#sorry the proportions are screwy

[choccymilkblehhh]

testing markers in my art class i made me n pookie’s splatsonas blehh

[taylorscottbarnett]

First: Go to hell you bourgeois. Sorry I get a little annoyed at the same tired advice from rich people that never look at their situation or millennials with any context and seem to think they have a magic bullet that will fix everything stemming from their knowledge at their brilliant success while never recognizing the heaping amounts of luck and privilege not granted to most peasants -- err, I mean common folk, ummmm, people.

Youe highnesses, may I present a rebuttle of your vastly oversimplified idealistic veiw of exactly what you did right and what millenials are just too stupid to realize?

Coffee: Let's go with the average of $92 a month. That's $3.06 a day.

Shoes: First, you realize that when it comes to dress shoes certain things have to match right? But I digress, the article states the average person owns 12 pairs. Your claim that women may own more shoes -- have you considered that they have to match what the person wears? You go to work in shoes that don't match the rest of your outfit and see the looks you get.

Besides that however, do you realize people generally don't buy 12 shoes a year every year? They might OWN 12 pairs, but it's not a continuous recurring cost every single year.

I buy tennis shoes usually two pairs at a time. I have three pairs of "dress" shoes, one black, one brown, one of those a recent purchase, about a year old. The other is oh, three years old when I was going too see Wicked and realized I didn't actually own any dress shoes. Lastly one pair of marching band shoes I've owned for, oh, 16 years, mostly for things needing slightly better shoes than sneakers, but not that dressed up.

In addition, I have a two pairs of running shoes, and three pairs of tennis shoes. I also own a pair of hiking boots that are nearly a decade old, and a four year old pair of snow boots.

Know why? Those tennis shoes I bought on sale, and if I alternate shoes by week they don't wear out as fast, meaning I dont have to buy shoes again when they might not be discounted.

Jeans: for years I only owned, oh, three pairs of jeans. I spent the last two years adding more to my wardrobe. I've maybe 8 pairs of jeans, ranging from work clothing, to casual. I've 8 pairs of pants from Swiss Tech I picked up over the course of a year when they went on sale. They tend to make up a large portion of what I wear to class. Two pairs of dress pants. Some of those are 6 years old. Some are 1. Thing is, when you can alternate clothing, you can put off doing laundry until you have a full load. Saving you money in the long run in terms of detergent, water, electricity, and wear and tear on your clothes from use/washing -- meaning you don't have to replace them for ages. I'll wear those clothing for an average of about 8-10 years each. A pair of my black jeans are nearly a decade old and apart from a rip at the knee when I fell off a stage and busted by knee last year they are in great shape. Screw you.

Your seven percent a year profit from investing is screwy as hell you know that? That's an average over decades. Between 1926 and 2014, returns were in that “average” band of 8% to 12% only six times. The rest of the time they were much lower or much higher. It also doesn't account for luck. Those gains only materialized if you happen to have owned stocks on the best performing days.

According to JP Morgan if you missed the best ten days from Jan. 01, 1999 to Dec. 31, 2018, your overall return of 7% becomes oh, about 3.5%. Average inflation for that time period was 2.18% total accumulative inflation was 50.72%

Take the average inflation away from the overall return, and if you missed just the 10 best days of the market over a 20 year period (or you know, for my generation happened to be like 10 at the start of 1999) your return is a paltry little over 1%.

It takes money to invest and have a decent, diversified portfolio, assuming you invest only in mutual funds so you dont have to buy one share of Amazon at oh nearly $2,000, even if you are only investing via an app like Acorns.

And about that coffee: I'm a barista. I spent 4 years saving my tips and putting them towards 15k in student loans at 7% interest. Along with a $100 month payment. I also got lucky, I helped take care of my COPD stricken aunt. I lived rent free, and could afford to put an extremely large amount of my income towards those debts. I also would turn around and put the tax deduction savings from the interest payments towards paying off debt.

My customers went a long way towards me paying off my loans. A married couple for example tipped me a dollar each. They got a large coffee each. That's $6 total from their family budget. It was also about $520 in tips to me a year. Did that $6/day mean a lot to them? Probably not. Did the coffee before work? Definitely. Did the $520 a year mean a lot to me? Absolutely.

Acorns lists Americans spending an average of $92/month on coffee. $3 a day. Does it mean a lot to them? The cost probably not. Does the experience enrich their soul? Help them survive at work? Keep them from quiting or setting fire to their boss? Absolutely. Does this save them money in the long run? Probably.

So maybe the next time you are giving advice, consider that not everyone happend to found a learning software company in the late 80's that got lucky and was sold to Mattel making you multimillionaire. Or happened to be sent to an expensive boarding school for your education. (While I don't know what it cost your parents, it's current tuition is listed as $53,000 /year).

Or attended a school that only cost only about $2,500 a year, (that's $15,808.15 in today's dollars) as opposed to the $52k it is today.

Then again ecconomic Conservatives have a big tendency towards blowing their successes out of proportion while minimizing failures. (After all, you claimed Donald Trump was "Smart as a fox" pretty much even a glance at his string of lies, deceit, scandles, shady dealings, multiple business failures, twitter feed, or his extremely obvious incompetence in deal making or negotiation with Republicans or Democrats in Congress, never mind other political scandals since taking office, would easily confirm Trump is a trust-fund baby, carnival barker, who's much better at lying, cheating, and screwing over people than actually being a businessman.)

[dramallamadingdang]

Lately, me=long text posts. Sorry. :)

This post is for @immerso-sims, mostly, but also might be of interest to people who use Almighty Hat's age mod that makes lifestage lengths proportional to the 3-day length of Sim gestation. (So, basically, 4 Sim-days=1 real year because real pregnancy is roughly 3/4 of a year long.)  I'm mostly making a post because the reply got too long and I didn't want to reblog. :)

The overall goal of Hat’s mod is to make a Sim's lifetime relatively realistic in that that lifestage lengths remain realistically proportional. So, you don't have toddlers who are toddlers for the same amount of time that they're infants when toddlerhood ought to be roughly 3-4x longer than infancy, or teenhood that lasts twice as long as childhood when, realistically, it ought to be roughly the other way around, if you figure childhood starting at age 5, when most kids start kindergarten, and teenhood being 13-18. 

Anyway, the issue we were talking about a little was the elder lifestage transition which, with this mod in, happens when the sim is “only” 184 days/46 years old. Now, granted, this happens after the Sim has had 112 days/28 years of adulthood, so at that point you might be very ready to move on. :) But the thing is that Sims can then possibly be an elder for a very long time after that, depending on how many aspiration "bonus points" they get at their adult-to-elder age transition. And by "very long," I mean 200+ days of elderhood, about twice the length of the very long adult lifestage.

It does take patience and a lack of things going screwy with the neighborhood -- which, let’s face it, things tend to happen with that even if you do nothing “wrong” -- but it you make it through a couple generations, you start to notice that a significant percentage of your population is slouchy, shuffling, gray-haired things that, although they may only be 50 years old, look like they're about 1 day away from the grave. :) This happened in a neighborhood I played a while back, where I made it to the second born-in-game generation being in their teens before that computer died on me. So, I had a lot of shuffling elders from the founding and first born-in-game generation kicking around. It just seemed kind of...off. Granted, this is likely because my Sims tend to be very happy pixel people, in general, because I play according to their wants, so they get lots of those age-transition bonus points. One can affect this with mods that alter how aspiration points are accumulated and how quickly they decay. I tried some of those mods, in fact, but ultimately didn't like them. I guess I like my happy, mostly-platinum pixel people. ;)

Anyway, Hat's reasoning for the relatively early onset of elderhood in her scheme is simple: 1) Female Sim elders can't get pregnant, at least not without alternate pregnancy controllers, so elderhood ought to hit about the time that women enter perimenopause, which is usually in their mid/late 40s, at which point it's very unlikely that a woman will get pregnant without artificial hormonal assistance. Also, it's apparently very hard to stretch ACR's fertility curve past that age, for folks who use ACR and allow it to dictate how many babies a couple will have. And 2) For real humans of both sexes, age of death varies widely. Some people die relatively young from a massive heart attack at 50 or from cancers or other health issues. Some people live to be 100. Which is a 50-real-year/200 sim-day difference. For this reason, it makes sense to have a 200+-day-long elderhood, to reflect these real-life possibilities, for those striving for realism. If you don’t have pretty-much-permanently-happy Sims, you would possibly see that range of death ages. But for me? Not so much. Most of mine seemed to be the living-to-100 type. :)

But even if that wasn’t the case...I don't need quite THAT much realism in my game. :) Really, I just want more time with my pixels, so that I can do things like let them have true days off that aren't dedicated to frantically skilling so that they can get those 2 skill points they need for their next promotion. The pixel has plenty of time to get that promotion and still make it to the top of their career, so they can take a day or 10 and just sit at their current job level for a while and do purposeless-but-fun things on days off. At the same time, I don't want a neighborhood where the largest percentage of the population is young-but-very-old-looking elders. And while, yes, I could do things to make elders look less-old-looking in my game (non-gray hairs in the elder bin, clothing that uses the adult body meshes, etc.), A)  I don’t want the CC and B) Even if I had it, I probably wouldn’t bother because then the young-looking elders with that elder voice is kinda...strange, probably because I’m a very aurally-oriented person.

So, I've often thought about fiddling with the age of elder transition in Hat's mod, but what put me off was the thought of also having to alter its accompanying modded ACR controller, to adjust the fertility curve accordingly. So, I reread Hat's notes about doing that before I went to bed, and kinda went "Eh, I don't think so." But then, when I woke up, it struck me that I don't really HAVE to mess with the controller.

As it is, fertility is cut off for females at around age 46 (Hat said that it actually ends a few days after that), which is about where it ought to happen, IMO. I looked it up and, according to the Mayo Clinic, the median age of the start of perimenopause is 47.5. I mean, yeah, some insane women these days are birthing babies at 50, but generally speaking they usually need some sort of hormonal intervention to do so. It doesn't often happen naturally that way. So if you leave the ACR controller as-is but push back the elder age transition to, let's say, 70/280 days instead of 46/184 days...You suddenly have middle age, which is something that I've kind of wanted in the game. You basically have me, in fact: Through menopause and therefore infertile, and, yes, with a lot of gray hair if I'm not assiduous about coloring it, but not (yet) heavily wrinkled and hunchbacked and decrepit with a scratchy, grandma-sounding voice. Yeah, such female Sims could get pregnant if you use the manual/Maxis way, but since I rarely do that...? (And if I wanted to, I could, and call it “hormonal intervention.” ;) ) So, this actually makes sense to me. In fact, I could even make Sims in that stage look middle-aged. Give them some graying hairs, put a few wrinkles on their face, perhaps dress them a little more conservatively because most middle-aged bodies ARE a bit gravity-challenged so most of us don't run around in midriff-baring tops and short-short skirts, but we're not yet shambling and decrepit. Do that and then, when the elder transition does hit, it's not quite so shocking and sudden a physical difference.

So, basically lop off 100 days from that possible elderhood with Hat's mod and make a (sort of) functional middle age out of it. In turn, this makes the "adult" stage more like a "younger adult" stage, when they'll focus more on raising young children, if they have kids, and maybe not hitting the top of their career until that middle age which, again, would be more realistic than a pack of 25-year-old CEOs and whatnot.

So, tl;dr: I'm going to fuss with Hat's aging mod to push back the elder transition while leaving the modded ACR controller as-is, thus creating a quasi-functional, infertile (for females) “middle age.” I'm going to start up a little testing neighborhood and toss in some testing Sims to check the fertility percentages and whatnot, see if it works like I'm hoping it will.

Also, immerso, I’ll put together a list of the “supporting” mods I have, hopefully with links. It’s actually not that many, especially because a couple of them affect Freetime things, which you don’t have because Mac. (Gah, I don’t think I’d like playing without secondary aspirations. :( ) And of course, if you do decide to play a neighborhood with this mod, I can share the tweaked aging if it works like I hope, since no SimPE for you. :)

[araminthe-ispwitch]

hi so i love your writing its amazing i especially love gay highschool romance its my favourite i was wondering if i could have some advice im trying to write a school fic and im not sure how to transition between different characters since theres quite a lot. its in third person if that helps. if you have any other tips for school fics id be happy to hear them :)

WOWOKAY HOLY SHIT IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE SOMEONE PRAISED MY KNB FIC

(Alsoshit I have to update OTL)

((butalso wOW??? SOMEONE’S ASKING FOR WRITING ADVICE FROM ME???))

(((Okay,I rambled way too much here with advice when you were just asking aboutcharacter transitions… so uh I’ll just put this under Keep Reading. Anon, yourspecific question is answered on #6. If anyone’s interested in writing tips, feel free to skip some ramblings.)))

Well,okay, actually, The ExaggeratedlyPerilous Journey of a Gay High School Romance or GHSR had been my veryfirst school fic (I can’t count that one DNAngel fic ‘cause the setting washalf-outside of school…) and the one thing I noticed while writing it was that ahuge cast of characters needs to be handled with care, otherwise things cangrow way out of proportion.

Letme give a little more exposition on what happened to me exactly first, so you’llunderstand how important writing this fic had been for me:

GHSRwas my second fic in my entire life. After my DNAngel fic (which I really don’t encourage you guys to readunless you want a cringe-y flashback to your teenage weaboo days), I took along break from writing until KnB came along and inspired me. Now, whathappened in that break was that I got slowly influenced by other writers’styles as I read and read, so once I started creating GHSR, it was oodles morerefined than my first fic.

Butit still had that weaboo factor in it somewhere. I hadn’t practiced in a while,so I haven’t gotten rid of that thing yet.

(Andhere I will admit that my first writing style was really heavily inspired by acertain DNAngel fic author. She had written crackfics and I unfortunately adoptedher habit of using “blunette, blue orbs, teardropped, etc.” Yeah. Are youcringing yet? ‘Cause I am. Still, thanks for inspiring me, lady.)

Now,when I wrote Ch. 1 and 2 of GHSR, I was still using my old style. But as Iwrote chapters 3, 4, and 5—and as my word count climbed higher and higher forevery chapter jesus christ—I finally started to find my own style and startedcorrecting all the cringe-y habits I had before (hence why I had refined Chapter1 a while back). So what I’m saying here,anon, is that that experimental school fic of mine practically made me realize howto properly write a school fic.

(I’msorry this will be a bit longer pls bear with me let’s focus on the advice partnow)

Okay,first of all, if your school fic will be having a huge cast (because you canactually writing a fic set in a school without writing a lot of characters init), it’s best to really know each character’s persona. This is easy since if youread a lot of fanfics about the fandom you’re going to write for, you will havea lot of references on how the character is written by the majority. Forexample, I learned how to write Takao by reading works about him, and then Ijust added my own interpretation of him a bit and viola, I now have a Takao whofits my “everyone goes to one school” AU. It’s amazing because a lot of myreaders tell me Takao is so in-character in my fic, but when you really thinkabout it, his entire character isn’t completely shown in the canon as opposedto Kuroko or Kagami, right? But I managed to write him well enough that heseems natural to the readers because they’ve read other works about him, too—andall because I did my research on how his character works!

Anotherexample for this is when I fucked up Kagami’s character. OTL

Backin GHSR’s Ch. 1, I freely wrote Kagami as this food-loving delinquent who ispretty much down to fight. I was sofucking wrong. Watching the next seasons of KnB, I realized with horrorthat I fudged him up so bad and was really so embarrassed and basically, Iwanted to delete my fic right then and there. He’s a food lover, yeah, but he’snot actually actively looking fortrouble. He’s actually a well-mannered kid who is just skirting close todelinquency due to his looks, but is actually just a huge basketball dork.Those times he gets in trouble with authorities? Not actually his fault becausehe’s a mischievous kid—he’s just really unlucky lmao.

(Andthat is why I rewrote Ch. 1. I didn’t do enough research on him and I felt bad.OTL)

Okay,so basically this first advice is me telling you to read other fanfics and do your research. Major characters arepretty easy since they’re popular. It’s the side/minor ones you have to payattention to if you’re going to make them protagonists like what I did withGHSR, since they’re not fully fleshed out and it’s up to the fans to give themtheir own interpretation (like what I did with Sakurai Ryou). A word ofcaution, though: you have to be carefulin distinguishing canon from fanon during your writing. Fanon tends tooverwhelm the canon when the fandom accepts it more—when in reality, the fanonis inaccurate. I can’t think of an example in KnB, but in Yuri on Ice, OtabekAltin had become an Ensemble Dark Horse character in the anime because of hisconnection to Yuri Plisetsky, one of the major characters. Despite his littlescreen time, he’s now one of the most popular guys in the fandom and because ofhis character profile’s small size, the fans have pretty much supplied itthemselves—which kind of ruined his persona a bit. I’ve seen some fanworkswhere he seemed out of character, and that’s a bit dangerous when you’rewriting. So tread carefully when researching characters through fanworks.

Secondadvice: research school fics by reading school fics. Yep, this oneis pretty simple. Just find a school fic, and if you can’t put it down, keepreading and enjoy. You can come back for serious studying on it. (You can do soon my fic lol.) Even better: find a school fic on the fandom you’re going towrite for! If its style is within your standards, then go ahead and use it as astudy material. You might think I’m telling you to copy it, but oh no, I’m actuallytelling you to let it influence yourknowledge of how school fics work. For example, when I was inspired towrite for DNAngel, I never bothered about the mechanics of how schools incertain countries work—because I thoughtthat all schools in the world worked the same. (I hate teenage me.) It wasonly through spending enough time with anime and fanfics that bothered todescribe the Japanese schools’ inside slipper system that I realized that “oh fuck I’ve been basing Japanese schoolson my country’s schools oH SHIT”. Now, I can get away with that in DNAngel,where the rules and the world are a bit screwy. But I cannot bullshit my way through KnB, an anime that is fucking based in Japan. I, as a writer, amexpected to be responsible enough to research the setting of KnB, which is Japan’s education system. So not only amI telling you to research by reading school fics, I am also telling you toresearch the setting of the story. Chances are, there will be some differencesfrom what you know and what is actually real. And not only the setting, too, butthe culture of the school—not all schools mandate their students to clean theirrooms by themselves, and not all schools freely allow their students to go therestroom (looking at you, America). These are simple things you can look up onGoogle, and if you’re lucky, you’ll come across stuff like this in Tumblr, too.

Thirdadvice: it’s okay to be vague sometimes.There’s no need for you to be specific on a lot of details or even reverentlywrite what happened to a character the whole day. You can skip the time to amore interesting event or just be general about something. Because if you getway too focused on giving out every detail, not only will it bore your readers,it will also bore you and tire you out. Take GHSR, for example. In Ch. 5, thetimeline was from Tuesday to Friday, but despite my overly-long chapter, I didn’tactually write every single day on the story from morning to night. I showedwhat was happening in school in general and skipped to the really important andeventful moments for my characters to give movement to the story. Because I can’tjust put so much interaction if it doesn’t mean anything—that would be pointlessand exhausting. This really helpswhen your school fic has a huge cast, like mine. (In fact, the only reason thefirst few chapters were reverently following each day was because the startingcast was small, but it’ll soon grow and I’ll have to put plenty of time-skips.)

Eventhough what you’re writing is a school fic, you still have a designatedprotagonist, so most of the story revolves around them, hence the need to notdetail every single aspect of their life. It’s only called a school fic becausethat’s their setting.

Fourthadvice: your protagonist doesn’t have totalk to everybody in the room. Imagine Kagami in his classroom in my fic,with Aomine beside him, and Kuroko and Sakurai at the back. And then all theother classmates have been replaced with the cast of KnB—so technically, everyoneknows each other inside that room. Now, just because Kagami knows everyonedoesn’t mean he’s entitled to chat all of them up—nor are you entitled to forcehim to. Some writers (most especially those starting out, as I saw this yearsago, but hopefully, this generation has learned) think they have to forceinteractions for everybody so it won’t be boring, but actually, that would besuch a tedious process. You have to think about this realistically, even thoughit’s fiction. Even the most social butterfly in KnB would get tired if theyhold conversations with everyone in the span of a certain period of time. Thepurpose of a school fic is to emulate a school setting, and you don’t reallysee everyone interacting with each other, right? That would be chaos. Let therebe peace—in intervals. For example, when Misdirection was having their firstpractice in GHSR back in Ch. 4, everyone knew each other in the clubroom, but Ididn’t write them all talking to each other. Aomine and Midorima were isolatedfrom the rest and hadn’t talked to the others unless necessary. So unless your character wants to interact with someone specifically, it’sokay to just let them be silent.

Fifthadvice: DON’T PHYSICALLY DESCRIBE YOURCHARACTERS WHEN YOU’RE WRITING IN THEIR PERSPECTIVE.JUST DON’T. There’s this post I’ve found in Tumblr  (which I urge you to read) after finishing Chapter5, where it’s a bit demeaning to refer to the character you’re using with blandtitles/epithets like “the blonde” or “the male”, as if that was the only thing going for them. I admitted that it is, but at the same time, I gottause this style sometimes becausethere will always be scenes where several characters are all altogether. InGHSR, I can’t help but refer to Hyuga as the “bespectacled one” because thereare other black-haired upperclassmen besides him. Even with Kagami and Akashi—Ihave to distinguish the two. It helps that you describe their other features,but giving them titles like the ones above can be a bit too much if there’s noone else in the area that has the same description, ya know? So I propose this:

Don’tdo this:

The black-haired and blue-eyed kickboxer stared at the mop of blondehair he could see outside the gates and sighed.

Do this:

The kickboxer stared at the mop of blonde hair he could see outsidethe gates and sighed.      

“ButAra!” you say, with shocked eyes, “isn’t the first one your style? That line wasin the beginning of Chapter 5!”

Yes,it is. But you know what else? I wrote that line over two fucking years ago. I posted the chapter over a year ago and I didn’t edit that lineout. But over the course of a year, my style concerning this naming thing haschanged, and now I am actively trying to lessen that kind of thing in my works.I didn’t have to remind my readers that Kasamatsu Yukio had black hair and blueeyes. That was just my ego talking,being fancy as I add the descriptions to his title. That whole thing wasone of the very habits I’ve retained from my DNAngel days—and I fucking hate it actually so please don’t emulate me and just keepyour character’s self-perspective simple. Please.

Okay,sixth advice (and the last one for now because this has become too long): transitioning between characters inthird-person perspective is easy as long as you keep things SIMPLE. Sobasically, you just have to apply the simplicity above when leaping from onecharacter to another! It’s actually pretty easy when it involves dialogue:

Sakurai chuckled nervously at the answer. “I-I’m sure they canimprove, Sensei.”

“Oh, I’m hoping for it. Otherwise, we’ll all be in trouble,” said Kogawith an aggravated sigh.

“Maybe if you didn’t suspend us, we wouldn’t be struggling right now,”muttered Aomine, glancing sideways at the door.

See?For every line of dialogue, there was a corresponding character assigned to it.Dialogue tags and extra exposition helps.

Onthe other hand, for internal narration:

As much as Kise wanted to see Kasamatsu as soon as possible, hedecided to hold back since it was obvious his best friend needed a companion—anotion that Midorima rejected almost immediately, of course. Shintarou didn’tneed anyone tagging along with him as he switched from one department toanother. And he most definitely didn’t need Kise Ryouta pestering him withquestions about Takao.

Seehow in the first half, the narration was in Kise’s third-person POV, and thenon the other half, it’s Midorima’s? As long as you’re referring to who is thinkingat the moment and showing the readers whose mind it is you’re narrating,everything will be fine.

Thisalso works with dialogue-to-narration:

“You four are already in an agreement, correct?” he askedmatter-of-factly. The four high-schoolers paused at his words, staring at himin surprise and bubbling dread. There was something about the way the lightglinted off the math teacher’s glasses that warned them to be cautious, and sothey reluctantly nodded.

Thefirst sentence was in Koga-sensei’s POV, then the rest was showing what Kagami,Aomine, Kuroko, and Sakurai were experiencing.

Justkeep things simple. The best tip I can offer here is “if you’re gettingconfused by the transitions yourself,then chances are, your readers will be, too.”

Soagain:

1)Study your characters’ personas.

2)Research by finding similar works.

3)Being vague in storytelling is alright sometimes.

4)Social interaction with each character in a large group isn’t a must.

5)Don’t dump descriptions on your character all the time. (Unless you’re writingcomedy, but that’s for another lesson.)

6)Keep things simple so character transitions aren’t confusing or jarring.

That’sall I can think of for now. If you still have specific questions, don’t beafraid to message me! Honestly, though? Just keep on experimenting andpracticing with your writing. Read fanfics and do your research. That phasebetween DNAngel and KnB was my dominant experimental phase and actually, I’mstill improving and refining my own style, which you’ll notice if you check outmy new fics. Go and find your own style, too! :)

[barbecuedphoenix]

Which chick movie do you think the Eldarya guys would (really, really, in a embarrassing way) love?

This was a fun request. ^u^

It’s just a shame that Idon’t know that many chick-flicks, so I included a few male-POV romances toround this out. I tried my best. :(

So, assuming that the guyswere spirited away to the 20th - 21st century humanrealm, and grew up here watching our movies…

Nevra

Are you kidding? He knows all the chick-flicks! Growing up with akid sister, he used to watch at least one romance a week. (Frankly, this started out as a way to keep her out oftrouble on weekends, but it morphed into a routine once she entered her tweens.Now, they still meet up for movie marathons every few weeks. It’s theirguilty pleasure.)

He is definitely not ashamedof watching chick movies. Their stories generally have more character and heartthan, say, testosterone-pumped action flicks that all guys are ‘supposed’ towatch. Not to mention that women’s movies have a much higher proportion of eye candy because of the female lead’sscreen time…

But the biggest real life benefit?Knowing and liking chick-flicks is a boonwhen a guy is picking up a date. You all wonder why Nevra is so popular withwomen? Blame his sister for training him up on their entertainment.

What he enjoys:

Powerful and ambitious,but flawed heroes with initially zero chance of ‘getting the girl’… and gettheir hearts stomped on at least once. Their common Achilles heel:loneliness.    

Plucky, but innocentheroines who unknowingly hold the power to twist their man’s heart. And ifthey’re smoking-hot on the screen, he’s got another good reason to watch themovie.

Power-games, schemes,and corporate backstabbing shenanigans, where there is no clear dividebetween wrong and right.

Snappy dialogue witha cynical touch

(Crazily) balancing life’s priorities: first sacrificing love on the altar for ambition, power,reputation, etc. And then sacrificing more to get it back.

Redemption andforgiveness for the lead(s).

Personaltransformation in order to get ahead in life, and then again to win or save arelationship. (i.e. rags-to-riches Cinderella themes)

High-budget movieswith A-list actors; he likes qualityentertainment, thank you. He’ll also watch anything with Harrison Ford init.

Favorite ‘chick’ movies:

Sabrina (the1995 remake): This movie embodies everything Nevra loves in a romantic-comedy.He loves the story, the dialogue, and all the actors. But he reallyfeels for the hero Linus (quote from the movie: ‘the world’s only living heartdonor’), who starts off seducing the heroine to save his family’s businessinterests and his brother’s engagement, only to fall in love with her.Then gets the door slammed in his face once the love-of-his-life learns hisreasons and leaves the country. …What? He swears that has never happened to him before.

The Devil Wears Prada (2006): This is more of a laugh-fest for Nevrathan a romance. Keeping your head above water using your wits in NYC, whilescurrying around for an ultra-glamorous, fire-breathing boss with personalissues? Andy isn’t the typical heroine he likes to follow, but he sure wisheshe has an employee like her. But he is nota fire-breathing boss! What are you implying?  

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast(1991): You read that correctly. Whether animated, live-action, or on Broadway,this classic holds a firm place in Nevra’s heart. This is also the one moviehe’s embarrassed to love. He was skeptical first at watching aG-rated movie—Karenn had dragged him to see it when she was a kid–, but he wasthe one who teared up when the Beast released Belle, thus doominghimself to life as a pariah and monster. (His mental dialogue during thatscene: “Of course he had to let her go! He loved her!”. His mental dialoguelater when the lynch mob arrived: “You bastards! Leave him alone! Hasn’t hesuffered enough?!”) Nevra still gets a reaction when Karenn starts humming theBeast’s solo– ‘If I Can’t Love Her’– from the musical.  

Ezarel

Chick-flicks?Ugh! Spare him the torture! There must be other types of brainlessentertainment you can subject him to.

Ezarel won’t be caught deadwatching a romantic-comedy. Not unless it’s a very quirky, nontraditional,indie movie that’s more bittersweet than sentimental, makes fun of its owncharacters, and isn’t exclusively told from the female POV. That way, he’ll sayhe’s watching a screwball comedy instead. (So it has a little romance in it. What movie doesn’t, these days?)    

What he enjoys:

A cast ofcompletely-flawed, borderline obnoxious characters, who rarely get what theydeserve (good or bad).

An underdog leadingman (or woman), who’s the only smart one in the movie and frequently a lonelyoutcast. (He will not tolerate anair-headed protagonist.)

Fast-paced trollingdialogue, non-stop sarcastic humor, and screwball jokes. Pranks are a bonus.  

Realisticrelationships (i.e. with all the ugly baggage, awkwardness, and confusion thathappen in real life).

The constant struggleto overcome distance, misunderstanding, and social obstacles. (i.e. the ideathat people are completely unreliable, and that romance never makes sense.)

Unrequited love andbittersweet endings.  

Breaking movietraditions and the fourth wall. If a movie is serious from start-to-finish, andasks him to suspend disbelief for 90+ minutes, then Ez practically fallsasleep.  

Cult classics. A-Listblockbusters are pretentious, and plain boring.Give him weird animations, weirder stories, and bizarre camera angles anyday. 

Favorite Romantic Comedies:

Annie Hall(1977): Ezarel adores Woody Allen, and this movie is seen as ‘The Romance’ inhis collection. He can watch this film over and again just to catch allthe references and in-jokes. He also turns to this movie for general lessons onhow to cope with relationships. And you all wonder why he’s so salty.

What If (2013):One of the few modern romances with a happy ending that still has Ezarellaughing out of his seat. He knows the friend-zone very well, and how it’seasier (and more dignified) to stay there rather than to try to climb out. He certainly does not hope that what happens to Wallacehappens to him one day. He’ll gladly live life without falling for a friend andgetting punched down the stairs.  

Amelie (2001):He always turns beet-red when someone catches him watching this classic.Because he only watches it for the pranks and the deadpan narration, he swears!All right, so he feels a bit sorry for the quirky outcasts Amelie and Nino too,and he sort of likes the convoluted, pinball-machine way they finally find eachother. It doesn’t mean he enjoys thatlast, sugary scene of them laughing together like idiots on a bike. Tch. You never saw him watch this movie.

Valkyon

He’s quite neutral on romanticcomedies. To him, it’s just another movie genre that doesn’t fall on his listof favorites. Why spend 90+ minutes on a handful of little arguments that can technicallybe resolved in just 15 minutes? He doesn’t get it.

So the only romantic elementthat he can enjoy is if it’s tangled into a greater conflict that heunderstands. Like war, penance, and exile. That’s when it really hits home for him. (This also means that Valkyon is actually the weakest of the three guys for stories about‘true love’, so long as they’re packaged as epic sagas.)  

What he enjoys:

True heroes/heroines,who weather the curve-balls life throws at them without complaining, and try to hold onto their honor despite trying times.

Turbulent, large-scaleconflicts, but where there is still a clear divide between what’s wrong andright on the individual scale. (i.e. war dramas)

Crossing cultures andborders, and adapting to difficult new circumstances.

‘Pure love’ that is more seen and implied than spoken and argued about. And which enduresboth time and distance, despite great forces tearing the couple apart.

Dramatic reunions.

Tragic endings.  

Sweeping landscape shots and vistas. (Really, it’s the best way to immerse the audience in the story.)  

Historical accuracy.The story may be fictional, but it shouldn’t completely abandon reality; otherwise it’s pure fantasy orpropaganda. In the end, the most powerful stories come from real life.

Favorite (romantic) movies:

‘Atonement’ (2007):His favorite romance of all time, hands down. It’s also the most tragic film hehas ever seen. Don’t bother taking him to see the next installment in ‘FiftyShades’; this movie has inoculated Valkyon against all cheery/sexy romanticfilms. Most other romances are just so… pettycompared to what happened between Cecilia and Robbie. Other screen-writers shouldstart putting in more themes of loss in their plots.

‘Zero Motivation’(2014): The only real ‘chick flick’that Valkyon actually likes, because it’s such a spot-on portrayal of the screwylife of military recruits (like the ones he commands). The first time he sawit, he smiled knowingly to himself throughout the whole movie. Because he haspersonally seen all the pranks, the sassing to superior officers, and thebarracks feuds that erupt from boredom, stress, a general refusal to getalong, and well, exactly zero motivation. It’s even funnier to see it up on thesilver screen.    

‘The Last Samurai’(2003): This movie used to be number one on Valkyon’s list… until someone broke it tohim that real samurai are a lot less romantic and used guns by the time theywere disbanded. That’s why he’s embarrassed to admit that he still loves thisfilm. In fact, the ‘armoring’ scene between Capt. Algren and the samurai’swidow he fell for, prior to the suicidal battle, had him squeezing his date’shand very hard in the dark of the movie theater (result: they yelped loudenough to disturb the whole row). Even now, Valkyon firmly believes that thescreenwriter meant for the captain toremain in Japan and find her again after the war.    

Edit: Whoops. Did you just say chick movie? As in, one? Looks like I went overboard again. >_> Nuts.