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georgemackayhey · 4 years

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Rules For Falling In Love: #3

summary: In which George wants to get married. But… you’re not dating. Why should you say yes?

a/n: So sorry I've been MIA! Here's the news. There are only two chapters left of this fun little story. And something else is in the works for which I'll be posting a sneak peek of very soon (bet ya can't guess what it is!) I hope you're all still just as in love with this plot, though, because I know I am. Let me know your thoughts as always, dudes

w/c: 3k

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"What the hell are you doing?" You hissed through your teeth at your very own reflection. You were dressed for any imaginable occasion. If folks noticed you waltzing down the street, they might assume you were on your way to lunch with friends. They might think you were headed to the market, or to the movies, or shopping around. But they most likely wouldn't imagine you were on your way to get married. But you were.

You perfected your lipgloss and fixed your hair, and when there was nothing left to primp, you stood there, still, waiting for the girl on the other side of the glass to reach through, grab your shoulders and shake some sense into your head. But she didn't.

///

"That's it? We're done?" You asked in a stunned breath. The cheery old fellow who'd walked you through the process of signing a bunch of papers and reciting a few promises smiled, but studied you for a beat before nodding.

"You're married, now. Congratulations!" He escorted you and your group toward the door, waving a bony hand from the entry before slamming the old wooden door shut, abandoning you in the massive marble halls.

"Oh, that's absolutely not it." George's sister whined. The girl yanked you and her brother out into the warm sunshine. She shoved some wildflowers in your hands, forced you to stand in place, and shoved her brother to your side. George draped an arm around your shoulder as you both grumbled for the girl to stop making such a fuss.

"Just think of all the things I was talked out of doing. The party I could have- no, should have thrown. Now smile!" She rose her phone camera and snapped a few shots, humming with satisfaction when she was decidedly finished. Bless her, she really did only want the best for the two of you. And you and George were due for some new photos besides the ones snapped of your forced smiles at the latest award show.

"Well, I forgot to bring cake as promised, but let me take you round the cafe uptown to kick off my stress eating. " Dean sighed as if someone was making him pitch the offer.

"Sounds like ya need it." You jested. Dean rolled his eyes and gave you a real, soft smile. George's sister left with a big wave and a dramatic congratulations.

Dean was excited to choose your celebratory treats himself, and was the first to dart inside the posh cafe when you arrived. You and George followed, laughing about how your friend had transformed into the classic "kid in a candy shop." You lost Dean to the winding line and moved to find some big comfy seats in the busy shop.

The reality of your latest achievement hadn't quite set in yet. George's laughter was such a familiar, comforting sound, as you settled beside him on some ridiculously oversized ottoman. Today was just... another day.

"Please tell me that what Dean just told me is a big fat joke." A familiar lilt pipped up from the other side of the paint chipped coffee table in front of you. George's agent was stood, slack-jawed with a big, whip cream filled to-go coffee in hand. How funny she happened to be here, you thought. Only her surprise greeting was much different from the times you'd bumped into each other and chatted in line at the markets, before.r

"It's nice to see you too, Donna." George laughed, watching as she set her drink down and moved to sit in the claw foot chair at your side. The woman reached for your hand in a flash, focusing on the ring you'd grown rather attached to over the week.

"Surprise?" You laughed, a twinge of worry settling in your stomach as the woman glanced up to you, eyes full of shock.

"Why on earth did you get married?" She asked in a slow squeak, turning to George as you drew your hand out of her clutch. "More importantly why haven't you told me?"

"Well, it's only just happened. Like half an hour ago." George looked to you, then back to his agent. Donna let out a laugh, and you understood her shock, but her reaction was a bit unnerving. She continued to ask a string of rhetorical questions, how, why, where, why, why?

That was about the time Dean emerged from the line that was now flooding out of the doors and around the building. Was it filling up in here, or was the place closing in on you? A nagging unease settled at the base of your lungs as George told Donna some of the things you'd discussed and what led you to signing some papers, together.

Your favorite third wheel plopped down a tray of little bite-sized cakes, decorated in different shades of pretty pastel icing. They reminded you of the macaroons George brought home from the last award show after-party, and never shared.

"Care to join in the celebration? Tea is on it's way." Dean spoke in Donna's direction before casting his gaze to you, sitting across the way.

"Unfortunately, I've got to get going, but I do wish we could continue discussing what the hell you two have gotten yourselves into." Donna stood, with a wavering smile, grabbing her condensation covered to-go coffee, and spinning toward the door to the tune of your crew's goodbyes.

You glanced down to the cakes Dean had picked out, as he piped up to explain their fillings and flavors. George reached over to place a hand on your knee, as he nodded along to his friend's excited dessert-themed rambles. All the worry that had sprouted at Donna's confusion was swiftly put at ease when you noticed the ring on George's finger. This was your decision, together. You'd talked it all the way through and back. Anyone else's worry over the matter didn't hold value over that fact.

When your tea came, you had managed to ask Dean about the girl he'd been seeing. The three of you noshed on divine desserts and listened to your friend gush over the girl he'd taken on a fourth date, just the night before last. His eyes sparkled and you couldn't help but smile when he paused to think up just how to describe his new beau. He was lucky to have found someone who brought a blush to his cheeks at the mention of their name. Hers, was Claire.

You'd been enraptured by Dean's rose-colored chatter, so much so that your phone's sudden rhythmic buzz in your pocket made you gasp aloud.

"Oh shit." You muttered, past a bite of cake. "We're gonna be late for that thing." You turned to George whose face lit up in recognition. He had an interview today, one for a late-night talk show that would be on air long after you'd settled in for the night.

George thanked his friend for the desserts and for being there today, for the both of you. You knew George meant it, you knew how important it was to him. But to hear his genuine appreciation in his goodbye to Dean made your heart lurch.

"I know I've been giving you both a hard time about this, and I'm still a bit confused by the whole thing, but honestly, I'm happy for you both. And I'm glad you let me come along today." Dean shrugged as you all stood to head your separate ways. Now your heart was a puddle, as you flung yourself to the fellow, wrapping him in a hug and thanking him for being too good a friend. You were lucky too, you figured.

///

It was almost actually funny how uncomfortable these things made George. He was so keen to be a movie star, in the most romantic sense, of course. He could go on for days (months, even, you suspected) about the magic of storytelling and all the lessons to be learned from his chosen career.

But promoting his works, promoting himself, wasn't something he was fond of in the very least bit. So once, you tagged along to some garish dinner party that was really just a competition for best dressed, in disguise. He mingled with the people he knew, and the people he was meant to know, trying with all his might to make genuine connections because if he'd failed to learn at least one person's life story on a night out, he considered the evening wasted. And when they asked about him, he'd get it over with in a flash before turning his attention to you, introducing you, asking you to tell that one story. And when you were left alone to await the next celebrity encounter George begged you with his hands clasped together to come along with him to all of the ridiculous Hollywood shindigs he was ever required to attend. And of course, you couldn't tell the boy no.

So tonight was another one of many. You went home, tossed on a dress, and spun out of the door again without a second to breathe. All your focus was spent reminding George that this would all be worth it in the end. How selling his latest film to millions of viewers would ensure the story he was so proud to have been a part of would effectively become dear to most everyone who tuned in to hear his interview.

When you crept through the studio doors, hand in hand, the welcome George received was perplexingly warm. Interns offered both of you snacks and drinks, directors passed through the green room doorway with beaming smiles, and instructions for George to follow. Writers breezed in, covering the last of the bases, and a friendly old makeup lady fussed over his look just in time for George to float to the stage. When he did, he dragged you along with him. You let go behind all the cameras, promising you'd be near the door's he was meant to exit- near enough to give him the odd thumbs up and dash away when it was all said and done.

A small audience murmured as the set changed, and cameramen fluttered about. And then it was off. A man in a casual suit sped through a nauseating, over-rehearsed introduction and you wondered how many of the audience members were laughing for real or because they'd been told to.

And then, out of nowhere, without any warning, the interview took a turn you hadn't prepared for in the least. After the usual quick nice to see you again greetings had been passed back and forth, the host asked George a question he already knew the answer too and presented a photograph you hadn't even gotten the chance to see yet.

It was the one his sister had taken this morning, with the wildflowers, out in the midmorning sun. She'd posted it to her Instagram, tagging you in the caption that featured some long-winded sentiment. And you knew that the girl only had you in mind. She probably wasn't dreaming of George's next interview when she uploaded the photo for the world to see. She most definitely probably wasn't thinking of a moment like this coming true, and how her brother would hate it. In the blink of an eye, you envisioned George angrily phoning his sister and her dramatic defense, and a big unnecessary row breaking out.

But then you zoned back to life and watched George answer the interviewer's question with a small smile. He confirmed that he was officially married, and glad to be. George swiftly moved the conversation toward the film he was meant to prompt, which didn't sway the host on a strict schedule to cover all sorts of topics in the next three minutes. But George wasn't dismissive of the subject. He didn't squirm when the aspect of his personal life was spoken aloud to a room full of strangers. He smiled and caught your eye from the stage. You were too stunned to give him the usual thumbs up from where you waited, you just watched as he grinned, and nodded when the host offered his congratulations.

Then it was over, and the audience flooded away, and you and George hurried to collect yourselves and leave in as big of a hurry as you could without seeming rude. He held your hand like a vice, and you led the way out of the exit, toward the car park.

Before you could reach sweet freedom, a small crew of George's fans had been waiting near the back, with hopes of catching a moment of the guys time they'd come to watch get interviewed. The three young girls held out a marker and asked for his autograph in a shy manner. You noticed most of the fans George encountered over the years were just as meek and mild as the guy himself.

So he smiled and agreed with pleasure, as you awkwardly shifted on the sidelines, unable to flee to the car across the way because he had the keys.

"We're really happy for you, by the way." One of the girls piped up, facing you. "You guys have like, always been our favorite couple."

"You restore our faith in love." Another one of the girls giggled, approaching George with movie posters in hand.

All the complex feelings in your gut the rose at the girl's comments didn't matter. It was entirely too sweet of them to say something. So you thanked them with a smile, and waved goodbye when the last of them had their selfie with George. He said goodbye and turned toward the car with a sigh. You could practically see the weight of the evening's events fall off of his broad shoulders.

You piled into the passenger seat, debating on what to have for dinner, already knowing he dreamed of nothing more than a self-indulgent end to the long night. When you both agreed on what to have, a silence fell over the two of you for the first time all day.

It was heavy with different versions of the same question, the same subject. You'd woken up in one era, one that ended around ten this morning. And neither of you had much of a chance to talk about the fact that you were married now.

"Are you... happy?" You spoke up, at last, watching the world float by on your drive through the city.

"I am. Are you?" George smiled, turning to catch your eye, glancing back at the road ahead a couple of times.

"Yeah." You laughed a little. You wouldn't have agreed to any of this if you weren't dead sure you'd be at peace when the decision was made. And you were filled with that same calm that filled you in the cafe, this morning when George rested his hand on your knee. You'd made the right decision for the both of you, and you were very glad for it indeed.

///

Three months had passed. They were quite busy, and filled with all the usual stress that any typical trio of months held. But as the days passed by, you found George was right, somehow. Things... were easier. Maybe you'd talked yourself into believing so, but you noticed celebrities had stopped leaving you out of chit chat when they breezed through after-parties. You notice stranger men had stopped pestering you at the bar, half of the time. And when you met new people and wound up in new places, you didn't have to go through the long spiel of who Geogre was to you, and why he was always around. He was simply your husband, now.

It was strange to get used to the tile at first, but by the time you'd made it to month four, it rolled off your tongue like melting butter. George seemed most keen to use your unity to get out of other plans.

"Sorry I'll have to miss the next gala, my wife wants to go kayaking." You'd never kayaked. You didn't know how, and you'd never brought it up.

"Ah yes, I am that guy from that one movie but sorry I can't come back to your motel, I've got to help my wife pick out dinner." He had rushed you along grocery store stalls in a hurry to escape the odd, unnerving encounter.

That's how your week started, avoiding the scary fan who kept stalking through the market, stopping George with strange questions around too many corners. It wasn't his most unsettling encounter, but one that left the poor guy on edge for another day or so. You'd get home after fifteen-hour shifts, too tired to talk about it. Too tired to ask what he'd been up to all day.

By the end of your week, you'd barely seen George, and he'd been just as busy. You ended your last, hellish never-ending shift with tears in your eyes from the thousands of little things that had piled up and left you stressed till it was time to clock out.

You got home to find George in the living room, reaching for the remote. He left the thing on the coffee table when he twisted to see you in the doorway, worn down, strung out, over it. He asked if you were alright as you kicked your shoes away and hung your coat up in a hurry to decompress.

You demanded George wait to watch whatever film he had in mind for you to join him. You desperately needed to shift your focus from your own worries to an unrelated fictional realm. In a hurry, you showered the day from your achy body and slipped into your comfiest nightclothes. Then you piled up your best blankets on the sofa, using a couple as faux pillows while you and George shared one big, massive quilt, and flipped on the film.

"What'll be tonight then?" You asked, sinking into the cushions at long last.

"That one my mum won't shut up about. About that couple who gets divorced? WOn a bunch of awards." George muttered, clicking on Netflix. He'd always made it a point to watch the films the public raved over, to find out if the fuss was worth it.

"What if this kick starts our own divorce." You joked, the thought escaping your lips as soon as it passed through your head. Regret might have seeded itself in you if George wasn't so quick to laugh.

"I solemnly swear I will not let a fictional couple's marital issues affect my promise... no, my genuine desire to continue working at being with you for better or for worse."

Where the hell did that come from? You gapped at George as he queued up the film.

"Damn. You're getting good at this whole husband thing." You let out a small, stunned laugh. It made the dull ache in your head hammer. George noticed as you drew a hand to your brow, waiting for the thrum to settle.

"I'm sorry you had another bad day," He whispered.

"Thanks, You softened, knowing he truly empathized.

George lifted his arm and bobbed his head, beckoning you closer. You took the invite to curl into his side with a sigh. He was warm, and comforting, and his bicep was the perfect pillow. You relaxed for the first time in forever, it seemed, closing your eyes in to soak up the calm, quiet evening. The sounds of the film faded as you fell into an accidental nap.

You were jarred awake by a dreadful buzzing coming from the coffee table. George's phone was ringing, and when he twisted too slowly to reach for it, you realized he'd fallen asleep too. You noticed Dean's name flash across the screen as George answered, lackadaisically holding the cell in the hand that wasn't still closely wrapped around you.

"You're on speaker," George warned, as you stayed lethargically content at his side.

"Good! I have a question for both of you." Dean 's voice crackled through the telly. His assumption that you were already wherever George was, made you chuckle.

"Claire and I are staying in that quaint little seaside town, this weekend. Fancy coming along? In fact, it was her idea to invite you both to join us." Dean explained, it sounded as though he was walking through the city, shouts and clangs passing through the call.

You glanced up to George from where your head still rested near his shoulder. Neither of your expressions held signs of disinterest so when George carefully responded to Dean that the idea sounded nice, and asked for more details, you grinned and relaxed back into place.

Dean listed off some more information as George hummed and murmured in response. When the call had ended and new plans were made, George tossed his phone back on the table, and settled deeper into the sofa, shifting the weight of his arm beneath you, but hardly disturbing your peace a bit. The sun was peeking through the cracks of your curtains, and the movie must have been nearly over. You both drifted back asleep without another word, and all seemed well. It must have been.

You and George were closer than ever before- and you had already been classified as inseparable. But you'd hardly gotten to enjoy each other's company since making whatever you had official. Rule number three of this marriage enforced you must take every opportunity to for a bit of fun, as possible. It was time for a small getaway. A peaceful sleep would have to do, till then.

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taglist: @whenthe-smokeisinyoureyes @andux @imaginationandlove @velvetgoldsilver @queen-bunnyears @maria-josefin @dearevansamham @belledamsceno @nilletellsstories @loulouloueh @visionsofmelodrama @haileymorelikestupid

#george mackay #george mackay x reader #george mackay imagine #george mackay fanfic

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nerdzzone · 4 years

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Light After Dark: Chapter Seven

Summary: Brooke Harris was trying her best to be grateful. As the world tackled the COVID-19 pandemic, she was healthy and safe and so was the rest of her family, but her dreams had very quickly been crushed by the economic fallout. Trapped on the quaint island of Jersey with nothing, but free time to wallow in her mistakes, Brooke’s mental health was taking a hit, but when she collides with a handsome stranger she starts to realize that the future might not be so bleak and there might still be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Pairing: Henry Cavill x OFC

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May. 17. 2020

"You should go on the Great British Bake Off!"

Henry's idea came through the speakers on my laptop from where it sat on the counter. We'd been chatting on the phone for over an hour and at some point along the way, I'd decided to make cookies. It was late so everyone in my house had long retired to their bedrooms and since I needed my hands free for the baking process, we'd decided to switch to a video chat. It was actually quite nice just having our casual conversation while I did some baking and he sipped on some whiskey.

"Everyone says that," I laughed at his suggestion as I sipped my glass of wine while my cookies baked in the oven. "But I couldn't handle the pressure. Don't get me wrong, I can bake efficiently when I need to, but it must be so stressful on the show. I do cry quite easily too so if they said anything bad about something I made I would probably just burst into tears."

Henry chuckled before sticking his bottom lip out in a dramatic fake pout.

"Awe, can't take criticism?"

"I can!" I protested with a smile. "But they can be really harsh sometimes! And they give them such short time limits and then act like they're shit bakers even if they knew exactly where they went wrong, but they just didn't have time to start again."

"But surely there are times when you're in that situation when baking professionally?"

"Not really," I shrugged. "I wouldn't take a custom order if they wanted it done in an unreasonable time and as far as the basics go, I always made sure I went in early enough before we opened that I could get everything done properly."

"That's very professional of you," He nodded approvingly. "And I'd say it's a fair criticism of the show, but they probably need that time crunch to make the show exciting for viewers."

I gasped dramatically at that comment.

"Are you saying that regular baking wouldn't be exciting?"

"I'm sure some of it would be thrilling," Henry smirked. "But I would also assume that parts of it could be comparable to watching paint dry."

"Hmm, sounds much like the list of movies you've been in..."

I tried to keep straight face as I made that quip, but I cracked up as Henry tossed his head back laughing.

"Wow, Brooke," He chuckled, shaking his head. "That was harsh."

"I'm just teasing," I smiled. "And I am sorry if this impromptu baking show hasn't been very exciting."

"Hey now, that's not what I said." Henry smirked. "It's been delightful. Honestly, if all bakers wore outfits like that then it would never be boring to watch."

I blushed and subconsciously pulled up the straps on my silk cami pajama top to make sure it wasn't too revealing. The shorts that matched it were currently hidden from view by the counter, but I was sure he got a good look at them when I'd bent over to put the cookies in the oven.

"It's not very practical though is it?" I asked, trying to seem nonchalant and unaffected by his comment. "There's a lot of exposed skin that could get burnt..."

"So if the outfit isn't for baking, is it for my benefit?"

I took a big gulp of my wine as he waited for my answer, his eyebrow raised questioningly. Of course I'd made sure that I looked nice, even a bit sexy, before suggesting we switched to video, but I wasn't going to admit that so easily.

"No," I shook my head. "These are just my normal, everyday pajamas."

"The ones you save for special occasions must be very impressive then."

"That depends," I shrugged with a smirk. "If it's a really special occasion then I usually don't wear any."

Henry practically choked on his whiskey and I was pleased to get under his skin a bit.

"Wow, that is..." He cleared his throat. "Fair enough."

Before I could do anything but smirk at watching him squirm, my timer beeped signalling the cookies were done. I mumbled a quick 'just a minute' before turning around, slipping some oven mitts on and bending over to take the cookies out, well aware that I was giving him another show.

I checked the cookies quickly to make sure they were done before setting them on top of the oven and turning back to Henry.

"Those look amazing," He praised. "I can practically smell them through the screen."

"They do smell pretty good," I smiled. "But I've learned the hard way how important it is to let them cool."

Henry laughed, but at the same time a tiny voice from the doorway drew my attention away from the computer.

"Aunt Cookie?" Molly asked. "Can I come in?"

At her age, there were times when I was shocked by how big and how grown up she looked, but now she seemed the opposite. With her teddy bear tucked under her arm, her frilly pink pajamas and her eyes red from crying she looked small and fragile.

"Of course, sweetheart," I smiled. "Can I call you back, Henry?"

He agreed and I quickly hung up before going over to Molly who was still lingering by the door and squatting down to her level.

"What's wrong?"

That was all it took for her bottom lip to start wobbling.

"I'm just...I'm just..." She took a deep breath before letting out a sob. "I'm just so sad."

My heart broke at the sight so I held out my arms and she instantly rushed forward, wrapping hers around my neck. Her whole body shook as she cried, but I just squeezed her tight and rubbed her back until she'd got it all out of her system. Once the sobs had subsided into sniffles, I leaned back and gently wiped my thumb under her eyes.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I asked, giving her a moment to think before she nodded. "Would a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie and some ice cream help?"

Her teary eyes widened in delight at that.

"But I've already brushed my teeth..."

"I think it'll be okay just this once," I winked, earning a quiet giggle. "But don't tell your mum, okay?"

She nodded frantically and I scooped her up into my arms before carrying her over to one of the bar stools at the island. The cookies would have cooled off enough to eat by now so I put two on a couple of plates before adding a big dollop of ice cream. We ate in silence for a few moments before I pressed her.

"So, what's got you so sad?"

"The big virus..."

She mumbled her words around a mouthful of ice cream, but it was what I'd been expecting so I understood.

"It's pretty scary," I agreed. "But what's bugging you right now?"

"Nana and Pops were watching TV and the man said that lots of people died," She confessed and I made a mental note to remind everyone to be careful what they watched when Molly was in earshot. "And that a bunch more people were gonna get sick still."

"Well, unfortunately, that's true," I reluctantly admitted, not sure how much she really knew or really should know. "That's why we came here because not so many people are sick in Jersey so we're safer."

Her lip wobbled again, but she took another bite of her cookie to hide it.

"But what about daddy?"

"He's being super safe," I assured her. "He's being extra careful so he doesn't get sick, but he's being really brave and helping all the people who do get sick so they get better faster."

"I know," She sighed. "But on the TV a doctor said that they needed more masks 'cause there wasn't enough for everyone so what if daddy doesn't have a mask?"

"Your daddy does have a mask." It was a fairly empty assurance to make as I really wasn't sure, but from what I'd seen no first responders were completely out of supplies just yet. "And there's lots of people working really hard to make sure that they don't run out."

She stared me down for a moment, trying to suss out if I was telling the truth, but eventually gave up and looked back down at her cookie.

"Mummy's really sad too," She told me. "So I try to be brave and not be sad so she doesn't get even more sad, but sometimes I just have to be."

If the sight of her crying hadn't crushed my heart before then that comment certainly did. I put my spoon down on my plate and went around the counter to sit next to her. She didn't look up so I reached out and took her tiny hand in mine.

"Look at me for a sec," I requested, my voice soft. She did as I asked and I saw fresh tears in her eyes. "You don't ever have to be strong like that, okay? Not around me or your mum or your nana and pops. If you're feeling sad or worried or upset at all then you can talk to any of us. We're all a little sad and scared right now, but it's always better to get through things together, right?"

She nodded and I wiped away a tear that was sliding slowly down her cheek before kissing her forehead.

"Thanks, Aunt Cookie."

"Anytime, monkey," I smiled. "Was your cookie good?"

She grinned at that and nodded frantically.

"Can Mr. Teddy have one too?"

I laughed at her cheeky request knowing that Mr. Teddy was just a cover for her wanting another, but I shook my head.

"How about Mr. Teddy just finishes mine?"

There were only a few bites left, it wouldn't be as bad as her having a whole new cookie so as she nodded in agreement, I slid the plate over and let her finish it.

"Are you feeling better now?" I asked after she was done as I wiped her fingers and her mouth with a cloth.

"Yes," She said quietly, clearly with something else on her mind. I waited to see if she would elaborate and after a quiet moment, she did. "Do you think we could call daddy?"

"I think we probably can," I nodded. "Why don't you get back in bed and I'll go ask your mummy if he's working tonight."

She agreed and scurried off back towards her bedroom, leaving me the less than pleasant job of telling Cassie about what had happened. I knocked on her door, knowing she would still be awake as it was only eleven o'clock and went in once she answered.

"Hey," She smiled, putting her book down on the bed beside her. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," I assured her. "But Molly's having a tough time. She just came into the kitchen crying because of some things she overheard on the news."

Cassie paled at that information.

"What did she say?"

"She just asked about people getting sick," I told her as I sat on the end of the bed. "And she heard something about the doctors running out of supplies so she was worried about Josh having a mask."

"Oh god," She sighed. "What did you tell her?"

"I said that I knew her daddy would be careful and that I was sure he had a mask." I braced myself for the next part as I knew it would be hard for her to hear. "But she also said that she knows you're sad so she can't show that she's sad too because she doesn't want to make things worse for you."

Cassie's face fell again at that news and for a moment I thought she was about to cry herself.

"Oh my god, I'm the worst mother in the world," She groaned. "I thought I was hiding it well. I can't believe she didn't think she could talk to me about this."

"It's not your fault," I assured her. "She's too smart for her own good."

"Yes, she is," She laughed half-heartedly. "Is she okay now?"

"I think so," I nodded. "She definitely calmed down, but she was wondering if she could talk to Josh. I told her I'd ask you if he was working."

"He's not," She sighed again. "I'll go have a chat with her and we can give him a call. Thanks for helping her, Brooke."

"Anytime. It's nice to be around when she needs a hug."

Cassie swung her legs off the bed and grabbed her phone from the nightstand.

"She really looks up to you," She smiled. "I'm sure it meant a lot to her that you talked it over with her."

I almost teared up at that as it had meant a lot to me too that she trusted me enough to come to me when she needed comfort.

"I just hope I helped a bit," I shrugged as we headed out the door. "And if she says anything at all about a cookie and some ice cream, she's definitely lying."

"I knew I could smell baking!" She laughed. "I'll be down to get some after I'm done with Molly."

I promised to save her a few as she cracked open Molly's bedroom door and I headed back to the kitchen, hoping to catch Henry before he went to bed.

****

Once I got back to the kitchen, I opened my laptop again and poured myself another glass of wine as it turned back on. Once it was ready, I called Henry and he answered almost right away.

"Hi there," He smiled. "Everything okay?"

I took a large sip of my wine before I nodded.

"Yeah," I sighed. "I think so. My niece apparently heard some things on the news that shocked her and with her dad being a paramedic she needed a bit of assurance."

"Ah, yes, I could see how that makes things more complicated..."

"It was brutal," I frowned. "She's sitting there crying because she heard about all the deaths and how there's a shortage of protective equipment, but it's hard to explain to her. I don't want to lie, but I also don't want to say 'yeah, thirty-five thousand people have died in the UK and loads more probably will before this is all sorted out so keep washing your hands or you will too'."

Henry chuckled at my dramatic simplification of what was happening.

"Yes, I would imagine that's probably not wise to say to a child under ten," He smiled. "But I'm guessing you handled it well?"

"I hope so," I took another sip of wine. "I managed to stop her crying, but the warm cookies and ice cream might have had more to do with that than my words of wisdom."

"I'm sure you did your best," Henry assured me with a smile. "We had a similar issue here the other day. George was just very fed up with the whole situation and demanded to know why he wasn't allowed to see any of his friends. It took ages to calm him down."

"It's so hard!" I sympathized. "They're all going to end up so traumatized from going through this in their formative years."

"Probably, but hopefully they'll come out stronger because of it."

I couldn't help, but smile at his positivity as I took yet another gulp of wine.

"I hope so because otherwise there's going to be a generation of emotionally stunted people who are scared to get within two metres of each other."

"Let's hope that's not the case," Henry laughed. "But I have another pressing question."

I raised an eyebrow at that.

"Oh, do you?"

"Aunt Cookie?" He questioned. "Is that some play on you being a baker?"

It took me a minute to realize what he was talking about and then it dawned on me.

"No, it's not," I laughed. "My mum calls me Brookie and Cassie struggled to say it when she was little so growing up she always called me Cookie. Maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but that's why Molly calls me that."

"That's really cute," Henry smiled. "And a very fitting nickname for a baker."

"It is," I agreed. "It used to drive me insane when I was a child, but it's grown on me over the years."

"I always wanted a fun nickname, but all I got was Fat Cavill!”

I burst out laughing at that as it was so unexpected from the muscled man in front of me, but I covered my mouth, realizing it was rude to laugh at such a cruel name.

"Were they being ironic?" I asked, shaking my head. "How could anyone think you're fat?"

"I haven't always looked like this," He admitted. "I was chubby when I first went off to boarding school and kids can be very mean."

"That is true, but now you're Superman so fuck them all."

Henry laughed and nodded his head.

"Exactly!"

I smiled at his proud grin before glancing down at the time.

"Well," I sighed. "I should probably get some sleep. Sorry our conversation was interrupted."

"Don't worry about it at all," Henry assured me. "Sounds like it was for an important reason."

"It was," I nodded. "I'll talk to you tomorrow?"

"Absolutely," He smiled. "Goodnight, Cookie."

I stuck out my tongue at the nickname before saying goodnight and hanging up.

I had the usual sense of contentment that I had after a conversation with Henry, but there was a heaviness to it tonight. It was easy sometimes to block it all out and focus on the good that had come out of this pandemic. Meeting Henry, having time to relax, getting to spend time with my family. But in the end, the bad stuff always crept back in. The worry about the future, the sadness of how many lives had been lost and how many would be by the time this was over and now, the impact it was having on Molly and other children like her. She was a pretty tough kid and it was hard to see her crumble like she had tonight. She had a good support system though and I knew in the end she would come out of this mess okay so I picked my laptop up off the counter and headed to bed, trying to keep my thoughts positive and hoping that tomorrow would be a brighter day.

#henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill fanfiction #henry cavill fic #henry cavill x ofc

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okayto · 4 years

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Mini-Review: Inuyasha

15-year-old modern schoolgirl Kagome and grumpy half-demon Inuyasha reluctantly team up to recover the pieces of a magical jewel that were scattered when Kagome fell down a well into magic-filled feudal Japan. On their quest they team up with a monk, a demon slayer, and a young fox demon while trying to stay ahead of the large number of people who want one or all of them dead.

This counts as a classic now, right? I remember plenty of Inuyasha cosplays (including me as Kagome for Halloween once), fanart, and the rare anime merch in real stores while the original series aired in the early aughts. But despite that, I wasn’t a dedicated watcher at the time. Which ended up to my advantage, because now the entire series is easily available.

The premise is simple: Kagome falls down a well at her family’s shrine, and comes out the other side in feudal Japan. She’s attacked by a demon that wants to acquire the magical Shikon Jewel embedded in her body, awakens and is saved by the grumpy half-demon Inuyasha, the jewel shatters, and now they gotta go put it back together. Only, Kagome is the reincarnation of Inuyasha’s former girlfriend, the priestess Kikyo, and the two parted on bad terms each believing their lover had betrayed them. (It was a trick by series Big Bad Naraku, but still.)

And because nothing is ever simple, Kikyo gets brought back to life at one point for Reasons, then proceeds to spent a chunk of the series alternating between helping random peasants (because she’s got such a nice soul) and trying to kill Inuyasha and co (because breakups suck).

This is not an intellectual series, but it is a fun series. Mostly. There’s lot of action, lots of magic and demon-slaying, and the occasional respite/comedy break when Kagome heads home because she’s got a school exam, or needs to stock up on snacks, and say hi to a family who is super chill about their teenager just gallivanting around 500 years in the past, using her archery skills to avoid being eaten for dinner.

Yes. In this portal fantasy the portal remains open, allowing free crossing back and forth, which is convenient. I remain, however, mystified by how far the characters seem to travel while always remaining within a fairly easy trip back to their home base where the well is.

In general, you can’t think about it too hard. It won’t hold up, it’s not supposed to hold up. This is a feudal Japan where no one cares that Kagome is running around in a miniskirt, riding a bicycle and eating cup noodles and bags of chips.

On one hand, Inuyasha, like many action series, is great for the casual viewer: after a brief introduction at the beginning, you know the basic setting and the rest of the story in any given episode is easy to figure out (usually: this brightly-colored character wants to harm these other ones and/or steal their weapons). But what’s fun when viewed in short doses gets old if you’re trying to cram it. Not because it’s bad, but binging does make its flaws more obvious.

Its main flaw is that every single character needs to take a course in communicating.

To be clear, every main character has the emotional intelligence of a sleep-deprived sixth grader. Inuyasha isn’t alone in this, but the number of fights that compelled me to yell please work out your interpersonal drama later when demons are not actively trying to kill you was...a lot.

(Don’t worry, there’s plenty of arguing when they’re not dealing with murder attempts, too!)

Okay, so, why watch? I mean, sometimes you just wanna see cool magical people fighting other magical people in ridiculous ways? I mean look at these people! You’re not going to mix any of them up with anyone else, huh? And the colors, nice and bright!

Also, initial-minor-antagonist-who-refuses-to-admit-he-would-ever-willingly-be-nice Sesshoumaru, Inuyasha’s older half-brother? He was popular eye candy back then, and he’s still pretty now.

Now, my roommate and I watched this over the course of many months, which is what I recommend. It’s a long series (193 episodes total, excluding movies), and why rush it? A plus to watching now is that the series is complete: the original anime ended before the manga, so 163 episodes in, it just...doesn’t resolve. But a few years later, Inuyasha: The Final Act was released and completed the story.

Even so, the show is long enough that unless you’re really enjoying it, you can go ahead and skip the filler episodes that were stuck in the original run. Just google “Inuyasha filler” and you’ll find multiple lists.

Verdict

English dub? Yes

Visuals: I mean, the first 167 episodes are from 2000-2004, so the aspect ratio is 4:3, but it’s held up OK. Character designs are colorful and distinctive. This isn’t going for anything close to realism, but it’s fun to look at.

Worth watching? Yeah, probably. Sometimes you just need a silly action show, and Inuyasha delivers in spades. It’s not perfect--monk Miroku’s lechery and groping is treated as a small character flaw and usually played for laughs, which gets old real quick. A lot of the side characters are legitimately fun as well, from Sesshoumaru’s little entourage Jaken and Rin (does he care about them? he’ll kill you before admitting it) to Kagome’s easygoing family to the recurring wolf demon allies.

Overall, I think I have to hold a long-running fantasy action show to a different standard of “is it good” than I do, say, something with 12-26 episodes. It’d have to get to the point quickly if it was shorter; even skipping the filler, this is the adaptation of a 56-volume manga so there’s just going to be a lot of adventures where the entire point is just “characters get [magical weapon/power-up/knowledge] and beat up some bad guys.” There’s something fun and also comforting in knowing it’s not going to get deep.

Where to watch (USA, as of November 2020): Hulu (sub and dub episodes 1-167, then 168-193 under the separate listing of Inuyasha The Final Act), Crunchyroll (sub and dub episodes 1-54), Netflix (sub and dub episodes 1-54), Viz.com (sub and dub episodes 1-193); multiple blu-ray and DVD sets

Click my “reviews” tag below or search “mini review” on my blog to find more!

#also wolf demon leader Koga's 2 constant companions Ginta and Hakkaku are CLEARLY boyfriends we decided #Inuyasha #roomie and I had a couple nights a week we'd eat dinner together while sharing the show and it was a good time #anime #reviews #recommendation #kinda #but oh yes Sesshoumaru is p r e t t y

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lexiconoffear · 4 years

Quote

Well, what do you know? A tragic glimpse to my right presents a view of a little stranger with a charm for whispering nonsense to the air. Fucking Harper Lee over there is writing shit all on her frosted green MacBook with the creativity of a blunt hacksaw. That she casually smiles with a hint of disdain towards those that give her the stern eye when she infrequently cowers behind Jane Austen books is nothing less than revolting. Why do I sound surprised to see these people at Verve? All of them with the usual brand of “I want to make it in Hollywood too”. Here’s a newsflash for you. Stop pretending that you like to read Lady Susan and Sanditon. Oh and Miss Fucking Perfect, we know you haven’t read any classics in your sunny shell of an existence. I would also like to add that drinking five cups of mint mocha and mumbling your shitty screenwriting lines is a non-starter with any professional worth a damn. It’s insulting that people like you think otherwise. But you like giving out shitty blowjobs to every one of your followers on Insta if it gets you some undivided attention. The nerve. For once, I would like to rip open her fucking head and look inside. But we all can’t take unnecessary risks. Can we Joe? Cut to our little hideaway in that golden Americana cul-de-sac. Repose feels great in the evening. Some might beg to differ. Now, it’s time for some pressing news. Shock. Horror. A domestic violence case in our own quaint suburbia. To say that I'm intrigued to see how you handle this crisis is a bit of an understatement. Typical. Color me fucking surprised. You try to console yourself with many crafted truths. A bad case of false reporting. Lack of circumstantial evidence. You even blame it on something out of your control. But I'm glad to hear that you’re slowly dying on the inside. The world can finally find comfort in knowing what a stand-up guy you are, Joe Goldberg. You want a do-over? Some respite from public heat? No bueno. Why will it be any different this time Joe? Do you honestly think that low of me? Every word you espoused was a lie. Like crimson etches that forever stains our vision of what’s real. Comeuppance is nothing but a decorum now. The viewers of the media and our community love to crucify every fucker that slowly chips away at the perfect household image. The perfect family. Our fucking so called perfect lives as couples that be. But that’s the least of your concerns. What you should worry about most is a woman who owns her narrative. Her story. Her triumphs. She doesn’t pretend to be some victim of circumstance. She is a fucking survivor. Fucking America loves this piece to death. People love it. They all can't get enough of that shit. As soon as it's served up, everyone eats it up like magic rice. You were too oblivious to see what is at stake here. Don’t give me that dirty look as if you're entitled to it. Really, it’s a fitting retribution. Any scorned lover would see this punishment as fit for the crime committed. Did you think for once that the cost to all the insanity you inflicted was justified? Has nothing sacred ever matter to the likes of you? You weren’t like this before we grew and settled. Those restless struggles. Endless disputes. Our relationship certainly wasn’t the easy paradise that we pictured in our minds. That much I can tell you. But it was worth fighting for. Nothing else meant more than the first word we chose to define our union. Don’t tell me it meant nothing the moment you pulled closer at a wedding and reassured me with vows that came to be. Don’t you dare lie to me and say that our love was an illusion that ended while we fucked each other in my third trimester. When you saw me for the first time at Anavrin, you witnessed that wonder. A one-of-a-kind love. That incited all this madness and ecstasy. I was the cool girl you envisioned in your hopeless dreams. That cool girl who did everything right. Who like every asshole envisions as the definitive girl they like to fuck and bring to their family home for Christmas. Manic pixie version. She is that fucking cool girl. The same girl with a mouth that is sure to win some prizes in any department. What a fucking joke. To think that I shaped myself to be the ultimate lover. Unmatched in both scale and vision. Did you think that my fucking name was a joke to you? Yes, that’s a rhetorical question by the way. One fucking word. Love. How the fuck did you fuck that up? My charming hardened New Yorker guy with a wounded soul. I remember when you were different. Smitten by a dumb joke about fucking fruit of all things. I saw that darkness in your eyes. A wit that followed with a charming presence. Can’t also deny you weren’t easy on the eyes either. This had to be it. The thing we both searched for our entire lives. Love. In Hollywood of all places. You were all in and nothing else mattered. I loved you unconditionally. Yeah, that’s a fucking cliché if I hear it again. We fucked each other, blew one another and rose in the morning like fucking squirrels on mescaline. Perhaps, that’s a little too intimate for the ears. Forgive me for not censoring shit that needs to be heard. So, how the hell did we end up here? Call me a little jaded now, if I don't look back at our history with rose-tinted glasses. I should have seen the signs. Yes, love can make us do terrible things and be blind to each other's faults. That's a fucking given. But I never thought I would lose trust in you. The one who finally brought a sense of ease to my heart. The same guy who later cheated on me and fucked a woman from behind. Our neighbor no less. On a day that very well should have marked the death of me. Just one glance and I saw the vision of our nuclear family undone. All you ever pursue is another work of project in sight. That’s how your fucking story always is. Just like Delilah. Just like Beck. Add that cutthroat bitch with a revenge agenda to the fucking equation too. You killed assholes. Left. Right. Center. Yet, you stand there and face me with a familiar look. A smugness that reeks of self-righteousness. That appearance of hypocrisy. The very look my mother gave me when I didn’t do my part in taking good care of Forty. The same look is all I see now. Disappointment. Disgust. Revulsion. Like a damaged commodity that you pass on when you’re done. You didn’t even have the balls to tell me what you really felt. It’s all a delusion that you hold to encourage that shitty desire of buying new merchandise with an exclusive item on the side that some cunt upsells you at Walmart. Forgiving the unforgivable is not in my fucking rule book. You think you can get away. Unscathed. Unfazed. Unhurt. No, you don’t. No fucking way Joe. Now, I know the truth. I wasn’t destiny. I wasn’t love. The worst part is that you made me believe in hope. Made me hold onto faith. Then, you reduced me to a foil in your self-absorbed romance story. But make no mistake, you will pay the price. Mark my fucking words. Don't think I won't make plans well ahead in advance to fuck you over. You will see what I'll bring to the table. I must thank you though. You brought something else out of me. Something I tried to hide for a very long time. All it took was a little nudge in the right direction. The follow up act was less painful. But you wouldn’t care, would you Joe? You never thought about family. The lengths that many would go to protect their kind. To spare them of any anguish. A quick head dash into a collective antique vase from Montalcino should do the trick. Maybe, a little cut on the arm with a help of a few broken shards. That will save myself from the shame. From the silent screams. The undying pain. Nothing compares to the deep cuts of the heart. All I see now is a vivid painting of torture. Filled with cinnabar streaks all over the Vermillion carpet that my late brother cherished. What a perfect expression of grief. The dull ache. The fading memories. The wild stench of blood. When your other half dies, nothing eclipses the misery of loss. That’s what I told myself. Family is everything. It always came first. Above all else. But when I fell in love again, my entire perspective changed. Until reality hit me in the face. Sheared off in patches and defiled like every other celebration past the fourth of July. Do you really think I wouldn’t see to it that justice will be sought for the unseen wounds, the unheard abuse, and the million masks people like you wear to fool their loved ones? Don’t kid yourself Joe. It’s time we put an end to this fantasy. One way or another.

Love Quinn (YOU)

#gone girl #you on netflix #you netflix #netflix you #love quinn #cool girl #monologue #joe goldberg #joe x love #relationship #quote #season 3

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violethowler · 5 years

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This Isn’t A Zero Sum Game: An Analysis of Lotor’s Interactions With The Paladins as a Whole Across Seasons 5 and 6

Every once in a while I’ll think about some “hot take” I saw in the VLD fandom more than a year ago and just think about how canon... just did not support those conclusions... And since that’s how most of my meta get started, I churned out a new one:

In the wake of Seasons 5 and 6 dropping I saw a lot of posts, particularly from Lotor stans, bashing the Paladins for the way they treated him in the first two episodes of Season 5, how cruel they were to just give him over to his father without a second thought. I even saw a few arguing over how humane his treatment was in S5E1.

While I do believe that Lotor’s desire for peace was genuine (as we would have seen in Season 8 before the executive meddling cut the payoff), I think that it’s a little extreme to argue that the Paladins treatment of him in S5E1 The Prisoner was unethical, or that they were just throwing him to the wolves in S5E2.

To quote one of my favorite video game characters, “Let’s hit these plot points in order.”

What exactly were people expecting the Paladins to do after Lotor saved the day in “A New Defender”? Immediately welcome him into the fold with open arms and a fresh batch of cookies that Hunk made just for the occasion? They’re forgetting that just a few episodes ago, Lotor was still in charge of the Galra Empire. He wasn’t a fringe third party with a checkered past who showed up to help when the chips were down like Rolo and Nyma. For all of Season 3 and most of Season 4, he’s been an enemy combatant, and they treated him as such. While he may currently be at odds with his father after S4E3, the Paladins have no way to know whether he genuinely wants peace or is just telling them what they want to here so he can take advantage of them. Because he’s done it before.

In S3E2 Red Paladin, Lotor has Narti use her mind control powers to have the leader of Puig send a distress signal asking Voltron for help. When they arrive, he ambushes them and sends multiple waves of fighters to gauge their skill and whether they would be able to retrieve the trans reality comet. When he gets what he wants, he leaves.

Two episodes later, in S3E4 Hole in the Sky, Lotor attaches a distress beacon to the ship with the comet inside that mimics an Altean distress signal. When Voltron arrives, he waits for them to retrieve the comet, then attacks them, steals the comet for himself, and flies off.

That’s two times now that Lotor has faked a distress signal and then used Voltron’s desire to help to further his own agenda before flying off with the fruits of his labor. He may not have done anything to them since then, but they are understandably wary of being used like that a third time. You know how the old saying goes. “Fooled me once, shame on you. Fooled me twice, shame on me.”

So, when he slides up to the Coalition saying “hey, I know we’ve fought in the past but let’s see if we can come to an agreement”, he’s looked at with suspicion, and understandably so. The Paladins aren’t going to just give free reign of the Castle of Lions to someone they know very little about, who was an enemy combatant less than a month ago (by all indications S4E2-6 take place within a very short period of time), and who has a history of using their desire to help people to advance his own agenda. So, they put him in the cell as a probationary measure. If he proves trustworthy, they give him access to more of the castle. If it turns out that he’s using them for his own ends like they fear, well, they’ve already locked him up, and at least he wouldn’t have been able to access any sensitive information. We see that bear out in S5E3 Postmortem. The Paladins aren’t bothered that Lotor’s out of his cell. He’s proven his intentions by killing his father. Their main reaction is surprise that they’re giving him access to the bridge already.

[EDIT]: Some posts following the release of Season 5 pointed out that if the lights on Lotor’s prison deck were kept on 24/7, it would constitute a form of torture. While that is a valid point to make, I saw quite a few blogs that took that possibility and exaggerated it, not even considering the “if” part of the original discussion, declaring it as fact, and rushing to label the Paladins’ actions as war crimes because we never saw Lotor’s cell with the lights off. It should be noted that all of these scenes took place in the daytime, and while we never see that specific room at night, Season 2 already showed that the castle’s lights are turned off during the night cycle, and there’s nothing to suggest they didn’t do the same with Lotor’s cell.

And there’s also another angle that isn’t really talked about – that not everyone we saw in the Coalition in previous seasons was willing to work alongside Galra like the Blade of Marmora. While the rebels we see in Begin the Blitz and A New Defender are just fine working with the Blades, it’s not out of the question that some Coalition members might resent the Coalition’s Galra allies. And if Lotor’s on the Castle of Lions, that would make him a target. The cell could also have been just as much to keep trigger happy Coalition members out as it was to keep him in.

Then I hear people arguing that they were just going to hand him over to Zarkon with no strings attached, that they were just going to give Lotor up and trust that Zarkon would stay true to his word. It sometimes sounded like some people want so badly for Lotor to be a bigger victim than he already is that they twisted canon to make the Paladins out to be thoughtless jerks. Because S5E2 Blood Duel shows us that everything that happened was all according to plan.

For those who are unfamiliar, the Unspoken Plan Guarantee trope refers to the pattern that the more the audience knows the details of the plan beforehand, the greater the chances the plan will fail, and the fewer details the audience knows in advance, the greater the chances the plan will succeed. Explaining the details of the plan after it’s been successfully carried out is optional.

After Zarkon pulls the hologram trick, the phrase “Hold our position until the time is right.” Is repeated by both Shiro and Lance (albeit without the “until the time is right” part for Lance). And the show tells us that the moment when “the time is right” is when Lotor attacks Zarkon and leads him away from the shuttle.

When the Paladins are arguing with Shiro in S5E3 Postmortem, they don’t say anything to the effect of “why did you give Lotor a weapon?” They had no problem with him being armed. The issue they had was that Lotor was given the Black Bayard, his father’s signature weapon they had only just gotten back from Zarkon 14 episodes ago. One wrong move in Blood Duel, and that weapon would have been back in Zarkon’s hands. And for a moment in that episode, it was. Zarkon did get his hands on the Black Bayard and if Lotor had been a second too slow, Zarkon would have killed all five Paladins, plus Matt and Sam in a single strike.

I’ve mentioned before that VLD prefers to show things to the audience rather than explain them out loud. Sometimes it’s to the show’s detriment because the answer to viewers’ questions aren’t immediately obvious. But watching Blood Duel again, it’s clear that plan was always “make the hostage exchange. Wait for Zarkon to double cross us. Lotor attacks Zarkon and leads him on a chase across the desert. Shiro, Matt, and Pidge storm the shuttle to free Sam.” The Paladins were always going to ensure that Lotor was armed during the fight with his father. The only issue they had was Shiro’s choice of what weapon to give him.

So now that Lotor has proven they can trust him, they start to drop their guard and be more casual and friendly around him. And according to Matt during the flashbacks in S7E7 “The Last Stand: Part”, by the time Sam Holt has been on Earth for just over a year, Voltron had been missing for six months. That means that between S5E5 Bloodlines and S6E4 The Colony, Voltron and Lotor had been working together for just over six months. That’s six months of the Paladins slowly growing to trust and befriend the new Galra Emperor. But the little embers of doubt about his intentions were still there in the back of each of their minds.

That’s why it’s so easy for the Paladins to believe Keith and Romelle when they show up accusing him of murdering Alteans with no concrete evidence other than their own assumptions. Because given his behavior before Naxzela, an apparent reveal that he had been playing the long game manipulating them all along rekindled those embers of suspicion. It’s easy for them to conclude that Lotor was playing a long con since it would fit with his behavior towards them prior to Season 4. Because what non-nefarious reason could Lotor possibly have for not telling Allura and Coran that he had been sheltering the surviving Alteans after working together for six months?

We know why Lotor didn’t say anything. Because he refused to risk Haggar discovering the Colony’s existence and scouring the universe until she found it. But the Paladins have never experienced the level of privacy invasion and subsequently justified paranoia that Lotor has. So, they do not have the experience to understand that he refused to risk the security of the colony by revealing its existence where Haggar might have spies or listening devices or cloned sleeper agents to overhear.

I agree with the theory that Lotor was telling the truth about the Altean Colony and that what was happening there was not what Keith and Romelle believed it was. I absolutely believe that the Paladins leaving Lotor in the rift was a mistake. But the attempts by certain Lotor stans to water this down to a black and white scenario of Paladins Evil, Lotor Good are not supported by canon. Canon shows us that the falling out between Lotor and the Paladins was a messy situation where everyone had understandable reasons for reacting to the reveal of the colony as they did. That doesn’t make any one person’s reactions right or justified, only that if you put the pieces together it’s understandable how they reached the conclusions they did.

TL;DR: There is no evidence in the show that suggests Lotor was treated inhumanely, the Paladins were never going to just hand him to Zarkon unarmed and hope for the best, and Lotor's paranoid refusal to tell them about the Colony gave Keith's accusations greater weight because it was in line with his behavior towards the Paladins in Season 3 enough for them to believe that he had been pulling a long con all along.

#voltron meta #vld lotor #voltron legendary defender #character analysis #vld paladins #vld season 5 #voltron season 5 #voltron season 6 #vld season 6

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glitter-asian · 6 years

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limerence [part one]

Everything happened so quickly. It started with one meeting and developed into something more. My entire world felt as if it were spinning at some unknown rate where some moments were irritability slow and others being intoxicatingly fast. I guess I should have seen it coming right? But sometimes we choose to ignore toxic traits in others because of our own insecurities. That leads to even worst consequences. Not even you can deny it but sometimes we're fucked up enough to want someone who is totally obsessed with us.

Everything happened so quickly. It started with one meeting and developed into something more. Who knew that one person could change your life so much? Maybe I was crazy for doing this. Maybe I was just so in love with the concept of being in love that I took the first sign of kindness and ran with it. Either way I didn't regret it. I didn't regret the blood spilled, the people who went missing, the boundaries crossed and the fucked up things that happened. Because in the end I got her. I got the girl ~ even if it was for only a while.

warnings: yandere! type behaviour displayed in ‘love’ interest // smut // drugging // toxic relationships // blood // viewer discretion advised

word count: 4.6k

a/n: okay so this is part one because it’s so long and it’s not edited yet ... shoutout to @maknaesdancersrappers for inspiring me to write this type of fic.. check out her amazing stuff! and if you want more yandere stuff check out @neo-cult-ure [a new account that will mainly do yandere stuff]

"Great idea." you mumbled to yourself as you stood by the bus stop, half soaked in rain water as the cold evening breeze caused goosebumps on your skin. "Listen to Lucas. He obviously has a brain" You mentally scolded yourself for letting your friend convince you to leave your comfy, warm apartment and buy snacks for his dumbass frat party. You slipped your hand in your pocket and pulled out your phone, thankfully it was water resistant so it still worked however, you weren't planning on leaving so the battery percentage was pretty low. Your fingers glided across the screen as your other hand held the two plastic bags filled with bags of chips and cookies. At your feet were the other bags of snacks that you had momentarily placed on the ground so you could easily call the younger male.

"Please pick up." you mumbled as you placed the cellphone to your ear and waited for him to answer. He didn't. "Dumbass." You said before ending the call and looking around. Every second you spent waiting here only allowed for the darkness to cover the city even more. The sight itself would have been very aesthetically pleasing if you weren't annoyed at him. Vehicles sped past as you stood alone in the cold, once or twice flinching as a car passed a little too close to a puddle that could possibly cause a big splash if it were to drive in it. It would be at least another 45 minutes before the next bus came and your only other option was to walk to the frat house which was a couple blocks away, however you hesitated considering the fact that you were holding so many bags, and that it could rain again. You were pulled out of your thoughts when you heard a soft voice. Quickly, you turned around only to come face to face with Bae Joohyun.

Joohyun, otherwise known as Irene, the one girl in university that the boys all wanted but somehow they never got a chance with. You knew about her because even Lucas tried to shoot his shot at her but that didn't end well. Some said that she had a CEO boyfriend and a loaded mother while others assumed that she was a lesbian cult leader. Obviously people think too much and should mind their own business however it was hard to not pay attention to the beauty that was Irene. You had seen her around however she wasn't in any of your classes. In fact she was a year or two ahead of you. She was holding a small plastic bag in her hand, a dark blue jeans clung to her legs and she paired it off with a light pink hoddie. Irene stopped as she approached you.

Hardly anyone willingly spoke to Irene mainly because of this resting bitch face she had. She always acted so prim and serious ~ not even laughing, as a matter of fact you couldn't remember ever seeing her laugh before. As your mind flashed through all these thoughts you felt your heartbeat increase and your nerves stood on edge.

"Are you waiting for the bus?" Irene asked. You looked at her and then back at the road.

"Yes." Your answer came out a little too enthusiastic and it caused Irene to raise an eyebrow at you. "Yeah, I kind of missed the first one." you said in a more calm and collected tone. Your gaze focused on the road as you pushed your phone into your pocket and picked up the other two bags which were on the ground. There was a moment of awkward silence before you spoke up again, "Are you?"

You heard her let out a sigh almost as if she really didn't want to speak and it was a bit embarrassing honestly.

"Actually I just came because I thought I saw a pretty girl here." Irene's words were blunt and unexpected to say the least.

"I've been standing here for almost ten minutes and no one else has passed by." an awkward chuckle left your lips at her comment. You looked back at Irene and her gaze was still on you.

"Then maybe that pretty girl was you." Her tone so in command as if there was no doubt in the statement at all. This came as a shock to you, why? Because you heard exactly what she did to Lucas when he approached her and flirted with her like he would usually do to tons of girls. His techniques had a ninety five percent success rate, however with Irene it failed. You blushed, your eyes looking away ~ but Irene didn't. "I'm not joking." she added, her lips curving into a soft smile.

This was the first time you had ever seen her smile and boy was it beautiful.

It had been almost three months now and you and Irene seem to be getting along fine. The night you both met, she ended up walking with you to the frat house and even stayed at the party for a while ~ mainly trailing behind you as you looked for Lucas. Speaking of your friend, he was a bit skeptical about your relationship with Irene. He claimed that she didn't fit right with you and the rest of your friends. And to some extent he was right. But you just believed that he was low key jealous that you had done what no other boy could do and that was befriend her. She became closer to you a lot quicker than most of your university friends which was surprising considering the way people talked about her.

And her aura itself changed, she no longer was an intimidating senior ~ instead she became a sweet, older sibling type friend. You saw nothing wrong with this. However it was quite unusual how quickly you both became close.

"Are you free tonight?" the text lit the screen of your phone as you sat in your morning lecture. At first you thought it was Lucas so you didn't reply. A few seconds later you received another message but this time it was a pink flower emoji. You took out your phone and read the message which happened to be from Irene, before sending a reply,

"Well I just have some homework to finish up for next week, why?" You sent the message. A few seconds later you received another message.

"I can help you with it if you want, I kind of need you to go with me somewhere tonight." You were reluctant to take up her offer. But then again she was a year above you so she had experience and knew how to do this the right way.

"Okay, you can come over to the apartment around 4." That was the last text you sent her before putting your phone back in your bag.

A knock on the door pulled you from your thoughts as you stood up and walked over to the front door of the apartment. You looked through the peephole and saw that it was Irene standing there with her bag. It took a few seconds to unlock the door since your roommate, Lana added a new lock to the door.

"Hey, thanks for coming." You stood to the side and allowed her to enter the apartment before closing the door behind.

"It's no problem. I'm always down to help you out." Irene smiled a little as she looked around the apartment. "Where is your roommate?"

You puffed out your cheeks and shrugged, "I have no clue, she didn't come back yet." Irene nodded.

"Well I have everything here, I was just having some problems with the research part for this section." You directed her attention to the notebook on small table you and Lana used as a dining room. Irene placed her bag down on the table and sat on a chair. She began to explain the assignment you were given and even helped you completely plot the entire thing. Once she was finished you felt so relieved and couldn't even begin to thank her for her help.

"Seriously, I don't know what I would have done without." You said casually as you stood up from the chair. "Lucas would have never been able to figure this out." you laughed, but it quickly died down when you noticed Irene didn't seem to ecstatic about your male friend. "Now what was it you needed me for tonight?" You questioned as you recalled the exchange in text messages earlier today.

"Well, there is a party that my .. " before Irene could finish her sentence the front door swung open and in walked your roommate with her boyfriend's hands all over her.

"Oh y'all still here." Lana said, her smile fading, "Didn't I tell you I'd need the apartment tonight?" she asked.

"Right.. " Your voice trailed off, "yeah, we're leaving in a bit.." You managed to say, "By the way this is.."

"Yeah I don't really need to know." Lana said before pulling her boyfriend with her towards her room which was down a hallway, next to yours. You glanced at Irene who looked a bit unimpressed with the person who you had to share a home with.

"Right what were you saying?" you asked Irene.

Irene licked her bottom lip before continuing, "First of all, she's even bitchier in person." she paused, "and secondly, it’s a party, and I need a date so I thought I'd bring you since you seemed so stressed these days with your classes."

You smiled at her, "well that's nice of you but.."

"Come on, it will be fun, and your roommate clearly wants the place to herself tonight."

You thought about it and nodded, what's the worst that can happen? After agreeing, Irene asked you to use the bathroom and you pointed her in the direction, it was also down the hallway, the door directly opposite to your bedroom. you went on to start packing up your school supplies and shutting down your laptop.

"Most of the people here are either in their last year of university or graduated already." Irene told you as she pushed a strand of your hair back. Both of you sat on the couch inside the house where the party was taking place. She looked at you, "Don't worry just relax, I brought you out to have fun." Irene reached for a cup that she had brought you earlier and handed it to you.

"Thanks," You relaxed a bit and looked down at the liquid, "what is this again?" you asked before taking a sip of it.

"It's just some vodka and juice." Irene took up her own cup and then raised it slightly to 'cheers' with yours. You placed the cup to your lips and drank the liquid, it had a low key off taste about it but you brushed it off before noticing an older man approaching you both.

"Joohyun, I see you made it." the tall man said before taking a seat next to her on the couch, she shifted closer to you and ensured that he didn't have any contact with her at all. "And who is this pretty girl?" His gaze trailed away from Irene and went to you.

"Well, this is my girlfriend Y/n." Irene stated without missing a beat, "And this is Leeteuk." Irene looked back at you. You were at a loss for words after she just introduced you like that to someone. It wasn't expected to say the least but when Irene shot you a look you went along with it. Afraid to disappoint the older girl.

"Nice to meet you." you bowed slightly since you all were still sitting on the couch together.

"Joohyun, you didn't mention to me she was so pretty." Leeteuk said before standing up, "I will leave you ladies alone now." he said before saying his goodbyes. Once you two were alone again, you took another drink from your cup and felt the alcohol entering your system again and leaving a hazy after feeling. You had barely been in the party for a long while and already you were feeling the effects of this.

"Are you okay?" Irene asked as she looked at you.

"Yeah, but .. Why did you introduce me as your girlfriend?" you asked. Irene took a second to respond to you and it added to your nerves.

She let out a breath and spoke, "Well you know some men, the only way they'll leave you alone is if you say you're taken." she almost joked about the situation and being in the state you were in you laughed with her. It was understandable and you were always down for helping another girl out even if you didn't like her romantically. Your eyes gazed down to the cup, The liquid seemed a bit cloudy and so you decided not to drink anymore.

"Can I see your cup?" You suddenly asked Irene, she nodded and showed you her cup, she was drinking a black liquid ~ nothing like yours at all.

"Let's dance." Irene suggested as she stood up and placed both your cups down on the table. She pulled you to the area where most of the people were dancing. You were a bit reluctant first since you felt a bit dizzy with the music playing and how everyone was pressed against each other. The heat was starting to get to you as you faced Irene. She flashed you a reassuring smile and you went along with it. A dream like feeling overtook you as you moved to the music, everything looked hazy. Maybe you should leave now and just call Lucas to pick you up. And then almost as if Irene read your mind she spoke up, "Do you want to rest?"

You nodded, unsure of why you were feeling this way. Usually you were good at holding your alcohol, come to think of it you only had one drink. Everything felt like you were in a dream, your senses relaxing and right now the only thing that kept you connected to reality was Irene. You felt her take you in her arms and walk with you to the front door so you both can leave.

"Are we going home?" you asked. "My roommate… can you call Lucas for me?" you tried to string words together and make them sound right.

"It's okay, I'll take you to my place." Irene explained as she walked to her car. "You can stay with me tonight." You were okay with that because you trusted her right?

She looked down at your sleeping figure. You were still in that tight pair of blue jeans and a pink shirt but fully passed out on Irene's bed. The lights were dimmed and Irene stood by the side of the bed closest to you. She took a deep breath, what she was about to do wasn't something she would usually do to anyone. In fact this was the first time she had ever been so invested into someone. Slowly she was going to find a way to have you return her affection. This was not going to be another one sided love where she was going to puke up flower petals again.

"So pretty." she said softly as her delicate fingers glided down the side of your face. Your skin was so soft and beautiful, from the moment she saw you, Irene knew that she had to have you. At first it was based on your features, the way you looked. You didn't look like an instagram model ~ no you looked like something that should be hung in an art museum. Your features different from what she was used to and it pulled her in like a moth to a flame. Then when Irene finally got to know you she couldn't help but feel the need to have you even more.

Irene bit her bottom lip and reached for your shirt, she popped the first button and then the second. Her heart skipped a beat as more of your skin was exposed to her. She leaned forward and proceeded to unbutton your shirt completely. Once she gently opened it out, she saw your skin tone coloured bra which held your chest in place so well. Irene wanted to touch you, she wanted it so bad. For the past weeks all she could think about was you. Finally she had her chance but she couldn't bring herself to do it.

"Fuck." she mumbled as she pulled her hand away from your body. Irene moved to your pants and unzipped it before sliding it down your legs. It took a couple of minutes to have your sleeping body fully undressed but once it was she stepped back and admired you. Irene reached for her phone and snapped a couple pictures with you. She wasn't going to show anyone these. They were hers, all for her alone. A rush of emotions flooded her body, and she felt a familiar heat between her legs as she knelt on the bed by your feet. She ran her hands up your thighs and gave them a squeeze, feeling your soft supple skin under her touch. She bit down on her lip to suppress a moan as she hovered over your body.

Without warning she flopped her body down next to yours, her hands exploring her own body as you laid beside her unaware of what was going on. She picked up your shirt and raised it to her nose, inhaling the scent before slipping her other hand down her stomach and into her panties. "I wish you loved you." she moaned out as she slid her fingers between her slick folds. The more she touched herself the greater the craving for you became. All Irene could think of was how you would feel. She had never felt this way about anyone before and usually guarded her heart because she was fully aware of how chaotic things can get when she has her sight set on someone.

Her fingers entered her sopping heat as she arched her back of the bed, she pumped her fingers in and out with a quicker pace, her eyes falling back on you as she tried to hold in her desperate moans of pleasure. This just didn't feel the same. She wanted you. Only you. Thoughts came rushing through her mind from the moment you both first met to how quickly the relationship blossomed and you both became friends. Maybe if Irene kept playing her cards right you would be hers. The thought of you being hers, of your body under hers as she kissed your soft lips and touched you in all the right places was enough to push her over and she came all over her pretty fingers.

Out of breath and almost in tears Irene wiped her fingers off on your white shirt and tossed it off the bed, she moved closer to your sleeping form and wrapped her arms around you, next she swung a leg over yours and pressed her body against you. She wished she could have this every night however it only happened tonight.

You awoke the next morning to a pounding headache and a cold room. Slowly you opened your eyes and looked around, this was not your place, and it wasn't Lucas' place either. So where were you? Your eyes scanned the room until you found a picture of Irene and an older woman together. You sighed in relief as you sat up and swung your legs over the side of the bed, you looked down and realised you were wearing a t-shirt which wasn't yours and a pair of sweat pants. Maybe Irene put them on for you last night. That was odd but appreciated to some extent since tight, high waisted jeans and a shirt isn't the most comfortable thing to sleep in.

Slowly you made your way out of the bedroom and down the hallway where you heard a soft voice singing. You had never knew that Irene could sing and you didn't expect her voice to be that beautiful. After you turned the corner you saw her by the fridge taking out some orange juice.

"Good morning." your voice was a bit grungy. You were greeted by a smile as Irene turned around and placed the juice on the counter.

"Hey, how was your night?" she asked. "I hope it was okay, I changed your clothes while you were passed out."

"I passed out?" you questioned. Irene nodded, "really?" you didn't believe that happened last night.

"You drank a lot of alcohol last night." Irene poured you a cup of juice before looking back at your face. You were in a state of disbelief, you tried your best but couldn't remember anything that happened last night. Why was that? "I thought maybe you were just trying to relieve yourself from the stress of university."

Confusion engulfed you as Irene handed you the cup of cold juice. Something still didn't quite fit because you knew you made a promise with Lucas to not get drunk until your final assignments were submitted. In fact you remember telling Irene the promise a couple weeks before. Yet here you were.

"Are you okay?" Irene asked as she walked towards you, she placed her hand ontop of your shoulders, gently massaging your tense muscles before leaning down and pressing the side of her face against yours, "You can stay for breakfast if you want." she teased.

You were silent for a few seconds before nodding, "Sure, but I’ll have to leave right after because I promised my group members that I would be at the library to work on our presentation." You felt Irene's grip on you loosen as she stepped back.

"Oh." the words left her lips in a dejected tone as she walked to the counter to continue preparing breakfast. "you can call in sick, tell them you'll work on it later since you have a hangover." She said after some time.

A chuckle escaped your lips as you shook your head, "Nah, I have to present on Monday so I think it's best if I go ~ hung over or not." you stood up from the chair, "by the way, what did you do to my clothes?"

"I put them to wash so I can bring them for you later if you want." Irene turned her back to you and continued to make breakfast.

You sat next to Lucas as he played a game on his phone, it looked like PUBG but you were busy going over your part for the presentation that you didn't really care. A few seconds later you heard him curse before placing his phone down on his lap. Your head turned slightly as you looked at him,

"Language." you said slightly swatting his arm.

"Y/n we're both grown, I don't think that matters." he said with a scoff, "By the way where were you last night? I went over to your place and Lana told me you went out."

"That is none of your business." you said as you turned the page in your note book.

"Were you with Minji again?" Lucas asked, "Or.." his voice trailed off before he sat up and looked at you, "You were with Irene." He narrowed his eyes at you.

"Calm down, we just went to a party." You brushed his gaze off before turning back to your book. "and I may have stayed the night at her place."

Lucas's jaw dropped as you said the last part. "You.." he was ~ for the first time~ at a loss for words. "Is she like your girlfriend now?" He asked.

You shook your head, "what ? No." you pushed your hair back before adding, "I don't.. I don't see her in that way. " You continued to speak in an attempt to defend yourself. " Girls have sleepovers all the time." Clearly that wasn't a weird thing. However Lucas wasn't fully convinced.

"But no one ever gets to go home with the Bae Joohyun aka Irene." he said clearly almost as if he was talking to a five year old.

You rolled your eyes as you shifted your whole body on the bench so that you were now facing him fully, "Listen, we are just friends." You saw his lips curve upwards and he nodded.

"Fine." he paused, "But if you were more than just friends, you'd be down with having a threesome with me right?" he asked as he stood up from the bench and placed his phone in his pocket.

You shook your head before reaching forward and hitting him with your notebook, "You're a pervert."

Her dark eyes were glued on the screen of the laptop as she sunk down on her chair. The doors to her apartment was locked, the blinds closed and the lights dimmed down as she settled in the chair. She bit her bottom lip as she saw the figure of the girl she adored. But somehow you looked tired, stressed, a bit worn out. But still beautiful. Irene was focused on how she entered the room unbeknown to her that someone was watching.

Irene's grip on the leather chair tightened as she saw the younger girl walk to her desk, right in front of the camera and pulled her t-shirt off. She tossed it to the side before looking around the room in only her black, lacy bra and tight short pants. Irene's breath hitched once she saw her fingers move down to unzip her pants, before slowly pulling it off. Irene leaned forward and kept looking at the computer screen as the subject of her fantasies climbed onto the bed, now on her hands and knees as she looked under her pillow for something. Irene didn't care what it was ~ in fact she was more focused on the clear view she had of her ass.

It had been almost two weeks since she had installed the camera in y/n's room and ever since she followed the daily pattern of when she would wake up, go to bed, do homework and even get dressed. Irene had seen so much of y/n that it almost ~ just almost felt as if they were together. Things were going so well so far that Irene couldn't believe it. She crossed her legs as her finger glided over her bottom lip. Her gaze predatory over y/n who was still searching around her room in only her underwear.

A smirk pulled at the older girl's lips as she saw y/n get off the bed and walk forward to stand directly in front of the camera again, she followed her eyes as they searched around the room. However Irene felt her heart jump to her throat as she noticed the change in y/n's facial expression.

Irene leaned closer to the computer screen and y/n's face contorted from confusion to horror. She reached forward and picked up the small device that was transmitting video footage straight to Irene. Y/n panicked as she covered the device and grabbed her phone. Irene couldn't see what was going on but she heard the movements and the words.

"Lucas, get over here now. Please please." Y/n begged, "I'm going to call the police." Irene heard her pause before she continued to speak, "it’s a camera. I think, I don't know just come please." she rambled through what Irene assumed was her cellphone.

Things were finally about to get interesting.

#red velvet #red velvet smut #red velvet irene #red velvet imagines #yandere!irene #yandere!au #yandere!kpop #yandere!redvelvet #yandere!smut #yandere idol #au #irene smut #red velvet scenarios #limerence part one #limerence

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agardenintheshire · 5 years

Text

“The Wisdom of the Crowd: Internet Memes and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” by Michelle Markey Butler

hi tolkien fandom! did you know there’s an essay dealing with memes and the first hobbit movie?? now you do! bless my uni for having this essay. i thought it’d be fun to give you some of the best bits from the essay

without further ado........let’s go (on an adventure!)

(i will make a TLDR post about this and link it, but i just wanna get it out there after spending like 5 hours typing this dkfksdfjlsfjs)

(Boldened is my own emphasis!)

“The Wisdom of the Crowd: Internet Memes and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” by Michelle Markey Butler

[...] Harry Potter, the Game of Thrones, and Twilight do appear regularly in memes. But the works of Tolkien, despite being decades older, hold their own with them in the cutting-edge culture of memes. [...] My handling of memes deals with their rhetorical functions. Among these, as I have argued elsewhere, is crowd-sourced literary criticism. This essay will argue that memes are a vehicle through which a broad community thoughtfully engages with and presents nuanced criticism of Jackson’s films.

[...] Of course, not all Lord of the Rings memes participate in crowdsourced literary analysis. Indeed, many do not. Some are merely humorous, or employ LOTR elements for other objectives such as social critique. A rough estimate would be that one in ten engage in literary analysis of Lord of the Rings. But those LOTR memes that do carry the function of literary analysis by and large do so through the method of comparative consideration of the book and Jackson’s film versions.

In contrast, memes about The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey have thus far focused almost exclusively on the movie. Memes that appeared before the film was released express anxiety about its potential handling of the book and question why the book was adapted into three movies. One meme, for instance, unfavorably compares Jackson’s strategy for adapting The Hobbit with his approach to Lord of the Rings.

The meme is arguing that while adapting three books into three movies is a reasonable artistic decision, adapting one book into three movies is not. The real reason for this decision, the meme asserts, is financial, making this claim of financial motivation using the Aliens meme, a choice which allows the meme to imply that a monetary incentive for a three-movie adaptation of The Hobbit is as crazy a notion as the claim that aliens might have visited the earth. Anxiety and skepticism about the upcoming Hobbit films are evident.

[...]

Within hours of the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in December 2012, memes drawing upon images of the film began to appear and indeed, evaluate the movie, functioning in essence as crowd-sourced critique. The earliest and most prevalent of these memes - I’m Going on an Adventure, Majestic Thorin, and Never Have I Been So Wrong - focus upon moments and elements of the movie that engender strong reactions, either positive or negative, and analyze those reactions.

Snippets of the I’m Going on an Adventure scene had already been revealed in a trailer released in September in 2012. Yet while the image that is the basis for this meme was present in the trailer, memes featuring this moment did not appear until after the movie’s release. The meme community became interested in this line when it appeared in the context of the movie, rather than in the relative isolation of the trailer, as would be expected if memes function as crowdsourced analysis of the larger work. Unlike the two other pervasive memes that emerged following the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I’m Going on an Adventure memes are overwhelmingly positive in their characterization of the scene.

[...] The juxtaposition of the first two images suggests that getting new video games feels just as exciting, just as much as the beginning of an awesome adventure, as Bilbo setting out with a group of dwarves to steal treasure from a dragon. However, the second and third images critiques the actual experience of those games. Whereas Bilbo in fact goes on an adventure, playing the videogames leads nowhere, but sitting on the couch in your underwear. Not exactly the same as [Bilbo’s adventures]. The meme makes an argument about the limitations of virtual entertainment through (perhaps ironically) comparison with a fictional (albeit presented as real) adventure. [...]

Similarly, let’s consider a second example of a meme that depends for its meaning upon a positive view of the “I’m Going on an Adventure” moment:

The meme implies that the narrator believes that as an adult, he should take a level-headed, even casual approach to travel, but in reality he sees it like Bilbo sees his journey - an exciting adventure. [...]

On most meme sites, anyone can create and submit memes, but not all memes are featured by the websites. Most have a voting system that factors into determining which memes become featured (often called “making the front page.”). [...] Memes, then, funcion as crowdsourced literary criticism (among other rhetorical purposes, as discussed above) both due to the open submission format and because successful memes are those chosen by the community. Memes are, thus, peer-reviewed.

The popularity of “I’m Going on an Adventure” memes carries several interesting implications. First, the widespread interest in such memes, both creating and choosing them, suggests that movie audiences indentified this moment as one to which they had an intense response. For images or moments to become memetic, they must be immediately recognizable - important, meaningful, or in some way striking enough to have formed an accessible memory in the viewer’s mind. The widespread presence of the “I’m Going on an Adventure” meme thus suggests that this scene was indeed such a moment. Secondly, the handling of the scene in the meme suggests that audience reaction was in general a positive one. [...] The film clearly intends the scene to be a moment of high emotion and engagement (witness the film techniques employed as well as the swell of the musical score). From the evidence of the memes, we would have to conclude that it was successful.

While meme communities’ responses to the “I’m Going on an Adventure” scene were positive, other elements of the film did not fare as well. “Majestic Thorin” is a meme that points up the mixed results of the film’s adaptation of the characterization of Thorin. In the book, Thorin is a middle-aged dwarf whose overriding character trait is pomposity, most clearly seen in his tendency towards long-winded speeches filled with big words. Like most elements of the book, Thorin is not taken entirely seriously; at times his pomposity is played for humor. Nonetheless, the book handles that aspect with a light touch, never undercutting Thorin so much as to disable his ability to be seen as a courageous, albeit flawed, figure. We take his status as king seriously, we regret his bad decisions, we applaud his repentance, and we mourn his death, none of which would be possible - or at least would be considerably different - if the book presented him purely as a figure of humor.

The movie, in contrast, portrays Thorin as young, good-looking (”hot” would be more accurate), laconic, and most importantly, intensely serious. Perhaps too serious, the memes suggest.

The movie clearly intends to characterize Thorin as a “chip on his shoulder”, “tough as nails” dwarf prince out for revenge - a “badass”, in internet parlance. But memetic attention to this element is not necessarily positive. Nor is it overwhelmingly negative. “Majestic Thorin” memes question the portrayal, not utterly condemn it.

One problem with it, the memes suggest, is that the difference between the characterization of Thorin in the book, and, perhaps more importantly, the rest of the dwarves in the movie, might be too wide. Consider, for instance, another Majestic Thorin meme.

The meme’s argument is that Thorin is so much more awesome than even his closest dwarf competition that Kili is often reduced to tears of frustration at his inadequacy.

The situation is similar in nearly all Majestic Thorin memes.

As with the example above, this meme argues that the gap between the movie’s attention to and characterization of Thorin compared with its presentation of the other dwarves is too extreme. The movie lavishes Thorin with markers we are to understand that he is the only really important dwarf, that he has legitimate grievances to avenge, that we are to give our full sympathy to him. None of the other dwarves, even Kili, come close. This particular meme takes a bonus swipe at the movie’s presentation of Kili, noting that he lacks the most definitive of dwarvish characteristics, a beard.

A final example of Majestic Thorin demonstrates how extreme the meme community finds the characterization to be.

This meme is particularly effective at making the argument that the movie goes to far in elevating Thorin above the other dwarves. It picks up on Thorin’s characteristics gesture throughout the movie of staring into the middle distance, clearly brooding upon the injustices he’s experienced and how he intends to get vengeance. The meme argues, though, that this is not the reason for his continual middle-distance contemplation. Rather, he looks away from the other dwarves so much because he’s too majestic for their presence and can’t stand to look at them, even to the point of ignoring his nephew Kili, who beg like to a child to be notices. Everyone loves a brooding good guy intent on punishing those who wronged him, the meme argues, but The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey goes too far in trying to make Thorin the sole dwarvish object of our affections. We love the other dwarves too (especially Kili) and would prefer to feel as if we do so because of the movie’s presentation of them and not despite it.

Unlike most memes [Note 12: Intriguingly, it is also a rare meme that can be traced to a particular source, a discussion of tumblr by users mistlethalia @monsterthalia and @jackietastic in December 2012] “Majestic Thorin” does not have a dominant image, instead making use of numerous stills from the film. This variation suggests that the meme is indeed about the overall portrayal of Thorin, not simply how he appears in a particular scene. Majestic Thorin memes consistently draw attention to the potentially over-the-top characterization of Thorin, but do not (at least not yet) mercilessly mock that characterization. In addition to suggesting that the characterization gap between Thorin and he other dwarves is too wide, the memetic attention of Thorin also questions whether Thorin’s majesty is problematic not because it is his most defining characteristic but because it is largely his only characteristic. By focusing upon Thorin’s majesty, the meme suggests that while viewers did not necessarily dislike the characterization of Thorin, they came away from the film with concerns that the brooding, appearance-based presentation was limiting, ultimately resulting in a nice-to-look-at but underdeveloped character.

An underdeveloped portrayal of Thorin might go a long way towards explaining memetic communities’ ambivalent response to a later scene in the film. Far and away the most prevalent meme deriving from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is Never Have I Been So Wrong/ I Have Never Been So Wrong. Thorin’s actual line in the movie is “I have never been so wrong in all my life, “ but versions of the meme exist using both the shortened real line and the variant phrasing, “Never have I been so wrong.” Quotations have an observed tendency to distill or distort as they become widely known. In this instance, it is interesting to note that the change makes the phrasing more formal, arguably more consistent with the film’s characterization of Thorin as aloof and proud, bordering on arrogant. Inverting his words gives the phrase a more formal, more archaic, and more elevated feel.

The Never Have I Been So Wrong meme nearly always employs the same template, a juxtaposed pair of images. In the first frame, we look over Bilbo’s shoulder at Thorin. In the second, we look over Thorin’s shoulder at Bilbo as they embrace. These images derive, of course, from the climactic scene near the end of the film in which Thorin changes his mind about whether bringing Bilbo along was a good idea - after we see Bilbo risk his own life to save Thorin.

As with the “I’m Going on an Adventure” scene, the film clearly intends this scene to be a moment of high emotional engagement for the audience. Unlike the earlier scene, it is not at all certain that the scene succeeds in being so; indeed, the consistent irreverence with which the scene is handled in memes suggest that it does not. Whereas “I’m Going on an Adventure” memes nearly always reference the scene positively, “I Have Never Been So Wrong” memes employ the scene at best ambivalently, and at worst, mockingly. For instance, we see examples of the meme using the typical images but with the following captions:

The widespread popularity of the “Never Have I Been So Wrong” meme seems to result from at least two elements. The meme is highly adaptable, lending itself to commentary about a wide variety of topics, as the examples above show. While that is demonstrably true, it seems insufficient to explain the meme’s popularity and longetivity. Within that flexible meme resides a core of commentary about the movie - that An Unexpected Journey aims to bridge the lighter, more playful world of the Hobbit book with the more solemn and dangerous world of LOTR, both as text and as movies, but is not entirely successful - a conclusion that viewers arrived at not long after the film’s release and about which they have not changed their minds.

Never Have I Been So Wrong is the most common Hobbit movie meme to emerge, most likely because the scene in many ways encapsulates the film as a whole, and audience reaction to this moment is representative of viewer reaction to the movie as a whole. This scene, like the movie itself, aims at a serious, high-concept reaction from viewers but does not fully succeed, resulting in a moment that partially deconstructs itself, teetering on the edge of self-parody. That teetering is what Never Have I Been So Wrong memes draw attention to. We react strongly to this moment, but we’re not certain how or why, or whether our reaction tracks with what the film meant to provoke. When Thorin confronts Bilbo, the seeminlgy-intended seriousness does not entirely hold together; the moment does not ring fully true. It is this partial failure of dramatic persuaiveness that memes have picked up on, the moment that almost, but not quite, travels into unintentional self-satire, and employs it repeatedly for precisely that purpose - mocking partly serious, partly ludicrous, situations. Of which, it turns out, we encounter many in our lives, hence the meme’s continued vibrancy.

As much as audiences wanted to like The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, they struggled to do so. There was concern and skepticism about the decision to adapt the book into three movies, and memes reflected this, but there was also goodwill towards the films and a profound hope that they would turn out well. Parts of An Unexpected Journey were well received, as we can see from the emergence of the I’m Going on an Adventure meme and its favorable handling of the scene. Other memes, however, suggest that while audiences recognized the filmmakers’ goal of incorporating The Hobbit into a more developed and darker world of LOTR, that goal has been incompletely met, at least evidenced in An Unexpected Journey. The desire to make Thorin a more serious character came at the expense of him being a more fully realized character, as the Majestic Thorin meme’s insistence upon drawing attention to the movie’s portrayal of Thorin as a laconic, brooding badass, and only that, suggests. Most crucially, what is clearly meant to be the film’s climactic scene of repentance and redemption is so unsuccessfully rendered that instead it becomes a meme for critiquing moments that are half-serious and half-ridiculous. Each of these issues were raised either implicitly or explicitly in the memes themselves and demonstrate how the broader meme community engages in thoughful, nuanced critique of Jackson’s films. With this in mind, it will be interesting indeed to watch the meme communities when The Desolation of Smaug is released, to see what memes emerge and what they’ll tell us about viewers’ analysis of the film.

Sources:

Butler, Michelle. “The Wisdom of the Crowd: Internet Memes and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”. The Hobbit and Tolkien’s Mythology, edited by Bradford Lee Eden, McFarland &Company, 2014, pp. 222 -231.

Picture Sources:

https://michellemarkeybutler.com/academic/hobbit-memes/

#personal #uh how to tag this?#the hobbit an unexpected journey #an unexpected journey #thorin #majestic thorin #also i'm sorry for everyone on mobile this is such a long post ahhh oh no #long post

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bradycore · 6 years

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@anxiousprincedad I saw your post and..I wrote a thing

If anyone else writes this please tag me I would love to read it..I wrote this at one a.m. in under an hour it's not quality content

But anyway

---

Virgil lounges in his chair, examining his chipped black nails as he absorbs the interviewer's questions. He has to admit he doesn't like being on TV too much, but it can be fun to do these interviews, and play with the fans a bit--take now, for example, when he decides to finally respond to a much-asked question with a casual "Yeah, I'm in a relationship." He's not surprised when, the next day, his corner of social media is blowing up-- he's always been a fairly private person, regardless of the fact that one could consider him famous. Virgil could spend hours scrolling through this stuff-- it's like a conspiracy theory video but better because these theories about the mystery partner are so far from the truth it's funny-- but he's pulled away from the phone when, speak of the devil, Logan finally gets home from work. "Lots of papers to grade again?" "Yes, my apologies that I arrived home so late. I did manage to catch that interview on my lunch break, however." Virgil can feel himself internally melting at the quirked smile on his boyfriend's lips. Externally, he just walks over to the kitchen and pulls the nerd in for a kiss, simultaneously grabbing the coffee pot from behind Logan. "It's ten at night, set that down--" Virgil holds eye contact as he chugs the pot, still half full from the afternoon's batch, in defiance. Logan chooses to ignore this display of what their friend Roman would call, an "act of bravery, bordering on stupidity." "Are you ever going to actually say who I am?" "Wasn't planning to." They share a smile-- they prefer to keep their careers away from the secret, stress-free side of their lives, aka each other. *** It's the next week. Logan watches in amusement as his boyfriend collapses on the bed after a concert. "God, I'm tired," the rockstar says hoarsely. Logan brings over a mug of tea, knowing that while Virgil may need to live off of his caffeinated coffee, jasmine tea is the favored drink. He smiles at the appreciative gaze. "A student asked me today if I was a fan of you, she saw my phone wallpaper." "What did you say?" laughs Virgil. "I said 'Something like that.' Someday they'll know. Until then, I prefer to let them suffer in their blatant ignorance." "Speaking of people suffering in ignorance and confusion," Virgil pulls his Twitter page up on his phone, "I'm enjoying watching everyone trying to figure this out." Logan reads his boyfriend's most recent post, not able to hold back a snort. So many of you have been wondering about who I'm in a relationship with, but I have to admit, sometimes it seems like he loves his Crofter's jelly more than he loves me. #notsponsored *** A few months later Virgil's back with the same dark-haired interviewer whom he's actually quite grown to like. "Well, Joan," he grins, "I actually have some news about--" "Mystery guy?" they exclaim hopefully. "You've kept us in the dark for so long, it's not quite fair, don't you think?" "Actually...yeah. And as of yesterday, we're engaged, so it's probably about time." "Dude!" "Dude." They high-five. "Who proposed?" is Joan's first question. "Hey now, that's a story for another time. I've got to keep some secrets, right? Anyway, I hope you'll be content and stop badgering me if I show you a picture?" Virgil can almost feel the gasps coming from every viewer as he taps a few things on his phone. He leans foward, feeling his pulse beating hard as Joan carefully takes the phone for a closer look. He resists the urge to fidget anxiously with something(his anxiety giving him a need to fidget is the real reason behind the chipped nails and the torn jeans, actually)-- though he's not too sue what he's so nervous about. The photo is one of his favorites of Logan(well..they're all his favorite but what can you do). The college professor is smiling in his black polo and khakis(and the tie. Of course the tie) and it was a real moment, an expression of happiness from a normally seemingly impassive man. Virgil is sure, though, that what most people are focusing on as Joan holds the picture up for the world to see is the opposite of what Virgil sees-- a surprisingly normal man, nothing special. Joan, thankfully, isn't stupid, and congratulates Virgil on the fiance, who would gladly fight anyone who talked bad-- or anything less than perfect really-- about his nerd. On his way home in a cab, reading all the disappointed comments from his fans about how they expected "more," he tweets, Anyone who succumbs to the stereotypes of mainstream media and judges people based on appearance-- or the appearance of the person they love-- good bye, I don't want you coming to my concerts or buying my merch, assholes. But when he gets home, Logan is there(he didn't have classes that day) and calms him down, reminding him of all the fans who are being more awesome. "I think some of the comments actually exceed expectations--" "No. No, we are at home, you don't get to use teacher language." *** Tomorrow Virgil wakes up and feels so grateful for his fiance, who always helps him find the honest side, which is, yes, often the bright side, of things. Life is good. He stops by Starbucks and grabs the teacher a pumpkin spice latte, planning to drop by Logan's classroom in general appreciation. Needless to say, the students(those who weren't fans and hadn't seen yesterday's interview, anyway) were quite in shock when an all-out punk rocker came strolling in during a talk about astronomical culture. "Oh, sorry," the tattooed guy with the three lip piercings says, "I didn't mean to interrupt a class, but I brought you a latte," and many kids identifying him as the leader of the Storm Clouds band are close to fainting in shock when he kisses Professor Sanders on the cheek. "Yes, you could have thought that out a bit more," smiles Logan, "but I appreciate it." He notices the distracted class and snaps his fingers. "Let's--" "No," calls a particularly opinionated kid, "don't you dare make us finish the lesson, I wanna know about your boyfriend!" "Fiance," corrects Logan, sighing inwardly as he realizes class might as well be over. "Okay, you can ask him a few questions." The rest of the lesson-- and all of next week's classes-- all the students are freaking out about how they never knew how "cool" their teacher really was(they had always loved him to be honest, he was quite the good teacher.) And Virgil and Logan enjoy laughing at everyone's reactions-- fans, students, most everyone is actually really accepting, even if at the same time still in shock. They're content, in spite of all the excitement surrounding them, to have a small wedding not covered by media-- some things should get to remain private, especially what happened after the wedding. (No, you fools, nothing inappropriate, they literally just went out and bought a cat. It's name is Elliott Crofters Latte the Third and they didn't want a kitten to have cameras shoved in it's face. They're two asexual dorks and it would not behoove you to think otherwise.) The End

#sanders sides #analogical #fanfiction #logan sanders #virgil sanders #tw mild cursing #adding a The End makes everything better #always?writes

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michael-garza-author-blog · 5 years

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Linux Simply

Nobody could make Linux simple.

It is as complex and layered as the biological world, if not more. Arch users can feel free to get their snickering out of the way now.

You can however, simplify the way you make Linux—a Linux distribution, that is.

And that’s exactly what the teams behind three leading Linux distributions, or distros for short, have done by implementing user-friendly environments that can be setup in minutes.

Perhaps you have heard of them while perusing CNET, TechRadar, or even Reddit.

Pop!_OS: maybe the most popular entry on this list. It is developed by System76, a Colorado based computer company, to run smoothly both on their own machines as well as virtually any 64-bit computer you pull from the shelves.

Solus OS: the open source underdog compiled from the ground up with no reliance on prior code.

Elementary OS: a long running and trusted Ubuntu derivative, which isn’t exactly free like most distros but has features to far outweigh its price tag.

Each Operating System (OS for short) has been designed to be accessible to the casual computer user, Linux novices and FOSS veterans alike.

Today we are going to take a look at why these three distributions are ideal for the beginner and for those who would like to speed date through the world of open source software.

We’ll begin with Pop!_OS

POP!_OS

Pop! Was System76’s brain baby to be used as their exit strategy from only offering stock Ubuntu on their machines. When Ubuntu’s parent company, Canonical, announced the system’s reversion from the Unity desktop environment to its predecessor GNOME, System76 went in pursuit of options.

And ended up at GNOME, themselves, ironically.

Not just any GNOME desktop environment, though. GNOME found here has been specially tweaked for the brand of System76.

The theme, design, and system options make it apparent that this OS is as brilliant with personality as it is with usability.

For instance, graphics driver support for AMD, Intel and NVIDIA chips right out of the box is a milestone for those interested in Linux gaming.

A slick and trimmed software center called Pop Shop makes it a joy to navigate through both open source packages and proprietary 3rd party apps. This comprehensive design is likely to shift focus from installation via terminal, though the function is still there for old-school code junkies.

The OS installer also allows easy disk encryption for assured privacy in an evolving digital world.

The standout feature of this distribution is its effort to minimize the learning curve. Every feature and application seems to be right in place. Within a few minutes you could fool your friends into thinking you’re a red-pill swallowing reality hacker whose DNA is coded in Python—or just that you’re a tech guru.

You can download Pop!_OS here: https://system76.com/pop

SOLUS OS

Solus OS was like an outlaw busting through the swinging doors of the Open Source saloon.

Not everyone was sure what to say when it arrived on the scene. It wasn’t derivative of Ubuntu or Debian or Redhat. It wasn’t taken from a slightly repackaged rib of Arch.

It was just Solus. And this was the concept they ran with.

It was the Solus team who introduced the Budgie desktop. Budgie has since been adopted by Ubuntu, Manjaro, and more.

Why? Because it’s so damn beautiful is why! The Budgie flavor contributes largely to Solus OS being on this list (no discredit to its other groundbreaking features)

Budgie has roots in the GNOME 3 Desktop as well, but wears its heritage more as an innovative badge of honor than a developmental burden.

Budgie is twice as simple to traverse and uses a fraction of the hardware resources of its relative.

It’s an office professional’s Linux distribution. Frills and endless tinkering are sidelined in favor of sensibility and ease of use. You want Spotify, Plex, or Skype? Don’t go hunt down the source code or even type t for terminal in the app search.

Solus OS makes licensed 3rd party software available to download straight from the software center. You can even find studio quality Audio mixers like Bitwig Studio.

The included office suite, Libreoffice, comes loaded with free and open source alternatives to Word, Excel, Publisher, and more.

You’ll have the ability to save in ‘open document’ formats as well as the proprietary DOC and DOCX. So you never have to worry about files not opening when they reach the other side.

And of course the Raven widget makes a calendar, notifications, and even system tweaking just a mouse hover away. Always there to be seen but never intrusive.

I’d like to think that Solus took the introduction of a new package system as an opportunity to create distance from hardline terminal use. Updates and software installation can be run solely from the software center. No more lines of dizzying code.

I’ll consider it a tipped hat to us m’normies.

You can download SOLUS OS with desktop environments including Budgie, GNOME, and MATE here: https://getsol.us/download/

ELEMENTARY OS

The oldest of the bunch despite its name.

Like many modern Linux distros, Elementary OS found its code in Ubuntu and expanded from there. It simply took a few left turns, rerouted and dropped off some baggage along the way.

It’s specifically marketed as a “fast, open, and privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS.”1 No, really, it says so on their homepage.

It even resembles MacOS to a degree, if that’s any indication of the company’s target.

The lightweight interface was designated as a friendly tool for everyone. A system you could open up right from where you left off. The fiddling, the minutia of customization, the daily disaster-prevention management—all tossed aside.

It’s in no sense incapable of anything a Linux system is expected of. It just doesn’t make you think about those things.

You shouldn’t always need to adjust the ribbon or unjam the keys of a typewriter. Sometimes you just need ‘pen on paper.’

You could say that Elementary OS is the pen on paper of open source computing.

It’s still a Mont Blanc on a high quality moleskine. Simple, but satisfactory.

The stage of Elementary’s application is set by the Pantheon desktop, which you’ll find to be less customizable than say GNOME or Cinnamon. This could be said to act as “damage control” for the inexperienced Linux user.

It’s easier than you would think to break your environment in the excitement of mix-matching themes, icon packs, and installing widgets designed for other DE’s.

That headache is alleviated with Elementary, which adheres a straightforward take me as I am approach.

And when you take your first look at the home screen, I doubt you’ll find it a drawback.

For those who want to get some work done in peace and quiet, you’ll find:

Epiphany Web Browser

a file manager

Music and Video players

a Photo Viewer

a dedicated mail client

As well as a handful of other neat applications. Nothing too neat that it stops being essential though. Zero bloatware or spyware.

The key to Elementary is simple essentialism.

Writing that novel at a lakeside cabin? Tuning up this year’s budget? Or are you finally going to email that someone you met over Winter break?

In any case, it’s Elementary.

You can find and download Elementary here for a fee of your choice: https://elementary.io/

OVERVIEW

It would make sense, all features considered, that Pop!_OS would suit the likes of media professionals, avid gamers and developers.

Where Solus OS might be optimized for the business professional with a full schedule.

For casual home use, or emailing your family and friends your new favorite Youtube video, I’d recommend Elementary OS.

The question is, which one best suits you?

Stay tuned for more Linux and Tech news here, and thanks for reading!

Sources: 1) https://elementary.io/

#linux #elementary #solus #pop_os

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jmsa1287 · 5 years

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Apple TV+'s 'The Morning Show' is Mad as Hell but Will Anyone Watch?

Apple’s foray into streaming TV is upon us and its flagship series “The Morning Show” is...fine.

With the launch of Apple TV+, the new streaming service from the biggest tech company in the world, on Nov. 1 it officially marks the beginning of the so-called "Streaming Wars." The intangible battle has been a looming threat for the last few years — ever since Apple and Disney both announced they'd be going head-to-head with already well-established streamers like Netflix and Amazon. (The Mouse House's Disney+ will launch on Nov. 12 and we'll get a handful of new steamers next year, including HBOMax, Peacock and Quibi.)

Apple and Disney have different strategies when it comes to the rollout of their over the top services. With its impressive ownership of some of the biggest intellectual property in the world, Disney will launch with a "Star Wars" spinoff show called "The Mandalorian," along with a "High School: The Musical" series, but more notably, the company revealed in an epic Twitter thread just all the content that will be available on Disney+, ranging from the obscure ("Smart House") to its most beloved films ("Beauty and the Beast," "Avengers").

Apple doesn't have a content library as deep as Disney, so it's setting sail with a number of brand-new shows in hopes it will be enough to get people to sign up for its $4.99 monthly service. And Apple TV+'s biggest bet is "The Morning Show," a star-studded adult drama about a morning news program in the throes of the #MeToo Movement. It's very topical and features some of the biggest celebrities in TV history, including Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon reuniting from playing sisters on "Friends" as well as Steve Carell, marking his first major TV role since "The Office."

It'll be determined whether or not the trio of A-listers will be enough for casual TV watchers and the more diehards to fork over the nearly $60 a year for Apple TV+ -- folks who are likely already shelling out good money for Netflix, Amazon, a music streaming service, and the number of other streamers out there like Hulu (which Disney has full control of), The Criterion Channel, HBO Now, and Shudder. (Not to mention many people pay for cable on top of that.) It's likely early reviews of "The Morning Show" will play a significant role in getting people to sign up or skip adding another streaming service to their diet.

"The Morning Show" is fine. It's not a disaster that its odd trailers would have you believe. Loosely based on journalist Brain Stelter's book "Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat Worlds of Morning TV," the new drama is that adult middlebrow fare that has a little too much swearing for network TV, has a higher budget ($15 million an episode!) and looks sleeker but... untimely feels like it would air on CBS primetime in 1995. Maybe not a bad thing for some! Both Aniston and Witherspoon give great performances, playing veteran "Morning Show" anchor Alex Levy and a non-nonsense conservative reporter from a local news station down South, Bradley Jackson respectively. In a supporting role, Carell plays Mitch Kessler, Alex's longtime "Morning Show" cohost who is outed in the first minutes of the show's pilot, directed by TV vet Mimi Leder, as the latest celeb to be accused of sexual misconduct.

Indeed, the confident pilot is the best of the three episodes Apple provided. Alex wakes up to learn The New York Times published an article about the allegations against Mitch, who she calls her "on-air husband," at 3:30 a.m., learning with the rest of the world about this TV's dad's transgressions. Reacting to the leaked story, Alex has to quickly prep for the show, figuring out how to react on live TV and what to say getting guidance from her producer Chip (Mark Duplass) and the newly appointed network president Cory (a great Billy Crudup). Later on in the episode, Bradley finds herself going mega-viral for having a "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore" moment when a protest she's covering gets out of hand.

Almost everyone on "The Morning Show" is mad as hell. Alex can't stop crying and lashing out from the revelation about Mitch, which is causing her professional and personal lives to be turned upside down. Bradley is sick and tired of trying to do good journalism while constantly bumping up against the patriarchy and people's lack of interest in hard news. Chip's head is constantly spinning while trying to manage the Mitch controversy and finding his replacement along with constantly reeling in Alex. Cory, who is sly but seems the calmest and optimistic about the situation, is feeling the heat from the network execs to get "The Morning Show" on the right path. Mitch is mad at the whole damn world for being a "victim" of what he calls the second wave of Me Too Movement. This is where "The Morning Show" gets a bit dicey. It doesn't hesitate to show you Mitch's side of the story ("I didn't rape anyone!" he yells more than once). He admits to having affairs albeit consensual, unwilling to understand the power he has in that kind of relationship. There's also a scene in which Mitch gets to have an odd positive moment when he's discussing his allegations with a sketch filmmaker, played here by Martin Short, who admits to being a predator.

"The Morning Show" has a lot on its mind but thankfully it doesn't take itself too seriously and has a necessary undercurrent of comedy that pops up in the right places. It feels like the right time for a splashy drama to take on real-life headlines about prominent men facing consequences for their inappropriate actions (in this case viewers won't be able to stop thinking of Matt Lauer and his exit from "Today"). And there really hasn't been a good TV show about the newsroom in recent years; Aaron Sorkin's HBO drama "The Newsroom" was the biggest kind of a disaster. The short-lived NBC comedy "Great News," starring Andrea Martin, didn't have the bite to take off and was more focused on a 'will-they-won't-they' relationship. It's a bit crumby that "The Morning Show" has the added pressure of being Apple TV+'s flagship series. If it debuted on Netflix this week, it would probably get the kinds of reviews Netflix shows usually get — mixed-to-positive. There's an exciting energy to the first three episodes but it suffers from the feeling that the showrunner, Kerry Ehrin, who took over the drama after it was developed, was desperate to fill up each hour (and in some cases, over an hour) each episode. "The Morning Show" suffers from a lot of the same symptoms Peak TV programs usually have except it's under a magnifying glass. Though timely and well-acted, there are probably better ways to spend $5 a month.

#tv #apple #apple tv #apple tv+#the morning show #jennifer aniston #reese witherspoon #steve carell #peak tv #mark duplass #billy crudup

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truthofherdreams · 6 years

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life behind the camera (2)

also on ao3 + main instalment + outtakes

He doesn’t know how long they stay in the hot tub, loses track of time when Lara Jean’s mouth is on his. Might be minutes or hours, not that it matters much when he can wrap his arms around her and pull her in his lap, taste her mouth, thread his fingers through her hair. They kiss and giggle and kiss some more, whispering sweet nothings when their mouth aren’t otherwise busy. After weeks of pinning and frustration, it feels like heaven.

And then Lara Jean starts shivering, cold winter wind against her wet skin, until her teeth are shattering. She pulls him closer, as if it would help.

“Let’s go back inside,” he whispers to her.

She whines a little when he lets go of her and he knows that sound will follow him through his dreams for weeks to come. But he doesn’t let himself think about it too much as he jumps out of the hot tub to grab big fluffy towels inside and comes back jogging. He wraps her in one of the towels, a perfect little LJ burrito that he kisses on the nose until she giggles.

Then he’s pulling her inside, one arm around her shoulders to keep her close and share body heat at the same time.

They must have been in the hot tub for longer than he thought at first, because the entire cabin is silent, fire dying slowly in the fireplace and mugs of hot cocoa discarded on a table.

Peter leads LJ to his bedroom, but she tenses a little when they stop at the door, her eyes widening as she avoids his gaze.

“Just sleeping,” he reassures her. “Or cuddling. Whatever.”

“Taking it slow,” she confirms.

He doesn’t mind. He’s waited weeks for this moment. He will enjoy whatever LJ is ready to offer, glad and grateful that his feelings are finally returned, happy for his love not to be unrequited anymore. He could wait months for more than that, and be perfectly fine with it.

What he isn’t fine with is John’s shit-eating grin when he opens the door. “I’ll find somewhere else to sleep,” he simply comments as he stands up from one of the two beds in the room. He doesn’t say the I told you so, but the look he offers Peter as he leaves the room is pretty telling on his own.

Even LJ, queen of being clueless, notices. “He knew?”

“About the contract or about my feelings? Because yes to both.”

Her face does that scrunchie cute thing he loves so much, and it’s hard not to lean down and kiss her from how adorable she is. Until he remembers he doesn’t have to stop himself anymore, the no-kissing rule definitely is off the table, and so he does just that. Kiss her. And again, and once more, until she giggles against his lips and he swallows the sound. It’s already his new favourite activity. Fuck Youtube, that’s what he wants to do for the rest of his life.

“I may have told Lucas everything tonight,” she confesses once they stop for breath. She’s still pressing her forehead against his though, him leaning down and her on her tiptoes. Fucking best.

“Yeah, that’s fine. I mean…”

He doesn’t need to finish his sentence for the both of them to understand what he means -- Chris and Gabe will need to be told too, at some point. It’s a small miracle they went on with the contract for so long and only John guessed that something was off. Perhaps because they were so good at pretending, until they were not pretending at all.

The thought makes his heart race.

“Later,” she agrees with a small nod.

Later, when they will not be busy kissing and moving to the bed, and cuddling and kissing again. It’s well into the night when Peter takes his iPad out to watch The Golden Girls, and that’s how LJ falls asleep -- in his arms, completely at peace.

...

“I’m too old for this,” Lucas groans as he sits in one of the couches.

Chris follows suite, sitting by his side before she leans forward to grab Veronica’s hand and pulls her on her lap. Her girlfriend does as she’s told, not without a roll of the eyes. “You’re only twenty-six,” the gamer girl points out.

“It’s ancient in Youtuber years,” John laughs from his spot in the only armchair. Sitting casually, one ankle on a knee, he looks like the king of the internet. Which he might be, What with his newly-celebrated ten million subscribers.

Peter shares another couch with LJ, as he sits with his back to the armrest with her between his legs, her back to his torso. She’s wrapped in a powder blue sweater from Veronica’s new merch line, her recently-cut hair brushing against his cheek every time she moves her head. Her fingers laced with his on her stomach, and he’s the happiest of men, exhaustion from Vidcon be damned.

It’s been a hell of a two months, what with their tour followed by the convention, but it’s the good kind of tired, the one that settles deep in your bones and leads to long and well-deserved hours of sleep. Soon it will all over and they will go back to LA, to the house, to their routine of vlogs and editing. But, for now, Peter enjoys the life on the road with his friends, the closest thing he’ll ever get to being a rock star.

Well. Maybe it would be one step closer to being a rock star if they were actually partying. But, as it is, Lucas isn’t entirely wrong. The craziness of the past few weeks is finally catching up with all of them and, where they would party like there’s no tomorrow any other year, this year they are just chilling in their penthouse suite with their friends. Veronica, of course, now officially member of the Kavinsquad, and Simon and Bram, Dimple. A viewer’s wet dream, yet all they’re doing is chill and eat nachos.

“I met an eight-year old fan today,” Simon agrees. “SimonSays shirt and hoodie and baseball cap and everything. Eight! Young enough to be my daughter!”

Bram puts his hand on his boyfriend’s thigh, a faux serious expression on his face. “Babe, I didn’t know how to tell you…”

Everyone bursts into laughter at Simon’s dramatic face, even more so when he throws a tortilla chip at Bram, who catches it in his mouth. It’s all those little things that have Peter remember that enjoying yourself with your friends doesn’t have to always involve loud music, tons of alcohol and fuzzy memories. It can be just as simple as good moments with Hozier playing in the background.

LJ is getting sleepy in his arms, snuggling a little more into his neck, so he shakes her slightly to keep her awake. Leaning closer to her ear, he whispers, “Let’s go outside,” to which she nods a little.

She’s all mellow and sleepy as he pulls her up and into his arms, guiding her toward the door. John shares a meaningful look with Peter that does nothing beside set his stomach into knots of anxiety as he leads LJ down the corridor and toward the lifts.

She doesn’t protest until they make their way to the roof terrasse, and then she forgets to protest altogether. The fresh air finishes waking her up properly, and she gasps a little at the view offered to her. The whole city shines in the night, brights colourful lights that paint a gorgeous picture.

She leans against the railway, and Peter steps behind her to hug her, arms wrapped around her waist and chin on her shoulder. That’s the only downside of the past few weeks; they’ve barely managed to get a moment to themselves, away from the others. He’s all but moved into her house at this point, enjoying the intimacy of a place he doesn’t share with his best friends, relishing in having LJ all to himself now that Kitty has switched places with him.

“Can you believe it’s been two years?” she sighs wistfully.

So much has happened in only two years that sometimes Peter barely even remembers who he was before LJ entered his life. He sure can’t imagine a life without her now, when she’s everything, everywhere – the first face he sees in the morning, the first person he turns to when he has a doubt about a video, his last kiss before falling asleep.

“It feels like an eternity.” She complains a little under her breath, for the heck of it, so he leans over her shoulder to kiss her cheek. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world.”

She does that thing she always does when he really touches her, that soft ‘oh Pete’ that is just for him but that has also generated thousands of comments on their videos. Lucas even says it’s their main ship tag on tumblr, whatever that means.

“Not even for fruitcake cookies?” she teases him gently. He doesn’t need to see her face to picture the amused smile on her lips.

“Not even… I mean, maybe one thing.”

He feels her confusion, even more so when he puts his hands on her hips as to turn her around so she’s now facing him. Her cheeks are red from the cold and the excitement of the day alike, her hair a mess, her eyes dark. She’s so beautiful, and she’s all his.

“We’ve been off-contract for over a year and a half now but… what if we signed a new one?”

Her face scrunches up, so very obviously confused at his words now, that she barely reacts when he takes a step back and reaches inside his sweater’s pocket. There’s a good ten seconds of nothing between the moment he drops to his knee and the moment LJ reacts, the longest seconds of his life. Just stunned silence, one hand against her mouth as she stares at him with the wildest, most surprised eyes ever.

Eyes that are quickly filled with tears then, when he opens the velvet box in his hands. John and he took hours picking it, something pretty yet small and discreet, something shiny but not too in-your-face. It looks perfectly her, like it was made with Lara Jean Covey in mind and nobody else.

“Lara Jean, babe… Remember last summer, when Kitty and your grandma were trying to teach me some Korean, and they explained the concept on ‘jeong’ to me? To be honest, I’m still not sure I completely understand…” She lets out a wet giggle than makes him smile in return, a huff of breath through the nose before he goes on, “but I think what we have is as close to ‘jeong’ as it gets. You’re my person, and you’ll always be my person. And I know how scared you must be right now. Truth is I’m terrified. But I want you to know you’ll never lose me. Ever. Because I love you, and I will always love you, and I want to be by your side for as long as you’ll have me. So, what do you say?”

She’s full on crying now, big tears rolling down her cheeks, so Peter stands back up to cup her face and hold her close. Her body is shivering with her sobs, but she’s laughing too, and for a moment there he’s afraid he lost her for real.

“You want to marry me?” she asks in between two hiccups.

She’s so fucking adorable, he can’t help but pull her into a hug and kiss the side of her face. “Yeah, even got a ring and stuff.”

Hysterical sobs turn to hysterical giggles right there, and he can’t help but laugh too. And hold her tighter. And kiss the side of her head again.

He’s the one to lose it when she says, “There’s no camera.”

“No, baby girl. Just us.”

“T’would have gotten so many views.”

He barks a laugh at the unexpected statement, at her mindset and how much she’s changed through those two years together. She used to frown at the blatant clickbait in his videos, and now she thinks about it during one of the most important moments of their life. Only Lara Jean…

“I don’t care about the views. I just care about you.”

She’s laugh-crying again, wet nose pressed to his collarbone when she whispers a small “Yes.”

“What?”

“Yes, Peter. Of course. Yes!”

He might be laugh-crying too.

#covinsky #covinsky fanfic #covinsky ff #to all the boys I've loved before #fanfic #ff: tatbilb #ff: do it for the views #REBLOG IF YOU CRIED

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ick25 · 6 years

Text

Rockman.EXE Episode 31 Review.

And here is Netto!

Oh, sorry, that’s my Gulpin who I nicknamed Netto.

Here is Hikari Netto!

Well, now I remember why I called him that.

I like how Netto admits that the title is a bad pun. XD

We open the episode with a Star Wars parody for some reason, don’t believe me?

Long ago in a far away parody...

Netto narrates the text since it’s in english, and we then see a flying curry saucer near the Earth and a shot of Netto’s plane arriving at Namaste, a country known for its curry. Apperantly, Namaste takes this title seriously since we see something resembling the hand of the statue of liberty holding a curry dish.

As soon as Netto leaves the airport he is greeted by an indian looking man who tells him that he will partake in an “all you can eat curry buffet”. Netto, being the hungry anime boy protagonist, is delighted by this idea and accepts to go with the perfect stranger, despite Rockman’s suspitions.

We inmediately cut to a fancy hotel where Netto gets ready to eat his first curry meal.

Before watching this episode I had no idea what curry was, all I took from this episode is that it was some kind of sauce.

It just looks like a regular dish with rice and meat sauce with some vegetables on it to me.

Netto begins to chow down the curry like crazy, ignoring Rockman’s warnings.

Soon after we get a montage of all the dishes he has to eat in a single day.

How is a curry ice cream even posible?!

Anyway, the curry sushi seems to hit the spot for Netto as he has another over the top reaction, with the indian guy crying with joy.

What does tasting curry have to do with being in the N-1?

Get ready ladies, because right after this we get a close up of Netto’s belly expanding.

Rockman is not to be blamed if Hikari Netto explodes.

More belly expansion.

What’s strange about this scene is the amount of detail they put into these close ups, it’s suppoused to be funny, but it feels like it has another purpose. Then again, I might have a dirty mind. X(

We leave Netto asking for more as we zoom in to some mountains where we find Madoi and Count Elec hand gliding. They talk about Mahajarama summoning them to Namaste and that Hinouken already there. We still don’t know why, but since they are gliding really high their gliders freeze up and the two of them fall into an abyss.

I’m sure they’re fine.

We then see Netto’s friends on a ship where Yaito tells them that they should surprise Netto at Namaste since it is his last stop, and what better way to get there fast than in a freaking rocket!

Even Yaito seems like she’s having second thoughts. XD

Speaking of bad decisions, we return with a shot of a super stuff Netto. Naturally, he is too full to keep eating, but since Netto loves curry so much he wont quit.

This guy doesn’t see that Netto is too full?

It took this long for his vest to finally open.

We then see the fat Netto on a bed where the indian guy tells him to get ready to meet the best curry restaurant in Namaste with a very familiar name.

Good to know your ears are not stuff too.

After this, we cut to Count Elec and Madoi with some souvenirs for Mahajarama.

I like how the Count gets offended after Mahajarama underappreciates the souvenirs.

Turns out Mahajarama owns a popular curry restaurant that has been in his family for generations, to which Count Elec asks him why he didnt bother paying for airplane tickets for them.

They also ask why he called for the World Three members.

Well that came out perfectly for you, considering you took the wrong plane in the last episode, but now that I think about it, could Mahajarama had something to do with that too?

Mahajarama tells them the harsh truth about them never getting real jobs and that their only hope is to rebuild World Three, and the only way to do that is for them to finally defeat Netto and Rockman.

Since the last time you saw them? Because you still believe last episode was a dream, right?

After Hinouken mentions something about team work, we cut to Netto’s friends who are finally at Namaste. Not knowing where Netto is, Yaito tells them that she will track him with her spy satelite and that they will wait in the air for the results.

She has an automatic lawn mower as part of her security system, a giant tree house that doubles as a secret base, her own private jet, a limo that can drive over water, her own battle submarine, and a freaking rocket! What else is new?

We cut back to the World Three with Mahajarama giving a speech about curry being a combination of different spices and compares it to the perfect team work, as he reveals the other three members rising from the floor with colorful chef hats.

I like their different expressions, Count Elec looks angry, Hinouken is embarrassed, and only Madoi seems cool with it.

They are all gathered in an underground Net Battle arena that doubles as a curry research lab where Mahajarama reveals a giant machine with several arms like a hindu god.

Pfff... Puririkko-chan.

This giant machine scans the brain waves of all the World Three members and has the ability to create a curry dish based on their team work.

Each plate comes with a glass of water, cooked rice, some chopped vegetables and a spoon.

Since they know nothing about team work the taste of the curry is flat out horrible. Mahajarama tells them that if they can master working together the curry will taste better.

Outside of Mahajarama’s restaurant, Netto arrives with Rockman. Their suspitions are confirmed once they see a life zise statue of Mahajarama at the entrance, Rockman warns Netto that it is a trap, but Netto’s stomach proofs to be stronger than his brain since the smell of the curry inside is enough for him to go in.

Geez, Netto, if it wasn’t just the World Three you would’ve put your life in danger just because you couldn’t resist the smell of curry.

Netto quickly remembers he walked into a trap as soon as he hears Mahajarama’s voice, who captures him inside a ball that transports Netto to the underground floor.

After commercials, Netto arrives at the underground arena where he is greeted by the World Three operators challenging him to a Net Battle, Netto agrees and sends Rockman into a cyberworld that looks a giant curry stew.

Just like their operators, Fireman and Elecman can’t wait to fight Rockman and interrupt Magicman’s witty dialogue attemp.

Rockman points out that they are cowards and the two Navis rush over to attack him, with Coloredman joining in by thowing his ball along with some vegetables he picks up accidentaly hitting Fireman and Elecman who fall in the apperantly boiling curry water.

Mahajarama nags them and the machine scans them again revealing another curry dish that they dont even bother to taste.

Netto sends in the Shot gun to Rockman, but the four Navis finally work together to block the attack and make a combo. Rockman dodges the attack but a new curry dish is created.

Normally when lightning strikes, it means something bad.

The World Three curry is getting better as they score another combo attack, which is just them passing Coloredman’s ball to eachother like in a soccer game, and they knock Rockman into a giant bread cooker that rises from the water.

Rockman is being cooked inside, and it looks like Yaito’s spy satelite can also capture images from the cyberworld because Netto’s friends inmediately receive the footage of Rockman’s face! They figure that Netto and Rockman are in trouble and they hurry to where the footage came from.

Netto points out that the World Three strategy is dirty, but Mahajarama just complements himself by saying that the dirtyness adds that extra flavor to his curry.

Okay, now the machine has cooked meat too?!

Yaito’s rocket arrives and drops two drilling cars with arms that bust through the ceilling to where Netto and the World Three are, because what can’t you buy when you’re rich?!. After casually greeting him, Netto’s friends plug in their Navis to break the container where Rockman is.

The World Three Navis proceed to attack them, but Rockman’s friends protect him with a cuadriple barrier. After seeing how in synch they are we eachother, Mahajarama scans the group’s brain waves and a new curry dish appears, literally blowing the World Three away.

Netto and the others explain to him that their team work is better because they’ve been friends for a long time, and that the best curry is the one that is left out after a day.

Rockman activates a new style change, the Elec Team Style aka Elec Brother Style.

Somehow Netto knows the Elec Brother’s ability since he asks Tohru to lend him Iceman’s power by using an “extension chip” from who knows where, because I have never heard of that until now.

The extension chip downloads Iceman’s data into Rockman which might be the anime’s version of a Navi chip, this grants Rockman the power to send his electricity to the WWW Navis and freezing them.

For some other unexplained reason, Piririkko-chan...Pff, blows up after this and Netto and friends manage to escape on Yaito’s rocket just in time, where Netto then tells them that he might not eat curry again in a long time after his experience in Namaste.

Mahajarama survived the explosion where he is found by Beet, he says that he have finally realized that he’s indian curry is superior to the japanese curry and that he will proceed with his plan of expanding his restaurant world wide.

However, the other World Three operators overhear him and are not happy with the fact that he used them in order to confirm his theory, leading to them beating him up off camera.

Netto finally returns home, where his useless mom had no idea he was coming back that day nor did she even consider picking him up at the airport. Netto asks her what’s for dinner and falls over after she tells him that its curry. And the episode ends with Rockman laughing at Netto’s bad luck and telling the viewers that their trip around the world is officially over.

She sure seems trilled to see her only son back home! XC

My thoughts?

This episode wasn’t just for comedic purposes, it also lets us know what the former WWW members are up too after the whole Pharohman incident. Any other criminal would just go find another job, because its not like the police know who they are and the Net agents have proved to be useless in arresting people. No, these guys want to keep creating chaos and get revenge on Rockman, Mahajarama already has a different goal, why can’t the others do the same? Just give up already, you’re never gonna beat Rockman!

“Namaste” is an Indian greeting, and in the anime it is the name of a country that seems to be based on India, though it is never mentioned again after this episode.

We also learn what curry is, curry is a dish that was created in India and is a sauce made by combining spices and herbs. Curry is a popular dish in other asian countries who adopted it and created their own curry recipies based on reginal preferences. For example, did you notice how the curry plate created from Netto and his friends teamwork was yellow rice? That is because thats a japanese styled curry. Rice curry is a popular dish in Japan, so in any anime series you will always find atleast one episode where the main characters are eating rice curry.

The Elec Team style is actually named the Elec Brother style, I guess it is because Rockman and Netto are suppoused to be brothers in the game. This style is activated when using Navi chips often, since there are no Navi chips in the anime they decided to let Rockman gain another Navis ability with the help of some “magical” extension chip that appears out of nowhere, seriously, I have no idea where Netto got that thing or knew it was compatible with the new style.

#Rockman.exe #MegaMan NT Warrior #megaman battle network #anime #dub vs sub #My Reviews

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panda-noosh · 7 years

Text

Action! {Lance x YouTuber!Reader}{Au}

Words: 6723

Summary: Being a YouTube guru is hard enough without the added stress of living with Lance McClain, the man who insists on bombarding into every YouTube video you try to film. His viewers love him, and secretly, so do you.

Pairing: Lance x YouTuber!Reader

Notes: p2 - p3 - p4 - p5 - p6 - p7 ; I'm in such a long fic mood I'm so sorry.

“Hello everyone, and welcome back to my channel!”

The intro rings off of your tongue in the natural way it always had done – a simple greeting for the thousands – sometimes millions – of viewers who would soon be clicking on this very video.

The make up scatters the table in front of you, your ring light shining in front of you with your camera placed firmly in the centre of it. A less-than-professional set-up, but you didn't need anything more than what you had. Your fans appreciated the sometimes low-quality aesthetic of your videos.

At least, you hoped so.

“Today, we're going to be doing the full face with one product challenge. I was tagged to do this by multiple people, and I'm sorry I'm only getting to it now. I've been a bit absent from YouTube because of some-”

“Because she forgot to go grocery shopping!”

Lance's voice startles you, making a yelp escape your throat. Your elbow shoves concealer off of the desk, sending it toppling into the plush pink carpet of your filming room.

You snap your head to look at your room mate as he barges in the door, faux anger plastered on his features though it is clear he is trying to hide a grin.

“Are you serious?” you bite, scrambling to pick up the knocked off product. “I'm filming!”

“And I'm starving,” Lance replies. “Plus, you forgot to go grocery shopping, so there's nothing for me to cook. Meaning we have to go out for dinner tonight.”

You raise a brow, folding your arms over your chest. “Can you not just order take out? I need to get this video filmed.”

“Delivery is far too expensive nowadays,” Lance says. “Finish up filming and then we're going out for dinner.”

“Lance-”

But he's already span on his heel, facing away from you to make his way out of the door. “No excuses, Y/N-ah! And hurry up! I'm getting dizzy.”

The door closes behind him and you slump back in your chair, gazing at your camera. How Lance managed to do that, you had no idea. How he always managed to make you feel this way. How he always managed to interrupt your work – if anybody else had done that, you would have freaked out. You were like a lot of other Youtubers – a complete workaholic. Your life was surrounded by the internet – emails, brand deals, YouTube comments and Twitter mentions that had your name glued to them.

Whenever people got between you and your work, the business you had set up for yourself from the very ground up, you got mad at them. But Lance always got away with it.

You had met Lance not long after college. You were looking for universities to enroll in and had met him at one of the open days. The two of you became close, moved in together, until eventually you both ended up dropping out of university to go your own paths. Lance was currently in training to become a pilot, and you were a YouTuber.

An unlikely pairing, but one which oddly worked.

You grumble to yourself in disbelief at your own softness for the boy. You would have to tell him off at some point, just to ease your own nerves. But until then, you had a dinner to get ready for, and what better way to do that than to film a Get Ready With Me? Room mate revenge edition.

Lance sat down in the seat in front of you, a tomato dangling from his lips which he had just pulled loose from the patty of his burger. You barked down chips, one arm folded over your waist as the other picked at the chips in front of you, stuffing two at a time into your lip gloss coated mouth.

Lance watched you closely for a moment, observing how you sat. You noticed he often did this whenever it was silent between you two – he liked to see the little movements you did. How you would dart your eyes around the restaurant as if somebody was out to get you, how you would laugh at the air every now and then as a funny thought erupted in your brain, or how you would sometimes suddenly dive for your phone so you could write down an idea that had suddenly sprung into your head.

Today, none of that was happening. You were simply staring back at him, creative juices flowing.

“Did you know tomatoes are fruits?” Lance says through a mouthful of said-fruit.

You narrow your eyes. “That doesn't even make any sense.”

Lance's eyes widen as if you had just offended his entire being. “Are you saying I'm lying? Because I'm not! I read it on a Facebook pop-up ad.”

You snort. “Seems legit, Lance.”

“It was,” Lance grumbles. “You honestly can't hate on me. I'm the one with the unlimited number of facts up my sleeve.”

“Oh yeah? Give me another one.”

“I'm saving them for whenever it's quiet,” he says, before he takes a bite out of his burger. You watch him closely as he chews thoughtfully on the bite, before he turns back to you. “Did you end up finishing your video?”

You sigh, slumping further down in the booth seat and popping another chip in your mouth, followed promptly by a chicken nugget. “Not the one I was planning on filming. I would have looked a mess at the end of it, and I couldn't be bothered reapplying it all for the dinner, so I just did a GRWM.”

Lance raises a brow. “You don't even need to doll up. We're literally in a diner eating greasy food with our hands at 5 in the afternoon.”

“It's the effort that counts,” you counter. “And plus, I need a video for next week. My pre-filmed ones are running a little low.”

“I can tell. You've done nothing but organise future videos for the past two weeks straight.”

It was the truth. Pre-filmed videos were beginning to run thin, meaning you had to restock. It wouldn't be long until you were due to attend the Video Star event in LA, and you would be damned if you didn't have videos prepared for when you were away. Your channel had been thriving on a good schedule for the past eight years, and you wouldn't let that streak slip.

“Speaking of which,” Lance says, suddenly. “I've been meaning to speak to you about some videos of yours.”

You raise a brow. You mostly did beauty videos – the odd tag, the odd collab with a family member to jostle up the fun, but they were never videos you thought Lance would like to watch. You had never seen him watch any of your videos, and he only ever spoke to you about your never-ending schedule, not the content.

You lean forward. “Right. Continue.” He takes a bite out of his burger. “I had this – this idea. This genius epiphany, if you will.”

“Rare.”

“Shut up.” He swallows thickly and points the burger at you before continuing. “I've been featured in quite a few of your videos, right? Whenever I pop in and start yelling and stuff like that. Plus, I'm always on your vlog channel. Why not have me actually – you know – sit down and do a video with you?”

You nearly choke on the air you are inhaling, hardly believing your ears.

You and Lance had never discussed doing a collab together. The idea alone seemed weird. Sure, Lance's voice had been heard in the background of your videos on multiple occasions, him earning the nickname as Y/N's Phantom Room Mate, but there was never any discussion of anything other than that. Him sitting beside you as you did one of your routine videos seemed almost absurd, but you find yourself oddly appealed to the idea.

Almost as soon as he says it, ideas are popping into your overworked mind. That was the thing with you – everything was an idea. Everything had potential in it, some more than others. Bringing Lance onto your channel seemed to trigger your brain, opening up a wide range of ideas which you suddenly become eager to try out.

“My channel?” you ask. Lance nods eagerly, never taking his eyes off of yours. “My make up, beauty and fashion channel?”

“Yes Y/N, I'm well aware of the content you create. You can dress me up or do my make up, or even do a Q&A if you want. It doesn't matter. I just wanna see what all the fuss is about.”

You frown. “There is no fuss.”

“There will be fuss when I show my beautiful face.” He chuckles, licking grease off of his fingers before slumping back in his seat and spreading out his fingers across his stomach. “So what do you say? Me, you. Video.”

You pout. It was a good idea. There was a lot you could do with Lance by your side, and your viewers on your vlog channel always seemed to love him whenever he made an appearance. It would be for the benefit of your viewers. It would also give you some videos to post during your time away.

You sigh and nod your head gently. “Sure. Why not? Let's do it.”

“If I move too much, will the camera go out of focus?” Lance asks as he messes with the chair you had set up for him by your desk.

You shoot him a sideways glance as you busy yourself with fixing your mascara, a casual look foe the question and answer session you were about to film. Nothing over the top.

Whilst you wore a simple white shirt tucked into light blue jeans, Lance had come with a hawaiian dress shirt pressed to his chest, the top few buttons undone paired with ripped, black skinny jeans. His usual, casual style of a hoodie and sweat pants had been abandoned, and you couldn't help but appreciate it.

He looked good. He always looked good, but today he looked extra good. He looked a little bit more like a man, and you could appreciate that.

Even though you didn't mind him dressing the way he usually did.

“Only if you do anything crazy,” you reply. You sit back on the white seat beside him, shoulder brushing his slightly. “Are you ready or not?”

“I was born ready.” He smiles widely at the camera, despite you having not even started yet. “Wait, what are we even doing?”

You roll your eyes, opening Twitter. The hashtag 'Y/N Room Mate Q&A' had been trending for over three hours now, questions upon questions from curious viewers pouring into the board at a speed you found difficult to keep up with. One's that said too much, ones that said too little, ones that were just downright weird.

“A Q&A,” you reply. “My viewers have been dying to know who you are, so what better way to introduce you than this?”

Lance nods gently, draping an arm over the back of your chair to look at the tweets which you continually refreshed.

Soon, you put an end to the refreshing of the page and decided to finally begin the video. You shuffle away from Lance just a little, look up at the camera, take a deep breath, and-

“Hello everyone, and welcome back to my channel! Today I'm joined with a very special guest – my best friend and my room mate, Mr Lance McClain!”

Lance grins widely, waving furiously at the camera. The act alone makes a blush creep along your cheeks – one you hope that your bronzer and concealer cover up well enough to not make obvious. “Hey everyone!”

“Now, I asked you guys on Twitter to send me some of your questions for me and Lance to answer, and you guys really did deliver. It was trending and everything.”

Lance splutters, turning to you with wide eyes. “Really?”

You nod. “It's insane. They're insane.” You send a cheeky grin to the camera before looking down at your phone. “Okay, first question: What if your favourite and least favourite thing about living with one another?”

You turn to Lance, hoping to find any expression that would suggest he was thinking, but it doesn't take long for him to speak up with an answer to both inquiries.

“My least favourite thing about living with Y/N would definitely have to be when she forgets to buy groceries,” he says, and you can't suppress the groan which escapes your mouth. Lance laughs as you slump down in your seat, shaking your head.

“I did that one time!”

“One time too many,” Lance barks back, clamping a hand to your knee. “My favourite thing about living with her – well, there's a lot I like about living with her. She's my best friend, afterall. Maybe it's the way she puts up with my busy schedule. Yeah. I like that about her a lot.”

You raise a brow, looking up at Lance for a moment with a small smile appearing on your face. “How genuine of you. I only put up with it because you being in the house is a chore.”

Lance squeezes your knee, a giggled “Hey!” escaping him. You chuckle along with him, shuffling up in your seat to answer the question yourself.

“My least favourite thing about living with Lance would have to be . . . He interrupts my filming a lot. It's almost like he just knows I'm filming and he chooses that time specifically to come and yell at me for stupid stuff.”

“Stupid stuff?” Lance exclaims. “My starvation isn't stupid, Y/N-ah. It's actually quite serious.”

You wave your hand, dismissing his comment though the smile appearing on your face is bright and joyful and you want to wipe it off, keep the deadpan, serious look but you can't help it.

“My favourite thing about living with Lance would have to be . . . Um . . . The way he pays half the rent.”

“I'm really about to move out.”

You bark out into laughter, shoving Lance playfully. “I'm kidding, I'm kidding! No, you're great fun to live with just in general. Whenever I'm having a bad day, you never fail to come into my room with a cup of coffee and we'll just sit up and watch romantic comedies for the entire day. You take care of me.”

Lance looks at you, his expression visible in the view finder you find yourself looking into. His smile is small, almost weak looking but his eyes are soft, as if your words really did hit home with him.

He taps your knee gently, and it's only then that you realise he actually hadn't let go of your knee since he placed his hand on it earlier. The thought makes your face burn and your quick to look down at your phone, preparing the next question.

“Okay, next question~”

The questions continue until the footage is a good hour long, and you're almost certain your entire neck will be cramped by the time you've finished editing it to a reasonable length.

You send out a quick thank you tweet to everybody who sent in questions before turning the camera off and slipping the SD card out of it, sliding it into your pocket for later use.

Lance groans as he stands up, knees and back cracking due to the lack of movement he had endured for the past hour. “That was fun!”

“It got a little weird at the end,” you say, turning to look at him. “You putting lipstick on your eyebrows certainly wasn't what I had in mind when I invited you for a Q&A.”

Lance shrugs, rubbing at the red lipstick that was stuck on the fibres of his eyebrow. You had yelled at him through laughter, tapping the table in an attempt to calm you down – this was a side to you the viewers had never seen before. Laughing uncontrollably, tears streaming down your face. You were never overly serious in your videos, but they were professional enough that you never made an attempt to make inappropriate jokes. You were there to help girls and guys with their make up routines when they needed it – jokes just added extra minutes onto the video.

But here you were, wiping at your streaked mascara all because Lance had filmed a video with you. You were still laughing, thoughts of his funny answers swimming through your mind and making the choked laughter erupt all over again.

“Tell me when you're going to upload it,” Lance requests. “I wanna watch it.”

“Do you wanna proof watch it before I upload?”

Lance shakes his head, making you frown. You thought for sure he would want to check over the footage, make sure you had edited in everything he wanted and took out everything he didn't want. His first time on YouTube would have to be special.

Lance notices your confused expression and smiles softly, gently placing a lipstick stained hand on your shoulder. “I've seen your other videos, Y/N. I trust you enough to make me look good.”

You flush, the comment surprisingly flattering you. It was nice to know that you're hard work, the hours you put into editing these videos, is paying off and somebody is noticing it. It's enough to make your cheeks flush a colour darker, though Lance doesn't stay still long enough to pick up on it.

“Anyway, are you feeling Korean food? I want bulgogi.”

The comments were streaming in, and every single one sent a tingle of nerves to spiral through your chest.

It had never been like this. At least, not for the last six or seven years of you uploading videos.

You remembered your ten year old self uploading her first video – a Lally Kally review – and how nervous you had felt whenever you got your first comment. It was something along the lines of, “How cute!” followed shortly by, “Where are her parents?”

It was similar to how you were feeling now. This twist in your gut as people commented, though the comments rolled in a lot quicker than when you were ten years old. You refreshed the page every two seconds, trying to capture every comment before it disappeared amongst a pile of others, but it was soon seen to be impossible.

You sigh, pulling the covers higher up until they are bundled under your chin. Comments like these should be making your heart pound because they were compliments, but your heart was pounding for a reason a bit different than that.

“I've never seen Y/N look so happy. I'm glad she has somebody like Lance to make her laugh like that.”

“Look at the way Lance looks at her, omg!!!!”

“Honestly, I always thought these two were just friends. The way Y/N would talk about him always made it seem that way, but seeing them together is making me think there's something else to it.”

“Has she ever smiled like that in a video?”

“More! More! More!” “What's their ship name? I want that shit trending immediately.”

They were nice comments – far from hate comments, at least. People seemed to like Lance. People seemed to like Lance and you together even more, and that made you feel weasy, almost.

Lance was eventually going to read the comments. You knew it wouldn't take him long to figure out how YouTube worked, and the thought of him seeing all of these comments about how you two would make the perfect couple made you oddly anxious, because what if that made things awkward?

You knew it wouldn't. You knew Lance was better than that – he would never ditch your friendship over the things others were saying, but the thought still ate at the back of your mind, a stupid worry you couldn't shove away.

You rewatched the video for a third time that night, trying to avoid the way the clock said 4am. You had been up editing until 12am, replying to Twitter mentions until half 1, and now you were locked onto the YouTube comments, rewatching your own video on loop and reading what your viewers had to say.

It was YouTuber tendencies to be a night owl, apparently.

You had to admit that there was an obvious clash between how you acted in this particular video with every other video you had posted. In your other videos, you very rarely even had guests, so there was never any reason for you to burst into uncontrollable laughter. Your videos often consisted of voice overs, also, rather than you speaking directly to the camera. But even with the voice over and lack of guests, you were definitely still obviously a lot happier in this video than any other one you had filmed.

The way you rested your head on your palm and looked over at Lance was an action you hadn't even noticed you were making whenever you were filming. It was so natural. The way Lance would be in the middle of speaking and his eyes would flick down to you, and he'd blush just a little and send you a small wink, all without stopping his sentence – it was so natural whenever you two did it off camera, but watching it back made you realise just how suggestive it all looked.

Sure, it was cute. It was deadly cute. But you didn't need Lance knowing you felt like that.

You rub at your tired eyes roughly before finally closing your overused laptop. You set it to the side and cuddle under the covers of your sheets, your mind repeating the YouTube comments on a loop in your head.

“You two would look so adorable together!”

Two weeks had passed since you had uploaded the video, and you were almost positive Lance had read through every single comment that was on it. He checked them daily, showing you the ones which made you squirm uncomfortably, but Lance didn't seem bothered by them. In fact, the majority of them were making him giggle.

But your troubles would soon be set aside, as it was finally time for you to make your appearance at the Los Angeles Video Star event – one you had been anticipated to attend for the past two years, but you had never bothered.

Being around other YouTubers never interested you. You had a few YouTuber friends, but none that you met up with on a daily basis. Other than meeting your fans, there was never any pull factor to showing up at these events.

This year, you had read through the tweets from your fans, begging you to go, and you had cracked, accepting the invitation. You had been booked on plenty of panels, and you weren't ready for any of them.

The conference hall is huge, you notice. Almost as soon as you step inside, you're suddenly itching to text Lance, to ask him to calm you down in the way he always manages to do so. But your phone has been turned off for the sake of the cameras, and there's a crowd of girls squealing because oh my god, Y/N L/N just walked in! and you quite frankly don't want to look rude.

You're led to your seat on the panel by some of the hosts, a seat right beside Hunk Garrett, one of your good YouTube friends. He owned a YouTube channel with a good million subscribers called HunkGrub, where he basically just ate food, cooked food, talked about food – anything to do with food. Every challenge that had to do with food, you can guarantee that he was doing it within days of it becoming popular. In fact, quite often he was the one who started them.

“Well, long time no see, stranger,” he says to you as you take a seat.

You take a long swig of water before replying, needing something to quench the thirst which had been brought on by the nerves. “Sorry. I'm not very good at texting.”

Hunk frowns, looking at you with a raised brow. “You honestly look like you've seen a ghost. First time here?”

You nod shakily. “First time in LA. I didn't realise everybody here was so . . .So, uh -”

“Self aware?” Hunk suggests, and you wince at how harsh the phrase sounds, though you know there is no better fit for it.

Hunk nods and leans back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest as he looks out over the appearing crowd. The big hall was definitely filling up at a pace which you struggled to keep up with, some people even being held back before they launched themselves onto the stage at the line of YouTubers who were also currently filing in.

“I saw your video with your boyfriend a few weeks back,” Hunk suddenly comments. Your eyes widen, head snapping around to look at him.

“Lance isn't my boyfriend.”

Hunk raises a brow, his turn to look surprised. “What? How? You two were so-”

You wave a hand, not wanting to talk about the one thing which had been plaguing your mind since you clicked 'UPLOAD' on that video. The positive response had been overwhelming, but you didn't need to hear about how cute you and Lance looked when you were perfectly aware of what it looked like.

“So you just . . . You just look at your friends like that all the time?” Hunk continues anyway, ignoring your clearly uncomfortable aura. “Lance just looks at you like that all the time? Are you friend zoning that poor boy?”

“Hunk!” you hiss, slapping his shoulder which causes a mesh of screams to emerge from the audience. “Would you just – Christ, we're not dating.”

“That's not what I asked.”

“I'm not friend-zoning him. You can't be friend zoned if you don't like the person who's friend-zoning you, and Lance McClain most certainly doesn't like me as anything more than a friend.”

Hunk smirks now, looking at you like you were a three year old trying to excuse why the vase was broken. “You're getting worked up, babe. That means something whether you want it to or not.”

“Would you just sh?” you grumble, folding your arms over your chest. “I'm nervous enough as it is.”

“Would Lance make you feel better?”

“I swear on all that is holy, Hunk Garrett, I will-”

“Please mind your language, everyone!” the host exclaims into the microphone, sending a whistling to vibrate amongst the crowd. “We're live and we don't want to face any legal trouble, so all offensive comments and all rude words must be left for after the live stream is turned off. Sound good?”

The crowd screams in reply. You take a swig of water. Your fellow YouTubers nod and grin, shining personalities an amazing contrast to the bundle of nerves you are in the centre of it all. You don't even know why you're in the centre. Was the centre special? Was it because you were new here?

You take a deep breath in an attempt to settle your anxiety, setting your water down to place your hands in your lap, fiddling with the strings on the camoflage, baggy trousers you had decided to wear with your hoodie. Street fashion that you only ever planned to wear in a place like this.

Soon, the live stream had begun and the questions were being fired your way and everybody elses way. You had to admire the way the other Youtubers and the way they so calmly answered each question as if it was no big deal. The way they comforted crying fans who stood up to the microphone shaking at the chance to speak to their favourite content creater.

The few fans who had given you that welcome had only gotten a shy smile and a, “Please don't cry,” in return, and you had thought that was enough. But watching Allura jog down off stage to go and hug her sobbing fan made a swarm of guilt to erupt in your stomach. You should be doing more. You should be showing the fans just how much you appreciated them, but your social skills were a little too rusty, stopping you from doing anything too bold.

Things seem to wind down after a little while. You become less anxious, lounging back in your seat and laughing along to the comments the panel are making. You even make a few jokes yourself, smiling in content at the way your fans scream in appreciation and laugh along with you, shocked to see this slice of humour that you very rarely place in your videos.

Still, you know the question of Lance will soon show up, and the thought of it's impending arrival is enough to make you even a little bit tense, a little bit drawn back. You have to come up with a good enough answer before the question is asked – but you don't even know what the question will be, so trying to form an answer seems close to impossible at this point.

It's after the panel host announces that there is only time for a few more questions that one of your fans finally steps up to the podium and asks what everybody had been thinking all night.

“Are you and Lance dating? If not, have you ever had feelings towards him?”

You swallow the golf ball sized lump in your throat, hiding it with an embarrassed smile and a chuckle as the crowd erupts into screams of delight that somebody had broken the ice and asked you the one question which was surely playing at their minds all night. You want to pretend it's all okay, but the flaming heat arising up your neck and attacking your make-up covered face will surely give away any subtleties you were trying to hide.

You shake your head gently, keeping the reassuring smile on your face, never breaking eye contact with the fan who was nervously playing with the hem of her shirt. You noticed her make up look was one you had done on your YouTube channel only a few weeks ago, and that reassured you that she meant no harm. She was a supporter, and you would treat her with as much love as she had shown you.

“Lance and I are just friends,” you reply after the crowd has settled. “We've lived together for . . . Three years now? Coming up on three years, so we're very close. We know each other better than anybody else and that's maybe why we looked so close in the video we shot together. But I can promise you that we're nothing more than friends.”

The girl nods, and you think it's over. You think you've cleared yourself until the panel host turns to his microphone, a cheeky grin on his face as he says, “And what about the second question? Have either of you ever felt feelings for each other?”

You bite down hard on your lip. So hard you're almost positive you've drawn blood, but the feeling of the pain distracts you from your embarrassment and the dread forming in the pit of your stomach. The crowds screams become unbearable, hacking through the ear piece in your ear which makes the questions louder for you to hear. They were adamant for this, and you didn't want to lie. You didn't want to make it seem like you would never have a chance with Lance, because you liked to hope otherwise. You liked to hope that there was room for you two to be something more than friends, but it was a scary thought. The thought of admitting everything to this room full of strangers before you had even discussed your feelings with Lance seemed stupid, but it was now or never.

Now or never.

You lean into your microphone, laugh lightly and shrug. “I think – uh – I think it's almost impossible for me to not feel something for Lance, you know?”

What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing?

You continue on anyway. “He's been by my side through thick and thin for a long time, and he's my best friend. He's seen me at my lowest and at my worst, and he's one of the only people on this planet who know how to properly calm me down when I'm feeling stressed. It's hard to not feel something whenever somebody knows you that well. But again, we're just friends.”

And the crowd screams.

You scramble for your phone as soon as you enter your hotel room.

Lance had been watching the live stream. He had to have been watching the live stream. He had promised you he wouldn't miss it for the world. He felt bad enough for not being able to accompany you to LA due to his training schedule, so you knew he would find anyway he could to support you without actually being by your side.

That meant he watched the live stream. He had to have watched the live stream.

Your thoughts are confirmed whenever you open your phone to a stream of messages, as if Lance had been live messaging you throughout the entire thing. You quickly read through them, thumb nail in your mouth and dread forming in the pit of your stomach.

Lance: bitch you look so pretty damn you cleaned up well for this one.

Lance: are those my military jeans? I knew I lost them somewhere.

Lance: why is nobody asking you questions? I want to hear your voice.

Lance: you look like you're about to throw up all she did was ask you what make up concealer you used lmao.

Lance: ask Hunk to make me food.

Lance: aw, that fan was crying over you! I love seeing how much of an impact you have on them, it's adorable.

Lance: you look so happy. i'm happy that watching you be happy.

Lance: okay but the panel host 100% has his eye on you and it's lowkey pissing me off don't ask why yeet.

Lance: SOMEONE ASKED ABOUT ME HJFISDJIOSHGIUO.

Lance: aw, you're my best friend too, Y/N x

Lance: wait.

Lance: why didn't you tell me?

Lance: fuck, Y/N, did you really mean that in the way I think you did? can I call you?

Lance: i've been wanting to hear that for so long. my heart is racing so hard right now.

Lance: I hope I didn't misunderstand. please call me as soon as you get these. I want to confess with my voice, not over text.

Lance: shit. i'm so anxious right now. I had no idea.

You don't waste a moment, and you don't entirely know why. You should have been panicking, trying to avoid him as much as possible after your embarrassing confession that you sent to hundreds of people, but you can't stop yourself from pulling up his contact, clicking on his name and ringing him.

He picks up on the second ring.

“I'm sorry,” is the first thing you say, suddenly pacing your hotel room with your hand gripping your hair. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you before. I'm sorry I said it to the fans before I said it to you. I didn't think. I was just letting out my feelings, and-”

“When are you home?” Lance asks, his voice strained.

“In three days,” you reply. Lance groans, the noise startling you. “Why? Is something wrong? Did you break the kitchen counter again?”

“Jesus Y/N, I need to see you.” The sternness in his voice takes you by surprise and you freeze your pacing to listen closer, afraid you had misheard. “I need – I need to see your face after hearing what you said. I need to kiss you. I heard that's the best way to let someone know you like them back.”

Your eyes widen, jaw going slack. Here you were, alone in LA, miles and miles away from your best friend. You were out here living your dream, surrounded by fans, and you wanted nothing more than to be back with Lance right now, curled up in his arms in the way you had been dreaming forever.

“Don't say that,” you say. “I was doing okay but now I feel like I need to see you.”

Lance chuckles gravelly, his throat sounding dry through the phone. “Three days. We can last three days.”

You barely lasted three days.

But on the third day, you had never run so fast. The taxi had dropped you off a few minutes from the flat complex. You had thrown your fee at the taxi driver, hauled your suitcase out of the back of the taxi and launched yourself into a full-on sprint down the pavement, the smile never leaving your face as you did so.

You pushed open the door to your flat, tossed your suitcase to the side as you frantically looked around for Lance. He was nowhere to be seen, and disappointment soon began to settle in the pit of your stomach.

He might be working.

You frown, running a hand over your face and sighing into your palm. You just wanted to see him. Now that you knew how he felt, you never wanted to leave him again. This was the kind of thing that only happened in movies – you wanted to relish in it for as long as you could, but work schedules were a bitch.

But then the sound of a door slamming down the hallway startles you back to reality, and suddenly Lance is yelling, running into the living room and sliding to a halt on his black socks against the frictionless wooden floor of the living room.

He stops himself sliding right in front of you, where he finally wraps his arms around your waist and pulls you into him, doing a twirl with you in his grip. You laugh, throwing your head back in pure bliss as every knot made from travelling that had appeared in your body suddenly seems to unravel and the world seems right again and you're home, where you should be.

You're pleasantly surprised whenever Lance takes his chance at kissing your neck with the way you throw your head back in laughter. His soft lips press against the vein in your neck and you inhale sharply at the sudden contact, hands pulling at his hair to let him know you approved.

“Never leave again, please,” Lance says, voice muffled by your neck. “I'm a complete wreck without you here. Both physically and mentally. I haven't washed a single pair of socks in a week, and we no longer have green plates.”

You groan, pulling him away from you. “How many did you drop?”

He raises a brow in sarcastic misunderstanding. “I have no idea what you mean.”

You go to respond, but he doesn't let you as his lips finally crash onto yours, closing the gap you so desperately detested between the two of you. The feeling is like an eruption, like you've finally found the other half to you that you had been aimlessly looking for for your entire life. He had been there this entire time, hiding behind a mask and a label of 'my best friend.'

Now here he was, lips pressed to yours in the perfect way it was always meant to be. You were almost certain you could have burst with happiness, but instead you pressed your lips harder against his, releasing your excitement into the kiss that was the cause of said emotion.

It was weird how a single YouTube video could change everything. You placed a mental reminder in your head to thank your fans for their comments.

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