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mermaidxatxheart · 3 years ago

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Better Together Chapter Eight

Here's Chapter 8, y'all. My work is not to be posted on any other site. If you'd like to be added to my tag list, send me an ask.

Pairing: Poe Dameron x Reader

Word Count: 4.9k

Warnings: language, violence, descriptions of torture.

Series Master List

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

You climb down from the tower, trying to dry your eyes. You dust your hands off and head for the lab. You don’t want to study these stupid flowers, you just want to forget that whole stupid fucking planet. Your eyes won’t stop watering, your throat thick and painful as you try not to burst into tears again.

You round a corner, glancing behind you as you wipe your eyes again. The skin around them is starting to feel raw as you rub them endlessly. There’s something in the middle of the walkway that shouldn’t be there. You turn back to look at what you’ve walked into, stumbling back as fingers wrap around your shoulders.

“Y/N,” Poe breathes, eyes fluttering closed.

Oh, Maker. Your lower lip trembles as you look at his beautiful face, the rejection from earlier swirling up and stifling you. Your eyebrows pinch against your will, eyes starting to squint as the tears threaten to overtake you. Fighting for control, you struggle to smooth out your forehead, but no matter how hard you try, it won’t relax. You inhale sharply through your nose and his eyes fly open.

“Oh, sweetheart.” He mumbles, pulling you in for a hug. It hurts, feeling him care about you this way. You don’t hug him back, keeping your arms rigid by your sides. If you let yourself give in, it will only make things harder. “Y/N, I’m so sorry.” He whispers, burying his face in your neck. “I didn’t mean… this morning…” he takes a shuddering breath. “Please? Just… pl-please.” He hugs you tighter, his voice breaking.

“Poe,”

“Don’t you think I want… if I let myself ki-“ he cuts off audibly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He whispers.

“What do you want from me?” You ask, but it comes out colder than you mean it to.

“Forgive me? You have to know I would do anything for you. Anything you ask of me.”

“You didn’t do anything that needs to be forgiven.” You say softly, your arms curling around his back, your willpower crumbling.

“In my room-“ he starts.

“I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have put you in that position.” You sigh, turning your face into his neck. “Moment of weakness. Will you forgive me?” You ask.

His soft lips press into your neck and you shiver at the unexpected touch. “Nothing to forgive.” He murmurs, lifting his head up to trail up your neck. Your heart thrums erratically in your chest as his lips brush your jawline. “Please tell me you haven’t been crying all day because I’m an asshole.”

“No.” You say, barely more than a whisper. It’s all you can manage as his lips trail up your cheek. “I finished my report for Leia.” You say and he tenses. “Poe? I know… I know I don’t deserve it, but can we talk about the river?” You ask quietly.

“I liked the river.” He mumbles against your cheek. You desperately want to turn your head, to catch his lips with yours. Maker, you feel like you’re on an emotional rollercoaster, high then low, upside down, then backwards.

“I meant what happened in the river.” You correct.

“Liked that, too.” That earns a weak chuckle.

“You shouldn’t have.” You mumble.

“Y/N,” he groans, guiding you against the wall. He brushes his thumb along your jaw. “What’s bothering you? Tell me. You have so much that you’re not saying and it just breaks my heart.”

Your holopad beeps and you close your eyes. “I have to get to the lab.” You twist your face away.

“I have literally nothing else to do. We can talk on the way.” He says, taking your hand.

“You don’t have to.” You look at him suspiciously. “Why send poor Snap to my room earlier?” You ask and he tips his head back, laughing.

“For funsies.”

“Pando? What the hell was that about?” You ask, his fingers intertwined with yours.

“Lando Calrissian. You mentioned he was an inspiration of yours to become a pilot. I figured you would get the reference. Poe, Lando, we’re both pilots.” He shrugs and you roll your eyes.

“I mentioned Calrissian once, five years ago. I can’t believe you remembered that.”

“I remember everything.” He promises. “How was your caf?” He hints.

“Better than the one Bryce brought me. Thank you. And for the food.” You add and he beams, lifting your hands to trace your cheek with the backs of his fingers.

“Of course.” He looks at you before facing straight and keeping his lips pressed together.

“You might as well say it. You have a terrible sabaacc face.” You sigh, pulling him into the lab.

“I don’t like him. He’s been dating you for three years and still doesn’t know how you like your caf. It’s not hard. He’s a jerk. And I hate that he kept me from the med bay so I couldn’t see you. I hate that he acts like he owns you.” He picks up your protective lab coat and helps you slide your arms in. You wince in pain but quickly compose your face so he won’t see.

“Anything else?” You look up at him.

“Only a million other things.” He sighs, leaning against your lab bench.

“Tell me.” You say, catching his hand.

He lifts your hand to his mouth, lips parting slightly as he flutters his eyes shut. He inhales deeply, lips moving silently against the back of it.

“Didn’t catch that.”

“This is so fucked up to say, but I’m so proud of you.” He says. “When we were taken, you were incredible. I never should have put you in that position, but you didn’t say anything, not to save me, not to save yourself and, Maker, I’m so fucking proud of you. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to hold out when he started hurting you, but the fact that you weren’t breaking gave me strength.” He bows his head, clinging to your hand. “And I hate the fact that you think we went through all that because of you. None of it, none, was your fault.” He sighs, lifting his eyes to your face. “In fact, if it wasn’t morally the exact wrong thing to do, I would kiss you again in a heartbeat. Over and over. But you’re a good person and that wouldn’t be fair to you.” He murmurs softly.

“Poe,” you plead. It’s all you want, to kiss him.

“I know. I shouldn’t want that. You’re not mine to want that with, but I just… it’s in my head now. How good you taste, how soft your lips are.” He squeezes his eyes shut, cutting off his words and you squeak. You try to get your hands free, you want them in his hair, holding him to you.

“Poe, please!” You struggle and he drops your hands, hurt written all over his face.

“Okay.” He turns to leave and you grab his arm, pulling him back. You cling to his face, pulling his lips against yours. His hands grip your waist and you exhale in a rush. A massive weight is lifted off your shoulders as you kiss him, hold him. His lips part under yours and you moan low in the back of your throat. He clings to you, crushing you against him like he can’t get close enough.

Maker, you could stay like this forever.

He backs you into the lab bench, fingers pressing into your hips and you rock into him, starving. The door hisses open and he jerks back, spinning around and walking away a few steps.

Nya walks around the corner and looks up to see you fiddling with your holopad. Having barely recovered your wits, you grabbed the first thing your hands landed on.

“Y/N.” She greets with a smile. It’s fake and you want to slap her, but you just tighten your grip on your holopad instead.

“Nya. What are you doing here?” You ask, trying for polite at least and failing horribly. Poe smirks at you over the shelf he’s studying.

“Looking for you, actually.” She says, heading over and you internally groan.

“What did I do?” You ask and she laughs lightly.

“Nothing yet.” She promises. “Your plants are in bin Cin17.” She says, handing over the packet she’s holding.

“Oh. Thanks.”

She smiles at you and turns to walk away. You glance at Poe and he shrugs, coming back over. “That was odd.” He comments.

“Odd? That’s literally the nicest she’s ever been to me.” You sigh, turning back to your bench.

“I wonder why.”

“Maybe she wants something? Maybe she saw my outright panic attack in the dining hall and is getting off on my suffering.” You sigh.

“Or. On a slightly less negative note. Maybe she missed you? Maybe she realized she’s in love with you and now she wants to make it right and have babies with you.” He says and by the end, you’re laughing much harder than you should be. You double over, grasping your knees, your entire midsection aching for various reasons.

“Fuck, you’re gonna make me rip my stitches.” You gasp.

“It wasn’t that funny.” He mumbles.

“Oh man, you’re a funny guy, Dameron.” You pant, standing up and wiping your forehead.

“Thanks.” He mutters dryly. “May I ask what, exactly, was so funny about that?”

“Nya. Liking me? She’s so into dick, it’s all she talks about sometimes. Everyone who has one is in her sights. Especially you, Commander. And then babies with me? Come on. Get serious.”

“Just her? Or anyone in general is unbelievable?” He asks, an odd, stiff texture to his voice.

“I dunno. Anyone? I never really thought I’d make a good mom.” You shrug, heading for the containers now that you’re back under control.

“Really? I do.” He says and your face heats.

“Moot point at the moment. Bryce doesn’t want kids.” You say and he groans.

“Just when I think…” he rubs his face. “I gotta go. I’ll see you later.” He mumbles, swiftly heading for the door.

“Wait, Poe!” You call, half turning.

Too late. He’s gone.

***

You’ve never been punched before. Training was always hand to hand, blocking blows or fighting with weapons. They don’t teach you how to take a punch, or five, or twenty.

It doesn’t hurt at first. The impacted spot on your cheek just goes numb. You can feel the cut on the inside from your teeth against the sensitive tissue, but it doesn’t hurt. Yet.

Then after a couple minutes, it turns into a white hot pain. Couple that with fists landing all over your body, and you’re in pain like you’ve never felt before. Tears spill over your cheeks as the fist lands against your nose, cracking your head back against your prison table. You can’t see, can’t feel your face. Your mouth fills with blood, coating your tongue and spilling down your chin as you gasp for air. You can feel your lips split in different places.

There isn’t a part of you that doesn’t hurt, but you hold onto Poe. He didn’t give them anything, so you can’t either. You can’t let him have suffered for nothing.

The trooper stops, rolling his shoulder. “Answer me. Where is your base?”

You spit the blood out of your mouth at his feet. “That all you got? I was just getting into it.” You say and he grumbles, turning to leave for the time being.

You close your aching eyes and drop your head against the support. It’s not comfortable by any stretch of the word, but it’s better than having to hold your head up anymore.

The image from your nightmare flashes in front of your eyes, Poe fighting the invisible enemy, only now it’s not so invisible. A StormTrooper is wielding the blade, plunging it deep into Poe’s heart.

You jerk upright in your bed, upsetting your holopad and sending it crashing to the floor. You flip on the light, unnerved and feeling like you're not alone in your room. But there doesn’t seem to be anything there. Just your clothes on the floor.

You push yourself to your feet, not feeling safe here, and grab your blanket, wrapping it around your shoulders. You want to go see Poe, make sure he’s okay, be positive your nightmares haven’t gotten him yet.

But he doesn’t want to see you. Having avoided you for the rest of the day, you get the hint. A moment of weakness. That’s what that kiss was. You were there and he needed someone. Could have been Nya, probably for all he would have minded. Any port in the storm.

So, you bypass his room and head for the tower where you ate your lunch. It’s quiet, dark, you can see anything coming for you. You climb the steps slowly, feeling the familiar pinch of your stitches. They’re still ugly, crude, jagged. Maybe it’s good that Poe doesn’t really want you. No one could possibly love the new mutilated you. Bryce hasn’t seen them yet, either. You’re positive that the second he does, he’ll run for the hills.

Maker, you’re selfish.

You push open the door and a body in the tower makes you freeze. “Oh.” You mumble, realizing it’s Poe. “Sorry. I’ll leave.” You rush, ducking back down.

“Stay.” He croaks and you hesitate. “I can’t sleep. Stay and talk to me?”

“You sure you want me to?” You ask.

“I’d rather it be you than anyone else.” He admits.

You feel like leaves on the wind as you climb the rest of the way up. Swirling around in chaotic confusion. You don’t know which way is up, what to trust. You sit a little ways away, back against the wall, facing him.

“What do you want me to talk about?” You ask finally.

He drags a stick through the dirt, making scratch drawings. “I told you some stuff earlier. Spilled some of my guts. Anything you wanna tell me?” He asks finally.

“Yes.” You answer. It’s harder than you think to get these words out. “I…” you close your mouth, thinking about where to start.

“Not easy. To spill your secrets.” He muses. The pale moonlight ghosts across his face. He looks terrible. Tired, hurt, miserable.

“Anything you wanna ask me?” You prompt. “Maybe I can say it that way.”

He looks at you warily. “Will you tell me the truth?”

“Always.” You answer immediately.

“Why did you kiss me in the river?” He asks. “I’ve been thinking over it on a loop and I just can’t figure it out.”

“It felt… right. I needed to do it. I wanted to do it. You’ve always been the best person in the world to me, always taking care of me and looking out for me. And on that planet, I was losing my fucking m-mind, seeing things, hearing things. You were so patient, so kind, so… you. And I could feel tension. Not in a bad way, but pulling me towards you. I’m so sorry, Poe. I know you said I didn’t do it, but I can’t shake the feeling that if I hadn’t, if I hadn’t distracted you, you would have heard those troopers coming. You’ve never been so compromised on a mission before until you go on one with me. I fucked up so bad and I’ll never be able to forgive myself for hurting you like that.” You ramble, the dam broken and the words spill out everywhere. He doesn’t move in the shadows.

He doesn’t say anything for a long time. Your ears start to ring in the dead silence before he speaks again. “So, why kiss me in the lab?”

You sniffle quietly. “You admitted you wanted to do it again, and it’s been one of the dominating thoughts in my head since you saved me in that closet. I want to kiss you. And I like kissing you, but… the guilt… it just keeps reminding me that I’m hurting everyone. Every time I kiss you, I hurt Bryce. Every time I mention him, I hurt you. I can’t get it right. I’m turning into a plague.” You press your lips together.

“You had a nightmare in the cave. What was it?” He asks. You’re not even sure if he’s actually listening to your words, he gives no indication of hearing them.

“I,” you pause, having to think back that far. “I was hovering over myself as I slept. You were saying something but I couldn’t really hear it. Then I went outside, but it was into a First Order ship. And then I saw the tables we were attached to. And then two men fighting with lightsabers. And then…” you cut off, swallowing thickly. This part you remember, even though you wish you could forget it. “A-and then you. Y-you were fighting something I c-couldn’t see. It had a bl-blade and it killed you, stabbed you th-through the heart.” You say, gasping for breath. It feels like the surrounding air is crushing you. “I w-woke up and you weren’t there, I pa-panicked.” You twist your fingers into your blanket, hiding your face.

“Do you want to kiss me again?” He asks finally.

“Poe,”

“Do you? If you say no, I’ll never bring it up again.” He promises.

“Of course, I do. But it’s not that easy. I keep hurting you. I don’t know how not to. And being around you, it makes me happy, it makes it easier to breathe. I don’t wanna lose you. I couldn’t survive it.” You admit shamelessly.

“You won’t lose me. I won’t leave you.” He says. “One more thing.” He starts.

“Okay?”

“Do you hate the way dickhead doesn’t know how you like your caf?” He asks and you crack a tearful smile.

“Yes. It’s not hard.” You mumble.

“Come here.” He holds out his arms. “Come sit with me.”

You scoot over, resting your head on his shoulder as he spreads your blanket out over the both of you.

“I need you, too, you know. I can’t lose you, either. And if that means I have to kick Bryce from here to Tatooine, I will.” He says, nuzzling into your hair.

“Please don’t. You’ve been hurt enough on my account.” You close your eyes to him stroking your hair.

“No promises, sweetheart.” He's quiet for so long, you nearly fall asleep. “But I’m not gonna stop kissing you.” He murmurs against your hair.

With one last conscious thought, you dig into your pocket, reaching for his hand with your other one. Sleep is making your limbs like lead, heavy and clumsy. You feel him chuckle a little, placing his wrist in your fumbling palm. You place the chain in his hand, curling his fingers around it.

“Meant to give it to you earlier,” you mumble, almost certain you formed actual words.

“Y/N, ” he chokes, squeezing you tight. “Thank you.”

***

“You have to eat something.” He protests, guiding you down off the ladder. His chain is back around his neck, shimmering against his tan skin as it always has. Some day, he's going to give it to someone; someone he wants to spend the rest of forever with. Someone who isn't broken like you. Someone who actually deserves him. And you'll try to be happy for him, but you know it'll break your heart.

“Can’t you just… go get it for me?” You ask, feeling your hands start to shake at the thought of the crowd.

He smiles softly, brushing your hair back. “Sweetheart. No.”

“Poe…” you start and he cups your face.

“I won’t let anything happen to you, okay? I’ll be right there the whole time.” He promises. “But you have to eat. You need your friends. They miss you.” He looks around, noting the empty pathway. “If you need to leave, we’ll leave. Just say the word.” He presses a kiss to your forehead.

“It’s gonna be loud.” You protest as he takes your hand and leads you towards the commissary and dining hall.

“This early?” He scoffs. He pulls you along gently. You could stop him, you could let the tears free that have been simmering just under the surface since you got back. You know he wouldn’t push you to do it if you’re not ready.

But… he’s gone in there, he’s seen his friends. If he can do it, you can, too. You take an extra step, falling in next to him instead of being pulled by him and he smiles down at you proudly.

“There’s my girl.” He says softly. He holds your hand right up until you stop outside the doors. He lifts your hand to his mouth softly, eyes never leaving your face. “I’ll be right next to you.” He promises. You nod and he lowers your hand, reluctantly letting it go until not even your fingertips are touching.

He pulls open the door and lets you walk inside first. He doesn’t shove you in, instead, he waits for you to take a deep breath, smiling down at you until you straighten with a false sense of confidence, and step inside. He follows you, just barely touching your arm as he guides you to the line of food.

Despite his assurances that the room would be mostly empty, with shift changes and missions leaving early, the room is fairly crowded. You can feel his eyes on you, along with about a hundred others, but you feel better today. Stronger, even. You can do this.

You hope.

Poe picks up two trays and starts to put food on both, watching your face for positive or negative signs. You could do this yourself, you’re perfectly capable, but you like him waiting on you a little bit. Just this one time, let him dote on you.

He finds an empty table, just the two of you and he sits across from you, foot tapping against yours. They trickle over, slowly, one at a time. Your friends come to sit next to you. But this time, they don’t swarm you. They sit next to you, or next to Poe, talking to him about something trivial and you’re so grateful. It lets you get used to it again, being around people, acting human again.

You watch Poe, listening to him joke with Snap; Beaumont sets an apple on your tray as he tells Poe some gossip. And Poe sits there, listening and laughing to all of it. He interacts, partakes, and never once does he look uncomfortable or like he wants to bolt. You don’t know how he does it.

And then Lieutenant Connix walks behind him. She leans down to say something in his ear, her hand squeezing his shoulder as she talks. His hand lifts to cover her own as he twists his face to listen. After a second, he nods and she walks away.

You’ve always liked her, she’s friendly, smart, ambitious. But maybe you need to rethink your ideas. She walks quickly, her hips swaying, and you huff under your breath. Since when are she and Poe so close?

You try to listen, to distract yourself, but you can’t tear your eyes away from where the pretty girl disappeared through. Poe’s foot taps against yours and you flinch, looking up at him slowly. He smiles softly, his eyes falling to your ignored food.

You roll your eyes, picking apart your roll and taking small nibbles. After a couple minutes, Connix is forgotten as Beaumont regales the table with a story of how he got trapped in a wedding dress on Coruscant.

Soon, you’re laughing along with them. You forgot what this feels like, your face hurts from smiling so much. Poe’s beautiful eyes are on you, his own grin infectious.

A crack echoes across the big room and you jump, hands grabbing the table, ready to run. Your heart pounds in your ears and it’s like your vision completely leaves you. Snap’s hand settles on yours closest to him as he shouts something. Your brain slowly fades back in and you realize Poe has your other hand across the table and Beaumont is out of his chair, peering across the room.

Two mechs collided, neither paying attention to what was in front of them, their trays falling to the cement. That was the cracking noise.

Poe’s hand is shaking just slightly, hardly noticeable, as it covers yours, but you feel it. You twist your hand into his and he glances over at you. You smile softly, tracing your thumb over the back of his hand.

Beau sits back down next to you, his eyes searching your face for a minute before he grins. “Never boring, eh, Y/N?” He asks, his hand resting on your shoulder.

“I guess not.” You answer. You pull your hands back and pick up the apple. Poe is quicker than you thought possible, his favorite knife out and the handle pressed into your palm before you can even realize you need one.

You cut the apple in half, core out the middle on both halves and give the other half to your best friend. He’s abnormally quiet for a minute as he chews, and you wonder if maybe he’s not as okay as you thought.

“Wexley, what’s on the agenda today?” You ask Snap, half turning to face him, giving Poe time to recover.

“Well, I have a mission the day after tomorrow. So, I need to get my ship ready. There’s a part that’s being problematic. I have some mechs that are gonna look at it today and see if they can fix it.” He sighs.

“Well, if they have any problems, you can always come find me and see if I can help.” You offer and he grins.

“I just might do that.”

Once Poe is sure you’ve eaten all you possibly can without getting sick, he collects your trays and you join him to deposit them before leaving the room with a wave to your friends.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He asks and you slip your hand into his.

“Thank you for making me go.” You say, leaning into his shoulder.

“Of course.” He smiles. “And… thank you.” He sighs, scratching at the back of his neck with his free hand. You cast your mind around, trying to figure out what he could possibly be thanking you for.

“I didn’t do anything.” You frown.

“With that stupid tray… you… fuck. How are you always so strong exactly when I need you to be?”

“Poe, I was ready to bolt. The only thing stopping me was you and Snap.” You tell him. “If you hadn’t grabbed my hand to keep me there, all you would have seen was my dust as I hightailed it out of there.”

He smiles softly, but it’s weak, a little broken. “I didn’t grab your hand to keep you there. I grabbed it to keep me there.” He admits, pausing outside the door to the lab.

You stare up at him, realization dawning much too slowly. “Poe,” you place a hand on his cheek and he leans into it, eyes fluttering closed. “Anything I can do, anything you need-I’ll always be here. You’re not alone.” You whisper and he pulls you close, kissing you softly.

Every time feels like the first time. His lips press against yours like they’ve known each other forever, no hesitation. He tips your head back, towering over you as you hold onto his shirt. His tongue is soft on yours, not domineering and controlling the way… someone else’s is… your subconscious blanks on the name, but it doesn’t matter, not when Poe is kissing you like his very life depends on it. No, like your life depends on it.

He pulls away, breathing slightly faster, forehead pressed to yours. His eyes are closed, but yours are open, drinking in every detail of his beautiful face. “Me and you, kid.” He agrees and you punch his arm, a smile already pulling at your lips. His eyes fly open and he rubs his arm.

“We’re the same age.” You glower and he laughs.

“I know. But you’re so much shorter.” He puts his hand on top of your head and you slap it away, turning towards the door with a huff. You’re about to swipe your keycard, but he pulls you back, plucking it out of your pocket. He swipes it and pushes the door open, letting you step in first.

“Will you stay?” You ask, reaching for your log books.

“Yeah. I don’t have anything else to do. I’m still technically on leave, recovering from…” he trails off, but you get the picture.

“Alright.” You start checking off your supplies and notes while he moves around your lab. You don’t pay him much attention, there isn’t much trouble he can get into. But you feel better having him around.

He looks through every box on the supply shelves, every glass container. You look over at him, catching his eye being magnified through a specimen jar. He looks so ridiculous that you can’t help but snort at him. He grins and straightens up, coming over next to you.

“Didn’t find anything you liked?” You tease, flipping through the last of your notes.

“Oh, I found plenty I like. Just nothing I can take right now.” He sighs wistfully. Your face heats, so you keep your gaze directly away from him. He chuckles and sits in the spinning chair next to your bench.

Chapter Nine

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only-johnny-deppp · 3 years ago

Photo

“Whatever I’ve gone through, I’ve gone through. But, ultimately, this particular arena of my life has been so absurd...”

Johnny Depp’s NEW INTERVIEW!

Last saturday, August 14, The UK Times, released a new interview with Johnny for the Sunday Times section. It was realized sometime earlier this month, in London, probably on the same day he and Andrew Levitas were recording for the Q&A for the “Minamata” release in UK. This is Johnny’s first interview since the UK trials in London last year, and released three years after Johnny’s major interview for the British GQ Magazine. Here Johnny and Andrew Levitas speaks about “Minamata”, his future as actor and a thing or two about his personal life, although he cannot talk about the court case.

For those who couldn’t read yet, here is the FULL interview: Enjoy.

***

“I’M BEING BOYCOTTED BY HOLLYWOOD”

Johnny Depp has a new film out this week. In the opening scene his character, the real-life photographer W Eugene Smith, says, “I’m done. I’m tired. My body is older than I am. I’m always in goddam pain. I can’t trust my f***ing dick any more. Constantly in a foul mood. Even the drugs bore me.”

I ask Depp if Smith’s despair resonated with him. Depp stops. Rocks back and forth. “That’s interesting,” he replies with painful hesitation.

“I didn’t approach playing Smith in that way… Although you bring your toolbox to work and use what is available. Having experienced...” He stops again. Depp takes any questions that might refer to his calamitous libel case last year slowly, in a mumbly, croaking drawl. “A surreal five years…”

In the film Smith needs to revive his reputation. In real life Depp’s task is even more daunting. Thanks to the judgment, everyone can call him a “wife-beater”. Now he must convince a Hollywood still convulsed by #MeToo that he’s not toxic — and that any attempt to rebuild his career is a risk worth taking. This is Depp’s first interview since the case.

We are speaking over Zoom, Depp in his London home, in front of a gold-framed painting. The 58-year-old is wearing a lot of clothes. Earrings. Floppy hat. Sunglasses. Bandana. Scarf. Checked shirt over a T-shirt with an indiscernible slogan. If you saw him on the Tube*, you might think he was off to work at the London Dungeon*, to play most of the characters.

PS. For those who are not familiar with British words: * Tube = British slang for London Underground, the subway trains. * London Dungeon = is a walk-through experience that recreates scenes from London's scary history in a mixture of live actors, special effects and rides.

Depp resumes, talking in broken sentences about the new film, Minamata, in which Smith, via Life magazine, exposes the brutal mercury poisoning of Japanese villagers in the early 1970s.

“How do we do this?” he asks rhetorically, meaning how to speak about the elephant in the Zoom. “Well, there’s no way one can’t recognise the absurdity of the mathematics.” He grins. “If you know what I mean?” No. “Absurdity of media mathematics.” He talks in riddles. “Whatever I’ve gone through, I’ve gone through. But, ultimately, this particular arena of my life has been so absurd...”

He trails off again. He is holding a big brown roll-up of some sort. “What the people in Minamata dealt with? People who suffered with Covid? A lot of people lost lives. Children sick...Ill. Ultimately, in answer to your question? Yeah, you use what you’ve got. But what I’ve been through? That’s like getting scratched by a kitten. Comparatively.”

Last July, I went to the High Court in London to watch Depp on another screen — a video from the socially distanced court where the Hollywood star was losing a libel action against The Sun after it called him a “wife-beater”. It was the grottiest showbiz trial of the century. There were photos of the actor passed out in a foetal slump, socks on show. One lengthy exchange involved faeces. Another urination, inside or outside a house, after a violent night with his ex-wife Amber Heard.

This had all been going on for a while. In 2016 Heard applied for a temporary restraining order against him. The couple had long endured a narcotic, booze-filled, childish relationship, but that does not matter — 12 incidents levelled against Depp were proved, said the judge, and abuse is abuse, regardless of how badly they both behaved. Depp wanted to appeal, but the court said no. Next April in the US he has a $50 million defamation case against Heard relating to an opinion piece she wrote about being the victim of domestic abuse. It may be his last roll of the dice.

In the 1990s Depp was a sensitive heart-throb. Cooler than DiCaprio, edgier than Pitt. In this past year he has been stripped of his status and dignity. On day three of the trial Sasha Wass QC, representing The Sun, asked Depp about daubing a penis on a painting. He could not remember. “That would be quite a big thing, painting a penis on a picture?” Wass asked. “Quite a big thing?” Depp asked.

It was a well-delivered line, but Depp was on show. Performing. Now he is more timid, less lucid. His people say he cannot talk about the court case given the looming US trial, yet it hangs over everything. The director of Minamata, Andrew Levitas, is also on our call — as a pub trivia aside, Levitas is married to the Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins.

The two men clearly get on. “With regards to journalism, it was important for us to put across in the film the power of truth,” Levitas says. Depp nods. “The responsibility of journalists to look after citizens of the world. [Our film] coincided with the moment important publications had to put Raquel Welch on a cover to get enough eyeballs to sell enough ads in order to put something meaningful inside. A result of that is clickbait — it’s destroying the purpose of journalism,” Levitas continues.

“You said it beautifully,” says Depp, one of the world’s most pinned-up men, who built a career on magazine covers. “I couldn’t say it better than that.”

Last month Levitas wrote to MGM, which bought Minamata for the US market but decided not to release it. He accused MGM of being concerned that “the personal issues of an actor in the film could reflect negatively upon them”. Then the letter got really strong. Levitas accused MGM of failing in its “moral obligation” to release the film and said it needed to explain to the victims “why you think an actor’s personal life is more important than their dead children”. He then attached Smith’s photos of ghastly deformities that shocked the world 50 years ago.

“It’s important that the movie gets seen and supported,” Levitas says. “And if I get an inkling it’s not going to be, it’s my responsibility to say so. Where it goes from there? I don’t know. But we have responsibility to these victims . . .”

You can see why he’s passionate. The film is good. MGM bought the film because it is good. Depp is good too. He disappears into the role, far from his more recent pantomime parts. It’s being released worldwide, just not in the actor’s homeland.

Depp, who also produced the film, interrupts. “We looked these people in the eyeballs and promised we would not be exploitative. That the film would be respectful. I believe that we’ve kept our end of the bargain, but those who came in later should also maintain theirs.”

“Some films touch people,” he adds. “And this affects those in Minamata and people who experience similar things. And for anything…” He pauses, as he does. “For Hollywood’s boycott of, erm, me? One man, one actor in an unpleasant and messy situation, over the last number of years?” He trails off. “But, you know, I’m moving towards where I need to go to make all that…” Again, he trails off. “To bring things to light.”

The fact, as I think Depp knows, is that for his career, the court that matters is not one of law, but public opinion. On social media, where a lot of minds are made up, Depp’s good reputation will always outweigh the bad, thanks to his frequently blinkered fans.

Outside the High Court, as Heard arrived, I saw Natasha, 30, yell: “Get hit by a truck, Amber!” She is extreme, but the persistent way his fans demand that others think their idol is a saint shows a career revival will happen. After all, most filmgoers do not follow his private life at all. To them, he is Jack Sparrow, Edward Scissorhands. To them, he is a star — and a star can take an awful lot of heat before it burns out.

“They have always been my employers,” Depp says of his fans. “They are all our employers. They buy tickets, merchandise. They made all of those studios rich, but they forgot that a long time ago. I certainly haven’t. I’m proud of these people, because of what they are trying to say, which is the truth. The truth they’re trying to get out since it doesn’t in more mainstream publications. It’s a long road that sometimes gets clunky. Sometimes just plain stupid. But they stayed on the ride with me and it’s for them I will fight. Always, to the end. Whatever it may be.”

Depp will talk like this for ever — about his “truth”. Minamata is the last film Depp has listed on the industry site IMDb, where actors usually have half a dozen in development. So, yes, fans of the actor can see Depp in a new role now — it is a return, but is it a relaunch? The film was finished in 2019, way before last year’s court case. Is that it? His last film? He thinks and looks off to his bookshelves, at biographies of Betjeman and Olivier.

“Er...no,” he says, eventually. “No. No. Actually, I look forward to the next few films I make to be my first films, in a way. Because once you’ve...Well, look. The way they wrote it in The Wizard of Oz is that when you see behind the curtain, it’s not him. When you see behind the curtain, there’s a whole lot of motherf***ers squished into one spot. All praying that you don’t look at them. And notice them.”

I would ask him to explain, but I am not sure he is an explainer. Watch this space, I guess, but he is already taking a first step back. After we speak, it is announced Depp is getting the coveted Donostia award at the San Sebastian Film Festival next month. Some people are just too famous to fail.

~ Interview by Jonathan Dean, in London, for The Times UK (released on August 14, 2021)

#Johnny Depp #New Interview #Interview #Minamata #Justice For Johnny Depp #I Believe Him #Johnny Depp is Innocent #The Times UK

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bopinion · 4 years ago

Text

Book of the month / 2021 / 04 April

I love books. Even though I hardly read any. Because my library is more like a collection of tomes, coffee-table books, limited editions... in short: books in which not "only" the content counts, but also the editorial performance, the presentation, the curating of the topic - the book as a total work of art itself.

björk :archives. A retrospective

Klaus Biesenbach

Monograph / 2015 / Schirmer/Mosel Publishing House

Iceland, the land of geysers, the largest volcanic island on the planet. Home of the Icelandic pony with its exclusive gait of the tölt and the most active literary community in the world. Soccer mecca and most sparsely populated country in Europe. Icelandic names - for example the highest mountain Hvannadalshnúkur - are hardly pronounceable, although the alphabet does not even know many common letters such as C, W, Q and Z. There is a separate holiday for seafarers and a division of time into 3-hour periods starting at midnight. 16 German cities each have more inhabitants than all of Iceland, which has therefore its own dating app to prevent relatives who are biologically too close from mating. It's a fascinating country.

Given the size of the country, it's probably no wonder that Iceland's pop cultural influence internationally is rather limited. Despite the Nobel Prize for Literature winner Halldór Laxness, whose work I don't know, and the crime series The Valhalla Murderers, which I know thanks to Netflix. But wait - wasn't there something else? Yes, that's right, Iceland has a globally successful Gesamtkunstwerk named Björk. Her contributions to music, video, film, fashion and art have influenced a generation worldwide.

Björk Guðmundsdóttir, born in Reykjavík in 1965, has made a name for herself as a singer, music producer, composer, songwriter and actress with a broad interest in different types of music, including pop music, electronic music, trip-hop, alternative rock, jazz, folk music and classical music. To date, she has sold over 20 million albums worldwide. Certainly not only because of the seemingly endless variability of her compositions, but also because of her voice, which one can confidently call unmistakable. She causes goose bumps, whether you like her music or not.

Little Björk attended music school at the age of five and was taught singing, piano and flute, among other things, for ten years. One of the teachers sent a recording of her singing the song "I Love To Love" by Tina Charles to a radio station. The broadcast was heard and liked by an employee of the Icelandic record publisher Fálkinn and subsequently offered her a recording contract - when she was eleven years old. With the help of her stepfather, who played guitar, she recorded her first album. It contained various Icelandic children's songs and cover versions of popular titles, such as "Fool on the Hill" by the Beatles. The album became a great national success.

At 14, Björk formed the girl punk group Spit and Snot, the maximum contrast program to the children's songs. This was followed by the fusion jazz group Exodus, later Tappi Tíkarrass and Kukl (Icelandic for witchcraft), with whom she developed her signature vocal style. First foreign tours to England and West Berlin followed. Then in 1986 came the formation of the band Pukl, later renamed The Sugarcubes. The first single brought respectable success in England and USA, The Sugarcubes reached cult status. The first record deal with Elektra Records led to the album "Life's too good" in 1988, making them the first Icelandic band ever to become world famous.

The transformation into a total work of art began in 1992 at the latest with Björk's move to London. The first solo album, appropriately named "Debut," became the album of the year according to New Musical Express. Now even Madonna wanted to have a whole album written by Björk, but it remained with the title track "Bedtime Story", she remained true to herself and her love of experimentation. The New York based news magazine "Time" named her the "high priestess of art" and in 2015 put her on the list of the 100 most influential people on earth. She rounded off her visual extravaganza, that even her wardrobe was prominently featured in the major retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Schirmer/Mosel Verlag is an art book publisher in Munich founded in 1974 by Lothar Schirmer and the commercial artist Erik Mosel. Schirmer became friends with artists such as Cy Twombly and Joseph Beuys at a young age and began collecting their works. By buying and reselling art prints and drawings, he earned the start-up capital for his publishing house. With his publishing debut, he ensured the rediscovery of August Sander, a visual artist of the Weimar Republic. There were various publishing collaborations with the MoMA, and in 2015 there was also the retrospective mentioned above. And of course, in keeping with the protagonist, the publication had to become a work of art itself.

"björk :archives" comes in an elegant slipcase containing six parts: four booklets, a paperback and a folded catalogue raisonné poster with the covers of all Björk albums. A closer look is worthwhile: first there is a thematic introduction by the editor and exhibition curator at the MoMA, Klaus Biesenbach. Then an illustrated essay by Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker, which deals with Björk's creative dissolution of musical and aesthetic boundaries. Another by Nicola Dibben, professor of musicology at the University of Sheffield, on Björk's creativity and collaborations. And the collected e-mail correspondence similar to a pen pal relationship between Björk and American publicist, philosopher and literary scholar Timothy Morton.

The book itself, the centerpiece of the edition, is about Björk's seven major albums and the characters she created for them. Poetic texts by Icelandic author Sjón, with whom Björk has long collaborated, are joined by a veritable treasure trove of illustrations: Photos of live performances, stills from the music videos of masters like Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze, Björk in stunning costumes by designers like Hussein Chalayan or Alexander McQueen, and PR shots by star photographers like the duo Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin or provocateur Araki.

The design of the publication quotes music scores and comes from the renowned Parisian design studio M/M. It all adds up to an extraordinary visual masterpiece, a tribute to the magical world of Björk. And that at an hardly believable price of € 19.80. A reviewer on Amazon (no, you shouldn't shop there - support local businesses!) sums it up: "This is a collection of art, stories and references very well organized and assembled with care. The price does absolutely not represent how valuable this product is, I am positively surprised." Positively surprising - that could truly be Björk's mission statement.

Björk's music itself is so rich in pictorial statements that it doesn't really need any exuberantly creative videos to go with it. Therefore, according to Slant Magazine, her best video is her first, relatively simple one: "Big Time sensuality" from her "Debut" album purely shows her joy in music. Here's the link:

https://youtu.be/-wYmq2Vz5yM

youtube

#book #book review #björk guðmundsdóttir #björk #the sugarcubes #iceland #schirmer Mosel #MoMA #museum of modern art #new york city #retrospective #Klaus biesenbach #gesamtkunstwerk #Voice #cult #singer songwriter #music #Reykjavik #Youtube

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1989dreamer · 4 years ago

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FTH-2020-Seventy-Five Percent

For @fandomtrumpshate‘s 2020 auction, big thanks to @evanesdust for bidding on me and for being so patient.

AO3 link

Summary: Stiles and Derek are roommates at college, and living together is going well considering Stiles is harboring the hugest crush on Derek. When Derek needs an emergency date to his sister's tenth anniversary dinner, Stiles agrees. He doesn't expect it to get messy. He's kept his feelings in check for three and a half years. Spoiler alert: it gets really messy.

From this prompt. “We’re fake-dating and I’m supposed to publicly break up with you but you’ve been irritating me lately so instead of dumping you I publicly proposed to mess up your plan and now we’re getting married, fuck” au.

Tags: Friends to Lovers, Fake Dating, Pining/Mutual Pining, Minor Misunderstanding, Human AU (full tags can be found on AO3).

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“I need a date,” Derek says apropos of nothing, and Stiles carefully sets down his brush, leans across the aisle, and stares at his friend. Derek flushes. “I mean,” he all but spits out between gritted teeth, “that my sister is having her tenth anniversary dinner, and I am the only single one in the family. If I don’t have a date, I’ll spend the whole time being accosted by my relatives.”

“And that’s my problem how?”Stiles asks. He goes back to his painting. The life model flexes just a tiny bit, and Stiles rolls his eyes at him.

“It’s your problem now because I will pay you to come with me,” Derek says, an undercurrent of threat in his voice. Or tears. Could be tears. Derek sounds mad when he’s about to cry sometimes.

Stiles sets his brush down again. Of course Derek would hit him where it hurts the most. All of Stiles’ meager earnings from his part-time job go toward keeping his Jeep running so that he can make the trek back up north to visit his dad when he’s on break from school.

“How much?” he demands, hating himself for being this easy.

Derek looks relieved. It’s a good look for him. Although, Derek looking good is any day of the week. “Thanks. Like three hundred for the day of? Maybe fifty for each additional thing that comes up?”

“And how often will things come up?”

Derek shrugs. “Maybe once or twice. I’m sure at least some of my family will want to call you to make sure that you’re real.”

Stiles claps a hand to his chest. “You haven’t told them about me?” he asks, pretending to be scandalized.

It’s Derek’s turn to roll his eyes. “I have told them about you, but in the context that you’re my best friend at college and we live on opposite sides of the state.”

“So they don’t think I’m real?” Stiles asks, not sure if he should be insulted or not.

“The most common thing I’m asked about you is ‘What is a Stiles?’” Derek grins, private and sort of cheery. “I’ve kind of stopped referring to you by name now. Just easier that way.”

“Hardy har har.” Stiles pokes Derek. To be completely fair, their freshman year, when Stiles would go home, he’d complain to his dad about his unfairly attractive, selfish, loud, attractive roommate. His dad had been convinced that Derek didn’t exist until he met him when Stiles was emptying his dorm room.

Now he and Derek have an apartment off campus, and Dad keeps trying to get Stiles to invite Derek to Beacon Hills because he claims he should at least get to intimidate his son’s future husband before their wedding.

Never mind that Derek has never even been seen with any dates, much less given Stiles any hope that he could possibly have a chance with him.

Until now. Except not really, because Derek just needs a pretend boyfriend, not an actual boyfriend.

“Why me?” Stiles asks, squinting suspiciously at Derek as he tries and fails to draw the absolute lounge of the life model. Stiles is recommending that Isaac never model again. It’s too much ego and not enough clothes, although Isaac did keep his scarf draped artfully around his neck when he dropped trou. “Why not Boyd or Erica? I’m sure either of them would be pleased to play Derek Hale’s date for a night.”

Derek shakes his head. “Both of them have already met my family. And so has Isaac. We were all friends in high school. You’re the only one I talk about regularly. It’d seem too weird if you weren’t the guy I was secretly pining after all these years.”

Stiles intensifies his squint. “Am I?” he asks bluntly.

“Are you what?” Derek refuses to make eye contact, making quick lines with his charcoal across his drawing of Isaac.

“Am I the guy you secretly pine after?”

“No…?”

Stiles throws his brush at Derek, not even a little sorry when it smacks against his chest and Derek complains that he’s wearing his favorite shirt. It’s not his favorite shirt. Stiles stole that a year ago and has yet to return it.

He’s a bit of a stalker. It’s a habit he’s trying to break. He will break. When he and Derek have graduated and gone their separate ways. When all they’ll be in a few years is the occasional drinking buddy, living too far to justify visiting more than once every couple years, work and life getting in the way of their friendship.

Stiles shakes himself. “So don’t make it a question.”

Derek sighs in defeat, handing Stiles his brush back. “Look, Laura already thinks that you’re my secret boyfriend.”

“I thought they thought I didn’t exist,” Stiles says, bitterly. He takes the brush and lays it down, turning to face Derek. Then he gives Derek a tissue to at least wipe off most of the paint. Too bad it’s oil and will stain.

“Laura helped me move in this year. She saw you and your dad from a distance and I pointed you out.”

Stiles narrows his eyes. “I could have met your sister?”

Derek squirms. “Yes?” he hedges. “But she was asking all these weird questions like our first kiss, where we go on dates, if we’ve gone all the way yet. I didn’t want you to deal with that, so I distracted her until she had to leave.”

“So I get to meet her now?”

Derek nods. “It is her anniversary after all.”

“Cool.”

Then Stiles ignores Derek in favor of finishing as much of his painting as he can before class lets out.

~ * ~

Lunch is leftover chili with homemade cornbread that Derek made earlier. Stiles taps a pen on some paper, thinking over all the things he knows he should put into a contract of sorts for his and Derek’s arrangement.

Stuff like pet names, PDA, just what they’ve “done” as a couple, how long they’ve been dating, and just how long they are supposed to be together before they break up.

Derek sees the list, scratches out pet names—“Trauma,” he mutters as explanation—and adds the terms of payment as well. He also writes down that the breakup should be public so that Derek can take time to “recover” without his family breathing down his neck.

Overall, there’s nothing really objectionable to pretending to date Derek aside from the fact that Stiles would much rather actually date Derek, but how to tell your presumably-straight roommate that you wanna suck his dick and kiss his lips?

Derek gathers the dishes and starts washing them. “Hey, so, my lab is today, so I’ll see you after 5:00. We can talk more when I get home.”

“Sure thing.” Stiles has to run himself or he’d stay and watch Derek clean up. It’s almost like a dance when Derek really gets into it. Stiles likes to park his butt on the couch and watch him while he pretends to do his homework. If Derek’s lab runs late, it explains why he’s cleaning now. Which means that not only will Stiles miss it because he needs to go to class, but it will be his turn to cook and clean tomorrow.

Ugh.

Stiles had considered Derek selfish freshman year because Derek hadn’t known how to share a room. He’s not sure why though, it’s not like they were each other’s first roommates either. Now Stiles feels selfish because he doesn’t mind cooking or doing chores but he had enough of that at home and was hoping to relax at college.

“Hey, see you tonight?” he asks, Derek waves in response.

Stiles goes to class, the pit of his stomach rebelling with every step. Why are things different now? Derek doesn’t want to date Stiles. He just wants to get his family off his back.

Concentration is out the window, so Stiles just spends all his class time thinking up the various scenarios that his and Derek’s plot could go so, so sideways.

By the time he makes it back to an empty and sparkling apartment, he’s nearer to a panic attack than he has ever been in the last three years including the whole fiasco with his first roommate during freshman year.

Stiles goes to wash his face, hoping that the cold shocks his system enough for him to stave off the attack, but Derek finds him there a few hours later, and Stiles has no memory of it.

Derek gentles him through the remainder of his attack, sets him up on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate and his favorite movie, and then just sits in silence while Stiles tries to process the fact that he just had a goddamn panic attack over pretend dating his roommate.

After another movie, Derek moves onto the couch, letting Stiles snuggle into his side.

“All good?” he asks.

Stiles shakes his head. “I will be though.” He waits for a few minutes, long enough for Derek to lean against him and start drowsing. “Tell me about your family.”

Derek yawns. “Well, you know Laura, the one who’s celebrating. She’s older than me, by like a million years. Made her insufferable growing up. And then there’s Cora, who’s about four years younger than me. We were rivals growing up. Every crush I had, she had too. And she’s kissed about half of them. I have a couple older brothers who are even older than Laura and even more insufferable, but in the way that us younger Hales are the dirt under their shoes. Especially my youngest sister. She’s the baby of the family and the most normal. But I guess it’s because my parents were tired when they got around to raising her.”

“Hmm, so many Hales to meet.” Stiles’ heart beats extra hard at that. Not only does he have to pretend to date Derek, but he has to pretend to date Derek in front of—Stiles counts on his fingers—seven Hales that aren’t Derek. Five sibling Hales and two parent Hales.

“And my uncle Peter,” Derek adds, drowsily. “He’s a dickhead. He’s also as old as my brothers but he was far more invested in causing drama with the younger Hales.”

“Laura too?”

Derek nods. “Laura especially. He almost wasn’t invited to her wedding. I will be very surprised if he doesn’t do something that gets him kicked out of her anniversary dinner.”

“And you want me to meet them?”

“Well,” Derek hedges, and that hurts so much and so viscerally that Stiles climbs off the couch and goes to the kitchen to pretend to drink a glass of water from the tap. Derek follows him after a minute. “Look, it’s not that I don’t want you to meet them. You’re my best friend. It’s just that they don’t have the greatest track record with people I bring home.”

“What, like I’m not good enough for you?” Stiles fans the flare of anger growing in his chest. Anything but another panic attack is preferred.

Derek sighs. “It’s a dumb test. I think everyone goes through it, but I don’t know because I don’t participate. I mean, it’s dumb to make your sister’s boyfriend hate her family when before he wanted to be with her, right? It’s like we’re trying to scare them off.”

“So like they’re not good enough for the family,” Stiles repeats.

Derek’s shoulders fall. “I guess. I always hated it, so I wouldn’t bring anyone home so that they couldn’t do that to them.”

“Partners,” Stiles points out.

“What?”

“You said ‘sister’s boyfriend,’ so this assholery only happens with potential partners. Is that it?”

Derek frowns at him before nodding, understanding dawning on his face. “Yeah. That’s it.”

“So, I’ve never met your family because…?”

The absolute look of panic that flashes across Derek’s face is in parts thrilling and heartbreaking to see.

“I understand,” Stiles says. “Well, it just means that I truly am the right choice of friend to take home to mother.”

Derek barks out a strangled laugh. “Yeah, sure. Please don’t call my mom ‘Mother.’ It makes her unreasonably angry. I think she thinks it makes her sound old. I think she sounds older when my nieces and nephews call her grandma.”

“How many nieces and nephews do you have?” Stiles asks, suddenly, acutely aware of just how much he doesn’t know about Derek. It makes him feel like a chronic over sharer and like Derek doesn’t fully trust him.

Derek shrugs. “I think Laura has three kids and my brothers each have two, but that was last Christmas so they could all have more on the way. I have five nieces and two nephews that I know of.”

“And we’re driving down to Chula Vista, right?”

Derek looks relieved, grabbing at Stiles’ floatation device of a conversation change. “Yeah, yes! Definitely. I mean, it’s about seven hours. We could take a flight down, it’d probably be quicker, but more expensive. And besides, this means that we can leave whenever either of us want to.”

“Yeah, how’s that going to work?” Stiles points, and they head back to the couch. Derek sits, angled so that his knee is brushing Stiles’. “Do I just say, ‘Laura insulted me, I want to go back to college now’?”

“Absolutely yes. If any of my family makes you feel uncomfortable in any way, let me know, and we’ll leave as soon as possible.”

It’s a nice reassurance, and Stiles hopes to assuage all his fears as easily, so he and Derek spend the rest of the night, until Derek falls asleep, discussing the finer matters of how to “date” a Hale.

~ * ~

The rest of the week until Derek’s sister’s tenth anniversary dinner blurs by. Lots of packing for what is essentially just a day and a half, getting Boyd to agree to look in on the apartment even though they have no pets or plants that require sitting, and arguing over whose car they’re taking. In the end, Derek agrees to allow Stiles to drive his Camaro for a short stint, and they depart, happily, on Friday after classes.

The drive is uneventful, even when Derek oversleeps the first leg and Stiles ends up driving two thirds of the way to their destination. Derek doesn’t even grump about it, just smiles dopily until he notices Stiles looking at him, and then he steps on the gas.

They pull into the drive of an enormous house at about 11:00 pm. The whole house is lit up. Stiles snorts awake to stare at it.

“That’s your house?” he squeaks.

Derek shifts, uncomfortable. “My parents’ house,” he says. “They’re rich. I’m not.”

“It’s a big house.”

“Yeah. That’s because my uncle and his family live with them, and I think Cora still lives at home and so does Laura and her family.”

“And you? Are you going to live at home when we graduate come spring?”

Derek doesn’t answer. Instead, he opens his door, shuts off the engine, and pops the trunk.

Almost immediately, the door opens and a very pregnant woman waddles out to stare at them, her hands fisted on her hips. The light from the porch illuminates her perfectly.

Derek hands Stiles his suitcase and then starts up the stairs. When he reaches the woman, he takes a step back.

“Cora?”

“Yeah, dumbass. Who else would it be?”

“But aren’t you dating what’s-her-name?”

“Lydia, and yes. We decided we would use sperm donors.” Cora rolls her eyes. “You would know all this if you talked to us more than just at the holidays.”

Chastised, Derek ducks his head. “Sorry.”

Stiles thinks it’s been awkward long enough, so he sticks out his hand. “Stiles Stilinski. Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Hale.”

“What kind of a name is Stiles?” Cora asks.

Derek clears his throat. “He’s my boyfriend. And Stiles is a nickname.”

Cora gives Derek a flat look. “Your boyfriend?”

Derek nods. He looks so nervous. He hasn’t looked this nervous since he and Stiles were paired together after the first rooming fiasco.

“Well,” Cora eyes Stiles with a disapproving glare, “I guess you’d better come in and meet the rest of the family. The ones that are awake anyway. Be extra quiet: the kids are asleep.”

Inside is just as opulent as the outside, perhaps more because inside is completely lit up and doesn’t have to battle the darkness of night.

There are portraits of what must be the Hales and their families everywhere, tasteful crystal décor, and polished marble floors.

It’s very austere, and Stiles understands why Derek said his parents were rich but not him. Stiles has seen how Derek chooses to decorate, and it’s in warm tones with soft surfaces and very limited bits of chrome.

Twin sweeping staircases stand guard at the end of the foyer, leading up to what presumably is more austere marble and crystal, severe lines of cold.

Two handsome people, the woman is an elgant black gown, the man in a black suit, Windsor knot in his silver tie, stand in front of the staircases. Cora stops next to them, says something lowly, and then heads upstairs. Nervously, Stiles clings to his suitcase and follows as Derek walks, spine straight, face blank, toward what must be his parents.

His mother lifts her head, and Derek stops in his tracks.

“Wonderful of you to join us, Derek,” she says, like she’s a queen surveying her subjects and finding them very lacking. Stiles had thought his clothing, a dark t-shirt covered with an open blue flannel shirt and khakis, was fine in Berkeley. Here, it’s completely out of place. Derek’s outfit of a maroon shirt and dark slacks looks a little less out of place, but far too casual for this foyer.

“Mom, Dad,” Derek returns, and it is so incongruous with the image they’re presenting that Stiles has to stifle a hysterical laugh.

After a few more moments, Derek’s parents break, and smiling, they all but run to Derek and hug him at the same time. Derek’s father disentangles himself first, turning to Stiles and offering his hand for a shake.

“So this is the man who’s caught our little Derek’s heart?”

Derek flushes at his father’s words, but he doesn’t disagree.

Mr. Hale grins, using Stiles’ hand to tug him into a quick hug. “Welcome to the family, Stiles.”

“Uh, thanks?” Stiles doesn’t wriggle free, but it’s a near thing. Derek must realize how out of place he’s feeling, still reeling from the complete change in demeanor, because he laces his fingers through Stiles’, grounding him.

Talia nods at their hands. “And how is the relationship? Single rooms?”

Stiles coughs to cover another laugh. He and Derek share a bedroom in their apartment—it was cheaper than two bedrooms—so they should be okay sharing a room. A bed might be another matter, but they’ve been living together at college, so if they’re dating, they should already be comfortable with seeing each other naked, having morning erections around each other, and all those other embarrassing things no one ever talks about happening when people start having sex with each other.

Derek blushes. “It’s a little new, the relationship, but it’s strong. We can be trusted to be in the same room.”

“It’s late,” Derek’s father says. “Let’s get you boys settled, and then we can all talk tomorrow.” He looks at Derek with kindness in his eyes. “I can’t wait to hear what you’ve been up to.”

The room he and Derek are deposited into is medium sized. Stiles would have thought all rooms in the house would be enormous. Derek watches him studying it before explaining, “I went through a phase where I didn’t want anything from my parents, so they moved me in here. It used to be a closet, but it was the smallest they were willing to let me be without me moving out.”

“How old were you?”

Derek shrugs. “I was ten.” He frowns at Stiles’ sudden chuckle. “I was very self-righteous. I thought we were bad because we were rich and I didn’t want to be.” Quieter, he adds, “I was very bullied in school.”

“So was I,” Stiles reveals. “I always pretended that it didn’t bother me, but it did. It’s why I chose Berkeley. Close enough to go home to see my dad, but far enough away that I didn’t have to see my tormentors again.”

“I’m glad we found each other,” Derek says. He points at his bed, a single twin. “You can have the bed. I’ve got an inflatable mattress around here somewhere. I can get that blown up and sleep on that.”

Stiles is too tired to argue. It’s only a little after 11:00 pm, but they’ve been driving for most of the day, and he just feels under stimulated and uninterested in anything except brushing the gnarly taste of garlic pretzels out of his mouth and collapsing into a deep, refreshing sleep.

“Bathroom?”

Derek points down the hall, and Stiles takes his travel bag with him. He’s not sure what he’s expecting when he opens the door, but it certainly isn’t a soft coral pink bathroom with matching rugs, toilet cover, and shower curtain. It’s hideous. Stiles loves it.

Everything was getting a little too marble for his liking. This shows a human side to the Hales.

Because he’s Stiles, he snoops a little. Finds magazines in a holder on top of the toilet. Gross. Finds extra soaps and feminine products hidden in the cabinet under the sink. Cool. Other spare products and towels are kept behind a closed door. Good.

Overall, the bathroom passes muster enough that he feels comfortable scrubbing his teeth clean, scraping his tongue, and washing all evidence down the rose quartz-colored sink.

Derek comes in before Stiles finishes drying his hands on the fluffy, rose-scented towel.

He does a double-take at the room, digs under the sink for a little while, and stands up. “We’d better leave no evidence that we were ever here,” he says, ominously. “The bathroom’s been redone since I was last here at Christmas. I think that means, especially because her favorite color is pink, that this bathroom is Lydia’s and we shouldn’t ever be caught in here.”

“How unhygienic,” Stiles replies, pointing at the magazines. Derek claps a hand over his mouth to stifle the sudden bark of laughter.

“I agree. But honestly, it’s probably a lot more hygienic than your phone.”

Stiles bumps shoulders and then heads back to the room. Derek has indeed found and inflated an air mattress. Stiles crawls onto it to test the bounce, and oh, there’s his pillow. For some reason it’s on Derek’s bed. He grabs it, tucks it under his head, and just like that, out like a light.

~ * ~

Stiles wakes up to a warm body next to his, someone’s leg wound around his, someone’s head on his shoulder. He blinks up at the ceiling, watching as the sunrise fills the room with a lovely, rosy glow.

Then he remembers where he is and what’s supposed to be going on and sits up, arms flailing as he tries to dislodge himself from a very deeply asleep Derek.

He hears a clicking sound, and his head snaps around to find an elegant strawberry blonde in very tight blue wrap dress aiming a phone at him.

“Whasit?” he grumbles, glad that both he and Derek apparently decided to sleep in their clothes. Usually, they’re both strip down to boxers kind of guys. It makes it hard for Stiles to sleep sometimes when he just really wants to lick Derek’s abs or jerk off over him. And apparently there goes his morning wood.

“It’s just payback,” the strawberry blonde says, loud even though it’s obviously early. Derek jerks awake, snorting, and gasping like someone doused him with cold water.

It doesn’t help Stiles’ inappropriate boner at all.

“Payback for what?” Stiles asks. He’s never met this woman. Why does she need payback?

“Oh hey, Lydia,” Derek says, gruff. Sexy morning voice alert. “What brings you to our room today?”

“Someone used my bathroom.”

“Didn’t used to be your bathroom,” Derek responds. He turns to Stiles. “Stiles, this is Cora’s fiancée, Lydia. Lydia, this is my boyfriend, Stiles.”

“Hmm, so he is real,” Lydia remarks. She snaps another picture, says, “Stay out of my bathroom or I’ll expose your sleeping arrangements to Mom and Dad.”

Derek yawns, lazily slipping an arm around Stiles’ shoulders and using the lax grip to tug him back down. “Mom and Dad already know we’re sharing a room. It stands to reason that we’re comfortable sharing a bed too. After all, we’ve been living together for almost four years now.”

Lydia huffs and flounces out of the room, but Stiles saw on her face; she lost and she knew it. And she didn’t mind.

Derek adjusts his grip, nuzzles into Stiles’ neck again. “Hope this is okay?” he murmurs.

Stiles swallows hard. “Yeah,” he grits out. “This is perfect.”

Still, Derek rolls away from him. “I’m going to get up now. It’s the perfect time for a quick run. There’s a bathroom down stairs, third door on the left. Ask my mom or dad if you can’t find it. Don’t trust anything Lydia or Cora tell you.”

He grabs a pair of shorts and a t-shirt from his suitcase and heads out.

Stiles flops back on the bed, wondering if he’d done something wrong. Derek’s leaving feels like dismissal and Stiles isn’t sure if it’s because he was being a little too enthusiastic, i.e. the boner, or not enthusiastic enough.

It feels horrible, like a pit is growing in Stiles’ stomach, and he realizes that he won’t be able to maintain the charade of being Derek’s boyfriend without someone on his side.

But he’s in Chula Vista, not Beacon Hills. His dad is a whole ten hours away, and Stiles hadn’t realized that he only has one friend in the whole world.

How Derek is more sociable than him, he doesn’t know. All he knows is that if he doesn’t spill to someone, he’s going to break down, and the public breakup won’t be public nor a breakup.

He’s sort of saved when Cora knocks on the door and comes in before he can do more than say, “Yeah?”

“I just wanted to apologize for Lydia,” Cora says. She sits on the bed, cradling her stomach. “Mom and Dad are humoring her because her parents just got divorced and she’s not taking it well.”

Stiles studies her. “You weren’t this nice last night,” he says, hoping that she isn’t offended. When she throws her head back and laughs, he lets out a little sigh of relief.

“No. I’m not a night person.” She rubs at her stomach, catches herself, and sits on her hands. “Look, the baby likes to tap dance on my bladder, and whoever said morning sickness was only morning or just in the first trimester lied their fucking head off. I was startled when Derek brought you home. He’s been talking about his roommate nonstop. I actually thought you were dating before now, but he never said your name, always claimed we’d think you were imaginary if he did that.”

“I get it,” Stiles says. “Whenever someone stumbles over my real name, I tell them I go by Stiles, and every time, I get, ‘What kind of a name is Stiles?’ instead of ‘Cool, something easier to say.’ It’s discouraging.”

Cora’s hand comes up to pat at her belly, and she frowns down at it. “I swear I’m not usually this tactile.”

“It’s okay. It’s your body. Hormones and all.”

“Tell me why you decided to date my brother. Did he finally get his head out of his ass and ask you?”

Stiles coughs. “Uh, sort of?” He winces. “I mean, yeah, he finally asked and we made it official, but I mean, I haven’t dated anyone since high school, and Derek’s never been with anyone else as far as I know.”

“That’s it exactly.” Cora points at Stiles and he looks down at himself. He’s not bad looking—if his dad can be trusted—and he’s been making more of an effort with even his casual clothes since he and Derek began living together. “Derek doesn’t date. So why you? No offense.”

“Some taken,” Stiles replies. He shrugs at her. “I don’t know why.”

“Oh, I think you do.” Cora hauls herself up, shakes her head, and sinks back to the bed. She pats next to her, and Stiles hesitantly joins her.

She leans in close. “So, how much is he paying you?”

“Wh-what?”

Cora has a gleam in her eyes that makes Stiles entirely uncomfortable to be trapped here with her. “I’m guessing that you and he aren’t really dating, but since it’s Laura’s tenth wedding anniversary this weekend, he doesn’t want to be bothered by the copious aunts and grand-aunts that like to pinch his cheeks and ask when he’s bringing home his bride. Ergo, you, because my brother may be many things, a coward, spineless, and utterly useless at getting dates, but he does have a soft spot for you.”

Stiles stands up. “Derek isn’t spineless or a coward,” he says, angry at her. “Why would you even say that? Do you even know your brother? He was terrified to come to college. I don’t know why. He hasn’t shared that with me yet. But when I needed a roommate after my first roommate turned out to be the biggest bastard on campus, he stepped up. We’ve been friends since. It was a natural progression of our relationship because, yeah, we fell in love with each other.”

Cora grabs his wrist. “Don’t leave. Not yet. I’m sorry.” She tugs, and he sits. He’s breathing hard, heart beating a little too fast. He doesn’t know why he got so angry except for the fact that he knows the true Derek, the one who likes cooking and cleaning and studying microbiology and taking life art with Stiles just so he’d know someone in the class.

Cora takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry I said that about Derek. I just needed to know.”

“Know what?”

“That you love him too.”

Stiles blinks. Derek doesn’t love him. Not like that.

“I can see that you don’t believe me, but it’s true. Derek loves you. He won’t admit it but it’s in his voice when he talks about you. It’s in the way he won’t let anyone call you imaginary but also won’t reveal your name, because he’s trying to protect you. I don’t know. I do know my brother, and I know that he loves you, and you love him too.”

Stiles doesn’t even know where the tears come from, but he finds himself sobbing on Cora’s shoulder as he confesses that Derek did actually hire him precisely for what Cora accused.

She listens patiently.

Then. “You’re both the biggest idiots.” She throws a roll of toilet paper at him. “Kleenexes get a little rough on the nose when you’re prone to hysterical fits,” she explains to his raised eyebrow. “Quadruple ply is a Godsend.”

Once he’s dried his face and blown his nose, Cora takes his hand again. “Look, I get it. I do. Our family can be overbearing. It was hell keeping them off Lydia’s and my backs long enough to have the discussion about children. And we’re not even married yet. But trust me on this: Derek does love you.”

“So how do I get him to ask me?” Stiles asks. “I mean, after all this. We’re supposed to have a public breakup after this weekend.”

Cora laughs. “Mom and Dad are going to be so pissed they let you sleep in the same room if you do that.”

“I’m serious. I’m supposed to break up with Derek so that he can, I don’t know, save face with his family. I guess because they’ll never see me again.”

She nods. “Makes sense.” She tilts her head, chewing on her lip. “Okay, I’ve got it: instead of breaking up with him, you propose to him. Confuse him. If he really likes you, he’ll probably say yes, and you can be engaged for however long you like. If he still wants to break up with you, then he can’t do it without a little shit sticking to him.

“Oh, I know! You can do it when we go to the mall!” To Stiles’ confused face, she explains, “It’s a tradition to do a scavenger hunt in the mall after a celebration. After we celebrate Laura’s anniversary, we’re going to the mall. It’ll be the perfect place to propose. Or breakup.Whichever it ends up being.”

“One problem: how am I supposed to live with Derek if he says no?”

Cora shrugs. “I don’t think he will, but you could make him move out if he does.”

“Another problem,” Stiles says. Cora rolls her eyes. “I don’t have a ring. I don’t even know Derek’s ring size.”

“That’s easy enough. I have everyone’s ring sizes. I’m the official jewelry expert in the family. That’s why.” Stiles nods. The Hales are so weird, but he finds it endearing. He supposes the Stilinskis would be just as weird to the Hales with their traditions. “Anyway, I’ve got the perfect ring for you to use.” She struggles up and then waddles toward a room three doors down the hall from Derek’s closet room. Stiles waits for her at the door. When she comes back, she tosses a small black box at him.

He flips it open and stares down at the silver band set with a single black cubic zirconium stone. Cora’s right, it’s perfect. It’s neutral enough to go with Derek’s wardrobe full of warm tones and dark pants, but also enough of a statement to bring attention to the fact that he’s wearing an engagement ring. Classy but not overstated.

Derek does have a few bright shirts mixed in, but he doesn’t wear them anywhere but around the apartment. Stiles thinks it’s because they’re gifts from him and Derek likes how soft they are. It makes Stiles unreasonably happy whenever he catches Derek wearing one of them.

“Are you positive he’ll say yes?” Stiles asks. He really doesn’t want to destroy his and Derek’s relationship. Although, he has a feeling that they’re already way past that.

“About seventy-five percent,” Cora says, and because they’re at her room, she shuts the door in his face before he can complain about those odds.

Stiles wanders back to Derek’s room. He keeps staring at the ring. It’s too soon to propose, right?

They’ve only just started dating, right?

They’re not really dating. It won’t be a real proposal. Right?

He closes the box and hides it in his pillow. Then, he grabs a change of clothes and his travel bag and heads to the downstairs bathroom for a quick shower.

~ * ~

Over the course of the day, Stiles is introduced to far more people than he ever expected to meet, and is frankly exhausted by the time they all pile into vehicles, he and Derek riding with Derek’s frankly frightening Uncle Peter and his partner, Freddie, to go to the restaurant.

The ring box is secure in his pocket, and he does his best not to touch it, aware that as the “new” significant other, he’s being subjected to a lot of interrogations, hugs, and all around suspicion. Through it all, Derek stays by his side, directing him away from the more prying of the aunts, or having him hide in an empty room until someone can make an announcement that makes Derek’s boyfriend seem like old news.

Finally though, they all sit at six tables pushed together, a buffet against the back wall of the room. The restaurant is owned by a pair of great aunts who insist on Derek and Stiles sitting next to them so they can gossip about the changes at California University-Berkeley.

“You know, Marsha was a co-founder of the first LGBTQ organization,” the more wizened one states. “How’d that go for you, dear?”

Marsha rolls up her sleeve to show off a large scar. “Thirty stitches and an expulsion.” She winks at Stiles. “And I’d do it all over again because it’s how I met the love of my life.”

He smiles politely. “I’m glad times have changed,” he says. “I don’t think I could scar as neat as that.”

“Well, that’s Diana’s doing. Such steady hands even as she berated me for putting my life in danger.” Marsha sighs wistfully. “Some things don’t change.” With sharp eyes, she pokes at Stiles’ soul, and he shudders at the sensation of being seen and known. “You may think you’re not scarred, but you are.” She turns to Derek. “Make sure you treasure this boy, eh?”

Derek nods almost frantically. He grabs Stiles’ and his aunts’ glasses. “Refills?”

“How long have you been together?” Marsha asks, and Stiles knows he should stick to the script he and Derek came up with, but he can’t. So, he leans in, like he’s telling a big secret, and whispers, “Three and a half years.”

Diana whacks at Marsha’s shoulder. “That means they’ve been steady since they met,” she excitedly exclaims. Stiles flushes at the sudden eyes on their end of the table.

“What I meant,” he stutters out, under the heavy, heavy gaze of, like, a million Hales, “is that we’ve been dancing around each other for years. We’ve only just decided to make it official.”

Derek plops down the glasses. “Don’t scare him,” he chastises his aunts, and by extension, all the nosy, nosy relatives. “I actually happen to love him, and I’d appreciate not having to find him again when you all chase him away.”

As if practiced, all the Hales go back to their own plates and conversation.

Stiles leans into Derek, gratefully sipping at his Sprite. Derek leans back a little, and they balance nicely. Until Stiles remembers what he’s planning to do during the after-dinner excursion. Then, he just sits there while Derek chats amicably, offers to refill Stiles’ plate, and almost holds his hand whenever he gets up from the table.

After the meal, Peter and Freddie give them a ride to the mall. Surprisingly, Peter hadn’t done anything to get kicked out, like Derek had predicted. Stiles thinks it’s because whenever Peter opened his mouth, Freddie squeezed his leg. Someday, Stiles thinks, if things work out, he and Derek could be like that, communicating with just a touch.

At the mall, Laura and her husband, Jordan, hand out a sheet of paper with things to find, and the Hales disperse, a literal army of at least thirty people, led by Marsha and Diana on their motorized wheelchairs.

Stiles allows Derek to hold his hand as they follow along more sedately. Stiles isn’t going to participate in the scavenger hunt, too nervous and afraid that if he uses it as a distraction, he’ll forget why he’s really here.

They get to the second level, and Derek points out a few things on the list, but Stiles has had enough. He sees Cora and Lydia in the crowd and makes his way toward them. Cora catches his eye and nods.

Stiles takes a deep breath, drops Derek’s hand, and then kneels down before he can think about it.

Derek turns to see what’s up and claps his hands over his eyes, like that’s going to make Stiles stand up again.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. “Derek, love, can you look at me?”

Derek shakes his head. He’s blushing, hard. Probably because they’re in the middle of a crowd. Apparently neither of them quite care for the public spectacle. Good to know.

Stiles pulls out the ring box. He takes another deep breath, teetering on the edge of backing out and letting Derek think it was a prank.

Behind Derek, Cora and Lydia both stand, hands clasped together, staring wide-eyed. Cora knows it’s not fake, so why does she look so invested?

Faintly, Stiles hears someone say, “Go for it!” So he gathers his conviction and opens his mouth.

“Please open your eyes,” he says, softly. When Derek does, Stiles is surprised to see tears there. “Derek Hale, I love you. I know we haven’t been dating for very long, but I already know I want to marry you.” And suck your dick, but Stiles doesn’t say that out loud. There are children present for God’s sake. “We go together like two things that you wouldn’t think would be good, but then they end up being the perfect pair. And I don’t ever want to give that up. Please say yes?”

Derek is already nodding, his expression goes from obviously embarrassed to fond and soft, in a way Stiles is entirely unused to seeing from him, even after living together for most of three and a half years.

Behind Derek, Cora and Lydia begin jumping up and down, squealing. Startled, Derek glances back at them before quickly focusing on Stiles again. He helps pull him to his feet and then wordlessly extends his hand. Stiles slides the ring onto his finger. Cora was right about the size and about the style. It fits perfectly, and Derek smiles at it.

Something warm blooms in Stiles’ chest, and it’s because he put the ring and the smile on Derek.

And oh fuck. Oh fuck, he just proposed to Derek fucking Hale and has gotten a yes. Fuck seventy-five percent. Fuck being unsure if his love is unrequited. Stiles leaps into Derek’s arms and is met with a completely off-kilter, totally unbalanced, completely perfect imperfect mashing of lips and noses, and they tumble to the ground, Stiles on top.

Derek is laughing, patting at him, but he also isn’t saying get up.

That’s Lydia, tugging at them. “Do you know how many germs are on this floor?” she grouses, but despite the hard edge from this morning, she keeps smiling at them like she actually likes them.

The rest of the Hales appear suddenly—probably summoned by a text—and all of them, not a one of them looks angry, they all look happy, pleased, already singing congratulations.

Cora raises her phone to show them that she recorded it all, everything, including what was their first kiss.

Oh shit. He’s so fucked. But he’s so happy too.

Cora’s right that they can be engaged for however long they need. At least they are engaged.

~ * ~

The rest of Saturday passes in a whirlwind, and Derek never stops smiling. The whole drive back to Berkeley on Sunday is spent in contented bliss, and when Derek isn’t driving, he just stares at the ring.

About an hour from their apartment, Derek pulls over, and Stiles jerks awake.

“What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Derek says, but Stiles can hear it in his voice. Something’s wrong.

“What’s wrong?” Stiles asks again, gentling his tone.

Derek takes off the ring and hands it to him. “Thanks for that. I really liked it.”

“Liked what?” Stiles stares at the ring. It looks wrong in his hand and not on Derek’s finger. It’s only been there about twenty-four hours. It shouldn’t look wrong, but it does. “Is this about the agreement?”

“Yeah.” Derek clears his throat, a clear sign that he’s about to start crying. He looks heartbroken. “The agreement. I’m sorry. I don’t think I can do this.”

“Do what?” Stiles asks. He turns the ring over, grabs Derek’s hand, and slides it back on. “Your sister already told me that you’re in love with me. I’m in love with you. I proposed-proposed to you. If you really don’t want to marry me, at least wait until we’re home before you break my heart.”

Derek just stares at him.

Stiles waves his hand by his head. Maybe he’s just too tired of this damn charade that they never should have done. Maybe he just wants something for himself for once and he’s willing to fight for it. “I know, you told me don’t believe what Cora says, but she also said you talked about me incessantly ever since you met me. Dude, we’re in love with each other, and yes it sucks that it took making up this fake dating thing for us to realize it, but if you think that I’m going to just roll over and say, ‘Hey, that was great, let’s never do it again,’ then you’re sorely mistaken.”

Derek covers the ring with his other hand, watching as it peeks through his fingers. “You’re in love with me?”

Stiles feels like snapping, but doesn’t. “Yes.”

Derek nods. “Thanks. I-I love you too.” He puts the Camaro in drive.

The rest of the drive is spent in silence. Stiles doesn’t feel relief at things being in the open nor at the sight of the ring on Derek’s finger where it belongs.

Instead, he feels dread rising. Something is going to happen when they get back to their apartment, and it might just be the end of them. Stupid, stupid, they just confessed their feelings for each other. Things should be looking up, not down.

Derek parks and immediately goes to grab their suitcases from the trunk. Stiles heads up the stairs to unlock the front door.

“So, I want a redo,” Derek remarks suddenly, his tone forced into easy and cheery.

Stiles pauses where he’s unlocking the door. “Redo?”

Derek moves closer, shoves the suitcases aside, and brackets Stiles’ head with his hands. He leans in until their faces are just an inch apart. “A redo.” And he kisses Stiles, and even though the doubt is still there, warring in Stiles with the warmth of knowing he has Derek’s love, it gets a little smaller when he falls back against the door and Derek follows him in.

“I am gonna suck your cock so good,” he murmurs against Derek’s lips.

“Not if I suck yours first,” Derek returns.

And that is the story of how Stiles and Derek finally stopped pining and started boning.

Cora tells the story of how they got together at their wedding five years later, conveniently leaving out the part about being seventy-five percent sure that Derek was in love with Stiles, but Stiles forgives her because while she may have been only seventy-five percent sure, he and Derek are both one hundred percent in love and getting married.

~ The End ~

#FTH2020 #evanesdust #Teen Wolf Fanfiction #Stiles Stilinski #Derek Hale

19 notes · View notes

eat-worms · 4 years ago

Text

T.H.O.M.A.S

Technological

Human

Operations

Mimicking

Automated

System

Sanders Sides AU where Thomas is a Robot the sides are building.

🤖=🤖=🤖=🤖=🤖=🤖=🤖

Plot: A bunch of 𝑔𝒶𝓎 scientists have to begrudgingly work together on building their robot son.

Patton- Was originally the bubbly receptionist for the lab, but after a few run ins and or shenanigans Janus realizes that Patton is really good with people and is the perfect test subject and consultant for Thomas's emotion replication abilities. So he officially hires him. (cant do tech stuff at all. cant even "hang out" with Thomas without something breaking)

Logan- The one building the robot parts of Thomas. Gets fed up with the other's antics but couldn't do it without them :)

Roman- Engineering. Designs the stuff on paper and in little prototypes. wants to constantly make Thomas "cooler" and adds in random things in the designs like a soda dispenser and Logan is tired™

Remus- Testing. Makes Thomas do stupid stuff and films it and Logan is like "how did you get a degree of science you buffoon??" and Roman just cackles and it inspires him to add more ridiculous and obscure things to Thomas for Remus to test.

Virgil- Techie that programs Thomas and also helps Logan build but mainly works on the safety aspect and fixing stuff after Remus tests. He also loves the wacky tests but if ANYTHING happens to Thomas u will pay. He adds protections and warnings in his comments/notes like "do not. under ANY circumstances. put Thomas within a 5 foot radius of a spider." just to confuse and annoy Logan (he may also be half serious) and Logan doesn't know what to do with any of it.

Janus- Director of the psychological studies for Thomas. He is very well versed in the ethics of the field they are working in and wont hesitate to debate you. He mainly focuses on trying to make Thomas act like a person even though hes a Robot and alongside Roman helps translate that into something that can be built. Hes also kind of the leader, along with Logan.

Moments:

Logan: This is test number three-five-o-two at 3:25 PM EST on July 3rd 2020 to evaluate-

Virgil: Logan, why is Thomas talking to the stove?

Logan: Wh-

Roman: Aw come on! Look at how stupid he looks talking to the kitchen appliances Logan, you made him stupid.

Logan: I dID NOT make him STUPID YOU-

*Janus later has to end the kerfuffle after he walks in on Logan, on top of Roman, holding a soldering iron to Roman's throat*

~~~

*Thomas is booting up but it's taking a while*

Roman: Tom

Patton: Tomathy

Roman: Tommy Salami

Patton: Tomalama ding-dong

Roman: Thomas the DANK engine

Logan: ...

~~~

Logan: I know him better than anyone because I know how he works so-

~~~

🤖💖More Lore💖🤖

Logan does the know exact time thing but says it at the same time as Thomas when someone asks what the time is.

🤖

Virgil will talk to Thomas like hes a person and Logan is confused by this but Virgil uses the excuse that hes supposed to seem like a human so why not talk to him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Virgil also kinda vents to him but uh big ouch a lot of it gets recorded onto Thomas and that gets turned into either hyjinx and or angst later.

🤖

Patton also talks to Thomas like a person but more like "Yes look and my robot son he is so smart I love him" and he also teaches him puns. The puns get out of hand at some point and Thomas has got it in his neural network that puns are The Exact Right Thing To Say in Any social interaction but they start becoming really obscure because Thomas has access to a lot of information, and he hasn't quite nailed getting puns in context, so one time he makes a pun that is really sciencey and vaguely connected to the conversation so only Logan gets it,,,,, but he finds it hilarious and it's the only pun Logan will admit to laughing at.

🤖

Virgil has that programmer relationship with Thomas. So smthn just wont run correctly and Virgil is like "YOU IDIOT! I'm going to prohibit your mimicking human breathing function if you keep this up!!!" "A SINGLE SEMI COLON ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?! Why is it ALWAYS dumb s̶h̶i̶t̶ like that with you Thomas?!" "I have a million copies saved of his program because if anything happens to him I will actually combust." He also has incomprehensible names for variables and functions and stuff and some of them are memes and vine references. Logan has had to learn a bunch of modern slang just vaguely understand what's happening in the code.

🤖

Jan is always recommending certain things to Roman to make Thomas more realistic but sometimes they are obscure because "people and psychology are just weird" so Roman adds them in (or tries) but sometimes Janus just makes it up and watches everyone struggle meeting his request for entertainment. like, "Mhm, ok, fantastic work this week, truly, just show-stopping. However, comma, He just... doesn’t fix his hair enough... You'd be surprised the amount of times the average Male adult fixes his hair in a single social interaction. So....make him do it more." (That request never ended up getting changed back after it got implemented...)

🤖

Remus is always adding things to the list of "things he needs to test with" and Pat at reception starts to get concerned with the 3rd bulk shipment of deodorant that came through. Remus actually uses funds to restock the fridge and snack cabinet a lot along with Roman occasionally.

🤖

Pat is always scolding the others (mainly Remus and Virgil) for swearing or saying mean things too or around Thomas because he "wants to raise him right" and doesn't want him to "learn bad manners". He also may or may not be low-key emotionally attached to Thomas and wants to believe he actually feels things. Janus is simultaneously amused and frustrated with this but he let's it slide because "I guess that means that Thomas is effective...despite the fact that Patton is naive, it's still promising."

(Patton isn't actually naive, just because he wants to treat Thomas like a human doesn't mean he thinks he is. Patton really does it because then the others can be proud of their hard work and can actually see Thomas functioning with a person outside of a controlled environment.)

Yeah so that's what I got so far! I kinda wanna add more to this so if ya like the idea interact with this post n I'll maybe make an update. I don’t have a plot in mind for this other than like, Patton being added to the group. I just think the idea is cute and works well with the dynamics already set up in Sanders Sides.

Also, Disclaimer, I haven't had any experience in Robotics LOL so this could all be actual gibberish. I have done Computer Science and programming tho so I vaguely understand that side of it. But the engineering and actual possibility of making a human-like Robot I have no clue about.

Oh! If you know anything about these topics or maybe just like this au idea and want to add on FEEL FREE TO SHARE! :D I would LOVE to see what people have to add!

See yah~💖🤖💖~

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obaewankenope · 4 years ago

Text

Stegosawns and Time - Good Omens, Absconding with Harry verse ficlet

@murderandjam asked for me to write something with dinosaurs involved so, like a champ, I’ve done my best. Hope they, and ya’ll, like it.

//.//

Harry doesn’t particular care about dinosaurs, not really, but he’s a thirteen-year-old boy and dinosaurs are sort of A Thing for thirteen-year-old boys to be interested in. Well, according to Miss Hale, who runs the local corner shop with her husband of thirty-five years, at least.[1]

So, of course, Harry has to at least be interested in dinosaurs otherwise Miss Hale will make comments about his Uncle’s and Harry will want to cause a bit—a lot—of chaos in her shop, even though she’s very nice to him and only makes snide comments on Tuesdays.[2] It’s less because Harry wants to impress Miss Hale with his dinosaur knowledge and more that he wants to have information he can utilise against someone who seems to like making Comments about his Uncle’s lifestyles.

Harry is well-aware that he can be a petty child, but he does limit his pettiness to people who deserve a bit of Petty Childishness thrown in their overly opinionated faces. Thus, it follows that Harry learns the basic facts about dinosaurs, recites a couple to Miss Hale, adds a few titbits about the quantity of homosexual relationships in the animal kingdom and how there were probably queer dinosaurs—enjoying immensely the way Miss Hale’s smile freezes on her face at that—and that, if Harry were to choose a dinosaur to be, he’d choose a Psittacosaurus because “it looks really cute but I bet it can do a predator a whole lot of harm with those little tusks”.

Oddly enough, Miss Hale hasn’t asked if Harry is interested in things anymore and doesn’t seem interested in suggesting research topics for Harry to try and make a hobby out of.

Strange that.

[Keep Reading on AO3]

But, when Jurassic Park is released in the UK on 16th July 1993, the interest Harry has in dinosaurs reaches a more expected level for a thirteen-year-old boy to possess; basically, he becomes obsessed with dinosaurs that eat people.

Though, not quite in the way Miss Hale probably ever expected Harry to be interested in carnivores. Apparently, spending thirty-minutes ranting about dinosaurs being denied access to enrichment like zoo animals ought to have is not the “correct” response on the forum dedicated to All Things Jurassic Park.

When someone tells him to “read the book, dumbass” Harry has to log off and go for a fly on his broom. Cursing someone who lives on the other side of the planet for being obtuse and all-round rude isn’t something he should do; even if he really wants to.

The pulava dies down after a few weeks of Harry reading everything he can find about dinosaurs in the bookshop—strangely, Uncle ‘Zira’s collection on dinosaurs and palaeontology is quite limited—and the library, Harry heads back to Hogwarts with Hermione and Ron ending up being unwitting victims of his diatribes.

Well, Ron is an unwitting victim. Hermione looks like Christmas has come early and she doesn’t even celebrate Christmas except at Hogwarts.

“I know!” Hermione exclaims, nodding vigorously at what Harry’s saying on the topic of how dinosaur DNA just couldn’t survive that long without totally degrading. “It’s really obvious if you think about it, even my parents said the same and they’re dental hygienists, but the boys who live by my house ignored me when I told them.”

“Idiots,” Harry replies and Hermione smiles at him. “Frog DNA is really picky as well, like, you definitely have to be careful with it; not just randomly add it to some ancient DNA and expect everything to be all hunky-dory! How do people not realise this?”

Harry shakes his head. “I know it’s fiction and Hollywood magic,” he continues, “but really, it’s a stupid plot to have such awful mad science stuff.”

“The book is much better than the film,” Hermione says and Harry nods. “Though, I do like the actors and—if I ignore the inaccuracies and deviations from the book—it’s not an awful film. I just prefer the book.”

“Same.” Harry pauses.

“The T-Rex scenes were pretty great though, weren’t they?” he asks and Hermione nods.

“Oh Morgana, yes!” Hermione agrees, grinning. “I really enjoyed the car chase.”

“Me too!”

“Also, that nasty lawyer—”

“—oh yeah! He totally got what he deserved!”

Ron, throughout this entire rant and later gush-fest regarding Jurassic Park and dinosaurs, is silent until he finally can’t take it anymore; judging by the way he all-but bellows at Harry and Hermione.

“What the bloody hell is a dinosaur?”

It’s probably The Worst question Ron could have asked but Ron obviously has no idea what Harry and Hermione are going on about; and Ron has never liked not knowing what’s going on. That’s probably because he grew up with six brothers and a little sister and had to deal with so much happening that he didn’t have a clue about. Being out of the loop is something Ron doesn’t handle very well when it comes to his friends and that means Harry and Hermione have an Obligation to educate Ron on the subject of dinosaurs.

He’s probably going to regret asking, Harry thinks, but at least he’ll know something other purebloods won’t.[3]

By the time the train arrives at Hogsmeade, Ron has a basic understanding of what dinosaurs are; ancient lizards that enjoyed being ancient lizards eating things and being eaten. Mentioning Jurassic Park during the Education of Ron sends them off on a digression that sees Ron being very, very confused by DNA, genetics, theme parks, and corporate environments. This drives Hermione to promise to borrow Ron her copy of the book, citing that it’s much more in-depth than what Harry and Hermione have told him, and to write a list of things that he doesn’t understand when reading so she and Harry can help him understand just why theme park monsters are Bad.

Dinosaur-related learning falls to the wayside as term starts and things Happen throughout the year, but Harry still finds the chance to ask various purebloods about the topic; feeling very vindicated every time a pureblood looks at him like he’s a madman—which, to be fair, he is—or throws a bit of a wobbler at the prospect that muggles know something a pureblood doesn’t.

When Harry asks a Slytherin who is somewhat amiable to students in other houses, he’s surprised when they actually do know about dinosaurs; right up until he realises that they’re a half-blood and hiding the fact. That Slytherin turns out to be pretty delightful and Harry makes no comment on the fact that they use terms that only muggles use. He’s never known a single pureblood Slytherin to use the word thermos when referring to their coffee cup and he just knows they picked that up from muggles.[4]

Unfortunately, Harry doesn’t find out until later that Hermione wisely went and asked the Ravenclaw purebloods about dinosaurs and discovered a whole host of them knew at least something about them and palaeontology too. In the end, Harry loses the bet with Hermione and ends up knitting a whole load of hats for the House Elves—which are used as hats for the teapots rather than the Elves themselves, much to Hermione’s mild annoyance—which isn’t so bad and he at least learns a knew skill in the process.

Throughout all of this, the two come to a sort of unanimous decision that Hogwarts needs better education on non-magical things. Even if witches and wizards might not ever really need to know the names of carnivorous dinosaurs, it’s still useful to know stuff that muggles do so they can better blend in when they’re older.

The fact that it will also reduce the division between magical and non-magical is something neither quite realise until they’re much, much older.[5]

Arranging a sort of study group with students from all the years to get them to learn about things Not Related To Magic is less of a challenge than either of them realise; especially when Ron snorts and tells them to make out the whole thing is “too good for those stuck-up purebloods”. Spite and pride, it turns out, are really good motivators for learning things just to Prove You Can.

Even the Slytherin’s show up.

That leaves Harry and Hermione, and several other muggleborns and half-bloods, with the job of explaining evolution to a bunch of witches and wizards. It sounds like it should be a doddle, but there are certain purebloods that seem intent on making it beyond difficult.

Oddly enough, Malfoy isn’t one of them.

“That doesn’t make any sense, though!” Stephen Cornfoot—a Hufflepuff—says and Harry doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a near-thing.

“Environmental changes happen all the time,” Hermione says calmly, though the way her eyelid twitches slightly tells Harry—who’s stood right next to her—that she is definitely not calm. “Physiological adaptation is natural response for a creature. Humans have evolved from previous versions to what we are today, and we’re still evolving. What is there to not understand?”

“A lot, apparently,” Harry mutters under his breath and looks away from the glare Hermione throws at him. “You can change how you act to stuff, right?” He says, raising his voice to be heard by everyone in the room—all forty or so students. “I know a lot of have broken school rules before, and I also know a good number of us have avoided breaking them after the first time we got caught. Or broke the rules better and not got caught. Well, same sort of principle applies to evolution. But it’s a much, much longer scale of time. Instead of us learning to break the rules better and teaching the students after us—or our children, if any of us end up being parents—an animal can evolve over a hundred million years to become a better hunter, or avoid being hunted.”

“Newton Scamander even noted that magical creatures potentially underwent some evolutionary changes in their own history,” Hermione points out, and Cornfoot looks more convinced from that alone which, Harry will admit to himself, is pretty annoying. “You don’t think Kelpies have remained the size they are currently? Or as specifically adapted to marine living?”

Harry knows Hermione’s questions are rhetorical but the way Cornfoot blushes in embarrassment makes him reach out and place a hand on Hermione’s arm. He’s a little concerned she might hex Cornfoot for actually believing Kelpies haven’t evolved.

He’s not certain how he’s supposed to stop her from actually committing murder when Cornfoot—and others—seem to not believe in evolution as though they’re the most resistant of Christians, but Harry figures that so long as Hermione doesn’t do it in public and doesn’t get caught then it’s not something he needs to really worry about.

Probably.

They split the students up into groups that each of the volunteer muggleborns and half-bloods who are willing to Educate The Noble Purebloods About Basic Things take. Whilst this enables Harry to keep Hermione away from Cornfoot and his very strangle-able throat, it however, leaves Harry with Malfoy to deal with.

The things Harry does for his friends.

Uncle’s Crowley and Aziraphale show up about an hour into the Educating of Purebloods and, unfortunately, derail the entire thing with a very casual comment regarding the veracity of palaeontology.

“You’re telling them about dinosaurs?” Uncle Crowley asks and snorts. “Dinosaurs aren’t real.”

“Of course they are!” Hermione says in the sudden silence Harry’s uncle’s words have caused. “There’s over a century of detailed records and expeditions to look for new fossils. How can you even say otherwise?”

“Because they’re a big ol’ prank,” Uncle Crowley answers. “She made them that way.”

“She?” A Ravenclaw asks from Dean’s group.

“You know, God.” Harry’s uncle looks very unhappy to be explaining this but since he started it, Harry doesn’t feel the slightest bit sorry for him. “Thought it was a right laugh, I’m sure.”

“Okay, okay, I’m going- you know what? Fine, fine,” Hermione rambles and she looks a little frazzled; the way she does sometimes when Ginny’s friend, Luna mentions some creature from the Quibbler. “Have you any proof of this claim?” She asks in a measured tone.

Harry has a feeling that this discussion is going to get Nasty.

“Well, my memory, I guess,” Uncle Crowley says and points at Uncle ‘Zira. “And his.”

“You’re memory,” Hermione says flatly.

“Yep!”

“The Earth hasn’t existed long enough for dinosaurs to exist, anyway!” Uncle Crowley exclaims and Harry’s sure Hermione’s eyelid just twitched. “Only been around for six-thousand-years!”

“I see.” Hermione, if anything, manages to sound even flatter than she did before. “Right, that’s what you believe. Nice to know. But actual scientific research tells us the Earth is actually four-point-five billion years old, not six-thousand. And,” she continues, “dinosaurs lived as recently as sixty-six million years ago and as far two-hundred-and-forty-five million years ago. That’s based on intense, rigorous scientific experiments which are much more reliable than a heavily revised book written and re-written over the last two-thousand years.”

Harry doesn’t leave the room but he sure wants to. Judging by the expressions on a lot of the students in the room, they want to flee too.

“That’s part of the joke,” Uncle Crowley explains with a smirk. “Thought was right funny, She did. Bit unfair of Her, really, expecting you lot to ever figure out She punked you all with dinosaurs but—” he shrugs “—not a surprise, really. She’s like that.”

“Well, how do you know God made them as a prank?”

Harry looks across the room, eyebrows raised in surprise because that’s Malfoy.

“Huh?” Uncle Crowley looks at the Slytherin with raised eyebrows himself. “Whadya mean?”

“Well, if your memory is what you’re going on, then did you have a conversation with God about dinosaurs and time and all that other stuff Potter and Granger have been going on about?” Malfoy elaborates. “Did you actually ask… Her if dinosaurs are a joke or did you just assume based on something you thought you know?”

Harry has never seen Uncle Crowley look so very stumped about something and, although it’s probably a little—a lot—bad of him, he really enjoys the sight of it. Judging by the way he seems to be smiling a little at Uncle Crowley’s expression, Uncle ‘Zira enjoys it too.[6]

“Well, obviously not,” Uncle Crowley says. “I learnt it the hard way that asking Her stuff ends painfully. Just figured it was a joke because this dustball hasn’t existed that long.”

The amusement on Uncle ‘Zira’s face disappears. Uncle Crowley’s State of Affairs isn’t something Harry asks questions about but he can tell it’s not the greatest thing, bringing up their statuses as angel and demon.

“But how do you know Earth hasn’t?” Malfoy presses and Harry’s actually sort of impressed. Malfoy has been strangely strange the past year or so. He’s still a twit and a bigot, but he’s better than he was in the first year, for sure.

“We were there when She made it.”

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “And when did She make it? What date, exactly? What existed before She made Earth?”

“Six-thousand years ago, I’ve said this kid,” Uncle Crowley replies. “Four-thousand-and-four-BC. She made it after Heaven and Hell got set up. It was Her big thing. Caused a lot of ruckus up in Heaven when She announced it.”

“Wasn’t Hell created when angels fell, though?” Terry Boot asks, frowning. “I’ve read the Bible and the Torah and Qur’an. I’m pretty sure Hell came after the Earth was made.”

Uncle Crowley waves a hand. “Semantics, really,” he says, “time wasn’t a thing before Earth got shoved into being so Heaven and Hell both existed before and after this little dustball and solar system got set up.”

“If time ‘wasn’t a thing’,” Malfoy says, smirking in that smug way the Slytherin does that makes Harry want to hex him. “Then how do you really know how old the Earth is, or dinosaurs, when you’ve literally just said time didn’t exist before the Earth was made? I mean, what if God was making it for a long time before She just made it real? Like when performing alchemy; we don’t just make gold straight away; we build up to it.”

“No, no, no, that’s not what I said,” Uncle Crowley snaps and he looks annoyed now. Harry thinks it’s pretty amusing that he looks annoyed because he definitely said that.

“That is what you said, actually,” Hermione says and honestly, the fact that she’s siding with Malfoy really says it all. Uncle Crowley has lost this argument and should probably just concede now. “The only way your argument could be valid would be if time existed before Earth did and Hell after and only after. Since you’ve said that isn’t the case, then it can be assumed that time has been applied retrospectively and that means that, technically, dinosaurs did live between two-hundred-and-forty-five and sixty-six million years ago because time is a measurement used to determine change.”

The room is silent because Uncle Crowley isn’t responding to Malfoy or Hermione and Uncle ‘Zira has been content to stand back and let Uncle Crowley do the talking. Harry is content to just Not Get Involved.

“Maybe the joke isn’t for humanity, maybe it’s for you,” Luna Lovegood says into the silence. She sounds like she usually does; like she’s more interested in Other Things that other people know nothing about. She reminds him of his Uncle’s sometimes, the way she just zones out and seems to be listening to something Harry can’t hear. Right now, however, Luna doesn’t remind him of his Uncle’s; he doesn’t know what she reminds him of, only that it’s something Big and Important and Beyond Him. “Or perhaps it’s a test.”

Harry would like for this whole conversation to end now please because the whole afternoon is getting away from them and he really did want to go flying on his broom before it got too dark to see in front of his face. Unfortunately, like most things lately, that plan is now in shambles and he’s stuck in this sort of painful situation of watching his Uncle’s quietly—or not so quietly, in Uncle Crowley’s case—question everything they thought they knew.

Existential crises happen even to celestial beings, apparently.

“Who cares!” Ginny’s voice echoes around the room, loud and a little startling. The room at large sort of looks at her; she’s doesn’t appear to be bothered by that. “I want to know about these Stegosawns, Hermione mentioned; they sound wicked.”

That—Harry notes—breaks whatever strange tension has been steadily filling the room since his Uncle’s entered and the students start to mutter amongst themselves; obviously they agree with Ginny and would really like this conversation to end now, there’s way more interesting things to learn about, thanks.

Harry is all too happy to oblige.

“Stegosaurs, or Stegosaurus,” he corrects, giving Ginny a smile, “were herbivores that had armour-plating on their back and spikes on their tails. Definitely not something a predator wanted to fight if they were weak or injured. They probably weighed as much as a dragon and were probably as big, depending on the breed of dragon.”

“Woah, wicked,” Fred or George say and there’s a general murmur of agreement amongst the students. “Imagine running into one of those when out for a walk.”

“I think I’d prefer the dragon, actually,” a fourth-year Ravenclaw remarks to a smatter of laughter.

Harry sees his Uncle’s slink out of the room—well, Uncle Crowley slinks, Uncle ‘Zira just walks—and resolves to visit them later tonight. He thinks they might appreciate him there to distract them from whatever Thoughts Malfoy and Hermione have given them about their purpose and stuff. Gods know, Harry would appreciate the distraction if he were in their place.

But, for now, he has dinosaurs to talk about with some purebloods who seem much more enthusiastic about learning about giant lizards the size of dragons. He wonders how they’ll react to the Brontosaurus; it should be entertaining, at least.[7]

[1] To understand the expectation people, have for teenage boys to be interested in dinosaurs, you have to consider the fact that dinosaurs are viewed as something of a Violent and Bloody Topic fit only for Boys and Men. Why? Because society loves to treat girls like their only worth is to be found in looking pretty but being stupid and vapid. A girl with a personality or a brain must in want of a husband who can put her back into society’s True Woman Mold. Harry, thanks to his Uncle’s, isn’t in the slightest bit impressed with this tripe and, as such, takes great delight in learning about things Boys Shouldn’t Be Interested In as well as pushing Hermione and Ron’s sister, Ginny, to learn things Girls Shouldn’t Be Interested In. It’s very entertaining as well as educational.

[2] Why Tuesdays is anyone’s guess really, but it does serve to ensure that Harry knows what day of the week it is if he ever spontaneously forgets that Tuesdays exist.

[3] Harry places a bet with Hermione—ignoring her huffy comment about how she doesn’t “bet” even as she places said bet—that not a single pureblood at Hogwarts will know anything about dinosaurs. Hermione thinks Harry’s assumption regarding pureblood education simply must be wrong since there are magical creatures that could be living dinosaurs considering how old they are.

[4] The fact that Harry is only right about the Slytherin—Arnold Renard—being a half-blood rather than a pureblood is less because Harry possesses excellent deductive reasoning skills and more to do with the fact that he’s rather good at just guessing stuff about people. If he ever sat down and really thought about how he knows this stuff, Harry would discover that he actually does have good deductive reasoning skills but a rather poor working memory when it comes to recognising such deductions consciously.

[5] The realisation that they can quite literally affect the entirety of the British Wizarding World by talking about dinosaurs, science, astronomy, heck, even yoga is something of a revelation for the two. The long-term impact on pureblood rhetoric is most apparent by the next generation of magical children; and the impact is wonderful.

[6] Aziraphale enjoys the sight of Crowley looking so stumped but the actual topic of conversation is one that will bother Aziraphale for a long time to come. The idea that they don’t know exactly what She has planned. The idea that a child can ask such a question and reveal that they, angels and demons, are assuming so much; it’s terrifying because it means they could be wrong. Being wrong sounds like a dangerous thing to be when one is an angel, afterall.

[7] It is.

#Good Omens #GOmens #Harry Potter #Absconding with Harry verse #Dinosaurs #Jurassic Park references #Listen if I can't give some existential crises to Crowley and Aziraphale #Then what's the point?#Lol

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same-side · 5 years ago

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hiiii! i just wanna say, i adore your art. second, im teaching myself to draw and while i can draw simple basics (mouths and sometimes eyes if im lucky), im still a beginner. ive watched many art videos and im still a bit confused on wtf im doing. so i just came here to ask if you had any words of wisdom for beginners? could be anything from what tablets to buy to simple mistakes to avoid. ive read some of the other posts here and have found it all extremely helpful so far! Thx for all you do!!

Hey there! Thank you so much!

I would put a read more but tumblr is broken. I’m trying to cover a lot of varied thoughts in little points, so if there’s anything you would like me to elaborate on or otherwise have questions on, feel free to shoot me an ask or dm me!

General

I think the biggest thing to remember is not to compare yourself extensively to others. A little bit of comparison is healthy... But too much will destroy your confidence, motivation, and take the fun out of art. Particularly if you are comparing yourself to someone older than you (life experience and coordination come into play here) or that has been drawing much longer (practice).

Additionally... If you’re not having fun (and you’re not getting paid to do it), don’t force yourself. If you find yourself being frustrated or bored with art, don’t force yourself to do it. That’s how you burn out and get art block! This applies to parts of a peice, too! If you don’t feel like drawing a face or a hand today? don’t force yourself to finish it. Come back to it later when you aren’t as frustrated or are getting better results. Even if its a week or a month from now. Honestly, at any given time I have probably ten headless bodies in my drafts. That’s okay! I just come back to them when I’m ready to do the face. And don’t be afraid to abandon something if it doesn’t feel right!

Something that also doesn’t get said enough.... take care of your body! I never knew when I started art, but artists are supposed to do warmup sketches and stretches and muscle exercises! I didn’t do any of this, and i went through a period of a few months where I was drawing for 5ish hours every single day. I developed carpal tunnel from it! So remember to take care of yourself. Take breaks, stretch, remember to eat.

Practice

Practice!!!! Even if its just for fifteen minutes every day. Or twice a week. But if art is something you really want to get good at, you have to put in the time and effort!! You can’t expect to draw an hour per month and be on the same level as someone who draws an hour a day!

I know I say this a lot but I think the biggest thing is just reference! If you don’t know what something looks like, look at a picture of it when you draw it! To go hand in hand with that, though, don’t just copy what you see! Learn from it and apply it! So take, for example, a shoe! pay attention to the way the heel is shaped, the location of the eyelets for the laces... how large the toe is, how steep the top! While you’re at it, look at other styles of shoes as well, and compare them! See what makes it look like a boot versus a trainer! And then the next time you draw it, hopefully you’ll remember all the things you learned the first time around!

I do lots of studies that serve no purpose other than to teach me things! I use referencing/studies to learn about color theory, shapes, and anatomy in a real environment. For example, hands or fabric folds! Oftentimes I’ll do them timed (20 or 45 minutes) so that I don’t fixate on perfecting things, just on the process itself and what I can learn from it. This also helps with getting better acclimated to your software and more coordinated with what you’re doing. Repetitive learning, like with playing sports.

I’ve realized a lot of people don’t quite understand what a study is? Basically you just look at a photo and try to replicate it so that you can learn about lighting or color theory or textures or anatomy or whatnot. So here’s an example of a timed study.

Additionally, don’t avoid!! We, as humans, have a tendency to avoid things that make us uncomfortable or are difficult. But it will make you a better artist in then end. When I first started, I absolutely hated doing fabric. I felt like I wasn’t good at it. So instead of avoiding drawing clothing, I sat down and did studies and sketches of different kinds of fabric. By the end of this learning period, I became comfortable with it and grew to enjoy it. These days, I adore sketching clothes, and it’s why my pants and shirts and things tend to be detailed instead of stylized in line art. If you don’t like drawing hands because you feel like you aren’t good at it? Sit down, look at a bunch of pictures of different hands, and practice it. By the end, you’ll be more comfortable, you’ll have learned something. Even if you feel like the drawings you ended up with aren’t good, you’ll still have learned, and that’s what matters!

Style

I worked on basics before I tried to develop a style. I made sure to start with a very realistic method at first, so that I could be sure I understood how fabric folds, anatomy, and realistic expressions worked before I tried to stylize them. I think in the long run this approach really paid off for me. It also allowed me to be conscientious of what elements I was absorbing into my artwork. I hear from so many artists that they started drawing when they were younger and into anime or cartoons or things like that, and tried to emulate it. Because those styles became so ingrained into their artistic skillset, it becomes near impossible to iron out those influences and get rid of them later. So starting with realism is a way to ingrain proper anatomy and other good practice into your artwork.

One way to develop style is to take a look at the artwork of someone you admire, and try to list out the things you like form their style - perhaps the thickness of their lines, or the way they do eyes. Do this with several artists, take all those little details you like and try them out! See if you enjoy using them in your own drawing process! Think of it like a grab bag or a pick-n-mix, sprinkling in the elements you like here and there to create something new and your own - not just copying another artists style word for word.

Don’t worry too much about it though; don’t allow yourself to become anxious or fixated on “achieving a style”. Its a natural ever evolving process that comes with time and practice. I know a lot of people get hung up on style, but just take it one day at a time!

Also try to keep in mind what style you’re going for as you begin drawing. And I don’t mean that like sailor moon vs. ghibli. I mean that as in, is this piece going to be a painting, a lineart, a lined painting, cell shading...? It will help you in the longrun if you narrow down the broad kind of style you use, and refine from there.

Workflow

My workflow for paintings is very different from my workflow for lineart and cell shading. A full tutorial on how I do paintings can be found here! A process video for how I cell shade can be found here!

Everyone is going to have a different method that works for them! You just have to experiment and find out how you like to draw! For me, personally, I use color blocking for painting (see the tutorial above) and a spine method for lineart. How the spine method works is that I will draw lines that represent the legs, arms, back, etc. so that I can determine the placement, length, and composition. From there, I’ll add a dark outline that actually shows the shapes of the body. Then, I’ll use thinner lines to add details. This is the method I’ve found that works for me. Another commonly used method that I’m sure you’ve seen is representing body parts with cylinders and cubes. There are lots of good tutorials out there on breaking down bodies into shapes like this!

Something that I do is if I’m not quite happy with a part of a drawing, I don’t just erase it. I duplicate the layer so that I always have the original copy, and then I make changes from there. Sometimes I can end up with five or six different versions of the same arm or face that i’ve made minor changes to. And then I compare and pick the one I like best, or condense all the parts I like from each version to make a “best” version.

Tools

Currently I use Procreate and the standard Ipad with Apple Pencil. Prior to March I was using a Wacom Bamboo Touch and Photoshop Elements 2008. I find its harder for me to do full paintings in procreate, but its made my life a million times easier for lineart and cell shading. The pen pressure is phenomenal, and I also adore that its wireless / active screen instead of plug in like the wacom. The programme itself is intuitive and easy to get the hang of; it simply lacks a lot of the neat tricks that photoshop has, like rendering (lens flares, for example), gradients, and gradient maps. Try testing out different trials of programmes... firealpaca, photoshop, autodesk, whatever it may be! What works for me may not work for you!

#thegodbucky #asks for ts #t talks #long post #art reference

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kittenshift-17 · 5 years ago

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What are your favorite dramione fanfictions??

Ok, so I’ve been sitting on this Ask for over a month trying to think of favorites because I honestly haven’t read a dramione fanfic that wasn’t written by me or one of my besties in a really long time. But I’ve put together a list of those I have read, and those I liked enough to add to my “Favorites” list on FFN. I’ve included a bunch of my own stories, too, since I honestly do enjoy reading my own work and hope others will too. *shrugs*

Presque Toujours Pur by ShayaLonnie Bellatrix's torture of Hermione uncovers a long-kept secret. The young witch learns her true origins in a story that shows the beginning and end of the Wizarding wars as Hermione learns about her biological father and the blood magic he dabbled in that will control her future.

Howl For Me by Kittenshift17: The Ministry enacts a Marriage Law, magically pairing couples who'd never in a million years agree to even speak, let alone wed. Paired off with Malfoy, Hermione has to suffer the added indignity of the Ministry banning all contraception and forcing fertility treatment and aphrodisiacs on them all. Draco's secret makes it worse.

The Alkahest by Shadukiam The Marriage Law, once enacted, has the power to destroy Hermione's perfectly normal life. Luckily, she and Ron are already planning to obey the horrific law together as a team... Until a Malfoy-shaped wrench gets thrown into the works. Dramione. Cover by littleneko1923 (thank you!).

Lady of the Lake by Colubrina Hermione and Draco team up after the war to overthrow the Order and take over wizarding Britain. "I don't even especially mind belonging to you most of the time," he closes his eyes and just breathes for a bit, savoring not being in pain. Finally he adds, "Just… try to take better care of your toys." Dark Dramione. COMPLETE

Last Year by Canimal There's nowhere to hide when a victorious Voldemort sends his best tracker to find Hermione. Draco won't give up until he finds her again. A story of the unraveling of the lies we tell ourselves. (Dark!Hermione)

Give Unto Me by Kittenshift17: The Ministry is offering rewards for having children. They've got a list of unconventional pairings and their willing to give certain people the thing they want most. When Ron overreacts to the idea of Hermione being paired with Mafloy and does something stupid, Hermione's life is set on a new path. One that involves having a baby with Draco Malfoy.

Eros & Psyche by RZZMG Draco challenges Harry and friends to play EROS & PSYCHE, a scandalous card game with a dark, mysterious history. It's Slyth vs. Gryff, male vs. female, pride vs. desire in the ultimate game of hearts and amour! Pairings: Draco/Hermione, Blaise/Ginny, Ron/Pansy, Seamus/Lavender, Theo/Daphne, Harry/Tracey. AU 7th yr. Secrets, romance, angst, and sex await the turning of the first card...

Summer of the Dragon by Lena Phoria 3 years after the war Hermione takes a break from Ron and accepts a summer job collecting supplies for Ollivander's wands. What she doesn't expect is having to work with Draco Malfoy, who's more haunted by his past than she ever would have believed. Together they will travel the world, fight dragons, conquer demons and maybe find exactly what they're looking for. COMPLETE.

The Silver Dragon by Kittenshift17: "This can never happen again," he warned quietly, waving a hand between the two of them indicatively. Hermione nodded emphatically in agreement, not daring to say a word lest she be terribly rude. Or vomit. Either was an option. Hermione wondered why she had a terrible sinking feeling inside to think that it still might.

The Green Girl by Colubrina Hermione is sorted into Slytherin; how will things play out differently when the brains of the Golden Trio has different friends? AU. Darkish Dramione. COMPLETE.

Stripped Bare by Kittenshift17: *COMPLETE* Dragged to Malfoy Manor, Hermione is tortured for information on Harry's whereabouts. When the Cruciatus curse proves useless, Bellatrix settles on a heinous course of action to loosen her tongue. Forced to come together under threat of death, Draco and Hermione are about to learn there is more to their relationship than hatred.

Ninety-Five Percent by HufflepuffMommy A new Wizarding Marriage Law has come into effect and Hermione takes her chance with the Ministry and lets them decide who would be the best match for her. Who would ever believe that Draco Malfoy would be her best match with a 95% Compatibility? (Hermione/Draco). Rated M for language and mature themes later on. COMPLETE!

Sang et Lumière by Freya Ishtar *8th Year* Late one night, Hermione hears a sound that chills her bones—a howling from the Forbidden Forest, yet all werewolves fled at the end of the War. When she finds Draco stumbling back into the castle the next morning, she becomes his confidante . . . and something more.

Tip of My Tongue by Kittenshift17 When Draco's wife is caught cheating and pregnant to another man, Draco must fight for custody of his son, Scorpius. Hermione, determined to ensure her son, Aurelian, grows up knowing his brother without Draco finding out, somehow winds up tangled into the middle of Draco's impending divorce. Can she help it if she also keeps finding herself tangled in his embrace, and liking it?

His and Her Bruises by lezonne "I congratulate your ability to leave a mark on me, Granger. Although I must make a point of it that my bruises on you are far larger than yours on me. When competing, you should always aim to win, yes?" Fractured timeline from fourth year up; will eventually look into their lives after school. Violent references. Sequel "His and Her Scars" is now up!

The Wayward Familiar (complete) by Freya Ishtar Returning for 8th year, Hermione unexpectedly winds up with a 2nd familiar when the one she buys for Ron as a gift—a ferret she jokingly names Draco—refuses to go to him. When she realizes the creature isn't what it seems, she goes further than she ever thought she would to get the real Draco back.

Addicted to You by Kittenshift17: An act of kismet whilst herb gathering sees Hermione interacting with an unknown werewolf. When he bites her while she is in her animagus form, he sets into motion a twisted destiny that binds them together as mates. With Remus and Sirius there to help her through, Hermione's biggest worry is finding out the identity of the werewolf who marked her.

Star-Crossed by HeartOfAspen Three years post-DH (EWE/Dramione). A prophecy handed down the Malfoy line for generations revolves around Draco, throwing a wrench into the life he's trying to rebuild. Even more perplexing, it somehow also seems to involve one Hermione Granger? Angst and murder, fluff and stuff.

Amuse Me by sloanwolves DMHG head boy and girl share a dorm. Draco walks in on Hermione doing something naughty then blackmails her. And Draco has been secretly been pining after the head girl all year! - Rated M for explicit sex scenes, language and lots of casual drug use.

Little Do You Know by Kittenshift17: Post-war, eighth-year marriage law fic. In a world where pureblood pomp collides with muggleborn sass not everything is as it seems. As the pairings unfold in the most peculiar matches, the current and former students of Hogwarts have a learning curve ahead of them. Little do they know that those people they called enemies might turn out to be their perfect match.

A Dangerous Affair by krissh Hermione was terrified. The rage in Draco's eyes was unmistakable; He looked like he was ready to kill someone. When she did not answer, he slammed her arms above her head, pinning her to the wall. "How dare you mock me like that," he snarled in her face. "You filthy mudblood."

Curls and Bruises by s l y t h e r i n d o l l "When I'm done with you, I won't need your permission. You'll simply be begging for it."

Better Dig Two by Kittenshift17: Hermione never expected she'd fall pregnant with a lovechild fathered by a mystery man to get back at Ron for cheating. Her drunken revenge leads to the birth of her son. 5 years later she is confronted by Draco Malfoy with a photo she thinks is of her son. Things get complicated when he tells her it's not.

The Risk-Reward Ratio by MissiAmphetamine Set during TDH; a maimed, disillusioned Draco surrenders himself to the Order after he earns Voldemort's displeasure. Hermione's pity for him blooms into something more and he stops seeing her as just a mudblood, as they both discover there's far more to each other than they ever thought possible.

A Regular Life by acro acro Draco's mouth popped open. He'd seen hair like that before in his other life, all curling golden-brown madness, rippling and crackling with an intensity that matched the gold fire in its owner's eyes. Her eyes. Her…Mione. Draco stumbled forward on disbelieving feet. "Granger?"

Lost Images by EvilGu MARRIAGE LAW Hermione must marry Draco Malfoy- the only wizard that (begrudgingly) petitioned for her who is not actively trying to kill her. If only there was some loop-hole... Can the unlikely pair survive marriage, in-laws, ghosts, murderous enemies, and their own traitorous feelings?

Unrequited Snowfall by Kittenshift17: Draco Malfoy has a secret. An Infatuation. An Obsession. '"I have to admit Granger, I was less than pleased with some of the things you drew in this book of yours" he said, pulling his hand away before he could do something crazy like sliding it into her hair and tugging her close so he could snog those pouting lips of hers.' Sequel: UNREQUITED SNOWSTORM.

Unrequited Snowstorm by Kittenshift17: SEQUEL TO UNREQUITED SNOWFALL. The trial of Draco Malfoy was the most controversial of the year. Most felt that he ought to be thrown into Azkaban for his crimes, the other half passionately believed it was wrong to lock up an eighteen year old boy for choices he'd been forced to make under duress. Hermione Granger never expected the trial to take a turn like this. DMHG.

Isolation by Bex-chan He can't leave the room. Her room. And it's all the Order's fault. Confined to a small space with only the Mudblood for company, something's going to give. Maybe his sanity. Maybe not. "There," she spat. "Now your Blood's filthy too!" DM/HG. PostHBP.

Draconian Heart by camnz Hermione had known the bitter end was coming, but it still took her by surprise as their cottage was crumbling from the force of the Deatheaters' assault. There really wasn't any hope left, but she would fight none the less. The dark side had won and there was no place left in the world for the remnants of her side, so this is how it ends. Very DARK - contains non consentual.

Wrapped In Red by Kittenshift17: *COMPLETE* During a school wide Secret Santa, Hermione has the bad luck of picking Draco Malfoy, suspected Death Eater. When she tries to sneakily learn his secrets in order to get his gift, and Malfoy winds up trapped under some mistletoe, things get out of hand. Who said snogging a Death Eater wouldn't land her in a strangely addictive mess? A Christmassy Dramione tale.

The Switch by BackInBlack99 When Hermione and Draco wake up in each other's bodies, chaos ensues. Will they set out to make or break the other's reputation? And can they find something more along the way? Pride, pranks, and forbidden temptation...

The Boy in the Hammock by galfoy Hermione tugged at the string holding the hood onto the boy's head, gingerly pulling the fabric back to reveal his face. Lying before her, barely recognizable beyond the swelling and the blood, but still very much himself, was Draco Malfoy.

Seeds of Seduction by AnjaliMalfoy There is only one rule in the game of seduction...Never fall in love. Draco Malfoy is a prized Death Eater. Hermione Granger, a member of the Order of the Pheonix is sent to seduce him for information.

Fallen by cyropi What can you do when hatred is tearing your world apart? Can you survive when love is all you have left? And how can you win when you’re fighting your own reflection? DMHG, HPGW.

Mistletoe Masquerade by Kittenshift17: *COMPLETE* Hermione Granger receives a strange and beautiful gift anonymously, and is swept off her feet at the Ministry's staff Masquerade Christmas Ball. Caught beneath the mistletoe, Hermione finds herself snogging an incredibly intoxicating young man, only to be shocked when she learns with whom she had been locking lips.

Aurelian by BittyBlueEyes Two years after the war, a young stranger pays a visit to the burrow. His arrival alone is baffling, but the news he brings of an upcoming war turns the world upside down. Hermione's quiet, post-war life will never be the same.

Someone Saved My Life Tonight by JadedDragon4 COMPLETE! They didn't choose to be partnered together or for tragedy to strike. But now, lost, hurt, and together, they must choose to save each other . . . or die alone.

Bathwater by xXBeckyFoo It's their 7th year,the Dark Lord's dead and the Death Eaters are all rounded up. Nothing could go wrong, right? There's a sense of peace in the air, but how long can it possibly last when the Ministry's throwing people together for all eternity? Curse the new Marriage Law.

An Aversion to Change by Mel88 Sent back to Hogwarts with the suspicious title of Head Boy, Draco is forced to share a dormitory with none other than Hermione Granger. With a war looming on the horizon and another danger even closer to home, their final year is anything but ordinary.

A Marriage Most Convenient by AnneM.Oliver Hermione lost it all when she divorced. Draco would lose it all by age 30 if he didn't marry. Marriage to each other would be perfect, one would even say it was most convenient. Her daughter even looked like him, although, he wondered why that was.

What A Difference A Night Makes by Kyra4 DHr prefects, top students in their year and Houses. Makes sense that they'd be chosen by the faculty for an honors project that requires them to be locked in the astronomy tower all night. Will they fall for each other or rip each other apart? COMPLETE!

Soooo.... Yeah.... Lemme just fling these 42 recommendations at you. *laughs*

All I ask in return is that if you read the works by these talented authors, please, please, please, make sure to leave them some kind and encourgaing reviews in return.

xx-Kitten

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21secondsofchristoph · 6 years ago

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Here is a full translation of the interview with the FAZ:

Mr Waltz, statistically you're a rarity. Only five percent of all actors in Los Angeles manage to get enough jobs to get accepted into the SAG. And out of that group, only about five percent earn enough to make a living out of their art.

Becoming an actor is like becoming a father: really easy. Being and staying an actor is much harder.

We're meeting today, because you're not playing the villain for once, but some kind of action-hero in James Cameron's Manga movie "Alita: Battle Angel"

As a futuristic doctor you revive a cyborg from Mars, so you're basically working on the interface of human and machine

Haha, you could put it like that! I like that!

When the story was published as a comic in 1990 it was considered Science-fiction. Today, people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos actually work on brain implants and dream of colonies on Mars. Have you dealt with such things as preperation?

I don't take Elon Musk seriously. His behavior strikes me as ridiculous and you can't forget that he has a commercial interest in the topic's sensation. I've already watched moon landing's and flights into space as a child. Is it really necessary to introduce billionaires into space tourism? Well, we will see what happens. I am interested in new technologies but it's difficult to seperate them from journalism of sensation, even if it's dressed seriously.

In time, a lot of things might be possible that I can't even imagine right now. But there is another question: the question of necessity.

The market economy drives our world into an orgy of uselessness. It damages our planet and our lives on it. Who wants to live on Mars? That we will all be unemployed and the environment destroyed is in no relation to any use.

Can one stop the progress if it's useless?

Not as long as someone benefits from it.

What about the desire for disruption?

Disrupting something is an easy action, replacing it with something useful is not.

I'm always ready to disrupt something if there is a useful counterproposal. Not necessarily until then.

A lot of things are turned upside down in film industry. Netflix not only revolutionized the concept of television, it also produces exciting movies. And Youtube even has its own celebrities among the new generation.

Over the past few months I've watched some movies which hadn't been produced without Netlflix. For example the winner of the Venice Film Festival "Roma". Movies like that wouldn't run longer than 3 weeks in theaters. Through the premiers and prices it now receives the attention it deserves. And after that it's on Netflix. As superficial as I can see that, it's not the worst thing.

In contrast to that, I don't have a hard time with not watching Youtube. It's probably a cultural matter and depends on how we want to shape our lives. Of course it's also a generational matter. But why is that? Just because someone is younger, it doesn't mean they are predestined for entertainment through videoclips.

You have 4 children. You have to be familiar with this world. Where do you see the difference to your generation?

In school we were always confronted with things we didn't like, but which we couldn't dispose of.

That's where the wonderful word "Bildung" comes from, which doesn't exist in English. Education refers to an information value. "Bildung" goes further than education through its cultural formation. When I was in school I also didn't understand why I had to study Latin. But not wanting to learn Latin would have never occured to me. Just because no one speaks it anymore and learning it seemed uncomfortable.

And did you like it?

It created connections within a language, trained precise phrasing, as well as logic and discipline. It's certainly more challenging to learn an abstract language than watching a funny Youtube video.

About for or five years ago you warned Facebook might be a breeding ground for the fast growth of terror organisations. Are you surprised that it also seems to threaten western democracies now?

Not at all. History has taught us that medium and structure can be more dangerous than the message, because it's easier to handle the problematic movement than the well oiled machine that keeps it going. Especially when algorithms control the dynamics in the networks, those networks can become independent.

Some hope that societies might improve through a "Wutbürger"-culture and a crazy government.

At best, all of that just has entertainment value.

So maybe not anyone should always add their opinions?

If you don't have anything clever to say you should shut your mouth. But actually it's the other way around. Apart from this choir of stupidity being really annoying, people who haven't developed the resistance and sensors might fall for the noise. Whoever shouts the loudest ends up being heard.

You are known for keeping your private life private. How does that match marketing's and fan's expectations?

Fame is an unsolved problem, not only for me.

You either remain an anonymous observer without a bigger platform to present your realizations. That is an unfortunate paradox because the people who get the chance to move in public have to deal with growing fame while they also distance themselves from the influences and experiences of real life.

Studies have shown that introverts would handle most jobs better. But they tend to get cast out by the loudmouths.

I can imagine that. Self- and foreign perception are a tricky thing. I can remember the first Loveparades in Berlin which I saw on TV. I always avoided the event myself. In the interviews, people were saying things like: "We celebrate our individuality!" And there were one million people that all looked the same. The music was a monotonous bum-bum-bum and I always tried to spot a moment of individuality.

You've been living in the centre of individuality for a while now. Do you still consider the United States of America governable?

Maybe not as a federation. The question I'm interested in is whether the USA as a federation are still worthy of governance. California alone is the fifth largest economy in the world.

In an interview from 2003 you talked about posing, about film makers who eroticise themselves and about how to stand yourself

Oh God, I remember.

Are you currently able to stand yourself?

Sometimes. But it's not easy.

At that time you weren't a Hollywood star and you made yourself very clear in interviews.

"Schindler's list" is mendacious because Spielberg might have thought "that type of movie still lacks from my collection of movies about dinosaurs and UFOs

Or that Roberto Benigni's "Life is Beautiful" is "crap" because it communicates that it's alright to laugh about concentration camps. "when it's a tender laugh"

Do you still dare to say such things now that you constantly meet other Hollywood stars?

In Germany, yes. In America, no.

Do you believe it's better to become famous later in life? And does aging feel better when you're at least famous while you're aging?

Hopefully both, right? As a young man you often experience the world through tunnel vision, because you impatiently want to experience everything, even though you can't sort a lot of things right. If the attention hits you at that point in life, you get in danger of stirring towards a dead end where you don't develop well.

Do you believe you became more careful and more lenient over the years and success?

You're becoming more careful and more lenient. I never thought of that before. I thought: Now I suddenly step back a little. You become more lenient when you connect yourself to it. In a strict German way you could call it cowardice, because you gain another point of view, the insight. And apart from the experience and the success it might be due to the abrasion of the testosterone-related edges.

#christoph waltz #alitabattleangel

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henrynicholl7-blog · 5 years ago

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scribeofmorpheus · 6 years ago

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I Don’t Dance To Dubstep Part 4 (A Deadpool Fic)

Part One, Part Two, Part Three

A/N: I don’t even know what the hell inspired this chapter tbh! I just love the banter between all the characters and the reader. Also, Dopinder is a killer cinnamon roll. I will say this: the next chapter contains TIMETRAVEL SHENANIGANS!!

Remember: Reader’s alter ego (nickname) is DJ

Words: 2621

Warnings: Mature Language, Mention of Sexual Kinks,Stan Lee what are you doing here?

(gif isn’t mine)

The taxi was parked in the lot of a clothing and specialists store tastefully named 'Dom N' A's Tricks.'

You had never rolled your eyes so far back into your head you thought they'd roll like bowling balls until you read that tacky sign.

When everyone was arguing amongst themselves as to who should do the shopping, Wade had suggested a sing-off and the loser would have to buy the supplies. As soon as Cable heard 'sing-off' he practically threw himself out of the car and hurled himself into the store.

Wade and Dopinder were singing along to Sonny and Cher's: I Got You Babe playing on CD in an overly enthusiastic performance to pass the time.

You and Domino sat in the back seat of the taxi with your mouths agape and a bug-eyed expression painted on both your faces.

"They say we're young and we don't know, we won't find out until we grow," Wade sang Cher's part in a high pitch, of course.

"Well I don't know if all that's true, 'Cause you got me, and baby I got you," Dopinder was smiling euphorically as he sang along in a pleasant voice.

Dopinder and Wade turned their heads towards each other at the same time like it had been choreographed.

"I got you babe," they sang together, Deadpool theatrically gracing Dopinder’s cheek as though they were filming some romance musical.

Dopinder, feeling not at all uncomfortable with Wade's lack of acknowledging other people’s personal space, played along and swayed his head from side to side.

"I got you babe," they continued singing along.

"Kill me now," Domino said in an exasperated huff.

You were speechless as you watched the act Dopinder and Wade were putting on.

"It's like I'm watching a re-run of all the nightmares I didn't know I had repressed play through in high definition..." You said to no one in particular.

Feeling in no particular mood to listen to the duet between the two weirdos in the front, you used your ability to generate a white noise hum to drown out all other noises. What you were doing was basically generating an ability induced set of earplugs.

Unbeknownst to you as the calming thrum of the white noise lulled you to the brink of sleep, a panicked Cable came sprinting to the car while red lights blared from inside the store and a skinny tatted woman shot off her shotgun in the direction of the car.

There was a busted window behind the woman that had the jagged but noticeable outline of a large man. It looked like a cartoon outline. Deadpool flailed about in his seat as a splatter of his blood missed Domino's face by an impossible inch, no doubt a shotgun pellet had managed to hit him.

You opened your eyes when you noticed Dopinder panic and put the car in reverse, bumping into a light post jerking you from your seat.

You stopped producing the white noise and suddenly you were bombarded with too much information for a sane person to process all at once.

"Drive!" Cable shouted as he threw the box of clearly shoplifted goods in between you and Domino.

Dopinder put the car in drive and his tyres screeched as he burned rubber behind him. The lady with the shotgun let off another shot and shattered the rear window. All three of you in the back ducked on instinct.

"What the fuck did you do, Cable?" Wade chastised in the same high pitch he used to sing Cher's lines.

"I don't carry cash on me and I figured we were in a hurry!" Cable bit back.

"Who doesn't bring money with them when they go shopping?" Wade asked idiotically.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe a half-human cyborg from the FUTURE?" Domino shouted over the two of them.

"Then why did he volunteer to buy all the sexy roleplay stuff?" Wade asked.

"Maybe because you threatened to make him sing a duet with you when he was clearly uncomfortable, Mr Pool," Dopinder enlightened him.

"Can everyone stop referring to me in the third person, please? I'm right here!" Cable exclaimed.

"Well if you're from the future an argument could be made for the fact that you are actually existing in two places simultaneously..." You chipped in.

Cable grumbled at you and Deadpool looked in the distance and said, "And that is called a continuity plot-hole ladies and gentlemen!"

"A WHAT HOLE?" You, Cable and Domino asked in unison, completely confused by Wade's comical shtick.

Wade noticed a street sign up ahead that read Parker Ave and pointed to it hastily, "Quick, Dopinder, take the next left and go down the street Uncle Ben will undoubtedly not be killed in during the current MCU reboot!"

Dopinder followed Wade's instructions and drove down Parker Ave and used the back roads to drive to your destination while avoiding the freeway and the mass of cops that were probably out searching for the five assailants that robbed Dom N' A's Tricks store.

***

"I look utterly ridiculous!" You pouted as you looked at your distorted reflection through a store window.

True to the singer persona Wade had given you earlier at the Chinese Restaurant, you wore a platinum blonde wig, a leather corset and fishnets, coupled with six-inch heels that could kill someone just by tripping over a cobblestone walkway.

"Here's the finishing touch," Wade held out a pair of fake teeth with a gap in the middle.

You looked at Cable in astonishment, "Did you buy a set of faux teeth?"

"I take no credit. That was all him," Cable said as he stared at you with intense eyes.

"I'm not putting on a set of fake teeth, Wade!" You warned as you focused the sound waves generated by the whooshing cars driving passed to shatter the plastic teeth into a million pieces.

"You have no respect for the art of role-playing," Wade said.

"I think you mean Cosplay?" Domino corrected him.

"I meant what I said!" Wade shouted as he reached into the backseat to grab another outfit from the box of stolen goods. "Alright sweet cheeks, your turn," He handed the clothes to Domino.

Domino gave the outfit one glance then looked at her own attired and gave Wade a condescending look, "Uh, no thanks. I'm already in costume."

Wade was about to protest against Domino's refusal to change into a new costume when you interjected, "Look I can do the whole infiltrating and catching the target off guard routine on my own. Domino you're on crowd suppression duty, Cable just cover my six from a vantage point, Dopinder keep the meter running and Wade…"

"Yeah?" He questioned cautiously.

"Put on the wig and heels. You're my dance partner, sweet cheeks!" You retorted with a sinister smile.

Domino and Cable laughed, enjoying your little power trip and the fact Wade had to wear a wig and a pair of heels... again!

Feeling a bit flustered, Wade dropped the box on the taxi's boot and placed both his hands on his hips, "Well, jokes on you! I've actually been looking for an excuse to wear heels again. They make my calf muscles pop!"

"Sure thing Queer Eye. Go get changed." You shooed him into the cab.

***

When Wade was fully in costume -above his regular costume, naturally- he quickly made his way up a three-story window that was the entrance into the Burlesque clubs dressing room with ease. You'd die before admitting this, but Wade's agility was something you envied.

You looked up at the window and then down at your heels wondering how on this God's green Earth would you manage to get up there without busting an ankle. Maybe if you focused the sound waves from a considerable sound generating source you could levitate on a cushion of sound waves, but there was nothing loud enough to draw from in your vicinity.

Domino noticed the crease of your brow and smacked Cable's chest before nodding her head in your direction to let him know his assistance was needed.

Cable stood up from the hood of the car, the temporary indent straightening out when his weight was removed. He walked over to you and looked between you and the window, before making a brace with his fingers and getting low on one knee.

"Need a boost?"

You looked down at him, took off your heels and placed your foot on the brace he made, "Since you're offering."

"Hey, don't get any ideas. He's mine!" Wade shouted from the window as he sat on the sill and stretched his arm out for you to grab.

Cable hoisted you up, his metal arm grabbing your ass for the briefest moment. You tried to act like the contact of hard metal on your ass wasn't invigorating and pleasantly different. Fuck! Now you had a new kink to add to your ever expanding list: Metal Arm Ass Groping. Quite the mouthful, you'd have to think up some catchy abbreviation for it later.

With his mechanised strength, he flung you high up into the air and you managed to grab Wade’s hand and he pulled you into the club. Domino and Cable made scarce and disappeared to get with the plan.

You put your heels back on.

"Naughty, naughty," Wade tut-tutted as he noticed your flushed cheeks and devious grin.

"Please, like you haven't thought about it!" You retorted as you marched out of the dressing room and down to the private parlour’s dancer entrance, more than ready to kidnap this Madam Mayflower and pay your rent to your sleazy landlord.

Behind you, Wade gasped in exaggeration as he followed suit walking like a model with poise and grace.

***

The upbeat tempo of the music you were dancing to filled the private lounge where Madam Mayflower sat with a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigar in another. She was guarded by four bodyguards who seemed to be having a hard time appearing stoic and immovable since they were constantly stealing glances of your seductive dance number.

Mayflower eyed you with desire clearly advertised on her face as she licked her lips and eyed you up and down.

"I count two guards on the second floor," Domino's voice rippled out to you through Wade's earpiece as he sat waiting patiently for you to give the signal to make the move on Mayflower.

"I count six others circling the perimeter." Cable's voice rippled out too.

"Something tells me there isn't a stealthy way to handle this," Wade whispered.

"Tell me I didn't dress up like a dominatrix for nothing, Wade!" You said in annoyance, your hands rubbing at your sore temples as you blinked rapidly. You dance routine thrown out the proverbial window.

Madam Mayflower looked at you in confusion, "I'm sorry is this part of the act? I don't remember role play being a part of the package… not that I'm complaining." She said with a heavy lilt as she proceeded to suckle on her lower lip suggestively.

You didn't have time to deal with her horny attitude right now so you raised a finger at her and said plainly, "Just hold on a minute," You curved your back a little and leaned back so that you could peak through the curtain Wade was hiding behind, "Wade just come out here and do your thing, toss me the earpiece."

"What the hell is going on here?" Mayflower demanded from you. Her bodyguards circling in around her, creating a human barrier.

Wade emerged from behind the curtain full of energy and pizzazz, a leather whip in one hand and a pair of handcuffs in the other.

"You do know Burlesque and BDSM aren't the same thing right?" you asked him.

"Don't ruin this for me," Wade shushed you as he tossed the earpiece your way. He cracked the whip against the open space and made a neighing sound, "Come on boys!" He teased the bodyguards.

"Just keep it quiet, Wade," You reminded him.

Mayflower made a motion to jump out of her chair but you thrust her back into it using a controlled burst of waves.

The sound of Wade fighting off the bodyguards with his whip was thankfully drowned out by the loud music that played in the room.

"Cable, when I say when, I need you and Domino to generate a loud noise right above the window I'm waving to you from." You said through the earpiece.

Cable searched for your waving figure through the scope of his gun. When he spotted you, he saw Deadpool engaging in a fight with four other guards still wearing his heels and wielding a bullwhip.

"What the?" Cable whispered through the earpiece.

"Remember, when I give the signal, generate big boom!" You said in a baby voice as you thrust Mayflower back into her seat for the umpteenth time again.

"How are we supposed to do that?" Domino asked.

"Get lucky I guess," you joked.

When you turned to see if all the guards were knocked unconscious you looked over at Deadpool who was wiping non-existent sweat from his masked face. During all the excitement you noticed someone had snatched his wig off.

"Hey, Indiana Jones, throw Mayflower through the window," you told him as you opened the large window.

"Wh-What?" Mayflower shouted in shock, her eyes wide with fear.

"What? No, I'm not gonna throw my paycheck out the wind-"

You cleared your throat and clicked your heels, "You mean our paycheck?"

"That's what I said!" Deadpool said all too defensively.

"Just do it, Catwoman!"

"Okay geez, enough with the outdated references already," he groaned as he flung a very scared Mayflower out the window.

"The woman currently hurtling to her death, is that the signal?" Cable asked an instant later.

"Yes!" You shouted as you jumped after Mayflower too.

“WHAT THE FUCK DJ?” Deadpool shouted after you as you began to free fall with Mayflower down several stories.

“Oh, not good,” you heard Domino scurry about anxiously over the earpiece.

Mayflower was screaming like one of the Bond girls.

Please, don't let me die swan diving after a Madame, you secretly prayed to whatever cosmic entity watched over your universe.

Suddenly, a large explosion of fireworks went off in a dumpster near the taxi and the sound of the exploding gunpowder and the vigorous force the projectiles produced when they hit the metal lids generated strong enough sound waves for you to generate a cushion of waves to catch you and Mayflower before you turned to street pizza.

Your prayers have been answered my child, A smiling Stan Lee whispered in your inner ear. Where the fuck did that come from, you wondered.

You landed gracefully on both feet while Mayflower landed in a puddle on her face next to you.

"Okay, we can go now!" You shouted up to Wade who decided the quickest way down was the same way you made your exit. He was lucky the fireworks were still producing enough sound that you were able to catch him and lower him mid-air onto the ground.

Domino appeared out of nowhere as a small explosion went off behind her and Cable grappled down the side of the building he had set up his sniper position by using his metal arm to dig into the brick and slow his momentum.

All four of you (plus a muddied Mayflower locked in the trunk) got into the cab and headed for Al's apartment before any of the bodyguards could fully realise what had just transpired.

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kierongillen · 6 years ago

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Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 36

Spoilers, obv.

Well, this was a fucker.

I wrote the following while drunk a few weeks ago.

This is something I only found myself chewing over the way home from drinks in town when I select a Spotify playlist for fist-pumping tracks. And it's mainly stuff like Ram Bam's Black Betty and My Sex Is On Fire or whatever, but it also includes Billy Joel's We Didn't Start The Fire. Which is out of place in such a playlist, but also welcome.

It's a song which came out during the brief period between me becoming someone who bought pop music and someone who was a hardcore metalhead. It's a song I bought, and intensely loved. It's perhaps not a surprise. It's in its deeply unfashionable way, entirely me. A pure burst of reference pop.

It's a gimmick song. A list song. It's a list of events from Joel's life – it gives the impression of building towards the present day, but really is pretty fucking random from across the timeline, selecting stuff as it would occur, a ramble. The song is so sleight to be sarcastic, but it's delivered with a frustration and attack. The words are all meaningfully chosen, with juxtaposition between huge events and trivia equally sang with commitment, but the context is so traditional a frame to be almost dismissive. Yet with this disengagement – and with tricks thrown in to maintain interest from its monotony and add towards a slowly build tension – it builds towards an apocalypse, before backing off to a statement of that is how life feels as it is being lived, and the sense of apocalypse is an illusion, and the real horror is that this will continue ever onwards.

So, I was listening to that, while thinking about this issue, and sort of smiling.

And I can see what drunk me was getting at.

Okay – this is a tricky issue to talk about, as you slice somewhere and its guts come falling out. I've written a lot, but I'm also aware that writing that begs more questions which begs more specific answers. As always with these notes I say "This is a collection of thoughts from the making of the issue, but not comprehensive." Even in one like this where I'm saying a lot, that still holds true. This could have gone on forever. And on and on and on and...

Yeah, you get the point.

Perhaps the most common request from WicDiv fans is “Are we ever going to get a list of all the pantheons?” or, for the more demanding, “are we ever going to get a list of all the gods.” The latter makes me blink, for reasons I'll probably segue into, but we did want to do the former, at least as best as we could within the limitations we've set ourselves.

But also, I always think of the nature of murder and plans stretching across time. “I have been murdering people for hundreds of years” is a cool line, thrown off, never examined. I kinda wanted to examine it, and play with what the human brain does with repetition.

I recall a critique of the brilliant (and highly influential on yours truly) Heavenly Creatures, of the considerable sympathy you hold for the titular teemage murderers despite the horror of the murder on screen. The critique noted that the murder on screen was highly sanitized, and the actual murder had forty-five injuries, over twenty of which were head wounds. So the three or so blows shown in the murder were bad enough. When we're forced to really live with the actuality of what the murder required, to not just hit thrice, but again and again and again and again and again and again and many more times, at which point does any sympathy we have evaporate in the face of the actual reality of the horror of what they did. Murder is ugly.

I found myself thinking of an aside in one of the WW1 episodes of Hardcore History, which describes American reporters sitting in Belgium, watching the German army march past on the first offensive. It's over a million soldiers. The reporters sit in the cafe, and it's instantly astounding. And then it goes on, and the effect deadens a little. And then it becomes almost comic. And then, hours later, when you realise it's taken an entire day for these people to stomp past, it becomes surreal, brains shaking at the sheer size of it. That.

Also, Modern art, especially music, is about an exploration of repetition with minimised variations. Paul Morley's Words And Music posited all pop music as a line from Alvin Lucifer's I Am Talking In A Room to Kylie's Can't Get You Out Of My Head, from which a city emerges. That.

And a lot more – that's a selection of thoughts that went into this. It's idea rich, and frankly there's some stuff which – like any experimental piece – was a surprise for the team itself. We walked away with new stuff in our heads, learned from having a jackboot stomp on a human face across all human history, and what we saw when we juxtapose all these things together. I highly recommend trying the impossible, at least once.

When I first suggested it to Jamie, he was excited. The thought was that it'd be a whole issue, with three panels a page. This would have been an easier task, partially as it would be the only work required in the issue, and also the framing in a wide panel would require more detail, but less total research. In short, you wouldn't have to worry about what people were wearing on their legs in periods with scant research.

That fell by the wayside when I did the tight plotting for the arc. We couldn't afford the space, and I can only imagine what the response to the issue among the anti-this-kind-of-stuff readers if we had.

(The response was exactly what we expected it be, in terms of strong polarisation between The Best WicDiv Thing Evvvvaaa! and those who it had no effect at all, that its non-traditional form of comic narrative was essentially invisible.)

It was a few other things as well – in one way, I just wanted to give Jamie a guitar solo. I think he's the undisputed costume designer of his generation in the American field – even putting aside his work on WicDiv, he's responsible between three of the most influential looks of our time, two of which are going to be everywhere for the next five years at least (Miss Marvel and Captain Marvel being the Everywhere-ers, and Ameican Chavez being one of those period touchstones.) The idea of having half an issue devoted to 128 new and individually reseached character designs is absolutely a mike-drop. No-one's done this. No-one would try to do this. I wanted Jamie's peers to cry at the idea of even considering trying this. Admittedly, this involved Jamie crying doing it, but the cost of doing business.

So yeah – while arrogant and desperately overambitious, especially in the context of a monthly comic book (this is easily as much work as two monthly comics) this is one we're intensely proud of.

I have also promised everyone I will never do it to them again. Because once you've done it once, there's no need to, right?

Okay – let's do this.

Jamie/Matt's Cover

Continuing the theme of the arc in terms of covers of “Persephones” and “Anankes” and “Minervas”, and clearly set up to be a “Hey, here's a new interesting character.”

Babs Tarr Cover

God, Babs is a hell of an artist. As usual, we just asked what she's be interested in, and the Persephone on Bike seemed too good to resist, with the implicit MotorCross Crossover thrills. Wonderful stuff.

Page 1

Cutting this to the bare minimum is always the thing. Enough to treat the characters as iconic as the ones in the present – the three panels with 2/3rds main image is what we use for the vast majority of the traditional transformation, and with small tweaks we keep the same beats.

We'd normally do a LOC CAP or similar in this scene, but that would step on the effect as we start LOC CAP-ing on the next page.

Of course, by now, we know how this scene goes...

PAGE 2-12

I'm not going to go too deep into this, and try and talk about top level thinking and the choices you make when going on this kind of an endeavour, especially when you know that there's no ideal one. History is a mess.

If you want a panel by panel walk through of the periods, I direct you to Twatd's extensive 6000 years of murder. They've also just put it in an ebook for their patreon folk, if you want to throw them some coins. I'll be picking up some various bits of details.

First leg of this fucker was me, basically on my own with the history books and the spreadsheets.

The main part of that was simply positioning each one, for definite. Until now, I've allowed myself some flexibility, based into the nature of the recurrence. I didn't need to know the exact dates until I wrote a story in the period, so I didn't nail them down. As we set up in the first issue, it's every ninety years from the end of the previous pantheon. The Pantheon length varies between 1-3 years, depending how quick the gods die. A 1 year pantheon would be them all dying in two calendar years, and a 3 year one being a very slow one. There's few of them. Most Pantheons are across 3 calendar years (Therefore, a 2 year pantheon). I'd checked I could land a pantheon on 455 earlier, based on the squishiness in these math, but I learned how to actually work a spreadsheet, put the math in, and tweak.

On another bit of the spreadsheet I started doing the other half of the work, which works in parallel (but mostly separate) from the main thrust of history. As in, Ananke's story. Where she is at each point in history, what she learns there and what she's trying. There's some areas where the change in her tactics is quite obvious, and can be discerned from just what's shown in the panel. The ones where it's major but bemusing are likely the ones we'll be delving into in the future – either next issue, the final special or some other point.

Even writing this part was strange, entering the mind of someone who's been working on a project for 6000 years, and the waves of ennui and experimentation and strangeness. How to think like Ananke? It's hard. Every ninety years this thing happens. How she gonna play it this time? You occasionally get WicDiv readers asking “Why doesn't Ananke do X thing?” and this answer she probably gives would be “Yeah, tried it a few times, doesn't work nearly as well as you think it would.”

The biggest problem is choosing the pantheons, and the narrative it's choosing to tell through it. With the big list of pantheon dates the two core questions are...

What's the most culturally influential thing going on in this period that we know about?

How can we get the best global sampling that we can?

The latter is the fucker, because records are bad, and while history isn't written by the winners, history is written by those who write histories or at the least those who make things which historians can find or those historians have bothered to try and find. That warps the options for choices intensely, and often ways which frustrate our desires and choices. The script draft had multiple options for each category, and we chewed them over – there's a page in this month's Image+ which shows some of my notes there. Especially with the super-long-lived cultural empires, we looked opportunities to justifiably use anything other than them to just avoid 3000+ years of alternating between China and Egypt.

(Seriously, of all the many things this project has given me, a better understanding of the physicality of time, both its expanse (as in, HOW LONG HAS EGYPT BEEN THIS CULTURAL CENTER?) and its shortness (It is 66 full-lifetimes between us and the start of this mess. The last page skipping back from 2013 hits the majority of what we think of as history. It's a vertiginous book if you let it get beneath your skin, and we had to.)

Equally, we should unpack “culturally influential.” “Culturally Influential” normally means “invaded and killed a bunchy of other folks and made them take on your culture.” This is mainly a list of cultures who've dominated their locales. This has always been there in WicDiv. The 20th century Pantheon is primarily (though not solely) American. The 19th century one was primarily European. 455 is about the fall of Rome.

I'm not sure if I have to state the obvious: all the choices flow from the nature of WicDiv gods as cultural epiphenomenon (or, if not epiphenomenon, heralds. Or both. Either way, the gods dovetail with the rise of "civilization")

We map the gods to known history. If it's troubling, it's troubling because world history is troubling. And I do find that troubling.

At the same time, the concept of the book also lets us create spaces for possibility. We are showing one god from the period - Persephone. There's another dozen elsewhere. While we've shown some pantheons work with a tight geographical focus (such as the London/UK one) others have sprawled across considerable spaces, covering at least a continent and sometimes more. Some of the pantheons shown in this issue imply that kind of gap, normally signified by Ananke dressed in culturally different garments than the Persephone. Equally, some of the more extremely positioned Persephones are a snapshot that implies that gods can end up that far afield, at least occasionally.

In other words, if we drop a pantheon anywhere on the continent it implies that in some of the pantheon are in areas other than the direct place we're putting them. Steppes People bar one Hunnic one. Africa South of Mali. Most of East Asia, bar China and Japan and one Vietnamese Persephone we squeezed in. A lot of South and North America. We just don't have the history to know what or when to pick, and the relevant reference to draw even if we could.

(The exception we forced was Australia, as we didn't even have a single god on that continent. As such, it was key to show a god on that continent to show that gods could be on that continent and by implication they could in one of the other pantheons.)

The above grates, but this issue was one of a bunch of compromises and decisions. This

There's also an attempt in the Ananke/Persephone pairings to talk about various stories. Sometimes the Persephone prefigures a culture's dominance. Sometimes it prefigures its fall. Sometimes it prefigures an option simply not taken. There is an implicit complexity and ambivalence to what we're showing here, as human history resists easy answers.

The naming is the other major bugbear. After the above choices were made, I spent a clear week going back and forth for a standardised naming system to use. Having one which I felt made sense, I spot the couple of exceptions where it didn't, and flick back entirely the other way. There's been times when the whole thing had generalised “Africa” or “Europe” captions. There was times when I considered not even having any captions at all – but these sacrifice so much in terms of the thrill of the mystery of these names. When (say) “Uruk” turns up it's meaningful and interesting, and losing that seemed a huge cost.

The rules we went with were as followed...

If we want to place this Persephone to a specific locale that exists and I want to specifically set the story in that limited locale, we use that name. (e.g. Athens, Uruk)

If a cultural region exists, and I don't want to tie the story to happening to a specific settlement in it, I use the cultural region (e.g. Egypt). If I want to be a little more specific, we can include geographical detail (e.g. Northern China).

If nothing exists for sure, use pure geography (e.g. The Upper Nile.)

All this also ties into my own knowledge of any areas. Some areas I have more confidence in choosing where to place the implied story. Some, I'd rather step back and be broader. This is based upon the background knowledge in a section. To do otherwise, I'd have to do reading akin to a WicDiv special for every panel in this issue, and as each WicDiv special is basically 6 months work, I'd have to had spent 33 years on this one.

This has one eye on the future – if we ever go back and do stories in WicDiv's history when all this is open, I want as much room to manoeuvre as possible. Do not close stuff off we don't have to, while also leaving enough room for people's imagination to populate the world.

Christ – this is 2500 words already, and I haven't said anything yet. You should see the script. There's actually a page of it which is going to be in the next Image Plus. I was a little reticent, as any one page was either too long or too fragmentory. We included one, which includes a couple of notes in from various levels of the production. The basic structure is that the panel is split between a “What the interaction is between the Ananke and the Persephone” and the “What period is this set in or what choices do we have?” And then there's a mass of conversation, both online and in person, after that. We say that all scripts are conversations, but it was never moreso in this issue.

The main take away from the second half was wanting to give Jamie as much room as possible and cut as many corners as he needed to get through it.

This is Jamie. He's never going to cut any corners.

(There's sections at the start where I suggest doing things like dropping backgrounds entirely and making it symbolic or whatever, but Jamie! That guy. THAT GUY.)

The baton of the workload then passed to Jamie. This is simultaneously a much bigger workload and a significantly different. I was performing a great filter. He was digging into specifics.

To get an idea of the scale of this, hired a costume researcher for this for a week of solid work, and they managed to do about a quarter of the periods, and even then not completely. The rest were done by Jamie and Katie as they proceeded through the issues.

Our costumes and choices are most conservative in the periods we know least about, and are normally excused by “if we don't do this, we miss this culture out entirely.” The further back we went, the harder it was, but even that isn't on a level playing field. When we get past the history and into the quasi-myth it also becomes tricky. It's just tricky.

As this was all only completed right up against the hard deadline, it also left barely any time to actually do the level of due diligence we wanted. We were expecting that we'd have stumbled over something accidentally mortifyingly offensive by accident in terms of colour choices or something else easy to stumble over, but the surprise is that there's been relatively little about that. We were expecting to have to do a bunch of tweaking when we come to the trade, and just mea culpa. In fact, there's only a handful of things to tweak – one place name which, after due consideration, I think I'll change and one architectural mishap. Frankly, this is much better than we were thinking, though I guess there's time for more stuff to be spotted.

Right – let's do a quick tour through the pages, with me pulling out bits and pieces which spring to mind.

Page 3 – still dealing with regions-rather-than-places, with Uruk being a side-step. Also sets up the rhythm of things staying the same and then things changing – as in, repetition enough to let people know there's a pattern, then a subversion. As it's the opening, the pattern is pretty obvious – straight murder until a Persephone gets wise and fights back, and then a change of tactics. Er... I'm not going to go in detail on this stuff from now, as that's reading the bloody comic for you, and I'm not one of those comic reviewers who just do a synopsis of the comic and sticking a 7/10 at the bottom. Even when I was a critic, I was the type to write a synopsis and stick a 6/10 at the bottom as I was a big ol' meanie.

The thing which most strikes me as sad about the research is that any headwear is a total waste. Man! Decapitation is the worst.

Page 4 – Japan 2942BC is one of my fave Persephone looks. I also like Ananke Northern China.

Yes, the “Crete” one is very clearly a “Wait – what happened here?” one. More anon.

Page 5 – Watching Ananke across this period is the interesting one.

Wrangel Island is one of my favourite historical things, in that it's the last place Mammoths were alive on Earth, around this period. There's a story I've wanted to do that is set this period. Maybe one day I will. I want to do it as an OGN, but part of me thinks it's actually a 5 page short story.

Egypt shows the arrival of the Pyramids here – architecture in backgrounds is one of the trickier things we had to deal with, but something that big and iconic is hard to resist. This was one of the problems culturally speaking – that there's many cultures we couldn't get good (or any) reference for their houses, so they tended to be put in rural/wooded situations, which carries an implication we weren't fond of. Occasionally we pushed it as far as we dared with simple housing to avoid that.

Man, I love the movement Jamie does in the middle two panels – plus the treatment of colour from Matt. That's actually worth stressing – I said it was a huge amount of work for Jamie? It's equally hilarious for Matt. He normally gets to set up a palette on a scene, and then carries it to other panels. Here, he has to reinvent it every single time. Stuff like the transitions from Egypt to Wrangel Island is dazzling.

Page 6

I resisted the Druidic one for a while – the earlier Western Europe one too – but they were both also (I think) Egypt ones. Basically everything here which is us going “We can use this for another locale” is taking out an Egypt or a China. Egypt and China have done so much stuff, guys. It's kinda scary.

Australasia is clearly one where we played it particularly tight – by definition, Ananke will have travelled here, and we minimise as much of Persephone's clothes due to not knowing for sure what people would wear in the period.

Page 7

Honestly, with out own interest in decapitated head, we were hardly going to resist the Olmec heads, right?

I like the implication of the story with the Egypt one here. You can see Ananke taking the Persephone all the way beneath the surface for this scene.

Page 8

Any time I look at the Assyrians I think of taking my friend Sarah Jaffe – not someone who is into ancient history – around the British Museum. When passing through the Assyrian display, I tried to work out how to sum up the Assyrians. I ended up with “The Assyrians... well, the Assyrians were tossers.” I may have used a stronger word than “Tosser.”

How do we know this? They spent a lot of time carving pictures of how much a tosser they were, just so we all know thousands of years later.

I find myself wondering what looks Ananke most liked? Does she look back fondly at certain periods? Almost certainly.

Page 9

It's around this point the sheer size of ancient history starts to get to you. Especially in the earlier Egypt/China-duopoly drafts it was like being punched in the face. It goes on and on and on and on. Which is the effect we were looking for, of course.

I kinda wished I could find somewhere other than Macedonia to do this one, but I couldn't find anything that made sense.

Eturia is one of those implied-other-story ones. This is near Rome, but not Rome. Eturian culture was significantly different from Rome, and you wonder what a more Eturian influenced Roman culture could have been like. I mainly ramble by way of example in my thinking for some of these.

Page 10

Yes, I smiled at Judea. Into the AD!

The South East Asia one is Vietnamese, and one of the ones we had least to draw off, but when there was so many East Asia pantheons, having them all be China and Japan felt worse than doing one with minimal sources.

The Eastern Europe one is my one complete fuck up when scripting this – it was originally the Hunnic invasion of India, with Persephone as a Hun. Except I had just read a number wrong, and the Hunnic Invasion of India was a century later, at a similar time to the Fall Of Rome Pantheon. A quick last minute panic kept it as Steppes People, and just had it out there, in the regions were the Huns were pre most of this, foreshadowing.

454 is earlier in the Fall Of Rome special. One of my reads in my research on that one was that Roman failure to integrate Germanic peoples into the empire to rejuvenate it (as they had with previous migrant groups) was one of the prime causes for the western fall, so this seemed a symbolic way to go. And look at the dappling!

Page 11

Tikal is the one I'll tweak. That's a more modern name. I'll likely tweak to Yax Mutal in the trade.

The Constantinople panel is the architectural problem – that Hagia Sophia look is simply from a much later period.

The acting in the first four panels are basically my favourite thing in the whole issue. Yes, the fourth one is “that time with the Franks” as referenced earlier in this arc.

I did try to tweak numbers and end up with a 999 pantheon, but couldn't make it land, and I decided that the Nun Lucifer story would work better later, circa the Black Death. As such, doing a millennial pantheon this far from the AD timeline appealed. And look at the fashion!

Page 12

The next special is 1373, so close to the fourth panel here. More to come, etc.

First two panels are the Crusades, mirroring one another.

Page 13

When planning this originally, I thought 60 pantheons. I then failed to realise I did the math wrong, and if I started close to 4000BC, it'd be 66 pantheons – so we'd need 11 pages. I did have a draft with a slightly longer start, but I realised that I couldn't afford another page, when I had a lot of work to do in the latter half of the issue.

I also realised that it's not 66, as the first one is actually the one we saw in 34, which is by definition, not in this sequence. Which left us one panel at the end. We played with various options, but calling back to a sequence from issue 9 seemed a good move. It's a scene which, of course, reads differently now.

These are the most familiar pantheons, of course.

Page 14

Interstitial, a nod to the Kanye track. I originally had this as the interstitial at the end of last issue, but felt that it contextualised Baal in a crass and deceptive way, and made it more likely to be taken as literally without any nuance. By placing it between these two horror stories, applying the word to both Ananke/Minerva and Baal, there's more space to think about it.

Page 15

I normally do a tight synopsis for the whole arc before starting. I did for this arc, and it actually expands to next arc too. However, these always change. When I reached this issue, especially when I realised it would be 12 of the 20 pages, I did some reworking of plot threads, moving a couple of other beats either to a teaser for next issue or just to next issue – as next issue is one with much more space available for present day stuff.

I did it as basically Baal's origin (there's no other word for it – Baal is a classic superhero origin story, as pure as Spider-man's) requires the space. He's earned it.

Still – as there is one other key thing which needs space, the question how to approach it was there. The final choice was minimalistic and cleanly. Three panels here, into the flashback. Red colouring. Baal's colours now.

Flame fade out to flashback, ala all performance-storytelling we've seen so far. As in, Gods' signature segues to flashback.

Page 16-17

I love what Matt is doing here with texture and shape. It makes everything feels alive, like ornamental, pushing against Jamie's art. It's like a mural, it's art.

Not a back garden but a playpark. I imagine Baal on the way home, crossing across here, meeting the lady and...

2 page scene. This needs space, in its own way.

Page 18-19

A spread, but this is effectively one page in terms of page use. Trying to get as much story as we can from the limited page count available. This is almost all Star Superman in cutting to the basics – a single image showing a fragment of the fight, and one of Baal's line.

More red. You see where we're going, as it's building up.

“that night, I did it” just made me shiver.

Page 20-22

We talked about various approaches to this – on a single page. but we chose to burn pages. As always, these are free, and don't come from the page count of the issue. In this case, it lets us dwell on it, and hit it again and again.

Page 23-24

And a segue out, back into reality. This is where we crunch the details we feel people need to know.

Of course, this is why Baal has always taken the Great Darkness more seriously – not least he knows what he has to do if the Great Darkness isn't dealt with before another three months ticks over. You can probably chew over yourself how much is him believing it's saving the world and how much he believes it's just saving his family. I don't think you have to choose one or another.

“You don't need to know” is a very WicDiv choice, isn't it?

It's one of the things which is there, but never stressed – Baal, for all his bluster, has never won a fight in all of WicDiv, when actually fighting against someone who fights back. Here's the reason.

It's worth noting Baal had the necklace, at least occasionally, before issue 4 of WicDiv. Woden is completing it as he hands it back. As in, it's been tuned up for a while – obviously it needs to be completed with what Ananke suspected may be coming with Lucifer. Er... this is probably too much to say here? It just occurred. It's the sort of stuff we chew over.

I suspect “I want to die/but I want to live” is one of those axis which WicDiv is built around? I found it upsetting to write, which is normally a tell.

Page 25

I said this when asked about the pregnancy plot when the issue came out...

Thanks for your faith, but I understand cynicism. It’s not as if there’s much track record for media doing this well. I’ll probably write a little more about it in the writers notes - I just deleted a paragraph here as I want to chew over my exact wording carefully. The short version is, like everything we do, we take it intensely seriously and we didn’t go here lightly. I also have faith in the readers unpacking it and making their own sense of it as we continue - I think Pomegranate’s take is basically the best sort of response we could have hoped for at this point, really.

… and after chewing it over, I don't think there's much I can add to it, really. Further into WicDiv I'm sure I will, but it's too connected to everything, and any explanation just leads to questions I can't answer yet.

I do wish I had slightly more space here to push the pause as Baal chewed it over longer.

Page 26

The idea that Baal would burn down Valhalla only struck me as I was writing this sequence. Of course he would. It just made sense.

This is a great example of Jamie being an amazing storyteller. I put her outside, and Jamie asked questions about how far, what would be nearby and so on. So we end up with an image which grounds this melodrama back to reality, hard. We see this godly palace burn sown from a simple London street. The movement between the two worlds. And morning. This is real. We wake up.

Also – Matt follows him. After the mythic colouring we've seen earlier, here we have this very normal, very real dawn. He's wonderful.

Worth noting there is a considerable time skip. By implication, Baal's performance lasted much longer than it took to read.

Mildly frustrated the issue printed a little dark, so the message was nearly unreadable, and was missed as the cliffhanger it is. Namely, a message from someone (I suspect many will guess who) catching up on the nights events... and The Norns being locked up again after Cass has said stuff?

In the original draft for the text I used the phrase “Sectioned” but was informed it's something which wouldn't make sense for a North American audience. I suspect I'll tweak again to get a cleaner message out.

Anyway – mildly frustrated the information doesn't 100% land here, but next issue goes at it running.

Page 27

I wanted a simple title here. It's Baal's story.

And that's it. God knows how much I'll edit out of this mess. The next issue is out tomorrow, and hopefully you'll find it interesting.

#writer notes #the wicked and the divine #WicDiv

138 notes · View notes

newstfionline · 6 years ago

Text

An Orphanage That Doesn’t Seem Like An Orphanage

Jason Beaubien, NPR, August 9, 2018

Orphanages are falling out of favor.

Ever since the horrific conditions in Romanian orphanages were widely publicized in the 1990s--naked children tied to cribs in overcrowded wards--there’s been a movement in the international aid world to shut down orphanages completely.

But according to UNICEF, there are still 2.7 million children living in orphanages worldwide.

So what if someone tried to set up a good orphanage--a place where parentless kids could thrive? What would it look like? And what could it tell us about the basics of child rearing?

It might look like this: A dozen kids piled on a couch watching a soccer match on TV while kids from neighboring houses drop by to chat. Other kids are preparing dinner in the kitchen. The kids call the employees of the institution “mom” and “auntie” while the staff call them “mi amor”--my love.

The kids and the adults at the SOS Children’s Village, an orphanage in Tela, Honduras, interact like a big extended family. It’s a place where dozens of kids who’ve been separated from their biological parents for a variety of reasons now live. Some of the kids’ parents are dead. Some have left the country. Some lost custody of their children because they couldn’t afford to feed them. All the kids have been placed at the institution by court order.

The director of the facility, Carolina Maria Matute, says what these kids need most is love. “A lot of love,” she says. “A lot of affection.”

The resident social worker, Jenny Zelaya, also puts love at the top of her list. But it’s also important that the children feel that the staff have their backs, she says. “It’s not just a job,” she says about working at this institution. “We take a real interest in them [the kids] succeeding and being able to achieve their goals.”

SOS Children’s Villages is a nonprofit aid group founded at the end of World War II in Austria. The organization is remarkable now for the sheer number of children it has in its care. It’s one of the largest providers of residential care to orphaned, abandoned and neglected kids worldwide, with more than 80,000 youngsters living in nearly 600 orphanages. SOS operates in 135 countries, primarily low- and middle-income nations. But it also runs three villages in the United States.

There are six SOS Children’s Village in Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Americas. On a per capita basis only people in Haiti earn less each year than Hondurans.

At the SOS Children’s Village in Tela, the “mom” in house #9 is 45-year-old Sandra Hernandez.

Hernandez describes herself as a sports fanatic. The house is known among the kids in the village as the place to go to watch soccer. Hernandez a die-hard supporter of the Spanish Futbol Club Barcelona. A blue and maroon Barca FC shield is pasted on the wall in the living room. But because Barcelona was eliminated from the Champions League tournament, Hernandez is rooting against Barcelona’s archrival Real Madrid.

The four teenagers in her house--three boys and a girl--refer to each other as brother and sister. Hernandez lives in the house full-time. When she takes her annual vacation an “SOS aunt” comes to stay with the kids for a week or two.

“It’s a family model,” Hernandez says. “It’s like a natural family.”

This SOS “village” is inside a large, fenced compound on the outskirts of the Caribbean coastal city of Tela. The 12 separate houses are connected by a footpath shaded by several giant mango trees. There’s an open field where the kids often play soccer. Chickens scurry amid the bushes.

Unlike some other orphanages, SOS doesn’t offer these kids for adoption to families in wealthier countries in North America or Europe. The goal is to make this village their home and to raise these kids in their own culture. Some kids do leave before reaching adulthood--but only to be placed with biological relatives or, if conditions have improved, to return to their parents.

The houses themselves are not fancy. They’re identical two-story, cinder block buildings with a kitchen and a living room on the ground floor and four bedrooms upstairs. Built in the mid-1970s they resemble bland public housing from that era.

The beige and brown paint outside many of them is peeling. The furniture inside is spartan and worn but Hernandez’s 15-year-old “daughter,” Naomi says her friends from school like coming over because she has such a nice house. (We’re calling her Naomi to shield her privacy and because she is a ward of the state.)

Naomi was placed at the SOS Children’s Village when she was 2 years old and has been living with Hernandez for the last eight years.

The SOS model, Hernandez says, provides a structure that gives the children natural social connections.

“It helps them a lot because they’re not isolated,” she says.

Hernandez says this not just because she’s worked here for ten years. She was placed at an SOS Village in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa when she was 3 and grew up there.

“I lived the same situation as them,” she says of the kids in the orphanage.

At Sandra Hernandez’s house the day starts early.

At 5:30 a.m. the youngest boy in the house who’s 15 is sweeping the back yard. Hernandez and Naomi are making breakfast. The two older boys stumble into the kitchen around 6:30. Hernandez is patting egg-size balls of dough into thick, traditional Honduran tortillas called baleadas.

Soon the children will go off to school--not in the children’s village but in the town. That’s part of the SOS strategy: to integrate the kids into the community so they can develop social connections that will help them find jobs and homes and spouses later in life.

One of the 16-year-old boys was just elected president of the student council, which is remarkable in part because he only returned to Tela a few months ago. He spent last year in a drug rehab program.

“They choose one student to represent the school in various activities,” Hernandez says. “And he’ll represent his school when they have meetings of all the schools in the city.”

She is extremely proud of him.

The daily routine at Hernandez’s house is a bit complicated because Naomi goes to the morning school session and the boys attend in the afternoon. On this day, the school, Instituto Triunfo de la Cruz, is celebrating its founding 69 years ago.

Naomi is one of a dozen contestants in what’s essentially a beauty pageant to see who will be crowned “Señorita Aniversario,” the queen of the anniversary festival.

As she walks confidently onto the stage the announcer declares that her hobby is studying and she hopes to become a medical doctor.

Naomi is one of three finalists--but doesn’t win the top prize.

Her 9th-grade math teacher, Jennifer Gamez, says Naomi is one of the best students in the school.

“You explain something once and she gets it,” Gamez says. “If she has a question or a doubt, she asks me about it. And her behavior is excellent.”

Gamez says many of her students live in poverty. Jobs are hard to come by in Honduras, but Gamez tells them that their situation in life doesn’t determine their future.

And Gamez says she’s been extremely impressed with students who’ve come from the SOS orphanage.

“I know a lot of them who’ve become professionals, they’re good people who come from this village,” she says. “I know a lot of people like that.”

There are also kids from the SOS Children’s Village who struggle. The youngest member of Hernandez’s household is one of them. One of his teachers says the 15-year-old doesn’t pay attention. He talks too much in class, doesn’t turn in his assignments. With a stern glare the teacher adds that he prefers to run around with his friends rather than do his work.

Hernandez says she’s aware of these problems and is trying to get him more focused.

The big question is: Would he fare any better if he were living with his biological parents?

Duke University professor Kathryn Whetten isn’t so sure. Whetten has researched residential care for kids who’ve been separated from their parents for various reasons and says that orphanages aren’t inherently bad.

“We see the same continuum of bad and good care in the group homes as we see in the family settings,” says Whetten.

For the last 12 years Whetten has been following 3,000 kids who were orphaned, abandoned or for some other reason separated from their biological parents. The professor of public policy and global health at Duke is conducting the study in five low- and middle-income countries. Half the kids are in institutions of some kind--government-run orphanages, private group homes. The other half have been placed with extended family members.

“What the kids really seem to need is a home-like environment,” Whetten says.

Regardless of whether they’re placed with extended family members or in institutions, the researchers found that the one thing the children need is a stable living situation. They don’t do well if they’re bounced from one place to another. Having consistent long-term caregivers and steady sibling-like connections to other kids is also important.

“So creating a family-like environment is what is really important,” Whetten says. “And that can happen in a family setting in a small home or it can happen in an orphanage slash institution slash group home like SOS.”

None of the SOS Children’s Villages are part of Whetten’s long-term study but she says the group has the right model of placing kids in small, stable units.

The worst residential care facilities for orphans, she says, tend to be government-run institutions where employees look after the children in shifts.

“They often come in in white coats as if they’re providing treatment. Usually there’s three [caregivers] per day who rotate in and out. By the very nature of what they’re doing they’re not as committed to each child,” Whetten says.

“And of course restraining the smaller kids, restraining them physically, is bad for them. We’ve seen very few of those [orphanages] that are really, really on the bad end and those are usually ones run by governments.”

Also places where shift workers care for the kids tend to have the wrong organizational structure.

For the SOS moms like Sandra Hernandez, there are no shifts. Hers is a 24-hour-a day job.

When Naomi gets home after the Señorita Aniversario pageant, Hernandez is waiting anxiously for her on the porch. She wants to hear all the details.

Naomi tells how she made it through the first three rounds and how the crowd was cheering as she walked out on stage. All her friends were sure she was going to win.

Hernandez beams with pride.

Later that evening Hernandez organizes kids from all 12 of the houses to help clean up an overgrown section of the village next to the soccer field.

As the sun fades the kids rake up piles of cut grass and leaves. They haul bushes and small tree limbs off to a pile by the outer fence. The kids also chase each other around. One teenage boy is keen to show that he can carry a bigger bag of leaves and dirt than anyone else.

Some of the younger girls practice a song. A young boy from a neighboring house keeps running over to hug Hernandez--for no particular reason. Eventually the work party turns into a soccer game.

Hernandez scores three goals but the kids insist she was offside. And what could be more fun than arguing about whether or not someone is cheating at backyard sports?

It feels a lot like a big family picnic.

#Honduras #Honduran orphanage #SOS Children’s Village

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dailycamilacabello · 7 years ago

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Welcome To Superstardom, Camila Cabello

Camila Cabello stuck the landing so emphatically that it’s easy to forget she leapt in the first place. This time last year the 20-year-old Cuban-Mexican singer from Miami was fresh out of Fifth Harmony, her generation’s most popular girl group, assembled by Simon Cowell from an array of teenage strangers on the short-lived American edition of The X Factor. Cabello’s departure was acrimonious but understandable given her rising profile and a rapidly expanding catalog of quality solo tracks that pegged her as a household name in the making. Cabello had been the first member of Fifth Harmony to score a solo hit (with the Shawn Mendes collaboration “I Know What You Did Last Summer”) and was on her way to matching the group’s best performance on the Billboard Hot 100 (with the Machine Gun Kelly duet “Bad Things”). She was guesting on tracks by big-name producers like Cashmere Cat and Major Lazer and seeking outlets to explore her own creativity outside the restrictive confines of a girl group. Superstardom seemed inevitable. A year later, on the eve of her debut album, it has come to pass: Cabello is now such a prominent figure in mainstream pop that her girl-group backstory is largely fading out of memory. And this is coming from someone who’s always had a lot of good things to say about the girl group in question. Fifth Harmony were never exactly Destiny’s Child, but they have quite a few bangers to their name. They made “Work From Home.” They made “Sledgehammer.” They made the criminally underrated “BO$$.” Cabello’s history with the group is not some embarrassing chapter to be erased. Yet at a time when her absence has become the only interesting storyline Fifth Harmony have left, Fifth Harmony has come to feel like a footnote in Cabello’s own narrative. This could have gone much differently. Last May, riding high on the success of “Bad Things,” Cabello released “Crying In The Club,” the lead single from her debut album The Hurting, The Healing, The Loving. It peaked at #47 and flopped as much as a song with nearly 125 million YouTube views can be considered a flop. At the very least it was enough of a failure that eight months later the album has a different title (Camila) and “Crying In The Club” isn’t on it — not even as a bonus track. That song, which Cabello cowrote with Sia and Benny Blanco, was an above-average bit of dark, melodramatic dancehall-pop with production that artfully nodded toward her Latin roots, but it never found an audience beyond the fiercely loyal fan base she inherited from Fifth Harmony. It didn’t much help that the video began with a lengthy prologue built around a different, less immediate track called “I Have Questions.” The tearful ballad, which wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the video’s YouTube description, may have tested viewers’ patience and caused some confusion about what her single actually sounded like — or at least that was my own experience. Here’s where Cabello’s career path reminds us how much the music industry can function like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Had “Crying In The Club” caught fire, maybe we’d have gotten the album she originally envisioned, one defined by heartbreak and recovery. Instead, the album experienced the usual delays and revisions incurred by a failed lead single, which brought on another fork in the road: In some other timeline, such stumbles might have multiplied until Cabello’s album was released without buzz or shelved indefinitely. In this dimension, she converted what seemed like a roadblock into extra runway to continue reshaping and improving her project. It was not unlike when fellow Floridian teen-celebrity survivor Ariana Grande rolled out “Focus,” the lead single from her album Moonlight, only to watch it brick. Grande retreated to the lab and reemerged months later with the title track from her new album Dangerous Woman, essentially pretending the whole “Focus” thing never happened. Cabello pulled a similar maneuver, but she handed over the next choice in her Choose Your Own Adventure to the fans. In August she returned with two more singles, each one an improvement over “Crying In The Club.” Although both tracks paired her with massively popular Atlanta rappers, they were markedly different exercises. The Charli XCX cowrite “OMG” was a slow-creeping trap-pop production built around the appealing chorus “Oh my God! You look good today,” featuring the suddenly ubiquitous Migos leader Quavo doing his usual Auto-Tuned ad-libs and non-sequiturs. “Havana,” meanwhile, was more like hip-hop salsa music, a sly and seductive story-song buoyed by cowriter Pharrell’s signature vibrancy and a typically weird guest verse from Young Thug. By releasing them at the same time, Cabello seemed to be crowdsourcing her next stab at a lead single. It worked. “Havana” has become far and away her biggest hit, dominating at radio and lingering for weeks at #2 on the Hot 100. In retrospect it’s an obvious winner: sneakily catchy and contagiously slinky, with a central piano riff that swings like graceful hips and a casual, conversational vocal performance that occasionally darts into high drama. Even before Cabello released a remix with Daddy Yankee, “Havana” was perfectly timed to capitalize on the massive popularity of “Despacito.” In the loosest sense, here was another seamless blend of hip-hop and Latin pop, yet built from such different strains of hip-hop and Latin pop that it would always stand alone as its own thing. Furthermore, its stupendously fun video by Kendrick Lamar collaborator Dave Meyers — in which Cabello plays multiple roles including a primped telenovela actress, a geeky fangirl, and a svelte young woman gliding across a Cuban dance floor — confirmed the star power suggested by her trashy noir turn in “Bad Things.” This time a lengthy video intro worked in her favor: a short story so delightfully immersive that it almost turned the monster single it was promoting into a secondary concern. The clip has been viewed well over 400 million times. Meanwhile “Havana” has been the most played song on pop radio for the past seven weeks, the longest such streak in five years. The groundwork is laid for Camila to be a blockbuster success. Even if the album doesn’t spin off any more hits, “Havana” alone should be enough to propel it to the top of the Billboard 200 and cement Cabello’s status as an A-list pop star. Frankly, though, the prospect of no more hits from Camila seems unlikely. Although it’s a crime she left “OMG” off the tracklist, there’s plenty of radio bait to fill the vacuum once “Havana” finally subsides. Perhaps reflexively rejecting the grandiosity of “Crying In The Club,” Camila feels intentionally compact and small-scale, less an Event Album in the Lemonade sense than a concise portfolio of potential singles. She recently told Zane Lowe she changed the album title and left off so many of her early solo tracks because she was leaving that period of personal tumult in the past. What remains is crisp and focused, engineered for world domination at a time when the sound of pop has become decidedly thin and ephemeral. The album exists in the omnivorous but streamlined sonic environment common to top-40 radio right now, cohesive in its air-light agility but with enough leeway to lean into various genres. That’s exemplified by the two advance tracks Cabello shared in her latest double drop: Lovestruck album opener “Never Be The Same” is surging, synth-powered festival-core that could almost pass for indie rock with the right marketing plan. On the other hand, “Real Friends” is a spare, simple guitar tune, like Justin Bieber’s Selena Gomez kiss-off “Love Yourself” re-imagined in Gomez’s own airy aesthetic. It’s one of several tracks that seem to reference Cabello’s falling out with Fifth Harmony — “I’m just looking for some real friends/ All they ever do is let me down” — and one of a few to embrace naked minimalism, along with the similarly guitar-driven “All These Years” and a wistful piano ballad called “Consequences.” Another piano-powered lament, “Something’s Gotta Give,” begins modestly before blooming into emotional theatrics. “Havana” is sandwiched by two other Latin-tinged club tracks, the reggaeton banger “She Loves Control” (a fitting anthem for a singer who told The New York Times she chose a solo career because “if anyone wants to explore their individuality, it’s not right for people to tell you no”) and the booming, skittering Caribbean flirtation “Inside Out.” The trip-hop excursion “In The Dark” sounds bathed in the same blacklight that once illuminated Sneaker Pimps. And perhaps no song on Camila seems more earmarked to follow “Havana” into ubiquity than the brisk, rhythmically charged album closer “Into It,” an effortlessly catchy come-on built from lyrics like, “I’m not a psychic, but I see myself all over you.” Aggressive synth swells, soft neon curlicues, and a motion-compelling digital drum loop add up to a refreshing jolt of energy. It sounds, to quote Cabello’s own recent contribution to the Bright soundtrack, like someone running for the crown. [source]

#camila cabello #album review #camila #news

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