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3rachaslut · 1 year ago

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i saw the virgin partner post and i just want to say that we need a VIRGIN SKZ version of it!, like what they think about it and how it feels and how excited they're about it it'd be also really nice it was written with dots like a headcanon that fits their personality and what are they most likely to do!

i hope I'm not asking too much and please ignore this ask if you're uncomfortable no pressure at all! 💖

okay so i may have gotten slightly carried away with this one but the thought of of virgin!SKZ x fem experienced reader is adorable ahh

warning; smut obvs but mainly fluff MINORS DNI !!

(not proof read, please forgive any mistakes)

HYUNG LINE; virgin!skz x fem!reader

chan

he would be so nervous on how to approach the topic that he��s ready to have sex with you. like, you two would be watching a film and he’s tickling you and down your thigh whilst PANICKING.

“y/n, i think i’m ready?” “ready for what baby?” “you know…” and your eyes would light up at his words. you would bring him in to the longest, most loving kiss ever and he feels like a weight has come off his shoulder now he’s actually SAID it!

he would definitely be giving you oral for so long just to try and psych himself up for what’s to come. he’s so so excited but so nervous. he wants to impress you so bad but all you want is for him to enjoy himself.

once the time finally comes he is hesitant but mainly because he feels so much pressure to make you feel good. “relax baby, enjoy it. i know i will” you would say as you bring him in to a kiss whilst rubbing his cheeks to calm him down and when he pushes into you, he ASCENDS. i’m talking, eyes rolling back and the WHIMPERS he’s letting out- oh my god.

“you can go faster baby, ah ‘feel so big inside me oh fuck-“. he’s so careful not to hurt you though because when i tell you chan has a BIG dick i mean that shit with my entire chest. he may have never had sex before but my god he knows what to do with his cock. you’d be a moaning mess and so would he. the whines he would let out whilst telling you he’s “cl- close..close” and the way you would grip him whilst clenching around him would tip him over the edge.

he’s trying his best to still buck into you as his orgasm hits him like a tonne of bricks and he’s moaning SO. LOUD. he would collapse into you after coming down from his climax and cover your flushed face full of kisses and tell you how fucking amazing you felt and how he can’t wait to make love to you again and again and again….

lee know

you’d be straddling him on the couch, yet again lost in the filthiest make out session. you’d be grinding on his thigh so desperately when he says “-wanna fuck you babe”. your eyes widen so big and you have to check you heard correctly. “what?” you say, “i said, i wanna fuck you” and he’d instantly be taking your clothes off. you don’t stop to question where his sudden confidence has come from because you’re too damn thrilled about the situation. he’d be so hungry for you, like he’d be running his hands up and down all of you whilst he takes your nipple in his mouth and lapping at it like a starved man.

unlike channie, lee knows nerves wouldn’t be so obvious but i swear this man is petrified inside, he just won’t let on that he is AT ALL. his dirty talk is the same as usual though, saying the filthiest things in your ear as you become more and more horny, wanting, no, needing him more than ever.

he’d lay you down on your bed and undress the rest of you whilst trailing kisses everywhere your clothes leave your skin. “so beautiful baby, you’re so beautiful” he’d say and you’d blush, remember what this foreplay would end in. he’s so eager to fuck you omg. he’d be telling you how badly he wants you whilst he preps you and his words truly get you going. you’re getting wetter and wetter at the thought.

before he enters you he’d say “you ready babe?” and omg you are more than ready. the moment he enters you, he lets out the loudest moan you’ve ever heard and you whine at his size. you knew he was big but having him inside you was another story. he’d speed up slightly and every time he’d hit your sweet spot, you’d make the most beautiful noises that turn him on so much. he definitely wouldn’t last long but it’s his first time so you can’t blame him at all.

“think.. ah- think i’m gonna cum baby fuck-“ he says whilst frantically bucking into you, his thrusts getting sloppier as he gets closer to his release. you’d clench around him tighter and he MOANS so loud. cusses and ah-s leave him mouth with every breathe as he cums inside you and he would lay on top of you afterwards stroking your hair and kissing all over your face until you both fall asleep….

changbin

he’d be on top of you, kissing your neck and caressing your face, whispering in you ear how beautiful you are. “baby..” he would say, sounding really nervous and you can’t help but think how cute he is. what you weren’t expecting was him to tell you how he is ‘ready’. “what?” you’d say, sure you must have misheard. “i’m ready.. to have sex with you” he would say and the blush on his face is crimson. “okay” you nod your head, smiling at his shyness.

the closer and closer he gets to your pussy as he’s trailing kissing all down your body, the more his nerves become apparent. he would be eating you out for AGESS, forcing his body to buck up the courage to just fuck you. your fingers are in his hair, tugging slightly and he’s whimpering at that, sending shock waves to your pussy with each moan and at this point you’re DESPERATE for him but don’t wanna add more pressure on him by saying “please binnie, i want you so much.”

once he’s ready, he would be caressing your legs and thighs and say “can i.. put it in now?” with uncertainty and shy eyes and you melt at his cuteness. “please!” you beg, absolutely dying for him to. when he enters you, he would let out the longest sigh ever, stilling inside you once he bottoms out and just taking in the feeling of you clenching around him. his eyes would be roll back and his mouth agape.

at first he be hesitant to start thrusting in case it felt too good and was scared he wouldn’t last long. “oh my god baby, you feel amazing ah-“ he’d mewl, his face contorting ever so slightly at your pussy taking all of him in so good. your head would be thrown back in bliss but you’re aching for him to go faster. “please binnie, faster. want you” you’d practically beg and he’d oblige, speeding up slightly and you’d start to moan louder. the feeling of your cunt around him mixed with your moans brings him closer to his orgasm. you knew he was gonna come fairly quick since it was his first time so you didn’t mind, if anything, you thought it was super cute.

“sorry baby, but- ah- i’m so- close” he’d gasp through whimpers, his voice slightly higher than usual. he would be thrusting into you as best as his hips would let him, faltering at the overwhelming pleasure around his cock. “s’okay baby, so good. you wanna cum, then cum babe” you’d say, staring into his eyes and he crumbles. seeing you underneath him looking into his eyes as he fucks you send waves of pleasure to his cock and he he’s quick to cum inside you, eyes scrunched closed and high pitched gasps leaving his mouth every second.

he would collapse on top of you after he comes down from his high and you’d praise him for doing “so good”. he would be so shy, he’d press his face into your neck and you’d let out an affectionate giggle at him. “i love you” he’d say as you kiss his temple and stroke up and down his biceps. “i love you too baby”….

hyunjin

hyune would be stroking up and down your leg, yet again not even making in through the first ten minutes of the movie you and him agreed to watch. you’d look at him and cheekily say “what are you doing hyunjinnie?” already knowing where this is going. “just feeling my princess” he’d lean in towards you and kiss you slowly but so deeply. your make out sessions always felt so full of love and this time was no different. his hands would come to cup your cheeks and he’d pull away, look into your eyes. “y/n..” “yes hyune?” you’d say, gazing into his beautiful eyes, waiting for him to speak. “i wanna make love to you, like, properly”. at first, you wouldn’t know what to say but once he gives you a smile.

you’d pounce onto him pulling him into kiss you. straddling him, you’re both smiling into the kisses you’re sharing and he’s gently unbuttoning your pj top. his kisses would be trailing down from your lips to your jaw, your neck to your chest. he would take your nipple into his mouth and you’d throw your head back in pleasure, grinding onto his thigh in desperation to feel something on your sore clit. you’d moan down his ear at the way he flicks your nipple around in his mouth with his tongue and gently bites down sending more waves of pleasure straight to your pussy. “hyune…” you’d whine, the knowledge of knowing what’s to come making you more and more horny. “what is it my love?” “need you” you’d say breathlessly, your thrusts on his thighs speeding up and he chuckles at how cute you are. he’d lay you down on the sofa, making you comfortable as he takes hus clothes off, the sight of his naked body never failing to take your breath away.

the gentle rubs he would give your clit have your toes curling and he’s desperate to feel you around him. “please jinnie..” you’d beg, needing him inside you so bad. he’d smile fondly at you beneath him as he lines his cock up to your entrance, gasping slightly at the amazingly foreign feeling. you’d close your eyes but he’d say “look at me baby girl, want to look at my princess” and he’d push in slowly, his mouth falling open and you reciprocate. the new feeling having you both overwhelmed with pleasure. you’d wrap your legs around him, bring in him in closer and he’d moan so loud as he bottoms out inside you. he’d lean down to be face to face with you, kissing you longingly as he begins to thrust into you, his cock dragging along your walls making you feel dizzy. “fuck- you feel so good darling” he’d say as his trails kisses town your neck, sucking gently at the skin and leaving love bites as a temporary reminder of this moment with you.

“so beautiful, my princess” he’d whisper in your ear and you’d fall in love with him all over again. his thrusts would begin to speed up slightly, hitting your sweet spot over and over again, the pleasure in your stomach threatening to tip you over the edge. “fuck hyune- you feel so fucking good in me ah-“ you’d say and he’d whimper in response, a string of ah’s leaving his mouth tell you he’s close. “so beautiful angel, i’m gonna- ah-“ he’d mewl, words shaky and his thrusts into you becoming messier and his legs tremble as he reaches his climax. “jinnie please!” you’d beg, unsure of what for but he cums at your pleas, whimpering and moaning curses into your ear. he would plant kisses all over your flushed face and tell you again how pretty you are, his “pretty girl”….

#skz smut #stray kids smut #stray kids x y/n #stray kids #lee know smut #bang chan smut #changbin smut #hyunjin smut #skz x reader #skz imagines #stray kids imagines

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rainbowsky · 20 days ago

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On GG's album, and hints of what was to come

As everyone here likely already knows, I'm completely losing it over the news of a full album from GG. There's a lot more to all of this that I haven't yet discussed, so let's dig into it. I have thoughts...

Disclaimer: Most of what's discussed here is rumor and interpretation, and could be inaccurate. We'll find out what's really happening soon enough!

I never dared dream that GG would put out an album. I have been begging for crumbs of a song for years now, it would have seemed completely outrageous to dare to dream of an entire album!!!

But now that it's on its way, and I've heard more info/rumors about the release (more on that in a bit), I can look back over the past year and see some signs that have been there all along, of what's to come.

More on the release

Promo has already begun, and we now know more about the release schedule based on what's posted on the streaming platforms.

The songs will be released in 3 waves, with the first wave happening on the 12th, the next one on the 19th and the final one on the 26th.

The physical album is going to be coming in December, and there are some tantalizing rumors about what that will include:

The album cover was drawn by GG.

A Xiao Zhan Studio red gift box containing various items including postcards, t-shirts etc.

There will be a CD version and a limited edition vinyl version.

A music video is also rumored to have been completed. This has been confirmed, and will be premiering on the 12th.

Clues we've had all along

What's interesting to me is that for months I've been posting updates about changes to XZ Studio's business license, that have been clues to what GG might be up to.

In January a license was obtained to establish a domestic performance agency.

In March that license was expanded to include services for film production and live performances.

In June there were some legal trademark applications made, pertaining to office supplies, calendars and paper gift wrapping.

And now we know that he's releasing an album, at least some editions which will likely be sold with bonus gifts, paper products and packaging (I think this is a very credible rumor because if he's going the physical album route, it's likely designer GG will want to do special editions like this).

Licenses recently purchased protect the studio's exclusive rights to produce and sell such items.

We also know GG and his studio love to produce stunning high quality videos. Was there ever any doubt that he'd make a music video? Maybe even more than one.

Licenses purchased earlier this year give the studio the right to produce such commercial videos.

And there's another license that is associated with live concert performances! I think it's highly likely we'll see a concert from him in the coming year or two.

Generous GG

As Fat Shrimp mentioned, the songs will be free on streaming. This has made a big impression on some fans, and there has been a lot of discussion about it, and about how much this album will have cost to produce, for GG to give it away for free (here's a compilation of some of the comments via Nili, and another from Estefanita).

People have expressed so many thoughts about this. Everyone agrees that it's almost unheard of to give an entire album for free. One or two songs, maybe, but just as a teaser for the full album - which must be paid for.

A lot of people have talked about the 'old days' (ack, I feel old!) when people would buy physical albums, often after having heard only one or two singles on the radio (although where I'm from people could go into a record store and listen to the full album before buying).

They say that he's opening himself up to that evaluation before people are expected to commit to paying for it, and that it's very generous and honorable, but that it will also open him up to being heard more by passersby who wouldn't otherwise be willing to pay for the music - therefore expanding his possible audience.

I personally think there are a few possible factors contributing to why he chose to share his album for free:

To me, this feels almost like GG's bigger 'debut' as an independent solo singer. He's finally releasing music entirely on his own terms. He wants to share and celebrate that with the world, as a gift to the world and to the fans. "I'm here. Please enjoy."

He's inviting people to listen to his music and judge for themselves whether it's worthy of their investment. It goes along with his personality as someone who wouldn't want people to associate any sort of 'buyer's remorse' with something he's sold them. He's always saying, "people are free to like or to hate," and this is his way of giving people that choice without judgment. "Listen and if you like it, buy it. If you don't, that's fine too." By doing this he's likely to build a bigger audience than by doing a traditional release, because everyone has a chance to hear and evaluate him without any up-front investment.

He wants to avoid any possibility of a repeat of what happened with Spotlight, where he was criticized because fans were buying dozens of copies as a means of boosting sales, and then bragging that their idol was the biggest seller of all time. He doesn't want fans to spend all their money on his songs or on boosting his 'sales', nor does he want any perception that the success of his album was bought by fans.

He could be bargaining on making more overall sales via charging for only the physical copies than by selling both, due to the expanded interest a free release is likely to generate.

He has confidence in what he's created, and is happy to share it openly.

He's doing this out of the joy of it more than anything else, and money isn't a central factor for him.

To me this approach, along with the stated plans for rolling all of this out, feels like a marketing plan, and we all know GG has a professional background in that kind of thing.

Yes, all those other elements of artistry, generosity and magnanimity come into it as well, of course. Marketing is treated as a dirty word, but we must remember that every marketing plan is based deeply in the values and intent of the individual/organization doing the marketing, and is focused on their goals.

I feel that his plan will have considered the factors I mentioned, and will be aligned with his values, intentions and goals.

This is just my take on it, of course. Only GG and his studio really know for sure what his plans and goals are.

Can't wait!!!

Whatever his feelings or plans are, I can't wait to hear this album, I can't wait to buy it, and I can't wait to see what kind if interest and critique it generates!!

I also hope that this is just the beginning - that he will be releasing more music, and hopefully doing concerts in the future.

#xiao zhan #singer gg #wm

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kaythefloppa · 8 months ago

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The Current Timeline of Wild Kratts:

Remember 3 years ago during the hiatus when I made that detailed post explaining the chronological lore of Wild Kratts and analyzed its timeline of a decade's worth of episode with a dash of my own HC involved in it and posted it onto the Wild Kratts fandom subreddit?

Yeah, I promised updates to it when the new episodes arrived, and here I am years later where the season has already premiered. Not to mention there were people who messaged me about legitimate errors I made that I accepted humbly, but didn't actually fix. Not to mention the crossovers that I completely ignored.

Well, much like in 2021, I had wayy too much free time on my hands and decided to go back and finally update that timeline. Unfortunately, Reddit's character limit prevented me from getting the edited version posted so I grit my teeth and decided to bring this fucker to Tumblr via copy and paste. Yeah, I'm not even kidding. So if you've ALSO got enough free time on your hands or are someone who read the original post who was desperately searching for an update, you've got it.

Full post underneath the cut: Warning, shit gets crazy down there.

The PBS Kids original animated show “Wild Kratts” has turned a decade old in the 2020's. Within that time, an autobiography, a 200 episode milestone, and a theatrical film based on the series is confirmed to be in development.

With new episodes of the show coming out, I figured that I’d analyze the show by making an analysis for its timeline. Like many shows, it does have continuity, but Wild Kratts is one of those shows which apparently has an extremely open universe where events happen within that universe, but they don’t seem to have a coherent timeline or any serialization. Many episodes are aired out of order and it’s hard to find a passage of time in a show which doesn’t rely on over-serialization in order to tell its own story.

I partly blame this on production errors as well as strict scheduling as well as the network focusing on releasing episodes in order of when they were produced as opposed to the intended date.

I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt that it doesn’t just rehash its timeline over and over again (unlike some other shows I know cough cough Arthur & Family Guy cough cough). Continuity does exist. It’s just figuring out how it falls in line that is the hard part.

I’ll update this post every time a new episode comes out. My plan is to analyze every single episode until the series finale so that we can determine how much time passes in the show. The way I'll order the timeline is by chronological order first. If there exists an episode or a group of episodes that do not contradict the order, but is not stated to go within this order, I will place them by original air-date and not production order.

I had found a website that lists every Wild Kratts episode (minus the hour-long specials) in order by air-date, unlike the Wild Kratts wiki & Wikipedia. Now, I did find some errors, as it claims that the first 2 episode aired on December 31st and not January 3rd, however I can forgive that as that has been a misconception for years and it got only the date wrong and not the order of episodes. So I was able to use that as a reliable source, more so than the fandom wiki. I am also running off of vivid memory based on my viewing experience as a kid, since I grew up with the show and have come to realize how much info I've retained from the universe of my hyperfixation and how I can use that to this post's advantage. Let's get into it.

Activate Analysis Powers!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

SEASON 1:

Let’s start with the very first 2 episodes to be released: Mom of a Croc and Whale of a Squid.

In that episode, we see that the Kratt Brothers are already familiar with what’s around them. They’re familiar with the Minaturizer, their Creature Power Suits and Disks, and adventuring with the coolest creatures from oceans to trees (sorry, had to squeeze that reference in).

We see that some animals and inventions are introduced into this episode like the Hippo Sub, Crocodilla, and her daughters. However, let’s focus on things which aren’t introduced in this episode.

Most notably, the Gharial Power Disks and the Miniaturizer. Let’s focus on the disks first.

Near the climax of the episode, the Kratt Brothers use the Gharial Power Disks to substitute for Crocodile Powers since they did not have a disk. Gharials and Nile Crocodiles are both in the order Crocodillia, but were not in the same species nor family. That, along with different designs, makes gharials and crocodiles in general very different animals, which is why the activation didn’t hold up (I hope to god they actually make an episode around gharials in the next season).

Many people assume that this episode only takes place after Kerhonk since Chris uses Gharial Crocodile Power, but this is actually false. Listen closely to what Chris is saying.

“Ha! Crocodile. And a gharial is a type of crocodile!”

Now we’ve already established that a gharial is NOT a crocodile despite being a crocodillian, but let’s get to the important part. Chris is saying that as he pulls out his Crocodile Disk for the Creature Power Suit. Now here is the thing. He doesn’t pull out a Gharial Disk. He uses the Croc Disk to activate Gharial Power, but he doesn’t use a gharial disk to activate the corresponding power suit.

So if Aviva did invent Gharial Power by the events of Kerhonk, Chris would’ve used that instead of using the Crocodile Disk as a substitute. And assuming that episode predates Mom of a Croc, the Kratt Brothers would’ve obviously used the Crocodile Disk since they have used it before.

So that means there was some off-screen adventure where Aviva made Gharial Powers which took place before Kerhonk.

...But that would mean Chris would already have a Gharial Power Disk by the events of Kerhonk and Mom of a Croc. One of 2 things is likely the case. Either Chris didn’t have access to the disk and used Crocodile Power as a last resort (as we see, the disk holder doesn’t exist until Season 2, so he probably stuffs them in his pockets), or that episode exists in an alternate timeline, which we know isn’t the case since that episode’s continuity is brought up later (we will see soon).

So we’ve established that Kerhonk takes place after Mom of a Croc, which takes place after an unseen series of events that predate the series itself as we know it.

Now onto the Miniaturizer. We see it in this episode, but 4 episodes later in Mystery of the Squirmy Wormy, the miniaturizer is invented. That leads me to believe that the episode takes place before Mom of a Croc. However, if you look in the background, you can see that the Walrus Power Suit is in the background with a harness and strap over it. This debunks my original theory of this episode predating the invention of the Creature Power Disks.

With the Walrus Power Suit in mind, it has a harness and strap over it, which brings up the question of why?

My answer would be that the harness and strap was meant for the Walrus Suit after it was damaged in Polar Bears Don’t Dance.

So now we’re at the original pilot episode, the first piece of Wild Kratts media produced by PBS Kids (excluding the Flash games that came out a month prior and were removed 9 years later, *sobs*). Here, the operation of the suits is different. Here, Aviva modified the suits for arctic survival and all it takes is for them to touch the animals with the gloves and then press the button. In many episodes, the modification occurs with the existence of a Creature Power Disc, or the disk is seen off-screen.

But the more I see into it, the more it makes sense. Ever wonder why we don’t see some creature power disks of creature powers in the earlier episodes? Maybe it could be the same reason why we don’t see the Polar Bear and Walrus Disk for the Creature Power Suit.

Aviva pre-programs the Creature Power Suits into the animal that the user can activate into not because she prefers this over making discs, or because the discs are already inserted into the suit, but because this was before she began making Creature Power Discs. This explains why in many Season 1 episodes, we don’t see the disc itself because the power is preprogrammed into the suit.

So at what point does this end and Aviva starts making discs? Any could be. All we know is that this would soon become the norm over preprogramming the power into the suits.

Polar Bears Don’t Dance could possibly chronologically take place around the earliest in the Wild Kratts timeline.

In Mystery of the Weird Looking Walrus, Aviva talks about upgrading features into the Walrus Power Suit. Maybe she isn’t talking about inventing the suits, but modifying the suits, which is fitting considering the walrus suit somehow malfunctioned and got jammed (which was presumably due to the cold arctic ice).

In the same episode, Zach and Donita’s interactions appear to be as if they had met recently, with Donita referring to Zach as the one who “vomitted from clams under the table.” So already we’re forming a coherent timeline with these episodes and we’re not even half-way through Season 1.

There would be one inconsistency. In this episode, Aviva says Jimmy’s controller is waterproof (along with food-proof) but in Seasquatch, 16 episodes later, Jimmy’s controller is protected by a shrink-wrap, indicating that it isn’t safe from the environment. Well, here’s the thing.

That episode shows a second appearance of the Squid Power Suit and Bumper the Sperm Whale from the episode Whale of a Squid which aired alongside Mom of a Croc on the premiere date of the series.

There’s no reason not to believe that the whale episode takes place after Mom of a Croc, which we have already established, takes place long after Polar Bears Don’t Dance. With that, my only explanation is that Jimmy’s controller wasn’t 100% waterproof since salty water can actually be very damaging to technology.

In Octopus WildKratticus Koki lists down many Creature Powers shown. This includes Honey Badgers, Polar Bears, and Octopi. This indeed indicates that these episodes where these powers debut are placed before this episode (some say it’s a retcon, but I disagree since Martin could’ve activated Honey Badger Power after the events of Honey Seekers).

Now let’s address the continuity in the series.

In Season 1, the Kratt Brothers have 2 adventures in the Australian Outback: Ones with kangaroos and koalas. In the koala episode, Chris mentions Aviva inventing Thorny Devil Disks for the Creature Power Suits the last time they were there. Considering that the kangaroo episode was 2 episodes prior to this one, I’m making it count.

Mimic is a sequel to Cheetah Racer, which takes place after Falcon City. In Mimic, the Cheetah Power Disk is invented, which is later used in Caracal Minton.

A Huge Orange Problem takes place after Kerhonk since Schnozzle (I think that is his name appears and Chris and Martin refer to him by that name.) This means that Kerhonk is in the official timeline of WK, meaning the only explanation as to why the Kratt Brothers had little access to either the Gharial and Crocodile Power Disc is that they physically had no access to it due to misorganization.

The Food Chain Game introduces new Creature Powers treated as familiar powers, which indicates that they were already invented off-screen. No episodes introduce these Creature Powers so that means the episode can't be out of order.

In Masked Bandits, Chris and Martin originally intend to use Wolf Power as costumes for their Halloween party, but instead Raccoon Powers are activated and Wolf Power is instead invented in Little Howler.

Ok so let’s go over the established time-line so far. When listing down the time-line, I’ll first do the episodes that chronologically fit together, then I’ll list episodes through air-date if there’s no connection or contradiction between them, then I will go back to chronology if I need to.

And that’s the end of the S1 timeline

Season 2:

Now already, we can see that Season 2 is a continuation of Season 1. The Tortuga HQ has an upgraded design, most likely from Aviva, which foreshadows the events of “Tortuga Tune Up.”

For the sake of things, I will put Speaking Dolphinese and Blowfish Blowout at the start of the S2 timeline because we don’t see the Tortuga so there’s a high possibility of it retaining its original design from S1 (I’m not including Lost at Sea because that was a terrible special that did nothing but combine 2 unrelated episodes into a movie).

The Seahorse Rodeo takes place afterwards since in Tortuga Tune Up, we see Blimpy (who is now an adult) and Ocean Pony.

Next we have Tortuga Tune Up, which shows Aviva modifying the Tortuga for swimming mode. Obviously I like to think the Tortuga’s redesign was an attempt to fix it, until Aviva had realized something was amiss.

Rocket Jaw: Rescuer of the Reef is a part of the Coral Reef saga of episodes so I count it at the beginning of S2.

Then we have Bad Hair Day, Race for the Hippo Disc, Creature Power Challenge, and Termites Versus Tongues, all of which are the first 4 ep. of S2 and take place in Africa. I consider those 3 chronologically connected. Plus, Zach recalls stealing the Creature Power Disc in one episode.

Happy Turkey Day is a Thanksgiving-related episode but I can easily consider it to be in the timeline.

Bugs or Monkeys serves as the first installment of the Central American Rainforest/Coral Reef saga. Followed by Shadow: The Black Jaguar, Rainforest Stew, Secrets of the Spider's Web, and To Touch a Hummingbird.

Then we get a bunch of episodes taking place in the Sonoran Desert. First we have Rattlesnake Crystal, which introduces the Sonoran Desert. I include this directly after the hummingbird episode because here, Aviva modifies Eyelash Viper Power for Rattlesnake Powers.

In the episode “Roadrunner” Chris and Martin say they have only JUST arrived at the Sonoran Desert. That episode’s plot is focused around the Tortuga getting a resupply, which is fitting considering they just recently crashed.

I would put “Skunked” after Roadrunner since it appears that they have enough resources by now. Then we’d get “Gila Monster Under My House,” then “Desert Elves”

Aqua Frog would come next I assume, I see no reason not to.

Groundhog Wakeup Call and Journey to the Subnivian zone have little ties to other episodes so I can place them in order of air-date. Since Attack of the Tree Eating Aliens takes place in the spring, we can have them come after those episodes.

So the Season 2 timeline goes like this:

Speaking Dolphinese → Blowfish Blowout → Rocket Jaw: Rescuer of the Reef → Seahorse Rodeo → Tortuga Tune Up → Bad Hair Day → Race for the Hippo Disc → Creature Power Challenge → Termites V. Tongues → Neck and Neck → Happy Turkey Day → Bugs or Monkeys → Shadow: The Black Jaguar → Rainforest Stew → Secret of the Spider's Web → To Touch a Hummingbird → Rattlesnake Crystal → Roadrunner → Skunked → Gila Monster Under My House → Desert Elves → Unnamed Burrowing Owl Disc Creation Episode → Aqua Frog → Journey to the Subnivian Zone → Snow Runners! → Groundhog Wakeup Call → Attack of the Tree Eating Aliens

Season 3:

Now, a lot of misconceptions have been made around Season 3 in terms of both continuity and air-date. My stance? Don’t believe a goddamn word that Google, Wikipedia, or the Wild Kratts wiki says. They have been getting the episode air-dates wrong since the very beginning, which is the reason I have to organize them.

As a longtime fan of the show who has been there since the beginning, I pretty much know the air-dates of the episodes by heart and the order.

The first episode is Hermit Crab Shell Exchange, second is Where the Bison Roam, third is Bandito: The Black Footed Ferret, fourth is When Fish Fly, fifth is Osprey. All 7 of these episodes premiered from April 7th to April 11th, 2014 as a part of PBS Kids' Wild Kratts Week, celebrating the show returning for its 3rd season.

The episode to air after that is the double-length episode, Back in Creature Time, which despite popular belief is NOT the Season 3 finale. The last episodes of Season 3 were centered around Madagascar. But before that, we see some adventures in the cypress swamp and the prairie.

Now that we’ve cleared up the misconceptions that people have had about Season 3’s episode order for the past 7 years (yeah a BIG fuck you to Wikipedia for that shit) let’s address the order continuity wise.

The first 7 episodes aired from April 7-11th as part of PBS Kids’ Wild Kratts Week! Celebrating the show’s renewal of S3. All but one would likely remain at their place. All except for Where the Bison Roam and Bandito since it introduces the prairie arc.

Back in Creature Time was after a LONG hiatus. Just to give you a good idea as to how long it was, the first 7 episodes of S3 aired in April when I was still in school, then the Back in Creature Time special aired months later long after I had moved into a different house during summer vacation.

The first episode to air after Back in Creature Time was Mosquito Dragon and Crocogator Contest (they were aired together as part of a special called “Swamp Things” but that special sucked for the same reasons why Lost at Sea did).

Now, this is something I noticed. Mosquito Bots were already invented by the time of Back in Creature Time, meaning that episode takes place after Mosquito Dragon.

And if we’re to include the cypress swamp saga, that means that Back in Creature Time comes in around the middle of the S3 timeline chronologically. That’s not even including the prairie episodes.

There were also Madagascar episodes. I consider Lemur Legs is chronologically the first of the order since the Kratts enter Madagascar here, and the finale of this arc is Golden Bamboo Lemur, where they leave.

This will be hard to crack, but I might be able to do it.

A thing that I noticed was that the Dragonfly Power Suits got redesigns frequently in S3. In Osprey and Mosquito Dragon, it has basket legs, resembling its S1 counterpart, but in Florida Panther and Back in Creature Time, they look completely different. In-universe, this can be credited to Aviva redesigning the suit, so I tried to arrange the episodes in a way that would make the suit's metamorphosis (pun not intended) feel less jarring than if you were watching the episodes in production order or viewing order.

So the S3 timeline is

Hermit Crab Shell Exchange → When Fish Fly → Osprey → Crocogator Contest → Mosquito Dragon → The Search for the Florida Panther → Opossum in My Pocket → Slider: The Otter → Back in Creature Time → Where the Bison Roam → Bandito: The Black Footed Ferret → The Amazing Creature Race → Prairie Who → Mystery on the Prarie → Under Frozen Pond → Capture the Fishmobiles → Praying Mantis → Lemur Legs → Chameleons on Target → Aye-Aye → Lemur Stink Fight → Tenrec Treasure Hunt → Fossa Palooza → Mini Madagascar → Golden Bamboo Lemur

Season 4:

Once again, this season was distributed out of order and the years that have passed since its release, however, as someone who, once again, watched every episode the day they aired, I can correct the misconceptions.

Firstly, the first episode of S4 was The Last Largest Lobster, and the last episode was Musk Ox Mania. The 3rd episode was A Creature Christmas, followed by 5 additional episodes, one of which introduced Paisley Paver and Rex into the show.

Now the confusion is that A Creatire Christmas aired as the 3rd episode of S4, yet animals and Creature Powers in that episode wouldn’t be introduced until later. So I’ll list down all of the episodes that come before the Christmas special.

The Last Largest Lobster comes before Stars of the Tide (they literally aired back-to-back).

Panda Power Up comes first in the China-located episodes. Next up comes Golden Snub Nosed Monkey Man. Red Panda Rescue features both Giant Panda and Snub Nosed Monkey Power, so I imagine it comes next. At the end of that episode, Aviva alludes to Red Panda Power, which is present in “The Colors of China”

Pangolin Rescue follows that (remember, all of these take place before A Creature Christmas). Along with the Two-Tusked Narwhal Adventure, the Snowy Owl Invasion, the Puffin adventure, the Other Martins, and This Orca Likes Sharks.

At this point, we’ve covered all of the pre-Christmas episodes. Now let’s do the ones we have left.

Liturgusa Krattorum, Eel-lectric!, Sea Otter Swim, Box Turtled In!, Animals Who Live to be 100 years old, Archerfish School, and many others.

Something to note is that Aviva narrates how the villains have never before teamed-up. Ignoring the fact that it is not true, that episode would have to come before Krattorum.

Here’s the timeline of S4:

The Last Largest Lobster → Stars of the Tides → Box Turtled In → The Other Martins → Sea Otter Swim → Animals who Live to be 100 Years Old → Spirit Bear → Panda Power Up → Snowy Owl Invasion → Golden Snub Nosed Monkey Man → Red Panda Rescue → The Colors of China → Pangolin Rescue → Archerfish School → Baby Tooth & Kid Musky → Musk Ox Mania → Puffin Rescue→ Mystery of the Two Horned Narwhal → This Orca Likes Sharks → A Creature Christmas → Cheetah Adopted → Eel-lectric → Liturgusa Krattorum → Creatures of the Deep Sea

Season 5:

I’m gonna throw in my personal opinion… This is my least favorite season of the show. The premiere episode, Alaska: Hero’s Journey was pretty cool and in my opinion, jumped the shark for Wild Kratts as we know it. Not only did it establish continuity with previous adventures and use it as a key-factor for the episode’s story, but it introduced a Creature Power Suit for Koki and had a very mature theme and an awesome message.

And then it went downhill from there. A lot of episodes, whilst enjoyable, felt pretty weak. Some were forgettable, and it felt like it talked down to its audience more, and there were just a lot of things that I felt didn’t work. This is where I think the show began a heavy seasonal rot and I know I'm not alone in this.

Ok, opinions aside, the time-line of this season is a lot easier to decipher than the earlier ones because there were less episodes.

Even though Alaska: Hero’s Journey was the first episode of S5 to be aired, the Bald Eagle Power Suit was shown, yet it wouldn’t be invented until The Fourth Bald Eagle.

Many listings show Mystery of the North Pole Penguins as the S5 premiere. And given that there are no continuity errors in that episode, I can see it being the start of Season 5’s storyline.

In the next episode, Temple of the Tigers, Martin and Chris head to India to adventure with tigers. A majority of S5 takes place in India, including the episode where Paisley Paver and Rex return, so I view the tiger episode as the start of the “India” arc.

There are also several episodes centered in Europe, as part of what I like to call, the “Europe” arc.

Creepy Creatures would go near the end of this timeline, as we see many S5 Creature Powers and animals by then.

So here’s the timeline for S5

Mystery of the North Pole Penguins? → Temple of the Tigers → The Dhole Duplicator → The Cobra King → Sloth Bear Suction → Elephant Brains → Cheeks the Hamster → Fire Salamander → Komodo Dragon → Wild Ponies ---> City Hoppers! → Blue Heron → Choose your Swordfish → The Erminator → Hercules: The Giant Beetle → Creepy Creatures! → The Fourth Bald Eagle → Alaska: Hero’s Journey

Season 6:

This season in my opinion, was a slight step up from the 5th season, since we get to see more interesting animals, and the writing feels a lot more breathable. The color palette, I specifically would go without, because it just looks weird. What I do like is how they recasted Koki, a character of color, to be voiced by a woman of color, and I'm glad this change is permanent.

Instantly, we get an instance of a continuity error: Martin is shown to have a Jackrabbit Power Disc in the 2nd episode of S6, yet he doesn’t get it until the Easter special, In Search of the Easter Bunny. There’s actually a reason behind this. The original title for the episode focusing on bunnies was titled “Spring Bunnies” and was listed as the Season 6 premiere, however this was cut and the bunny episode was released almost a year later. My working theory is that because of tight schedules, “Spots in the Desert” was released before the introduction of the Jackrabbit Power Disc.

We return to the Amazon once again with the double-length episode, Amazin’ Amazon Adventure and we get some newer amazon episodes after that.

In a promotional video for Hero’s Journey, the Kratt Brothers said that Season 5 would have at least 23 episodes. My guess is that they had to cut down the last 5 episodes because of COVID or something.

There are two things that stand out the most to me in this season's timeline. For starters, in the Hammerheads episodes, we see that the brothers have an Antelope Disc for the Creature Power Suit despite there being no episode centered around those creatures or introducing a Power Disc. Much like the Burrowing Owl and Gharial Discs, we're to assume that there was an adventure focusing around that animal/an invention of that Creature Power Disc that was not televised, and thus is part of this season's lineup.

The second was how in one of the first episodes of Season 7, Chris expresses a desire to adventure with wolverines, despite that happening in the previous season. So in a rare case, this has to go in a different season's timeline to remain consistent.

Anyways, let’s go onto the timeline of the most recent season. I’ll be going off of habitat here just to be consistent.

In Search of the Easter Bunny → Mystery of the Flamingo’s Pink → Spots in the Desert → Wolf Hawks → Deer Buckaroo → Unnamed Antelope Adventure Episode → Hammerheads → The Vanishing Stingray → The Real Ant Farm → Mystery of the Mini Monkey Models → Amazin’ Amazon Adventure → The Great Froggyback Ride → Parrot Power → The Race to Goat Mountain → Iron Wolverine → Adapto the Coyote → Tartigrade Xtreme → Uh Oh-Ostrich! → The Great Creature Tail Fail → Cats and Dogs →

Season 7:

The long-awaited Season 7 has arrived as of 2023, marking the return of the show to PBS Kids after two years of a hiatus. With eight episodes having been released, 13 more confirmed on the way, and the 200th episode milestone airing in S7, fans have a lot to hope for. And thankfully it means new fodder for my timeline list.

As I've said before, The Race to Goat Mountain cannot be a part of Season 7's timeline since it has to take place before their actual wolverine adventure.

This in of itself is purely subjective but I like to imagine that Clever the Raven would be the first episode of S7. For a few reasons. One, it was the first episode of the season to be confirmed (in an interview with Jane Goodall). Secondly, compared to Outfoxed, it felt more like a season premiere. With the fanservice-callbacks, the villains returning, the simple-structure of the plot with no rising or falling action and the episode's overall writing, it basically marks off a check-list of everything in the show that you were missing out on for 2 years and everything that you're coming back to after such a long break. Plus it's my favorite out of all of the S7 premiere episodes. Call me biased, but this one's going first.

Our Blue and Green World was the first of the episode batch in 2024. Personally, I am putting it as the most recent spot in the S7 timeline, after the other 3 episodes. The reason being is because with Paisley Paver's redemption, this episode feels like a huge game-changer, one that the writers hint will affect the rest of the series. I think this special should've been the last to air in the batch just to get viewers hyped for what's next. It's basically like a mid-season finale of some sorts:

Three new episodes will air in November of 2024: Salamander Streaming, Bumblezzz, and Chimpanzee and Me. Until the episodes come out, I will list them in the timeline in their release date order.

Timeline of Season 7:

Clever the Raven → Outfoxed → Owl Odyssey → No Name Dream → Backpack the Camel → Fish Out of Water → Our Blue and Green World → Salamander Streaming → Bumblezzz → Chimpanzee and Me

CROSSOVERS:

There are three shows that Wild Kratts has crossed over with. One of which came out after I made this post, two of which before, but I decided to add them here just for the fun of it and to commit to the lore-dump of the timeline. Whether or not I'll extrapolate that into forming a huge novel about the expanded universe of PBS Kids, only time will tell.

Night Shift: (Odd Squad)

This was the first crossover the brothers had done with another show, Odd Squad, a live action math-based cartoon that is set to air its fourth season in 2024. The Kratt Brothers have their traditional live-action opening that is interrupted by Otis and Olympia solving their 'odd problem' a running gag with various different characters throughout the series as a 'cold opener.' The reason there is such a massive overlap between the two fandoms is because of that scene in the episode.

How to fit it into the canon? Well, since this is shot similarly to a Wild Kratts live action opener segment, then we can equate it with the "what if!?" element of the show. It should be noted that the Kratts are following a white-tail-deer, an animal they would later adventure with in Season 6. So you could have this episode take place directly before the "what-if?!" section of that episode that transitions into the animated story.

Wild Batts: (Nature Cat)

In 2015, PBS Kids launched a new nature based show known as "Nature Cat" featuring the titular cat and his gang of animals exploring nature. This special aired directly after Wild Kratts: A Creature Christmas, so PBS Kids often marketed both the WK Christmas special and the Nature Cat premiere, so much so that at the end of the Christmas episode, the Kratt Brothers themselves promoted the new Nature Cat special. It only made sense that these nature brothers from another mother teamed up! And thus we had Wild Batts! In this episode, Chris and Martin "Batt" have to find a new home, after their old one is destroyed, challening Nature Cat and Ronald's fear of bats in the process and learning more all about them. Several references to the Kratt's show are made, such as the classic "Living free and in the wild!"

How to fit it into the canon? In the episode's context they are literally bats, but in the context of the show itself, they would probably be in Creature Power Suits. And one thing interesting is that Chris and Martin are said to be Indiana bats, an endangered species of North American bats. We know that there is no singular Creature Power Suit for a generalized species as we've seen with the crocodillian, owl, and snake-based Power Suits. So it's possible that Aviva modified the Little Brown Bat/Vampire Bat programing with Indiana Bat Power. So this would probably take place post-Season 1. I have it take place in Season 6 since Wild Batts aired around the same time that Season 6 just started airing, ironic ain't it?

Oh, and the episode also makes bat references to other PBS Kids characters, such as Peg + Bat (Peg + Cat), George the Curious Bat (Curious George) Daniel Bat (Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood) and the Bat/Cat in the Hat. Now, the logical man within me says that these are easy puns to laugh at and not look into. However, the sick twisted fuck that is me says, connect that shit together. Since we've already established Odd Squad, we can probably say that there was an 'odd problem' turning these random PBS Kids characters into bats (probably including the Kratt Brothers if you don't buy the idea that they're in very convincing Creature Power Suits) and that the Odd Squad is able to save them with a reverse-bat-inator and they all go their separate ways, never to meet each other again until their grand return in PBS: Endgame (ok maybe I'm going too far into it but just a funny thought, also yes that is the one MCU reference I decided to cash in).

Cry Wolf: Molly of Denali

The 3rd of the Wild Kratts crossovers, airing in summer of 2022. This was a massive thing in the WK fandom, mainly because around that time, news had come out that the show would not air any new episodes until 2023, which was a massive low blow. This crossover between Wild Kratts and Molly of Denali, while not enough... at least damaged this blow and is an okay entry point to Molly of Denali, another pretty damn good PBS Kids show.

The Kratt Brothers help Molly and her dad track a missing pack of endangered wolves, learning more about them on the way. In the episode it's established that Molly is a huge fan of Wild Kratts, referencing their show a lot, implying that the Kratts we see here are 2D representations of their IRL selves rather than their 2D-in-universe selves. Still, I came here to overanalyze, and overanalyze I shall! Since the Kratts did their whole "what-if!?" skit in Odd Squad, then I could see the same happening here, just not being necessary for the episode's plot. I'll suspend my disbelief again because what the hell.

How to fit it into the canon? I'd have it come between Season 6 and 7. It aired around that time, and again, it was almost certainly done so as compensation for making fans wait 2 years for the new season to drop. Plus it lines up with my headcanon of Clever the Raven being the first in S7's timeline, since the brothers would still be in the mood to adventure with wolves.

So to conclude, all of these crossovers I see as very recent in the show, you could cut them out and lose nothing, but add them in and get more of something, which is what I'm doing. In terms of timeline to the crossovers specifically, here it goes.

Wild Batts → Night-Shift → Cry Wolf

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CONCLUSION: THE CURRENT TIMELINE OF WILD KRATTS

Polar Bears Don’t Dance → The Mystery of the Squirmy Wormy → The Mystery of the Weird Looking Walrus→ Unnamed Gharial Crocodile Adventure Episode → Mom of a Croc → Whale of a Squid → Aardvark Town → Flight of the Draco → Platypus Cafe → Bass Class → Build it Beaver → Voyage of the Butterflier XT → Honey Seekers → Fireflies → Tazzy Chris → Octopus Wildkratticus → Walk on the Wetside → Elephant in the Room → Let the Rhinos Roll → Kickin’ it with the Roos → Koala Balloon → The Blue and the Grey → Falcon City → Cheetah Racer → Mimic → Kerhonk → A Huge Orange Problem → Caracal Minton → Zig-Zagged → Seasquatch → The Food Chain Game → Masked Bandits → Little Howler → The Gecko Effect → Flight of the Pollinators → Birds of a Feather → Googly Eye: The Night Guru → Stuck on Sharks → A Bat in the Brownies → Raptor Roundup → Quillbur's Birthday Present → Speaking Dolphinese → Blowfish Blowout → Rocket Jaw: Rescuer of the Reef → Seahorse Rodeo → Tortuga Tune Up → Bad Hair Day → Race for the Hippo Disc → Creature Power Challenge → Termites V. Tongues → Neck and Neck → Happy Turkey Day → Bugs or Monkeys → Shadow: The Black Jaguar → Rainforest Stew → Secret of the Spider's Web → To Touch a Hummingbird → Rattlesnake Crystal → Roadrunner → Skunked → Gila Monster Under My House → Desert Elves → Unnamed Burrowing Owl Disc Creation Episode → Aqua Frog → Journey to the Subnivian Zone → Snow Runners! → Groundhog Wakeup Call → Attack of the Tree Eating Aliens → Hermit Crab Shell Exchange → When Fish Fly → Osprey → Crocogator Contest → Mosquito Dragon → The Search for the Florida Panther → Opossum in My Pocket → Slider: The Otter → Back in Creature Time → Where the Bison Roam → Bandito: The Black Footed Ferret → The Amazing Creature Race → Prairie Who → Mystery on the Prarie → Under Frozen Pond → Capture the Fishmobiles → Praying Mantis → Lemur Legs → Chameleons on Target → Aye-Aye → Lemur Stink Fight → Tenrec Treasure Hunt → Fossa Palooza → Mini Madagascar → Golden Bamboo Lemur → The Last Largest Lobster → Stars of the Tides → Box Turtled In → The Other Martins → Sea Otter Swim → Animals who Live to be 100 Years Old → Spirit Bear → Panda Power Up → Snowy Owl Invasion → Golden Snub Nosed Monkey Man → Red Panda Rescue → The Colors of China → Pangolin Rescue → Archerfish School → Baby Tooth & Kid Musky → Musk Ox Mania → Puffin Rescue→ Mystery of the Two Horned Narwhal → This Orca Likes Sharks → A Creature Christmas → Cheetah Adopted → Eel-lectric → Liturgusa Krattorum → Creatures of the Deep Sea → Mystery of the North Pole Penguins? → Temple of the Tigers → The Dhole Duplicator → The Cobra King → Sloth Bear Suction → Elephant Brains → Cheeks the Hamster → Fire Salamadner → Komodo Dragon → Wild Ponies -> City Hoppers! → Blue Heron → Choose your Swordfish → The Erminator → Hercules: The Giant Beetle → Creepy Creatures! → The Fourth Bald Eagle → Alaska: Hero’s Journey → In Search of the Easter Bunny → Mystery of the Flamingo’s Pink → Wild Batts → Spots in the Desert → Wolf Hawks → Night-Shift → Deer Buckaroo → Unnamed Antelope Adventure Episode → Hammerheads → The Vanishing Stingray → The Real Ant Farm → Mystery of the Mini Monkey Models → Amazin’ Amazon Adventure → The Great Froggyback Ride → Parrot Power → The Race to Goat Mountain → Iron Wolverine → Adapto the Coyote → Tartigrade Xtreme → Uh Oh-Ostrich! → The Great Creature Tail Fail → Cats and Dogs → Cry Wolf → Clever the Raven → Outfoxed → Owl Odyssey → No Name Dream → Backpack the Camel → Fish Out of Water → Our Blue and Green World → Salamander Streaming → Bumblezz → Chimpanzee and Me

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And there you have it so far folks. Thirteen years, seven seasons, 160 televised episodes, plus four crossover episodes amounting to 164 canon episodes in the current Wild Kratts timeline. More are on their way and more of this grand Creature Adventure is beyond the horizon. Keep on Creature Adventuring, see ya on the Creature Trail!

Am I a genius, or am I a genius?

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enthusiasticharry · 2 years ago

Text

the one where YN is a rising star in 1940's Hollywood, and Harry sets his eyes on her even though she's married.

author's note: two posts in two weeks? who am i? so thankful for all of the love on Desire i'm so glad you enjoyed it, and i hope you enjoy Glitz and Glamour just as much. posts are probably going to slow down again (very sorry just have a lot on plate going back to work, ugh) but imma promise that i'm not going to be gone for long, and there may even be a new series in the works ;) love ya lots!

word count: 10k of glitz, glamour, smut, fluff, angst and everything in between. (don't forget harry being a sexy rock star)

let me know what you think of Glitz and Glamour here! mwah <3

Hollywood, 1946

“I told you, Marshall, I’m not doing it.”

YN sat in her husband’s office; the pinstripe pencil skirt suit she had on giving her a sense of confidence to say what she really wants to in front of her husband. It wasn’t that she was usually a pushover in front of her husband – but his power scared her.

YN had met Marshall Miller when she was twenty-one, and she had just moved to Hollywood with nothing but a small suitcase full of all her personal belongings and a dream on her shoulders. It was at a scouting audition that she’d first met him, and YN knew that there were two things that were working on her side. The first was that she had a strive and a power to be the best actress that she could ever be, and the other was that she knew how to have men in the palm of her hand.

From being cast in her first film that day (even if it was only a minor role) she had Marshall Miller in the palm of her hand and she was holding on tight. She was in three more Marshall Miller films across the next three months, and in the fourth month of living in Hollywood she was married to one of the most influential directors in the business.

Obviously, YN had never planned for her marriage to be a business move (it was from her opinion, she didn’t know about Marshall), but she had to roll with the punches that this town gave her. She knew she would never love Marshall, but she couldn’t lie and tell herself that she didn’t appreciate the opportunities that he bestowed upon her.

That included this one – the first time that she was going to be a leading lady in a film that wasn’t just the wife of an important male lead. However, things weren’t exactly working to her plan when she received a revised version of the script which included a slightly more sexual scene (fine, whatever) but that also included her being nude.

This was the one thing that she had discussed with Marshall when she was first scouted – that she would do everything that she asked to, but she wouldn’t get nude in any scene she did. That would change the game for her acting – any last hopes for her to be known as an acting force in this life would be out of the window and she would be renamed as a ‘sex-symbol’ which wasn’t the life that she was looking for.

“I’m sorry, YN but you don’t have a choice.”

“I do have a choice, Marshall,” YN stood her ground, leaning forward in her chair and tapping her red-painted nails on top of his desk, “This is my body, Marshall, and I don’t want it recorded for everyone to see.”

“I think you’re forgetting something, YN,” He leans back in his chair and sparks up a cigarette, a look on his face that scares her and angers her all at the same time, “We’re married, you signed a contract to these studios – I own your body and what we want you to do with it.”

YN didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know whether to scream, cry or laugh her way out of the room. Instead, she stood up and spat, “Fuck you, Marshall,” at him and stormed out of the room.

There was no way in fuck that she was going back to work right now, and there was equally no way that she was going home where she may have to deal with the backlash of her actions towards her husband today – so she went to the next best place.

YN had found out about the bar that she had just walked into through some of the girls at the studio. It was a bar that many of the elite in Hollywood came to, mainly because it was underground and normally anything that happened there was kept under wraps by everybody there. It was an amazing bar, and YN loved it so much. She also knows that Marshall knows nothing about the bar, so she was completely safe.

Walking towards her normal seat at the bar, she sees that her favourite bartender in the entire world wiping a glass behind the bar. Once Bruno saw her, he beamed a smile in her direction and motioned for her to sit down. He immediately started making her a Manhattan, her favourite drink, and giving her an extra cherry because he knows she loves them.

“Haven’t seen you in a while, darling,” Bruno leans against the bar with a smile on his face, watching as she probably took a larger-than-ladylike gulp of her drink, “Rough day?”

“You know it,” She smiled at him as she slipped one of cherries off the stick and placed it into her mouth, “Thanks for this, Bruno.”

“Anytime, darling.”

To the watching eye, it would’ve been a sad sight to see YN sat by herself having multiple drinks, but it was what she needed. She didn’t know what she was going to go home to tonight and in the few months that she had been married to Marshall she knew that she could be walking into anything.

The last time that she had dared stand up in front of Marshall was a few weeks into her marriage to him, and it had ended up with him smacking her across the face. She didn’t know whether it was because he didn’t know what he signed up for when marrying her and thought that she was just going to be this perfect little wife that took everything that he said with a smile. That wasn’t the case, and YN really received the brunt of that.

That was the only singular time that Marshall had laid his hands on YN, but that was mainly because YN was strategic the next times that she said anything and made sure that she had an escape route planned so that she wouldn’t have to deal with anything like that again. Knowing that if she hadn’t left that office when she did, she would probably have had to endure something that scares her to death – but these were the games that she had to play.

YN didn’t know how long that she had been sat at the bar, but she knew that she had downed three Manhattan’s and Bruno was just placing down her fourth. She smiled at him, but he seemed to linger.

“What is it, Bruno?”

“You seem to have an admirer, Mrs. Miller.”

YN was confused by his words, but she knew that he obviously meant something. What YN didn’t expect was for probably the most handsome man she’d ever seen in her life. He was wearing a pinstripe suit, similar to her own but it was white and grey. His hat rested on the table next to him, and he had a drink which she could guess was whiskey in his hands. The second that he lifted up his drink to his lips, never breaking eye contact with her so she had to.

The second she looked away YN felt a heat rising right up her body. She pressed her hand up to the back of her neck, hoping that her hands were cool enough to spread through her body.

YN knew that she could attract men, but the circle that she was now in (especially being married to Marshall) meant that men sort of avoided her at all costs. However, right now Marshall was nowhere to be seen and every though she was in a place where some people she knows would be, there weren’t any here now. Even though that she could have some fun, she still had to remember that she was married.

That was a little bit difficult when she realised that he was no longer across the room from her but actually stood right next to her. Bruno looked at her once with wide eyes before turning to the stranger that had just invited himself to sit next to her.

“Another drink, Mr. Styles?”

“Please,” He nodded his head, placing his now empty glass on the bar in front of them, “And another one for the lady, on me.”

YN hadn’t notice that she had finished her drink, but once she had placed it down and took one fleeting glance in the stranger’s direction, she found herself heating up all over. She had definitely not expected a British accent. Even though she had quite a few drinks, she wasn’t drunk – maybe just a little tipsy.

“That really isn’t necessary, sir,” She placed her glass down, offered him a small smile and shook her head slightly.

“I think it is,” He nodded, “A beautiful girl shouldn’t be sat alone, paying for her own drinks.”

“Well…” YN had no idea what to say, and that wasn’t a state that she found herself in a lot, “Thank you, sir.”

“No problem,” As he leaned on the bar, turning on his side slightly so that he was looking directly at her she couldn’t help but look, even though every rational part of her brain was telling her not to, “It’s the least I can do.”

When both of their drinks were placed down in front of them, YN made it pretty obvious that she was married by picking up her drink that had her rings on it, and they weren’t rings that anyone could miss. It was Marshall’s second marriage, but he wasn’t sparing any expenses on his much younger bride.

YN watched his face as he realised, a light scoff of a laugh escaping his lips as he picked up his own drink.

“That’s a lovely rock you’ve got on your finger there.”

“Oh,” She extended her hand out in front of her, “This old thing?”

He laughed at her attempt at a joke (which seemed to work) and she couldn’t help but smile at his reaction. The way his face lifted when he laughed, and the dimples that he showed, and don’t even get her started on his hair.

“I must say, I am a little surprised to see a married lady in here without her husband to accompany her.”

“What’s to say he isn’t here? Or that I’m not waiting for him to come?”

“If you are waiting for him, he’s an asshole for making you wait forty minutes.”

The stranger had caught her there, but she made sure that her face was set so that he couldn’t see that he had shocked her.

“Oh, so you have been stalking me now, sir?”

“No, I wouldn’t say stalking,” He laughed, running a hand through his bouncy curls, “More so that I can admire beauty when I see it.”

YN couldn’t lie and say that she wasn’t enjoying the attention that she was receiving – because she very much was. This were the years that she was supposed to be in her prime, and the second that this handsome stranger took one look at her she should have had him in the palm of her hand. That wasn’t the case, as she always had Marshall lingering in the back of her mind.

Even though she knew that Marshall had been unfaithful to her (He was a director in Hollywood, for Christ’s sake) she didn’t know whether she could stoop to that level. There was also the slight issue of what Marshall would do to her, and the other person that was involved. There were so many moving parts to a marriage that was a business action, YN had quickly noticed.

“Anyway, who is this husband of yours? The one who doesn’t even come out for a drink with his wife?”

YN scoffed, slightly taken aback by audacity of this man to ask such a question when he hadn’t even told her his name, “Why would you like to know?”

“Maybe I know him,” He shrugs, “Know a lot of people around her, and I also wouldn’t be opposed to telling him how he’s supposed to treat a beauty like yourself.”

YN couldn’t believe what she is hearing, “Sir, what makes you think I’m just going to tell you my husband’s name and I don’t even know yours.”

“Harry Styles,” He holds his hand out for her, which she accepts with her ring clad hand.

“YN Miller.”

“Miller, that’s right,” He laughs, “I knew I recognised you. I do know who your husband is, Marshall Miller.”

Well, shit. That didn’t exactly go the way she planned, but at the end of the day everyone knew about her and Marshall. From the first time that they had been spotted outside the studio together, to the day that they made their red-carpet debut as a couple – everyone was reading about them.

There were times that it annoyed YN more than she could explain that every time she read an article about herself, the mentions of her acting came second every time to her marriage to Marshall. The marriage gave her the roles she wanted, but not the attention. The role in the new movie would give her the right attention, but if she followed through with the nudity she would be finished as an actress – that’s for sure.

“Of course, you do,” She smiles, “Thank you for the drink, Mr. Styles, but I think I may be off now.”

She grabs her purse and stand ups. As she turns to walk away, she feels a hand grab her wrist. It wasn’t harsh, but just a soft grip to keep her still.

“Look, I may know who your husband is, but my point still stands,” He offers her a smile, “And if you feel like this in the future, my band’s playing at Ciro next week and I’d love to see you there.”

When YN walked into the house she lived in with Marshall, it was eerily silent. YN knew that he was here, because her car was on the driveway, it was just finding him that would be the main issue. YN knew that she wasn’t up for a fight, and that was why she decided to just kick off her heels and make her way upstairs.

Growing up in a small town, in a flat in New York that was as big as the bathrooms in this house meant that there was a lot for YN to get used to. The fact that sometimes she wasn’t even allowed to make her own food, or just clean if she wanted to really got to her. There were small domestic things that she grew up with that she missed, but it meant that she appreciated the people who did even more and treat them much better than Marshall ever did.

As she made her way upstairs, she beelined through the bedroom and into the closet where she knew that Marshall never went. So, imagine her surprise when he was sat there with his tie a mess and his shirt unbuttoned. To say that her husband was twenty years older than her, she couldn’t lie and say that he wasn’t handsome. The problem wasn’t his looks, or even his personality on his good days – but the way he treated people, YN included.

“You’re late,” He muttered into his glass as he lifted it up to his lips, “Where have you been?”

YN didn’t stand and look at him any longer. She started unfastening her necklace and walked over to her dressing table. Unfortunately, the way that the mirror was angled she could still see him staring at her.

“Sorry, I went out,” She placed her jewellery neatly on the side, “I was with Rosie and Sally. You know what it’s like when we get together – the time just runs away with us.”

“Huh,” He scoffs into his glass.

YN felt as though she had been caught, “What?”

“It’s just funny, that’s all,” He leant forward, placing his elbows on his knees, “Because just after you stormed out of my office, I went to find Rosie and Sally to ask where you were, and they hadn’t seen you.”

“I went to the bathroom first, if you really want to know,” She sighed, turning so that she was looking at him, “I went to the bathroom, for a while because I couldn’t believe that my husband was such an asshole and needed to get myself together before I went to find them.”

YN couldn’t believe sometimes that she was such a good bloody actress, on screen and in her daily life. It wasn’t like she couldn’t tell Marshall that she had gone to a bar on her own, but the lingering thought of Harry in the back of her mind and knowing that she didn’t know how well she would have been able to cover that up meant that she had to think on her feet.

Deciding enough was enough, she stood up and started to remove her clothes as she walked into the bathroom ready to take her makeup off.

“Don’t you walk away from me, YN!”

“It wasn’t like you were saying anything, Marshall!”

As she made it into the bathroom, she leant forward on the counter with her hands and sighed. She knew that he wouldn’t be too far behind her, so when he walked in and grabbed her shoulders, tightly and turning her so that she was facing him – she wasn’t that shocked. However, the feeling of his nails pressing into her skin did have her wincing a little bit.

“We didn’t finish our conversation,” He says, and she can smell the alcohol so strong on his breath.

“It sounded like we had, Marshall,” She responded, trying to ignore the feeling of her on his skin.

“I’m not talking about that bullshit in there,” He spits, “I’m talking about the conversation in my office earlier.”

YN prided herself on the fact that not much in this life scared her, but Marshall was the one thing that scared her continuously.

“I told you, Marshall,” Her voice came out a little meeker now, “I’m not doing it.”

“It’s not up for discussion, YN,” He lets out a deep breath, “Think of all the money we’ll get. People want to see you, I mean, who wouldn’t?”

“I’m not doing it Marshall,” She shakes him off her and he stumbles back. He runs a hand over his face and starts to walk in a circle, “I told you; I’m not parading myself just because it’ll get your rocks off seeing me naked on the big screen. I don’t care about the money.”

He stalked closer to her, so that they were almost nose to nose and lifted his hand up and placed his thumb and pointer finger together, “You’re this close, YN. This. Close.”

He was pushing her further and further towards the counter, so that her back was painfully pressed against it, and she couldn’t breathe properly. She knew that there was only one way that was going to be fixed if she didn’t think on her feet.

“Look, Marshall, I’m not going to get fully nude – I won’t,” He let out such a deep breath that his nostrils flared, and she was bracing for impact, she even lifted up her hands, “But that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.”

He dropped his hands away from her and took a step back, “What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you do what the French are doing, eh?” She shrugged her shoulders, watching as he started to pace, “Why don’t you tease it?” He wasn’t saying anything, so she continued, trying to regulate her breathing as she did so, “The scene, yeah? She’s taking her robe off for him in their bedroom, how about the camera isn’t on her front, but it cuts to her back. And it stops, so it’s teasing her without fully showing everything. It can just be the top of my arse, Marshall.”

When he continues to not say anything, she moves towards him slightly so that he’s stood in front of her.

“Think about Marshall, when everybody knows that may get to see me nude, but they’re teased with it,” She places a light hand on his back, and he turns to look at her, “The money will be even better than if we did show my whole body, because people will be wanting more.”

He nods his head and looks at her with a beaming smile on his face. She squealed slightly as he placed a hand under her thighs and lifted her up, so she was sat on the counter.

“Knew there was a reason I married you,” He smiled, leaning to place a kiss to her neck, “Not just a pretty face, are you?”

Even though she should have been enjoying herself in the company of her husband at this point, the fear that she had felt earlier was still there and for some reason, all she could think about was the curly haired man that she had met earlier.

YN had really debated going to Ciro the following week. There were pros and cons to going, but all she could think of was the shit that her husband had put her through during the week and how she could feel like a young woman if she went and saw the man, she had met the prior week.

It didn’t take long for that decision to be made for her when she had been speaking to Rosie and Sally earlier and it had somehow been brought up in conversation that she had received an invitation by Harry Styles himself to watch him in Ciro and the two of them had almost burst in excitement at that revelation.

That’s what lead YN to be stood outside the queue of Ciro, Sally and Rosie in tow as she finally made it towards the front. The was a man stood outside the door with a clipboard, and the largest man that YN had ever seen in her life.

“Name?”

YN had no idea that she was supposed have her name on a list, and she knew it was probably very unlikely that her name was on the list.

“Uh, YN Miller.”

“Oh,” The man with the clipboard seemed shocked when he looked up to see her stood there, “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Miller. Mr. Styles has reserved a table for you. I’ll show you there now.”

Even though YN was a little shocked and surprised, with one fleeting glance and Sally and Rosie she nodded and followed the man into the club. This wasn’t her first time in Ciro’s, but it was the first time she had been, and it was so packed. YN was convinced that they had even put extra tables in.

“This is for you, Mrs. Miller. The best seats in the house,” He smiled and pulled her chair out for her.

“Thank you,” She smiled politely.

“Please let us know if we can get you anything,” He smiled, “Mr. Styles has left a bottle of champagne for you and your guests.”

“Thank you.”

When the man walked away, and a waiter came over to open the champagne she couldn’t believe what was happening around her. Rosie and Sally looked as though they were going to burst (for the second time that day). Once the glasses were poured and the waiter had moved away, YN turned to her friends with wide eyes.

“I had no idea that this was going to happen,” She laughed, picking up the glass in front of her, “But I’m not complaining.”

“How did you even meet this man?” Rosie asks, picking up her own glass.

“I told you!” YN laughs, “I met him at Bruno’s. I was sat on my own and he joined, that’s it.”

“You must have made a lasting impression to receive a reserved table, and a bottle of champagne, YN.”

YN laughed, “I honestly didn’t. I forgot that it had happened until you mentioned him earlier.”

That was a lie, and a big one at that. YN had spent the last week toying with herself. Every time Marshall was nice, she felt guilty for even considering it, but the second he went back to his own ways she wanted to go even more. Today they had filmed the scene that had caused all those arguments and if that hadn’t made her completely sure that she was going, then the conversation with Sally and Rosie earlier surely did.

What YN hadn’t realised from their conversation was that Harry was just as famous as she was in Hollywood, and probably the world. YN even knew some of his songs (Sally and Rosie were big fans), but she had never seen his face or known his name so she couldn’t correlate the two together.

“I think you forget that we know you, YN,” Sally adds, “And we can tell that something has been on your mind.”

“It was nice, okay?” YN shrugs, “That was it. Nice to feel like I wasn’t a twenty-two-year-old married woman for once, and that someone was interested in me. Now shut up so we can watch the show and enjoy.”

YN knew that Harry was talented just by the few songs that she had heard, but nothing could have prepared her for hearing him live. The way that Harry commanded the stage, and how everyone in the room was just mesmerised by him when he opened his mouth was something that nobody could prepare her for.

YN didn’t know how long that he was singing for, but she didn’t look anywhere but him. It was about halfway through when he noticed her, and even had to do a double take just to make sure that she was actually there. It made her laugh, and he couldn’t hide her smile. He didn’t stop though; it was as though he was born to be on that stage, and everybody was eating it up.

Just before the end of his set, he called one of the waiters over to the bottom of the stage and whispered something in his ear. YN couldn’t help but be intrigued at what he had said, but the ending of his and the standing ovation ended that quickly.

“Thank you everyone, and thank you Crio for being lovely hosts,” He smiles, pushing his hair back of his face, “I’m Harry Styles, and we’ll be here for the next few nights if you’re interested in coming again. Thank you!”

As he and his band left the stage, YN couldn’t help the beaming smile that was on her face. All of the worries that she had in the world didn’t matter at this point, because she had one of the best nights of her life.

“Sorry, Mrs. Miller,” YN nodded and leaned closer to the waiter so that she could hear him over the chatter in the room, “Mr. Styles has invited you and your party backstage.”

“Oh,” YN looked at Rosie and Sally to see their opinion on the matter, and their beaming smiles suggested that it was maybe a good idea, “Thank you, yes.”

The girls picked up their purses and followed the waiter through a side door, and down a long corridor until they were stood in front of a door that said ‘H.Styles’ on it. He knocked twice before opening the door, revealing Harry and his band sat on the sofas with drinks in their hands.

“Mr. Styles, your guests.”

As Harry realised that it was YN walking in, he immediately stood up and made his way over to her.

“Mrs. Miller, a pleasure,” He placed a kiss to her hand, which had her biting her lip. He then turned to the waiter and thanked him before turning back to her, “Thank you for joining me, and I’d like to thank your guests for coming too.”

Once introductions had been made throughout the entire group, Rosie and Sally found them conversing with Harry’s guitarist, Mitch, and drummer, Sarah. YN was sat on a sofa with the man himself, a Manhattan in her hand that Harry had ordered without a blink of his eye. YN had almost known Marshall a year and he still couldn’t get her drink right. He had even remembered the extra cherries.

“So,” He smiled, sipping his own drink, “Did you enjoy the show?”

“I did,” She laughed, “Who know there was so much talent hiding behind all that hair?”

He laughed, and YN couldn’t help but joining in. There was an ease about talking to him, as though she didn’t have to worry about anything that she said because she knew that there wouldn’t be a single repercussion.

“But in all seriousness, Mr. Styles,” She smiled, “Thank you. It was an amazing show, and you were ever so generous to us.”

“No need for the Mr. Styles here, Mrs. Miller,” He shook his head, “Please just call me, Harry.”

“Only if you promise to call me, YN,” She smiled, “Mrs. Miller makes me sound so old.”

He laughed, shaking his head, “I don’t think I should comment on that.”

“No, I don’t think you should either.”

The conversation just flowed between them. They discussed their childhoods – when YN realised, she wanted to be an actress, and when Harry realised, he wanted to be singer. There was never a lull in the conversation, and she laughed in a way that she hadn’t for a while. Not only was this man handsome and talented, but he was funny as well? It was as though YN couldn’t catch a break.

“I’m going to go out for a smoke,” He placed his drink down and stood up, “Would you like to join me?”

YN didn’t even hesitate before agreeing. She stood up and followed the man outside, watching as he lit his cigarette and blew it out in such a way that she was almost having to cross her legs. YN wanted to feel guilty, she really did – but she just couldn’t.

“Should you really be doing that?” She asked, accepting the cigarette from him, “Doesn’t it ruin your voice?”

“I probably shouldn’t,” He shrugged, and YN couldn’t help the butterflies in her stomach as she wrapped her lips around the cigarette where his own had just been, “But, as they say, it’s easier to start them then stop them.”

YN laughed and passed it back to Harry. She leant against the wall, moving a rock around lightly with her shoe. There was one question that she had wanted to ask Harry since getting her, but she just hadn’t had the nerve to until now, since he was alone with just her.

“Harry?” She asked, looking up at him as he hummed and nodded in her direction, “Why did you invite me here?”

“What do you mean?” He shrugged, moving closer to YN so that he was stood leant on the wall near where she was stood.

“Well, you could’ve invited anyone to come and watch you. It isn’t as though your limited on options,” YN shrugged, “It isn’t as though there’s a romantic element between us, seeing as though I’m married.”

“There isn’t?”

“Excuse me?” YN couldn’t help the furrow in her eyebrows at his words. She truly had no idea what he was getting at by saying what he did.

“I’m just a little confused by you saying that there isn’t a romantic element between us,” He shrugs, dropping the cigarette on the ground and stubbing it with his shoe, “I’m just a little confused, married or not, why you would come if you didn’t feel anything.”

“There is such thing as a man and woman being friends, Harry.”

“Is that all this is, YN?” He asks, and YN has to ignore the flips in her stomach as he walks towards her, stopping just inches away from her, “Friends?”

“Harry –”

“If friends are all you see this as, then friends are all we’ll be,” He says, not taking his eyes away from hers, “But I can’t lie and say that I don’t really want to kiss you right now.”

Even though YN should be thinking of Marshall right now, her husband, all she can think about is how it would feel to kiss Harry. More specifically, right at this very second. There had never been any attraction (on her part, anyway) between herself and Marshall, but that wasn’t the case between herself and Harry. In all honesty, she doesn’t think she’s ever been attracted to anyone like she is with Harry. It made it so much easier that there wasn’t just an attraction, but an ease when they talked as well – as though she could say anything to him.

“We won’t do anything you don’t want to do, YN, I promise.”

“You still didn’t answer my question, Harry,” She noted, “Why me? Out of everyone you’re seeking out the one thing that you can’t really have.”

“It may be wrong, but I know what I feel YN, and I think you feel the same way.”

Even though YN hesitated before saying the next words, he was right. YN did feel the same way, and even though it was wrong she couldn’t help it. She felt guilty, but maybe if Marshall was nicer to her, she may not have been able to go through with it.

YN nodded her head lightly, whispering, “I do feel the same way.”

Those words were all it took for Harry to lean forward and place his lips on hers. The feeling of Harry kissing her, and his hands on her skin were unlike anything she’d ever felt before in her life. YN couldn’t remember the last time she kissed someone that wasn’t on-screen or her husband, and it felt nice to kiss someone that she wanted to. His hands on her cheek, and she gripped his shirt to pull him closer to her.

YN was the first to pull away, mainly because she was running out of breath, but she couldn’t help the smile that etched across her lips. Harry had one on his too, a boyish smile that she just wanted to kiss off his lips.

She let out a sigh and dropped her head back against the brick of the wall behind her, “Shit.”

The next time YN saw Harry was a week later. Marshall was out at meal with some of his friends, and she had claimed that she wasn’t up for socialising and was just going to go home to bed. What Marshall didn’t know was that she was going over to Harry’s apartment that he rented whilst he was in town.

For about a week after she and Harry kissed against the wall around the back of Ciro’s she had felt ever so guilty. It was only until around halfway through the week that YN walked into his office and his secretary was just leaving and he not only had his tie askew, but he also had lipstick around his face and the entire room smelt of sex. YN decided that the best thing she could do was to ignore it, but that didn’t mean that she hadn’t noticed it.

It meant that she was more excited to see Harry and have an intellectual conversation with him and just enjoy herself. It was nice to feel wanting, and that’s what Harry made her feel.

That’s why she was enjoying herself more than she was going to admit, sitting at his dining table as she watched him flounce around the kitchen making sure that everything was made for their dinner to perfection. It wouldn’t have been the best decision for them to go out, seeing as though anyone could have spotted them so Harry had offered to cook, and YN wasn’t going to say no.

“Just you wait,” He smiled at her as he drained out the water from the pasta, “This is going to blow your mind – the best pasta you’ve ever had.”

“Is that so?” She grinned, “Well, we’ll just have to see. I’ve had my fair share of amazing meals if I do say so myself.”

“Nothing like this, darling,” He grinned, shaking the pasta out, “I promise.”

There was something about watching him in the kitchen that YN could get used to. The little apron he had one, and the slightly flustered state that he was in. She was smiling throughout the entire time he was in the kitchen, and also afterwards when they were eating.

In all honesty, it was one of the best meals that YN had every had. He had made pasta in a tomato sauce with chicken and peppers, and she was enjoying every mouthful. She would never tell Harry that was the case, but by the way she finished her entire plate he maybe had a slight suspicion that was the case.

Throughout the entire meal, the tension that was brewing between the two of them was becoming slightly unbearable. It also didn’t help that she had a glass of red wine (which she doesn’t normally drink) and her cheeks were burning throughout the entire thing.

YN had offered to clean up the plates, but Harry shook his head and took them from her. She thought she was going to have to sit and watch him clean up the plates, but he just placed them in the sink and made his way over to her. It didn’t take long for him to be stood right in front of her and lean down to peck her on the lips.

YN lifted her hands up to wrap around his neck and that was all he needed to place his hands under her thighs and scoop her up, ignoring everything around them as he placed her upon his dining room table. As they pulled away, YN couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her lips. He raised one of his eyebrows at her.

“You laughing at me?” Harry speaks, leaning down to pressed kisses along her exposed neck, “Sure you want to be doing that?”

“I don’t know,” She shrugs, “What are you going to do if I do?”

He tugged her closer to him by her ankles, so that her legs were spread around his waist, “Just you wait and see.”

YN lifts her bum up slightly so that he can pull her trousers and panties down in one swoop. It felt strange to YN to be this bare in front of someone who wasn’t her husband, but the way that Harry was looking at her stopped all of the worries within her head.

Harry knelt down on the floor, so he was exactly face height with her. He placed kisses along her thighs as he made his way towards the part of her that she really needed him at. YN’s chest was rising and falling so quickly that she felt as though she may combust at any moment, but she knew that she had to keep it together. Once he had made it to that delicious spot between her legs, he couldn’t help but lean forward and place a kiss right on her wetness. Even the slightest of touch had YN withering – she honestly couldn’t believe how sensitive she was.

“Please, Harry,” Her back was beginning to arch off the table at how he was teasing her, “Please.”

“Please, what?” He asked, looking up at her with a grin on his face, “What do you want, love?”

“I want you to touch me, please.”

“Your wish is my command,” Without even a single hesitation, Harry leant forward and crashed his mouth right into her.

The feeling of his tongue against her, and his legs pushing her thighs apart, so she was completely exposed to him had her head dropping back in ecstasy. YN felt as though she was flooded down there, and he seemed to lap ever drop up with no complaints. It wasn’t until he started to swirl his tongue around her clit that she truly felt shock-waves throughout her body.

YN physically couldn’t arch her back off the table any further, and her head drops back with quite a heavy thump but all she could think about was the feeling of him along her sensitive nerve. He continues to flick her clit over and over, making sure that no matter how much she wanted to close her legs that she couldn’t. Not knowing what to grab, she reached forward and thread her fingers through his hair. Her mouth parted, and her breathing started to become more and more heavy, and her heart was beating faster than it ever had before.

YN had never felt anything like this before in her life. Obviously, her and Marshall have had sex in the past, but it was all about him and never about her. YN had never had somebody lick her there before, and in all honestly, she could get used to it more often.

“Oh, God, Harry!” He continued to attack her clit, and as he quickened the pace of his tongue, she knew that she wasn’t going to last much longer. YN had never felt so turned on in her life, and this wonderful man in between her legs was who she had to thank for that.

Harry is indicated that YN is close by the way her thighs started to tremble, and he tried his hardest to keep them still with pressure on them. Knowing that she’s so close, he works harder to make sure that she gets there. He switches between licking to sucking to then even flicking her clit quickly with his tongue. YN is fully pushed over the edge when he sneakily pushes one of his fingers into her, not stopping his attack of her clit.

“Harry!”

The sound of his name tumbling from her mouth only spurs him on further. YN’s orgasm ripples through her body, and her back arches so far off the table until she’s fully sat up. Even though she would want nothing more than to be looking at Harry, she physically can’t, and her eyes are firmly clamped shut. YN was gripping his hair so tight that it must have been painful for him, but she was so out of it that she had no idea.

YN’s body jerks as he pulls his mouth off of her, and slowly removes his fingers. Almost automatically, her weak knees buckle, and she’s propelled forward into his chest. He happily catches her and moves some of her damp hair off her face. When she finally opens her eyes, he’s beaming down at her with a smile on his face.

“Hi,” She smiles, trying to push herself deeper into Harry’s chest if that was even possible.

“Hi, darling,” He laughs, placing a kiss to the top of her head, “That good?”

“So good,” She lifts her head up to look at him and accepts a kiss to her lips, “Never felt like that before, Harry.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”

“Very.”

The very idea of going home right now was the last thing on YN’s mind. In fact, she would rather do anything else that have to go back to Marshall in all of his glory. There was no chance that YN would ever be as comfortable with Marshall as she is with Harry.

The conversation just flowed so easily between them, and YN felt happy. It was such a shame that she couldn’t just stay and that she did have to go home. That didn’t stop Harry from giving her the hardest kiss she’d ever received before she left, so hard that she could feel her lips tingling from it when she stepped through the front door of her house.

A few weeks later when YN was called into Marshall’s office she couldn’t lie and say that there wasn’t a spring in her step.

The night after her first time at Harry’s, YN had been giggling at the memory at the most random times throughout the day. YN had been fast asleep in bed when Marshall had come home, and he had left when she woke up meaning that she hadn’t had to see him. His side of the bed had been obviously slept on last night, meaning that he had at least come home but she had no idea in what state.

Due to the fact that she had been teased by Harry at the experience of being with him, she wanted to be with him at any chance she got. That meant that whenever YN got any chance to sneak away from her real life and go see Harry, she did. YN was enjoying being with Harry so much, that it started to become so difficult to go home to Marshall who she knew would never make her feel the way that Harry did.

YN had no idea why she was being called into Marshall’s office, but when she saw the set look on his face the smile immediately dropped off her face.

“Take a seat, YN,” This certainly didn’t feel as though this was a husband talking to his wife.

“Everything okay?”

The second she sat down; Marshall slapped a newspaper down in front of her. YN reached forward to grab it and her heart immediately dropped to the put of her stomach at the headline across the main page of the newspaper.

Hollywood’s married sweetheart seen leaving rock-star Harry Styles’ apartment multiple times over the last few weeks.

They had been caught. YN couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t even as though they had been caught by Marshall, they had been caught by the media. YN didn’t know at this point if she would have rather been caught by Marshall and not have the whole world find out about it before she was ready for anyone else to.

YN was terrified to look up at Marshall. She didn’t know what to expect when she looked up at him from behind the paper. The second she did feel the confidence to place it down, YN felt as though anything could happen with the look on Marshall’s face.

“Is it true?”

“Marshall I –”

“Is it true?” The next time he asks he shouts at her, and the loud bang of his fist on his table had her jumping in her seat.

There was no way that she could lie. If she did, he was going to see right through her, and she had no idea how he would react to it. So, she decided to just tell the truth, no matter how difficult it may be.

“Yes,” Her voice came out as a whisper, but the look on Marshall’s face saw that he had heard her. She was so thankful that there was a desk between them because she had no idea what would happen if that wasn’t the case.

“Do you know what this means for us, YN?” He spits at her, “Do you know?”

“I’m so sorry, Marshall,” The tears were starting to collect in her eyes, “I really am.”

“You don’t get to be sorry, YN,” He dropped his hand on the table again, “You’re the one that’s been fucking everything you see.”

“It was one time, Marshall!” YN exclaimed and even though she was crying, there was an anger to her words as well, “Not like you. You’re the one who fucks everything you see, Marshall!”

“This isn’t about me, YN!” He stands up, both of his hands upon the desk, “This is about you, and what you’ve been doing.”

“So, you can fuck anybody that you want to for the entire time that we’ve been married, but the second that I find someone who cares about me and wants to be with me, I’m the worse one in this relationship?”

“You belong to me YN!” He exclaims, “Me! Not the fucking rockstar that you’ve been getting your rocks off with.”

“I belong to you?” She asks, unable to believe what she was hearing, “And do you not belong to me, Marshall?”

“We all known that isn’t the case, YN,” He shrugs, “I’m a director in Hollywood. I’m the best of the best. I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

“Okay, Marshall,” That was all that it takes for YN to stand up, trying not to let him stop her from what she was about to do. Without any hesitation, YN pulls her wedding and engagement ring off of her hand and places it on the table in front of them. YN could see Marshall’s nostril’s flaring and she tried to ignore it but there was no way that she was going to get out of this unharmed, “We’re done.”

“That’s not your decision to make, YN.”

“It is, Marshall,” She shook her head at him, “I’m not putting up with this anymore, and you’re not going to stop me.”

“I think you’re forgetting that you have a contract with this studio.”

“For five films, Marshall,” YN spits, “And what film did we just finish – number five or did you forget?”

The look on his face that he knew she was right was all that YN needed to make her way towards the door. Just as she threw the door open, she was stopped right in her tracks by a glass breaking just by her head. Even though YN knew that the glass had cut her, and she could feel the sting over her body – she couldn’t stop now.

YN only hesitated for a second and she was out of that door and slamming it behind her.

“Get back here, YN!” Marshall shouted so loudly that the entire studio probably heard them, “We’re not done.”

They were, and YN knew that her life now had changed but she was ready for anything that it flew at her. She knew that even though she was now on her own, she wasn’t.

It didn’t take her long to fly home in her car, probably running every red light as she did. Hopefully she wouldn’t get pulled over by anyone but there was the possibility that she could be. The second she got to the house, she rushed up to her closet and grabbed everything that she could. Everything that could fit in her bag that she cared about, including her jewellery from her mother and all of her personal belongings.

The feeling of fleeing with her bag down the steps and out of her house reminded her of when she left home to come to Hollywood in the first place. It was almost a year ago that she moved, and here she was praying that the next year of her life wasn’t like this one.

It didn’t take her long to leave the house and make her way towards Harry’s house. The entire time she cried. It felt as though a part of her life was over, and not only that but she didn’t know how she was going to continue in her career. Her marriage and possibly her career was over in the space of one decision. She was going to have to work in the future, but all she needed now was to find Harry and make everything right.

The second she was outside Harry’s door, knocking on it and he saw her tattered and upset state, with a bag clutched in her hand he didn’t even hesitate before pulling her into his arms.

“It’s okay, you’re safe now,” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, “I’ve got you.”

The second that Harry had seen her, tears streaming down her face and cuts on her arms and legs he was absolutely fuming. He immediately pulled her into his arms and carried her towards the bathroom where he placed her on the counter with such ease so he could start tending to her.

As he was cleaning up the cuts, he kept looking at her with a nervousness, “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

There was a gap between his question and her response, but when he noticed that there were tears rolling down her face, he decided not to question her further until she was ready to answer all of his questions.

“I left him,” She muttered quietly after a while. Harry had anticipated it, but he didn’t want to pry.

“And he did this?” YN didn’t say anything, but the timid nod of her head gave him everything that he needed.

In all of the time that Harry had known YN, he had never known her so timid in all of his life. It was as though the events that had transpired had really knocked her, and she had no idea how to bring herself back from it.

“I’m going to kill him,” Harry shook his head, surprised by how angry he was at the news that she had just told him.

“No,” She shook her head and clawed at his shirt until he was facing her again, “I just need you with me, please don’t leave me.”

“I’m never going to leave you,” He leant down and placed a kiss to her forehead, “I never will.”

Regaining the popularity that YN had before when she worked at Marshall’s wasn’t as difficult as she thought it may have been. It had turned out that even though she was now divorced and had left the studio that the majority of the people in Hollywood saw as failure in this town, she found a studio just around the corner that was happy to take her.

The difference that YN found was that there was that due to the relationships being completely professional, they actually listened to what she had to say. She even had a clause in her contract that stated no nudity, and it was the best thing that YN had ever seen in black and white in front of her.

Every premiere that she had been to before this was, she had been cast in Marshall’s shadow, but this one was all about her and she was going to make sure that it was known. The dress that she had chosen was a beautiful baby pink with a skirt laced with feathers that had so much movement all she wanted to do was twirl around it.

“You look gorgeous,” Harry had said to her when he had seen her come out of the bathroom, fully dressed, and looking like the most beautiful person on this earth, “How did I get so lucky with you?”

“How did you get so lucky with me? I think that it’s I got lucky with you.”

Ever since she divorced Marshall in the previous year, Harry had been by her side. He hadn’t actually left it. For the first few months they had lived in his apartment before deciding that it was time that they actually bought a house. There had been a few moments where Harry had to leave to go to another state for a show, but he always came back to her.

This premiere for her latest film was the first time that the two of them had been seen out in public together, as a proper couple. It was a little nerve-wracking for YN, and for Harry as this was the first red carpet that he had ever walked but he wanted to be there for her and support her.

This was the last time that they were going to be together for a while, as the next day he was going on tour. YN originally had planned to go with him, but she had been given the script for a new film and there was no way that she was missing out on it. It was going to be the film of the century she believed, that was if she had anything to do with it.

It was strange being with someone who had such a real love for watching her succeed. YN was so nervous when she went home after receiving the script but the second, she had showed him the script and explained to him how excited she was about it, he had grabbed her face and kissed all of the worry out of her.

“You ready?” He smiled at her, lifting her hand up to his mouth to press a kiss to her hand.

She laughed and smiled at his antics, “As I’ll ever be.”

“Good,” He leaned forward and placed a small kiss to her lips, wanting to not mess up her lipstick, “Let’s get this done then.”

He climbed out of the car first and YN could hear the screaming from the second that he opened the car. Even though this was a movie premiere, it was obvious that there were some of his fans in the crowd. Her door was the next to open and she stepped out, waving to the people as she did so. Everybody seemed so happy to see her, and she couldn’t lie and say that she wasn’t slightly nervous about the entire thing. The nerves disappeared the second Harry came to stand next to her, and she placed her arm through his and they started to walk together. It just felt so right, and so natural to be doing this with Harry.

“YN!” A reporter called from across the carpet at her, and with Harry in tow she made her way over to him. YN recognised him (probably from a previous red carpet), “How are you tonight?”

“I’m well, thank you for asking,” She smiled, really trying to remember all of her media training that she had been given.

“You look absolutely stunning tonight, and we’re all so excited to see the movie.”

“Thank you so much, I’m very excited for you all to see it. It’s amazing if I do say so myself.”

“It’s your movie, of course you can say that!” The reporter laughed with her, “But I do just have to mention, in the last year you really found yourself in the backend of the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, are you afraid that’s going to shine over the film?”

YN couldn’t believe how cutthroat the reporter was straight away, but she tried to ignore it to the best that she could and answered the question the best way she knew how.

“It has certainly been a difficult past year for me, but I’m so excited to be working and have this beautiful film for you all to see,” She smiled, basically ignoring everything that he said, “I’m happy, and I hope this film makes some other people happy. Thank you.”

“Thank you, YN.”

YN immediately grabbed Harry’s arm again, and they beelined for the entrance. It was the first time that she had ever spoken of the events of last year, and she was praying that she had done okay.

“How was that? Did I answer it? Should I have said anything else?”

The second that they were in the safety of the building, she really let go of all of the questions that were swirling around in her head. Harry laughed and leaned forward to place a kiss on her lips.

“You were amazing darling, don’t even worry about it.”

“Oh, I’m so glad you think so, I was so nervous.”

“I know you were,” He laughed, wrapping his arm around her, “Now how about we get some popcorn and go see this fantastic film that you’re in?”

“That sounds perfect.”

And perfect it really was.

#harry styles fanfiction #harry styles au #harry styles angst #harry styles smut #harry styles fic #harry styles fanfic #harry styles x you #harry styles x reader #harry styles x yn #harry styles one shot #harry styles writing #harry styles fluff #harry styles imagine #harry styles

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tenpintsof-sundrop · 5 months ago

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Some Kind of Disaster - Preview

Gally (TMR) x Fem!Reader

Concept: You saw Gally take a spear through the chest, and you are more than shocked to find him alive and well, in front of your eyes.

Preview Word Count: 970

If you like this preview, follow my writing blog @sundrop-writes and turn on notifications there as the full fic will be posted there sometime within the next few months when I have the time and energy to edit it. I may or may not make a TMR taglist, I'm not sure??

A/N: This is based entirely on the movie version of Gally, as I haven't read the books and don't plan on doing so. The title comes from an All Time Low song of the same name - which I would highly recommend listening to in order to get the vibes for this fic. Also apparently this is the same concept as a dozen other Gally fics, but I don't really care right now - because I got inspired to do it and it's entirely self indulgent, and this is my take on the concept lmao. I am currently on hiatus, but I've been working on fics as a form of stress relief during this time - but I haven't been editing fics. This fic will be posted after its edited sometime within the next month or two. (And there is already a sequel in the works, shhh.) Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, and feedback is much appreciated!

Warnings: the full fic will be smut, but this is more of a tease of that; the reader character uses she/her pronouns and has a vagina; spoilers for the films if you haven't seen them; arguing that turns into kissing; Gally has a self-deprecating/insecure inner monologue; mentions of Newt x Reader (it's one-sided in this fic, but may be something more later on ;)); Gally being possessive, Gally being rough (but the reader likes it); mention of Gally masturbating to thoughts of the reader; implications of Gally being taller than the reader (which I think is likely for most people cause Will Poulter is pretty fuckin tall); technically virginity loss (but it's not a big focus of the fic) - it's more about two people naturally enjoying their first time together (and I wrote this the same way I would write a first time in a relationship with two slightly more experienced characters) - and also nothing majorly sexual comes up in this part; this section: heated kissing with intentions towards sex, and that's pretty much it.

...

“Look, I’m sorry I’m not like them, okay?”

He spat out these words bitterly when you didn’t speak, and this left you confused. “I’m sorry I’m not some dumb brave hero guy-”

You reached out and roughly shoved the middle of his chest again. Unknowingly, this aggravated the healed scar where the spear had gone through him, sending a dull ache through him at having the tender pink skin so roughly prodded without his chest armor on this time.

“You’re so stupid!” You barked back, utterly insulted by his words.

He thought this was par for the course, that you would begin hurling more insults before storming out. He thought that you would tell him his supposed ‘death’ had been the best thing that had ever happened to you, and the longing looks Newt had given you were truly something more.

“God, you’re so-!”

You choked on your own words and tears welled up in your eyes, and you took a sharp breath before you continued.

“You are that dumb brave hero guy!” You yelled back, speaking like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Gally gaped at you, and you continued.

“What do you think all that was?” You gestured vaguely behind yourself, obviously speaking about the events earlier in the day - when he had rushed into heavy bomb fire to drag you and the others to safety. “That was the dumbest hero guy thing I have ever seen.” You said, putting a stain of emphasis on the word ‘dumb’, pinching his own phrasing for it right in the ass.

“That was nothing, I just did that because you were in danger, and-”

“And that’s exactly what Thomas would have done.” You replied, quickly cutting him off. “You’re every bit as good as him. You are.”

There was a tense moment where you stared him down, deep contemplation knit across his features while you waited for him to agree with you.

“I wasn’t when you left the Maze.” He added on, quiet guilt floating through his voice. “I wasn’t brave then. I was a coward. I couldn’t be what you needed-”

“You have always been what I need, Gally. When will you get that through your thick shank skull?”

You were done rehashing the past.

You were done contemplating the details of what could have been. It hit you truly then - all that mattered to you now was the fact that Gally, your Gally was in front of you, somehow alive and well. And though it was something you never could have predicted, you wouldn’t let such a beautiful thing slip through your fingers.

You reached out and grabbed the front of his sweatshirt, pulling him forward roughly. At the end of that jerking motion, he was met with your lips, and he sunk into the kiss without a second thought, closing his eyes and letting out a soft sigh that shouldn’t have suited him so well. Adding to that softness as he reached up to gently cup your cheeks while you gnawed at him with a feral passion.

This is exactly what he had been waiting for. This was the reunion he had wanted all along.

In a moment, the touch, your desperate grip on the front of his shirt, the way you ran your teeth along his bottom lip, edging toward something more - it triggered something within him. A possessive streak over you that had long been dormant; something once fueled by rage and jealousy and fear over the bad things that might happen to you if he wasn’t constantly looking over your shoulder. Now, it came from something much deeper.

That immature love he had felt for you that had only grown and matured during your time apart, adding to a hungry passion for you now that he had you back in his arms - now that he could feel the heat of your skin, smell you, hear the whimpering patter of your breath and know that you were so damn real. (Not just another falsehood of his imagination with the details poorly filled in that he tried to soothe himself with, while he had a hand on his cock.)

He was the one who charged at you this time, shoving you backwards and walking tightly with you, crowding you back until you hit a wall. You hadn’t truly taken in your surroundings, and if you had half a mind to, you would have noticed that this was some kind of dingy store room - used for scavenged spare parts for the vehicles and old guns that needed to be repaired in order to be put into use.

But your brain didn’t take any of that in when your back made contact with the wall, Gally still kissing you fiercely, making you downright dizzy. You didn’t have time to think when one of his hands took a possessive hold on your thigh, hiking your leg up around his hip while his presence loomed over you, like the perfect protective wall you always felt that he was. He continued the heated liplock for a moment before he pulled away for air, and then, a particular query couldn’t be contained within you.

“What do you think you’re doing?” You asked, half-teasing, still holding your death grip on his shirt.

There was a particular hum between your thighs - something hot and beating and alive, a calling that demanded to be answered. You knew that you would be devastated if Gally stopped too soon or didn’t rise to that call. So you had to know what his intentions were now to prepare yourself for the potential disappointment.

“Showing you how much I missed you.” He answered firmly, entirely certain, leaning in to capture your mouth again - pressing his whole body tightly against yours now.

It sent a thrill through you - knowing that he would answer that call and thensome.

#sundrop writes #tmr gally #gally x reader #gally maze runner #gally x y/n #gally tmr #gally tmr x reader #gally the maze runner #the maze runner #the maze runner fanfiction #gally tmr x you #gally tmr fanfiction #tmr fandom #tmr fanfic

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transhuman-priestess · 24 days ago

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How I Scan Negatives

I've been doing film photography for 3 whole weeks so of course I am now an expert and you should toooooootally listen to me for my expert opinion on this matter.

But in seriousness, this post isn't meant to be a how-to guide, but if you can glean some useful information from it, that's really neat and I'm glad.

Part 1: The Scanner

There are a couple different ways to scan negatives. The simplest is known as camera scanning, and that just means you use some kind of backlight and take a close-up picture of a negative with a digital camera of some kind.

I've done a couple of scans like this but since it ideally relies on a macro lens, something which costs about $300 at a bare minimum, and more if you want one that's actually, yknow, good. Also, camera scanning inherently limits you to one picture at a time.

So my scanner is a flatbed Epson "Perfection" V600. I purchased this scanner because it is the least expensive flatbed scanner you can find that also does transparencies. It can scan 12 35mm negatives or two 6x9cm 120 negatives at a time. The Perfection V850 can do a full 36 exposure roll of 35mm but costs 4.33x as much.

So this thing is fine.

The first step is to cut my negatives up. This isn't as horrifying as it sounds. I have binder pages that hold 6 6-exposure strips, so a full roll of 35mm (which i will from here on out refer to with the slightly antiquated but slightly faster to type "135") takes up a single page.

Next, I mount them in the handy negative mounting frame that Epson provides, and put it in the scanner.

Now we can move on to the actual scanning.

Part 2: Scanning Software

This is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most irritating part of the whole ordeal. There's lots of decent scanning software out there, but there's fewer options for really good scanning software. Most of the "automatic" stuff sucks at being automatic so I end up doing most of it manually.

The scanner comes with the inventively named "Epson Scan," which is a very competent program if you want to scan and don't care about dust and scratches on your film. That is because I have yet to figure out what combination of options actually gets it to properly remove dust and scratches. This is mandatory, because I do not have $10,000 to spend on an industrial-grade negative pressure ventilation system for my bathroom/processing lab. Dust is avoidable, but ultimately inescapable.

The ins and outs of dust and scratch removal are interesting but not interesting enough for me to do a deep dive on them. The very short version is that the scanner scans every frame twice, once with visible light and once with infrared, and overlays the information from these to get rid of dust and scratches.

So instead of using the admittedly competent pack-in software, I opted to purchase SilverFast 9 SE. I paid $49 USD for this because I could not find a cracked version of the full-featured "HDR Suite" version and, frankly, i haven't missed the additional features.

SilverFast has a wizard option (Do they still call it that?) that walks you through the various steps of scanning. I haven't used it since my first roll.

The first step is to do a "pre-scan", which just scans the whole thing at a low resolution so you can pick the frames out of the lineup.

This is my screen at this point. The first step is to draw around the individual frames. This takes about 5-10 minutes depending on how anal i'm being about framing and overscan.

Now that i've let the computer pick the frames to save time for demonstration purposes manually picked my frames its time to boost the scan resolution from a postage-stamp 300 pixels per inch to an actually-usable 3200. You'll also note that i'm scanning these as "positives" rather than negatives. The "negative" scan option adds something called "Negafix" that i cannot turn off and that tries to color-correct for the negative stock's film base color. It is monumentally bad at this unless your stock is pre-loaded in its database which, as far as I can tell, hasn't been updated since 2005. We'll deal with that later though.

Now that we have the basic setting defined we go over to the "frame" menu seen above and copy these settings to all frames. I could set them manually, but copying settings over is the one thing this software is good at doing automatically. This may have something to do with the fact that it is essentially copy-and-paste, which you may recognize as a basic feature of every computer since 1987.

Occasionally, and unpredictably, the scanning software will turn on "Unsharp Masking." The wikipedia page on this option will explain it. I will not, because my contempt for the option rivals my contempt for the Republican Party, The Catholic Church, and Portland's insistence on driving 5 below the limit on the highway. I turn it off and if I could i would find whoever invented this option and eat their dog.

Once that is turned off we get to turn on the most beautiful option that SilverFast 9 SE has to offer, iSRD. iSRD is the previously-mentioned scratch-and-dust removal.

I have found that, in this one instance, the automatic settings are completely acceptable to me. They eliminate most of the really problematic dust in high-detail areas. The hairs and dust that gets left behind is usually easy to deal with via clone stamp later.

Now that the boring stuff is out of the way we get to the tedious, yet, to me at least, fun part. Histogram adjustment!

What you're seeing here is a histogram, its a graphical representation of the brightness of an image. Our goal with this is to maximize the dynamic range of the image. All that blank space to the right of the "mountains" (and some of the "lowlands" on the left) need to be eliminated so that the file can use as much of the bandwidth they have for actual useful image file stuff. This is pretty simple. We just slide those little arrows until they bound the mountains better.

Once we do this we can check the output histogram and see how it's mapped all the image data to the full bandwidth.

This has to be done individually per-frame, since each frame is slightly different.

Now that's done we can actually scan. I use the "Batch Scan" function, which scans everything one-after-the-other. I'm not going to show the dialog windows because 1.) its boring and 2.) I don't want to reconfigure the save path the way I did for the above images. It's a privacy thing.

After we've scanned everything its time to move on to...

Part 3: Color Grading

This is the part you've never heard about before. It's the most involved, and the most important, and it's worth getting into why.

Computers are amazing at storing information, at sorting information, at rearranging and processing information, but they are fundementally incapable of the most important part of dealing with information, assigning meaning.

I'm sure a lot of folks are going to be very very angry at me for saying that, but I actually don't care, and what's more, I'm confident the computer scientists I know will agree with me.

Film is better at storing images than computers. Period, this is a physical fact. The amount of dynamic range and resolution contained in film exceeds the ability of computers to contain it completely. So scanning is always going to be about compromises. You're trying to maximize the amount of useful information you can see by eliminating as much of the un-useful information as you can. But the computer doesn't actually know what is and isn't useful, so we have to tell it.

In order to do this, we use image editing software. I know a lot of photographers who swear by Photoshop, but fuck Adobe, and I know a lot of photographers who love GIMP, but GIMP's user interface is so convoluted as to be detrimental to my purposes. So I use Paint.NET, which is Windows-only, a fact which is sure to get me hate mail from several users including one of my best friends. (Sorry, Murder*.)

Here we have an unaltered** negative. There's a bit of overscan you can see on the left side of the image, and obviously its currently in portrait orientation. Before we go any further, I'm going to fix both of these things.

I like to crop my negatives in a 3:2 ratio. This is the natural aspect ratio of 135 film, and i like that similitude. Paint.NET lets me set a fixed aspect ratio for selections, which is nice

Now that the overscan has been cropped out and the picture is rotated properly, we can invert the image to a positive, and here is where it will become apparent to you exactly why color grading is important, and why there's no such thing as an "pure scan".

Wow! That's very...blue? Well, yes, it is. Color negative film mostly has an orange base. This helps compensate for shortcomings in the dyes used, and those shortcomings are why we have to color grade. The next step I take is to open the "levels" controls, where you'll see our old friend, the histogram!

This histogram looks different, but it's the same basic concept, with the difference that this program lets me adjust red, green, and blue individually. You'll also note that the individual RGB histograms broadly look similar, just out of sync. This is because of the orange base. They won't always look that similar, and in this case it's largely because the sky was overcast that day and there's a large amount of gray in the entire image.

We're going to adjust the input histogram first. Here, our goal is to map the maximum amount of dynamic range possible to the final image. Color balance is not yet important. So we slide the little arrows up and down from the top and bottom so that as much of them fill the output histogram as possible without clipping.

What is clipping? Clipping is when the black or white levels "blow out". Some clipping is acceptable in some images. A bright, sunny day will invariably have some clipping, and if you go out of your way to avoid it the image will look weird and flat. But in a picture like this where everything is muted and gray, we want to avoid it.

Clipping, by the way, looks like this, and is why i don't let the computer automatically adjust the level balance. Some people like this look with the deep black shadows, I do not.

But, onto doing it the Proper*** way

You can see the image is looking a lot better, but it still has a notably off color cast to the image. Its kind of green. Now we can move on to adjusting the output histogram. There's two ways to deal with this. We can adjust the input red, but this will result in highlight clipping. I actually don't mind highlight clipping as much, and in this case we have several red lights in the image both on the BMW and the crossing gate, so we're going to adjust that input histogram.

Truthfully, I should have thought of this before picking this image to do a demonstration on, but at this point its too late to turn back, and like I keep saying, this isn't a "how-to" guide.

So we still have a bit of a color cast, but its (mostly) in the midtones. Now it's time to bring out our secret weapon: gray balance, also known as neutral point or gray point.

That middle slider can be adjusted for red, green, and blue independently, and that's exactly what we're going to do.

This looks, for the most part, very good. I'll probably go back and tweak the gray points in the red and green a bit more, and i often go through these steps 2-3 times, repeating with finer adjustments before finally confirming the changes.

Truthfully, I don't remember if the BMW was pure white or eggshell white, so i'm going to err on the side of "eggshell" because the rest of the image looks weirder if i adjust for that white to be "pure".

And now, Voila! A fully color-graded image.

Does it look exactly like it did IRL? No, not quite, but again, scanning is all about compromise. I'm sure someone with more experience could do a better job than me, but the point here isn't to show you how to make things perfect, it's to show how I, Ivy Michaels do this.

If you made it through this far, congratulations! I love you! I hope you found this interesting. Thanks for reading <3

*Murder is e's actual name.

** i have censored the license plate of the 25-year-old BMW in my shot out of privacy concerns. It is not my car, and i do not know the owner. The negative has not been cropped, rotated, inverted, or graded in any way. Only the license plate has been removed by select-and-stretch. *** Despite my repeated slides into "we/us" language, this is not a how-to and is not intended to be a statement of objective correctness. It is "correct" in the sense of "correct to my personal workflow"

#film photography #film scanning

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ronniaugust · 1 year ago

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How To Write Good Dialogue (Part 1)

I'm gonna start this by saying I'm not trying to sound like a know-it-all. I am just tired of posts like these being absolutely fucking useless. I am aware this is basically me screaming into a void and I’m more than okay with that.

This guide is meant for intermediate screenwriters, but beginners are also absolutely welcome. :)

(about me)

-♠︎-♠︎-♠︎-♠︎-

I've noticed a rise in film students who want to make films that have no dialogue. Probably after your professor showed you Doodlebug, right? Fuck that.

I'll make another post about writing a short film, but all you need to know is: Don't waste the audience’s time. Most of these no-dialogue shorts have very little substance and take way too long to tell the shortest possible story. Not a good idea.

Useless Dialogue

Plain and simple, don't write useless dialogue. Useless dialogue is dialogue that just doesn't fucking matter. Dialogue matters by having ✨subtext.✨

What is subtext? Subtext is the meaning behind the action. That's it.

If I tell you that I love you and I got big doe eyes while I say it, it means I love you. If I tell you I love you through a clenched jaw without looking at you, I don't necessarily love you right now.

Simple, right? Great.

Now think about the subtext behind every line. Does your character mean what they're saying? Are they doing it to get what they want? What is going through their mind as they say it? As long as you know your character, you’ll have these answers ready to go. If you don’t, you’ll figure it out eventually. Just keep writing.

When you write your character walking into a Starbucks and saying, "One venti iced coffee," does that do something? Why do I need to see someone's boring Starbucks order? Do I need to know that your character's boring? Why are you writing a boring character? [Of course, in the rare situation where this is some revealing clue to the massive crime investigation, then it makes sense.]

Useless dialogue is any dialogue that has no meaning or purpose in your script. Delete and move on. You don't need to write entire conversations or scenes that bore us, just write what we care about.

I took a class once where my professor called a version of this "trimming the fat." Get us into your scene and out of your scene in as little time as it takes to have it achieve its full purpose in the script.

[P.S. You don’t “inject” subtext into your lines. Idk who started that vernacular in subtext teachings but I hate it.]

Show vs. Tell

I remember a glorious fight I got into with a Redditor last year about show vs. tell… TL;DR: Dialogue is “show” if you write it with intention and subtext. If someone says that dialogue is inherently “tell,” they’re wrong and can go fuck themselves.

Dialogue that is “tell” is expositional dialogue. But, hot take: Exposition isn't just in dialogue. It’s also those annoying clichés that make you roll your eyes in the theater (which we just call clichés and not exposition). I’m sure every professor I’ve had will disagree with this and then get me into a long conversation about it, but let’s ignore that for right now.

Have you ever seen a movie where a character rubs an old, worn-out photo of a young girl while looking depressed? That's exposition. That character has a dead daughter. No shit.

Clichés are incredibly annoying. We all know that. Assume that any cliché you see - in this context - is exposition and try your best not to write it. (Tropes are different and sometimes necessary, so I’m not talking about that.)

Point blank: When you have subtext in your lines, they are "show,” not “tell.”

Before moving on, I'll bring up that while technically the dead daughter photo is subtextual, it is as close to the character saying “My daughter is dead,” as you can get. Don't treat the audience like we're fucking stupid.

The First 15

If you don’t know what the Inciting Incident is, please look up “3 Act Structure” before reading this.

The first 15 pages of your script is the part that comes before the Inciting Incident. This is the part you want to get right because, although people probably won’t leave the theater, they will absolutely find something else on the streaming service they’re using. The people making said movie will also just toss your script in the trash before it’s even produced, so it's best to get it right.

Dialogue in the first 15 generally follows the same rules, but carries a heftier additional rule. All dialogue in the first 15 minutes must, must, must tell us something about your character.

Remember when I talked about that boring Starbucks order? Why is your character boring? Don’t write that. Don’t write nice characters. Or pleasant characters. Or friendly characters. No one cares.

You want empathy. This does not mean “relatable.” It means “empathetic.” There is a difference.

I personally relate to Vi in Arcane, but I empathize with Theo in Children of Men. Both are excellent, but one personally resonates a bit more with me. You cannot write a character that deeply resonates with every single person, it is impossible.

With each line of dialogue, you must be saying something about your character that generates the empathy. Instead of telling you how to do this, I’ll direct you to a movie that will do better than an explanation: Casablanca.

Watch how Rick interacts with the world. What kind of man is Rick? Watch what he does, what he says, and how he treats people and himself. Watch that empty glass on the table. Watch his contradictions. Everything. Those things matter and it’s what makes you want to watch Rick for the entire duration of Casablanca.

“Realism”

This is maybe more directorial, but make your characters human enough, not too human.

Too human is when you’ve tried your best to capture all those little life-like speech patterns. You know, the ones that no one fucking cares about.

If your character coughs, they’re sick. If they clear they’re throat, they’re uncomfortable. If a bruise isn’t going away, they’re going to die. Simple.

Every moment on screen matters. Everything the audience sees is meant to lead them to a conclusion. Not the conclusion, just a conclusion.

The realism you want is in the choices your character makes, not how many times they say “Uh,” in a sentence.

Conclusion

Dialogue matters and should not be treated lightly or without care. Once you have this all engrained in your mind, dialogue should become effortless.

If you want an excellent way to think about this, Robert McKee's Story has an excellent chapter that helped clarify this all for me. Here's an excerpt and the context.

Warning, spoilers for Chinatown.

"If I were Gittes at this moment, what would I do?"

Letting your imagination roam, the answer comes:

"Rehearse. I always rehearse in my head before taking on life's big confrontations."

Now work deeper into Gittes's emotions and psyche:

Hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, thoughts racing: "She killed him, then used me. She lied to me, came on to me. Man, I fell for her. My guts are in a knot, but I'll be cool. I'll stroll to the door, step in and accuse her. She lies. I send for the cops. She plays innocent, a few tears. But I stay ice cold, show her Mulwray's glasses, then lay out how she did it, step by step, as if I was there. She con-fesses. I turn her over to Escobar; I'm off the hook."

EXT. BUNGALOW-SANTA MONICA

Gittes' car speeds into the driveway.

You continue working from inside Gittes' pov, thinking:

"I'll be cool, I'll be cool ..." Suddenly, with the sight of her house, an image of Evelyn flashes in your imagination. A rush of anger. A gap cracks open between your cool resolve and your fury.

The Buick SCREECHES to a halt. Gittes jumps out.

"To hell with her!"

Gittes SLAMS the car door and bolts up the steps.

Story by Robert McKee, pg 156

The context of this page is McKee's way of explaining how to write characters. I found it very helpful.

-♠︎-♠︎-♠︎-♠︎-

Thanks for reading! I probably forgot something, so I made this a “part 1.”

I hope this helps someone since I’m really tired of finding short films on YouTube that are all fucking silent. The few who have done it well have been copied to death, so please write some dialogue. I promise you it’s so much better if you do.

Asks are open! :)

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krinsbez · 1 year ago

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A Watership Down Meta/Headcanon/Rant

So, both @jaybutnotthebird and @stavarosthearcane have stated that, to their knowledge, I've not posted this on tumblr, and indicated that they would like to hear it, I'm posting it now!

So I don't recall if it was stated explicitly or was, like, a rumor, but everything about Gen. Woundwort makes so much more sense when you realize he's a hutch rabbit.

Why is he so enormous? Cuz he was bred to be big and fluffy, was fed flayrah everyday, and was taken to the vet if he got sick.

Why is he so afraid of humans? Because they were the first elil he ever encountered.

Why is everything he does in complete opposition to proper lapine culture and behavior? Because he grew up not knowing anything about it.

Efrafa is, in essence, an attempt to make a warren into a hutch.

OK got that? So, here's another thing to think about. Cowslip's Warren, or Strawberry's Warren, or the Warden of the Shining Wire, or whatever you want to call it...they also completely disregard traditional Lapine culture and behavior; they don't tell stories of El-ahrairah, they make weird poetry about the inevitability of death, they keep babbling about dignity, they make ART, etc. This, by the way, is why it and Efrafa come off as so viscerally wrong, because Mr. Adams went to the trouble of putting us in a rabbit headspace, so we can understand the full horror; it's not just Woundwort's tyranny or the farmer's snares, it's that they're unnatural and rabbits aren't meant to live that way.

Now, I know what you're thinking when I say that word, "unnatural", but put down the pitchfork.

Because Hazel and Co. do a LOT of things that is outside the realm of typical rabbit behavior:

Despite being Chief Rabbit, Hazel let's the others argue with and talk back to him.

They made friends with mice and a bird.

He adopted Cowslip's Warren's idea of using tree roots to create a big central chamber

Tales (the sequel short story collection) has them adopt a (obvs. less aggro) version of the Efrafan practice of having the Owsla run patrols

They busted out hutch rabbits.

They used a boat

Meanwhile, Sandleford, the Warren that our heroes fled, was apparently the epitome of a traditional Warren and of course they all died horribly.

So, what's the difference?

It goes back to the last lines of the first myth, part of which was used as the first animated film adaptation's tagline:

“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.”

(I bolded the important part)

Sandleford's Chief Rabbit (EDIT: The Threarah) decided he liked things as they were and refused to change, and his people died. Cowslip and Co. allow themselves to be farmed and treat death as an inevitability, and they're slowly going mad and dying one by one. Gen. Woundwort teaches his Owsla to respond to every situation by fighting, and they break and flee when the unexpected happens. The ordinary rabbits of Efrafa are forced to live like hutch rabbits and they're miserable and not having babies.

Hazel does weird stuff…but he does so because he's in a weird situation and has to adapt. He listens to the other's concerns and ideas, he keeps an open mind, he figures out what resources are available to him, and then figures out how he can use them to protect his people.

In short? Unlike Woundwort, Cowslip & Co., or the unnamed Chief Rabbit of Sandleford EDIT: The Threarah, he is cunning and full of tricks.

(I think one of the reasons the BBC miniseries from a few years back didn't hit right is that they failed to get this)

Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED Talk

#Watership Down #Random Thoughts #Headcanons

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cnwolf-brainrot · 19 days ago

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Ok adding on more to my ideas for a Kai-centric live action Ninjago because I have more thoughts, so here's some things that I would like to see in relation to the base plot:

As mentioned in my last post, this would be early-Ninjago based, mostly just adapting season one and the pilots. However, we're thinking about this as a two-hour movie, so it isn't going to have the time that a full season would. I'm also thinking about this as part of a duology because there is no way that (provided the first movie doesn't COMPLETELY suck) Lego won't do a sequel to capitalize on the new medium and marketability

With that being said, I would ignore the serpentine for this first live action film. The villains would be Garmadon and the skeleton army, led by Samukai (underrated villain in my books). This could also save us from some terrible CGI snakes; I think the skeleton army would translate better to live action than the serpentine would

Like I mentioned in my last post, the baseline plot would be the ninja collecting the Golden Weapons. It's a very rushed plot line in the show since it happens in the pilots, which means there's a lot of room to explore and develop it without being too much of a direct comparison to how it's done in the show. In addition, it gives a great chance to give each of the ninja their own focus, unlike the Lego Ninjago Movie which really only gives character development to Lloyd.

I'm going back and forth with this, but as of now I'm thinking that Nya does get kidnapped by the skeleton army like she does in the original pilots. However, instead of her playing the damsel in distress role like she is in the pilots, she gets more of her season one characterization and gets to go on her own subplot of breaking out of imprisonment and she's the first one to meet Lloyd

So like halfway through the movie the ninja are on their way to one of the Golden Weapons that Garmadon is about to grab and they basically run right past Nya, who's running away from a skeleton hoard that she'd managed to singlehandedly escape with a new little brother in tow.

Throughout the movie the characters are told that they have elemental powers inside of them that can be channeled by their weapons, not controlled by them. As each ninja gets their weapon they unlock their powers, and all the ninja kind of use their powers through their weapons... until the climax scene, where Kai is the first one to use his element without having to touch the sword (kind of doing the "true potential" moment without calling it that)

It would actually be kind of cool if the weapons weren't named after their elements in this version and the ninja don't find out what their element is until they get to use it for the first time. Like they go after the Golden Scythe and none of them have any clue what it'll do until Cole grabs it and then can suddenly make earthquakes. Like, theoretically if Jay had been the one to grab the Scythe, then it would have channeled his lightning and been a Scythe of Lightning... could also lead to a lot of foreshadowing about other elemental masters existing, since I don't think they had initially planned that with the first two seasons and it always made it a little weird to me that the Special Golden Weapons Of All Creation TM were tied specifically to these four random dudes. The Golden Weapons channel any element, the ninja just all have their preference of which one they use lol

we should drop some foreshadowing about the Megaweapon too, I think that would be great material for a second movie if we make collecting the Golden Weapons a big part of the first one

Having the Golden Weapon Quest TM as the central plot for the movie is also great because it gives the villain a reason to be doing something too. I'm scared of the live action movie that gets released having a one-dimensional Garmadon who just... is evil... and does evil... No. Here, he actually had a reason to be doing his evil things; he wants to remake Ninjago in his own image, and he needs the Golden Weapons to do so. Thus, collection competition.

OH and speaking of motivation, that's why I think I'd like Nya to be kidnapped in this still. It gives Kai a good reason to look at the old guy who showed up on his doorstep and said "hey want to join my super special fight club?" and say "ABSOLUTELY YES". I would love for this movie to give us a good older brother Kai to both Nya and Lloyd, so this would be a great foundational motivation to get him going along with the Plot

#ninjago #lego ninjago #live action ninjago movie #ninjago live action #kai-centric ninjago movie #because I need this now #ninjago dragons rising #plot ramble #kai ninjago #ninjago garmadon

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chaos0pikachu · 10 months ago

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Film Making? In My BL? - The Sign ep01 Edition

So, if we're doing this we're doing this, so buckle in baby.

I'm gonna focus how the opening scene below, uses two narrative devices and one film technique to build out the scene as a whole: in media res, misdirection, and the long take.

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Okay so to begin, we have to start at the beginning, or well, the middle lmao

In Media Res

I saw a post in the tag that said something to the effect of how The Sign starting with no context and providing no information at the beginning was strange, with the implication it was bad writing. I disagree, fundamentally, because The Sign is using a very common literary device called 'In Media Res'. And in my opinion, uses this device very well.

If you're familiar with basic storytelling terms I ain't telling you anything new, but for folks who may not know, in media res is a latin term that means "in the midst of things" and lots of stories - both prose, comics, and film - use this device.

The most famous is The Iliad by Homer, which if you've ever read - and you should it's glorious also it'll give some context to Song of Achilles - you know it drops you full-on no context into the middle of things. The beginning will differ in verbiage depending on the translation you pick up, this free version starts with:

THE CONTENTION OF ACHILLES AND AGAMEMNON. In the war of Troy, the Greeks having sacked some of the neighboring towns, and taken from thence two beautiful captives, Chryseis and Briseis, allotted the first to Agamemnon, and the last to Achilles.

Right off the bat the story drops four character names and the setting with no real context. Who are all these people? Why is there a war? Well, keep reading to find out! It also starts the story with an action aka an argument - nay A CONTENTION!! Achilles and Agamemnon are such bratty bitches lol

Other (more mainstream) examples include:

The Dark Knight

Lost

28 Days Later

Mission Impossible (pick one)

Fight Club

Full Metal Alchemist (both)

MDZS

Inception

And, The Sign.

"In contrast to linear storytelling, which starts at the beginning and moves sequentially, in medias res is a nonlinear approach that can make stories more dynamic and immersive.

It's a technique that challenges the audience to make sense of the narrative puzzle, often revealing essential information about the characters and their motivations gradually." (source)

What's described above is exactly how The Sign, starts it's story, in the middle of things, specifically to create a puzzle for the audience to figure out gradually. If you watch the above scene, what's happening?

We get a (well done) overshot of an island (establishing setting), we see a group of soldiers (establishing the characters we'll be following) we see them doing military things (okay these are their skills, and they're on some sort of mission), their drone spots a group of people inside and a character says the dialogue "Listen up, you only have 15 minutes" (this establishes stakes, okay there's a time limit to this mission) "Team A will rescue the hostage" (okay now we know what the mission is and informs these characters are on a rescue mission).

Who is speaking here? We don't know yet, but a safe assertion would be this character, since they are the first character who speaks on screen, will be important.

And we'd be right because it's Phaya speaking, one of our main protagonists as well soon find out.

All this happens within the first minute; the show provides an interesting set-up. It deals out information in tidbits - setting, characters we'll be following, situation set-up, stakes - but not enough information for the audience not to ask questions.

I want to iterate that at this point, the goal isn't to "care" about the characters yet, so much as create an intriguing set-up based in action that will showcase various information about the tone, setting, and skills of the piece that will engage the audience. To make the audience ask questions, to engage with them.

When you open up on MDZS the protagonist, Wei Wuxian is dead and we have no context for this. Everyone is just in the middle of celebrating his death and we, the readers, do not care that he's dead or why he died. The story could have started in a more linear way, with him arriving at Cloud Recesses arguably the beginning of his journey, but would that have been as interesting? As engaging?

I like how this article breaks down the why of starting your story in media res is a powerful and often used device:

This is what The Sign is doing in this opening part. Starting the action of the series off with action and creating that immediate engagement. The scene also ends with a plot twist which connects to that final point about information control.

This isn't a technique I've seen often used in BL because BL is a sub-genre of romance and most romances are told in chronological order, rather than non-linearly - there are, of course non-linear romances, but most mainstream romances, and by extension most BL aren't told in this way - BL shows don't often have actual physical action. A majority, especially in Thailand, are grounded, closer to slice-of-life, coming-of-age, and comedy dramas - though we are starting to see a change in that trend.

So starting in the middle of things, like chepa the middle of what? Two dudes walking~ to Engineering class?

The goal of this opening scene is to pull in the audience, make them wonder and ask questions: "who are these characters? will they rescue the hostages? who are the bad guys? who is this character who's having visions?" and so on and so forth. It's a way to engage in the audience without having to slow down the narrative with a ton of exposition, or build up stakes slowly, rather it grabs the audience immediately and sets them in the middle of the tension asking them to engage with what's happening.

The Long Take

You've probably heard about "the long take" but to break it down, a long take is one continuous take without any edits/cuts. The film 1917 was famously filmed to "look" like one long take. One of the most cited and well known long takes is from Children of Men by Alfonso Cuarón:

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Now if you watch this movie you can tell why there isn't a lot of BL long takes because, god damn, they built a new type of car just to get that one scene. [read here for more on long takes]

So, The Sign. It's long take starts at about 2:08, following Phaya - again, we the audience don't know this is Phaya BUT since the camera is spending specific time with him we assume he is An Important Character and he is! Set up and payoff! Funny how that works - and ends at around 4:27.

[Sidenote I love that the take ends, not with a cut but a transition. Which I'll cover in another post but in the land of Thai BLs which favor cuts so damn much transitions were so refreshing to see]

During this long take, we establish that these characters are competent at what they do. We understand that they're military trained, in both hand-to-hand combat and firearms. We also get these two mid-close ups, which signifies these will be Important Characters:

And they are, the first shot is of Phaya, Khem and Thongthai and the second is Tharn and Yai.

This also sets-up the character dynamics; Yai and Tharn are already close and know each other so they are drawn to each other while on the mission, while Khem and Thongthai have a pre-established relationship but are still supporting behind Phaya.

This type of shot also allows for the audience to better see and follow the fighting that's happening on screen. Filming fight scenes are their own beast, and while there's no one school of thought on how a film scene "should" be filmed, there are techniques that that place some fight scenes above others.

The first video showcases some techniques on how to film a fight scene, while the second one at the 8min mark talks about the long take in John Woo's classic action film Hard Boiled.

This long take in Hard Boiled really showcases why long takes are so powerful in filming a fight scene specifically. They pull the audience further into the action and create a palpable energy that just works better than a scene with lots of quick cuts.

There's a reason one of the biggest criticisms of Mortal Kombat (2021) was that all the fights were edited to pieces while John Wick (2014) was a refreshing jolt to the industry.

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The Sign takes a page out of John Woo's book, and places the characters, and the physicality of the scene front and center, pulling the audience along with the camera in one long shot.

Long takes are hard, I can't really emphasize this enough, if you watched that video on Children of Men you can see all the intricate work that went into scenes that amounted to maybe 5mins of actual film time. Likewise this long take in The Sign is only about 2mins of actual time in the show BUT it's effective, it's engaging, its ambitious.

Which is why, I gotta give The Sign it's roses because of that ambition. Long takes are a lot of hard work, time, effort, blocking, rehearsals, on top of incorporating the fight chorography that's a lot and it looks good.

Now is this the best~~~ long take I've ever seen? lol no god but it's well done and ambitious especially for the sub-genre of BL.

Misdirection

Misdirection has more in common with in media res than the long take as it's a literary device and not a filming technique.

From Gotham Writers:

"In fiction misdirection can be either external or internal. That is, the author can be using the story as a frame to misdirect the reader, or a character in the story may be misdirecting one or more of the other characters. Or, of course, both." (source)

Misdirection is often used in thrillers or mystery narratives, Hitchcock used misdirection a lot in his films.

In Psycho the audience is lured to believe that Marion, the character the film opens with, builds up, and essentially sets up as our protagonist, is in fact our protagonist. She's not, she's murdered and her sister, Lila, is the actual protagonist of the movie. Sorry if this is a spoiler for an almost 70 year old film lmao

Misdirection is often used to set-up plot twists down the line. A good misdirection will leave clues for the audience when they watch back and go, "oh! I can't believe I missed that!"

In film The Sixth Sense is a good example of this, where the plot twist at the end doesn't weaken the film once you know it but rather, it enhances the film itself on a rewatch. Another good example of misdirection in film are both Knives Out and Glass Onion, where Rian Johnson will set up a non-linear story and then slowly unravel the information for the audience.

Take the scene where Marta, in Knives Out, finds Fran's body and hears Fran say "it was you" at least to audience ears. Then stands up looming above Fran's body. The scene cuts, and the audience is led to believe Marta has let Fran die to protect herself (since we the audience also have been led to believe Fran is dead) only to find out later that Marta didn't let Fran die, she is alive, and she knew Ransom was the killer.

The Sign uses misdirection in a much more simple way. It sets up an expectation: Phaya is going to die, upping the stakes from "must save hostages" to "must save a comrade" aka the character we, the audience, have been following for the last 11 minutes. It sets two characters, Chart and Phaya, as opposing against each other, for reasons we don't know - is Chart one of the villains? Why is he trying to kill Phaya? etc - and the audience is led to believe this is a life or death situation.

Then, plot twist. The reveal happens that this was all a training exercise, and there was never any "real" danger whilst also keeping the audience on their toes. And like in The Iliad, now we have context for the mission, and then the story is able to step back and explain.

It's not like, the best~~~ use of misdirection but there was a purpose to it. It sets up an expectation, and subverts that expectation of the audience - but in a good way not a Game of Thrones way. While also pulling the audience into the show by starting in the middle of the action rather than slowing down the story with exposition or giving their hand away to much that this was a training exercise.

If you knew it was a training exercise, suddenly the stakes feel less intense because none of the characters are in any real danger, but not knowing that, withholding that information until it's relevant, ups the stakes of the scene.

The opening scene of The Sign imparts a lot of information without using a lot of dialogue and I find that impressive. We learn which characters will be relevant to the story - Phaya, Tharn, Yai, Khem, Thongthai and now we know, Chart is also important - that they are skilled combat fighters, knowledgeable in firearms, there's a fantasy element to the story via Tharn's visions, they're on an island which the setting for right now, and the tone and aesthetic of the show itself.

It's actually a fun scene to rewatch again with more context because I appreciated it even more. Which is just good film making.

I didn't talk much about the camera work - needless to say it's notable and fun - but maybe I'll save that for the next post. What other shows or scenes would be fun to breakdown? Drop me a line but heads up I don't actually watch a ton of shows so idk if I've seen xyz show lmao

Later chepies ✌️✌️

Other posts in the series:

Aspect Ratio in Love for Love's Sake | Cinematography in My BL - Our Skyy2 vs kinnporsche, 2gether vs semantic error, 1000 Stars vs The Sign | How The Sign Uses CGI

[like these posts? drop me a couple pennies on ko-fi]

#the sign #the sign the series #idol factory #phayatharn #chaos pikachu metas #chaos film metas #idk what to tag this as anymore rip #these posts are so looooooooong #brain is a fried egg someone pass the soy sauce #Youtube #pikachu's bl film series

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youling-the-ghost · 3 months ago

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sfth incorrect quotes pt.7 because I haven't made these in *checks notes* ALMOST A WEEK?!?!

Sam: My hands are cold. Luke: Here, let me hold them. Sam: My lips are cold too. Luke: *covers Sam's mouth with his hand* Luke: I wasn’t that drunk. AJ: You colored my face with a highlighter because you said I was important. Luke: BECAUSE YOU ARE! Tom: Mint is just cold spicy. The Squad: ... Sam: What the actual fuck is wrong with you.

Tom: Do you think different paints have different tastes? Luke: They do. AJ: ...Why did you say that with such certainty? Luke: Don’t say a word. Sam: Fergalicious. Luke: Sam, I said no words. Sam: Oh, I see how it works. Two weeks ago, we’re playing Scrabble, it’s not a word, now suddenly it is a word because it’s convenient for you. Sam, to the Squad: The real secret to immortality? Not dying. You want to be immortal? Okay, that’s easy. Just don’t die. That’s it. Refuse to die. There you go. AJ: But how- Sam, ignoring him: "But how", you may ask. Well, easy. Just don’t do it. Refuse to. Say "no thanks". Luke: Am I a boy? Am I a girl? It doesn't matter. I'm going to burn your house down. (yes I'm continuing with the "Luke is an arsonist" bit) Sam: Look, Tom, it's the third time this week you had a mental breakdown and its Monday. Luke: Fight me! AJ: Ha, look at your size! What are you gonna do, kick my ankle? *Later* Tom: Why is AJ crying? Sam: Luke kicked him really hard on the ankle. Police Officer: You have the right to remain silent. AJ: I choose to waive that right! AJ: *screams* Tom: Dude, I will never forgive Craigslist for banning me after I wrote a post seeking a sworn nemesis. Whoever reported that is obviously my nemesis but I was so pissed. Sam: Hey! Tom: What do you want? Sam: Remember what we were talking about yesterday? Tom: Nope. Tom: Be kind. Everyone is fighting their own battles. Luke: Why would I be kind? I will be brutal and relentless and ride into battle by their side! AJ & Luke: *"accidentally" set the kitchen on fire* AJ: We need an adult! Luke: AJ, you are an adult! AJ: We need an adultier adult! Get Tom! Tom: Sam, keep an eye on Luke today. He's going to say something to the wrong person and get punched. Sam: Sure, I'd love to see Luke getting punched. Tom: Try again. Sam, sighing: I will try to stop Luke from getting punched. AJ: So are you gonna explain how the hell you crashed my car? Luke: Well we were driving and there was a deer in the road, so I said "Sam, deer!" AJ: ...And what did Sam do? Luke: ...He said "Yes, Honey?" (when gay chicken goes too far, but not in the way you were expecting) Sam: Why does my arm shake and turn bright red when I’m eating dirt? Tom: Tom: Why are you eating dirt? Sam: Did I ask you if I should eat dirt? No, so answer my question. Luke: I hate Sam. Tom: Don’t say hate. That is a mean word. Luke: Fine, I LOATHE Sam. ("Sam is full of shit." - Luke Manning, Discord Q&A, 2024) Sam: There is no i in happyness... Tom: There is if you fucking spell it right. Luke: watching their house burn down Luke: Luke: *starts filming* Waddup, guys, welcome to my vlog, today's topic: how to get away with accidentally committing arson because you forgot Spaghetti O's cans are metal and thus non-microwavable! Step one: deny everything. (I'm determined to make arsonist!Luke a reccuring joke) Tom: Go ahead, Sam. Let it out, cry. If you don't, your tear ducts will get blocked up, and then when you get old, you won't be able to cry. AJ: Just when we thought it was safe to let you back into the conversation. Sam: All right, AJ, that’s it, you’re grounded! I found a rap album hiding under your bed and it was the clean version. I didn’t raise you to be such a nerd! AJ: I’m not even your kid- ("I get my motherfricking baby back, baby back-") Sam: Let’s watch Sharkboy and Lavagirl. Luke: Okay. Sam: And make out during the scary parts. Luke: Th- Luke: The scary parts. Luke: Of Sharkboy and Lavagirl. Sam: You guys worried about Tom? AJ: Totally! Luke: Yeah, he called me in the middle of the night and just yelled, "what do I do, what do I do, what do I do, what do I do?" Sam: And what'd you say? Luke: "I dunno, I dunno, I dunno, I dunno." AJ: Sam: He's lucky to have you as a friend. Some guy, to Luke: Look at you! All cute and small! I could just eat you up! Luke: *proceeds to kick them in the shin and run away* Sam, walking past: Rule number 1, don't call Luke cute or small.

#shoot from the hip #shoot from the hip incorrect quotes #I still don't know what compelled me to make luke an arsonist in these #luke manning #alexander jeremy #sam russell #tom mayo

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marmota-b · 5 months ago

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Regarding Boromir, his death scene, and redemption / repentance (book vs film)

A bit of a callback to my original post on the topic of redemption, and inspired by a post calling (correctly) Boromir's trying to take the Ring one moment of weakness. I think I've finally figured out (I was low-key aware of it, but never put it into so many words) why I like the book version of Boromir's last moments much more than the film version, and why it pains me the film version seems to be what so many people prefer and so many fic writers inevitably reach for.

"I tried to take the Ring from Frodo. I am sorry. I have paid." ... "Farewell, Aragorn! Go to Minas Tirith and save my people! I have failed." "No!" said Aragorn, taking his hand and kissing his brow. "You have conquered. Few have gained such a victory. Be at peace! Minas Tirith shall not fail!"

Emphases mine, obviously, but when I think about it it's quite telling in which order they tell each other the things they say, and of course how exactly they say them.

The most important thing here, though it is on both their minds and it is what connects them and what their personal motivation is, isn't Gondor. Yes, Boromir is very worried about the fate of his country, but the first thing he tells Aragorn is what he has done, and that he is sorry.

And the very first thing Aragorn tells Boromir is assure him that he did not fail.

It's not a question of warrior honour, the way the film states it ("You fought bravely. You kept your honour."). It's a question of the main conflict of the book, that between the Ring's temptations and the ability to see it as the evil artifact it is.

The film keeps framing a lineage / authority / responsibility conflict between Boromir and Aragorn that's finally resolved, but that's not at all the conflict that matters (or, really, even exists) here. What Boromir is actually saying in relation to Gondor is "I now recognise that what I tried to do to save my people would have actually doomed them, and I recognise you have indeed been much wiser in this than I from the start. Please keep doing that, I can't change what I did now because I'm about to die." And some of it is present in the film, definitely, but it's muddled with the whole issue of both Aragorn and Boromir questioning Aragorn's legitimacy. Which means in the film Boromir's death scene ends up serving us Boromir repenting his behaviour towards Aragorn and... I hope we can all agree that's actually not the point Tolkien was making with Boromir's death scene in the book.

One moment of weakness. Boromir immediately saw that what he had done was wrong, and tried to make amends the only way he could at the moment. He did not keep trying to pursue Frodo, except to apologise (which admittedly Aragorn does not know, but it's still inherent in what Boromir tells him here). Boromir let go of the Ring even after being very, very sorely tempted, and Aragorn can see that. That IS a huge victory. THAT is a huge victory.

And the film frames that main conflict as it played out in the breaking of the Fellowship... wrong. The film leaves us with Boromir the man who succumbed to temptation, and died for his sins, and Aragorn the man who did not succumb and lived, and Boromir submits to the latter. That's not what happens in the book. In the book Aragorn simply never really went through a full moment of culmination of long-term temptation like that. Aragorn recognised and respected Boromir as someone who had reached the moment of culmination of long-term temptation, succumbed, and saw the light anyway. Meanwhile Boromir thinks he's paying for his sin and basically doomed, so Aragorn assures him that no, it was just a moment of weakness and he has overcome it. (Oh, and what also happens in the book is that after a long period of temptation even Frodo succumbs, and lives.)

My main problem with the film version is that the films inadvertently downplayed the main conflict and main theme of the whole story and served up the wrong moral.

#boromir #aragorn #lord of the rings #lotr #lotr books #literary analysis #media literacy #repentance #atonement #redemption arc #redemption in fiction #redemption #j r r tolkien #the two towers #tolkien #book vs movie #the one ring #the fellowship of the ring #character analysis

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fictionyoubelieve · 6 months ago

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This is a VERY long text post.

thanks @squareallworthy for giving me the excuse to make a House of Leaves post!! I'm going to try to make this accessible to everyone, so:

If you haven't read HoL, feel free to bail if this goes too deep or stops making sense. Personally, I don't think you need to worry about spoilers because it's not that kind of book (it usually spoils itself anyway), but if you'd rather go in knowing nothing, slam that J key now.

If you have read HoL, feel free to skip ahead to the theories. You're presumably good at tuning out extraneous information by now. :)

What is House of Leaves?

House of Leaves is a novel by Mark Z. Danielewski (MZD), published in 2000. It's an example of postmodern literature, which according to Wikipedia is:

a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues.

...all of which is House of Leaves to a T. Rather than capturing a single narrative, the book's text layers multiple stories, which refer to both each other and to external (e.g. mythical) stories, and which often reference the fact that they are stories in a book.

You can find it archived here, though unfortunately that scan/OCR seems to mangle the text in ways that will be hard to distinguish from everything else it's got going on.

Overall, I think the book is really cool and interesting, but maybe not worth sinking a ton of time and effort into. It's not a fun or easy read. Definitely worth checking out, but don't be afraid to skim or abandon it if it's not your thing.

The layers of HoL

The innermost layer is The Navidson Record (TNR), which is ostensibly a documentary but effectively a found-footage horror film. It's a series of films about the Navidson family--an unmarried couple with two young children--moving into a house in Virginia, and discovering that something is very strange about it. First subtly and then dramatically, the interior of the house grows and changes, in defiance of physical laws. One closet in particular becomes an eerie and seemingly infinite labyrinth, which they explore at their peril. (Don't worry--the overall novel is creepy and sometimes upsetting, but not outright scary. I'm a weenie about horror and had no trouble.)

The next layer is a pseudo-academic text about TNR by a blind man named Zampanò. He recounts the events of TNR, but also meanders on long tangents about other stories or academic works.

The third layer is the primary one we experience as the book House of Leaves. A character calling himself Johnny Truant discovered the disorganized and incomplete manuscript in Zampanò's apartment after that man's death, and he has assembled and edited it into this book, as well as added an introduction and lengthy footnotes relating stories from his own life. Johnny often contradicts himself, freely admits to making things up or changing the previous layers to suit his whims, and appears to mentally deteriorate over the course of the novel. He also says he can't find any evidence that TNR actually exists.

There's a thin layer added by "the Editors," who supposedly received the text from Johnny, and published it while in contact with him. They add some appendices and minor notes throughout, mainly to provide English translations for certain excerpts or to state that something the text refers to is missing. They include a purported still frame from TNR in the appendices, with no comment from Johnny.

All of the above, of course, was actually written by MZD, the real-life author of HoL. He self-published the earliest version of HoL to the internet, before publishing the full version as a physical book. He also produced some teleplays related to the work, and a collection of letters from Johnny's mother. The letters were originally published separately, but now most of them are included as an appendix to HoL. MZD's sister, the singer-songwriter Poe, also released the album Haunted around the same time as HoL, and it serves as a companion or counterpart to the novel.

The final layer is us, the readers. We interact with the text and also with each other, like I'm doing with this post. MZD's website still hosts forum threads from the time the book came out, where readers deciphered and theorized about it together. This is an important and intentional aspect of the work, as I'll explain in more detail later (see "The Meta").

Sub-stories

There are a few smaller anecdotes within the text which almost serve as their own layers, but don't fit neatly into the hierarchy above:

The Chiclitz play The Minotaur, on p110-111

The story of The Atrocity, on p297-300

The story of the changeling/cyanotic child, on p518-521 and referenced obliquely on p48-49

Themes and motifs

A non-exhaustive and highly subjective list, ordered very roughly from the most to least prominent:

The Greek myth of the Minotaur and the labyrinth

House

Madness, memory, and meaning

The sea and the sky

Darkness, absence, emptiness

Yggdrasil, the world tree; trees, leaves, and paper; the Cumaean Sibyl

Fidelity (in multiple senses of the word)

Colors, especially red/blue or red/blue/green/yellow

Death and rebirth, procreation, the womb

The biblical myth of Abraham and his sons

The biblical myth of Jonah and the Whale

The eye, cameras

Head injuries, holes in the head

Families, especially parents and twins/pairs of siblings

Note that there are connections and overlap between these themes. I'm going to argue that the first few in particular are strongly intertwined.

The Meta

Most of the fan theories I've seen are focused on the usual concerns: "what do you think really happened in the story? what does this mean for the characters?" That's reasonable, but since HoL is extremely aware of itself and its readers, I think it's also worth asking what the text expects from us or what it's trying to communicate directly, if anything. IMO those questions are easier to answer than nailing down the events of the story, and that's on purpose.

While rightfully regarded as a challenging and puzzling book, HoL actually is pretty blatant about helping us "solve" most of it. Heck, it color-codes its major motifs. There were many instances where I was like "oh, this reminds me of that other part from a ways back" and then the footnote would tell me to refer back to that part I was remembering. When there's an encoded message, like the Morse code or first-letter sections, Johnny typically makes a comment providing the key to decoding it--and in some cases also tells us the "hidden message," like in his conversation with the band near the end of the book.

The book straight-up tells you how to read it. On p115, just before it starts getting really wild with the typesetting in a section structured like a maze, Zampanò's text gives this advice for navigating mazes:

In order to escape then, we have to remember we cannot ponder all paths but must decode only those necessary to get out. We must be quick and anything but exhaustive.

The next footnote (139) also warns: "[in a maze,] the faster you go, the worse you are entangled" and "If one reads too quickly or too slowly, one understands nothing."

And of course, the book provides an extensive (albeit somewhat playful) index, so that if you have a theory about a certain word or concept, you can easily go back and look up examples. I believe the page numbers also match up across editions, so that different readers can more easily confer with one another.

All of this strongly suggests that MZD very much wants us to view the text as a puzzle to decode with other readers. He makes sure we know there are patterns and hidden messages to be found.

The madness of analysis

Like I mentioned above, Johnny's mental state deteriorates over the course of the book. A lot of his story also has to do with his late mother, who was committed to a psychiatric institution when he was young, and who shows similar quirks and inconsistencies in her letters to Johnny. The reader is quickly clued in that Johnny is an unreliable narrator, and by the end of the book it's nearly impossible to untangle what "really happened" in Johnny's narrative because there are so many revisions and contradictions.

Zampanò's writing may seem like a sharp contrast to Johnny's, since it is stuffy and academic rather than casual and coarse. But the two strongly parallel each other, as do the two characters. They both ramble and are prone to lengthy tangents based on tenuous connections; Zampanò seems to make things up and messily add and redact just as Johnny does with his stories. Both seem haunted by and obsessed with the manuscript in similar ways.

Other HoL readers have called it a satire of academic texts, but I'd go a step farther and say it's drawing a parallel between (perhaps overzealous) academic analysis and psychosis: seeing patterns or connections where there are none, jumping to wildly different and sometimes bizarre conclusions from the same experience, getting lost in theories with little connection to reality, communicating in ways that are hard for others to understand.

It even encourages its readers to engage in the same behavior, by hinting at many different patterns and connections yet making them inconsistent, uncertain, and contradictory. It goads you into trying to analyze it, but you'll just end up like Charlie in the Pepe Silvia meme:

Derrida's Deconstruction

Wait, so does that mean it's futile to try to analyze House of Leaves? Well, sort of, and the book tells us this! Remember that part (see "The Meta") that was giving us advice on how to navigate a maze, i.e. the book? On that same page, p115, it also says:

Unfortunately, the anfractuosity of some labyrinths may actually prohibit a permanent solution. More confounding still, its complexity may exceed the imagination of even the designer. Therefore anyone lost within must recognize that no one, not even a god or an Other, comprehends the entire maze and so therefore can never offer a definitive answer. [In the Navidson house,] any way out remains singular and applicable only to those on that path at that particular time. All solutions then are necessarily personal.

This sounds a lot like Deconstruction and Post-Structuralism, which isn't a coincidence given that Derrida was just quoted on p112. From the Wikipedia page on Deconstruction:

Derrida's deconstruction strategy is also used by postmodernists to locate meaning in a text rather than discover meaning due to the position that it has multiple readings.

It's probably also relevant that most of the book is about Johnny interpreting a text after the literal death of the author.

Footnote 140, which comes after "even the designer" in the above excerpt, includes this, in red and crossed out:

Or in other words: shy from the sky. No answer lies there. It cannot care, especially for what it no longer knows. Treat that place as a thing unto itself, independent of all else, and confront it on those terms. You alone must find the way. No one else can help you. Every way is different. And if you do lose yourself at least take solace in the absolute certainty that you will perish.

This ties the more general advice on interpreting texts back to the specific narratives in HoL. Before we dig into that more in the next section, note that Derrida was also a fan of putting things "under erasure" by crossing them out. Hmm...

Madness and the Minotaur

In multiple ways, the Minotaur is associated with absence. Most obviously, text mentioning it by name usually only appears in red and crossed out--Johnny says these are sections he recovered after Zampanò tried to erase them. The Minotaur also seems to be absent within TNR; the labyrinth of the House suggests its presence through growls and slash marks, but a beast never actually appears, and instead, things within the labyrinth seem to gradually fade out of existence. In myth, of course, the Minotaur was removed from society by hiding it in the labyrinth, and was eventually slain by Theseus, obliterating it forever.

On p335 we get footnote 295, again in red and crossed out:

At the heart of the labyrinth waits the Mi[ ]taur and like the Minotaur of myth its name is [ ] Chiclitz treated the maze as trope for psychic concealment, its excavation resulting in (tragic[ ] reconciliation. But if in Chiclitz's eye the Minotaur was a son imprisoned by a father's shame, is there then to Navidson's eye an equivalent misprision of the [ ] in the depths of that place? And for that matter does there exist a chance to reconcile the not known with the desire for its antithesis?

(The footnote continues, making the shape of a sword with large gaps in the blade.) Empty brackets in this section supposedly denote burnt holes in the manuscript, but since they are consistently used to make puns, it's clear that at least one of the authors is being intentional. We could read the gaps here as literal: the name of the Minotaur is [nothing], the labyrinth conceals the treacherous [nothing] in its depths.

The chapter that footnote appears in (Chapter 13), which is titled The Minotaur, begins with a quote that is translated as so (p313):

a slow shadow spreads across the prairie, but still, the act of naming it, of guessing what is its nature and its circumstances creates a fiction, not a living creature, not one of those who wander on the earth.

In this poem, El otro tigre, Borges compares a tiger in a poem, made of words and symbols, to "the other tiger" of flesh and blood, out in the wild. No matter how he tries to capture it with writing, the real tiger will always elude him.

So the Minotaur is connected to absence, nothingness, emptiness, and so on. This chapter draws additional associations with death and madness, which of course are also forms of loss or absence--both of self, and of meaning.

Is Johnny the Minotaur?

Johnny is strongly associated with the Minotaur, but his exact relationship with it is more complex than simply "Johnny is the Minotaur" or "the Minotaur represents Johnny". He is stalked by the creature in various forms, and he has nightmares or delusions in which he is the Minotaur. Raymond, the abusive foster dad, calls Johnny "beast". I think it's most accurate to say he is scared of the Minotaur and scared of being or becoming it, especially if we're interpreting it as nothingness or madness. And we know how his story ends.

There's another association I make with Johnny which isn't as explicit and doesn't seem to have been discussed as much, and that is to Icarus. There are hints of this early on--his father is a pilot, he's strongly associated with the sea and drowning, his fantasy when he meets Thumper sounds like flying--but it's brought home in the story about getting the scars on his arms, on page 505, and all the allusions and imagery. He burns and then drowns.

Zampanò, likewise, is like Daedalus. He built the labyrinth that is the manuscript, and which traps both Johnny and himself. There are some suggestions in the text that he and Johnny are like figurative (or in some theories, literal) father and son. But Daedalus, unlike Perilaus, was able to free himself from his own invention, and it seems like this wasn't true for Zampanò.

(This may be too much of a pet theory; I'm not sure it's as well-supported as the other parts of this post. But there's something there, I'm pretty sure.)

House

A house is a structure that defines empty space and imbues it with meaning by separating it from the greater nothingness. The novel is likewise a structure that gives form to a particular nothingness (fiction) by defining it and separating it from the greater nothingness (everything else that has not happened).

As readers, we follow a narrative "thread" through the text, but encounter only the Minotaur (nothingness) within. Just as the Minotaur in Chiclitz's play was portrayed sympathetically, the absence does not need to be bad or monstrous--it's just nothing. As we see in the key shape of footnote 123 (p110-111), the Minotaur is the key, but there is no Minotaur. There is no key. The key is crossed out (both the text comprising it, and the key itself, by being split across two pages). Perhaps we "slay" this Minotaur by imposing our own meaning? Would that be noble or tragic?

The house itself is what matters, but the house is blue, and blue means open to interpretation--what a blue screen meant in the 90s, before digital film became the norm. Everyone projects their own thoughts and fears onto the house, and it reflects those back at them. It's meaning and memory; you get out of it exactly what you bring. Blue is shifting and unfathomable like the sea. You could lose yourself in its depths.

Though "out of the blue" specifically seems more like a deus ex machina, because I'm pretty sure the blue of the sky is associated with God, eyes/cameras/observers, and us (MZD and the readers), though I don't have examples prepared to back that up. "Shy from the sky" (see "Derrida's Deconstruction") could then be taken as "don't look to the author for answers".

But if there is any meaning to be found, it also can't be found looking only within the text and the world it defines, without considering those final layers. The stories all intertwine and even loop back on themselves, as when Navidson and Johnny both encounter their own book. Using the HoL to light your way through HoL will lead nowhere. You'll need help from the outside.

So?

Okay, okay, okay. So what?

"SO?" asks the text (p103), and maybe you do, too. Sew buttons, says the Morse code of footnote 119 on the same page. Dismissing the question? Or suggesting you work hard to secure your buttons with a whole spool of thread, as Johnny does near the end (p514) to avoid losing them to the labyrinth?

Shortly after, on p516, Johnny writes this:

Wasn’t darkness nothingness? Wasn’t that Navidson's discovery? Wasn’t it Zampanò's? Or have I misconstrued it all? Missed the obvious, something still undiscovered waiting there deep within me, outside of me, powerful and extremely patient, unafraid to remain, even though it is and always has been free.

This (and some of his other writing late in the story) reads to me like possibly an acknowledgement or dim awareness of reality outside the book, but I'm not sure. I'm just going to point to it, and also the part a little further down the page, where he describes a sunset as "Reds finally marrying blues."

How do we reconcile red and blue? Is it about reconciling ourselves to the lack of true meaning, as in Nihilism? Or choosing to focus only on the "real", refusing to lose ourselves in the endless cycle of interpretation?

I don't know. There's probably more that can be built on this foundation, but this is as far as I've gotten. If you actually got through all that, wow, thanks for reading, and by all means let me know your own thoughts.

#hol #house of leaves #theorycrafting #literary analysis

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atiny-for-life · 10 months ago

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Ateez's Full Storyline Explained - Part 1

Masterlist

I'm gonna cover the Diary Entries/Diary Film before we tackle Inception MV in the next post since all three tie into each other but, as the only written medium, the Diary Entries are the most elaborate and provide the foundation on which the Inception MV is built.

Fever Part 1 Diary Entries:

Side-note: All future albums from Fever Part 1 onwards come in three versions - usually titled A, Z, and Diary Version. If you purchase the Diary Version, you'll find a series of diary entries by the members in the photobook - that's how the storyline gets told. This album, however, is a bit of an exception. There are still three versions but this time, the Thanxx Version includes just one bonus diary entry on the back of Hongjoong's large photo, but we also get the regular Diary Version which comes with a bonus booklet that includes all main entries.

Thanxx Version Entry:

Note: This entry is also being read by a female voice for Track 1 on the album, indicating that someone later found it. Who exactly is unclear. However, it's not the writer as will later become evident.

The entry begins with the first person narrator recounting an incident where an adult asked him what his dream was

From his entry:

As if my dreams explained who I am... When I said I have no dream, the look on the adult's face was like to the child with no name. The look was familiar to me.

He talks about how life passed him by: try to get good grades to please his parents, walk the same path each day, expression unchanged

Many books tell me, look at the stars in the night sky and become the person who shines bright like those stars. But, the stars that I looked up to in the sky did not shine at all. So I continue to walk, looking down at the floor.

It was then that a child walked up to him and told him there was nothing down there to look at, that he should look up

He describes the child as weird because the smile on his face was bright but his eyes were just like his own

They began to hang out together from then on; they would turn up the music and dance

Eventually, those hang outs became the times he felt truly alive

My heart pounding like it's about to burst and this tingling feeling coming up from my fingertips started to take over me. Was there ever another moment where I wanted something this bad? One by one, more children started to say my name. The path that I only walked with one other person became a path to many. Slowly, the word 'I' became 'ours'. Wandering around with this unknown fever, as we looked above our heads, stars seem to shine bright. Today.

The identity of the author is unclear, unfortunately, because going based on the events and some of the word choices, it seems like Hongjoong but later on, we'll see Yeosang's diary entry outright re-use parts of the final lines above

Diary Version Entries/Diary Film:

I highly recommend watching the Diary Film before you read on! It covers all entries in a very pretty, artistic way and will set the vibe for what's to come.

The Intro describes the location of Ateez's hideout: leave the city behind, head through a deserted side road and past a maze of cement walls to find a factory entrance with a 'No-Entry' warning sign

It's surrounded by wild grass, the only sign of visitors: a trampled path made by several sets of footprints

From a distance, you can already hear a familiar beat

Following the path, you'll find a deserted warehouse with rusty iron gates

The first person narrator (likely Hongjoong) enters and finds his friends - the sight makes him smile

From the entry:

These are faces I never got tired of seeing every day. This is our own space. Laughing, crying, arguing, dancing, and singing. A space where our dreams came together. Our hideout, our own world, separating us from the adult world. Right now, it is a moment void of compromises and tameness, it is the moment before we opened that door.

From Hongjoong's entry:

I don't want to be forgotten as if I never existed.

He talks of how he feels different from the people on TV who're performing under bright lights, but he still wants to be a star like them so he can be seen from everywhere

Maybe then, his family will notice him

Even if it were by coincidence, I wish I could meet them at least once. If my family could get back together like before... I miss the warmth of our living room.

His family split up, each of them moving away and leaving him behind where he now found his new family in Ateez

He met each of them through music, by performing in their hideout

Just thinking about them warms my heart! I really hope we can achieve our dreams together! My family, the music I love, and our dreams... We must keep them.

Seonghwa watches a girl perform by herself and feels something in him change as the music from her headphones reaches his ears

He feels the world fall away

From his entry:

Common sense, rules and this tough world didn't have power over her moves. Right this moment, my world broke along this snowy road. [...] She dropped a bracelet that had "Be Free" engraved on it. Ever since that day, I went to the same place at the same time.

Yet, she never returns and he has no way to contact her

Regardless, the way he views music permanently changes

I can no longer distinguish the structure, code, or the genre of the song. Only the lingering feeling of that day remains.

Yunho's entry is a one-sided conversation with his brother, likely taking place at his brother's grave

From his entry:

Hey brother, you look like you are in such a good mood today! The weather is so good as well. Even though I was running to see you, I didn't even feel the heat.

He tells him about his day, how they would've gone to Han River together and how he's been planning to rid of his brother's old guitar but couldn't bring himself to do it

But since it's a guitar you cherished so much, I just left it out of sight because it seemed like you abandoned your dream.

He continues to tell his brother about Hongjoong and how he was someone he felt he could talk to when things get tough

He is a person I admire on both an artistic and humane level. Thinking about it now, you both kind of look alike? I think you guys would have gotten along if you'd ever met each other.

He tells his brother how he can laugh again, thanks to Hongjoong and the other members and how it's helped him avoid the painful memories and focus on achieving the dreams his brother couldn't

I will make them happen: the boys and I will make it happen. When that time comes, you must wake up from the long hibernation. I want to show you all of it! I'll be back tomorrow. Good night!

Yeosang talks about how he was originally never good with mechanics until he started to dismantle a speaker

As time went on, every time he felt suffocated, he would begin to dis- and reassemble appliances and instruments

His parents are the ones who always make him feel like this; they have his entire life planned for him - one routine repeating over and over again each day

From his entry:

That day in that shabby warehouse, a bunch of guys I'd normally run away from asked me if I knew how to work a drone. This whole encounter was a bit strange! I actually was lost and wandering around. The sound of music was what brought me to that place. From that day on, I went there every day.

He falls in love with dancing, describes it as a mind-blowing activity not even the memory of his parents' worried faces could hold him back from

For the first time, I felt alive.

From here, we get a paragraph that can also be found in the bonus entry from the Thanxx album, as I already mentioned when we discussed it

However, where the Thanxx entry reads: "Slowly, the world 'I' became 'ours'. Wandering around with this unknown fever, as we looked above our heads, stars seem to shine bright." This one ends as follows:

Slowly, the word 'I' became 'ours'. However, now I must leave the 'ours'. If I back out, everything will be back to normal, the scattered members and the stolen hideout. I'm sorry, guys.

From San's entry:

I was always laughing, but I always felt lonely. I just couldn't open up or maybe I've never had the time to open up. Every time I got closer to someone, I had to move.

He has to move again today but at least this time, he can talk about his feelings with his friends

As soon as I saw them, I knew right off the bat, they're like me. Oh, Seonghwa was a little different. He never tried to do anything the traditional way, he was always 'HIS' way.

It was his dad who told him they'd have to move again but the words hit San differently this time since he finally found a place he felt like he belonged

What should I say to Wooyoung? Thanks to him, thanks to my friends, I was able to perfect my dance moves. Bobo, what should I do? What? You want me to do it 'MY' way?

The entry ends here, leaving it unclear who "Bobo" is but they get mentioned again in the Fever Part 2 Diary Entries

From Mingi's entry:

Music was my haven, my escape, my one and only relief. When I felt like dying, I would listen to music. I wasn't afraid of death! People who never lived in poverty would never understand this feeling.

The people around him looked at him as if he were an alien and laughed at him for wanting to die when he's just an "immature high school student"

I guess it is uncommon for someone my age to feel that way.

He doesn't remember a lot of names from his years spent in school since no one ever talked to him and, even when they tried, he simply wouldn't answer

But Wooyoung was different.

He's been with Mingi since elementary school and would always stick to him during breaks, even when Mingi would never bother to partake in the conversation

Wooyoung would tell him stories about their classmates, his favorite songs, American dancers and the other Ateez members he worked with outside of school

He always tops it with that signature laugh of his, which naturally made me laugh. Out of shyness, I started calling him "Woo-Ong". Ah, that unique laugh of his. He was the first friend I've ever opened up to.

Mingi started to spend all his time with Wooyoung until he eventually also followed him to the hideout for the first time

The place where I could dream. They were friends who took me as I am. We cried, laughed, and made music together. They accepted me as who I am, regardless of where I live or who my parents were. I felt exuberant for the first time in my life. But now I'm getting scared. Can I really have a dream? Will it not be taken away from me?

Wooyoung recalls how his mind always goes blank and how he wants to run away whenever he tries to perform in front of an audience, regardless of how confident he feels when practicing alone

On social media, his practice video already raked in 100,000 views and many people, including big entertainment agencies, reached out to him, and yet

Once I felt their look towards me, I just couldn't move. I closed my eyes, trying to escape, and then Seonghwa's voice popped in my head: "Wooyoung, before you start performing on stage, remember these three things: 'Everything will be okay!', 'Believe in yourself!', 'You can do it!'" "He will be too nervous to remember THREE things! What kind of psychology book did you read?" "Yunho, are you making fun of Seonghwa again? Buy hey Wooyoung, believing in yourself is the key." Hongjoong is always good at putting everything into perspective.

Wooyoung smiles at the memory and feels their presence despite them being nowhere near; he gets back up

He has a habit of chatting in order to beat his stage fright and has trained himself to laugh when he's feeling shy

But even though he doesn't mind being teased for these habits, he still freezes when he feels the eyes of an audience on himself - his tricks don't work in this kind of setting

He recalls the first time he met Hongjoong, Seonghwa and Yunho at a street performance and how he saw something in them he felt he was lacking

Expressiveness beyond dance techniques and showmanship that captivated the audience. When I danced with them, I wasn't self-conscious and was able to deliver my best performances. My legs are tense. The first step, the step that I was never able to do, the chain that was tying to my body was magically released.

Jongho recalls how he's had his entire life planned out, everything centered around playing basketball... and then he got injured

He begged the doctor to let him get back on the field and play again but it was no use

I felt like I was drowning. No matter how hard I tried, I was still stuck in the exact same spot.

He tried to keep going but the moment he fully gave up on his dream, he felt lifeless

As good as being dead.

He sees his own lifeless eyes from before reflected on Mingi now as he punches him

Yunho grabs his throbbing hand after to keep things from escalating further

Mingi clearly saw the fist coming his way but didn't try to avoid it. His lifeless eyes are still haunting me.

Mingi had called their dreams a luxury, had said their time together meant nothing to him and decided to quit

Jongho couldn't hold back from throwing a punch then

Funnily enough, it was a heartbreaking moment for me but also the time I started to dream again. At that time, I didn't know how to reach out to a lost Mingi. Where are we, where should we go?

The situation with Mingi clearly reminded him of the way it had felt to lose his first dream which meant, amidst the chaos and heartbreak, he realized he'd unknowingly begun to dream again

The Outro, written from Hongjoong's POV as will later become event, begins as follows:

Even though I lost my dream and family again, there was nothing I could do. Everyone left and here I am, alone again.

On a hot summer day, they decided to go their separate ways since they began to view their shared dream as shackles that were holding them down

The scorching sun melted away even our dream of youth and made it disappear at the end of our feet.

Their problems were piling up, their shared promises kept getting put off and, eventually, they began to forget each other

It was then that Hongjoong began to see him in his dreams

The man in the black fedora, whose eyes you could only see through his mask. Somehow familiar but tired eyes. "You lost your dream, not because of the tough reality, but because you guys decided to. "Get rid of the idea that the world you see is everything. There are many dimensions and many realities in this world. The world I am in, the world you are in, are all real."

The man says he'd like to share more but is short on time

He calls the hourglass in his hand "the Cromer" and says it's the key to connecting the worlds

He hands it to Hongjoong before stepping back with his final words

"Follow your heart, the map is there."

When Hongjoong looks up from the Cromer, the man is already gone and Hongjoong wakes up, feeling lonely

It's then that he spots the hourglass on the table in front of him and watches as the sand begins to flow from bottom to top, indicating the Cromer's ability to time travel

The iron door then opened and I could hear the footsteps coming closer one by one. The guys then gathered around me with the same puzzled face.

#ateez #hongjoong #seonghwa #yunho #yeosang #san #mingi #wooyoung #jongho #ateez lore #diary film #fever part 1 #fever series

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