#source: mallrats

[hawkinsincorrect]

Billy: You wanna say something?

Steve: Yeah. About a million things, but I can't express myself monosyllabically enough for you to understand 'em all.

[kantharohs]

[clubdionysus]

[BAD DECISION #16] Overindulging

warnings: just a lovely little fluffy chapter!! breakfast food!! chatting about jaykay's big dreams!! we visit yoongi and he calls us out on our bullshit of being besties!! a very cursed bird falls </3

a/n: our first calamity of the purge - i cannot find the header image for this chapter ANYWHERE :( i've checked both laptops and my phone, know the exact date it was orginally posted (nov 20, 2022 if ur curious) and yet nothing - there's actually a few around this period which are lost in the void </3 the og was one of my fave headers too :( it had a cute lil market stall :( waaa

soundtrack: wish on an eyelash - mallrat

wc: 5.3k

bd total wc: 540k (ongoing)

AO3 | MASTERLIST | MINORS DNI

"So you really quit then, huh?" Jeongguk mumbles, before blowing against the top of his coffee. It's steaming hot, the cold air of a fast-approaching winter not enough to cool it down.

The pair of you walk by the canal that runs through the city; Jeongguk in his gym gear, his skin still a little clammy from his session, you in a pair of comfy sweats despite the fact you haven't worked out at all.

It's a Sunday, and neither of you slept much last night. He'd been behind the bar, and you'd been on the other side, disco balls in your eyes and trouble in the tequila smile that you were greeting him with every five minutes. It's not your fault that he was the most interesting guy in the bar all night.

You nod, taking a sip on your americano - still iced (because "warm coffee is for pussies" ).

"Wasn't getting my money's worth," you explain, but he knows this perfectly well. You only ever went to the gym to grumble about how much you hated it. That, and to pretend like you weren't looking at him in the mirror whenever he took off his lifting belt. He caught you every single time, but he'd grown to enjoy how shamesless you'd become with it. "Plus Danbi's finally nagged me into joining her pole class, so I'm-"

"Shut up," Jeongguk laughs, cutting you off with his exclamation. He briefly stops in his tracks. Looks at you all lovely and bemused. "You're not?"

You're almost offended by his disbelief.

"Oh, but I am, Jeon," you grin. It's not how you ever thought you'd get your primary source of exercise, but Danbi's core muscles have never looked better. You figure may as well give it a try. "Had my first class yesterday afternoon."

"Did you?" He asks, only waiting for a small hum before he questions you further. "How was it? Have fun?"

Truthfully, you've never been so quickly humbled. Danbi and the other girls in the class make it look effortless. It's a small group, and they've all been lovely and overwhelmingly encouraging, but you can't help but feel out of your depth.

"The pole spins," you tell him, because you can't believe you were the only person who didn't realise that. "Always thought it was the people spinning, but nope. Just the pole."

"What?!" He almost chokes, just as confused as you had been yesterday.

"My thoughts exactly! So yeah, that helps," you acknowledge, nudging his arm to push him in the direction of the street market.

It runs up a lane, connecting the canal to the main street, and has been active for hundreds of years. Old traders would dock their boats on the canal and set up shop down the alleyway, away from the prying eyes of the law enforcement looking for black market traders. These days, it's all flowers and produce, with the occasional hotteok stand during the winter.

Jeongguk's bag rustles as he hikes it a little further up his broad shoulder, sniffing sharply to clear his nose. It's the first sign of a winter cold, and he regrets not wearing a coat, now.

You're babbling on about your class, and how your legs have never been more bruised. You're not even sure he's really listening, but you don't mind. There's no pressure for him to retain this information, no pop quiz coming later.

You just enjoy each other's company. Talk about nonsense because you can. It's like you're playing a game of sims, prattling to one another just to make those little green plus marks hover above your head, your socialising bar restoring to full health.

"Honestly, you should see my legs - I look like a bloody watercolour painting. All purple and blue."

"Oh, yeah?" he finally responds with a teasing grin, glancing over to you as you meander towards a flower stall. It's small, but overflowing with native flowers. Considering how cold it's becoming and how orange the leaves are on the trees that line the river, it's nice to see some green. "Maybe next time I'm at the cafe, you'll have to live model for me."

You stop in your tracks. Bunch your face up like an old newspaper, as if he's just said the most offensive thing you've ever heard, and then you scoff.

Jeongguk turns to look at you fully, a goofy little smile on his pretty lips (though you really ought to stop thinking of his lips as being pretty ), and raises a brow. He's baiting you out. Teasing you. Was deliberately looking for a reaction like this, because he finds them funny.

Folding your arms, you knock your shoulder against him as you walk past and say, "you're never seeing me naked."

" Again ," he calls after you. "Never seeing you naked again ."

The ajumma sitting by her stall just a metre away, with her homegrown cucumbers and cabbages, scowls in Jeongguk's direction. Tuts beneath her breath. Looks away as he turns to apologise, his cheeks flaming red like they always do when he's had too much soju.

He's not had a drop all week, though. He's been working hard, and studying even harder. It's all work, no play. The walk home from the gym is the most free-time he's indulged in since he left your apartment last week.

You had been right in saying that the water pressure of his shower is far better than yours - but he'd insisted on showering at yours regardless. Together. Just friendly. Like you normally do. Didn't want to have to explain things to Jimin. Is still not exactly sure even he knows how to understand your friendship - just that he likes it, and he doesn't want to lose it.

He also likes the scent of your shampoo. Rummaged around in Jimin's old haircare stuff for a shower cap just so he could preserve it for an extra day. Doesn't tell you this though, as he thinks it's a bit weird.

Probably just as weird as the way you'd rearranged your pillows that night just to keep the scent of his aftershave close. You tell yourself it's a comfort thing. In all actuality, it most likely is.

"I can't believe you shouted that-"

"I didn't shout!"

"- In front of that poor old lady," you hiss beneath your breath as he finally catches up with you, now holding a cabbage. "Why do you have-"

"Felt bad. Bought a cabbage from her."

"The fuck are you gonna do with a cabbage?"

He shrugs. "Eat it?"

Nonchalant in the way he approaches life, Jeongguk feels like a summer breeze even as temperatures begin to dip below a comfortable level. You've got a heat pack in your pocket, and when Jeongguk sniffs again, you pass it over to him. Think that he needs it more. He tells you it's okay, and that it's fine, so you just stuff it in his pocket despite his protests.

By the time you've reached the end of the alley, Jeongguk is the one ignoring your protests as he pushes you forwards into a cafe. The buttery scent of fresh pastries is so heavenly that you're half convinced you did actually die of embarrassment when he announced his awareness of your bare skin to the entire neighbourhood.

Various loaves of bread line the counter towards the front of the shop, golden brown and just begging for you to buy every single one of them. Pastries, cakes, too. It's overwhelming.

"They do the best french toast," he promises you - and how can you refuse?

You're practically salivating as Jeongguk plonks you down by the window of the only free booth. It's tucked away slightly, but offers the perfect people-watching spot - which is why it's his favourite seat in the entire cafe. He tells you to wait there while he orders at the counter.

You're too busy people-watching, but you notice the lack of his presence. The cafe feels duller. Less warm. Less inviting. Less... like home. He's taking longer than you thought he would.

Perhaps there was a queue? You can't see from your vantage point - but, eventually, you can see Jeongguk as he comes to stand in front of the window with a closed-lip smile, his silver ring flipping in the corner of his mouth. In his hand is a small bouquet of posies. Wildflowers, you think, from the stall down the other end of the alley. He must have sprinted. The way his chest heaves a little confirms this.

"For you," he says as he comes to sit opposite you a moment later, holding them out for you to take. There's a variety of flowers in the bunch, tied with a white ribbon, but you don't know the name of any of them. You just know that they're beautiful. He senses your confusion, so he clarifies. "An apology. Sorry for telling the entire street I've seen your tits."

You narrow your eyes. Tilt your head. Jeongguk thinks you look like a little puppy. Tells you so.

"Careful, or you'll have to buy me more to make up for the fact you just called me a dog," you tease as he places a small black disk down on the table. It's from the front counter, given to him when ordered the food. On the side, a bright red 07 lets you know your order number.

"I like dogs," he says as he shakes his hoodie off, tucking it over the back of his chair. "It's a compliment."

Sometimes, you forget Jeongguk has tattoos. His eyes are so doe-like, his nature so tepid and warm, that the idea of him engaging in anything remotely painful shocks you - but you've also seen how hard he goes at the gym, and have also felt his firm grip on your body. You know he most likely finds pleasure in a little pain.

They trail up his arm, thick intricate lines mapping out his identity for all to see - or at least the parts of him he doesn't mind other people knowing. If you didn't know Jeongguk, you'd be able to learn a lot about him from his arms - right down to the fact that one of them covered in ink, while the other is pristine and free of it. He's a man of two halves, and you're lucky enough you get to indulge in both.

"What?" He grins when he realises you're contemplating something.

"Just not sure I forgive you," you tease, crossing your arms in an attempt to make it look like you weren't reminding yourself of the way his fingers - the ones with the tattoos - feel inside of you. It was only a brief thought, but any thoughts like that outside the confines of a fallen bird are dangerous, you decide.

"Got you flowers, got you brunch - what more do you need?!"

You sharply inhale some air, teeth gritted, eyes to the sky in contemplation. "More compliments."

Jeongguk has to try really hard not to roll his eyes. He looks around, as if he's scared someone will hear him, licks the corner his of mouth and shakes his head.

" Fine . I like your outfit."

"Pathetic," you say almost immediately. "If I wanted appearance compliments, I'd go on tinder."

"You have tinder?"

"Give me something that's actually a compliment. Something none of my tinder boys could say."

"You have tinder boys?"

"And girls," you shrug.

The truth of the matter is that you have neither at the moment. The app lies dormant on your phone, unused because you just can't be arsed with the hassle. There are only so many times you can be asked if you're 'open-minded ' or if you live alone. As much as you don't mind hooking up with strangers in bars, you hate meeting people off of apps. It's too much pressure.

Still, you don't let Jeongguk derail the conversation, although you can see that behind his eyes there are some cogs turning. Whatever he's thinking will take a while to formulate. You know what he's like now; how he likes to think things through before he says them.

"So," you lift a shoulder, lazily shrugging. "Compliment?"

He reclines back into his chair. Finds himself narrowing his eyes like you so often do. You're challenging him, and he's weighing up how much of a chance he has of winning. Thinks his odds are pretty high.

"Tae couldn't have sorted out his art show without you."

As much as you wanna pretend like it isn't exactly the sort of thing you wanted to hear, a smile forms on your face. Acknowledgement of your hard work is always appreciated. You press your lips together, but still, a smug grin prevails.

"Nah, seriously, Byeol," he adds on. "Thank you. I mean it. It's been Tae's dream since I met him. You've no idea how cool it is to watch all of this happen."

"I played a tiny part," you smile, secretly enamoured with how happy he is for his friend's success.

It's a trait that says a lot about Jeongguk. Who he is as a person. Makes it all the more clearer as to why he's so keen on helping you with your issues. He wants the people he cares about to thrive, no matter the circumstance.

"So? The nozzle is a tiny part of a fountain gun," he says, making reference to the bar he works behind. "But without it? The drink would go everywhere. It's important. You're important."

"You're giving me far too much credit," you deflect, a little embarrassed, now.

He shakes his head. "I'm not giving you enough."

He holds your gaze for a moment. Wants you to know that he really does mean what he's saying. He wouldn't bother hyping you up if he didn't genuinely think it. He knows Tae well, and knows he has enough drive to make his dreams come true, but he had been drawing blanks recently - until you came along.

It's not just the space of the art cafe that's helped, but you willingness to help market it, get the news out to local artist circles that Tae wasn't privvy to. You've taken insurmontable wieghts from his shoulders. All Jeongguk could do was put posters up in the bathroom stalls of Dionysus.

"What about you?" You ask, wanting to move the focus away from yourself. "What's your big dream?"

He goes to speak, but is cut off the by the small black disk with a flashing 07 on the side of it. The vibration tone is so loud that it actually makes him jump.

"Hold that thought," he says as he heads off to the counter to retrieve the food, leaving you to watch the window once more - but you find yourself glancing in the mirror that's up on the back wall.

The woman at the counter smiles at him, and you see him bow slightly as he says thank you. His manners are never forgotten.

You bet he's the kind of customer the girl behind the counter will daydream about coming in again. A takeaway order, maybe. He'll stand by the till and wait for it, chitchatting with her. She'd hope he would enjoy her company and make himself a repeat customer. One day, eventually, he'd ask what she's doing after work. Ask if she wants to grab a drink, or something.

But Jeongguk is Jeongguk. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn't.

You know this.

Still, you find yourself dreaming up this little hypothetical life for him; one in which his fears don't exist anymore.

When he returns, he pretends he didn't see you looking.

"Samgyeopsal," he simply states, as he organises the plates to make them look pretty, just in case you wanna take a picture.

"What of it?"

He's proven right as you pull your phone out and open up the camera. Tweaking a plate ever so slightly, you're impressed with his arrangement. He's got an eye for composition. You're less impressed with the fact he sticks his middle finger up in the background of your shot.

"Child," you scold. He just sticks his tongue out to further solidify your point.

"Well," he hums as he redistributes the plates and hands you some cutlery. "I really enjoy working at the bar, but I hate not being able to make big decisions about what happens there - here -" He passes you the tiny jar of syrup that came with your french toast. "- and so I'd like to own my own place. Thing is, I really fucking love samgyeopsal."

"Oh yeah?" You laugh at how much he exaggerates his tone.

"Love it more than maybe anything else on this planet."

"Even me?"

"Oh, especially you."

"Rude."

"Shut up," he laughs, focusing his attention on his croque monsieur. "Anyways, I think it would be really cool to have my own joint, yanno? Decorate how I like, serve my favourite side dishes. Get a good team working for me - probably would poach Yeonjun from the bar."

"He'd do well in a restaurant," you nod. "Good people person."

"Exactly," Jeongguk beams, thinking about the prospects all over again. "I even know the exact building I wanna be in."

"Really?"

"Mhmm," he confirms, swallowing down a bite of warm bread and cheese - no ham ,though. They really scrimped on the ham. He'd never scrimp on meat in his place. When you notice how furrowed his brows are, as if he's furious for how delicious his food is, you smile. "Few streets over from your work. There's been a vacant unit next to the makgeolli bar for a little while. I've registered my interest, but like - I'm still in fucking school." He laughs now. It's all a bit of a pipe dream. "I need to speak with investors. Raise funds. That's what scares me the most."

"Oh?" You encourage him, not wanting to interrupt his train of thought - and also not wanting to stop eating. He was right. The french toast is to die for.

"I know all of the hospitality tricks," he continues. "Been working long enough to know how to run a place on the people side of things, but I'm a bit out of my depth when it comes to business."

"Do you not cover that at school?" You question with genuine curiosity. "Thought you were under the business faculty?"

"I am," he nods, pleased that you have apparently been listening to him. "But you can only be taught so much, yanno? Nothing compares to actually experiencing it. It's the little things, like bank meetings, and shit. That's what's scaring me."

Funny. You'd never really considered that Jeongguk's fear of rejection could trickle down so far into his bones. It's like he's fearful nothing he wants is a viable option - career path included.

"Have you spoken to Yoongi?" You ask, mindlessly soaking up the maple syrup on your plate with a chunk of french toast. "He's got his own studio, right? He's gone through this process?"

Jeongguk nods. "Something similar, I suppose. Hospitality is a little different to what he does. I think technically - when it comes to tax and shit - he's listed as a construction worker?"

He laughs, and shakes his head. Has seen Yoongi painstakingly craft the most beautifully ornate home furnishings. Thinks he couldn't be further from a construction worker if he tried (though Yoongi would argue that the red pine hanoks he built with his own bare hands beg to differ).

"To be fair," he considers, "I actually need to pop by Yoongi's on my way home."

"Oh?"

"There's some work to do at the bar out back. Boss wants to convert the little courtyard next to the staff room into the smoking area, and change the existing smoking area into a patio bar," Jeongguk sighs as he rolls his eyes. He thinks they may as well just add a bar to the existing smoking area and leave the courtyard free - mainly because he likes to hide there on the nights he can't be fucked with punters. Only for a minute or so. Maybe five minutes. No longer than ten. Apart from that one time he fell asleep, but that's neither here nor there. "Doesn't wanna hire workers though, so yours truly has been tasked with the job. Gonna get Yoongi's advice on it."

You nod. Remind yourself of what Jeongguk looks like with a lifting belt on, and replace it in your mind with a tool belt. Press your lips together. Your legs, too.

"What?" He asks, when you shift away from him slightly.

"Oh, no, nothing," you smile, deflecting. "Just really good food."

He narrows his eyes. Chooses not to press. Has no idea that you're getting yourself all flustered because of him . Instead, he hauls the conversation forward - asks you about your dreams instead, where you want to end up in life. It's a big question, you tell him, and he agrees - but he finds fantasising about future possibilities fun. Gets you thinking in hypotheticals. Lottery wins, winning a free trip to a country of your choice, only having one day to live - that kind of shit.

The conversation carries on for far too long. Brunch is long gone, and Jeongguk suggests another drink not once, but twice. Orders some french toast for himself, and gets you a cake from the counter even though you insisted on not wanting anything, just because he doesn't wanna eat alone.

Midafternoon sun encroaches on your window spot, and he finds himself grinning whenever the glitter catches in the light. There are a few rogue specks that have strayed from your eyes. He leaves the ones on your cheeks alone, but reaches over and dusts off the ones that are on your forehead. Says nothing as he does so. You just let him, and continue talking.

He can encroach on your personal space and recieve zero complaints. You're comfortable. The significance isn't lost on him, but it is tucked away into a safe part of brain, not to be distrubed for the time being.

Once he's done with his french toast (and also done complaining about the fact he's eaten so much he might die ), you head on your way.

There's a chill to the air that wasn't present earlier, and you know that you're gonna have to start wrapping up a lot warmer soon. You hate how quickly summer turns into winter - autumn is far too fleeting.

As soon as the leaves turn golden brown, they've fallen, only for the snow to fall just as quickly as soon as the New Year arrives. You've a month or so to go.

"Best season," Jeongguk says as he kicks a few leaves that are brittle and brown, settled on the pathway, crunching beneath his feet. He loves the rustle of autumn leaves.

Loves the blossom season in spring, too, and will swear that it's his favourite season instead come April.

The cycles of life; evidence that life goes on, always. No matter how defeatist he can be, no matter how much he can fear the variables of the future, it's proof that there invariably will be one.

He leads you through a twisted road of alleys, that you'd no doubt get lost in without him, before eventually reaching Yoongi's studio. "I'll be quick, promise."

And how can you refuse? You owe him for the food, and know that he absolutely will not accept it when you try and pay him back, so not kicking up a fuss or complaining is the least you can do. It's not like you have plans for the afternoon. Had sort of figured you'd spend it hanging out with him anyways.

You're also really nosey. Are intrigued by Min's. Wanna see inside the studio, to see if it looks like how you've imagined it to(though you have already looked at the instragram, so you reckon you've got a fair idea in your head).

Jeongguk ushers you up a narrow staircase that brings you above a mandu restaurant. The smell of hot oil and fresh dough wafts in the air and follows you up the stairs, while Jeongguk whinges about being hungry again.

He absolutely cannot be hungry already, but he swears down that he'll die (a common complaint from him) if he doesn't have some mandu soon. You put your palms on his lower back and encourage him up the stairs, stopping him from turning around when he tries.

It's only made worse when you enter Min's studio, only to find Yoongi munching on flat mandu. Jeongguk whines again. Tells Yoongi that he's being cruel, then tells you the same thing for your refusal of allowing him to indulge in such a delicacy.

Yoongi just looks at the pair of you a little bewildered, half a mandu in his mouth, the rest held snug between his chopsticks. He swallows down the food and raises his brows. "Can I help you?"

As it turns out, he can. Jeongguk explains the task at hand - "ballache, if you ask me" - and Yoongi offers to help, free of charge, without even batting an eyelid. Brushes his hands off on his dark grey apron, tosses the empty paper container of his mandu into the bin, and sets about finding that right tools for the job.

It's a no-brainer to him: invest in the people you care about, and they'll invest back. He knows that Jeongguk would help him in a heartbeat, too - and he will also be sure to remind him of this moment in the future when he's in desperate need of a bar space for a showcase.

Min's is everything you thought it would be.

Deceptively large, it has more than enough room for there to be a few extra members of staff - but Yoongi works best alone. Likes his solitude. The rowdiness of his friendship group more than makes up for how quiet his job is - and when the saws and sanders are blaring, it'd be redundant having other people to socialise with.

The back wall showcases more saws than any one man could possibly need, but they all serve a distinct purpose that Yoongi would argue couldn't be achieved with anything else. In all truth, he's skilled enough to be able to mimic the texture and appearance of certain saws, but he likes doing things the old-fashioned way; as they should be done.

There's a stack of wooden boards on his work table, that he's been sanding by hand because there's something far richer about the finish than when they're machine done. He'll charge a little extra for these ones - and it'll be paid without hesitation because of how beautiful they are.

"Has he mentioned dinner at our place to you, yet?" Yoongi asks when Jeongguk finally makes a break for it to go and buy some mandu.

You glance over to him from the display unit, where small ornate objects sit, perfectly polished and prettily waiting for new homes. "Dinner?"

Yoongi nods. "Our place. Weekend before Tae's show - has he really not mentioned it? I've reminded him twice already."

Shaking your head, you laugh. "Boy's got a complex. Not good with invites."

It's something Yoongi is well aware of - after all, he'd been the one to watch Jeongguk with you, a smile on his face, as he finally spoke to a new girl at the bar a few weeks back.

"Mhmm," Yoongi hums. "Just didn't realise it applied to you, too."

"Doesn't normally," you admit, trying to hide the slight confusion you feel. It really is out of the ordinary - he usually invites you to things to avoid having to invite an actual girl. Makes you feel a little insecure. "Maybe he just doesn't fancy me being there?"

"Who doesn't want you where?" Jeongguk says through a muffled mouthful of mandu, pushing the studio door open with his shoulder. Stops in his tracks when he sees Yoongi slowly fold his arms over his chest, giving him a hard stare. "Ah. That ."

He glances over to you, noticing your furrowing brows and the hurt that's delicately kissing your features. It's faint. Barely there. But he knows you well enough now to know exactly when you're feeling affronted.

"So you don't want me there-"

"No!" Jeongguk chimes before you've fully finished your question. "No, no. It's not that, I just keep forgetting. Honestly."

He really does. The last time Yoongi sent him a reminder, he'd been on his way to the art cafe hell-bent on getting forgiveness. And like, he did get it, so it's not like it was a fruitless endeavour. Ended up nearly getting laid in the process, but that's neither here nor there.

Yoongi sighs. "If you want a job done properly, do it yourself."

And then he's the one to invite you for dinner. "Our place. Seoyeon is dying to meet you."

You say yes in a heartbeat, as you've been dying to meet her, too. Yoongi says he'll just bypass Jeongguk next time and invite you himself, to which Jeongguk doesn't protest like you half think he will.

In fact, Jeongguk actually really likes that Yoongi considers you a part of the group. Likes that you're becoming their friend, not just his.

Jeongguk's eyes are warm as he looks over to you; teacups full of steaming americanos. Enough caffeine to keep you up for hours, but cosy enough to calm the shakes. And, just like a good cup of coffee, you find yourself always going back for more. Warm coffee might be for pussies, but maybe you'll make an exception this time.

Eventually, Yoongi shoos you both out of the studio. He's got work to finish, and you're distracting him as you mess around with the soldering pen he uses to sign his work. Neither you nor Jeongguk can really work it properly, and are just using it to write profanities on scrap wood anyways.

"You're like a pair of flirting teenagers," Yoongi scolds. He actually quite enjoys the way you banter together. It's nice seeing Jeongguk like him old self again - but he worries. Knows what happened the last time Jeongguk got a little too close to a girl who was 'just a friend' - so he deliberately makes things awkward to force a little self-reflection upon his friend. "If I didn't know the pair of you, I'd think you were fucking, or something."

The way Jeongguk glances over towards you is nefarious; a reminder that what's done in the dark should remain in the shadows.

That's the thing about Jeongguk, though. There's no hiding him. He'll shine even in the darkest of rooms - and when he's facing a girl with enough glitter to rival a mirrorball, his shine would only ever be amplified.

Still, he gags and tells Yoongi not to be a 'weirdo,' and that 'guys and girls can be friends without fucking,' and asks 'do you not have any girl friends?' then says 'like, literally, what the fuck Yoongi?' and 'take that back ' and 'we'd never fuck' and 'we're not even each other's type' and-

"You're deflecting a little hard, there, Gguk."

All you can do is laugh. Yoongi's right. He is deflecting hard.

Plus, on a technicality, you haven't fucked Jeongguk. Not really.

Which is probably a good thing, considering that when you arrive back at Jeongguk's place, there's a single bird waiting on his bed for you both.

The folds are pristine. Expert. His .

He looks at you as you read it to yourself first. Isn't sure if you're grimacing or smiling. Thinks both would be bad, given the nature of literally every single bird on his ceiling.

"So?"

You eventually look up at him, and turn the bird around for him to read:

Let a friend set me up.

"So," you take a deep breath and smile. It's convincing. "Looks like I have to arrange you a blind date."

AO3 | MASTERLIST | MINORS DNI

[dangerously-human]

I was tagged by @mademoiseli, @mrgartist, and @saxifrage-wreath for two different 10 songs games, one asking for 10 songs I've been listening to a lot lately and one asking for 10 songs that come up when I put my music on shuffle. So I decided to combine them by shuffling my Spotify On Repeat playlist.

1. Waking Up - We the Kingdom (Lockwood & Co playlist, captures the vibe of hope over despair and death over life as well as specifically the feeling of coming back from the Other Side - "I am alive in the land of the living" sung as victorious, love it!)

2. Told You So - The Band CAMINO (Guaranteed a spot in my Spotify Wrapped, favorite TBC banger)

3. Dancing on My Own (Tiësto Remix) - Calum Scott (Red October was fun while it lasted)

4. Can't Leave the Night - BADBADNOTGOOD (Lockwood & Co playlist, bangin' choice for a theme song)

5. Groceries - Mallrat (Lockwood & Co playlist, impeccable domestic fluff vibes, listened to for at least an hour straight for reasons of my latest flash fiction prompt response)

6. Haunted - The Band CAMINO (Lockwood & Co playlist... Are we sensing a theme... Speaking of, theme song and title source for Living With the Ghost of You)

7. BREAKFAST - half•alive (Look at that, more Lockwood & Co playlist, fantastic Locklyle song that makes me Feel Things about vulnerability and the push-pull of letting someone see you as you really are, thematic for more than one WIP - in fact it's been a competition for which gets the lyric title and which - "Here's a safe place to lay your heart down, it's a second chance, it won't be your last" GAH)

8. Captives Come Home - Run Kid Run (I loved this song in high school and I'm so happy to have it on the Lockwood & Co playlist as a song addressing the Other Side/Harrowing of Hell connection while also just being great imagery for the kids pulling each other along through Dark London, I'm completely not over "So hold on tight let's go, and leave behind false sense of hope, as I'm waiting for the world to end I'm clinging onto oxygen, pulling captives by the hand, come home" and then "the world is falling faster falling, so take this step and leave, to bring you home from the other side" like HECK you've got Other Side and Creeping Shadow references plus take my hand Lucy and let's go and the general climax of the story like WHAT)

9. Spiders - Bear's Den (Lockwood & Co playlist, excellent Black Winter angst song, with bonus imagery that fits in beautifully with the spiders/haunting motif in the series, also a theme/title source that a couple WIPs are competing for - "I can't take back all the hurt I've caused, everything I love I have somehow lost, it's 4 in the morning and the spiders are crawling in my mind replaying pictures of all that I can't undo, love, I'm trying, but I can't pull myself out when the darkness comes")

10. Last Man in the World - The Band CAMINO (Had to listen to the album on repeat ahead of the concert, you know how it is)

I tag @fairytale-lights, @mybrainisalibrary, and @loubuttons to participate, if you would like!

[shannendoherty-fans]

NEW GUEST ANNOUNCEMENT! We are excited to announce Shannen Doherty is attending Steel City Con - April 12-14, 2024! @theshando is best known for her roles as "Brenda Walsh" on Beverly Hills, 90210, "Prue Halliwell" on Charmed as well as roles on Mallrats, Our House, and many more! Attending all 3 days. Last appeared at SCC in 2017. Get your tickets and photo ops at steelcitycon.com🎟️

(Source)

[sllowshow]

✨ zoe and monty (and darcy?)

arm's length // MALLRAT.

you're almost at an arms length now/ my hand is close enough to hold/stay in my palm for now/and wrapped around my fingers

i think more than like a forbidden aspect, the arm's length feeling was something zoe found very attractive about their whole little ordeal. per that meme i imagine that like they hung out as a group like darcy and monty and zoe and whatever little guy she was in love with that month, and after darcy ditched them continuing to hang out and try to have a little normalcy still. and like they are in a very similar position as someone who cares about her and is worried while also being frustrated with her and its good to have someone to talk that sort of thing out with.

and like, in conjunction with him being the sweetest thing she's ever known she just greatly appreciated the fact that he was someone she had at arms length. it wasnt something she'd ever gotten from her tinder situationships and it was barely something she'd gotten from darcy in years to just have someone who was so consistently there and down to just like watch reality tv with her or walk around the farmers market with her and just be so right there. made her start posting instagram stories memes about how her love language is quality time

and then well obviously we have to address the girl at home of it all *pulls on my collar sheepishly* because even when darcy and monty are split, she's always the source of any amount of tension in the room. like she's their metaphorical third wheel the idea that this person they both have strong feelings about is the thing thats tied them together and how wrong that makes the fact that they're into each other in the first place feel. but even when they can't be so explicity. they can be at am arms length.

[mirandamckenni1]

Liked on YouTube: why did pop stars perform at shopping malls? | Internet Analysis || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA8wmkGrqs0 || a weird little dive into pop star mall tours! // Thanks to Peach & Lily for sponsoring part of today's episode. Use my code TIFFANYF for 20% off the Peach & Lily collection sitewide for all first time customers! https://ift.tt/oUjFOZP @peachandlily Ginger Melt Oil Cleanser: https://ift.tt/7o9t3kO Matcha Pudding Antioxidant Cream: https://ift.tt/mRb02of Glass Skin Refining Serum https://ift.tt/fabQ0kq PATREON: https://ift.tt/k85Ui9q Full video episodes of Internet Analysis are available to watch/listen on SPOTIFY! Follow the show here: https://ift.tt/QLD5wBz ♥ Instagram: https://ift.tt/Zet8m1K ♥ Vlog / Second Channel: http://bit.ly/tfergvlogs TIME STAMPS: 0:00 - intro 1:57 - Peach & Lily (sponsor) 3:33 - the story of 80s pop star, Tiffany 5:08 - mall culture 6:59 - Tiffany's mall tour 8:40 - marketing in malls 9:46 - what was Tiffany's appeal? 12:22 - the manufactured teen pop star 14:03 - financial exploitation of child stars 17:10 - the mall tours continued... 18:07 - Britney Spears' mall tour (1998/1999) 20:44 - Avril Lavigne's mall tour (2004) WRITTEN SOURCES: Tiffany wikipedia - https://ift.tt/pXBedO8 ONTD Original: These Were Mall Concerts - https://ift.tt/JM5198L "On Top With Tiffany" by Keith Tuber, June 1989, Orange Coast Magazine. Tiffany will hang out all summer in shopping malls and try to meet new friends - https://ift.tt/dmGC2ci Get In. We're Going to Save the Mall - https://ift.tt/GkfUHXa Totally 80s (JANUARY 1988: "TIFFANY" IS THE NO. 1 ALBUM IN AMERICA) - https://ift.tt/x5s4MYj AN ORAL HISTORY OF TIFFANY’S MALL TOUR - https://ift.tt/yoUBhfw Tiffany: The $5-Million Star of Stage and Court - https://ift.tt/zBoh9es The Number Ones: Tiffany's 'I Think We're Alone Now' - https://ift.tt/mx1S76h L'Oreal Hair Zone Mall Tour wiki - https://ift.tt/pD6WA4c List of Avril Lavigne promotional tours - https://ift.tt/EniRybe Mallrat. Avril Lavigne at a Mall Near You - https://ift.tt/JPYbxrh VIDEO: Halsey singing Blink 182 in the mall - https://youtu.be/DuweYhMNZAo Walmart yodeling kid - https://youtu.be/bOZT-UpRA2Y TIFFANY vs MELISSA MOULTRIE (Star Search 80s) - https://youtu.be/Y-3giZkwNNY 1990s USA, Teens Interviewed About What They Do At The Mall - https://youtu.be/wBusEZiT86I Rare Tiffany Interview at Bergen Mall in Paramus, NJ - https://youtu.be/xsIFgDTPvBM Tiffany on Des O'Connor Tonight Show 1988 - https://youtu.be/2rzutEmSLxo Tiffany - I Think We're Alone Now (Official Music Video) - https://youtu.be/w6Q3mHyzn78 Willa Ford - 2000 - I Wanna Be Bad LIVE - https://youtu.be/MH_INhkcRBU Nobody's Angel - 2000 - If You Wanna Dance LIVE - https://youtu.be/JvXAVN2ALEE Little Britney Spears at Star Search - Love Can Build a Bridge - https://youtu.be/wWuK5EnXaWU Britney Spears - Baby One More Time (Hair Zone Mall Tour 1998) - https://youtu.be/tkCsBRHGXJA Britney Spears - Mall Tour, Oxford Valley Mall (1998) - https://youtu.be/F0riLGfDG7c Britney Spears - Crazy/Sometimes. - LIVE VOCALS! Mall Tour Part 1 - https://youtu.be/cZ2Z41LUB8c Britney Spears - Born to Make You Happy - LIVE VOCALS! Mall Tour Part 2 - https://youtu.be/K1Iq860169Y Avril Lavigne - Complicated (Official Video) - https://youtu.be/5NPBIwQyPWE Avril Lavigne mall tour 2004 - https://youtu.be/6EcAyTmPYN8 TIKTOKS: allthegirlgroups - https://ift.tt/MDZ0fax 2000spophits - https://ift.tt/wsSWLUK mason_watson23 - https://ift.tt/J2A3bfH Tiffany Ferguson (she/her), 27 years old. #internetanalysis #y2k #nostalgia Business Inquiries: tiffanyferguson@select.co This episode was co-written by Sheriden Smith! Captions / video transcription by: https://twitter.com/slowxmoxpanda (She is looking for more caption work, so feel free to reach out to her on Twitter!) FTC: This video is sponsored by Peach & Lily.

[asolle]

Click the link to download/stream Music Music Music spring 2023 episode 10: https://app.box.com/s/k6mau1tsr5zuenh88zsqt5m0857qikmf

Playlist:

Stardust - Music Sounds Better With You Braxe + Falcon - Creative Source Wednesday - Got Shocked The Police - Invisible Sun/Spirits in the Material World The Beastie Boys - Gratitude Cannibal Ox - Ridiculoid Mediocre - To Know You're Screwed is to Know a Lot Breanna Barbara - Nothin' But Time Queens of the Stone Age - You Can't Quit Me Baby Yaya Bey - exodus the north star alt-J - Hard Drive Gold Radiohead - Jigsaw Falling Into Place Pizzicato Five - Baby Love Child Davido - IN THE GARDEN Altin Gun - Rakiya Su Katamam Billy Idol - Dancin With Myself/Eyes Without A Face (remix) Chickasaw Mudd Puppies - 9 Volt Martina Topley-Bird - Orchids Charles Wright - Express Yourself Mudhoney - Souvenir of my Trip Deap Vally - I Like Crime Mallrat - Surprise Me Flycatcher - Games Francisco the Man! - You & I/In My Dreams Black Moth Super Rainbow - Sun Lips The Futureheads - Man Ray

[chrismastronardicovid19]

This is my tumblr for series - (Adderall blog ) - Little Nemo on abc

Cmastronardi@sva.edu

(Phone 2015 by mommy from Chelsea, manhattan @ Trumbull mall where we live since 1997)

I am Macy's 1997 mallrat brodie inspired

Blackberry 2005

Skyline 🏙 manhattan □♤ Queens, ny purchased

Author Current tv Contributer East Village Apple Computers G5 Apple annimal54 (Sn of art school photo 2004 📸 girlfriend protest 2004 Penn Station RNC - no downstairs 23 gnosis) li station

#Freedom Tower

We are the city the freedom tower APPEARED *as a miracle in 2013* INSTEAD of being built for 2057 (as PRIME news source Ny1 said)

I am 215 east 23rd street

Apt 2223a1

New York, New York

10010

Our occupy wallstreet Era New York Drivwes Lisence

We traded in our Connecticut Drivers Lisencr I attended The University of Hartford for Film Studies in 2002 as a freshmen

I am Fairfield High School 2002 Fairfield Connecticut (one economic class status school - art school started junior year 2000 announced)

The 13th precinct and Barak Obama bought my sweet 16 blog to Proove their real to baby snuggles

Blogs= fearsexdream.diaryland.com

Forecastmazy.diaryland.com

I am Occupy Wallstreet seen wearing angel wings in park fashion photographer of park and Occupy Wallstreet @ 2039098766

[criticalbennifer]

The Unbearable Sadness Of Ben Affleck

The Ben Affleck of the late ‘90s was a charm machine: goofy, self-effacing, and deep in a highly public bromance with the equally winning Matt Damon. Within five years, he was a punchline. It took a decade for his career to recover. Today, he's once again at war with his image. So what's Affleck so ashamed of?

By: Anne Helen Petersen

March 28, 2016

The year after Daredevil, Ben Affleck told People magazine that “I can’t imagine doing another action movie.” In 2002, he called his earlier desire to do blockbusters “an adolescent aspiration.” In 2003, he described his “fundamental code” as “being honest, doing things with which I can live, rather than be ashamed of — doing estimable things.” In 2006, he told USA Today that “I’ve been in movies that earned a lot of money that ... I wish I wasn’t in, honestly.” Later that year, in an interview for his “comeback” role in Hollywoodland, he was relieved because “I don’t have to feel, like, embarrassed anymore.”

Affleck has an issue with shame. Over the last 20 years of stardom, he’s voiced that shame about the roles that he’s taken, the relationships he’s made public, his lack of education, his drinking habits, and, most recently, his tattoo, which, after a swift and public backlash, he quickly (and rather dubiously) claimed to be “fake.” He has not, it should be noted, been ashamed of his gambling habits or his extramarital affair — allegations of which, at least publicly, he still denies.

During his career renaissance in the late 2000s, the shame receded: He was directing, which is much less embarrassing than acting in bad movies, and in 2013, he won a Best Picture Oscar for Argo. But recently, Affleck has returned to the source of his embarrassment: In signing up for the role of Batman, he’s wed himself to a decade of action movies. Reviews for Batman v Superman are so bad that fans of the film have conjured a conspiracy theory that they were paid for by (DC Comics rival) Marvel. And in videos like this one, currently meme-ing its way across the internet, you can watch, in real time, as that old shame creeps in:

It’s the same look he sported at the Gigli premiere in 2004, laden with the realization that he’d done something horribly, irrevocably wrong. It's a look that shows up so often there's an entire deliriously well-stocked Tumblr of “Ben Affleck Looking Sad.” But the Sadfleck look doesn't inspire pity. Instead, there's a palpable desire to punch him in the face.

Stars, the understanding goes, should be grateful for what our fandom has given them. They should be gracious when we award them their fame, and when reviews are bad, they should smile and keep spinning, as Henry Cavill gamefully does in the Sadfleck Interview. And they should do all of this because they are getting paid mountains of money.

Affleck breaks that implicit pact. It’s one thing to make fun of your past, but it’s quite another to resent your present. Especially, in the case of Batman v Superman, because Affleck has been through it all before: He hates action movies. He especially hates superhero movies. His self-flagellation is off-putting because it’s tinged with resentment — toward the very filmmakers who would hire him again and, by extension, the millions of fans who’ve paid to see him.

It wasn’t always this way. Before the slew of genre films that made him seem like a paint-by-numbers leading man, Affleck had something like charisma. Early on, he played beefhead bullies in supporting roles — see Dazed and Confused (1993) and Mallrats (1995) — in part because, at 6’2”, he towers over most actors. “I had some producer try to talk me out of casting Ben in Chasing Amy,” director Kevin Smith told People magazine. “Because he was ‘too big’ to be a romantic leading man.”

In Chasing Amy (1997), Affleck was finally in the lead role, but he was still no leading man: just a New Jersey schmoe who, like the movie itself, doesn’t really understand lesbians. The moment when Amy (Joey Lauren Adams) takes the stage and begins singing to someone in the crowd, and Holden (Affleck) thinks that someone is him — it's a sublime moment of oblivious doofery. Not slapstick, just complete ego annihilation. As Holden, Affleck is all goatee and bad cardigans, but you have to trust me when I say it was hot for the time. It also helped launch his career: As Amy hit theaters, Good Will Hunting, Dogma, and Armageddon were all in production.

Good Will Hunting was a ready-made Oscar campaign, elevated to even more epic levels with the help of the Weinsteins — who, in 1997, were at the very top of their promotional game. According to the well-recited narrative, Affleck and Damon had met as kids in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Damon went to Harvard; Affleck went to the University of Vermont where, after two months, he dropped out and went to Hollywood, chasing the dream of acting after he’d appeared in a few bit roles as a teen. Damon, by contrast, wrote a screenplay, which sat in wait until he dropped out of school and moved to Hollywood, where he and Affleck started to act out scenes, rewrite, expand, and refine the script, anchoring it in big, meaty moments where one of them (or the psychologist character, played by Robin Williams) could give tour-de-force performances.

Which helps explain why the movie endures as a collection of scenes: the “Dem Apples” moment at the bar, Williams talking about his wife, Affleck telling Damon that he’ll kill him if he decides to squander his talent. The image of Damon and Affleck as a pair of hometown-boys-made-good was at the center of the publicity campaign, but Damon was clearly the star — and given most of the credit for the screenplay (at least, that is, when others weren’t floating conspiracy theories that the script had been written, or at least heavily doctored, by someone else).

“I took the whole writer thing very seriously,” Affleck told Talk magazine in 2000. “In retrospect, if I’d known then what I know now, I would have expanded the part that I played. Matt had a bigger part in School Ties and he had been a lead in Geronimo. Both movies totally bombed, and nobody was offering him any parts, but you could make the case that he was the actor. I’d only had supporting roles, and there wasn’t a lot of room [in the script] for us both to star, especially because we needed to have a big name [Robin Williams] in order to get it made. So I felt like, well, okay, we’ll cut my scenes out.”

When the pair won the Oscar for Best Screenplay, they were scrappy favorites — wearing gifted tuxes and bringing their moms as dates — that fit, in many ways, with their onscreen images as working-class Massholes. They remained self-deprecating (Damon: “If you put us together, you might actually make a whole, creative, interesting individual”) and graciously accepted the next step in their Hollywood wunderkind path: blockbuster stardom: Damon, with Spielberg, in Saving Private Ryan; Affleck, with Michael Bay, in Armageddon.

Still, Affleck managed to avoid insufferability. He still wasn’t the lead lead — that was reserved for Bruce Willis — instead, he gamely played with animal crackers on Liv Tyler’s stomach. But in his first big cover story forVanity Fair in 1999, hints of his macho self-consciousness started to become visible. “He may not be Bike Guy or Adrenaline-Junkie Guy, but spend a few minutes with Affleck, who’s usually seen around town in baggy army pants, a t-shirt, and a leather jacket, and one thing becomes clear: he sure as hell is a guy.” “He longs for the time when models looked like Christie Brinkley,” the profile declared. “He thinks Tom Cruise is a god. He stands behind Hootie. He has been known to forgo sex for video games.”

And as a guy, a guy’s guy, still friends with all his friends from home, Entourage style, Affleck was terrified of the feminizing effects of publicity. “His favorite words seem to be ‘chump,’ ‘weak,’ and especially ‘jackass,’” the profile continues. “‘Jackass,’ to Affleck, is the worst of insults. A jackass is what he fears he sounds like in profiles like this one.” Later in the interview, Affleck admits that the media version of his friendship with Damon was “so gay.” “If I had gone by the tabloid stories of it,” he elaborated, “I would have been like ‘Look at these fuckin’ chumps. I just want to smack these people.' And I kind of wanted to smack myself.”

Vanity Fair goes on to declare that Affleck, in his self-awareness, is the opposite of a jackass, but that fear — of the way that publicity will effectively castrate him — was merited. Male and female stars have always required publicity (posing for photo shoots, sitting for interviews) in order to maintain their status in the public eye and promote their newest product. But there’s a type of publicity that’s masculine (profiles in men’s magazines, photos in classy suits, interviews in established newspapers) and another that’s feminizing (gossip magazines, tabloids, photo shoots that signal a willingness to believe that you’re hot). The cover of Vanity Fair isn’t feminizing. Being named People’s Sexiest Man Alive — and posing for a mildly embarrassing photo shoot — is.

It’s a counterintuitive process: that becoming a heartthrob can de-masculinize you. Attractiveness to women should up a male star’s virility quotient, but in truth, or, at least, in media, it makes him subject to the gaze — a passive pin-up. It’s what happened to Rudolph Valentino back in the ‘20s; it’s what nearly happened to Burt Reynolds in the ‘70s, when he posed nude for a Cosmopolitan centerfold that he’s recently admitted he regrets. (Leonardo DiCaprio has fought the impulse by getting as ugly as possible in every other film.)

Whether Affleck was conscious of that process or not, publicity clearly inflamed his anxiety — which, judging from his own comments, sprung from an acute case of class consciousness. Affleck described his upbringing as “working class” — his mother was an elementary school teacher, his father was, among other things, a mechanic, a bookie, a construction worker, a bartender, and a drunk, who left the family when Affleck was a boy, leaving his mother to raise him and his brother Casey on a single income. Affleck’s mother, Chris, was raised on the Upper East Side and attended Harvard; her father (Affleck’s grandfather) had been a Democratic activist — an inclination that was passed down to Affleck, who has been active, in some capacity, in Democratic politics his entire adult life.

Which is all to say that Affleck, living in Cambridge, surrounded by schools like MIT and Harvard, and living with a Harvard-educated mother, was incredibly attuned to class differences. “I’ve always been insecure because I only had a little bit of college and knew a lot of people from fancy schools,” Affleck told Rolling Stone. “All that sort of resentment in Good Will Hunting about people who went to college came from me feeling on the fringe.”

He hated being called “fratty” because it pointed to a class level that he also never achieved. “The idea that I’m this frat guy is odd, because I only went to college for one semester,” he told Talk. “I was never in fraternity. It speaks to a kind of upper-class upbringing that I didn’t have.”

Which isn’t to say that he didn’t dress and act like a different style of frat boy: His idea of the good life, according to longtime friend and producer Chris Moore, was “eating at Subway and playing video games”; when Bay cast him in Armageddon, his first order was that Affleck get his teeth, one of the ultimate signifiers of class, fixed.

At the same time, Affleck had affixed himself to Gwyneth Paltrow — arguably the most high-class star of the last 25 years. Paltrow, who, pre-Goop, was still the woman who’d attended the most exclusive New York private school, who’d grown up surrounded by Hollywood, and who'd, according to writer-director Don Roose, offered Affleck “lots of unsolicited advice” about his decor. “To hear her talk you’d think there were mattresses on the floor and Led Zeppelin posters on the wall.”

In truth, it was more like a keg of Guinness and a rotating set of friends in his Hollywood home, but Paltrow, according to People, “wanted to show that there’s a real man inside him, a thinker and a sensitive guy. She doesn’t let him skate by on that frat-boy thing.” Put differently, she was trying to reform — re-class — him.

Anxiety over the public perception of his intelligence, apparently fueled by his own girlfriend, might have been part of why Affleck so eagerly stumped for Al Gore, embraced plans to adapt Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, or spoke publicly at Harvard with Damon and Zinn about raising wages for the university’s service employees. “They spoke very passionately,” Zinn said. “Ben talked about how his father had worked at Harvard at a menial job and how he understood what it was like to work for an enormously rich corporation and get a pittance.”

Affleck’s affiliation with Zinn, whose work also made an appearance in Good Will Hunting, crystallized his ambivalent relationship with his own class: He wanted to be a populist — someone who’s not ashamed of his working-class roots — but everything around him, including his own girlfriend, wanted him to disaffiliate with that same past in order to be famous.

Affleck and Paltrow broke up in 1999, but his subsequent roles suggest an oscillating desire to align himself with the (high-class) art house film and the (not-so-high-class) genre film — there’s his wan straight man opposite Sandra Bullock in rom-com Forces of Nature, a return to Smith in Dogma, classic indie ensemble work in 200 Cigarettes, and what was intended as a prestige role alongside Paltrow in the unremarkable Bounce: “If you don’t like my performance in this movie,” Affleck proclaimed, “then you will never like me or believe me in any movie, and probably should never go see another movie I do.”

He agreed to make Reindeer Games because its director, John Frankenheimer, was responsible for The Manchurian Candidate; he said yes to Daddy and Them because it was Armageddon co-star Billy Bob Thornton’s first directorial project since Slingblade. He did Boiler Room, one can assume, because he wanted to have a juicy Glengarry Glen Ross-type speech, though it did not transform him into a serious actor — or at least the sort of actor that wouldn’t have to do the kind of PR that would make his class an issue.

And so Affleck leaned into handsome-leading-man roles, even though, as he was quick to admit, he felt alienated from them. He was unmemorable in Pearl Harbor, fell flat taking over for Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan in The Sum of All Fears, was just fine opposite Samuel L. Jackson in Changing Lanes, and had every scene stolen from him by Jennifer Garner in Daredevil.

And then there was J.Lo.

Consider Affleck’s mindset at the time. He’d spent time in rehab (brought to the Promises Center in 2001 by Charlie Sheen after an all-night bender; just think about that for a second) as a “pre-emptive strike” to counter what he viewed as a family inclination toward alcoholism. After the disappointments of the late ‘90s and early 2000s, he’d become a major and successful movie star. But not a respected one — especially when compared, as he always was, with Damon, who’d given a tour de force performance in The Talented Mr. Ripley and attached himself to much less flashy (and better) franchises with Bourne and Ocean’s Eleven. If Damon’s career choices were Whole Foods, Affleck’s were increasingly Costco.

When Affleck began working with Lopez on Gigli in 2002, she was married to dancer Cris Judd, and enormously successful, but, at heart, a celebrity, not a star. The two became close on set, but according to Affleck, only as friends.

It was during this friendship that Affleck decided to publicly assert the extent of Lopez’s talents. In March 2002, he took out $20,000 in ads in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter declaring how much he loved working with her — and how impressed he was with her acting skills. “In a lot of ways it was in contrast to what some of my preconceptions were about Jennifer,” he wrote. “I thought I’d write a paragraph saying what a professional, decent person she is and how kind she is.” (Note: the Hollywood trade magazines have a long history of congratulatory ads, but this particular ad “raised eyebrows.”)

They were "just friends," but Affleck was nevertheless concerned with the public perception — which goes unnamed here, but can be insinuated as “low class” — of his co-star. To be sure, Affleck did actually find Lopez impressive, professional, decent, and kind. But to take out an ad proclaiming as much says more about how he’d like to be perceived for working with her and less about his actual concern for her image. Put differently, she wasn’t ashamed; he was.

In June 2002, Lopez announced her separation from Judd; a month later, she and Affleck announced their relationship, as one does, via public appearance, dining with Lopez’s manager and producer Babyface at “New York’s see-and-be-seen” sushi restaurant Nobu. “They were cuddling at the table,” an employee told Us Weekly, adding that Lopez had worn beige-and-white sweatpants with her name embroidered across the back.

Thus launched one of the most high-profile — and heavily degraded — relationships in the modern celebrity era. They were the first couple to win a celebrity moniker, “Bennifer,” which pointed to the ways in which their relationship became the central commodity, exploited and expanded by the burgeoning rivalry between People magazine and the newly rejuvenated Us Weekly.

Dozens of couples had been tracked with similar ferocity before, and dozens would be in the decade to come. But the sentiment that hovered around Bennifer was one of distaste. The press was filled with reports of their lavish gifts to one another — a $100,000 toilet seat encrusted with jewels, a 6.1-carat pink solitaire ring, a six-figure Aston Martin sports car. While modern celebrity is distinguished, in no small part, through displays of conspicuous consumption, Bennifer’s tipped into new-money gaudiness — too conspicuous, especially when paired with equally conspicuous displays of affection.

Usually, we love when celebrities kiss or hold hands for the cameras, but Bennifer exceeded the unspoken limits of good taste, especially when Affleck appeared in the video for Lopez’s “Jenny from the Block” — cuddling, kissing, cupping her ass on the back of a yacht. “The reason I did the video was as a commentary on the crazy tabloid paparazzi attention,” Affleck explained. “But it was covered without any irony whatsoever.” Instead of satirizing paparazzi surveillance, it seemed like Lopez and Affleck were celebrating, or at least catering, to it.

In the press, Lopez was figured as a “bad fit” for Affleck: She was "ravenously ambitious” (Vanity Fair), “the Zsa Zsa Gabor of our generation” (Rolling Stone) who wore velour J.Lo jumpsuits and loved Deuce Bigalow. “The problem, of course, is that J.Lo is no Julia,” an editorial for The Hollywood Reporter explained, comparing her to Roberts, whose love life had also been in the press. “You never saw Roberts show up at the Oscars dressed in Saran Wrap, for instance. No one gushes about Roberts’ rear end as being intrinsic to her success.”

The unspoken connotation of all this rhetoric? Lopez was trashy. She wasn’t talented like other Hollywood stars — she was an OK singer, a forgettable actor. Instead, her celebrity was rooted in her raced, classed body: in her dancing ability, but also in her body’s beauty, which she exploited without shame. She had been arrested, along with ex-boyfriend Sean “Puffy” Combs, in connection to a Manhattan shooting. She was the opposite of Paltrow.

And even though Affleck attempted to emphasize the similarities between him and Lopez — "We are both from working-class families in culturally diverse neighborhoods in east coast cities,” he told The Mirror — the rhetoric around their relationship remained that of a mismatch. When Vanity Fair asserted that Lopez was “perhaps the last woman on earth Affleck should have chosen if he really wanted to maintain a lower profile,” he responded: “That occurred to me. Why did I fall in love with this person? What does that say about me? Maybe I am conflicted, but I also have a contrary streak.”

Which might explain Affleck’s conflicting impulse to both defend Lopez and transform her. He corrected those who called her “J.Lo” instead of Jennifer, a move that presaged Tom Cruise’s attempt to turn Katie Holmes into “Kate.” He toned down her sexuality: “Jen has had fewer boyfriends than your average high-school junior,” he said. “In the physical sense, she’s extremely chaste. She’s had a much simpler, more easily explainable, more clean romantic history than I have.” He encouraged Lopez to fire her longtime manager, who’d help craft the tabloid-friendly strategy that made her famous. The “popular theory,” according to Newsweek, was that Affleck wanted to “sophisticate his wife-to-be’s image in case his long-rumored aspirations of a political life as a congressman from Massachusetts become a reality.”

The pair went on Dateline in late July to promote Gigli, which was set to premiere August 1, 2003. The interview itself was overkill (Entertainment Weekly charted its progress with a “Pain-o-Meter”), but the distaste was further amplified when, the night that it aired, Affleck was “caught” at a strip club in Vancouver with Christian Slater and Tara Reid — where, depending on the report, he either drank water all night and touched no one, or hooked up with a dancer, went back to Slater’s house, and had sex with her.

Affleck and Lopez issued statements maintaining that Affleck had attended the club with Lopez’s permission, but it mattered little — he was still at a strip club. If anything, her “approval” simply reinforced her lack of class. When the pair showed up to Gigli, the looks on their faces as they posed on the red carpet were overly bronzed and pained.

Gigli became a legendary flop, immediately likened to ur-flop Ishtar; studio head Joe Roth called its $7 million international gross, on a budget of $54 million, “humiliating.” A month later, Affleck and Lopez called off their $2 million wedding, purportedly due to too much media scrutiny. By January 2004, the pair officially ended their relationship. But they still had a second collaboration — Jersey Girl — to promote, and Affleck was back on the publicity circuit in March, making fun of Gigli and his own overexposure, owning the shame and sporting a hideous goatee and tatted-up arms on the cover of Rolling Stone.

He’d also been thinking about why, exactly, his relationship had incited such vitriol. He suspected it “had something to do with race and class,” he told Vanity Fair. “That pushed a button. This is a country that flew into a gigantic uproar about Janet Jackson’s breast. There’s still a heavy-duty puritan influence going on, and we still hold ourselves to a pretty chaste ideal, which includes, buried within it, the tradition of people being with people like them. We were thought of as two different kinds of people, not just racially but culturally.”

The explanation didn’t feel credible at the time, but in hindsight, race and class anxieties were redolent, if coded, in the rhetoric used to describe their relationship. Affleck himself seemed to have internalized that anxiety. He turned away from publicity, at least until, a year later, he began dating Jennifer Garner — a woman who, in addition to her burgeoning role as avatar of the middle-class femininity, upholds, as Affleck had put it, “the tradition of people being with people like them.”

It was literally Bennifer 2.0, but Affleck kept the relationship as low-key — as classy — as possible: They married yet rarely appeared together in public, Garner’s career receded, and the only images of their three children were playing, as a family, in the park. Garner didn’t offer him the class elevation that Paltrow would’ve, but she also didn’t inflame his own working-class connotations the way J.Lo had. She was wonderfully, soothingly safe, roundly respectable — an image that slowly, by extension, became Affleck’s as well.

As Affleck’s halo of shame receded, his likability increased. He was humble and tragic in Hollywoodland, was easy to root for as the director of Gone Baby Gone, and gave a completely unflashy performance in Argo. He’d found his low-key niche — the one, back in the early 2000s, he’d dreamed of. But something happened in the aftermath — as if he’d forgotten the lessons of a decade before. He seemed cocksure, arrogant; he was gambling and fighting constant rumors of infidelity, specifically with Gone Girl co-star Emily Ratajkowski. He’s great in Gone Girl not because he’d returned to the gleeful doofiness of Chasing Amy and Shakespeare in Love, but because the doof had grown up, soured, turned on itself. “He’s perfect in Gone Girl,” a friend told me, “because that movie knows he’s trash.”

When Affleck and Garner announced their divorce, it was against a backdrop of continued gambling problems (in October 2014, Affleck was thrown out of a casino for counting cards) and an alleged affair with the family’s nanny — perhaps the trashiest in the tabloid hierarchy of affairs. Yet it came as no surprise: We’d seen this cycle play out once before. Now that Batman v Superman has been pummeled in the press, his reaction feels not just like sadness in the wake of bad reviews, but a deep shame stemming from a series of disappointing decisions.

Class and race are the primary ways that we decide a person’s worth in this country, and while the history of Hollywood stardom is filled with men and women who transcended their original class, any anxiety, regret, or shame about their current or past class is carefully scrubbed from their images. That sort of insecurity isn’t read as sympathetic or relatable — instead, it’s a sign of image instability.

Even though we encourage the people who surround us to grow, change, and deliberate, there’s an expectation that stars, and the ideologies their images come to represent, remain static. Affleck’s oscillation between class anxiety and class capitulation — in his actions, his facial expressions, his interviews — makes him seem like a man who refuses to own himself or his decisions.

Back in 2000, still in the first act of his career, Affleck turned philosophical: “Being in the position that I’m in now, I tend to look at lot of these older actors and say, ‘Well, where are their lives now? Who do you want to be in life?’ So many of them seem so unhappy and so fucked up: confused or lost or bitter or hateful or venomous or in agony. None of them are happy. And you think, God, I don’t want that life.”

It seems, at least publicly, that Affleck has found in that vortex of stardom, still at war with his image, his career choices, and what he’s come to represent. That’s the realization that seems to descend upon Affleck in the clip: the dark understanding that even an Oscar can’t rescue him from the specter of his past shame — compounded by time and regret and failed relationships and superhero carapaces and the everlasting comparison to Damon — returning for him.

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

when i come around (summer of '94)

by batteryghosts

It all started with a driver’s license, a rope, and two empty boxes of firecracker popsicles.

It ended an hour later with a broken arm, a confiscated mustang convertible (with a freshly dented driver’s side door), and a threat to ruin the summer just one day into summer break.

Words: 1915, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Young Justice (Comics)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: Gen

Characters: Cassandra Cain, Tim Drake, Duke Thomas, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth

Relationships: Cassandra Cain & Tim Drake, Cassandra Cain & Jason Todd, Cassandra Cain & Dick Grayson, Cassandra Cain & Duke Thomas, Tim Drake & Jason Todd

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - No Powers, 90s AU, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, what happens when i shove all of my favorite tropes into one fic, Good Older Sibling Cassandra Cain, Doctor Bruce Wayne, young justice are mallrats, also cass and duke are part of their group bc those two need friends their age, this is my barbie dreamhouse so i get to play with my dolls however i want, No Beta

source https://archiveofourown.org/works/44168974

[hawkinsincorrect]

Hopper: You wanna say something?

Mike: Yeah. About a million things, but I can't express myself monosyllabically enough for you to understand 'em all.

[priestfrommidnightmass]

op i have so many questions for you. most importantly being WHICH one of my fics could’ve POSSIBLY inspired such a strong reaction from you??? you specifically said i rip off movies which narrows it down a little but like. which one are you mad about? my character study there will be blood fic??? my character study clerks fic??? my character study gerry fic? my character study tom at the farm fic? my stay and saltburn fics (the most explicit) went a little crazy but i think they made sense for the source material (especially saltburn mine is far from the craziest thing written abt it out there. maybe not even as crazy as the actual MOVIE.) unless you’re talking abt my american vandal rarepair fic where i was VERY clear was incredibly self indulgent and very clear abt the fact that it was inspired by a mallrats scene i like? either way i understand not liking it because it’s a bit weird but goddamn 😭 also i can see from your blog you’re a fan of the boys which is like The weird kink show so i cannot imagine anything i’ve written offending you This deeply. and even after all those questions it doesn’t matter because i know for a Fact that i’m a good writer and there’s no doubt in my mind abt that fact so like. i don’t even know what you thought you were doing here. like do you want me to kill myself over this??? i cannot imagine reading anything on ao3 and disliking something strongly enough that i’m moved to say something to their face abt how much i dislike it at all LET ALONE telling a total stranger i’ve never interacted with and never will they’re going NOWHERE IN LIFE?😭 i could be the biggest freak on the planet and it still goes nowhere near the level of freak you have to be to send this message to a complete stranger. as a midnight mass lover you should be MATCHING MY FREAK not TEARING ME DOWN

ur writing is mid and also its so obvious everything u write is just a direct rip off of various scenes of different movies that all fit ur weird fucking kinks. i hope u know i hate ur writing ao deeply. and yes this was meant to be non anonymous bc i dislike ur writing so much. u are mediocre and going nowhere in life

tell me what you REALLY think

[incorrectlooneytunesquotes]

Bugs: You wanna say something?

Wile E.: Yes. About a million things, but I can't express myself monosyllabically enough for you to understand it all.

[incorrectcobrakai]

Johnny: I was going to propose to her.

Bobby: Where?

Johnny: The Universal Tour.

Bobby: You're kidding. What part?

Johnny: When Jaws popped out of the water.

Bobby: That's the most romantic thing I've ever heard.

Johnny: Too bad I'm not trying to marry you.

[shannendoherty-fans]

“The power of three will set you free.” We are excited to announce our third and final guest from Charmed to the Washington State Summer Con. Please welcome one of television’s greatest icons of the ’90s, Shannen Doherty, to the lineup in Puyallup from June 23rd through the 25th. Shannen Doherty started her career as a child actress at just 11 years old, starring in Little House on the Prairie as Jenny Wilder. She then appeared in Our House with Deidre Hall and Wilford Brimley. She also starred alongside Sarah Jessica Parker, and Helen Hunt in Girls Just Want to Have Fun and then in Heathers, a teen comedy also starring Winona Ryder. Her real success came in 1990, at the age of 19, when she was cast in Aaron Spelling's long-running hit series Beverly Hills, 90210 as Brenda Walsh. Shannen continued her work in movies, starring in the thriller Almost Dead and the comedy Mallrats. During the fall of 1998, she reunited with long-time producer Aaron Spelling when she was cast as Prue Halliwell on Charmed, a show about three ordinary women who happen to be witches. She starred in Charmed for three years and also directed three of her last episodes. She continued her work in movies by starring in Another Day, The Rendering, The Battle of Mary Kay, and View of Terror. In 2003, she hosted season one of Scare Tactics and season two with only eight episodes and then left to pursue other endeavors. Shannen returned to television on Fox's drama series North Shore. In 2006, she starred in her own reality series, Breaking Up with Shannen Doherty. Doherty and her former Charmed co-star Holly Marie Combs would star in their road-trip reality show, Off the Map with Shannen & Holly, in 2015. Meet Shannen Doherty at the Washington State Summer Con. She will be with us Saturday and Sunday, meeting her fans, signing autographs, and joining Rose and Holly for an epic Charmed reunion panel. Tickets are on sale now: www.wasummercon.com

Source