#the whole cast was ranging from good-for-local-theater to actually-really-good

[hamletthedane]

turns out you can spend $18 million on your filmed production of Hamlet and cast all the great Hollywood stars of the 90’s to act in it, and it will still never beat that one performance by a kid in a texas barn with an audience of 40, performed during in a 110F heat wave

[vacation-grif]

What kinda feelings?

A LOT, ACTUALLY. Like I said before, the RTNY group was telling me to skip it because it wasn’t a good season, and I want to express how much I wanted to just form my own opinion, only to end up agreeing with them in the end. Let me break this down as best as I can now that I am on my PC. I mean no disrespect to the director and writer, as well as the cast and crew. Honestly, I’m worried that my opinion makes me feel like a boomer at this point.

First off, if anyone was going to tell me that I’m going to have headaches over bright flashing lights and colors over a Red vs Blue series, I wouldn’t have believed you. As I said before, they should’ve just called this “Red vs Blue: Epilepsy Warning THE M0VIE”. I understand that they are using the Unreal Engine, because my god the graphics on this is INSANE. But everything is...too bright. TOO. BRIGHT. Everything has a lens flare no matter where the camera turns, and with the high paced action, all the lights and colors, it HURTS.

-

Next, this is a fully CG-animated season. We haven’t had one like that in SUCH a long time, and this is the first in the 20-ish years of Red vs BLue. When I was a kid who didn’t have a cellphone, I could only imagine what Red vs Blue was like when my best friend would play it over our landline on a weeknight before we would go to school the next day. And I would come over and be like, HOLY SHIT. IS THIS FUCKING HALO?! So imagine my excitement when after 8 years of Red vs Blue using Halo 1 to Halo 3 assets, you see a Warthog just crash through the walls of Valhalla, something you’d never see in a Halo game. A fully animated scene of Grif running over Washington (hell yeah), and an angry Washington outside of his game model just climbing onto the hood of the car and shooting at Grif through the windshield at pointblank range. Then cut to episode 10 of the same season, Tex makes her triumphant return, fully animated instead of her Halo 3 game model. And in the last two episodes of the season, you get OUR VERY FIRST FREELANCER VS FREELANCER FIGHT. You find out this was the work of the late Monty Oum (rest in peace), and until Season 10, Red vs Blue was THE HIGHEST POINT OF YOUR FUCKING LIFE.

Then we go to Season 12 where the animation post Oum (he was working on RWBY at this point but iirc this was just before he died) was choppy at best and didn’t feel right until Season 13, where within the one year the animation team REALLY stepped up. And this actually carries over into Season 17, Singularity, where it became more animation and less game effects, or rather it was balanced. It wasn’t extravegant like Oum’s works, but given that these are the Simtroopers, some Freelancers, some Mercs, and time gods, it felt par for the course. It felt right.

We cut now to these upgraded graphics, which felt like when you were playing on your Xbox 360 and you jsut FUCKING SHOT into the Xbox One. It was, as you would say, unreal (lol). But it felt...off. The first two episodes, the entire action didn’t feel like what you spent 16 seasons watching. It felt like a whole another beast entirely. With the use of super powers, you would think oh the Freelancers had that! Yes, but those were all suit enhancements. These...didn’t feel like it. Zero’s and Phase’s teleportation didn’t feel like something that Fragmented AI can control. Shatter Squad’s at least felt more at home. 

The models themselves were a bit off too. Choppy at best, but understandable given that they were using the Unreal Engine. But you notice that they do a lot of hand on hip pushed out to the side type of thing a lot? Everyone does it. Except Raymond, West, and the big dude. Like the SASSY STANCE. Also, there was way too much power stance. Where if your feet were shoulder width apart, it was a bit wider, and also the pelvis was out a little more. A bit weird. Finally, everyone has an ass. Everyone. Even West. West has an ass, it was like, everyone was dummy thicc and the clap of their ass cheeks was alerting Viper.

-

Next, voice acting. I...absoultely could not stand the voice acting. It was completely over the top, overdramatic, over exaggerated. Granted, I’m a singer, a perform, but I’m not exactly a good actor myself in the few shows I’ve actually done. It felt like watching an anime. When you wtach something with dialogue of your own language, you can tell when you feel something is to over the top. If you watch something of a language you don’t speak, it’ll go over your head, unless you start to speak that language, and you speak to people who speak that language, then you start to pick up what is regular speaking and what is acting. When an anime gets dubbed, most times, the voice actors tend to over dramatacize in the same way the Japanese due, and some times it works, most times it doesn’t. This is because the Japanese way of acting comes from kabuki theater. When English dubbers do that with this weird over emphasized emotions, it is extremely offputting.

In some places, the voice acting is poorly done. Jen Brown’s performance from just getting out of a hospital to giving an expositional lecture about the new cast in literally 5 seconds of time was...off. Carolina should’ve had more time to recover, especailly after losing Washington, one of her closest surrogate family, she felt...a little too calm and normal. Not like the Carolina who was hesitant but trying her best to be a whole better person (see the Paradox Arc, S15-17). It was jsut quick shift, and now she’s making snarky remarks in that Jen Brown voice she does (my god step on me please) and also being a mother hen. Also, she really calls Washington David way more this season than she ever did before that.

Fiona’s performance was shaky at best in my opinion, I don’t know her very well outside of what everyone says. All I know is that sometimes, the way she emphasizes some of her lines don’t fit the situation very well. I think East/Phase was a lot better done than One imo. But she was mostly angry and competitive.

Raymond is the textbook definition of what I hate about taking a character’s role and making it their entire personality. Think of it like watching Power Rangers, and all of their roles is just defined by the shit they say. Jason is the jock, Kimberly is the pretty girl, Trini is......I’m not gonna lie, I don’t...know what to classify Trini, Zack was the cool guy, and Billy was the nerd (Tommy was Jock II also the rebel/loner). Raymond reminded me a lot like Billy, where Billy was defined by being so smart, half of his dialogue was just look at me, i’m fucking smart, let me use all of these big words. Half of Raymond’s dialogue was, look at me, i’m the tech guy, I’m nerdy and loveable, it felt like it was too over the top of trying to stand out. By the end of the season, after East’s big reveal, I started to like him a lot more because he knew what was more at stake. I want to say that my initial impression of him was immature at best.

West was too stiff. Just.. Too stiff. I get he’s old. But show some emotion, please.

Why am I emphasizing on this more? When you listen to the dialogue of RvB, and then you listen at this, even with the return cast of Carolina, Washington, and Tucker, the direction was different. I think it’s because of the new medium with Zero being all super animated like an action, where RvB was just a bunch of net videos that you’re gonna laugh at with well timed jokes. It was super casual, but also super real. Geoff and Gus and everyone else aren’t big actors or anything, but that’s what made it feel real. That’s what made RvB feel like its own thing.

-

In terms of writing, I get that this is RvB meets FnF (Fast and Furious). But I honestly feel that it doens’t belong. The story of Shatter Squad vs Viper would have been a lot better if it didn’t have the RvB name tacked on. It’s such a cool concept, but given what RvB was before, the tonal shift is jsut too great, especially when you only have 3 of the previous cast returning.

Speaking of, what happened to Tucker?! What happened to the guy who became a leader? Responsible? Not as arrogant? Maybe playfully arrogant at best, but not stroking his ego? What happened to HIS SWORD? Did they forget how Tucker’s sword works? That it only works IF HE DIES? Tucker didn’t die, and yet Phase was able to use his sword (which by the way is now hers). One of the earliest stories/gags of RvB and they just...retconned it and threw it away! Also, Tucker’s voice acting did NOT match the scene at all. It’s like watching a video game that was localized from Japanese, and the dubbers spoke too fast before the character could finish. Tucker moves outside of his dialogue and there is this weird seconds of silence. That...that was just a BAD return for him.

-

My final thought is that, if RvB Zero is not...the RvB I grew up with. Maybe the jokes are dated, but the memories of what RvB was is still real. This just...doesn’t feel like RvB anymore. This should have just been it’s own show, it’s own story, replace Wash and Carolina and Tucker with new characters, it just wasn’t their place to be in this.

The only thing I liked about this? I’m glad Danielle (I’m assuming this is how you would spell her name) didn’t go AWOL and returned to the team. I actually really liked her the most next to Axel. She was done dirty, but she still held on to that one bond she had as East that Zero didn’t give her as Phase.

-

I know this is probably not a great opinion, and I really hope that Rooster Teeth finds the ground they want this series to go in. Sometimes, you have to try new things, or else staying stagnant will make it go stale. It’s all about trial and error. I don’t know how everyone else feels about Zero, how the new audience and the old audience feels. RvB as a whole wasn’t perfect. They had their down moments. But when you feel that way for an entire season...it’s a problem.

[aion-rsa]

Cruella: Does Every Villain Need a Sympathetic Origin Story?

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Clearly this isn’t your parents’ Cruella De Vil. This isn’t even your Cruella De Vil. However, there is something fiendishly charming about seeing Emma Stone charge into a ballroom and light her black and white dress on fire, revealing a chic red number beneath that would do Scarlett O’Hara proud. If fashion is a statement, Cruella is here to say the villain has just arrived!

Yet one can’t help but shake the certainty that by the time we actually learn the plot of Disney’s Cruella reimagining, Cruella will be in anything but black and white, or fiery red. Rather Cruella is obviously posturing to take a sideways approach to an old classic. But then again, that increasingly feels like the only direction these Hollywood redos know: the sympathetic origin story for an iconic villain.

To be clear, we’ve only gotten a glimpse of Stone as the new Cruella, and she looks absolutely fabulous in a black leather coat and cane, purring, “I’m only getting started, darling.” There’s a wildness about this interpretation befitting our current era where Harley Quinn is the hero of her own story, and Wade Wilson now leads a Disney franchise. Nevertheless, when I watch Cruella on the edge of tears in the trailer, barking defiantly that she is CRUELLA—and seemingly embracing an unfair reputation that other characters may be placing on her—a nagging question persists in the back of my head: Do we really need a sympathetic Cruella De Vil?

The trend of supervillains getting intellectual property-expanding sob stories is nothing new, be it at Disney or anywhere else in Hollywood. Maybe 25 years ago when folks liked their villains big and outlandish—think Glenn Close in Disney’s previous live-action remake of 101 Dalmatians—it was novel to see the antagonist become a tragic protagonist. But like everything else with modern blockbusters, that all changed a long, long time ago with something called Star Wars.

Back in 1977 when the original Star Wars movie was released, many audience members left the theater giddy about the world George Lucas created. In a galaxy far, far away, every pop fantasy of the mid-20th century—Wizards! Knights! Princesses! Samurai! World War II ace pilots!—was thrown into a massive cauldron that seamlessly blended these elements.

Luke Skywalker’s galaxy felt like a real place of exotic, lived-in locales, all of which captured that dirt-under-the-fingertips, tactile quality so rarely seen in fantasy stories. Sure the characters might be archetypes, but they came with histories which gave their fantasy space battles human density. Old Ben Kenobi fought in the Clone Wars with Luke’s father Anakin, who was “a gifted pilot.” But what exactly was a clone war? And why was there more than one of them? Also, what did a Jedi’s “more civilized age” look like for Luke’s papa?

For more than 20 years, no one knew the answer to those questions, which made them all the more intriguing, and the “lore” of this fantasy evermore mythic. Then came Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, the first modern blockbuster prequel devoted to filling in the gaps left by a beloved classic’s mysteries. That movie’s problems are numerous, but at its core the most persistent, lingering issue may still be the reveal that Darth Vader was once a blonde haired little boy with the emotional range of Beaver Cleaver. Of course everyone knew in the abstract sense Vader was once a child… but did they ever really want to see it?

Additionally, did anyone really want to learn Anakin Skywalker’s reason for turning to the Dark Side is because of a bratty streak that followed him into adulthood? Probably not.

Nonetheless, all three Star Wars prequels made massive amounts of money and rather than becoming cautionary tales of what happens when you attempt to explain away all the mysteries of a beloved character, they were the first steps toward a modern staple of media regurgitation where seemingly every mug, pug, and thug would get their own sympathetic redo.

Since then, we’ve learned on screen that Spider-Man’s arch-nemesis Venom, is really a well-intentioned bloke caught in a bad romance (with his alien space buddy), Batman’s arch-nemesis the Joker is really just a Travis Bickle clone with mommy issues, and Maleficent, the reigning empress of badassery in the Disney Villain canon, was really just a woman scorned by Sleeping Beauty’s toxic father. Even Hannibal Lecter became a victim in Hannibal Rising, and the Wicked Witch of the West starred in the most popular Broadway musical of all time… where it turns out she was the hero in a conspiracy with the Scarecrow to pull one over on Dorothy.

To be clear, some of these spinoffs and reimaginings work quite well. Even if I personally am a bit chagrined at Todd Phillips’ Joker being nominated for Best Picture, Joaquin Phoenix’s sad sack killer clown created the space for a riveting performance that reminded mainstream audiences that movies can still be for adults. In another comic book movie, Magneto’s heartbreaking backstory in the Holocaust was expanded in 2011’s X-Men: First Class, which made an already relatively complex supervillain just that much more compelling in Michael Fassbender’s hands.

Overall, however, this approach has left something to be desired. And to get back to Cruella, her remix as a misunderstood tragic heroine appears to owe most of all to Maleficent. In 2014, Disney made a killing when they cast movie star Angelina Jolie as their very best big bad, a character so evil in 1959’s Sleeping Beauty that she was willing to knockoff a princess simply because no one sent her a party invite. That’s cold. And it’s wickedly entertaining. Hence why Maleficent scared and captivated generations of children.

Some characters are just too good at being bad.

The marketing of Maleficent leaned into this with a melancholic cover of Sleeping Beauty’s Tchaikovsky-inspired theme song, “Once Upon a Dream.” Now in a minor key, the new version sung by Lana Del Rey promised a scarier, more menacing version of the story, which was then confirmed by Jolie’s wonderfully devilish laugh. The big bad was finally going to have her day at the ball.

But when the movie actually came out, we learned that Maleficent was an enchanted fairy who’d been wronged. In the end, she didn’t hate Elle Fanning’s Princess Aurora. In fact, she loved the little royal and tried to save her from the curse she herself cast in a fit of justified anger. Ultimately, the sorceress adopts Aurora as the daughter she never had after disposing of her now abusive father. That’s certainly an interpretation. I guess.

It also proved massively successful in the short term, opening at a staggering $175.5 million in its opening weekend worldwide, and grossing $758 million total. Those numbers also exclude merchandising and home video revenues. If you want to know why we’re getting the punk rock Cruella, look no further.

However, did a lot of folks really like Maleficent? It made all the money in the world based on that devious marketing campaign that promised a shocking tell-all about Disney’s closest approximation to Lucifer, but by the time a sequel limped into theater five years later, relatively few seemed to still care about the misunderstood, freedom fighting warrior fairy Jolie played. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil ostensibly continued the good fight but flopped at the box office with a cume of $491.7 million, barely more than half of what its predecessor made. (Don’t cry for Disney though, as Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and remakes of Aladdin and The Lion King in the same year made Maleficent 2 look like a clerical error.)

What this whole sputtering franchise reminds us though is that some characters are better left bad, and the mystique of the unknown is an end unto itself. While I enjoyed Phoenix’s take on the Joker, there is little argument the character was even scarier with a PG-13 rating when he manifested out of thin air, like Beelzebub, in The Dark Knight. Or to take a step away from just villains, was Han Solo really any cooler when you learned how he got his name in Solo: A Star Wars Story? Or could you have gone your whole life without knowing thanks to The Hobbit movies that Gandalf and Galadriel were kind of, sort of, just maybe friends with benefits?

The allure of Cruella De Vil is right there in her name: She’s a cruel devil. How could she not be when her entire ambition in Disney’s classic 101 Dalmatians is to skin puppies for their fur coats? Finding out she used to fight the power before hoarding it may make a lot of money, but it doesn’t make her necessarily more compelling.

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3dpItie

[adoredontour]

every fic that left a lasting impression with me this year. sorted in order of when i read them!! 

buckle up lads, it’s a long one

nicotine by krisstylinson 32k

"We're two different types of people, Liam. He likes sex and drugs, I like theater and tea. Trust me, we'd never date." Except they would, they do, and neither of them plans on letting go anytime soon.

"Just because you can get me hard doesn't mean I like you," Louis whispered. The fact was, he didn't like Harry right now, not at all. Not even a bit.

"Yeah, yeah," Harry murmured, his breath fanning over Louis' cock as he spoke. "You done telling me how much you hate me so I can suck you off?"

like candy in my veins by littlelouishiccups 31k @littlelouishiccups

Basically the A/B/O, enemies to lovers, fake relationship, Christmas AU that nobody asked for

worth dying for by whoknows

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Louis says, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. In the center of the table, a set of three glossy photos stares up at him, mocking him.

“A security detail is non-negotiable, Louis, you know this,” his mum reminds him, tapping the middle photo with two fingers.

Louis doesn’t look back down at the pictures, gesturing towards them wildly, over-dramatically. “This is not a security detail!” he protests. “This is a lanky college student. In what world do you hire someone like this kid to protect me?”

damn your love, damn your lies by ifthat

“Of course you’d use your free time to go to the gym.”

“Your idea of the best way to spend your free time is annoying your neighbors,” he laughs, dimples carved into his cheeks like marble.

No, Louis likes to annoy Harry. Everyone else on this floor is just an unfortunate casualty.

“No one has complained except for you,” Louis informs him smartly. Which is actually a good thing. If someone other than Harry had complained to him long ago, he would have unfortunately had to stop.

you came into my life by disgruntledkittenface @disgruntledkittenface

When the Queer Eye cast and crew sweep into Louis’ small town and fire station to make over his best friend and coworker Liam, Louis’ carefully constructed walls start to fall down and he has to face his fears – and the only guy he’s ever been able to see a future with.

a thousand miles from comfort by littlelouishiccups 

In which Louis is a closeted gay actor and a recovering addict with a troubled past. Harry is the personal trainer who helps him get his life back in shape.

smaller than me by checkthemargins 

Harry's just finished his first year of uni on his way to becoming Dr. Harry Styles, Neurosurgeon. He's young, he has endless potential, three amazing best mates, a new love and the world at his fingertips. The fact that his new boyfriend may or may not be a sex-worker, of course, throws a wrench into the works. But it's not true. Really.

Probably.

It most definitely might not be entirely true. And that's all Harry needs to know.

escapade (i was late to the game shut up) by dolce_piccante

In the grand scheme of things, finding a date for a wedding should be no problem for Louis Tomlinson. He's rich. He's handsome. He's reasonably well behaved. But when the wedding is for his lifelong best friend (and former boyfriend), and is happening in under a month, finding a date for the ceremony and accompanying festivities becomes more of an adventure than he ever could have planned for.

soft hands, fast feet, can’t lose by dolce_piccante

American Uni AU. Harry Styles is a frat boy football star from the wealthy Styles Family athletic dynasty. A celebrity among football fans, he knows how to play, he knows how to party, and he knows how to fuck (all of which is well known among his legion of admirers).

Louis Tomlinson is a student and an athlete, but his similarities to Harry end there. Intelligent, focused, independent, and completely uninterested in Harry’s charms, Louis is an anomaly in a world ruled by football.

A bet about the pair, who might be more similar than they originally thought, brings them together. Shakespeare, ballet, Disney, football, library chats, running, accidental spooning, Daredevil and Domino’s Pizza all blend into one big friendship Frappucino, but who will win in the end?

oh glory by alivingfire @alivingfire

Harry Styles is Team Great Britain's newest swimmer, and has spent his whole life training for this moment, a chance at the gold medal in the Rio 2016 Olympics. All his training, hard work, and dedication to no distractions is tested when he's assigned to the same Rio apartment as Louis Tomlinson, British gymnast and Harry's childhood crush.

it’s all brand new because of you by supernope

AKA, Louis starts a new job as a summer camp counselor at the local aquarium and Harry is a biologist who really likes teaching people about the ocean.

this wicked game by cherrystreet @cherrystreet

An AU in which The Bachelor is gay, Louis is a contestant, Harry is the bachelor, everyone drinks a lot of champagne, the entire world gets to watch them fall in love, and no one plays by the rules.

do not go gentle by afirethatcannotdie @afirethatcannotdie

When Harry Styles starts his first day as a surgical intern, he expects a lot of things: to treat patients, to observe a surgery, to feel a bit overwhelmed. What he definitely doesn't expect, however, is that the handsome guy he kicked out of his bed this morning is also an intern.

A Grey’s Anatomy AU where tensions are high, Harry and Louis are hooking up in secret, and no one has time for love. Or do they?

to brim with fright by hereforlou @hereforlou

The only reason he’s here is because it’s tradition. And also, Harry said it’d be fun to make Liam wet himself in fear and Louis agreed. It’ll be hilarious. He’s not an insecure new transfer anymore, thank you very much. It took him no more than a week to insert himself into a group, to get invited to his first party, and to start crushing on someone—he’s not what anyone would call socially impaired. He doesn’t need validation.

have you coming back again by whoknows

It’s five o’clock in the morning. Louis has a lecture at half eight. He could be using this time to study or to do his readings or to go to the gym, but - well. He doesn’t have any exams coming up, he’s not going to his seminar today anyway and he hates the gym.

Instead he’s using this time to fuck with Harry Styles’ poor little brain.

Louis jogs across the street and jabs the key into the car door. It opens easily, not that he was expecting anything else. He copied the key for a reason, after all.

He’s got Harry’s schedule memorized, more because the guy keeps following him around than anything, so he doesn’t bother looking around before climbing behind the wheel and setting his bag on the passenger seat. It’s a Monday, which means that Harry doesn’t even get out of bed before noon unless he’s planning on harassing Louis.

i put a spell on you by bethaboo @bethaboolou

A BBC/Secret Santa mashup featuring Captain Niall, our intrepid weatherman/amateur matchmaker, rather clueless sports reporter Liam, charming political analyst Zayn, and cheeky entertainment reporter Louis. Harry is the new fashion correspondent who prefers to dress like a flamingo. And pining. There’s a lot of pining.

naked & proud by kiwikero 

In which Harry runs an organic store, not a nudist colony, and Louis doesn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

take me under the blue by objectlesson

Louis hasn’t even seen his legs yet. He doesn’t know how they work or how long they’ll be. Maybe they won’t suit the rest of Harry at all, and he’ll have to grow into them or something. It doesn’t matter; Louis has loved Harry for a year with scales, so he can’t imagine wonky legs putting a damper on his attraction.

He supposes he’ll just have to find out. In the meantime, he wonders how the fuck he got here, in his squelching wellies about to save the love of his life from the sea and take him to bed and bang him for the very first time.

It’s sort of a long story.

paint the sky with stars by kiwikero

the historically accurate Titanic AU with a happy ending.

truth be told i never was yours by justfortommo

(or the one where Louis and Harry have a complicated past, Louis is getting married to someone that’s not Harry, and the universe has decided to have a laugh and make Harry the wedding planner.) 

into the badlands

Louis is Q. Harry is a double-oh agent who thinks that making knock-knock jokes around foreign embassy delegates mid-mission is a good idea.

swim in the smoke by whoknows

“What about this, Captain?” Liam asks, nudging the boy kneeling between their feet with the toe of his boot. The boy hisses and swipes at him, slurring out something unintelligible around the makeshift gag Niall had to stuff in his mouth. He misses by a mile and tries again, just as ineffectively.

Harry looks down at him, at the way the sun streams over his face and shoulders, at the way the gag stretches his mouth, lips pink and chapped. He’s lithe and pretty, smudged all over with dirt. They had found him tied up below deck, mostly unconscious, next to a barrel full of gold. He’s clearly a prisoner, but there’s something familiar about him, something that niggles at Harry’s brain. Something he can’t quite put his finger on.

“Put him in my cabin,” Harry decides, turning back to deal with the rest of the loot. The boys screams out jumbled curse words at Harry’s back, muffled by the gag, and Harry can’t understand any of it.

resist everything except temptation by domesticharry @domestic-harry

The one where Louis is the commodore's son who is forced to become a part of Harry's crew when he is captured.

pray till i go blind by el_em_en_oh_pee 

Louis is (kind of) a preacher. Harry is (probably) a demon. Of course, nothing's as simple as that.

This is not a love story.

(your heartbeat) rang true inside my bones by flimsy @flimsi

Harry goes as Louis' date for a weekend wedding. He ends up taking the role a bit too seriously.

i love your demons (like devils can) by ariadne_odair

Harry didn’t plan to join the football team. She didn’t plan to sleep with the captain of the football team. She definitely didn’t plan to sleep with the closeted captain of the football team, who promptly acted as if nothing happened and left Harry a pathetic, pining mess.

alien roadtrip! by helloamhere @helloamhere

roadtrip with desert feelings, too much snack food, and empty motels. Harry is definitely absolutely not an alien. That would be ridiculous.

treat mothman with kindness by flowercrownfemme @lesbianiconharrystyles

In which Louis, Liam, Niall and Zayn are amateur cryptozoologists and Harry is the creature they find in the woods of a small north-western town. ft. lots of glitter and shrieking and a whole shed full of lesbian cats.

just me, you, and this box of matches by tomlinsunshine

Louis is fairly sure that his new neighbour is going to destroy him. And also their apartment building, and the dumpsters outside, and all the forests within a thirty mile radius. But. Mostly him.

close to nowhere by angelichl @angelichl

Louis and Harry are psychics who kind of hate each other. They go to Tennessee to investigate a haunting. 

magical soup by gloria_andrews

Slytherin prefect Louis Tomlinson's seventh year at Hogwarts takes an immediate turn for the worse when he's made to be potions partners with Harry Styles, Hufflepuff's resident heartthrob and class clown. Louis has always considered Styles to be a terrible show-off who coasts by on his charm and good looks, but the more they work together, the more he questions that idea. As term goes on, will Louis be able to admit to himself that he might actually like Harry Styles after all... and maybe, just maybe, as more than a friend?

sainted taints and velvet vices by toomanytears

A self-fulfilling Hogwarts AU in which Louis is new to seventh year and Harry is the resident devil-may-care Slytherin set to make his entire experience a living misery. Due to less than favourable circumstances they're forced to forge an unwilling, tentative relationship for their own survival. Repressed emotions, decidedly unromantic ballroom dancing, Triwizard Tournament tasks, creative jinxes and twilight flying above the Forbidden Forest ensue.

run like the devil by benzos

Supernatural AU. Louis hunts demons; Harry's the strangest demon he's ever met, and he keeps fucking meeting him.

be with me so happily by briamaria

[aka Louis is the director of the Styles Elephant Sanctuary and really doesn't want to babysit his funder's spoiled lay-about son for two months]

come together by bottomlinsons @bottomlinsons

Harry and Louis slept together three weeks ago, and haven't talked.

Their coming group project is gonna change that.

what this world is about by isntrio @bloubird

An eighties American high school AU; there are first times, football games, and feelings.

Alternatively titled: the beginning.

once upon a dream by thedeathchamber

Louis is psychic and gets caught in the middle of a murder investigation led by FBI Special Agent Harry Styles.

aka. the Medium/Criminal Minds-inspired AU no one ever asked for.

led by your beating heart by missandrogyny @missandrogyny

(Or: AU where Harry's in One Direction, Louis isn't, and they reconnect over a game of 'Call or Delete'.)

forever and always by jacaranda_bloom @jacaranda-bloom (again, thank you!!!!!!!)

OR the one where Harry’s neighbour is a crotchety old witch who hates vampires, Niall is the unsuspecting human who ends up inhabiting Harry’s body, and Louis is the caseworker who is assigned to swap them back. How it ends up a love story is anyone’s guess.

sail your sea, meet your storm by kiwikero

The strangers to enemies to friends to pining to lovers fic where Louis is cynical, Harry is charming, and they have seven days to get their shit together.

tangled up in you by missandrogyny

Harry blinks once. And blinks again. And says, his voice dangerous: “Niall, did you get me a mail-order bride?”

Because what the actual fuck. It kind of looks like Niall’s just purchased a person. For Harry.

Niall blinks back at him for a few moments, before throwing his head back and howling with laughter. Harry throws a pillow at him. Hard. “No, what the fuck, Harry.”

“A prostitute then?” Harry also doesn't want a prostitute.

“Of course not!”

“A stripper?”

“No!”

Damn, he’s running out of ideas. He settles for launching another pillow at Niall’s head. Niall bats it away easily, still laughing. “Stop!”

“What did you get me, then?!” Niall must hear the tinge of hysteria in his voice, because he’s pulling himself together, trying to stop himself from laughing.

There’s still a big grin on his face, though, when he says, “I got you a professional cuddler.”

A professional…what. “What?”

i’d burn this city down to show you the light by you_explode 

Harry's a sheltered rich kid and Louis's a punk with a heart of gold. They meet when Louis breaks into Harry's house, Harry obtains an instant and all-encompassing crush, and they spend the summer falling into a whirlwind romance.

sail your sea, meet your storm by kiwikero

Louis is thirty, single, and a bit of a workaholic. He's happy with his life, but then his mother decides to buy him tickets for a Singles Cruise. Appalled that his family thinks he can't handle his own love life, he steps aboard the ship determined to have a terrible time.

That is, of course, until a persistent brunet keeps offering him drinks.

The strangers to enemies to friends to pining to lovers fic where Louis is cynical, Harry is charming, and they have seven days to get their shit together.

bring out feelings in me i never show

“I really think you should stop reading,” Liam says, having moved to hover behind Louis’ back at some point. “I can already see the cogs turning in your head, Louis, and I don’t like this.”

“Shut up,” Louis waves him off and continues reading.

I can do these things, at your request: openly hit on other female guests while you act like you don’t notice; start instigative discussions about politics and/or religion; propose to you in front of everyone; pretend to be really drunk as the evening goes on (sorry I don’t drink, but I used to); start an actual, physical fight with a family member, either inside or on the front lawn for all the neighbors to see.

remember you well by fondleeds @fondleeds

“Um,” Harry starts. He looks out of place. Louis can’t really believe he’s seeing Harry like this, so unsettled, so unlike himself. He holds out his hands. “Should we–. Should I, um. Did you wanna, like, cuff me to the bed or something?”

Louis raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know. Do I need to?”

i love you most by stylinsoncity

friends with benefits has always been enough for louis. until, of course, it isn't.

ready to fall by whoknows

“Ninety and rising,” Nick says triumphantly, as though making Harry’s heartbeat pick up by thrusting an obscenely attractive person in front of his face is any kind of success. “Louis Tomlinson has just walked into our control room and suddenly our dear Harry Styles has lost all ability to speak. Could this be some kind of strange coincidence?”

“I hate you,” Harry hisses, forcing his eyes back into Nick’s direction, uncaring that the mic must have picked it up. “I thought we agreed that you were going to play fair.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Nick denies, except he’s holding up a picture of Louis’ face now, sharp cheekbones prominent, soft lashes nearly sweeping against his cheeks as he looks down, and his fucking mouth –

“A hundred and two!” Nick crows, all but clapping his hands together in glee. “The highest it’s ever been!”

“To be fair, I did bend over the desk on purpose,” Louis’ voice comes crackling in the headphones. Harry practically breaks his neck whipping his head around at the sound of it, gaping at him through the glass panel. “You can’t really blame him for getting a little excited about that, can you?”

[rebelstreetclothing]

https://rebelstreetclothing.com/blogs/news/every-man-should-date-a-goth-girl

She changed my life in ways she could fathom, although I don't have any idea who that eighth grader was.

It was I was introduced to a particular -- Fashion? Lifestyle? Fetish? -- that's since become my greatest aesthetic quirk. All men have a kind -- a few are into your regular breastaurant waitress mold, others are to the tatted up neo-pin-up template, and many others are all about the artsy-fartsy nerd chic -- and it was here, I assume, that I developed mine: the all-American goth chick.

Now, at the moment, we did not call them "goths." In actuality, we did have an term of both genders, who wore three pounds of eyeliner everyday and wore all donned spiky jewellery. Some called them "the other children," some called them "skaters" (which none of them possessed skateboards, apparently, meant very little) but by and large, the other students called them as either "the freaks" or "the weirdos." The rest of the kids before Columbine -- were terrified. Rumors spread that They did needle drugs and hung out together on the weekends and practiced magic charms. While blaring Marilyn Manson they chainsawed hobos behind Costco to passing. Granted, the worst items they actually did was smoke cigarettes away from the movie theater and perhaps shoplift a couple of malt liquors, but they embraced the paranoia and dread the other pupils fostered for them. In a way, it made them over the junior high totem, which makes them a more effective caste system force than even the preppiest of preps.

And there was something about that I discovered inherently attractive. I found them alluring, while everybody found the women to be terrifying. Others believed their morbid, sadsack dispositions was the turnoff, but I thought it strangely entranced.

She was the first crush of my own adolescence. Even now, I've no hint what her name was, but I won't ever forget seeing her at the bus stop for the first time. Curling her auburn coif out of her eyes -- showing a pair of peppers outlined in what I presumed was an whole bottle of dollar store lashes -- she smiled a sinister smile and asked me, with the playful lunacy of Harley Quinn, "what you staring at, curly?"



I never reacted. But each time she saw me in the hallway, she would take me that half-playful, half-evil smile and say something along the lines of "hello, curled, how you doing?" I guess she thought she was freaking me, but deep down, I adored the focus (god knows, she was the only girl in the sixth grade who ever acknowledged my life.) Forget tans, forget the blindingly blonde hair and forget that all too dull "girl next door" look -- I was eternally enamored by the women who seemed more Morticia Addams compared to Christina Aguilera.

During high school and college, I more or less homed in on each of the pale girls who wore Invader Zim tops and loathed their parents. Really, my very first makeout was having a woman wearing a literal pentagram on her brow and I had been introduced to the joys of carnal pleasure with a young woman whose whole makeup chest was full of nothing but novelty Halloween lipsticks and nail polishes. Throughout these relationship sojourns, I discovered a seldom spoken truth concerning the "goth girl" motif/stereotype. Actually, I soon learned that there are really five genuses of goth woman, each with her Own idiosyncratic quirks:

THE RICH, SUBURBAN GOTH -- Her father makes $150,000 a year and her mother lets her spend $500 at a time on naturally Hot Topics buys (usually, Hello Kitty-branded lip gloss and anime-inspired belt buckles.) Really, she likes to wear a lot, although she claims to be a poetic soul. She's at least three Nightmare Before Christmas posters in her room along with the heaviest ring she listens to is AFI.

THE POOR, ANTI-SOCIAL GOTH -- She lives in a trailer park, works part-time in the local grocery store or hole in the wall restaurant (usually on the rear of the home -- they do not want her spider tattoos creeping out the clients) and has attempted at least 80 percent of all of the drugs known to man. The only thing in her handbag are the cigarettes at 7-Eleven, a few wadded bills and a switchblade. She will break up, if she does not have at least one felony on her record.

THE ARTISANAL GOTH -- She gets good grades, she is most likely the best actress in the theatre department and she spends her evenings studying Dante's Inferno from the original Italian, as it is more atmospheric like that. Her dream is to obtain a art endowment to produce the world's biggest ball of sculpture.

THE FASHIONISTA GOTH -- She's hyper-concerned about her looks. You absolutely can't leave the home till she has her winged eyeliner down. Every day she paints her nails and she makes at least one visit to Ulta. From the time she graduates college, she is usually evolved into a "health goth" or abandoned the aesthetics entirely for a new lifestyle that allots for pink and yellow wardrobe options.

THE UNKEMPT GOTH -- The reverse of this fashionista goth. She apparently just wants to kiss you shortly after she sucked down a Camel cigarette or peeled off her lips her dragon-shaped bong. Her jewelry is pewter, she farts in public and she spends at least half of their afternoon playing League of Legends. She like the poor goth, except sans the penchant for criminality. After all, to do so you must get up off the couch.

Yeah, sometimes you get a mix of three or two of these, but by and large? Each subset has its advantages and disadvantages, its flaws and benefits, something to admire and love and something to detest and hate. And men, I think you owe it yourself to experience all five of those sub-goths before you get your bachelor's degree. Why? Because goth women -- for better or worse -- represent the most varied range of feminine character types. While some are pretentious and -- ironically -- stuck-up some are cool. They will make you laugh, they will make you cry, they will make you think notions that are existential that are profound and they will -- by design, perhaps -- make you want to kill yourself. Even as fleeting, transitory relationships, they offer you something to consider about both the fairer sex and that what you are as an individual. You date nothing but club women or cheerleaders or nerds for a year, and you won't learn any nobler truths. Spend a year dating only goth women, however, and an whole cosmos of previously unrevealed knowledge befalls you. Hell, you may even find one which is just the ideal match, and who knows?

But maybe the biggest motive to date goth women even though you're a young dude? Because, to put it simply, existing at age 25 stops. They're professionals today, and they must terraform themselves to that dull, staid, office drone appearance. Adios blouse with sayonara eggplant eyeshadow and the shoulder pads. The ring comes out, the Doc Martens proceed the Cureshirts and the thrift shop are locked away never to see the light of day. You can always locate a bubbly cheerleader or artsy geek kind when you're 30 and 40. But the red-blooded goth? You have got up until your senior year in school, and that is pretty much your last opportunity to land one your own age.

For those of you have been pursuing a darker kind? Bear in mind, the clock is running out, and the sands of time are falling by a lot. And you don't need to visit your grave not knowing what it is like to make out with a woman wearing lipstick to midnight, do you?

Rebel Street Clothing

[theveryworstthing]

today we learn about the mainlander castes, their ruling families, and their God Royalty. this is part one since i’m going to put the Royals on their own post.

pictured here we have:

Lord Cahphie (i call his family Fight Club in my head. you’ll see why.)

Lady Mirriow (a mirage brought on by the cacophonous sound of a million hyenas laughing.)

Lady Twaine (child made of coffee and architectural planning.)

and Lady Emelyerat (the pastel priestess who runs this god forsaken show.)

read below the cut to know the things. there are...a lot of things.

Caste system:

Royals: the King and Queen. God ruler bloodlines.

Lords and Ladies: The non-Royal royals. The four officially ruling families and some super rich families. They run around in a system called the courts, which is basically where rich people go to make deals and sneer at other rich people while looking fancy.

The People: Exactly what is says on the tin. The general range of middle class schmucks.

The Grey People: The lower class. Life is hard man, they’re just trying to get by.

Ink Servants: Pretty much slaves. Slavery was outlawed long ago but there is a contract system in place that makes it so people that can afford it can basically go into any prison and buy a person to have them serve out their sentence as their servant. The buyer provides room and board, the Ink Servant works, and since nobody really checks in on most of these arrangements, they just assume that everyone involved is treated with dignity and respect until this rehabilitation period is over. I won’t elaborate further. Its not all criminals though. Sometimes people in dire straits like poor single mothers or the disabled willingly sign themselves onto the contracts to secure housing and safety for their loved ones. Most buyers treat these people more like normal servants but there are some who see no difference between them and the prisoners. In fact, most of society sees them that way.

Courts:

Cahphie (keepers of the natural order): The Cahphie court and their subjects are known as the People Of Peace. This is ironic considering the astonishing amount of civil wars they’ve been in and how the Cahphie family seems to be entirely composed of ultra-petty ticking time bombs. They are a relentless people who hold serious grudges and thrive on pure brute force and cussedness. They treat the caste system as an absolute food chain that is never to be disturbed and are some of the few mainlanders who have no problem with feral animals and beastly behavior, since they feel those traits can be used to great advantage. Despite all this, when viewed from a distance (while holding completely still and radiating fear and respect like your life depends on it because it probably does), they seem pretty chill. The Cahphie are a reactive force at heart, you have to piss them off first. They find no honor in going after people without a reason. But oh man, are they good at finding reasons. The rest of Mainlander society has gotten really good at not doing that though and there hasn’t been a war for ages.

This would be good news for the current Lord Cahphie, who through a fluke in genetics isn’t filled with gallons of barely contained Liquid Fight, but that just means that his court gets bored. Past events say that boredom is more dangerous for his people than actually going to war so his great great grandfather, sick of not having enough excuses to stab people in peacetime, cultivated a strong dueling culture. People in the Cahphie courts duel over just about anything; land, love, the last slice of cake, and Lord Cahphie duels the most. Every day in fact. Every day by law. You see, only the strongest deserve to be at the top and winning duels is the best way to prove you’re still capable of running the Cahphie family. So every day there is a call for challengers and (almost) every day he destroys them. If he loses then one of his siblings or worse, his parents, get a chance to fight him and if he loses to them he loses his position. He’s come close to failure a few times but he’s still ruling ten years in with no sign of flagging. Good news for the court duelists, as he’s much better at non-lethal wins than his kin (much better meaning he tries at all not to murder them as hard as possible).  Better news for the People Of Peace in general since his rule has really thinned out the heads on pikes. Neutral news for his family members, who totally aren’t using the dueling tradition to find honorable and legit ways to assassinate him before he has a child and take his place. The lack of a good war is really starting to make them itch.

Relationships With Non Mainlanders: They find Rabbits hardy and admire both their chemical warfare and their survival tactics. They mostly see them as possible cannon fodder/playthings though. They have the same kind of respect that a dude in a wolf shirt has for huskies. Noble creatures who are good enough, but at their core they’re dumb animals compared to Real Foodchain Kings. They respect the Hare’s ability to live their nomadic lifestyles and thrive in the wilderness but mostly hate the fact that they stray into their (at least they claim) lands without permission sometimes. They don’t really deal with Vultures. Vultures have seen too many battle aftermaths to play into the spiel about their honor.

 The Mirriows (the blood that rejoices): The Mirriow family and their court are known as The Good Neighbors. This name is apt as the other courts basically go there to party and eat, while occasionally asking to borrow things that they have no intention of returning. Their cities are lively, boasting year round festivals, exciting new fashions, and news from the ships and caravans that stop there. Their food is legendary on the mainland, taking inspirations from the different cultures passing through (yes, even Vultures) and turning out dishes good enough to have local cooks routinely enlisted to cook for The Royals. Their theater and dance scenes have similar acclaim, and simply wandering the night can take you to anything from dramatic historical shows to small jazzy underground burlesque joints. Truly the Mirriow courts are places of happiness and distraction. Forget your sorrows, don’t mind what you saw out of the corner of your eye, and don’t bother reading the fine print sugar. Its probably fine.

Everyone’s not so easily swayed by the Mirriow though. The mix of cultures makes their courts far more accepting of the bending of societal rules, making it known by some as the Unseemly Court. This accusation is usually flung after meeting Lady Mirriow, the personification of the sound that a contract signed in blood makes when it snaps its fingers to a groovy beat. She sashays through life with the aesthetic of a Disney villain, wielding a laugh like a mildly singed saucy velvet painting of a hyena and an amazing Nervous Making Smile. Despite her whole deal, she’s good ruler and her people love her. She takes care of them, carrying on her family’s legacy of generosity, always ready to make deals with others for favors and goods. The amazing gifts and services she gives in exchange for what can usually be seen as trifles to the untrained eye through these friendly contracts keep her in the good graces of the other families and out of most drama. They are totally not ways to subtly manipulate people and find on the books reasons to punish anyone who tries to cross her with near impossible riddle-like fine print clauses that depend on quick clever thinking to make sure she doesn’t own you for life. They are certainly not that. Unrelated, her family is known for their disorienting conversational skills, distractive backhanded flattery, always following through on deals, and the ability to somehow never lie even when you feel like they are lying to your face. They also own a secret trove of very old, very illegal literature that would definitely have gotten their whole bloodline struck down in a bloody rage by the Royals if it was ever found. It’s a good thing its never been found. It’s a good thing everyone is too distracted to look.

Relationships With Non Mainlanders: Rabbits, while still certainly second class citizens as a whole, are treated a little more equally here. This is the only place that they and Hares are really free to act and dress more according to their own cultural ideals. Mostly the ideals mainlanders see as cool but still. Vultures are fans of the area, flying in with all the juicy gossip and relishing in cuisine that actually bothers to include their tastes.

 The Twaine( the keys that shape the door ): the Twaine family and their court are known as The Fair Folk. The Twaine are strange, bordering on both the most beloved and most despised by the Royals. The dismissal comes from the fact that Twaine society is focused on forward motion. They’re the inventors and artists who develop housing, transportation, machinery, medicine, and manufacture a good chunk of mainlander goods. They’re driven to build and fix and work. They tend to be smaller and less bombastic than other mainlanders, typically going for simpler aesthetics. The Twaine family even crop their luxurious ears and tails when they come of age, signifying function over form. Despite all of this desire to make new discoveries and help society progress, The Fair Folk rarely do anything new with all this knowledge. This is because at the end of the day they are very loyal to the Royals (perhaps even more loyal than the Emelyerat in some ways), and the Royals have a certain way they want the world to be. So, before anything is made for public use it must be submitted to the Emelyerat for approval. Failure to make your thing official and use it anyway can get you labeled as a degenerate treasonous Witch, a term that doesn’t carry the sweet old aunt fondness of Rabbit society. Mostly because it usually carries a death sentence. Of course sometimes submitting your idea gets the same result so most Fair Folk just keep their ideas to themselves, occasionally writing them down or discussing them with those they really trust, burning the notes afterwards with a swell of love for the Royals, civic pride, and a little fear. Not a lot of fear (they will be quick to tell you) but like. Enough.

On the flip side of all the witch executing, the Royals love the Twaine for their amazing musical ability (more than a few have been summoned to the Royals for lifelong employment) and the sheer level of housekeeping they do for the mainland. They’re quiet and subservient and have no problem being ordered wherever to fix whatever. They’re a boon during natural disasters, getting places looking good as new in no time, and their restoration of older buildings and objects preserve much of the mainland history that is left from the Before Wall times. They also handle the building of the Castles, the twin structures that are destroyed and rebuilt in different locations every hundred years. The Twaine family are the head architects for the Castles and hold their position with pride. The Castles are labors of love (and slight madness), a release of all the creative energy that can’t be put elsewhere. Rooms of amazing art and beauty hidden in blank walls, stairs that descend into a darkness that lasts too long and is full of the sound of far off orchestras and footsteps that aren’t yours, secret gardens that can only be reached by singing at the gates of prismed glass, wash rooms that resemble pools in forest groves where its always twilight and clockwork lightning bugs perform synchronized dances through the trees, ballrooms of scented mist and crystal floors that make dancing feel like gliding over a troubled ocean. All this is done with no input from the Royals. They’re not even supposed to tell them what they’re doing. Sure there are guidelines but each Castle is meant for the next in the Royal bloodline and since no one knows what the child will like they just wing it. Pure freedom.

The current Lady Twaine just became the head of this project and is trying her best not to burn out on the creative power. Her father’s death was unexpected, so with her older brothers dead just years before in a witchcraft scandal and her mother trapped in a cycle of grief she took on the crown. She’s barely 19 and her people describe her as resilient, industrious, mature, and delicate. Mostly she’s just young. Young and tired and possessing an inability to read or exhibit social cues reliably that make her seem more aloof than anxious. She has thirteen years to get caught up on and finish the newest Castles before the next heir is born which is not much time to make something that should entertain your godlike king and queen.

But that’s okay because it isn’t like she ever sleeps.

Relationships With Non Mainlanders: They find Rabbits to be fine workers but they don’t really ‘get’ them. The abstractions in their art, their community based living arrangements, their social structures, and their family allegiances. None of it really makes sense to The Fair Folk. They work closely with Rabbits and share a love of discovery but to some this makes it look like they’re on the same level and they’re not okay with that. They will go through amazing lengths to show a rabbit with the exact same credentials and skill level that they are beneath them. Not in cartoonishly evil ways just… they’re cold. Cold and dismissive.  As for the others, they straight up don’t trust Hares (liars and thieves, practically homeless vagabonds) or Vultures (disgusting cannibalistic flying germ factories) but they rely on them to transport materials and goods so they tolerate them and pay them well so they don’t return the saltiness and leave them up shit creek. There will be a paddle though. That paddle just happens to be held by a person on the shore who is snapping it over their knee while staring you straight in the eyes under a banner depicting rude illustrations of you getting sensual with a toilet brush. Of course if anyone drops out of their jobs its just claimed that clearly the mainlanders were right about them all along and how dare they shun their generous offers. The Fair Folk are not popular.

 The Emelyerat( the holy uplifted): the Emelyerat family and their court are known as The Gentry and they are the only Lords and Ladies that have the privilege of getting direct holy orders from the Royals. Serving as the clergy for all variations of mainlander religion, the Emelyerat are…enlightened? They’re certainly devout. Taking the Royal’s words as law and shaping the culture and aesthetics to deliver whatever they need from all mainlander kind. They are the ones who write and approve mainlander history. They declare who won what wars and what they were fought for. Not so much editing as strong bias and a tendency to simply eradicate periods of time if the Royals deem it so. They serve them always and think of nothing but their happiness. And how could they not? The King and Queen are just…just…they love them. Their presence is a blessing. Their beauty inspires them and their power gives every mainlander safety in their fold.

The Gentry acquire the best entertainment, the most interesting baubles, and the strongest magics to grant their every wish. So what if the enlistment of certain people into the Royal courts isn’t done with their explicit consent or conscious understanding that they have been spirited away? That good mothers disappear on shopping trips and come back a week later wearing elegant flowing robes with golden beads braided into their new patches of silver fur and breasts completely dry of milk for hungry babs. So what if violent criminals and heretics are granted reprieve from the gallows only for sobbing monstrous beasts warped by magic and in need of hunting to appear in the Royal’s  game forests days later? So what  if beautiful young mainlanders follow flirty charming people that they’ve strangely never seen around here before into the woods on festival nights and don’t wander back home until its fifty years past? That they appear still twenty odd years old with bright glassy eyes and pregnant bellies and a glow about them that makes their remaining kin not question this gift. This reunion. That they talk about their time away as if it were a dream. The extravagance, the unbridled joy, their lover tall and regal and looking so upset when they reveal their homesickness. No. they were always radiant and loving and they cried the day you asked them where the door outside was. They begged. Begged you to come back to the gardens, to dance and eat more of the strange food. The warmth of their arms around you as you danced the night away. The tantrum. Things breaking. Beautiful crystal shards at your feet. Laughter ringing through the court like spring rain. That first lick of fear. You hadn’t felt it in so long. Your heart was full, you’ll never be happier. You finally notice that they don’t move quite right. Their voice is like honey. A tearful kiss goodbye as the court looks on. You can feel their warm eyes on your belly. You can feel the jealousy.

And now its only been a few days since you left but the baby feels like its almost due now. You can feel it moving and something inside you is screaming a warning but something stronger makes you feel the same glittering euphoria you felt dancing with your Royal lover. Everyone else just looks on, helpful and accepting and you don’t worry about them being in the birthing room with you. Its fine for this. Because someone will need to take care of the baby and you know, through the haze of peace and joy, that it won’t be you. So you let them watch while you expel the opalescent egg and smile at the tiny creature that turns to you when the shell cracks open. Your vision dims as you disappear inside of its hungry mouth but you don’t feel anything. No pain, no fear to accompany the sound of snapping bones. The onlookers coo as you all sense the first glimmer of awareness in its eyes. You feel your consciousness not so much fading as changing, sliding away. You close your eyes. Your baby has grown so much. Surely they’re five or six by now. They look it. Surely the will be happy.

But anyway.

So what? That’s such a small price to pay to bask in their majesty. Not even a price. A gift. A gift that these people find the less divine worthy of company. The current Lady Emelyerat knows all about this gift. As Head Priestess she has been invited to the Royal’s courts many times. Ever since she took the crown at twenty-four she’s been in their confidence. Now, at thirty-eight, she’s a powerful mage who runs the mainland like a well-oiled machine. Forty-nine years of excellent service to the Royals. Traveling from Castle to Castle, solving what problems she can for the people so they don’t have to, putting aside family life to serve. Or rather. Wait. That last one isn’t even an issue as she had no one left after her mother…no no she has a husband. Where was he? They were wed after her coronation. And the boy! I mean son. Sons? Oh what kind of mother was she? How embarrassing. But then again it was so easy to forget these things. Some of them happened at least ninety-three years ago! Speaking of which, her oldest turns three in a few months. She has to remember to do something for him.

She has to remember to.

Her husband will help. He’s so wonderful and.

And he’ll.

He’s.

She probably won’t have time for frivolous activities this week. She’s so busy and the Royals have new projects for her. Having tea with her court or whatever she was thinking about will have to wait. No activity has a greater need than service to her majesties after all! This makes her life a little lonely sometimes but the work is worth it and she’ll have plenty of time to herself when she hands the crown to her future children. No need to fret. She’s only twenty-five after all.

Relationships With Non Mainlanders: All peoples not of mainlander blood are welcome if they wish to swear themselves to the Royals. Sure these people might be lesser in some ways, but that just means they should be uplifted! Through the Royal’s wills all things are possible and all people with open hearts and minds will serve and be loved by Them. And those that don’t? Well.

They all come around sooner or later.

[brooklynjewsies]

up to the stars with you - chapter one

my new newsbians fic! read on ao3

"Kath had loved theater her whole life. When she was five years old, she all but told her father to sign her up for the Tiny Tots Theater program at the local community center, and ever since that class, she’s been hooked."

Katherine is a teen actor, and just got cast in her first professional show. Sarah, a writer for the school newspaper, is sent to write about the show. They meet, and are each instantly intrigued by the other.

“Alright everyone! Nice job! Take ten, then once more from the top!” the director, Joel, shouted.

“Thank you, ten!” came the chorus from stage. Nearly the whole cast sounded worn-out and exhausted (a heavy contrast to them just a minute before, during the run), but not Katherine Plumber. Her voice rang out over the rest, and if you listened only to her, you couldn’t tell that it was nearly ten at night on a Tuesday, that she’d been working for five hours after a full day of school, and that she was only 17 rather than a seasoned professional.

Kath had loved theater her whole life. When she was five years old, she all but told her father to sign her up for the Tiny Tots Theater program at the local community center, and ever since that class, she’s been hooked.

She’d stuck with it all through middle and high school, and now, fall of her senior year, she had finally made it. An actual part in an actual show. Kath thought she’d probably spontaneously combust because she was so excited.

None of her excitement had worn off over the month and a half of rehearsals, to the shock and slight amusement of her fellow cast members. And even now, the night before their first preview, she was still “as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as can be,” according to her friend and co-actor Jack. He was just a few years older than her, and had quickly become one of her best friends, on and off stage.

“Hey, Plumber!” That was him now.

“What, Kelly?” She shouted back, although there was no reason for either of them to be shouting in the first place.

Jack sauntered over to her and slung an arm around her shoulders. “You ready for previews? I heard we got some big press comin’ to cover us!” On the words big press, Jack’s hands spread out in the air as if envisioning a glittering marquee in front of their faces.

Kath laughed a little at his antics. “Yeah, I think I’m good, Jack. What about you, huh? Can’t have our leading heartthrob be getting cold feet opening night, right?” She teased.

“Ha-ha, Plumber. No, but seriously: if you need anythin’, I’m always here for you, ‘kay?” Jack said, with all seriousness.

“Alright. Thank you.”

“No problem. Now go take your break, starcatcher!” He grinned, using a nickname that had been coined at the beginning of their friendship and came from their roles in the show.

“Just an apprentice!” She responded, as was their custom, mimicking their lines once again, before heading off to find her phone and waterbottle.

~

“Hey, Sarah, you good to cover that new show? We’ve got a kid in it, and Medda said we should send someone to write about it for the arts section, ���cause we’ve got a connection and stuff, you know?” Crutchie asked, standing a few feet away from Sarah’s desk.

“Yeah, sure,” Sarah replied distractedly, trying to finish reading the last paragraph of the article she was editing. “Who did you say was in it?”

“I didn’t. It’s Katherine. Plumber? Do you know her?”

“Know of. She was in last year’s show here, right?” Sarah looked up. “Oh, hi, by the way.”

Crutchie smiled. “Hi to you, too. Yeah, that’s her. She’s in that new show about Peter Pan downtown, and it opens for previews tomorrow night. Medda got us two tickets, and I thought you could go and bring someone with you.”

“Oh, I think Jack’s in that. You know, Dave’s boyfriend? Ooh, maybe I’ll bring David. Thanks, Crutchie, and tell that to Medda, too.” Sarah finished making the last edit on that freshman’s article. She slammed her laptop shut in celebration before opening it again and closing it gently.

“No problem. Have a nice night, and say hi to Les for me!”

“Absolutely; he’ll love that. Get home safe,” Sarah said as she stood up from her seat and headed out the door, already thinking of the next night.

See, Sarah had loved theater since she was old enough to sit still in a seat by herself. Her and her family would have regular nights out at the local children’s theater, and she adored it so much that she begged and begged her mom to sign her up for the Tiny Tots theater program at the local community center. She did a few years of classes, but combined money problems, insecurities, and other emerging interests led her away from acting.

Instead, she turned to writing. At 17, Sarah Jacobs was the editor-in-chief of her school’s newspaper, and loved it. The teacher, Ms. Larkin, although she insisted her students call her Medda, was an incredible writer and mentor, and understood Sarah’s lingering passion for the performing arts, because she used to be a dancer.

Because of this, Medda let Sarah do all the writing she wanted for the arts section of the paper, and did her best to let her go to as many shows as possible. Sarah was eternally grateful.

“Hi, Ima,” Sarah kissed her mother on the cheek. “Is Davey home?”

“Yes, he’s upstairs. Family dinner tonight; Aba will be home by 7,” Mrs. Jacobs answered.

“Ok.” Sarah kicked off her shoes and started up the stairs. “Love you!” She called over her shoulder.

She knocked twice on her older brother’s door before letting herself in. “Hey, Dave, you know your boyfriend?”

“Yeah.” David didn’t look up from his computer.

“You know how he’s in a show right now?”

“Yeah.”

“A show that opens tomorrow and you don’t have any current plans to go see?”

“Yeah, Sarah! What’s your point?”

“I got two free tickets, wanna come?”

David looked up. “Wait, really?”

“Yes, really, dork. You free tomorrow at seven?”

“Yes! Thanks, Sarah! I owe you.”

“You’re not even going to ask how I got the tickets?” Sarah pouted.

“Fine, fine. How did you get the tickets?” Davey asked with an overly-fake voice as he pulled out his phone, likely to text Jack.

“Medda’s sending me, because Katherine Plumber’s in it.”

“Cool. Don’t you have stuff to do?” David asked, clearly as an attempt to get her out of his space.

“Ugh, fine.” Sarah flicked her brother’s head and left. “Love you.” She walked across the hall to her room, immediately opened her computer to Instagram, and searched “katherine plumber.”

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Crusher Joe, Diana Rigg, Black Ops Cold War, Ambrose Bierce

Forthcoming (Cirsova): We’ve just received Schuyler Hernstrom’s foreword for Endless Summer, and we thought it was too good not to share:   Discussing stories is a complicated business.  Buried somewhere underneath layers of criticism, commerce, and identity you might find some deep understanding of Misha’s work. But I worry that careless digging will disturb the landscape. I challenge myself to think about his work with the care and sensitivity that he puts into it.

Memorial (The Silver Key): Word spread on Facebook last night that Charles Saunders, author of Imaro, has passed away. It is being reported he died in May. Odd that an obituary search turns up empty.  Let’s hope it may be a rumor, but it does not appear that way. Author Milton Davis, who continued in Saunders’ “Sword-and-Soul” tradition, broke the news, and many authors, friends, and peers have chimed in since.

Cinema (Wert Zone): Born in Doncaster, South Yorkshire in 1938, Rigg was raised by her parents in Bikaner, India. Returning to the UK, she trained as an actress and made her stage debut in 1957 and her TV debut two years later. In 1965 she was cast in the first of her three major screen roles on the fourth season of British spy series The Avengers, playing Emma Peel. Peel was an action heroine with a line in witticisms, engaged in a constant battle of comebacks and ambiguous tension with her co-star Patrick Macnee (playing John Steed).

Cinema (Wasteland & Sky): The 1970s are still looked on by movie snobs as the peak of cinema, destroyed by the aforementioned filthy space movie that opened the theaters of the 1980s to juvenile pap. This is of course ignoring that the 1970s were dead, spiritually, and morally, which makes many of those 1970s “classics” more worthless than the juvenile goofy space movie. It actually has a moral point, regardless of what you think of it. 1970s cinema, as a whole, did not.

Games (Bleeding Fool):  The new game Black Ops Cold War takes place during Reagan’s presidency during the height of the cold war with communist Russia. The initial trailer features KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov speaking about the communist’s plan to bring down America from within. If you pay attention, you may recognize some of the moves being used by the left today. The trailer urges you to “know your history or be doomed to repeat it” as it flashes images from the cold war across the screen.

History (DMR Books): This past Friday marked the four hundred and fifty-fifth anniversary of the definitive end to the Great Siege of Malta. On September 11, 1565, the tattered and battered fleet of Suleiman the Magnificent sailed away from the tiny island of Malta, utterly humiliated. The Ottoman Turks had disembarked amid imperial splendor nearly four months earlier. Their soldiers were reckoned in the tens of thousands, outnumbering by a factor of four to one–at minimum–the Knights Hospitaller and the Maltese who fought alongside them.

Fiction (Galactic Journey): The book is titled The Wizard of Lemuria but we don’t meet the wizard until Chapter 4. There are 12 chapters. The first quarter of the novella-length book is spent introducing our hero, Thongor of Valkarth. He is, although a lowly barbarian mercenary, both mighty and honorable. The book opens on the aftermath of a wager on a zamph race. Jeled Malkh—an officer and swordmaster—lost the wager, and attacked Thongor rather than pay up. Thongor quickly overcame him, shrugged off the bet, and offered to drink away their differences.

War Gaming (Jon Mollison): Miniature wargames in general, and historical wargaming in particular, are headed down the same road as every other hobby out there. You’d think those with an interest in history would be better prepared to learn from the history of other hobbies, but it doesn’t look that way. A lot of ink is being spilled and chit is being chattered about how to save the hobby from… well, from something that can’t really be shown or identified.

Comic Books (Screen Rant): Heads are gonna roll – as well as fly, disintegrate, and cave in upon themselves, along with pretty much any other violent act that can be inflicted upon a head – in the latest adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. Originally published in Weird Tales and later adapted by Dark Horse Comics, the story of the legendary Destroyer is now published by Ablaze, a publication that has given Conan a sword more caked with blood than ever before thanks in part to their decision to create a truly uncensored version of his exploits.

D&D (Grognardia): I’ve never been much of a fan of Deities & Demigods, though I owned it, of course. Why wouldn’t I? I have always had decidedly completionist tendencies and being an unabashed TSR fanboy, there was no chance I wouldn’t purchase this book as soon as I was able to do so. It’s true I didn’t get much use out of it, but I still proudly displayed it on my bookshelf, right next to the Monster Manual.

Guns (Frontier Partisans): As will most when forced to fight for their way of life, the Apaches of The War Chief utilized any weapon to which they might lay hand. Some of these they fabricated, with especially skilled artisans becoming highly revered by the tribe. The Apaches ranged a broad swathe of the American West and portions of Mexico, and so various materials fell into their hands — materials they converted into bows, arrows, and war clubs, including the famous jawbone club. These weapons and tools, for centuries, they fabricated themselves from indigenous materials.

Edgar Rice Burroughs (Pulpfest): The 2020 Edgar Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship (ECOF) Gathering will be held Sunday, October 11 through Tuesday, October 13 in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. Guest of Honor is acclaimed comic book artist and Hollywood illustrator Daniel Parsons. COVID-19 restrictions dictate this will be a small gathering in two large meeting rooms at the Country Inn & Suites located at 1650 Doris Drive. Fort Atkinson is located just 35 miles from Madison or 65 miles from Milwaukee. It’s 100 miles from Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

Fiction (Old Style Tales): “Some Haunted Houses” is easily one of Bierce’s most entertaining series of tales. I recommend it as the ideal Hallowe’en reading choice – a collection of pithy short stories that exude the gloomy atmosphere and chilling mood that make stories like Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw” or Poe’s “House of Usher” horror classics. Reading one after another, a strange feeling of uneasiness creeps into your imagination as Bierce’s reporterly prose calmly details what sound like the verifiable details of veridical hauntings.

Cinema (Swords & Stitchery): There is a space opera out there that came out back in the day that most of you had never heard of… A bit of background, on the weekends back in the 90s I would get into my car & go down to Wallingford,Ct for a weekend of Anime at a local comic shop. I would spend the weekend with friends & one of the things we saw was this. Crusher Joe was made into an animated film in 1983, and a pair of for-video animated episodes in 1989. The film version won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize in 1983.

Gaming (Future War Stories): There are time when we must ask ourselves when we witness what could have been: how can this not exist? That is how I and many other gamers felt during the recent leak of a Xbox development kit for the Blizzard cancelled StarCraft: GHOST 3rd person action/stealth game for the 6th generation. For many of us, GHOST was going to be first day buy for our OG Xbox consoles…and then there were delay after delay until GHOST was placed on DNR status in 2006 by Blizzard after nearly six years of development that span two studios.

Tolkien (Notion Club Papers): John Garth. The Worlds of JRR Tolkien: the places that inspired Middle-Earth. Frances Lincoln, London: UK, 2020. pp 208. John Garth is one of the best and most important writers on JRR Tolkien. This is his first full-length book since the landmark volume Tolkien and the Great War of 2003; so I knew I would enjoy it. From the title, and the fact that it is a large format, really beautifully-produced, hardback volume; I supposed The Worlds of JRR Tolkien might be dominated by the pictures, maybe even be something like a superior ‘coffee table’ book?

Fiction (Library Blog): This week marks the bicentenary of Sir Walter Scott’s twelfth novel The Abbot, published in Edinburgh on 2 September 1820 and in London two days later. Alone among the Waverley Novels, it was presented not as a stand-alone narrative but as the sequel to an earlier volume, The Monastery, which had appeared just six months earlier. Set in the early years of the Scottish Reformation, The Monastery had sold well but had disappointed many readers and reviewers. Criticism was directed, in particular, at the pivotal role played by the ghostly White Lady,

Cinema (Hollywoodintoto): Reporters have spent days detailing why “Terminator: Dark Fate” became the year’s most embarrassing flop. The movie made just $29 million stateside, and its foreign box office totals are equally weak ($94 million and counting). That’s no way for a franchise reboot to perform. Most observers are writing the saga’s obituary. Those reporters nailed some of the core reasons for its box office woes, from franchise fatigue to recycled story beats. Most missed another crucial factor. The sad decline of Arnold Schwarzenegger, A-list movie star.

Fiction (Adventures Fantastic): So yesterday’s post on Edgar Rice Burroughs and Harold Lamb and the recent post on the canon, coupled with today is the anniversary of the passing of J. R. R. Tolkien and the seventh anniversary of the death of Frederik Pohl, got me to thinking. I referred to Burroughs and Lamb as giants. In the canon post I quoted Newton talking about his achievements being due to his standing on the shoulders of giants. So who exactly are the giants in the field?

Fiction (Tentaculii): There’s a new bibliographic website for prolific British writer Michael Moorcock. The Works Of Michael Moorcock is obviously still a work-in-progress, but the pages for books and shorter fiction appear fairly complete. Moorcock tried his hand with at least one Sherlock Holmes pastiche, but has no overtly Lovecraftian pastiches that I’m aware of. His leftist attacks on many other writers, often described in words such as ‘brusque’ or ‘pungent’, turned out no differently in Lovecraft’s case and with the usual knocks being offered (“astonishingly awful prose” etc).

Fiction (George Kelley): I’ve been a big fan of Hank Davis’s Science Fiction anthologies over the years. Just in time for the Holiday Season, BAEN Books released Space Pioneers, an anthology with just about something for every readers’ taste. In typical Hank Davis fashion, the mix of stories blends Oldies with some newer stories like David Drake’s “Superweapon” (2018). I especially enjoyed Ross Rocklynne’s “Quietus” and Manly Wade Wellman’s “Men Against the Stars.” If you’re in the mood for an entertaining theme anthology, I recommend Space Pioneers. GRADE: A

Fiction (Paperback Warrior): In 2019, Stark House Press generated a commercial and critical hit with the release of The Best of Manhunt, an anthology of stories from the legendary 1950s crime fiction digest. Knowing a good thing when they see it, the reprint publisher has compiled a second volume of blood-on-the-knuckles tales from the popular magazine’s heyday for an August 2020 release.

Writing (Rawle Nyanzi): Recently, I came across an article (archive here) about the evolution of the horror genre in film. While the article is from 2000, and I’m not a horror fan myself, one point stuck with me: how scientific materialism, rather than an understanding of good and evil, became dominant in horror filmmaking, starting with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. In the materialist worldview, the universe came into being by random chance, and so did the Earth and humanity.

Writing (Kairos): World building is the one element that sets speculative fiction apart from every other category of writing. When designing a secondary world, it’s crucial to establish a foundation of internally consistent principles to help readers suspend their disbelief. Religion in general has been a constant of human existence. Writing a secondary world where there are no and never have been any religions will automatically cause tension between the setting and known history, straining credibility (though it could make for an interesting story hook if handled properly).

Tolkien (Jon Mollison): Listening to the Silmarillion on audiobook, and something occurred to me. The three themes of the Ainur presage the three ages of Middle-Earth.  From the Tolkien Gateway: The Ainur’s flawless Music satisfied even Ilúvatar during this early stage. The Second Theme was “like and yet unlike” the First; it gathered new power and beauty. Soon, however, Melkor’s discord rose up against it, and there was a “war of sound more violent than before”. This time, Melkor’s Theme triumphed over that of the others; many of the Ainur stopped singing entirely out of dismay.

Sensor Sweep: Crusher Joe, Diana Rigg, Black Ops Cold War, Ambrose Bierce published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[societyjoelorenzo]

Aviva Skall is the Vice President of Talent Management and Business Affairs at MMG, an International Model, Talent & Celebrity Management Company headquartered in New York City. Aviva was heavily involved in the creation of MMG’s Canadian division MMG Canada as well as their Los Angeles affiliate agency ITA or International Talent Agency.

MMG represents models, actors, recording artists, dancers, athletes, hosts & celebrities who have appeared on Print ads and campaigns for companies such as Abercrombie and Fitch, Hollister Co., Nike, Sephora, L’Oreal, Maybelline, Hermes, Seven Jeans, Buffalo London, Levi’s, Apple Co, Bare Minerals, Clinique, Bobbie Brown, Laura Mercier, Kiss Cosmetics, Estee Lauder, JC Penney, Justice, New Balance, Cadillac, Honda, Converse, Puma, Foot Locker, Mercedes Benz, Dentyne Ice, Hanes, Budweiser, Converse, Gillette, General Electric, Bombay Sapphire Gin, Ivy Park, Jameson, Gillette, Pop Sugar, Party City, and more; Editorials for Elle, Vogue, Maxim, Women’s Health, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Muscle & Fitness, GQ, Vibe, Teen People, Essence, Parenting and many other nationally published magazines; Commercials for companies such as Cover Girl, McDonald’s, American Express, Google, Pantene, Colgate, Lay’s, Reebok, Lancôme, Redken, AT&T, Samsung, Domino’s, Suave, Palmer’s Cocoa Butter, Nutella, Intel, Nintendo Wii, Xbox, Miller Light, Vonage, Wrigley’s Gum, Bud Light and many more; MMG models can also be seen walking the Runways at various NYFW shows. 

MMG’s talent can be seen on shows like the all new Deal or No Deal, ABC’s Blackish, Quantico, Power, Growing Up Supermodel, Glee, Gossip Girl, 90210, The Carrie Diaries, Collar, New Girl, Orange is The New Black, How I Met Your Mother, Law and Order, Shameless, Person of Interest, The Big C, Elementary, Royal Pains, The Following, Blue Bloods, Celebrity Big Brother, Days of our Lives, and One Life to Live; Movies including The Greatest Showman, Creed I and Creed II, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Hunger Games, Blue Valentine, Men in Black III, Get Him to The Greek, Pirates of The Caribbean, The Other Woman, Something Blue , Arbitrage, The Sitter, Sex and the City, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Hellraiser and Disney’s Sixteen Wishes; MMG has secured celebrity endorsement and appearance deals for major brands and products for our up-and-coming and celebrity talent.

In pursuit of the world’s most marketable talent MMG has created a partnership with several state directors for the Miss USA Organization by providing exclusive representation to the winners of the Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants in 18 states.

Prior to joining the MMG team, Aviva developed a deep passion for the industry which fueled her drive to pursue a career in entertainment. She began her formal acting training at 10 years old in New York and continued training and performing throughout high school and college. Aviva attended a Talent Search competition where she was discovered by MMG. Since then she has appeared in several TV shows and movies including Law and Order: Criminal Intent; Disney’s Enchanted with Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey and Susan Sarandon; and Music and Lyrics with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. After receiving her degree nearly a decade ago, Aviva joined the MMG team as a full time Talent Manager where she has worked hands on to start and/or enhance the careers of hundreds of emerging talent ranging from beginner to celebrity in both the NY and LA markets, as well as bi-coastal and international talent.

Aviva recently sat down with Joe Lorenzo to Advice to Actors & Models, here’s what she had to say:

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(above slideshow some images of Aviva/ MMG NY clients credits)

Joe (Q) What is your current occupation? How long have you been in your current position?

Aviva (A) I am the Vice President of Talent Management and Business Relations at MMG. I manage my own personal roster of talent (actors, models, singers, dancers, athletes, influencers and celebrities) and oversee all of MMG’s Talent Managers and their respective talent. I am also responsible for cultivating and maintaining relationships and partnerships to ensure we are able to scout the best talent out there and secure as many opportunities for our talent as possible. I have been with MMG for over a decade and have been involved in the entertainment industry for over 20 years.

  Joe (Q) How did you get started?

Aviva (A) I got started in the entertainment industry when I was 10 years old. After several years of training and performing in local theater productions I was accepted to a prestigious dramatic arts high school program where I spent 4 years learning everything from method acting and performance technique, to technical aspects such as set construction, lighting, and costume design, to the actual business of acting.  This program broadened my understanding of the industry behind the art I loved and deepened my desire to learn more. This program, known as the Calhoun High School “On Tour Company” was directed by Sal Salerno, a graduate of Hofstra University’s Department of Drama and Dance. I decided to follow in his footsteps and pursue a theatre education at Hofstra University. During my time there I also picked up a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology – a skill I find highly applicable in my day to day dealings in this industry. Concurrently, I attended a talent search in hopes to find an agent or manager and was scouted by MMG. Upon Graduation I decided to join the MMG team as an intern. MMG was a much smaller brand at the time and I was able to quickly grow as the company grew. I was instrumental in helping to open both our Canada office as well as our LA agency and learned a tremendous amount with each of these new endeavors. I was able to grow a strong team of excellent Talent Managers who truly care about our talent and I attribute much of our success to our hardworking staff.

  Joe (Q) Did you have any mentors or someone guiding you along the way?

Aviva (A) I had many great teachers along the way, especially the director of the On Tour program I mentioned earlier, Sal Salerno, who truly challenged me to dedicate myself to the craft and the business. Since joining the MMG family I have worked extremely closely with our President and CEO, Jeff Cohen, who has taught me an unimaginable amount. One of the best lessons I have learned from Jeff is to never think of yourself as an expert because the industry changes daily and what was the norm yesterday may not be the norm today. It is important to adapt and to keep your finger on the pulse. Since our world changes on a daily basis so must we.  This means that each day is a new learning experience and another opportunity for growth. It is those companies who can quickly adapt to changing times that are able to flourish.

  Joe (Q) How important is it to study and private coach for auditions?

Aviva (A) It is extremely important to study and prepare for every audition. Your time in the casting room is your chance and you must be prepared for that opportunity. Casting directors are very busy and don’t have time for you to read over again if you mess up the first time. So if you enter the room underprepared you just blew your shot. As an actor you should always have a monologue ready to go at all times. If you are reading for a potential representative they need to feel confident in your skill sets and also understand what areas they see fit for you to be marketed to – so choose a monologue that is age appropriate and that the character is one you can likely be cast as. When selecting a monologue, don’t just read that one excerpt. Read the whole play so you can gain some insight into the character and their background. This will help you identify with the character and deliver a more powerful performance. If reading for a role where sides are provided it is important to memorize the sides. Even though they may allow you to have the script with you, if you are constantly looking down at the pages in your hand you are not focusing on your delivery. Being memorized also shows professionalism. Fumbling lines is a sign of nervousness so if you are well prepared you will read a lot more confident than if you are unprepared. A private coach can help you understand the text better and provide suggestions on different ways to approach the scene. They can give feedback that a parent/friend simply can’t because they lack specific knowledge of our industry and experience breaking down scenes and working on character development. A good coach will not tell you how to say your lines, but will help you make choices to get you there on your own. So don’t fear that you will lose your individuality by being coached.

  Joe (Q) With all the rejection this business has, what keeps you going for your clients? What advice do you give your clients as they experience rejection?

Aviva (A) “You win some, you lose some!” But in this industry it’s very common to lose a lot before winning one. A good manager must impress upon their talent how tough this industry is and that they must be able to handle rejection as well as negative feedback. In today’s entertainment industry, there are more opportunities than ever before due to an influx in programming amongst television networks, streaming services, web series, etc. But there is also more competition than ever – since modern technology allows many more people to be considered for each role than in the past. Even as industry professionals, we often do not understand why a certain client picked one actor over the other. It all comes down to personal opinion. There are a million reasons you could be overlooked for a role that really have nothing to do with you. For example, if that client decided the character should really be someone with lighter/darker hair/skin/eyes, or if someone else in that scene has too similar of a look to you. Typically casting directors will not give feedback on why you weren’t chosen so there is no use in looking back.  The best advice I can give is “once you leave the audition room, forget it ever happened and move on to the next thing”. (That doesn’t meant forgetting to hold your availability of course!) But it does mean “don’t sweat it”. Either they will call you back or they won’t – but instead of focusing on that, focus on what you can be doing next.

  Joe (Q) What advice were you given when you were starting out that you can remember and share?

Aviva (A) As I touched on earlier, it is extremely important to remind yourself that no matter how long you have been doing this you can always learn. We learn every day if we open our mind to it so it is important to keep your mind open! Everyone has something to offer you so let yourself learn from them. I find that I am constantly learning from my talent, our clients, my coworkers, industry friends, etc. Another great piece of advice is that anything you don’t know can be figured out. When we were opening our Canada office, one day MMG’s President Jeff Cohen came up to my desk and said “I need you to write a contract for our Canada office”. I immediately replied that I hadn’t gone to law school and was unqualified to draft up something so important. He told me “you can and you will”. Taking on that project seemed scary and overwhelming but I got it done. Not only could I do it, but I had learned so much in the process that has made me better at negotiating contracts moving forward.

  Joe (Q) What piece of advice do you have for those just starting out?

Aviva (A) Congratulations – You chose to enter one of the toughest industries in the world! That takes a lot of courage. It also requires a LOT of hard work and patience. Always continue growing your craft and always continue learning! Networking is so important in this industry. Always be kind and courteous, show up on time and prepared. Personality is everything! Don’t be afraid to be over the top. Clients/Agents/Managers would rather see what you are capable of (and can tone you down if needed) than have to wonder if you will be capable. The more special skills you have the more they will set you apart – so stay well rounded and make sure you list everything on your resume – even if you don’t think it’s important! A good coach or manager can help you decide which skills are most pertinent to list.

  Joe (Q) What is the biggest pet peeve you encounter from brand new talent when you meet them?

Aviva (A) Many new talent have the expectation that they will be a star immediately. Just as no professional athlete, musician or politician got to where they are overnight, neither do actors. It can take many years to build a strong resume. Many talent think once they sign with an agent or manager they can sit back and wait for their rep to get them work. I can’t stress enough how incorrect this mentality is. Your agent/manager is part of your TEAM but you are still in control of your own career. Your representative can only use the tools you are giving them so make sure to be on top of that. Lastly, understand your representative makes money when YOU make money. A lack of results doesn’t mean a lack of effort – so treat your representatives with respect and trust that they are doing their job to the best of their ability.

  Joe (Q) What can you say to parents of children just starting out in this business? Things that parents do that are helpful, and things parents do that are harmful?

Aviva (A) Parents can make or break their child’s career. Until an actor is 18 the law states that a parent must be on set with them, so if a client feels that they can’t work with the parent, that means they can’t work with the actor. Behaving professionally and appropriately is extremely important. Representatives and clients ARE noticing how you treat your kids. If you are too hard on them, we notice and we likely won’t want to work with you. If it’s evident the kid doesn’t really want to do this and the parents are forcing it, we won’t work with that child.

  Joe (Q) Any last word of wisdom or something you would like to leave us with that can help someone starting out or someone struggling to keep going in this business?

Aviva (A) One of the best pieces of advice I received as an actor is that THEY WANT YOU TO BE GOOD. Whether “they” is an agent or manager who may want to sign you, or a casting director who wants you to make their job easy by being so great that their job is done because they already found you! I think that bit of advice really affected my confidence level during auditions because I no longer felt like the casting director was waiting for me to mess up and instead felt that they really, genuinely wanted me to be great – which made greatness so much easier! I think this is one important mantra to remember as you embark on any audition!

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Agent Advice to Actors & Models ~ Aviva Skall Ron ~ Interviewed by Joe Lorenzo/ Society Entertainment Aviva Skall is the Vice President of Talent Management and Business Affairs at MMG, an International Model, Talent & Celebrity Management Company headquartered in New York City.

[theconservativebrief]

“The whole thing was actually kind of an accident, like all things are,” Bob Pranga tells me, about his career decorating rich people’s houses for the holidays. He’s otherwise known as Dr. Christmas.

He was working at the Macy’s in New York City’s Herald Square in 1984, just after he graduated from college, decorating a tree on the sales floor, when Mia Farrow walked past and said, “I wish someone would do that in my home.” Pranga said he would do it, and he did — and then themed, expensive Christmas decor exploded in 1986, as American culture steered itself into an apocalypse of gaudiness.

Pranga was decorating as “a survival job” until he met the Hiltons. Then it became a career — a bi-coastal Christmas empire, thanks to his Los Angeles business partner Debi Staron.

There’s “no ceiling” on Christmas, he says, and his clients spend between $5,000 and $200,000 on decorations for the holiday. “Sometimes it can go higher than that, but there’s a point where I ask them, “Really?” It becomes Christmas-by-the-pound at that point. Your Christmas tree becomes one big jewelry stand. You’re literally hanging jewelry on the tree.”

(Pranga can’t give me any examples of people who pay for this kind of thing, but says it’s not celebrities so much as “what we used to call the captains of industry.” Like Steve Jobs, he says, but not Steve Jobs.)

“My business always depends on the economy,” he says. “It’s a luxury item, not a necessity.” But his business is also part of a broader industry that’s growing.

The question of Christmas each year is, simply, how to get it. We’re all allowed to look at the window displays at American Eagle. We can all go to the diner to say “Hi” to a paper Santa. But that’s really just looking — what about having? What about possessing Christmas decorations that transform your home from that place where you keep your other shoes into the set of a Hallmark movie, where love interests are always sending handwritten notes and a roommate in a slouchy sweater proffers a cup of tea? How do you wake up every morning with rosy cheeks and peppermint breath?

The services industry is the biggest and fastest-growing sector of the American economy, and that means all kinds of things

For a not-insignificant number of Americans — not just celebrities, apparently — the answer is quite obvious: Rent some Christmas decorations from someone who will store them for you in a warehouse you never have to see; install them for you, maybe while you’re not even home; and then remove them when you’re tired of looking at them.

The services industry is the biggest and fastest-growing sector of the American economy, and that means all kinds of things, like the option to have a single bottle of pinot noir delivered to your apartment at 11 pm or to hire someone to take your Instagram photos for the evening — and the option to borrow decorations from someone who will set them up in or on your house.

The Texas-based Christmas Decor network, one of the largest professional Christmas decoration companies, was created in 1986, mostly as an additional service tacked onto a landscaping business, and now has 300 franchisees nationwide. Its website boasts that the average member of its network — made up mostly of landscapers looking for off-season work — brings in more than $200,000 per year.

In New York City, renting decorations looks even more appealing because of our collective, severe lack of storage space. I don’t have exact numbers on how widespread decoration rental is here, but I will say that it was very difficult to get in contact with people who build Christmas for a living, as it’s nearly December and it was incredibly rude of me to try to occupy even a small amount of their time with questions.

I will not say which local decorators hung up on me, or which said, “Are we done?” in a way that was maybe worse than being hung up on, because it’s the holidays. In the end, I was able to spend an entire weekend watching Christmas get borrowed and built in New York. I don’t know how it happened — presumably magic.

“I’m getting glitter all over your baby,” Rent-a-Christmas founder Kristen Parness says, handing a baby covered in glitter back to its mother.

New parents Byron and Karen Hagan hired Parness to set up a 6-foot fake tree in the corner of the living room in their apartment in the Riverwalk Point luxury rental complex on New York City’s Roosevelt Island. They know Parness because she got her MFA in theater with Byron at Pace University, and this is the third year she’s shown up in their home in an elf costume with two elf assistants to set up their Christmas tree for them. When Parness is not doing this, she’s a drama and English teacher at the extremely competitive Bronx High School of Science.

Parness runs Rent-a-Christmas with her husband Judah, who has a day job as a sales professional. “We had this idea one year when we were living in Bay Ridge [a neighborhood in Brooklyn], we had just started dating, we had no decorations, and absolutely zero storage space,” she says. “We went to Home Depot and bought $500 of decorations and the house looked amazing, but we were like, ‘What are we gonna do with this? This is so crazy, it would be great if we could rent this stuff.’”

This year, they’ll serve around 40 customers with the help of around 10 part-time elves before they close up shop on December 23. The business is small but legit — through research and trial-and-error, Parness has picked out two interior decorating suppliers who provide the vast majority of her wares, though she still buys stuff at Target or the bodega.

This year, she contracted a firefighter to do the more complicated lights and an electrician so she wouldn’t burn any restaurants down. She has a warehouse space in the Bronx, which is also where she met her live tree vendor, and which serves as the unofficial headquarters of the operation. The elves preassemble garlands and wreaths and complicated decorations there, in heavy coats because the heat doesn’t really work.

“It’s not only rich people,” she tells me, when I ask who the customers are. “It’s so widespread. We have people with one-bedroom apartments or who are really busy or have a baby. And then, yes, there are obviously rich people who go all out.”

Rent-a-Christmas’s services range in price, from $185 for a single wreath with lights (and installation!) to $12,000 for complicated packages in which an entire apartment is coated in garland. They also decorate restaurants, bars, salons, banks, bagel shops, and law firms, starting around $15,000.

Most residential customers spend between $500 and $5,000, and Parness says the most popular purchase is the “Feels Like Home” tree package ($499), which includes the rental of a 6.5-foot artificial tree, lights, tree skirt, tinsel, ornaments, and a star, as well as a team of elves to set it up.

Rent-a-Christmas elves Cara Weissman and Sarah King, with the Hagan family’s tree. Kristen Parness

That’s what the Hagans have ordered. Parness’s assistants for this particular job are her head elf Jingle Bell — also known as Sarah King, an actress who makes the bulk of her living as a Disney princess-for-hire — and new temp worker Cara Weissman, who typically works as a casting director for reality TV shows on TLC and MTV, but needed some extra cash this year.

They’re both wearing full elf costumes, complete with glitter-covered ballet flats, and, in Sarah’s case, a sparkly silver fanny pack full of stage makeup. Most of Parness’s hair is dyed Christmas red. They sing while they work, and it takes about two and a half minutes for the tree to go from box to standing, five minutes for Sarah and Cara to cover it in gold tinsel, and 10 more for the whole team to put about 50 generic red, green, blue, purple, and gold ornaments on it.

The Hagans are watching the Hallmark Channel and drinking red wine, chatting with Parness about her plans for the holidays and about the Josh Groban concert that Karen is going to that night. The tree barely fits in the corner of a tiny living room that looks out directly onto a basketball court — where teenagers are flopping around in five or six sweatshirts apiece — and then the East River.

There is one moment when the lights go on and “The Christmas Waltz” is playing on Sarah’s portable speaker, and the kids outside are moving real slow and clumsy … it’s really good. There’s also a creeping urge to eye-roll, at the baby’s grandparents saying, “That’s your first Christmas tree!” while someone else sets it up, but that’s my cross to bear.

When she’s done with her work, Sarah comes over to where I’m trying to crouch out of the way of both the TV and the process, and tells me she gets a real high off of dressing as an elf. Kids love it, and adults appreciate it too, especially when they’re having a rough year.

Rent-a-Christmas decorations at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club. Kristen Parness

A first-time customer in Manhattan last year called them because her son had just died and she couldn’t bring herself to bring out the decorations. There are cases where people going through divorces find that their ex-partner took both the kids and the ornaments. “You have no idea the joy you’re gonna bring,” she says, “Or how hard somebody’s holidays were going to be.”

I ask her if she’s going to build a career as an elf, maybe transition it into her own business in some way. “Well, I like Christmas,” she says. “Doing it 365 might be too much.” We are in and out of the Hagans’ home in half an hour.

House of Holiday is the largest Christmas store in New York, owner Larry Gurino emphasizes to me over the phone. It’s in Ozone Park — the neighborhood of Queens best known as the stomping grounds of John Gotti. It’s also somewhat well-known as a real setting from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road — next to the Tastykake Wonder Bakery Outlet, which may or may not be closed but still features a giant mural of a Hostess cupcake. When it’s not Christmas season, House of Holiday sells Halloween decorations. And when it’s not Halloween season, it sells discount pianos.

“We’re the largest square footage. We make gorgeous displays. Our store is gorgeous,” Gurino says. “Get in the train, come down, and take pictures for your article.”

So, I do. The store is gorgeous. I don’t think I’ve ever swooned in the face of a commercial enterprise, but that’s the most accurate wording I can think of to describe the first-blush of my experience at House of Holiday.

Elf buckets at House of Holiday. the largest Christmas store in New York. Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

There is a section dedicated to Christmas-themed trains and miniature villages, one of which has a working Ferris wheel. There is a whole hall dedicated to fake trees, all of which are outfitted in different styles of lights, from tiny and bright white specks to heavy, old-school multi-color bulbs the size of overripe grapes.

There are tacky things and beautiful things, Budweiser ornaments and buckets of gold poinsettias. There is an entire room dedicated to different styles of 3-foot-tall, super thin elves, which is a horrifying nightmare. There is also a display of dish towels that say things like “Dear Santa, I want a fat wallet and a thin body” and “The tree isn’t the only thing getting lit.” These items are easy to ignore in favor of an arrangement of enormous angels with fluorescent wing tips and gowns more beautiful than any wedding dress I can imagine owning.

I ask Gurino how long it took to find suppliers to fill his store, and he simply emphasizes again that House of Holiday has been open for 25 years.

House of Holiday’s decorators are completely booked for the season, which starts overnight on Halloween, and the team of 25 will have decorated (or designed decorations for) about 200 homes and 200 businesses throughout all five boroughs by Christmas Eve. Typically, residential customers order a 7.5-foot tree, “decorated where you go, ‘Wow’ when you walk in,” as well as garlands for their railings, a couple of wreaths, and a centerpiece. They spend between $1,000 and $5,000.

House of Holiday, in Ozone Park. Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

Gurino points out that there’s a hole in my story: “Do-it-yourself is just exploding. Even bigger buildings and business are starting to push back a little bit [against rentals]. They’re coming in and buying all of their own stuff and then having maintenance put it up.”

That way, they get the same decorations at a fraction of the price. I ask him if this bothers him, and he says no, “We encourage do-it-yourself because we have the … largest … Christmas store.” Okay!

These customers have uncovered, in Gurino’s opinion, a con. “Most guys won’t tell you that because they only do decorating. They don’t have a retail space for people to come to. Most will tell you it’s the fad, it’s the hottest thing, but if they give you a quote for 5 grand, you can come to my store and do it for 2. That’s a big difference. If you need a crane, maybe [hiring a decorator and renting] is the way to do it…”

Most people are not renting Christmas, he says. Most people invest in Christmas, accruing it over time. “We don’t rent. It’s just taking the money from people. We don’t think it’s right. Everyone can afford a storage unit. Once you rent products from someone, they always have you over the barrel. You have to rent new stuff every year. Once you buy it, next year you have the same budget, so then you have twice as much, and before you know it you can make a beautiful scene.”

The data would seem to support most of this. The National Retail Federation reports that people are spending more than ever on Christmas — an average of $1,007.24 each — but they are still spending only about $215 of that total tab on non-gift items like food and decorations. (I don’t totally agree that “everyone” can afford a storage unit, but it doesn’t seem worth fighting over at Christmas.)

More than anything, Gurino hates the line about how everyone is too busy. “There’s always time to enjoy the season,” he says. “Make time because it’s important. At the end of it all, this is what we have. We have the seasons and the holidays.”

At the House of Holiday, which is incredibly reasonably priced, I am paralyzed with indecision. Should I try to decorate my home? I agree, the season is important because what else are we going to do, just cry until it’s spring?

Way less than 1 percent of House of Holiday’s selection of ornaments. Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

I also have nowhere to store these beautiful things, and I want a tree taller than my body but I don’t think I can fit it in my living room, which has a non-functioning piano taking up 30 percent of the floorspace.

After an hour of walking in circles, alternating between adding things to my Instagram story and staring solemnly at the nativity area, where you can look at, no big deal, the face of God, I decide on one small owl with straw-and-glitter feathers ($5.99), to put next to a fake crow I bought at Target when I was in a bad mood. And a light-up Santa-and-sleigh ($14.99) to put in my front window. For the children!

I ask Larry if he can tell me about the best Christmas decorations he’s ever created. “I don’t have anything special,” he says. “Everything is special.” And then, “Are we done?”

On Staten Island, the best-known best friends in the Christmas decorating business are Vincent Nicastro and Dexter Calimquim, high school buddies who have been stringing lights up on the stoney mansions and saltbox cottages of the largely-suburban, increasingly expensive “forgotten” borough for more than a decade.

Nicastro started the business when he was 16, a sophomore in high school in Park Slope, and got 10 jobs his first year just from passing out flyers. He did them on the weekend or after school; now he works 12 hours days without a day off for the entire season.

An intimidating house on Staten Island, decorated by The Christmas Decorators earlier this month. Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

I meet them after dark, for a job at a home nestled between two cemeteries and a country club on the east side of the island, where house prices hover around $2 million. They’re doing a modest installation — just $1,500 for labor, using lights that the homeowners bought from them some years before.

Nicastro drives me around the corner to a project they just finished, to the tune of around $8,500, including light rentals but not including the 6-foot-tall nutcracker on the stoop or the 8-foot inflatable teddy bear by the private basketball court. Those, the homeowner, Jennifer Bock, picked up herself, as she did with the teenager-sized elves in the side yard and the Santa-sized Santa in the driveway.

He has to ask her about a timer that stopped working on the bear, so he rings the bell and she opens the door immediately. A gush of aroma reminiscent of a vanilla Glade plug-in slaps the freezing air around us and I try not to very obviously stare at the chandelier behind her, which is the size of a Toyota Corolla and hanging from a cathedral ceiling with cherubs painted on it. “We love Vinny,” Bock says, “I found him on Ironmine [Drive], I was driving past and I said you have to come help me.”

She comes out to show him where she’d like some extra wreaths, then stands outside and chats without a jacket on. “He does amazing work,” she tells me. “And I love Dexter. He really knows his stuff.”

This assessment seems, from all the available evidence, accurate. Her house looks like the set of a Tom Ford ad. It looks like where Diane Keaton would live in a movie about how she’d made millions writing a hit book series and simultaneously raised elegant and educated children, and was now learning to enjoy the holidays without her handsome and kind husband who died. (Jennifer Bock’s husband has not died; I met him and his name is Tom.) It looks like, if you lived there, all you would do is stand in the driveway and talk to strangers about Christmas.

The Christmas Decorators’ handiwork, last year on Staten Island. The Christmas Decorators/Facebook

The Christmas Decorators do about 175 houses in five weeks. There are two vans and one truck, crews made up of roofers who are eager to take the off-season work and, as an added bonus, won’t fall off a roof. Calimquim says the only training they need is some easy electrical tips, because customers really only get mad when you blow their fuse box. A house like Bock’s will take all day, nine hours at least.

“I do enjoy it,” Nicastro says. “A lot of landscapers, companies come and go. We always see 20 percent growth every year.” Then he explains that, for the Bocks’ home, they had to glue each bulb onto the roof with a silicone gun, individually, and revises his tepid enthusiasm. “It’s 40 days of torture,” he says. But on the other hand, “I do okay.”

Calimquim and Nicastro also co-own a Halloween store in East Brunswick, New Jersey, which is open from August through February. There was a second store in Princeton for a while, but Amazon ate too many of the sales. The team decided to take part of their business online, selling on the platform as Costume Wholesalers.

Vincent Nicastro and a large wreath. The Christmas Decorators/Facebook

“I’m shipping blood to Alaska, gallons of fake blood,” Calimquim says. “A dragon to Puerto Rico.” The costume business is year-round, not confined to Halloween. They’re selling Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin costumes to schools for plays, Jesus and Moses costumes to churches.

In February — the coldest month of the year, Calimquim reminds me — they’ll work from 7 am to 5 pm taking decorations off of about 10 houses per day. He prefers working in the Halloween store primarily because he gets to be inside.

There are perks to being outside, though. He likes hanging out with the crew; he likes fresh air. He doesn’t like having to take the van to a Dunkin’ Donuts to go to the bathroom. He likes the holiday business because he gets time off to travel, and is going to the Philippines as soon as this is all over. He also hates Christmas, he says, the way McDonald’s employees hate french fries.

“Sometimes I’m like, ‘Is this what we’re doing for the rest of our lives?’” he says. It’s more a sincere hypothetical than anything resembling a complaint.

Bob Pranga, a.k.a. Dr. Christmas, makes a good living. He’s noticed an increase in demand for decorating services because people are “back on the ‘No one has time for anything’ thing.” They’re also increasingly forgetting to plan ahead, which is why he’s been called to give up his own Christmas Eve to decorate somebody else’s house.

“I did it,” he says, “For an additional cost. You have to be willing to sacrifice your holidays for this career if you really want to make it.”

Even in the most glamorous corner of this market, where the customers are Stevie Nicks and Beyoncé, there is a little twinge of a reminder: This is the six-week period during which our feelings about whose time is more important and what dismal dollar amount everyone else’s time can be bought for are spoken a little more loudly and crassly than they are the rest of the year.

“You have to be willing to sacrifice your holidays for this career if you really want to make it”

I know there is a lot of suspicious cultural and emotional goop around Christmas that makes what I’m about to say sound insensitive or delusional: I totally love Christmas, and both need and crave the “magic” of the most wonderful time of the year.

I know that Christmas, as popular culture has come to define it, is a nightmare of commercialism, a creepy propaganda tool of the Evangelical right, and a truly unfortunate time to work in any service industry — hardly a heartwarming combination of things.

At the same time, I think winter is a harrowing experience that humans are still ill-evolved to cope with, and that we deserve an elaborate charade to ease us into that and into the blinding horror of yet another year. We have chosen something with an irresistible aesthetic and wonderful set of smells, and we could have done much worse. The people who build Christmas are at least pretty into it. They do okay.

“My philosophy is always, you know, just remember to sparkle,” Pranga says, laughing. “Glitter gets you everywhere.”

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Original Source -> Why buy Christmas when you can rent it?

via The Conservative Brief

[rebelstreetclothing]

https://rebelstreetclothing.com/blogs/news/every-man-should-date-a-goth-girl

She changed my life in ways she could fathom, although I don't have any idea who that eighth grader was.

It was I was introduced to a particular -- Fashion? Lifestyle? Fetish? -- that's since become my greatest aesthetic quirk. All men have a kind -- a few are into your regular breastaurant waitress mold, others are to the tatted up neo-pin-up template, and many others are all about the artsy-fartsy nerd chic -- and it was here, I assume, that I developed mine: the all-American goth chick.

Now, at the moment, we did not call them "goths." In actuality, we did have an term of both genders, who wore three pounds of eyeliner everyday and wore all donned spiky jewellery. Some called them "the other children," some called them "skaters" (which none of them possessed skateboards, apparently, meant very little) but by and large, the other students called them as either "the freaks" or "the weirdos." The rest of the kids before Columbine -- were terrified. Rumors spread that They did needle drugs and hung out together on the weekends and practiced magic charms. While blaring Marilyn Manson they chainsawed hobos behind Costco to passing. Granted, the worst items they actually did was smoke cigarettes away from the movie theater and perhaps shoplift a couple of malt liquors, but they embraced the paranoia and dread the other pupils fostered for them. In a way, it made them over the junior high totem, which makes them a more effective caste system force than even the preppiest of preps.

And there was something about that I discovered inherently attractive. I found them alluring, while everybody found the women to be terrifying. Others believed their morbid, sadsack dispositions was the turnoff, but I thought it strangely entranced.

She was the first crush of my own adolescence. Even now, I've no hint what her name was, but I won't ever forget seeing her at the bus stop for the first time. Curling her auburn coif out of her eyes -- showing a pair of peppers outlined in what I presumed was an whole bottle of dollar store lashes -- she smiled a sinister smile and asked me, with the playful lunacy of Harley Quinn, "what you staring at, curly?"



I never reacted. But each time she saw me in the hallway, she would take me that half-playful, half-evil smile and say something along the lines of "hello, curled, how you doing?" I guess she thought she was freaking me, but deep down, I adored the focus (god knows, she was the only girl in the sixth grade who ever acknowledged my life.) Forget tans, forget the blindingly blonde hair and forget that all too dull "girl next door" look -- I was eternally enamored by the women who seemed more Morticia Addams compared to Christina Aguilera.

During high school and college, I more or less homed in on each of the pale girls who wore Invader Zim tops and loathed their parents. Really, my very first makeout was having a woman wearing a literal pentagram on her brow and I had been introduced to the joys of carnal pleasure with a young woman whose whole makeup chest was full of nothing but novelty Halloween lipsticks and nail polishes. Throughout these relationship sojourns, I discovered a seldom spoken truth concerning the "goth girl" motif/stereotype. Actually, I soon learned that there are really five genuses of goth woman, each with her Own idiosyncratic quirks:

THE RICH, SUBURBAN GOTH -- Her father makes $150,000 a year and her mother lets her spend $500 at a time on naturally Hot Topics buys (usually, Hello Kitty-branded lip gloss and anime-inspired belt buckles.) Really, she likes to wear a lot, although she claims to be a poetic soul. She's at least three Nightmare Before Christmas posters in her room along with the heaviest ring she listens to is AFI.

THE POOR, ANTI-SOCIAL GOTH -- She lives in a trailer park, works part-time in the local grocery store or hole in the wall restaurant (usually on the rear of the home -- they do not want her spider tattoos creeping out the clients) and has attempted at least 80 percent of all of the drugs known to man. The only thing in her handbag are the cigarettes at 7-Eleven, a few wadded bills and a switchblade. She will break up, if she does not have at least one felony on her record.

THE ARTISANAL GOTH -- She gets good grades, she is most likely the best actress in the theatre department and she spends her evenings studying Dante's Inferno from the original Italian, as it is more atmospheric like that. Her dream is to obtain a art endowment to produce the world's biggest ball of sculpture.

THE FASHIONISTA GOTH -- She's hyper-concerned about her looks. You absolutely can't leave the home till she has her winged eyeliner down. Every day she paints her nails and she makes at least one visit to Ulta. From the time she graduates college, she is usually evolved into a "health goth" or abandoned the aesthetics entirely for a new lifestyle that allots for pink and yellow wardrobe options.

THE UNKEMPT GOTH -- The reverse of this fashionista goth. She apparently just wants to kiss you shortly after she sucked down a Camel cigarette or peeled off her lips her dragon-shaped bong. Her jewelry is pewter, she farts in public and she spends at least half of their afternoon playing League of Legends. She like the poor goth, except sans the penchant for criminality. After all, to do so you must get up off the couch.

Yeah, sometimes you get a mix of three or two of these, but by and large? Each subset has its advantages and disadvantages, its flaws and benefits, something to admire and love and something to detest and hate. And men, I think you owe it yourself to experience all five of those sub-goths before you get your bachelor's degree. Why? Because goth women -- for better or worse -- represent the most varied range of feminine character types. While some are pretentious and -- ironically -- stuck-up some are cool. They will make you laugh, they will make you cry, they will make you think notions that are existential that are profound and they will -- by design, perhaps -- make you want to kill yourself. Even as fleeting, transitory relationships, they offer you something to consider about both the fairer sex and that what you are as an individual. You date nothing but club women or cheerleaders or nerds for a year, and you won't learn any nobler truths. Spend a year dating only goth women, however, and an whole cosmos of previously unrevealed knowledge befalls you. Hell, you may even find one which is just the ideal match, and who knows?

But maybe the biggest motive to date goth women even though you're a young dude? Because, to put it simply, existing at age 25 stops. They're professionals today, and they must terraform themselves to that dull, staid, office drone appearance. Adios blouse with sayonara eggplant eyeshadow and the shoulder pads. The ring comes out, the Doc Martens proceed the Cureshirts and the thrift shop are locked away never to see the light of day. You can always locate a bubbly cheerleader or artsy geek kind when you're 30 and 40. But the red-blooded goth? You have got up until your senior year in school, and that is pretty much your last opportunity to land one your own age.

For those of you have been pursuing a darker kind? Bear in mind, the clock is running out, and the sands of time are falling by a lot. And you don't need to visit your grave not knowing what it is like to make out with a woman wearing lipstick to midnight, do you?

Rebel Street Clothing

[rebelstreetclothing]

https://rebelstreetclothing.com/blogs/news/every-man-should-date-a-goth-girl

She changed my life in ways she could fathom, although I don't have any idea who that eighth grader was.

It was I was introduced to a particular -- Fashion? Lifestyle? Fetish? -- that's since become my greatest aesthetic quirk. All men have a kind -- a few are into your regular breastaurant waitress mold, others are to the tatted up neo-pin-up template, and many others are all about the artsy-fartsy nerd chic -- and it was here, I assume, that I developed mine: the all-American goth chick.

Now, at the moment, we did not call them "goths." In actuality, we did have an term of both genders, who wore three pounds of eyeliner everyday and wore all donned spiky jewellery. Some called them "the other children," some called them "skaters" (which none of them possessed skateboards, apparently, meant very little) but by and large, the other students called them as either "the freaks" or "the weirdos." The rest of the kids before Columbine -- were terrified. Rumors spread that They did needle drugs and hung out together on the weekends and practiced magic charms. While blaring Marilyn Manson they chainsawed hobos behind Costco to passing. Granted, the worst items they actually did was smoke cigarettes away from the movie theater and perhaps shoplift a couple of malt liquors, but they embraced the paranoia and dread the other pupils fostered for them. In a way, it made them over the junior high totem, which makes them a more effective caste system force than even the preppiest of preps.

And there was something about that I discovered inherently attractive. I found them alluring, while everybody found the women to be terrifying. Others believed their morbid, sadsack dispositions was the turnoff, but I thought it strangely entranced.

She was the first crush of my own adolescence. Even now, I've no hint what her name was, but I won't ever forget seeing her at the bus stop for the first time. Curling her auburn coif out of her eyes -- showing a pair of peppers outlined in what I presumed was an whole bottle of dollar store lashes -- she smiled a sinister smile and asked me, with the playful lunacy of Harley Quinn, "what you staring at, curly?"



I never reacted. But each time she saw me in the hallway, she would take me that half-playful, half-evil smile and say something along the lines of "hello, curled, how you doing?" I guess she thought she was freaking me, but deep down, I adored the focus (god knows, she was the only girl in the sixth grade who ever acknowledged my life.) Forget tans, forget the blindingly blonde hair and forget that all too dull "girl next door" look -- I was eternally enamored by the women who seemed more Morticia Addams compared to Christina Aguilera.

During high school and college, I more or less homed in on each of the pale girls who wore Invader Zim tops and loathed their parents. Really, my very first makeout was having a woman wearing a literal pentagram on her brow and I had been introduced to the joys of carnal pleasure with a young woman whose whole makeup chest was full of nothing but novelty Halloween lipsticks and nail polishes. Throughout these relationship sojourns, I discovered a seldom spoken truth concerning the "goth girl" motif/stereotype. Actually, I soon learned that there are really five genuses of goth woman, each with her Own idiosyncratic quirks:

THE RICH, SUBURBAN GOTH -- Her father makes $150,000 a year and her mother lets her spend $500 at a time on naturally Hot Topics buys (usually, Hello Kitty-branded lip gloss and anime-inspired belt buckles.) Really, she likes to wear a lot, although she claims to be a poetic soul. She's at least three Nightmare Before Christmas posters in her room along with the heaviest ring she listens to is AFI.

THE POOR, ANTI-SOCIAL GOTH -- She lives in a trailer park, works part-time in the local grocery store or hole in the wall restaurant (usually on the rear of the home -- they do not want her spider tattoos creeping out the clients) and has attempted at least 80 percent of all of the drugs known to man. The only thing in her handbag are the cigarettes at 7-Eleven, a few wadded bills and a switchblade. She will break up, if she does not have at least one felony on her record.

THE ARTISANAL GOTH -- She gets good grades, she is most likely the best actress in the theatre department and she spends her evenings studying Dante's Inferno from the original Italian, as it is more atmospheric like that. Her dream is to obtain a art endowment to produce the world's biggest ball of sculpture.

THE FASHIONISTA GOTH -- She's hyper-concerned about her looks. You absolutely can't leave the home till she has her winged eyeliner down. Every day she paints her nails and she makes at least one visit to Ulta. From the time she graduates college, she is usually evolved into a "health goth" or abandoned the aesthetics entirely for a new lifestyle that allots for pink and yellow wardrobe options.

THE UNKEMPT GOTH -- The reverse of this fashionista goth. She apparently just wants to kiss you shortly after she sucked down a Camel cigarette or peeled off her lips her dragon-shaped bong. Her jewelry is pewter, she farts in public and she spends at least half of their afternoon playing League of Legends. She like the poor goth, except sans the penchant for criminality. After all, to do so you must get up off the couch.

Yeah, sometimes you get a mix of three or two of these, but by and large? Each subset has its advantages and disadvantages, its flaws and benefits, something to admire and love and something to detest and hate. And men, I think you owe it yourself to experience all five of those sub-goths before you get your bachelor's degree. Why? Because goth women -- for better or worse -- represent the most varied range of feminine character types. While some are pretentious and -- ironically -- stuck-up some are cool. They will make you laugh, they will make you cry, they will make you think notions that are existential that are profound and they will -- by design, perhaps -- make you want to kill yourself. Even as fleeting, transitory relationships, they offer you something to consider about both the fairer sex and that what you are as an individual. You date nothing but club women or cheerleaders or nerds for a year, and you won't learn any nobler truths. Spend a year dating only goth women, however, and an whole cosmos of previously unrevealed knowledge befalls you. Hell, you may even find one which is just the ideal match, and who knows?

But maybe the biggest motive to date goth women even though you're a young dude? Because, to put it simply, existing at age 25 stops. They're professionals today, and they must terraform themselves to that dull, staid, office drone appearance. Adios blouse with sayonara eggplant eyeshadow and the shoulder pads. The ring comes out, the Doc Martens proceed the Cureshirts and the thrift shop are locked away never to see the light of day. You can always locate a bubbly cheerleader or artsy geek kind when you're 30 and 40. But the red-blooded goth? You have got up until your senior year in school, and that is pretty much your last opportunity to land one your own age.

For those of you have been pursuing a darker kind? Bear in mind, the clock is running out, and the sands of time are falling by a lot. And you don't need to visit your grave not knowing what it is like to make out with a woman wearing lipstick to midnight, do you?

Rebel Street Clothing

[rebelstreetclothing]

https://rebelstreetclothing.com/blogs/news/every-man-should-date-a-goth-girl

She changed my life in ways she could fathom, although I don't have any idea who that eighth grader was.

It was I was introduced to a particular -- Fashion? Lifestyle? Fetish? -- that's since become my greatest aesthetic quirk. All men have a kind -- a few are into your regular breastaurant waitress mold, others are to the tatted up neo-pin-up template, and many others are all about the artsy-fartsy nerd chic -- and it was here, I assume, that I developed mine: the all-American goth chick.

Now, at the moment, we did not call them "goths." In actuality, we did have an term of both genders, who wore three pounds of eyeliner everyday and wore all donned spiky jewellery. Some called them "the other children," some called them "skaters" (which none of them possessed skateboards, apparently, meant very little) but by and large, the other students called them as either "the freaks" or "the weirdos." The rest of the kids before Columbine -- were terrified. Rumors spread that They did needle drugs and hung out together on the weekends and practiced magic charms. While blaring Marilyn Manson they chainsawed hobos behind Costco to passing. Granted, the worst items they actually did was smoke cigarettes away from the movie theater and perhaps shoplift a couple of malt liquors, but they embraced the paranoia and dread the other pupils fostered for them. In a way, it made them over the junior high totem, which makes them a more effective caste system force than even the preppiest of preps.

And there was something about that I discovered inherently attractive. I found them alluring, while everybody found the women to be terrifying. Others believed their morbid, sadsack dispositions was the turnoff, but I thought it strangely entranced.

She was the first crush of my own adolescence. Even now, I've no hint what her name was, but I won't ever forget seeing her at the bus stop for the first time. Curling her auburn coif out of her eyes -- showing a pair of peppers outlined in what I presumed was an whole bottle of dollar store lashes -- she smiled a sinister smile and asked me, with the playful lunacy of Harley Quinn, "what you staring at, curly?"



I never reacted. But each time she saw me in the hallway, she would take me that half-playful, half-evil smile and say something along the lines of "hello, curled, how you doing?" I guess she thought she was freaking me, but deep down, I adored the focus (god knows, she was the only girl in the sixth grade who ever acknowledged my life.) Forget tans, forget the blindingly blonde hair and forget that all too dull "girl next door" look -- I was eternally enamored by the women who seemed more Morticia Addams compared to Christina Aguilera.

During high school and college, I more or less homed in on each of the pale girls who wore Invader Zim tops and loathed their parents. Really, my very first makeout was having a woman wearing a literal pentagram on her brow and I had been introduced to the joys of carnal pleasure with a young woman whose whole makeup chest was full of nothing but novelty Halloween lipsticks and nail polishes. Throughout these relationship sojourns, I discovered a seldom spoken truth concerning the "goth girl" motif/stereotype. Actually, I soon learned that there are really five genuses of goth woman, each with her Own idiosyncratic quirks:

THE RICH, SUBURBAN GOTH -- Her father makes $150,000 a year and her mother lets her spend $500 at a time on naturally Hot Topics buys (usually, Hello Kitty-branded lip gloss and anime-inspired belt buckles.) Really, she likes to wear a lot, although she claims to be a poetic soul. She's at least three Nightmare Before Christmas posters in her room along with the heaviest ring she listens to is AFI.

THE POOR, ANTI-SOCIAL GOTH -- She lives in a trailer park, works part-time in the local grocery store or hole in the wall restaurant (usually on the rear of the home -- they do not want her spider tattoos creeping out the clients) and has attempted at least 80 percent of all of the drugs known to man. The only thing in her handbag are the cigarettes at 7-Eleven, a few wadded bills and a switchblade. She will break up, if she does not have at least one felony on her record.

THE ARTISANAL GOTH -- She gets good grades, she is most likely the best actress in the theatre department and she spends her evenings studying Dante's Inferno from the original Italian, as it is more atmospheric like that. Her dream is to obtain a art endowment to produce the world's biggest ball of sculpture.

THE FASHIONISTA GOTH -- She's hyper-concerned about her looks. You absolutely can't leave the home till she has her winged eyeliner down. Every day she paints her nails and she makes at least one visit to Ulta. From the time she graduates college, she is usually evolved into a "health goth" or abandoned the aesthetics entirely for a new lifestyle that allots for pink and yellow wardrobe options.

THE UNKEMPT GOTH -- The reverse of this fashionista goth. She apparently just wants to kiss you shortly after she sucked down a Camel cigarette or peeled off her lips her dragon-shaped bong. Her jewelry is pewter, she farts in public and she spends at least half of their afternoon playing League of Legends. She like the poor goth, except sans the penchant for criminality. After all, to do so you must get up off the couch.

Yeah, sometimes you get a mix of three or two of these, but by and large? Each subset has its advantages and disadvantages, its flaws and benefits, something to admire and love and something to detest and hate. And men, I think you owe it yourself to experience all five of those sub-goths before you get your bachelor's degree. Why? Because goth women -- for better or worse -- represent the most varied range of feminine character types. While some are pretentious and -- ironically -- stuck-up some are cool. They will make you laugh, they will make you cry, they will make you think notions that are existential that are profound and they will -- by design, perhaps -- make you want to kill yourself. Even as fleeting, transitory relationships, they offer you something to consider about both the fairer sex and that what you are as an individual. You date nothing but club women or cheerleaders or nerds for a year, and you won't learn any nobler truths. Spend a year dating only goth women, however, and an whole cosmos of previously unrevealed knowledge befalls you. Hell, you may even find one which is just the ideal match, and who knows?

But maybe the biggest motive to date goth women even though you're a young dude? Because, to put it simply, existing at age 25 stops. They're professionals today, and they must terraform themselves to that dull, staid, office drone appearance. Adios blouse with sayonara eggplant eyeshadow and the shoulder pads. The ring comes out, the Doc Martens proceed the Cureshirts and the thrift shop are locked away never to see the light of day. You can always locate a bubbly cheerleader or artsy geek kind when you're 30 and 40. But the red-blooded goth? You have got up until your senior year in school, and that is pretty much your last opportunity to land one your own age.

For those of you have been pursuing a darker kind? Bear in mind, the clock is running out, and the sands of time are falling by a lot. And you don't need to visit your grave not knowing what it is like to make out with a woman wearing lipstick to midnight, do you?

Rebel Street Clothing

[rebelstreetclothing]

https://rebelstreetclothing.com/blogs/news/every-man-should-date-a-goth-girl

She changed my life in ways she could fathom, although I don't have any idea who that eighth grader was.

It was I was introduced to a particular -- Fashion? Lifestyle? Fetish? -- that's since become my greatest aesthetic quirk. All men have a kind -- a few are into your regular breastaurant waitress mold, others are to the tatted up neo-pin-up template, and many others are all about the artsy-fartsy nerd chic -- and it was here, I assume, that I developed mine: the all-American goth chick.

Now, at the moment, we did not call them "goths." In actuality, we did have an term of both genders, who wore three pounds of eyeliner everyday and wore all donned spiky jewellery. Some called them "the other children," some called them "skaters" (which none of them possessed skateboards, apparently, meant very little) but by and large, the other students called them as either "the freaks" or "the weirdos." The rest of the kids before Columbine -- were terrified. Rumors spread that They did needle drugs and hung out together on the weekends and practiced magic charms. While blaring Marilyn Manson they chainsawed hobos behind Costco to passing. Granted, the worst items they actually did was smoke cigarettes away from the movie theater and perhaps shoplift a couple of malt liquors, but they embraced the paranoia and dread the other pupils fostered for them. In a way, it made them over the junior high totem, which makes them a more effective caste system force than even the preppiest of preps.

And there was something about that I discovered inherently attractive. I found them alluring, while everybody found the women to be terrifying. Others believed their morbid, sadsack dispositions was the turnoff, but I thought it strangely entranced.

She was the first crush of my own adolescence. Even now, I've no hint what her name was, but I won't ever forget seeing her at the bus stop for the first time. Curling her auburn coif out of her eyes -- showing a pair of peppers outlined in what I presumed was an whole bottle of dollar store lashes -- she smiled a sinister smile and asked me, with the playful lunacy of Harley Quinn, "what you staring at, curly?"



I never reacted. But each time she saw me in the hallway, she would take me that half-playful, half-evil smile and say something along the lines of "hello, curled, how you doing?" I guess she thought she was freaking me, but deep down, I adored the focus (god knows, she was the only girl in the sixth grade who ever acknowledged my life.) Forget tans, forget the blindingly blonde hair and forget that all too dull "girl next door" look -- I was eternally enamored by the women who seemed more Morticia Addams compared to Christina Aguilera.

During high school and college, I more or less homed in on each of the pale girls who wore Invader Zim tops and loathed their parents. Really, my very first makeout was having a woman wearing a literal pentagram on her brow and I had been introduced to the joys of carnal pleasure with a young woman whose whole makeup chest was full of nothing but novelty Halloween lipsticks and nail polishes. Throughout these relationship sojourns, I discovered a seldom spoken truth concerning the "goth girl" motif/stereotype. Actually, I soon learned that there are really five genuses of goth woman, each with her Own idiosyncratic quirks:

THE RICH, SUBURBAN GOTH -- Her father makes $150,000 a year and her mother lets her spend $500 at a time on naturally Hot Topics buys (usually, Hello Kitty-branded lip gloss and anime-inspired belt buckles.) Really, she likes to wear a lot, although she claims to be a poetic soul. She's at least three Nightmare Before Christmas posters in her room along with the heaviest ring she listens to is AFI.

THE POOR, ANTI-SOCIAL GOTH -- She lives in a trailer park, works part-time in the local grocery store or hole in the wall restaurant (usually on the rear of the home -- they do not want her spider tattoos creeping out the clients) and has attempted at least 80 percent of all of the drugs known to man. The only thing in her handbag are the cigarettes at 7-Eleven, a few wadded bills and a switchblade. She will break up, if she does not have at least one felony on her record.

THE ARTISANAL GOTH -- She gets good grades, she is most likely the best actress in the theatre department and she spends her evenings studying Dante's Inferno from the original Italian, as it is more atmospheric like that. Her dream is to obtain a art endowment to produce the world's biggest ball of sculpture.

THE FASHIONISTA GOTH -- She's hyper-concerned about her looks. You absolutely can't leave the home till she has her winged eyeliner down. Every day she paints her nails and she makes at least one visit to Ulta. From the time she graduates college, she is usually evolved into a "health goth" or abandoned the aesthetics entirely for a new lifestyle that allots for pink and yellow wardrobe options.

THE UNKEMPT GOTH -- The reverse of this fashionista goth. She apparently just wants to kiss you shortly after she sucked down a Camel cigarette or peeled off her lips her dragon-shaped bong. Her jewelry is pewter, she farts in public and she spends at least half of their afternoon playing League of Legends. She like the poor goth, except sans the penchant for criminality. After all, to do so you must get up off the couch.

Yeah, sometimes you get a mix of three or two of these, but by and large? Each subset has its advantages and disadvantages, its flaws and benefits, something to admire and love and something to detest and hate. And men, I think you owe it yourself to experience all five of those sub-goths before you get your bachelor's degree. Why? Because goth women -- for better or worse -- represent the most varied range of feminine character types. While some are pretentious and -- ironically -- stuck-up some are cool. They will make you laugh, they will make you cry, they will make you think notions that are existential that are profound and they will -- by design, perhaps -- make you want to kill yourself. Even as fleeting, transitory relationships, they offer you something to consider about both the fairer sex and that what you are as an individual. You date nothing but club women or cheerleaders or nerds for a year, and you won't learn any nobler truths. Spend a year dating only goth women, however, and an whole cosmos of previously unrevealed knowledge befalls you. Hell, you may even find one which is just the ideal match, and who knows?

But maybe the biggest motive to date goth women even though you're a young dude? Because, to put it simply, existing at age 25 stops. They're professionals today, and they must terraform themselves to that dull, staid, office drone appearance. Adios blouse with sayonara eggplant eyeshadow and the shoulder pads. The ring comes out, the Doc Martens proceed the Cureshirts and the thrift shop are locked away never to see the light of day. You can always locate a bubbly cheerleader or artsy geek kind when you're 30 and 40. But the red-blooded goth? You have got up until your senior year in school, and that is pretty much your last opportunity to land one your own age.

For those of you have been pursuing a darker kind? Bear in mind, the clock is running out, and the sands of time are falling by a lot. And you don't need to visit your grave not knowing what it is like to make out with a woman wearing lipstick to midnight, do you?

Rebel Street Clothing

[rebelstreetclothing]

https://rebelstreetclothing.com/blogs/news/every-man-should-date-a-goth-girl

She changed my life in ways she could fathom, although I don't have any idea who that eighth grader was.

It was I was introduced to a particular -- Fashion? Lifestyle? Fetish? -- that's since become my greatest aesthetic quirk. All men have a kind -- a few are into your regular breastaurant waitress mold, others are to the tatted up neo-pin-up template, and many others are all about the artsy-fartsy nerd chic -- and it was here, I assume, that I developed mine: the all-American goth chick.

Now, at the moment, we did not call them "goths." In actuality, we did have an term of both genders, who wore three pounds of eyeliner everyday and wore all donned spiky jewellery. Some called them "the other children," some called them "skaters" (which none of them possessed skateboards, apparently, meant very little) but by and large, the other students called them as either "the freaks" or "the weirdos." The rest of the kids before Columbine -- were terrified. Rumors spread that They did needle drugs and hung out together on the weekends and practiced magic charms. While blaring Marilyn Manson they chainsawed hobos behind Costco to passing. Granted, the worst items they actually did was smoke cigarettes away from the movie theater and perhaps shoplift a couple of malt liquors, but they embraced the paranoia and dread the other pupils fostered for them. In a way, it made them over the junior high totem, which makes them a more effective caste system force than even the preppiest of preps.

And there was something about that I discovered inherently attractive. I found them alluring, while everybody found the women to be terrifying. Others believed their morbid, sadsack dispositions was the turnoff, but I thought it strangely entranced.

She was the first crush of my own adolescence. Even now, I've no hint what her name was, but I won't ever forget seeing her at the bus stop for the first time. Curling her auburn coif out of her eyes -- showing a pair of peppers outlined in what I presumed was an whole bottle of dollar store lashes -- she smiled a sinister smile and asked me, with the playful lunacy of Harley Quinn, "what you staring at, curly?"



I never reacted. But each time she saw me in the hallway, she would take me that half-playful, half-evil smile and say something along the lines of "hello, curled, how you doing?" I guess she thought she was freaking me, but deep down, I adored the focus (god knows, she was the only girl in the sixth grade who ever acknowledged my life.) Forget tans, forget the blindingly blonde hair and forget that all too dull "girl next door" look -- I was eternally enamored by the women who seemed more Morticia Addams compared to Christina Aguilera.

During high school and college, I more or less homed in on each of the pale girls who wore Invader Zim tops and loathed their parents. Really, my very first makeout was having a woman wearing a literal pentagram on her brow and I had been introduced to the joys of carnal pleasure with a young woman whose whole makeup chest was full of nothing but novelty Halloween lipsticks and nail polishes. Throughout these relationship sojourns, I discovered a seldom spoken truth concerning the "goth girl" motif/stereotype. Actually, I soon learned that there are really five genuses of goth woman, each with her Own idiosyncratic quirks:

THE RICH, SUBURBAN GOTH -- Her father makes $150,000 a year and her mother lets her spend $500 at a time on naturally Hot Topics buys (usually, Hello Kitty-branded lip gloss and anime-inspired belt buckles.) Really, she likes to wear a lot, although she claims to be a poetic soul. She's at least three Nightmare Before Christmas posters in her room along with the heaviest ring she listens to is AFI.

THE POOR, ANTI-SOCIAL GOTH -- She lives in a trailer park, works part-time in the local grocery store or hole in the wall restaurant (usually on the rear of the home -- they do not want her spider tattoos creeping out the clients) and has attempted at least 80 percent of all of the drugs known to man. The only thing in her handbag are the cigarettes at 7-Eleven, a few wadded bills and a switchblade. She will break up, if she does not have at least one felony on her record.

THE ARTISANAL GOTH -- She gets good grades, she is most likely the best actress in the theatre department and she spends her evenings studying Dante's Inferno from the original Italian, as it is more atmospheric like that. Her dream is to obtain a art endowment to produce the world's biggest ball of sculpture.

THE FASHIONISTA GOTH -- She's hyper-concerned about her looks. You absolutely can't leave the home till she has her winged eyeliner down. Every day she paints her nails and she makes at least one visit to Ulta. From the time she graduates college, she is usually evolved into a "health goth" or abandoned the aesthetics entirely for a new lifestyle that allots for pink and yellow wardrobe options.

THE UNKEMPT GOTH -- The reverse of this fashionista goth. She apparently just wants to kiss you shortly after she sucked down a Camel cigarette or peeled off her lips her dragon-shaped bong. Her jewelry is pewter, she farts in public and she spends at least half of their afternoon playing League of Legends. She like the poor goth, except sans the penchant for criminality. After all, to do so you must get up off the couch.

Yeah, sometimes you get a mix of three or two of these, but by and large? Each subset has its advantages and disadvantages, its flaws and benefits, something to admire and love and something to detest and hate. And men, I think you owe it yourself to experience all five of those sub-goths before you get your bachelor's degree. Why? Because goth women -- for better or worse -- represent the most varied range of feminine character types. While some are pretentious and -- ironically -- stuck-up some are cool. They will make you laugh, they will make you cry, they will make you think notions that are existential that are profound and they will -- by design, perhaps -- make you want to kill yourself. Even as fleeting, transitory relationships, they offer you something to consider about both the fairer sex and that what you are as an individual. You date nothing but club women or cheerleaders or nerds for a year, and you won't learn any nobler truths. Spend a year dating only goth women, however, and an whole cosmos of previously unrevealed knowledge befalls you. Hell, you may even find one which is just the ideal match, and who knows?

But maybe the biggest motive to date goth women even though you're a young dude? Because, to put it simply, existing at age 25 stops. They're professionals today, and they must terraform themselves to that dull, staid, office drone appearance. Adios blouse with sayonara eggplant eyeshadow and the shoulder pads. The ring comes out, the Doc Martens proceed the Cureshirts and the thrift shop are locked away never to see the light of day. You can always locate a bubbly cheerleader or artsy geek kind when you're 30 and 40. But the red-blooded goth? You have got up until your senior year in school, and that is pretty much your last opportunity to land one your own age.

For those of you have been pursuing a darker kind? Bear in mind, the clock is running out, and the sands of time are falling by a lot. And you don't need to visit your grave not knowing what it is like to make out with a woman wearing lipstick to midnight, do you?

Rebel Street Clothing

[rebelstreetclothing]

https://rebelstreetclothing.com/blogs/news/every-man-should-date-a-goth-girl

She changed my life in ways she could fathom, although I don't have any idea who that eighth grader was.

It was I was introduced to a particular -- Fashion? Lifestyle? Fetish? -- that's since become my greatest aesthetic quirk. All men have a kind -- a few are into your regular breastaurant waitress mold, others are to the tatted up neo-pin-up template, and many others are all about the artsy-fartsy nerd chic -- and it was here, I assume, that I developed mine: the all-American goth chick.

Now, at the moment, we did not call them "goths." In actuality, we did have an term of both genders, who wore three pounds of eyeliner everyday and wore all donned spiky jewellery. Some called them "the other children," some called them "skaters" (which none of them possessed skateboards, apparently, meant very little) but by and large, the other students called them as either "the freaks" or "the weirdos." The rest of the kids before Columbine -- were terrified. Rumors spread that They did needle drugs and hung out together on the weekends and practiced magic charms. While blaring Marilyn Manson they chainsawed hobos behind Costco to passing. Granted, the worst items they actually did was smoke cigarettes away from the movie theater and perhaps shoplift a couple of malt liquors, but they embraced the paranoia and dread the other pupils fostered for them. In a way, it made them over the junior high totem, which makes them a more effective caste system force than even the preppiest of preps.

And there was something about that I discovered inherently attractive. I found them alluring, while everybody found the women to be terrifying. Others believed their morbid, sadsack dispositions was the turnoff, but I thought it strangely entranced.

She was the first crush of my own adolescence. Even now, I've no hint what her name was, but I won't ever forget seeing her at the bus stop for the first time. Curling her auburn coif out of her eyes -- showing a pair of peppers outlined in what I presumed was an whole bottle of dollar store lashes -- she smiled a sinister smile and asked me, with the playful lunacy of Harley Quinn, "what you staring at, curly?"



I never reacted. But each time she saw me in the hallway, she would take me that half-playful, half-evil smile and say something along the lines of "hello, curled, how you doing?" I guess she thought she was freaking me, but deep down, I adored the focus (god knows, she was the only girl in the sixth grade who ever acknowledged my life.) Forget tans, forget the blindingly blonde hair and forget that all too dull "girl next door" look -- I was eternally enamored by the women who seemed more Morticia Addams compared to Christina Aguilera.

During high school and college, I more or less homed in on each of the pale girls who wore Invader Zim tops and loathed their parents. Really, my very first makeout was having a woman wearing a literal pentagram on her brow and I had been introduced to the joys of carnal pleasure with a young woman whose whole makeup chest was full of nothing but novelty Halloween lipsticks and nail polishes. Throughout these relationship sojourns, I discovered a seldom spoken truth concerning the "goth girl" motif/stereotype. Actually, I soon learned that there are really five genuses of goth woman, each with her Own idiosyncratic quirks:

THE RICH, SUBURBAN GOTH -- Her father makes $150,000 a year and her mother lets her spend $500 at a time on naturally Hot Topics buys (usually, Hello Kitty-branded lip gloss and anime-inspired belt buckles.) Really, she likes to wear a lot, although she claims to be a poetic soul. She's at least three Nightmare Before Christmas posters in her room along with the heaviest ring she listens to is AFI.

THE POOR, ANTI-SOCIAL GOTH -- She lives in a trailer park, works part-time in the local grocery store or hole in the wall restaurant (usually on the rear of the home -- they do not want her spider tattoos creeping out the clients) and has attempted at least 80 percent of all of the drugs known to man. The only thing in her handbag are the cigarettes at 7-Eleven, a few wadded bills and a switchblade. She will break up, if she does not have at least one felony on her record.

THE ARTISANAL GOTH -- She gets good grades, she is most likely the best actress in the theatre department and she spends her evenings studying Dante's Inferno from the original Italian, as it is more atmospheric like that. Her dream is to obtain a art endowment to produce the world's biggest ball of sculpture.

THE FASHIONISTA GOTH -- She's hyper-concerned about her looks. You absolutely can't leave the home till she has her winged eyeliner down. Every day she paints her nails and she makes at least one visit to Ulta. From the time she graduates college, she is usually evolved into a "health goth" or abandoned the aesthetics entirely for a new lifestyle that allots for pink and yellow wardrobe options.

THE UNKEMPT GOTH -- The reverse of this fashionista goth. She apparently just wants to kiss you shortly after she sucked down a Camel cigarette or peeled off her lips her dragon-shaped bong. Her jewelry is pewter, she farts in public and she spends at least half of their afternoon playing League of Legends. She like the poor goth, except sans the penchant for criminality. After all, to do so you must get up off the couch.

Yeah, sometimes you get a mix of three or two of these, but by and large? Each subset has its advantages and disadvantages, its flaws and benefits, something to admire and love and something to detest and hate. And men, I think you owe it yourself to experience all five of those sub-goths before you get your bachelor's degree. Why? Because goth women -- for better or worse -- represent the most varied range of feminine character types. While some are pretentious and -- ironically -- stuck-up some are cool. They will make you laugh, they will make you cry, they will make you think notions that are existential that are profound and they will -- by design, perhaps -- make you want to kill yourself. Even as fleeting, transitory relationships, they offer you something to consider about both the fairer sex and that what you are as an individual. You date nothing but club women or cheerleaders or nerds for a year, and you won't learn any nobler truths. Spend a year dating only goth women, however, and an whole cosmos of previously unrevealed knowledge befalls you. Hell, you may even find one which is just the ideal match, and who knows?

But maybe the biggest motive to date goth women even though you're a young dude? Because, to put it simply, existing at age 25 stops. They're professionals today, and they must terraform themselves to that dull, staid, office drone appearance. Adios blouse with sayonara eggplant eyeshadow and the shoulder pads. The ring comes out, the Doc Martens proceed the Cureshirts and the thrift shop are locked away never to see the light of day. You can always locate a bubbly cheerleader or artsy geek kind when you're 30 and 40. But the red-blooded goth? You have got up until your senior year in school, and that is pretty much your last opportunity to land one your own age.

For those of you have been pursuing a darker kind? Bear in mind, the clock is running out, and the sands of time are falling by a lot. And you don't need to visit your grave not knowing what it is like to make out with a woman wearing lipstick to midnight, do you?

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