#then i went and fucked it up by watching that silly gay science man

[parkercore-69]

i wish someone woulda told me about the medical malpractice pipeline before i watched re-animator cuz now im sat watching house md and i dunno whats become of me

[freak60000]

tell me abt the characters PEASE their relationships seem so interesting

this ask is old too but oh m GOD. i’m gonna talk about the relationships actualy but there’s so many relationships in this game like SOO many i’m not gonna do all of them here but i’m gonna do some i like. hold on tight and bear with me because i’m autistic and i know how to use it. i’m not doing them all but anyone can send another ask if they wan tto know more ^_^

also this ask made me REALLY happy i just want you to know HEHEE. 💖💖💖💖💖i love talking about my blorbos sosososoo much so this made me giggle and kick my feet while typing u know

okay. okay. i don’t even know where to start so i’ll get the ones im not too invested in out of the way. crypto and caustic HATE EACHOTHER. they are both going under fake identities and they both know it. but ALSO. crypto and caustic are stepbrothers. caustic is the biological son of mystik, an old woman who adopted crypto when he was younger. however crypto and caustic never met (i don’t think) when they were young so they didn’t actually Know this for a very long time until SOMEONEEE (me. pathfinder) literally just Guessed that since their mothers went by similar names that they were the same person. and then i just said bye and FUCKING LEFTTTTT. it was really funny they were both like. …………… see below:

ok next is uhh bloodhound and fuse. fuse joined the games and after a hard journey for the two of them bloodhound became fond of him. he comforted them throughout their journey trying to find themself and blaming themself for their home’s loss and destruction. the voice actors and like half the community ship them really hard so that’s cute i guess. idk if i’d call that canon though but they definitely are SUPER cute when they talk to one another

fuse and maggie OH BOY. OH BOY they were like Besties since they were little little kids. pretty much siblings. almost their WHOLE story is explained with this sfto though if you wanna watch that instead of me explaining. but yeah they hate each other now because fuse Left her and the already diminishing planet of Salvo to fend for themselves, basically selling them off to the syndicate. so yeah fuse is kind of a dick so maggie is furious with him (rightfully)

awwww rampart and mirage awww. they’re so cute. what started off as a bickering friendship between the two blossomed into soemthing mirage could Only define as a sibling bond, reminding him of his brothers (which he had lost). they’re siblings they’re found family and they’re so funny together their relationship makes me cry a little bit in a funny way and a sad way i love them. see below:

crypto and mirage HAHAAAAAA they have this like really gay frienemy thing going on it’s so funny. crypto called him old man and mirage called him kid when they first met even though crypto is literally older than him (there was speculation that he’s like… 28 or soemthing though but idk if that’s true or not) but yeah they’re silly

mirage and pathfinder YAYYYYYYY me and my bestie!!!! it started off as me just being like. annoying to him but then he started to like me and tolerate me and then we became besties. short and sweet but i (canonically and in-game) call him my best boyfriend so. you could say it’s a little Bit Gay but that’s up to you 😋 he loves me even if i’m a little bit silly (this is the same dynamic with wraith but she isn’t as mean to me HEHE) here’s a thing he wrote me after giving me a ton of flowers to cheer me up YAYY:

wattson and caustic ohhh boy. this one’s confusing. father-daughter like bond at first, caustic really admired her work in the science field and she appreciated his admiration. then that bond formed but caustic tried some shady shit in broken ghost because wattson started becoming besties with crypto and wattson REALLY didn’t like that so they like… weren’t friends anymore? and he did some more shady shit and she like electrocuted him and i guess that worked because now he’s like a sad puppy when he talks to her. so yeah idk what happened HAHAH.

last but not least me (pathfinder) and ash. yayyyy. i don’t liek talking about this one because i don’t like the way i was written here but i’ll give you the gist. i foudn her in the dumpster after she was put together and like. saved her i guess because she got rebuilt after. and then she moved in with me and i had a little girlcrush on her for a while (it was one of those “you’re a girl and you’re my friend, so you’re my girlfriend!” things) but she wasn’t interested (the way they wrote me was a little creepy :((( ) and she left. but she joined the games a couple seasons later and i apparently still haven’t let it go because i still. yeah. but yeah after she left i was depressed for like an entire season until my best friend mirage cheered me up ^_^ yay

[regrettablewritings]

Modern!Jaskier x Reader Ship Meme

Prompts taken from this ship meme

Which one texts like a straight white boy?: Of course it would have to be our resident white boy. It isn’t even that he necessarily means to, there’s just an embarrassing amount of overlap between the messages a straight white boy tends to text, and those of your rising star boyfriend. You’d look more into it if it weren’t for the fact that you know there’s no actual malice in it, and because it’s just so sad that it’s funny. If one were to go into the photos saved on your phone, they would’ve surely come upon an entire album of screenshots you’d taken over the years, from when Jaskier would be on tour without you to when he’d just be resting at home while you were out at work. Things like: “Wat r u up to 2nit, cutie? ;)” “I’m probably just gonna play whatever’s on my Watch Later backlog on youtube until I conk out.” “Wild!!! anyway wat would u do if i was there rn~?” Or “Do u miss me? :(” “Of course I do ya dingus!” “Ok....Can we do a quickie over videochat?” “Jas i’m at the store.” “The point still stands.” Or “Watcha thinkin bout? ;)” “About how The Great Gatsby becoming public domain means there’s nothing stopping anyone from making a drag show interpretation called The Gay Dragsby.” “Aaww w/o me? ;)” “...” “WAIT NO I THOUGT YOU’D SAY YOU WERE THINKING ABOUT ME SHIT NO.” “BUT ACTUALLY DO GO ON IM KINDA INTERESTD.” If it were anybody else, you would’ve blocked them. But this wasn’t anybody else. It was your Jaskier: Your foolhardy, constantly horny, but never-short-of-loving Jaskier. And besides, not for nothing, at least they were something you could get a laugh out of.

Which one cried during a fucking Disney movie?: Once again, Jaskier is the guilty party. It’s no secret that he’s the more emotional of the two of you -- he wore his investment in Titanic with pride, after all. But it is a secret that the particular Disney movie to make him cry was Hercules of all things! Not Bambi, not The Lion King, not even Beauty and the Beast, but goddamn Hercules! (On another note, he also cried to Coco. But that barely counts: Literally everyone and their mother has cried during Coco. The only difference here was that Jaskier could relate to being a young man so in love with music while coming from a family that discouraged the pursuit of it.) This isn’t a knock on anyone who enjoys the movie, mind you, but let’s be honest: Out of the Disney animated canon, Hercules isn’t exactly the most . . . emotionally cathartic or heart-string-plucking of the bunch. But just because it didn’t go out of its way to create a crying frenzy doesn’t mean that it’s lacking in some humanity. It is, after all, still a Disney film. The problem is, Jaskier can’t even quite express why it made him cry the night you both decided to watch it. Maybe it had something to do with a young man most people took as a joke trying to achieve greatness? And to be fair, “Go the Distance (Reprise)” and “A Star is Born” differently when you’ve done some growing . . .

Who put a goddamned fork in the microwave?: It only happened once, but you’d never let him live it down. You like to joke that you’d left him to his own devices for just fifteen minutes so that you could take a shower -- of which was completely true -- and that was all he needed for things to go downhill. Nobody wants to think they’d be in the wrong for trusting a 20-something year-old to not be his usually somewhat distractable self. But that particular day, said 20-something year-old decided to occupy that little spot of time to himself with TV and a plate of leftovers. And normally this would’ve been fine and dandy. But normally, Jaskier would’ve just waited for the food to heat before searching for something to watch. It shouldn’t have been too big of an issue that it went the other way around that day, but apparently it was. As much as he wanted to (which honestly wasn’t by much), Jaskier just couldn’t tear his eyes away from the images flashing on the TV. The baby blues were set on the screen the entire while -- up until he heard a faint popping. Followed by a sound he normally only heard in a cheesy sci-fi movie. The problem was, he wasn’t watching anything even remotely science-fiction-y . . . All you were doing when you exited the bathroom was going to grab your lotion. That was literally all you had any expectations for. What you hadn’t expected to come upon was your boyfriend, hollering and diving over the sofa in order to scramble into the kitchen and stop that strange, not-good-sounding sound. Suffice to say, you had to put your shower on hold; it simply had to wait for you to finish fussing, then again for you to finish laughing your ass off. And again because if you entered the shower still laughing, you’d probably slip and break your head open and then Jaskier would have to deal with another possible emergency caused by himself.

Who does the silly hands-over-the-eyes “Guess who?” thing?: You can both be guilty of it, but Jaskier without a doubt does it more. Sometimes he’ll emerge from “his cave” (aka the little nook in the apartment where he likes to mess around and write lyrics or arrangements) on a break and catch an unsuspecting you sitting on the couch or at the dinner table. Other times, it could just be when he comes back from running some errands or doing a quick interview at the local radio station. You don’t mind it much . . . Especially since you can get a rise out of him by purposefully guessing the wrong person. (“Hmmm . . . Could it be . . . my mail-order husband? Boy, that was quick. And all the way from Russia, too . . .” “Uh, no.” “The milkman, finally accepting my invitation to commence a torrid love affair?” “Okay, you know damn well -- ” “Or better yet: My hopes and dreams have manifested, oh, Waluigi, could it really and truly be you!?” “What in the absolute fuck --”)

Who puts their cold hands/feet on their partner?: Because it’s usually himself who presents as being the more mischievous of the two, and because he tends to run the warmest, it always shocks Jaskier when you decide to play dirty and put your cold limbs all over him. Is it childish? Yes. But are his reactions to the sudden feeling of icy flesh hilarious? Also yes. You love to creep up on him when he’s tuning his guitar or scribbling down lyrics, or just minding his own damn business by trying to actually turn in relatively early for once. You love even more to watch him jolt and release the most high-pitched yip a man of his build could ever even joke about making. You’ll still be laughing about it as he scowls at you, cursing your “ghoul hands” and demanding to know if he’s dating a corpse at this point. Of course, no matter how peeved he might be, you can always count on one other thing from his dramatic reactions: Him huffily grabbing your hands into his own and rubbing them warm, or him forcing a park of fuzzy socks on your feet. And just for extra measure, you can be sure that he’ll spend the rest of the night holding you close or cuddling you -- “For exchanging bodily heat purposes,” he will always reason.

Who had that embarrassing reality TV marathon?: You both are guilty of it, actually. The question should really be, who is the least shameful about it. As with most things regarding a lack of shame, it was, of course, our dear Jaskier. Being a musician with a growing following, the little attention whore just can’t miss out on an opportunity to show himself off to his awaiting public. A rising star with relatability and a taste for trash? People eat that shit up! So you’ve learned to be less surprised every time he decides to liveblog himself watching things like Love Island or any of the 90-Day Fiancee spin-offs. In fact, in more recent times, you’ve come to join in with him, adding your own corresponding Tweets and commentary. Though don’t be too shocked once he starts holding polls and letting the public decide what show the two of you should watch next.

Who laughs more during sex?: You do, completely through Jaskier’s own efforts. Jaskier’s always had a pretty lax view of sex. This didn’t change when he met you, of course, but how he specifically portrayed that laxness did undergo some metamorphosis. Before, the entertainer was much more intent on his bedroom experiences being a display of power and an ability to please. Something dramatic and to be taken seriously. He still sees the importance of satisfaction in the bedroom, mind you, but with you, he can’t help but feel more . . . comfortable. With you, it’s a little more okay if he accidentally makes a dumb noise that in no way can be salvaged as sexy. With you, it’s a little more okay if he struggles to get his or your pants off, or if he struggles with removing your bra. And with you, he’s come to find that he’s a lot more okay with sharing a giggle or being a little more loose about things. It’s fine if your fingers tickle him or if he struggles to think of something proper dirty. But it’s even more fine if you think something he says or does makes you laugh, but not in a way that discredits his efforts. When you laugh, it shows that you’re comfortable with him. Comfortable enough to be with him, and be truly vulnerable. So do forgive him if he can’t help but run his fingers up your sides in a tickling fashion, or sloppily string together an innuendo. He simply loves how golden your laughter sounds, even in the throes of passion, intermingled with sweet whimpers and pleas of his name. How the heave of your chest and rippling of your tummy bumpily sync in with the rhythm of his thrusts . . . He just wants to see your smile, your genuine mirth, and bask in it with you. Besides, it serves as excellent song inspiration for him . . .

Who is the little spoon?: It depends on the sway of the day, really. As a whole, you both take turns without much thought simply because you tend to just fall into your positions. Some days, you just happen to lay into him in a way that makes you the little spoon. Other days, he conks out next to you in a manner that most could consider would make you the big spoon (or jet pack). Neither side really fights how it plays out unless one or the other may feel small and vulnerable, or just plain tired and in need of comfort. You often find yourself playing the role of the more dominating position during those first few days after Jaskier returning home from either a quick tour, or after finishing a long week of hours upon hours in the studio, or whatever kind of press-related nonsense his management team told him he needed to do. For as much as your boyfriend loved the spotlight, the truth was he was still quite capable of burning out and needing time to himself. Or, at the very least, just time with you. Even if that means he’s asleep for most of it, with you clinging to his back as he drifts off into a much-needed sleep. He makes sure to return it tenfold when you need just the same. Sure, your occupation may not be of the same nature as his own, but that didn’t mean you were in any less need of his cuddling. In fact, with him being gone as often as he was, Jaskier couldn’t help but feel almost guilty for not always being able to provide you with the basic comforts of being a constantly present boyfriend. Hence why the moment he would see your fatigued body crossing the threshold of your apartment, he would be all over you, ushering you into a quick shower, followed by a quick and simple dinner or snack, and capped off with him cuddling about you from behind. It didn’t matter if you’d come home right in the middle of a writing frenzy, or even if he’d been in the middle of searching for a breakthrough with an arrangement -- for as vain and bullheaded as Jaskier could be, he knew he owed you at least this much. You already put up with so much of his nonsense; this was quite literally the least he could do, both for you and for himself. Besides, he who was he to fight against the feeling of you wiggling closer into his hold, to deny himself the sound of your soft breathing as you lay yourself vulnerable to him? The fact of the matter is that he simply isn’t. He couldn’t be. Maybe in the beginning when things were still so unsteady and uncertain, but never now, when things had become so . . . well, what he could only describe as being “the both of you”. The both of you, molded and entwined, never wanting to let go. Never planning on it, either.

[qwertyfingers]

Not to be too forward but please drop your TNG watch order.

okay tng is. complex. here’s how i’d do it I think. I’m jumping about a lot, and I’m also struggling to remember a lot of it because my first watch was 7 years ago and my rewatch w friends we just did Sherlock Holmes and then went straight into chronological order. so this is like, combo of a handful of eps I remember being plot important and just stuff that makes me laugh.

Elementary, My Dear Data (S2E3) and Ship In A Bottle (S6E12). a) introduces you perfectly to the concept of holodeck episodes, which will be important later b) DaForge married gay energy off the charts c) Picard is really fun. the only failing of this as a start is the tragic lack of Guinan

ALL of the Q eps. Speedrun the Qcard nonsense and get a lot of the overall show plot

Encounter at Farpoint (S1E1 and S1E2)

Hide and Q (S1E10) - unnervingly babyfaced Riker. you could skip this one but it lays some good basis for who the Q continuum are, but it’s kind of fun

Q Who (S2E16) - borg introduction! absolute must watch. The insanity of ‘to learn about you is frankly provocative… but you’re next of kin to chaos’ as a line alone, let alone the voice Patrick Stewart gives to it. Iconic episode.

Deja Q (S3E13) - Q getting turned into a human as punishment for being a naughty boy. V funny, must watch

QPid (S4E20 babeyyyyy) - MUST WATCH one of thee funniest episodes and experiencing the QCard speedrun from farpoint to qpid is a very special kind of brainworms

True Q (S6E6) - this one is skippable tbh, but it is pretty fond and I’m personally fond of running a full Q supercut

Tapestry (S6E15) - this one isn’t as fun as most Q eps but it is VERY TNG-ish and therefore a must watch. If you’ll forgive the pun, it really gets at the heart of Picard’s character

All Good Things (S7E25 and S7E26) - as with most Star Trek finales it’s not the best. You don’t have to watch this here but it can be a fun bookend for the Q speedrun

You could also go watch DS9’s Q-Less (S1E6) if you’d like to see Q get punched in the face, it’s really very satisfying

You kind of have to watch The Best of Both Worlds (S3E26 and S4E1). If you’ve seen TNG before, you don’t need to worry about when you watch it. If you haven’t seen any TNG yet, watch it here.

Darmok (S5E2) - THEE most star trek of all star trek’s. hmu if you ever want me to rant about Darmok I have a whole badly-structured personal essay about it ready to go at all times

Disaster (S5E5) - Geordi and Crusher teamup is really fun, and ‘executive officer in charge of radishes’ is the best line in all 7 seasons of TNG

Schisms (S6E5) - you could just watch from the opening until Data’s poetry recital ngl. The ep is decent and I’d personally watch it all but this ep is mostly about Data’s poetry.

Sub Rosa (S7E14) - Crusher fucks a ghost. iconic behaviour

Dixon Hill eps! They’re fun and silly and much like watching TOS’ A Piece of The Action

The Big Goodbye (S1E12)

Manhunt (S2E19) - Lwxana. I’d do anything for Lwxana

Clues (S4E14) - Guinan as Gloria is so much fun I love her and she should have got a full episode!!!!!

The Measure of a Man (S2E9) - important Federation and Data lore. Very emotional.

Yesterday’s Enterprise (S3E16) - Tasha’a back!!!!!!!! Just a very cool ep imo

Hero Worship (S5E11) - Extremely good Data ep, good content about Federation attitude to mental illness

Datalore (S1E12) - another important Data ep, and Lore is laways fun

The Offspring (S3E16) - Data wants to be a dad!!!

I, Borg (S5 E23) - HUGH!!! IT’S ALL ABOUT HUGH!!!!!!!!! (I like to watch this right after The Offspring because it’s direct parallels of geordi and data just wanting to take care of people)

Brothers (S4E18) - more Data (And Lore) content

Descent (S6E26 and S7E1) - not required watching, but Lore is fun and evil

Fistful of Datas (S6E7) - EXTREMELY SILLY GOOD FUN ALLROUND. CAN NEVER GO WRONG W ACOWBOY EP

Sarek (S3E23) - I can’t remember the plot I just know Sarek shows up in a lavender robe and has mad chemistry with Picard. I’m  pretty sure they mind meld really hard??? Lord help me the old men you put on this spaceship to do politics are exploring eachothers’ minds in the most intimate manner possible <3

Unification (S5E7 and S5E8) - Spock attempts to re-unify Romulus and Vulcan. Iconic 2-parter, but definitely the kind of episode that benefits from watching with a friend so you can add commentary

if you like Romulan episodes you could watch the full Sela arc before this one (The Mind’s Eye S4E24, Redemption S4E26/S5E1, Unification)

Face of The Enemy (S6E14) - I can’t remember the entire plot but I’m pretty sure it was good and I love a good Romulan ep

The Host (S4E23) - Trill introduction!!!! So good.

The Game (S5E6) - profoundly stupid but worth it for how funny the graphics for the game are

Cause and Effect (S5E18) - just a pretty cool one

Time’s Arrow (S5E26 and S6E1) - One of TNG’s strongest plots imo

The Inner Light (S5E25) - another banger plot; Picard gets hit by a psychic probe and lives an entire life in a history that has already happened. there’s a really good Spones fic based on this episode and I could read an au like this for any ship I swear

Relics (S6E4) - Scotty!!!! It’s fun

Chain of Command (S6E10 and S6E11) - another one of TNG’s strongest plots. The origin of the ‘there are FOUR lights’ meme.

Birthright (S6E16 and S6E17) - this is an infamous double parter but all I actually remember is Julian Bashir appearing and meeting Data

Ensign Ro’s intro ep Ensign Ro (S5E03) i LOVE her

The Next Phase (S5E24) - cool ep where Ro and Geordi get stuck out of phase and are invisible from the crew, pretty fun

and the end of her arc with Preemptive Strike (S7E24)

I personally love Barclay and just choose to live in a universe where the misogyny wasn’t happening and he was just a weird little man, but if he bothers you, you can skip his arc. Don’t skip Genesis tho it’s good

Hollow Pursuits (S3E21)

The Nth Degree (S4E19)

Realm of Fear (S6E2)

Genesis (S7E19) - perfectly batshit star trek fake science. I love it

Masks (S7E17) - extremely silly and therefore fantastic

after this point I’d go back and watch in order all the way through, or look up a watch order for eps that are actually important plot-wise :’) 

[exhaustedfander]

The Best Way to Flirt, Logically [Analogical]

@notdeadyet09 made a request for this so here ya go! This is very silly but I had fun with it.

A03 link

Word Count: 1,498

Summary: It would seem only logical that Logan had absolutely no tact, at least that’s how Roman saw it. He had no distain for him, in fact, they had been very close friends for years now. Sure, they had their disagreements from time-to-time – which was to say, quite often – but for the most part the two got along a lot better than they had in the past. Roman had a lot of respect for his friend so, incredibly respectfully, mind you, he informed Logan that he was fairly certain Logan couldn’t flirt to save his life.

It would seem only logical that Logan had absolutely no tact, at least that’s how Roman saw it. He had no distain for him, in fact, they had been very close friends for years now. Sure, they had their disagreements from time-to-time – which was to say, quite often – but for the most part the two got along a lot better than they had in the past. Roman had a lot of respect for his friend so, incredibly respectfully, mind you, he informed Logan that he was fairly certain Logan couldn’t flirt to save his life.

“Excuse me?” Logan asked, clearly attempting to mask any offence in his tone. It didn’t work.

“I say it in a very loving way,” Roman clarified, though the laugh that followed the statement seemed to indicate that he was not, in fact, saying it lovingly, “I just can’t imagine you being any good at flirting, pocket-protector.”

Logan sighed before pouring himself a cup of coffee. He certainly hadn’t asked to be insulted first thing in the morning, but Roman seemed to be dead-set on doing so.

“Tell me, Roman, what makes you think so? I’m fairly certain anyone, to some extent, could attempt to, woo, as you might phrase it, a potential romantic interest. After all, you were able to convince Patton to court you.”

Roman slapped a hand over his chest, letting out a dramatic gasp.

“Well, I never! I’ll have you know that I very gallantly seduced him! I am a prince, after all. Of course I know how to flirt! I’m the master.” Logan quirked an eyebrow.

“Is that so?” Roman sputtered.

“Of course it is! How dare you say otherwise?!” “Well, I don’t know, Roman. Perhaps because you’ve just insulted me.” Roman made a noncommittal noise before sighing.

“Listen, teach, I don’t mean to upset you and I’m sorry if I have,” that was true, too. Although Roman often expressed the fact that making fun was “how he showed his love” he was working on doing so less and taking other’s feelings into consideration more. Even so, there was always room for improvement. “All I mean is that you’re the brainy guy and I’m the prince. Of course I’m the one who has all the flirting power.”

Logan huffed after taking a sip of his coffee, casting the most irritated glance he could muster for the time in the morning.

“That logic seems rather biased. Just because I’m the “brainy guy,” as you so eloquently put it, shouldn’t mean that I’m incapable of flirting successfully.” Logan was about to elaborate on his statement before hearing a door open down the hall and seeing Virgil stumble into the kitchen blearily. Logan closed his mouth, any further argument in his favor dying as he watched Virgil pour himself a cup of black coffee and begin to chug it with the most lovestruck expression – not that Logan would ever admit to such things.

A glint of mischief usually only reserved for Remus glinted in Roman’s eyes as Roman turned to Virgil and Logan cursed the day he was born (which was rather odd, considering he was entirety aware that he was a side, and thusly, never had been born).

“Help me out here, Hot Topic,” Roman said with a smile Logan didn’t trust in the least bit. Virgil took his lips off of his Nightmare Before Christmas mug, sending Roman a scowl.

“What do you want, princey?” Virgil’s voice, while already rather deep, was even more so when he’d just woken up. He was still clad in his pajamas, a purple and black storm clouds just like his logo and his hair still clearly hadn’t seen the likes of a comb. That was to say Virgil looked adorable and it would be incredibly difficult to argue otherwise. It was simply factual.

“Wow, grumpy much?” Roman complained, earning a shrug in response, “Anyway, I think that Microsoft Nerd over here can’t flirt to save his life, but he can’t seem to agree. What says you?”

Suddenly, Logan rerated more than ever confiding in Roman that he had an…infatuation with Virgil. He’d already had to endure a slew of teasing but that had been manageable. This, on the other hand, was shaping up to be something different entirely.

Virgil snorted, a sound that was much more chipper than his attitude had been prior. It was a beautiful sound, Virgil’s laughter, and Logan would have relished in the sound had it not been at his expense.

“L, come on, you know you’re one of my best friends but there is no way you’ve got any flirting game.” A scowl settled over Logan’s face as he set his coffee cup on the counter and crossed his arms over his chest.

“So you two are in agreement? I had hoped that maybe you would’ve taken my side, Virgil.” Logan did his best to mask the hurt in his tone, unconscious of how much of it might be seeping through. Virgil frowned, placing a hand on Logan’s shoulder.

“I’m not saying it to piss you off, man. It’s just…I mean – sorry, I didn’t mean to make you upset – I don’t imagine you’d be very uh, good at it.” The dejected expression on Logan’s face spoke volumes because as quick as ever Virgil was rushing to make a clarification, “Not to say that I know how to flirt either!”

Roman, amazingly, had watched this conversation in silence before deciding butting in was in his best interest.

“You’re being too soft with him. Logan, I bet you ten bucks you can’t successfully flirt with Virgil!”

Logan’s heartbeat quickened in a matter of seconds as he sent Roman an incredulous look of frustration. He couldn’t tell if Roman was trying to tease him, be his wingman or both, but either way he was handling it extraordinarily poorly.

“Whoa, Roman, he – he doesn’t have to do that. Logan, you don’t need to do that, don’t listen to him, he’s just being an asshole,” Virgil sputtered, looking mortified. Hm. As nervous as Logan was becoming in this situation, Virgil’s reaction to the prospect of him flirting with him was curious. Could that mean – well, only one way to find out.

“Fine, I’ll take your bet,” Logan said as he turned to Roman before redirecting his attention on Virgil.

“Do you have eleven protons?”

“W-what?”

“Because you’re sodium fine.”

“PFFFFT! That’s how you flirt? Nerdy science things? There’s no way that’s going to work on Virgil! Virgil, tell him this isn’t working on you.” To Roman’s surprise, Virgil’s face had just reddened a shade or two deeper.

“I-I…”

“You must have a charge because I am finding myself feeling very attracted to you.”

“These are freaking ridiculous. Just give me the ten bucks now, you’re just digging your own grave at this point. Right Virgil – Virgil? Why do you look so red-in-the-face? No. No! There’s no way this is what does it for you!” Roman said, glancing between Logan and a very flustered Virgil.

“Are you my appendix? Because I don’t understand how you work but this feeling in my stomach makes me want to take you out.”

“L-Lo these are fucking awful, come on, stop it,” Virgil said with a hand covering his mouth and a look in his eyes like he very much did not want him to stop it.

“I could really see myself periodically doing you on a table.” That, it seemed, was Virgil’s breaking point because suddenly Virgil went rigid with a look of what can only be described as “Complete and utter gay panic” in his eyes.

“I – uh – need to go be. Somewhere else!” Virgil said before quickly sinking out of the room and leaving Roman and Logan alone. Roman put his face in his hands and sighed loudly.

“Oh come on! I had faith that Virgil had better taste than those corny things.” Logan raised an eyebrow, still a little overwhelmed that went as positively as it did.

“You say that having a boyfriend who regularly makes bad puns.” “Hey! Don’t you insult Pat’s puns, that’s-that’s different.” Logan rolled his eyes.

“I’m sure.”

“How many of those things do you have memorized? And why in the world would you, what use would they serve? I would assume you of all people wouldn’t enjoy that kind of flirting.”

“Oh, I have flashcards,” Logan explained, “You never know when they might come into use. Now, I believe you owe me ten dollars.” Roman grumbled, reaching into his pocket and presenting the bill.

“Well, aren’t you going to go woo the emo nightmare now? Considering how he left in such a hurry, I would unfortunately have to call that mess a rousing success.” Logan smiled faintly, thinking of how Virgil had reacted.

“I do believe you’re right,” Logan said, failing to mask just how excited he was before leaving the room.

Roman was right, Logan could most certainly not flirt.

It was a good thing that Virgil had a weakness for nerds with absolutely atrocious pick-up-lines.

=+=

[nodesiretogrowup]

alrighty, let’s recap this bitch!

LAUNCHPAD! I’VE MISSED YOU SO MUCH! PLEASE COME BACK!

I looked up when National S’mores Day is (because I’m a nerd) and it is August 10. So either the photo later was mislabeled or, more likely, Launchpad got the wrong info

Huey with the little baby scouts is TOO CUTE!!

I wonder if Violet’s there. Probably not because she would have been hanging out with Huey if she was. Or this episode was meant to come before Challenge

It’s a baby beagle boy! I wonder if he’s there of his own will or if it is part of some plan

He scared away most of the kids! Now they won’t get to enjoy s’more-y goodness

His s’more sounds DOPE AF, though it probably would give you INSTANT DIABETES

“Aw, not even a modern robot.” MY SWEET SON!

I know it was the bully saying it, but Huey should chill a bit when it comes to doing things EXACTLY and PERFECTLY. It’s just gonna cause stress

 BOYD IS BABY AND I LOVE HIM

“Would you like to be friends?” “Sure. Wow, that was easy.” If only it was always that easy

I don’t know if Huey has the JWG as memorized as he thinks, going by Challenge and Quack Pack

“We’re just kids.” “Definitely!” *uses laser eyes to light fire*

This episode does a good job showing what a trigger word/phrase is like, though I’m not sure if that was the intention

I like that a squirrel with a burnt tail scurries out of one of the trees. It’s the attention to detail that helps elevate this show

Instead of jumping out of the way or hiding Huey jumps straight onto Boyd to try and help him. Huey already sees Boyd as someone worth protecting

The kid that just runs across the screen while his hat is on fire is great

Not sure why they took the time to change before going to Gyro but whatever

BOYD IS ADORABLE AND I LOVE HIM

“I’m more than an intern, I’m a scientist.” I feel like this might be hinting at Fenton’s arc for the season, possibly wanting to be seen more as a scientist than a superhero

I’m gonna pretend that using sunglasses on someone who is shooting lasers out of their eyes is a Cyclops reference. And they look pretty dope too

At least Fenton knows when he is in over his head...this time

Gyro trying to climb up on the table to avoid Boyd was kind of funny. And then him protecting himself with Lil Bulb

“Which one?” Manny is DONE with this shit

“Boyd? What idiot called it that?” Even when he’s not there, Gyro can still burn Mark lol

I figured 2-BO was a reference to something but wasn’t sure what. Apparently it’s a bit of a play on the name of Astro Boy’s in-universe creator’s son. Neat

 Huey stays in between Gyro and Boyd to protect Boyd

Fenton’s face cracks me up. There are NO THOUGHTS in this man’s head lol

“You were an intern like me?” “Nothing like you.” Damn Gyro, why so salty?

I don’t know why Fenton is so surprised that Gyro was an intern. I feel like that’s a pretty standard thing

LOVE IS STORED IN THE BOYD

It make me sad when Gyro mentions how many times Boyd’s core programing was altered. Poor baby doesn’t really get a say in what happens to him

“ROAD TRIP!” Huey, you do these kinds of things ALL THE TIME. I feel like he should be used to this by now

“YOU’RE not going. GIZMODUCK is.” Does Gyro see Fenton and Gizmoduck as separate entities or is this just a no, but yes type of joke?

Huey standing up for Boyd is so sweet. They barely know each other but Huey trusts him

When the episode doesn’t have the theme song you KNOW shit’s ‘bout to go down

I wonder who’s flying the plane. My guess is Launchpad because Della would have been cooing over Huey making a new friend and go into embarrassing mom mode. He probably went of on his own adventure or did tourist things like buying collectables. Or maybe Gyro flew them there. Who knows

As many people have said, the art direction and animation for this episode are BEAUTIFUL. I love the pink tint the lighting has in most of the episode

SAILOR MOON CONFIRMED CANON

I bet Mark Beaks is a Sailor Moon fan

I like that the in-universe Sailor Moon is a bunny because Usagi is Japanese for rabbit

I love that going incognito nowadays means you wear a hat, a hoodie, and sunglasses. Boyd looks good in red (though red is my favorite color so I might be biased)

Gyro-takes one step and the fuzz shows up. NOICE

I like detective lady. She has a cool design

Huey and Fenton are awful at acting casual

“Crimes?” Oh my sweet Hubert. I’m pretty sure most if not all of Scrooge’s employees have had run ins w/ The Law

Gyro is like, move I’m gay

“I’m here on a very important...field trip.” ALL THE KIDS NEED A GYRO FIELD TRIP LIKE HOW THE GAANG GOT ZUKO FIELD TRIPS

Lil Bulb said FUCK THE POLICE

I wonder what it actually says

Fenton just watches as the inspector chases Lil Bulb

Seriously though, Fenton does a bunch of silly stuff in the background and this episode warrants a rewatch SOLELY for him

How did Lil Bulb know where to find them? And how did he shake off the inspector? I want to see his little adventure

FOR SCIENCE!

“Blah!” *arm armor attaches* I want this joke to come back

Fenton and Huey INSTANTLY nerd out. I love them

Fenton being a Gyro fanboy is ADORABLE

“AH, DUST IN MY EYE! The dust of GENIUS!” What a dweeb lol

I like that Fenton keeps the arm on for the whole scene

Poor Boyd, he looks so scared

Huey going into protective big brother mode

Doofus continues to be equal parts hilarious and disturbing

Where are their parents? Like, someone should be looking after these kids! ESPECIALLY DOOFUS!

“Do you need a hug?” I SURE FUCKING DO

Mark is such a prick lol

“NO WAY, A ROBOT BOY! DREAMS DO COME TRUE!” YOU DON’T DESERVE THAT DREAM YOU COCKWAFFLE

SOMEONE HUG THIS CHILD! BECAUSE I CANNOT!

“Seems like the little guy’s had it tough.” MY POOR BABY

Lil Bulb gets SO PISSED he blew a fuse

You really shouldn’t have left them alone, Gyro

Why does Fenton automatically jump to superhero for Boyd? I mean the theme of the episode is letting Boyd choose who he wants to be so of course Fenton would have his own idea of what Boyd should be, but why go straight to superhero? Do you want superbros, Fenton?

Huey already realises this might be a bad idea, because he’s more concerned about Boyd as a person rather than Boyd as a machine

“IN RETROSPECT WE PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE USED THE FIRST HOLE” Fenton, you dumbass genius

Dr. Akita’s setup made me laugh. I DIED when he “enhanced” the image

I recognized the character on the chips though I don’t know their name. I’m more of a western animation fan, so many of the references probably flew pass me

BOOP

I also have a key on my laptop that flies off (it’s the u key)

I LOVE BABY GYRO! It’s so cool they went with his og look (minus the red hair) to show him younger

I LOVE THE OUTLAW COUPLE! SO COOL! SO HOT!

Huey is so DONE with Fenton

I love the stupid G pose he does. PLEASE HAVE HIM DO IT AGAIN. PREFERABLY WHEN DW IS NEARBY

Such a polite boy

“My bones are metal!” This line and Boyd’s catchphrase of “Hi, I’m Boyd/2-BO, a definitely real boy!” reminded me of Olaf. The end of the episode gives Boyd even MORE Olaf parallels

Gizmoduck sliding by those boxes was cool

How did Gizmoduck get himself unstuck from that alley?

I loved the double take the female outlaw does

Huey is TRAUMATIZED

I legit thought Boyd was gonna light the oil on fire the first time I watched and I was like that won’t help

“So, what do we do now?” “I...don’t know.” This is why you don’t leave babies alone to fight criminals

Boyd reminded me of Calculester from Monster Prom when he asked the lady to return the money

STOP LEAVING THE CHILDREN ALONE! THEY ARE BABIES! THEY AREN’T EVEN TEENS!

“Why do we always fight when we’re on vacation?” Because this is Ducktales and there is no such thing as a normal vacation

Lil Bulb just kicking his lil feet

The “lab” safety poster made me chuckle. Then I remembered Akita is also a dog and I laughed more

LITTLE BABY GYRO GRADUATING! My guess is his professor/dean/principal influenced him on a personal level and is partially the reason Boyd is a parrot

Lil Helper blueprints. Nice reference to the og series

Has anyone talked about the poster with the cogs and the dogman in old-timey clothes that says GIZMOS on it? I think it’s a Dr. Who reference

IDEALISTIC GYRO AND BOYD IS TOO CUTE!

How did he NOT notice the second hole in the wall?

That is a surplus of handcuffs. Do you think she uses them for...fun times?

“I’m just a guy! With very bruisable skin!”

Poor misunderstood Gyro inventions

Boyd just politely waves at everyone

Huey is WAY calmer than I would be if I got lost in an unfamiliar city

Boyd says FUCK WORK

 I love Huey stimming. Really hope Disney will let them confirm in words that Huey is autistic

Is it more common for two kids to wonder around by themselves in Tokyo? Because as an American I find it super stressful and would want to find their parents so they could be safer

THE BUNNY! AND THEN THE KITTIES!

Do cats just take buses on their own in Tokyo?

CHERRY BLOSSOM TIME BITCHES

“And I know what you’re thinking, what about ninjas?” I am ALWAYS wondering about ninjas

I like that Huey finally has a friend who shares the same interests and doesn’t mind info dumps

“Boyd, I don’t think you’re a killer robot. You’re just a kid.” “Aw, that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.” T_T

I CAN SHOW YOU THE WORLD

I like Boyd’s motief

Akita is us after the quarantine

When he complained about being stiff I was like mood

I like his Green Goblin disc thingy

The other people don’t give a shit about Boyd just FLYING DOWN WITH HIS ROCKET FEET!

Gyro shows up *dramatic wind*

His tablet has a duckie on it. I wounder if they have a Mac/PC thing going on with Waddle and what brand the duckie represents

When the adults argue and Boyd gets all sad and scared I FELT THAT

Huey doing his best to keep Boyd calm and defend him SO PURE

OH GOD HELP THIS POOR CHILD!

HUEY IS A GOOD BOY AND A GOOD FRIEND

“Because of you I’ve become an outcast.” I feel like you did that to yourself

ANIME HAIR POOF

ngl, that shit was TERRIFYING

“You don’t have to do what Akita tells you. Do what I tell you.” So close

“INTERN! FIGHT BETTER!”

Huey must weigh NOTHING if Gyro can pick him up

Akita’s tail looks like a cinnamon roll

Huey always finding that hidden info

The gibberish Gyro says is great

BOYD SAYS IT BECAUSE GYRO TOLD HIM THAT!

THAT HUG!!!

HOW DARE AKITA HURT BABY GYRO AND SWEET BABY BOYD?!

PROTECTIVE PAPA GYRO

NEEEEERRRRRRRD FIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT

“You’ll never invent anything worthwhile.” LIL BULB HAS ENTERED THE FIGHT

Are doggos recyclable?

HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGS

Blue eyes=good robot

ANOTHER HUG

Be Only Yourself, Dude

I like that basically Gyro admitted that he was like Fenton if Fenton hadn’t had support

“That’s not technically how doctorites work, BUT I DON’T CARE!” Do you think Gyro doesn’t have his doctorate or do you think he assumed Fenton already had one?

“The hugging is a ‘just for today’ thing.” YOU CANNOT STOP THE HUG TRAIN!

“Leave. Now.”

Are they gonna go to the plane?

This season has been consistently knocking it out of the park! I’m a SLUT for backstory episodes, so I enjoyed this one a lot. I loved seeing Gyro when he had hope and faith in the world. It SUCKS that Akita took that away from him. Hopefully Gyro will see things slightly less cynical now. Fenton was a dweeb the whole episode and I love him for it. Boyd is SO SWEET AND PRECIOUS and in NO WAY deserved the treatment he got. I have a feeling there is more to Boyd’s creation/Dr.Akita that we’ll get later on. Huey was ADORABLE this episode. It’s really sweet to see him hangout with someone who gets him. Everyone deserves to have at least one friend like that. The fight scene was GORGEOUS! SO FLUID! I really loved this one and I hope we get more Team Science episodes because these characters play really well off each other. 

[eternaleve]

I’ve spent the course of COVID lockdown cycling through hyperfixations while also trying to engage in some much needed therapy (lolsob), and I’ve been essentially encouraging myself to try and do more things I can enjoy without feeling shame. Anyway, that’s a short way of saying I decided to blog about all the music videos of Depeche Mode for reasons of science.

The science is that my basic premise is that most of the videos are pretty bad in ways that I find to be pretty strange. Full disclosure is that I spent my teen years being a huge Cure fan and there’s an overlap there? Of songs with very niche high-concept ideas that don’t necessarily map onto a model of popular music but found mainstream success in the rise of new wave music in the wake of the collapse of first wave punk and amplified by the creation of music videos and music video TV. And I owned all the Cure music videos and played them on my iPod Nano because I was a very strange child. But to get back to my central thesis, many of The Cure’s videos are very stylised and fun and memorable in ways that are good. And yet, despite existing in the same sphere and having an overlap of fans, the music videos for Depeche Mode mostly stay bad until the end of the eighties, a fact I will prove by watching them all.

Can you tell that I am bored because i have lost my job and my mental health is making me fixate on strange shit currently because that is absolutely the case right now

Speak & Spell

Dreaming of Me (Feb 1981)

The single art is really lovely - the red/yellow contrast is very striking against the white, and I really love the design. Hey remember when people used to go out and buy singles and you would appreciate them and the work that went into them? I don’t think I’ve bought a physical single since I was about sixteen. I used to buy them from the Woolworths music department because it was cheap and all my friends worked there, so they had a pretty lenient attitude about what exactly constituted paying for things. Woolworths policy of only hiring teenagers is probably what destroyed their business.

Anyway, Dreaming of Me did not chart super well, getting to number 57 and having no official music video - or actually getting onto the album. It wasn’t included on Speak & Spell in the UK until the 2006 re-release. So, there was no music video for me to look at…

Apart from this video I found from local TV in 1981 to promote the song. It’s a maybe-music video. Because music videos had only been around for about six years and MTV didn’t exist until later in the same year, my guess is that Mute Records were pretty cautious about putting money into a medium that might cost more than they would get in publicity. That’s only a guess. I don’t have a crystal ball for forty years ago. 

Anyway, here are some children recording music.

If i was 19 and someone offered me a recording contract I would have taken it without thinking (like i took on all those student loans without thinking through any consequences wompwomp) but now I am nearly thirty I watch this and think, ‘These children shouldn’t be outside unaccompanied’. The passage of time has made a fool of me.

They go bowling and play Space Invaders which, hey, still sounds like a great night out to me, but I’m guessing that because this is very clearly aimed at teenagers the TV producers didn’t want to encourage teen drinking by showing them performing a gig at a club night.

I call it high fashion. The all-grey really sells it.

This reminds me so much of a advice column in teen magazines - when they’d have problems set out in a little faux-comic strip of still photos? ‘My best friend stole and read my diary’ ‘My crush found out about how I feel and now he’s going out with my best friend’, that sort of thing. That is also a classic carpet pattern. I think my grandma’s living room had that carpet. 

The video is very naive! It’s the sort of thing we would all see now on Youtube from bands just starting out and it is wild to me that this went out on TV. It’s very un-glossy and normal, the stuff that bands put out on YouTube now because of DIYness.

New Life (June 1981)

This is also a really great piece of single art. It’s very bold and striking - it would definitely be the standout record in a sea of other 7’’ released the same week. It also doesn’t particularly match the tone of the single but eh, it looks pretty cool. New Life did much better than Dreaming of Me and got up to number 11 in the UK singles chart. Still no official music video, but the charting meant that the band got onto Top of The Pops! ToTP was cancelled when I was a wee baby teen, because the BBC decided to stop caring about yoof viewership and promoting music was circling the drain everywhere as streaming hit, but it was the place to promote music so was definitely a sign that You Had Made It.

So, last video was silly and made by children, but now they’re wearing see-through mesh shirts, leather trousers, and leather hats with a design that I am a little bit dubious about. I grew up on the oi/punk scene and let me tell you about how many first wave punks wear iconography of bad regimes for faux edginess reasons because I met a LOT of them in my time.

Oh boy do i have thoughts about that hat. It also looks like a Leather Daddy hat which, well, let’s leave that thought to one side. Most ToTP performances were lipsynced. Playing things live would sound weird in the studio, be picked up strangely by the audio equipment and the cameras, so 99% of performances were mimed to the single. Now, some acts would deliberately play up to the pretence and refuse to act like they were doing anything that corresponded to the song - The Jam, The Communards, and The Cure are literally the first examples that come to mind who would just… not do anything close to pretending it was real. 

This is not that. It is very earnest and awkward and serious, which sort of makes it very sweet.

Just Can’t Get Enough (September 1981)

Right, that is shibari, isn’t it? I’m not blind, am I? It’s a very striking image that 99.9% of people would not recognise other than being a striking black and white image. 

I don’t think I can overstate how… innocent, in a way, this point of time was? As in the general level of knowledge about non-conventional stuff in the wider public at large. As in my mother, an almost teen at this point, saw George Michael walking with his boyfriend in central London and had no idea he was gay until he came out. It’s actually the widest cultural gulf I can think of between her teen years and my teen years because I was very aware of queer people from a young age.

Anyway, moving on, I feel like it bears repeating that this song fucking slaps. It’s the last single to be written by Vince Clarke and the last single until 2006 to be written by someone other than Martin Gore. This is one of those songs that just works on every level. Can you imagine coming up with this for the first album of your band? That blows my mind. It’s so overpoweringly good that it was probably for the best that it was saved for last - coming out the gate with a guaranteed fucking banger was been the nail in the coffin for a lot of other eighties synth/electronica bands. They scored a huge hit and then nothing after that managed to be as good or meet the hype. Depeche Mode had built up a far bit of radio play and interest before dropping this which turned out to be very good in the long run!

This got to number 8 on the UK charts and the first to get a music video! It is the only one with Vince Clarke. Full disclosure in that I had this song on my iPod through downloading the video to my computer (that’s how we got songs without using stuff that would give us viruses because i got a ton using bearshare for rare cure demos) and I remember watching the video, all of sixteen years old, and thinking, ‘Man, all these people look so grown up, compared to me, I can’t wait to be an adult!’.

Twelve years have changed my view, somewhat.

Look at this little baby man. Were you in one of my A Level classes - as in, ones that I have taught, not ones that I have been in.

Vince Clarke, however, has had a significant glow up in the six months and now looks like he is the bouncer in a leather bar. This is the One Adult in the room.

Ahh, I see it’s Open Mic Night at the local leather bar. You know what I was saying about how teens in the eighties tended to be significantly more naive about what we might call certain signifiers? Because what this outfit says to me, a queer woman in 2020, is susbstanitally different than to my mum and her friends watching this when it first came out. She would read this as ‘This is totally rebellious and cool!’ while I go ‘Someone just joined the university kink club and spent all their bursary’.

I don’t remember the member of Blazin’ Squad that wore a slave harness. (Now, there’s a reference that shows my age. A Blazin’ Squad reference in the year of Our Lord 2020. Hoooo boy.)

I read somewhere (that I can’t find now because, of course I can’t) that these are the band’s girlfriends and I always remembered that because it made me think, lol, same. One of my closest friends is the Head of London, so she’s in every band in London and if she’s not in yours yet give her time, and my partner was in a locally successful metal/hardcore band for about a decade and being connected with any sort of band means you will be helping out hugely behind the scene constantly. I have held lights, moved speakers, picked up instruments, been in music videos, and have bought tearaway trousers and glowsticks for gigs. You get called in to help all the time which is a lot of fun, so that fact always just stuck with me. It also makes sense financially because then you don’t have to hire any professional backing dancers, you can rely on people who will happily do it for free (while looking pretty rad while doing it!).

Anyway, the band look like those generic raiders that you run into when randomly walking across the map in a Fallout game.

I love awkward choreography in music videos. It feeds me.

Filming a night out provides A) Great footage and B) Can be done for limited overheads, leaving more money to be put into promotion. 

I always like seeing this sort of footage in music videos. I tend to see a lot of it, given the DIY punk scene, and it always charms me. I am easy to please. And all those women have the most amazing eye makeup that makes me super jealous because it all looks so good.

That hat is on point. This looks like a still image for some sort of cyberpunk big band style swing revival that, sadly, lives only in my dreams.

It took me so goddamn long to screenshot this shot probably because i was also blasting dream nails whoops

Anyway those are my reactions to Speak & Spell’s one solitary music video with some other things thrown in and this took me way too long. I make myself laugh though, that’s the main thing. I will do A Broken Frame… at some point. I think I have a bunch of vinyl for A Broken Frame? My mum actually bought all the singles for that album and I stole most of her collection years ago. I will have to search and see what I can find.

[rosesisupposes]

Destined, part 19

aka Loganberry?

Character Tags: Virgil/Anixety ; Patton/Creativity ; Patton/Morality ; Logan/Logic ; Remy/Sleep ; Dante/Deceit

Chapter Pairings: Platonic Moxiety, Logicality, Prinxiety

Chapter Warnings: Virgil Swears A Lot, Remy Is A Flirt, Allusion to kidnapping

Reader Tags: @residentanchor @royally-anxious @bewarethegrammarpolice   @fellowthomassandersfander @jemthebookworm @arandompasserby  @sparkly-rainbow-salt

Summary: After centuries of acting as an oracle to heroes, quest-seekers, and villains alike, Virgil just wants to live as a normal, modern human. For someone who can see infinite probabilities, you’d think he’d know better.

<<Chapter 18 | Masterlist | Chapter 20>>

read on ao3

It was a fine day, in Virgil’s opinion. The sun was out, the weather was crisp, and he’d woken up still happy with his newly-dyed hair. 

Upon his arrival to How You Brewin’, Remy had immediately latched onto his head and cooed praise over his amethyst locks. “YAASS BOI,  look at you discovering polychromatic hair! This is why you need to come to The Crypt, you would SLAY the dance floor and break all the hearts. You could follow in my glamorous footprints!”

“Glad you like it, Rem. Gonna have to pass on the danceclub heartbreak, though.”

“Fiiiine,” his boss sighed. “I’ll just have to tell them all to come here to have their hearts broken. There’s no way I’m sleeping on the business angle here, gurl. Broken heart equals party hard, it’s just math.”

Virgil flushed slightly. “I really think you’re giving me too much credit. People are not going to take one look at me and go head over heels.”

“It’s true, some might not. Not all of them can pull off heels as well as I can,” Remy nodded philosophically. “But for real, boi, look at you. You’ve got Roman, THE prettiest gay in this town, except for my lovely self of course...”

“Of course,” Virgil replied, straight-faced.

“And he was flirting with you the minute he walked through those doors! Face it. You’re hot, and it’s gonna make me money. Now go show Patton, he’ll flip if he doesn’t get to see his son’s new hair.”

Virgil went. He wasn’t sure if he was going to see Patton or running away from Remy, but either way, the bakery seemed like a safer place to be at this particular moment.

Patton was rolling out pastry when Virgil walked around the counter, but something seemed off. The pastry was stretched and too thin in some places, horribly bunched and thick in others, and the baker continued to roll without any seeming care to the inconsistencies.

“Good morning, dad.”

No response. Virgil was so surprised he almost walked into a bench. He carefully waved a hand in front of the baker’s face. “Pat? You okay, buddy?”

Patton finally noticed and snapped to attention. He smiled at Virgil, but it was overly wide and appeared strained. “Hey kiddo! I’m just fine and dandy! Just another day in the life as your happy-pappy Patton! Can I get you anything? Some snacks? A muffin? Let me know!”

“Patton. Something’s going on. What’s up?”

“The roof! Also the sky!”

Virgil groaned. “Patton, I know something is wrong. You’re not yourself today. You don’t need to pretend you’re okay if you’re not.”

The baker’s smile trembled. “Virgil, you sweet and sour shadowling, I appreciate your concern. I will be fine!”

“Pat-”

“That was a lie, nothing will ever be fine!” Patton suddenly burst out, diving at Virgil for a desperate hug.

“Hey, it’s okay, what’s wrong?”

“Love has failed me!” cried the baker’s muffled voice.

Virgil pulled Patton up from where the shorter man had lodged himself at his waist. “Pat, are you hurt? What happened?”

“Logan hasn’t texted me back!”

Virgil stared, trying to not roll his eyes. That was it? “Patton, I didn’t even know you had his number! How long has it been?”

Patton sniffed. “I got his number two days ago after you asked us for advice, and for a full day we were texting back and forth. He texts like he’s writing for a genetics journal, but he was responding so quickly until I asked if he wanted to go on a date tonight and he just stopped responding and now he’s avoiding the whole bakafé!”

“Okay, I’m aware I’m not the best at positive thinking, but don’t you think there are alternative explanations for this? Maybe he got called away on fieldwork, or had a family emergency. Or you asked him out, his brain went all ‘Windows Error.exe’ and he threw his phone into the sink.”

Patton looked at Virgil oddly. “Why would he do that to his phone? Is that something that happens normally?”

“Well, no, but I almost did that when Roman texted me the first time,” Virgil muttered, blushing.

“OhhHHHhh that is so cute!” Patton squealed, brightening. “You’re right, kiddo. I shouldn’t focus on only the worst possibilities. Thanks for taking care of your silly old dad.”

“Anytime, Padre. And you’re not silly, you’re just relentlessly positive. You know I appreciate that, except for when you’re covering up your own feelings. Did you need any help with the pastry before I go back to Remy?”

Patton finally noticed the mess on his bench. “Oh my powdered donuts! This is useless. Oh well, guess I’ll need to re-laminate and start again. I won’t keep you here for that, kiddo, it’s pretty tedious. You go take something from the hot case for yourself, though. You’re not avoiding Remy, are you?”

“I won’t be once he stops threatening to make money off my hair.”

Patton’s eyes suddenly flew up and widened. “VIRGE! YOUR HAIR! Congrats on the cool colorful crown!”

Virgil snickered. “Thanks, Pat. I thought you might appreciate it. And it’s all thanks to Talyn for their help with choosing a color and making it actually look good.”

“Hmm, the purple though… that gives me a peri-twinkling of an idea! The pastry dough will have to wait - I need to go bake something. Thank you again, Virgil. You’re my favorite son!”

After the lunch rush, Virgil wandered back to the bakery. Roman had the day off, so had yet to come in, and Virgil was bored.

Patton was putting the finishing touches on a new display of muffins. A chalk sign proclaimed these were a new variety of Jam-Packed Muffins, filled with a jelly that was a made from a hybrid fruit of blackberry and raspberry.

“‘Loganberry’ muffins? Wow, I am really feeling the cuteness welling up inside me. Or maybe that’s vomit,” Virgil drawled.

Patton just grinned. “That’s why I have the scientific name of the berries here as well. It’s not pandering if it’s science!”

“We both know it’s extra pandering if it’s science. Actually, has he come in yet? I haven’t seen him.”

Patton wouldn’t meet the other man’s eyes, instead fiddling with the sign and adding extra flourishes with his bright purple chalk. “I… haven’t seen him. Or gotten a text yet. Wouldn’t his phone be fixed by now, if that was the issue?”

“Pat, it’ll be okay - I’m still sure he’s not trying to turn you down. You didn’t see how nervous he was about talking to you. My whole first week here was a never-ending parade of watching him try to be subtle about checking you out. He’s just bad at words.”

Patton sighed, and smiled weakly. “You’re right. I’m trying to not worry.”

The café bell rang, and Virgil looked over at the door. His face lit up as he saw Roman rolling in, auburn hair mussed from the wind outside.

Patton giggled as Virgil practically sprinted back to the café counter.

“Hello, you,” Roman drawled. Virgil felt an involuntary shiver. It was just not fair how attractive this man was. Maybe Remy had a point - if someone as gorgeous as Roman was in any way attracted to him, maybe his looks weren’t as blah as he’d assumed.

“...hey,” he managed to squeak out. “So, uh. Does it still look okay in person? My hair, I mean?”

“It is positively iridescent, my delightful macchi-hot-to. Oh, also, can you you make macchiatos? I learned about this new drink that I’m just jazzed to try.”

“Yeah, macchiatos aren’t too bad. What did you want?”

“A jumbo, half-whole milk, one quarter 1%, one quarter non-fat, extra hot caramel macchiato with 1 and a half shots decaf, 2 and a half regular, with whip, 2 packets of splenda, 1 sugar in the raw, a touch of vanilla syrup and 3 short sprinkles of cinnamon.”

Virgil just stared. “What the fuck, Ro. Where did you hear about this drink, a Top Ten Drinks to Make Baristas Hate You list?”

Roman grinned, then laughed outright. “How did you know? Ahhh, you caught me, I just wanted to see if I could order it with a straight face. Nah, I’ll just have another caramel surprise. That one’s my good luck charm, after all.”

Virgil blushed faintly as he smiled and started the drink that had started his flirtation with this incredible man.

“So, did you miss me this morning?” Roman asked, leaning over to watch Virgil’s deft hands go from steam wand to gasket, not spilling a drop of liquid. “Was the café gray and bereft without my signature charm and wit?”

“I wish you had been here this morning, Remy is threatening to all but marry me off to the highest bidder at the Crypt. He said that heartbreak is good for business?”

“I will defend your honor, dear Virgil, fear not,” Roman said, posing dramatically. “I will fight back the adoring, crazed hordes and also Remy, that tricky minx. You need no longer fear, Roman Augustus is here!”

The afternoon sun beating through the windows gilded Roman’s silhouette in golden light. Virgil suddenly had a burning urge to wear a dramatic ballgown and watch this man slay ogres in his name. All other thoughts and worries melted away as he gazed at the swoop of soft hair, the shine in his hazel eyes, the elegant curve of his arm and back…

“Virgil, I need your help!”

Patton’s voice, laced with nerves edging on fear, interrupted his reverie and Roman’s pose. Without a word they both immediately rushed to the bakery.

“Pat, what’s wrong?”

“Logan texted back.”

Roman’s eyebrows waggled. “Need some help composing the perfect romantic missive, Padre?”

“No, it’s… I don’t know, this might be just paranoid and crazy, but I don’t think Logan sent this text,” Patton said.

“Paranoid and crazy? Patton, stealing my thing, no big deal…” Virgil snarked, taking the offered phone from the baker’s hands. He did a double take as he looked at the screen.

Sent Yesterday Afternoon

Patton Corwan (Crumb On In): Hel-Lo! P: You know I always enjoy seeing you in the bakafé, but I’d like to see you outside of work, if you’d be interested. P: How does a pasta dinner tomorrow night sound, at that cute Italian place on Magnolia street? My treat :)

Just now

Logan ⚛️💙: A date night sounds so good! ⚛️💙: But :( I procrastinated some work I really need to get done. I’ll be at the office late tonight. ⚛️💙: Let’s take a rain check though, okay cutie? Love you!

Virgil frowned as he passed the phone to Roman. Eyebrows immediately vanished into auburn hair as the other man regarded the odd exchange.

“I’m no expert on this Mr. Abacus Finch of yours, but this seems rather out of character,” Roman commented. “Did he hit his head particularly hard? Or is someone else using his phone?”

Virgil felt his stomach drop at the hypothetical Roman mentioned. He’d seen this exact scenario, and hadn’t made the connection until now. CrapcrapcrapfuckfuckfuckSHIT not now! It’s only been two days, I’m not ready for Roman to already be dragged into this, he thought desperately. Why couldn’t that snake of a sorcerer wait just a little longer?

Roman caught his eye. “Hey, Hot Topic, did you suddenly apply more foundation or is something wrong?”

Virgil shook his head. “I… I don’t think Logan hit his head. Or at least, he didn’t hit his head and then also send this text.”

“You think someone else did? Do you think it’s…” Roman’s voice trailed off as he made a vague gesture that was clearly supposed to connote ‘evil’. It wasn’t one of his more elegant attempts, but given the circumstances, it was understandable.

Virgil nodded in response to the unfinished question. Roman gulped and looked down. “This is it, huh. Okay. I guess I’d better be ready then.”

Patton looked between them, gesturing at himself. “Guess who has ten fingers and is very confused! What is ‘it’? Do you know who texted me? Is Logan okay?”

“Pat, remember when I asked you for advice? That was about this, I think. Roman might be the best positioned of any of us to find Lo and make sure he’s safe.”

Patton looked nervous, but nodded determinedly. “What can I do to help?”

Roman looked at the phone again. “It seems to me that Mr. Steal Yo’ Boy is at Logan’s office. Or will be, after work hours. The bakafé closes soon, right?”

Virgil nodded. “We have less than an hour left ‘til close.”

“I think we can risk waiting to go over until then,” Roman said, checking his watch. “Plus, that’s when the sun starts going down. If Logan isn’t the one texting, but his phone is being used, I’m going to made a guess that this creep will need shadows to hide in.”

“We’re going to wait? What if Logan is in more danger? What do we do between now and then?” Patton wasn’t used to being this nervous, and he did not deal with it well. He was already shifting from foot to foot, eyeing the bakery door like he was considering dashing out at any moment.

Virgil put a hand on the baker’s shoulder. “Logan won’t be in any more danger an hour from now than he is at the moment. Trust me on this. If we go search for him randomly, we might miss him entirely. Until it’s dark, we’ll keep working. Pat, why don’t you show Roman how to help with edible decorations? He’s artistic and has a the sweet tooth of a five-year-old in a candy shop, he’ll be a natural.”

Roman gasped indignantly, a hand artfully splayed on his chest. “I do not act like a five-year old,” he said with a sniff. “I am at least seven, give me some credit.”

As they’d both hoped, Patton smiled weakly and led Roman around the counter. Both Virgil and Roman cared a lot about their gentle friend. Even if Roman had only occasionally met Logan, the scientist clearly made Patton happy.

No one should interfere with Patton being happy.

author’s note: I’d always thought that Logan’s question in Crofter’s The Musical was a joke, but it turns out there actually are such things are real loganberries: Rubus × loganobaccus. I learned something new because of this story, Logan would be so proud! You know. Wherever he is.

Corwan, Patton’s last name, is an old English name that means ‘friend of the heart’

Augustus, Roman’s last name, means regal, great ruler, etc. He’s royalty, we love him

Yes, that is the author’s note you get on this while you wait for the next chapter :)

[table-top-romulan-playing-games]

Movies I have seen so far in 2018

A few of these arent new movies, just ones ive watched for the first time in 2018. I felt like doing this cuz I really love watching movies and felt that it might be a good version of those "good things" jars, but instead it's movies I saw. Some reviews are short, mostly cuz I didnt really have much in the way of opinions, but I did have something to say.

Just incase you havent seen them. I have tried to keep them spoiler free, but if you dont want even vague non spoiler spoilers, the list of movies is as follows; 

The Grand Budapest; The greatest showman; Jumanji: out of the jungle, King Arthur: legend of the sword, The Black Panther, Shape of water, Thor Ragnarok, the Emoji Movie, the Good Dinosaur, Jurassic world, Incredibles 2, Hotel Transylvania 3, Ant-man, A Wrinkle in Time, Lara croft: tomb raider, Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2, Spider-man homecoming, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Avengers age of ultron (semi live blogged), Captain America civil war, Avengers Infinty War, Deadpool 2016, King Arthur the one with kiera knightly, Deadpool 2, The Nutcracker, four realms, Venom, Love, Simon, Ready player one, Aquaman, Solo, a star wars story, Ghost stories (2018), Wreck it Ralph, Ralph breaks the internet, Goosebumps 2, Hidden figures, The meg, Pacific Rim, Pacific rim uprising, Wrath of the Titans, Mission impossible: fallout,Oceans 8, The Breadwinner, Mune, Operation Finale, The House With A Clock In Its Walls, Bad times at the El Royale, Outlaw king, Gnome alone, Journey to the center of the earth, Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy, Vvitch, Ex machina, To all the boys ive loved before, Extraordinary Tales, The Golden Compass, Erramentari, the blacksmith and the devil, Dragon heart, The black klansman, Robin Hood 2018, The Princess of Thieves, First Man, Bohemian Rhapsody, What we do in the Shadows, Overlord, For the Love of Spock, Next Gen, Small Foot, The Spy who Dumped Me, The Nun, Kin, Crazy Rich Asians, Spider-Man, Into the Spiderverse, A simple favor, Predator 2018, Rampage, 47 meters down, 2036 Origin Unknown, 2001 A Space Oddessey, The Martian

The grand Budapest hotel - good, great visuals. I enjoyed it.

The greatest showman - wonderful music, actual circus parts were good, the rest was boring. Its really short, and I felt it focused to much on the drama in pt barnums life, too much focus on a silly fuax love triangle, not enough on the acts themselves. I went in hoping to see the acts interact and actually be presented as the forefront. The beginning showed this magnificent scene with the acts, with this wonderful musical number that made me tear up. But then, it was just about Barnum and his kids being boring most of the time. The songs and musical scenes though? Absolutely wonderful, magnificent, stunning, and entertaining. Zendayas and Zac efrons characters duets? Beautiful, I loved the song and choreography. I just feel like the emphasis should have been on the circus itself. Hugh jackman. Needs. To. Do. More. Musicals.

Jumanji: out of the jungle - hilarious omg I laughed my ass off!

King Arthur: legend of the sword: wtf was this movie bro? I mean. I have a new song in my cars playlist, but wtf.

The Black Panther - IT WAS SO COOL! I loved the visuals and the storyline. Shuri is my favorite genius and I can’t wait for more Black Panther

Shape of water: absolutely beautiful omg

Thor Ragnarok: you mean that was the actual movie, that tumblr wasn’t just fuckin with me, like, those were real ass scenes that were filmed?

the Emoji Movie: bad, forgettable, literally did not remember watching it till a friend asked me.

the Good Dinosaur: literally a children's movie, idek why I watched it tbh

Jurassic world: THE HUBRIS OF MAN! THE INDO RAPTOR! BLUE! They made... An indoraptor. Not just any raptor, oh no, that's not enough for the hubris of man, its an indoraptor. What's an indoraptor you may ask? Well it's when you mix a raptor, with the indominous rex DNA. But Cotie, didn't the indominous rex already have raptor DNA? Wasnt that the whole thing that it was a t-rex with raptor DNA? Yes, yes it was. But this one is different, it's smaller, it's smarter, it made to obey commands like a war machine, it's the I N D O R A P T O R! So it's just a super powered velociraptor? Yes, yes it is. So what makes it special? THE HUBRIS BEHIND IT!

Incredibles 2: awesome! I loved it! Those flashing scenes really were no joke though. I don't have epilepsy, but damn those scenes were hard to look at. But I absolutely love the fact that edna babysat jack jack for a night, and gave him a super babysuit. I hope we get to see more of the other superheroes helping out the incredibles!

Hotel Transylvania 3: it was a good movie. Its the only Adam Sandler movie series I can stand, but it was a decent movie. I like the introduction of the van helsing family, and the whole premise. Plus I love the message that its possible to fall in love again.

Ant-man: "in like the Flynn" niiiiiiiiice Tangled ref! "ANT-THONY!!!!" Ok that was a fun and hilarious movie. I fucking love the three wombats, especially Luis omg. Also I love Scott lang relationship with his daughter and that he was the driving force behind his motivation. Also not gonna lie, I kinda watched this one so I could go see Ant-man and the Wasp, but I liked this one too.

A Wrinkle in Time: FUCK ITUNES NOT WANTING TO WORK DURING THIS MOVIE! ok but Chris Pine as a Dad? Awesome. "Happy anniversary, if only you'd dissapear too" wow, these high school preps are viscous. Also I love the little kid calling out grown ups for being pieces of shits. Also this movie was adorable and heart felt and I loved the mix of fantasy and science that made it a science fantasy movie omg.

Lara croft: tomb raider: ok but the girl who kicked Lara crofts butt in the beginning has me gay as Fuck man. "OPEN IT! OPEN IT! OPEN IT!" OK calm down Nicolas cage.

Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2: omg that was indeed another real marvel movie I had just seen. I can't believe the stooges are a space family that just, does stupid things. I love them all. 

We gonna start some parralels; a wrinkle in time - a movie about two siblings trying to find their dad who has been lost for 4 years. They get him back through the power of love; Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - a daughter finds some adverturing stuff to lead her to her father who had been missing for 7 years. Tries to get him back by killing men. Doesn't, and then kills more men; Gaurdians of the Galaxy volume 2: a boy finds his father after 34 years, but turns out he is a huge fucking jerk, also finds that Mary poppins was his dad after all, but then both Mary poppins and jerk dad died, with varying degrees of mourning from Boy.

Spider-man homecoming: omg so many second hand embarrassment scenes but it was so good! I laughed my ass off at the ending omg tony no. But also, that awkward moment when ur dates dad threatens your life and he actually meant it...

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Dude. Duuuuuuude that end credit scene. Duuuuuuuuuuuuuude. That movie was just as hilarious as the first ant-man movie omg! It was fun and incredibal and I'm so happy the 3 combats were there. I was losing my shit over the baba yaga stuff!

Avengers age of ultron (semi live blogged): god, I'm 9 minutes in and I hate this movie... 13 minutes in an ur telling me this could've been avoided if marvel hadnt turned two Romani (from what I remember of mutant canon) characters into, not only human expirements instead of mutants, but voluntary hydra agents. -sighhhh-... 20 minutes in and why, why Tony, just... Tell the team, why do we gotta have lazy 'i dont wanna communicate' writing bullshit...Jarrrrrviiiiissssss my boy T.T... Did they really just try to make dissimising female characters and using their achievements as a sort of 'my horse is bigger than yours' as quality character writing? God this Bruce/Nat romance is so forced... Oh no, Ultron fucking appeared, why does he sound like a bad Tony stark impression? Ultron is fucking annoying... Fuck man, the plot with the twins have arrived, and I hate it... -mentions Wakanda- thanks for reminding of a better movie I could be watching... God, the acting is either way too dry, or way too ham... Wow... Clint is... The most mature person in the movie... Wow, the scene where Nat reveals she is infertile, is worse than I thought it would be, and I knew it would be awful... Hour and a half in, still bad... Though ultron is now acting like a c h i l d... Oh no, now we creating Ultron 2.0 this time its Jarvis... Please discuss it with the team, pleeeease... Annnnnnnd U didn't... Fuck... I'm so tired, 1 hour and 31 minutes and the team is fighting... Thor coming in for the jarvis Saaaave! Yassss vision with the worthy of the hammer! Okay the battle scene with ultron was pretty cool. Still dont like the movie over all.

Captain America civil war: not as much fighting as advertised. Too much 'we arent going to sit down and communicate' trope. Honestly I was too bored and tired to really actually pay attention to closely... All I got from it is the russos need to learn what a get along shirt is and be better film makers.

Avengers Infinty War: wtf, what the fuck, was that. That was some fuck right there. You are telling me thanos was really able to get the soul stone like That? And the mind stone like That? And all that other bull shit? Y'all Russo better be ready to have thanos ass kick in the next avengers movie. But damn that was some shit that happened.

Deadpool 2016: I loved every bit of the movie omg, it was everything I hoped for out of a deadpool movie.

King Arthur the one with kiera knightly: That uh, sure was a King Arthur movie? Way less weird than King Arthur Legend of the sword. Merlin didnt cast magic, and arthur was a Roman, but guinevere is a kick ass archer, soooo acceptable...

Deadpool 2: THAT WAS FUCKIN HILARIOUS I LOVE DEADPOOL SO MUCH! god I love this movie, I would die for dominoe.

The Nutcracker, four realms: such a cute af movie omggggggggggggg. I loved Captain Phillip the nutcracker soldier and the gold highlight they put on his lips 💓

Venom: listen. I did no t see this film for quality. I saw it for the symbi ote ok. Ok. I lov it. But blease for the love of god.... Y.... Did...... The......... Symbiote........ Take the shape of a sexy comic book lady..... When........ The same sexyness could have been achieved by letting the symbiote be big beefy orc like lady....

Love, Simon: I'm not one for these films... I dont like these films... They are teary eyed wholesome cake frosting that make my cold gay heart sick... That being said... I relate, I relate so much... Also... If I was in simons shoes and the blackmailing weasle Martin outed me? They would still be scraping him off the pavement... That is all.

Ready player one: it wasn’t as bad as some of the things i heard about it on tumblr, but its not one I will watch again.

Aquaman: "show off, heh, I could've just pee'd on it" is the exact quality line I want out of my films. Also that was soooooooo awesome! I loved it! More Aquaman!

Solo, a star wars story: Not bad, but not great, it kept on plot really well, not memorable but I won’t knock it. I still say the actor playing Han Solo looks photoshopped and not real.

Ghost stories (2018): awful... It was slow and boring, and I didnt like it... I rented it through itunes and it glitched part of the way through and I stopped being able to see the picture. Even after I got it working again I still didnt like it... Though I did like the message of "dont be a bystander", but the whole this was boriiiiiinnnnnnnggggggggggg.

Wreck it Ralph: okay, technically I caught the beginning like 4 or 5 years ago, but I finally actually watched it and it wasnt bad. Will go see the sequel.

Ralph breaks the internet: WAYYYYYY better than the emoji movie, also, I really loved the princesses scene, the bright colors, and following Venelope through the internet... Also.... Ralph........ WTF..................... Also............................. that Stan Lee cameo.................................... Heartbreaking............

Goosebumps 2: Mr. Chu and his Halloween obsession is me... Stones appearence had me dying omg... Also where tf r ppl getting these awesome super cool Halloween stuffs!

Hidden figures: IM NOT CRYING UR CRYING! omg such a great movie i fucking loved it. Couldnt understand a WORD of math that went on, but damn girls, calculate that shit.

The meg: listen... Listen... The trailer looked stupid... And ridiculous... I just... Wanted to know how bad... And it was bad... But it was incredibally enjoyable omg... I loved it... In all seriousness, it was actually a pretty beautiful movie when it came to marine life and the wonder behind it, and it was anti shark culling for fins, and it was very clearly "not all sharks are bad, they do as they do, but megalodon is about to fuck our shit up."... It was also fucking hilarious... My favorite character was meiying, the little 8 year old in the movie... The love plot wasnt forced and they way they did it the two leads were not having it and had actual chemistry... Just... Also the dog... The dog does not die... Pippin lives... The wedding is not ruined... Also the shark ate a billionaire soooooooo... We good meg... We good...

Pacific Rim: yes I know, I took a long ass time to watch this movie... But Listen... Explody robots and monsters... Hannibal chau... Look... I just... Sometimes take a long time to watch movies... You wanna know how long it took me to watch Merlin BBC? I watched every episode as it came out and then put off the last episode for 5 years... Listen...

Pacific rim uprising: ok I watched the first one so I could watch the one with my boi John Boyega in it.

Wrath of the Titans: wtf kind of movie... Like really what the f... Since when is zues ever responsible and wise.

Mission impossible, fallout: I liked it. It's an action movie. Saw it for my birthday, kinda interested in the other mission impossible movies now. I appreciate the advance tech and the obviously stupid impossible shit.

Oceans 8: Listen, i have never been interested in the Oceans franchise, i dont want to see crusty men steal things, but lads, im gay. Extremely gay, just, shamelessly gay.

The Breadwinner: holy shit that was a good movie.

Secret of the Kells: eh, it was a good movie. Not my favorite, but it was good. I mostly just like the animation.

Mune: Guardian of the Moon: dat was a cute movie, and also i loved Munes Design, he is a little fawn

Operation Finale: Wow, that was an amazing film, absolutely superb. Not at all like the trailers. Seriously, what is it and trailers where everything has to either be an high stakes action movie or a romantic comedy? but this film, spectacular.

The House With A Clock In Its Walls: A Neat little movie. Corny, but i liked it. like, its a kids movie in the same way A Wrinkle In Time is, but this one was little less disney-fied in the way that they needed to have this overarching lesson of empowerment, and more “this is a kids movie to enjoy, like Halloweentown”

Bad times at the El Royale: neat movie, somewhat engaging, kept losing focus at the slow parts... Liked the Chapter title cards... Can't remember who that "important person" was supposed to be.... I think I may have missed it...

Outlaw king: I liked it! Way better than Braveheart! Also.... Cpine was not that naked.... Butt....

Gnome alone: weird, didn't like it, like a bad combo of Mean Girls and Coraline?

Journey to the center of the earth: I said old movies were gonna be on this list now didnt I? Also this movie was awesome and I wish the book was real too.

Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy: Nice!!! I had been meaning to read the book before I watched the movie, but I've packed my book away soooo, MOVIE. Also out of all thw sci fi movies that have destroyed planets, this is by far the only good one.

Vvitch: it was okay... By the middle I was kinda wishing it would go faster. But it was okay.

Ex machina: I'm not done with the movie yet but it's so fucking creepy holy shit... Also "its kinda non-autistic" in relation to "aware of her own mind and mine"???? Wtffffffff.uggggghhhhhhhhhh ewwwweeweeewewweeeewwwwwww the talk about giving the robot a sexuality is so grooooooooooooosssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss he gave her a working vag and hearing him talk about fucking the robot was baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. Mmmmmmmm no, did not like.

To all the boys ive loved before: Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww... Also that sibling relationship was..... Relatable.

Extraordinary Tales: tales based on Edgar Allen Poe and holy sweet Jesus I loved it, it has multiple different art styles per story and I loved them soooooo much!

The Golden Compass: okay but how could you end on that cliffhanger and not at least put out another movie????

Erramentari, the blacksmith and the devil: based on Basque folklore which I know nothing of, but it looked neat. It's also originally in basque but netflix has the English dub over. AND HOLY SWEET JESUS I KNOW THIS MOVIE IS SUPPOSED TO BE SCARY BUT THE VOICE OVERS ARE SO FUCKING FUNNNNNNNNYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!

Dragon heart: I didnt like it, there were better movies I could have seen, I'm not gonna reach for this one again...

The Black Klansman: Damn, I might very well be speechless. That was a Fantastic Movie, came at you like a bag of Bricks, and the ending when it went straight from a cross burning to the 2017 neo nazi rallies, to trumps “good people on both sides” speech, to everything that happened in 2017. The movie did NOT fuck around with anything. God Bless.

Robin Hood, 2018: Antifa film of the YEAR! Yeah Robin, Be a Class Traitor to the ruling class, Spread Wealth, Down with the 1%!

The Princess of Thieves: OMG Kiera Knightly as the daughter of robin and also a kick ass archer that causes trouble!!!! Loved it!

First Man: dude that movie was incredible, it read like you were seeing snapshots of his life, not completely invested, but as though you were a spirit looking at memories. I kinda liked it. I loved the silent scenes that filled the viewer with anxiety, like a realization of the gravity of what was happening. Omg. Good film A+

Bohemian Rhapsody: OMG I LOVED IT SO MUCH OMGOMGOMGOMG MY QUEER HEART IS RESTORED AND THEY SAID BISEXUAL!!!!!

What we do in the Shadows: that was an enjoyable movie. I didn't quite like the reality show format but it was funny!

Overlord: That was a great movie! it had decently fast pacing, which is good that it was only an hour and forty-eight minutes long... They Plot-Ex-Machina’d alot of the movie, like the wounded soldier feeling fine for the main firefight, then remembering he was supposed to be wounded all of a sudden. I watched it with a friend who saw one character, turned to me and said “He’s cute, i hope he doesnt die” one (1) second before a landmine went off. Also, Ghouls created by science rather by supernatural means.

For the Love of Spock: -cries like a big baby-

Next Gen: screams of anti-tech ideals... Also.... Damn...... They are channeling the "addiction to iPhones" angle man, like, villianous angle...

Small Foot: Not bad, At least it was a Short movie, or at least it didnt feel like it was dragging on. The Songs were great though, I actually liked them and at least they were written for the movie and not like, a song that already existed...

The Spy who Dumped Me: I rented it through iTunes and it gave some Ukrainian nuts swangin in my face...

The Nun: it was okay, but let maurice theirult be a lesson; u see some creepy haunted shit, you grab a cross and you walk away. You dont go back to play hero, cuz then you get possessed.

Kin: there is a line in the movie that says "you got a decade of bad decisions under your belt" and I feel like that sums of this movies plot points...

Crazy Rich Asians: that was so gooooood! I don't normally go for romcoms, but ppl had been praising the film, and I actually liked it. I'm glad I saw the majong scene explain before I actually watched the scene, because it felt a shit ton more powerful.

Spider-Man, Into the Spiderverse: AMAZING! INCREDIBLE! the animation was TOP NOTCH, like, omg!

A simple favor: I didnt like it... It tried to be both a thriller and what seemed like a parody of a thriller.

Predator, 2018: I kinda liked it, it was a mindless action movie, and the ending left it open for a badass sequal. I havent seen the other predator movies so I have no idea if this is in faith for the series, but im guessing yes.

The Martian: It was cool and chill, I liked it, also Mark Watney cussing out a government agency via a hundred thousand dollar communications outlet is.... Mood.

47 meters down: 2hrs of one woman having an absolute panic attack and being right to worry about sketchy diving boats.

2036 Origin Unknown: kinda what I feel like 2001 a space Oddessey wouldve been like if I had actually watched that movie... Oh shit the Borg!

2001 A Space Oddessey: Have I ever told y'all that I dont like Kubrick or his movies? His movies are the epitome of that pretentious art school boi style that just does too much and tries to pretend it's more than it is and sweet merciful god why is this one 2 and a half hours long! I'm 40 minutes in and I have a head ache from the over ise of classical music and boring slow pace of the movie. 2001 a space Oddessey is 2 and a half hours long and only has 1 hr of actual relevant film... The other 1 1/2 is just unending, weirdly colored space shots, two color inversion shots of planets and eyes, theremin and flute noises, and classical music set to nothingness

RAMPAGE: a 30ft alligator showed up about an hour and 10minutes into the movie and the first reaction was "well that sucks" and it killed me on sight. The movie is awesome! In am so glad I picked this as my last movie of 2018.

[oncethrown]

Shadowhunters is Finally Getting Good: A Writer’s Perspective

This is going to get long, so basically this is where I’m going:

1. Shadowhunters is still finding itself, similar to how Buffy the Vampire Slayer kinda sucked until it grabbed onto its “Monsters as Life Metaphors” structure halfway through Season 2.

2. Because The Mortal Instruments series is such a catastrophic narrative failure, Shadowhunters doesn’t have compelling plot points to string their own original story between, the way True Blood was able to do with their own sub-par source material.

3. The strong character writing is just starting to free the show from the restrictions of its source material.

Where We Are Now

-The company that owns the rights to The Mortal Instruments is using Shadowhunters to return on a damaged investment. They bought the rights to a popular book series, and made a movie that bombed so hard that when the numbers came in, they stopped production on the sequel within weeks. They lost a shit ton of money on what should have been a good investment, and were unwilling to throw too much good money after bad, which is why there wasn’t much investment in the first season. The first season’s low budget affects more than the special effects. It plays into who they can hire, how long they have to rehearse, how long they have to shoot, every element of production.

-The source material is shit, and it’s an albatross around the show’s neck. The movie sucked so hard because it was a pretty faithful adaption of the books, which are torturously long, and full of one note characters who only exist to spout faux-clever dialogue, or facilitate CC’s incest fantasies. They are driven by entirely by plot, not character, which makes for flat fiction.

-The first season had to be, to an extent, experimental. They had to figure out the right mix between what they had to keep to engage book fans, and what they had to add to make it possible for it to be a TV show, because the book doesn’t have enough material to be a couple seasons of TV.

-The first season worked to clear the very low bar of of being less racist, tokenist, slut-shaming, girl-hating, bi-phobic, and all around disgusting than the books. They succeeded. Yay.

-Successfully moving past the tragedy of the movie into an expanded episode order and expanded budget mean that season two is essentially a brand new show.

- That season is trying to fight its way free of what it had to be in the first season, and the failure of the movie, and the ball and chain of the books.

The Problems

1. The Show Has Turned Every Pointless, Cardboard Dialogue Spouter from the Books into a Compelling, Nuanced Character, and Now There Are Too Many

The book characters have interesting things on their character sheets, but never become interesting. The show has recomposited characters out of the character elements used in the books, and created complex, compelling, nuanced characters, who have ties and relationships to eachother, who are impacted by the world around them, and who make decisions and affect the world around them and eachother, instead of just waiting around for Clary to discover her special rune magic, or for Magnus to portal them somewhere.

Unfortunately, a bunch of cardboard cutouts creating obstacles to, and eventually enabling brother-sister fucking don’t suck up too much plot time, but 11 suddenly worth-while characters (Clary, Simon, Alec, Isabelle, Jace, Maryse, Jocelyn, Luke, Raphael, Maia, Magnus) plus a few new additions we are invested in to some degree (Lydia, Aldertree, Iris), and a few random additions that don’t seem to do much but create more dialogue and scoot plots along (Valentine, Meliorn, Raj, Max, Dot, Gretel, Suspiciously Important Girl With Glasses) all end up battling for screen time, to the detriment of each other.

For every charming interaction between Maia and Simon, we don’t get to see Luke dealing with Jocelyn’s death. When we get a glimpse into the tenderness of Magnus and Raphael’s relationship, there’s less time to see Magnus and Alec learn where they cross and divide. When we see that Alec and Maryse still love each other, even if the have so much shit left to work through , that takes potential minutes away from someone trying to talk to Jace about being abducted and tortured. There is so much potential, and it’s not possible to turn all of it into plot when there are only 45 minutes a week to work with.

1A. Except Valentine, Who is A Spectacularly Shitty Villain

Valentine is one long HHHHHHHZZZZZZMMMMMMMHHHHHhhzzzzmmmmhhhh on an evil kazoo.

A good villain is the hero of their own story, but they have to be more than that. A good villain has to taunt you with the possibility that they could be the hero of your story. They have to want something in a way that you can understand the wanting, even if what they want isn’t something you would want.

Kylo Ren is a good villain. He wants to be a super powerful Jedi and big deal leader in the Empire and the movie shows you that he wants that because he’s actually a pathetic little snot streak, drowning in his inability to live up to the standards of toxic masculinity around him, while wearing a silly helmet. The desire makes sense.

Spider-Man Villains are good villains. They are typically super smart scientists trying to solve a problem, but their science gives them some sort of mutation that casts them out of the society they were trying to improve.

Magneto is a great villain. A holocaust survivor who believes he sees the writing on the wall and won’t let history repeat itself.  

(Quick fact about Oncethrown: I went to go see the Johnny Depp version of Sweeny Todd in theaters in college and didn’t realize he was the villain until the very last scene. (The last last scene. Even after he throws Mrs. Lovett in the oven) Because he was unfairly jailed by a man who wanted him gone so that he could rape Sweeny todd’s wife to be raped into insanity and leave her out on the street to rot, and I was totally onboard with the quest for vengeance up until the moment the blood started pouring out if his neck.)

Valentine is just generically evil. He was born into the most powerful class in his world, was annoyed that his society wouldn’t let him become even more powerful, and now is experimenting on a class he already could kill with little to no repercussions, and working to eradicate them… because he can?

He doesn’t love or care about anyone either. There’s nothing to hold onto about Valentine. He’s just an opposing force. He could be a block of wood with angry eyebrows and the effect on the plot would be about the same.

1B. Except Aldertree, Who We Were Promised Would Be And Interesting Villain is Just A Random Force For Bad.

Aldertree came in to bring the erratic New York Institute back under Clave control. And he started out doing that. He threw the downworlders out of the Institute, he left Jace to rot in jail because he wouldn’t swear total fealty to the Clave, he nearly let Alec die because he threatened very important Shadowhunter traditions by refusing to marry a suitable woman in order to date a man, and a downworlder.

The yin-fen plot line originally was in this same functional but boring vein, until the last episode (spoilers) where he was clearly trying to get Izzy to trade sex for drugs (end spoilers). Generic Rapist Evil not interesting either. All he ended up doing was giving Alec a “Reclaiming the Institute Plotline” which would have been a really, really good piece in that whole “Effects of Institutionalizing Discrimination” theme… if any time had been devoted to it at all this season. Like… Alec originally ceded his authority to Lydia. The way he came for Aldertree just wasn’t given the building blocks to be satisfying.

2. The Books Didn’t Have Layers, and the Show is Trying to Graft an Interesting Theme Onto the Book’s Pocked and Diseased Foundation

The books are just an excuse for incest. The show is attempting to develop a narrative about institutionalized discrimination and oppression, and how characters are influenced by the way that affects their societies, upbringings, relationships and lives.

There is a really underdeveloped attempt at this in the books which more or less boils down to “Shadowhunters are mean to downworlders, and it’s not totally fair, but they are still the heroes, because they are all described as sexually attractive.”

The show is running into a lot of complications as they try to smoosh this theme onto the source material they have to work with.

-The main plot of “Evil McEvil is a Racist Who Wants To Start A Genocide Because Of Evil and Overt Racism”is sucking up all the air in the room for more compelling and important elements of the show,  such as every idea presented in Maia and Simon’s conversation about how Shadowhunters pretend that everyone is on the same team, but don’t understand what the daily existence of downworlders is really like in a world that Shadowhunters essentially rule.

Or Alec’s struggle to be both a Shadowhunter and a gay man falling in love with a downworlder.

Or Isabelle and Lydia’s season one speaking out about Law vs. Justice in the Shadowhunter world.

Or Clary’s 10 minute plot about not being trained well enough to be a real shadowhunter, but knowing too much to ever be a mundane again

The adherence to the main plot of book one and two is one of the things turning Clary into a mess of a white savior who doesn’t learn from her mistakes. She’s the entry point character, she’s bringing us into this world, and she’s the hero of the story. So... she’s white and straight with magic powers, trying to solve racism and homophobia in a story where the whole society she enters into is built around it, and has been for centuries.

3. The Clusterfuck of Potential We Are Working Out Of Now

So 2.08 and 2.09 I think prove that we are watching a show that is just about to get there. Both of these episodes had insular plots solved within the confines of the episode while also having consequences in the season stretching story.

Good characters are interacting with each other in interesting ways. (Except Lydia. Where is Lydia? I love her and I want her back) There are some growing pain failures (everything Izzy has said and done all season), some serious fuck ups (the lack of consent before the lack of malec sex scene) and a lot of unfortunate leaning on shitty and easy tropes (Izzy and Raphael fall into a drug fueled affair, Alec pushes Magnus into sex in a 3 minute side plot, Valentine exists and we have to watch him) But they are setting up more and more really solid pieces with places to go and I’m excited to see it happen.

4. The Things They Need to Fix (this is mostly rambling)

-Give fewer characters better plots per episode instead of trying to give everyone a couple minutes of screen time.

-Give characters goal and personality and development driven season arcs that create plots instead of having them constantly reacting to plot elements that are not character driven (purely from a writing standpoint, this is the biggest flaw with Isabelle’s plot line. The addiction drives her plot, not her personality, and Aldertree doesn’t have a character based reason to give her the drug to being with. “Just because I’m an asshole” isn’t really good enough. That’s why Alec is the best part of season 1. Everything he says and does is driven by a couple easily defined elements of his character.)

-If you are going to sell the diversity aspect of your show, be aware of the full context of the plot lines you are assigning your actors. It’s not great that there are 4 latinx actors, and the two of them with accents are in a drug dealing/addiction/sex for drugs plot line. It’s great that your only canon couple is a gay interracial couple. It’s great that they got a really sweet build up, and they have great communication scenes and they are really building a strong relationship. It’s not great that they do not touch while a lot of totally gratuitous sex is happening around them.

-Figure out who you really need, and jettison the dead weight. -Why is Raj still on this show? All he does is say nasty shit about women. He’s disgusting, he’s boring, and he’s pointless. Literally every single time he’s on screen he could be replaced by someone we care about and it would tighten the episode. -We ditched Robert because as far as the impact on the main characters goes, he’s a redundancy on Maryse’s storyline, and she has all the good elements. -Aldertree is pointless. Maryse could have had Aldertree’s “WE ARE REALLY FUCKING GOING WITH WHAT THE CLAVE SAYS” storyline and it would have been a lot more interesting with the rest of the plot.Lydia could have had that plot too. “You fucked up at the wedding, reign in this nonsense or we are shipping you our to wrangle island”

[magicmenageriestuff]

3am Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.) – The K.L.F.

( The Ancients of Mu Mu )

*

Alien 3  –  Paranoia In Pinewood part 2

The six stages of Film Production : as seen carved into the wall in Pinewood, Studio Five, by someone presumably better-versed in the industry than I :

Wild enthusiasm

Disillusionment

Panic

Search For The Guilty

Punish The Innocent

Reward The Non-Involved 

The above quote from the diary I kept in 1991 while filming Alien 3 in Pinewood Studios.  I released it into the atmosphere as My Pop Life #171 – Praying For Time.  I think it’s time for part 2, don’t you?

*

Somebody send me a clean version of this picture.  thanks.

Things settled down a little after the heart-thumping and deeply paranoid first month recorded in the previous episode.  No one was sacked.  I don’t think.  No one was re-cast.  There was a terrible accident one day when Sigourney’s make-up lady Linda was standing in a doorway on set – one of those science fiction doorways with a sliding panel which goes up and down with a swish.  It was a wooden contraption with a weighted pulley which failed, and it came down suddenly onto her face, right onto her nose. I wasn’t there but it was a nasty accident and she was rushed to hospital.  We never saw Linda again. Later I learned that she didn’t want to claim the medical expenses from the company, but having had a facial reconstruction and various operations I think that she eventually did settle.  Dangerous places film sets.

The cast of Alien 3 with David Fincher on set, 1991

My relationship with Sigourney had subsided into a kind of sulk, and although she would make the odd remark, the earlier fire and brimstone had calmed down a bit.  Not that we’d made up at all.  Sadly we weren’t friends.  I’d confided in other cast members – Niall Buggy thought I was completely bonkers “What are you talking about Ralph, she’s lovely!”  Pete Postlethwaite and Phil Davis felt the same way.  Dhobi Oparei too.  I was happy that they were enjoying working with her, but just as I started feeling cornered, there was Charles Dance asking me how it was all going as we waited for a set-up.  I think I was tentative at first but eventually told him what had been going on.  He confessed that he’d had the same kind of experience. “Is that how you’re going to say it?” and all of the paranoia about how clean he looked, other competitive nonsense.  I felt relieved that I wasn’t going totally mad.  It was only people she had scenes with where the behaviour occurred.  Wait – was Charles Dutton also having this relationship with her?  No.  He was a friend already and he was not the enemy.  Charlie and I have been firm friends ever since.

Charles Dance as Clemens

One day on set Sigourney and I had a scene on a balcony, after the fire. Men had died.  The Alien was trapped, locked in a loading bay. Dutton and his men were praying below us.  The scene wasn’t going well.  But we got it at around 8.00pm and Fincher pulled me aside.  “Dude.  She vampired that scene. Don’t worry I can cut around what you did, we got it.  But you’re letting her get to you.”  I think I said that I was trying to stand my ground.  “If you ever need to leave the set, take five minutes, regain your centre, just say it OK?  I got your back.”  It was another welcome acknowledgement that I wasn’t paranoid.  I went home, cuddled my lady and gritted my teeth for the long haul.  I had to try and protect my performance at the end of the day, that was what mattered.

the balcony scene is in the “director’s cut” on the DVD

As the weeks progressed, all of the actors were called in every day, in case we were needed.  First thing – put through ‘the works’ – costume and make-up – and then sat in our dressing rooms to await the call, often all day.  I often went into the next-door dressing room occupied by the Prison Governor, my boss the legend Brian Glover, who’d memorably played the gym teacher in Ken Loach‘s heartbreaking film Kes.  Brian was from Barnsley and did the voice overs for Tetley Tea Bags : ‘Tetley. Make tea bags. Make Tea.‘

Brian Glover as Andrews

Brian regaled me with stories from his days as a professional wrestler, fighting on the circuit with Giant Haystacks, Big Daddy and Mick McManus. ‘There’s money in ugly Ralph‘ he would announce, his squashed ear a keepsake of his years playing rugby.  Every 45 minutes the lovely 2nd AD Marcia Gay would knock and pop her head around the door – ‘Gentlemen. You won’t be required for the next 45 minutes. Just relax‘.  This became alarmingly irritating until one day Brian swivelled his giant head in her direction and asked ‘Is the money the same?‘  Marcia was puzzled.  ‘Yes‘ she said. ‘Well Fook Off Then!‘ shouted Brian.  Rude and fucking funny.

Fincher on the camera with Alex Thomson alongside him who had taken over as DP when Jordan Cronenweth was too ill to continue

There were eventually four units running at the same time – 1st Unit with David Fincher directing and another legend Chris Carreras as 1st AD.  The eye of any storm, the 1st AD basically runs the set, oversees all of the departments and keeps a keen eye on who is slowing the unit down.  The 1st AD is basically making the film.  Chris had an amazingly calm temperament but I saw him biting his tongue a couple of times.  Years later in 1999 I would contact him and ask him to 1st AD my film New Year’s Day, which he graciously agreed to do.  Without him it wouldn’t have got made. I was going to create a link there to the blog where I talk about the film that I wrote and which actually got made.  So scarred am I from this experience that 220 blog posts later I haven’t even started to think about discussing it.  Watch this space !

Paul McGann as Golic

Meanwhile back in Pinewood, the other 3 units which might or might not need actors for any given day were :  2nd Unit with Martin Brierly directing (and Nick Heckstall-Smith assisting, whom I would also work with later), Action Unit doing Alien Stuff and other SFX, and a Fire Unit which set fire to things and put them out while stunt guys ran around with falmes one their clothes.   We were all required, at one point or another, on all of these units.  But there were interminable days when nothing happened.  Backgammon became institutionalised, with American actors Chris Fields and particularly Holt McCallany relieving us of our wages on a regular basis with ruthless use of the doubling dice. I soon saw the error of this form of time-wasting, likewise poker and other competitive pursuits. 

Clive Mantle as William, Peter Guinness as Gregor

One day when it was clear once again that nothing was going to happen a group of us decided to wander around the studio lot and see what else was going on.  Like a bunch of escaped prisoners escorted by a correction facility officer.  That was me.  We went into one of the bigger studio buildings (Alien 3 had the majority but some were still available for hire) – I can’t remember precisely who was in that gang but I think Peter Guinness, Paul Brennan, Clive Mantle and Danny Webb certainly were. Maybe Niall Buggy and Vincenzo Nicoli too.  And there was a giant pyramid structure with lights on frames around it and people with cloaks wandering about.  We’d asked permission to visit of course, and the producers knew who we were, what we were doing there.  The band was The K.L.F. and they were shooting a video for their single 3am Eternal which had been at Number 1 in the charts that January.  A video it turned out, for the US market. We watched a take with smoke and lights, bleeps and heavy metal guitar chords, acid house beats and rap, capes and cloaks. It was all a bit mental.  Then they took a break.

We wandered into the next studio through a heavy door.  And there was Kylie Minogue, dressed for the Shocked video. We were all introduced and I became suddenly aware of a tiny elfin Australian blonde woman being dwarfed by half a dozen dirty shaven-headed prisoners from outer space.  She shook everyone’s hand then gently wandered away and asked one of her people if they could ask us politely to leave.  Which we did.  Poor love.

Kylie Minogue is Shocked at the power of love in 1991

There’s a curious link here because Bill Drummond, (who with Jimmy Cauty is The K.L.F.) had worked as an A&R man for WEA (now Warners) in London in the mid-80s and had apparently spent half a million pounds on a band called Brilliant who never quite took off.  Stock Aitken & Waterman were writers & producers for Brilliant, and Jimmy Cauty was in the band along with Martin Glover aka Youth from Killing Joke.  And Stock Aitken & Waterman were now writing and producing for Kylie, along with a vast stable of acts including Donna Summer, Mel & Kim and Jason Donovan.  Kylie & Jason had starred together in Aussie soap Neighbours, and to continue the odd waltz between the 2 acts, the K.L.F. had made a single called ‘Kylie Said To Jason‘ which was a hilarious rip-off of ‘Left To My Own Devices‘ by The Pet Shop Boys.  Confused Yet ??

Bill Drummond & Jimmy Cauty

I didn’t make any of these connections at the time.  I was listening to George Michael, Public Enemy, The Breeders. Catching up with Bob Marley and Miles Davis.  Discovering Wagner – again.  Looming on the horizon was Massive Attack. The K.L.F. seemed to me a little like The Tubes, one of my favourite bands to be sure, or the Bonzo Dog Band (see My Pop Life #77), formed by musicians who wanted to lampoon the music and the industry and anything else they could gather into their fiendish net.  Like everything was in quotes. I mean who sang along with the phrase “Ancients of MuMu” without a silly grin on their face?

And of course we were still recovering from the smiley-face rave culture moment from which the K.L.F. appeared to have emerged.  In fact they were rather more like a situationist art project that wanted to burn the whole thing down.  Anarchists.  Their career was inspired partly by the theatre show The Illuminatus Trilogy, written and directed by mad genius Ken Campbell in Liverpool where Bill had been the set designer.  He walked out one day to buy a sandwich and never came back. Later he formed his Pop Group who became The Timelords with big novelty hit Doctoring The Tardis, then The JAMS (Justified Ancients of MuMu) with the single What Time Is Love which got re-issued a number of times from 1988 onward, then The K.L.F.  Their brilliant warped career  peaked a year later in 1992 at the BRIT Awards when Drummond machine-gunned the audience of music industry execs from the stage, and a dead sheep was left at the door of the afterparty with the message “I died for you – bon appetit” attached. A few months later in May 1992 The K.L.F. announced that they had quit the music business and deleted their entire back catalogue.  Other stunts followed such as the infamous burning of a million pounds, the Soup Line, the 17 Choir and other innovative ideas.  Apparently Bill Drummond lived just down the hill from me when I was in Brighton but I never met him, I don’t think.

Niall Buggy as Eric, Danny Webb as Morse

Back on the Alien3 set a few days later it was Valentine’s Day.  I had been sent a card and an AD delivered it to me as we relaxed between shots.  It was of course from Jenny my beloved.  We were not married at that point.  And I could swear Sigourney was looking over my shoulder to see who it was from.  Hahaha.  Fincher was shooting a lot of footage.  “I’m doing long pans & track so they can’t cut into my footage” he explained one day.  It meant that when we had a group scene we could open a book on how many takes it would be.  Anything under five was unpopular.  Over twelve was possible, common even.  I think we did a tenner per set-up.  Someone wrote the names down and the number they’d chosen.  Often no one would win because we went up to Take 17 and no one wanted to put ten of your earth pounds on that.

Here’s an idea…

In fact Sigourney and I had one of our scenes discussing plans regarding telling the company their was an Alien on the planet, and playing a fella who wanted to go home to his wife and kids, rather than perish in some millennial cult group suicide, Aaron ’85’ suggested a plan.  Ripley’s response was tentatively ‘yes maybe‘.  We did a couple of wide shots, then into my single.  Can’t remember how many takes it was – probably around seven or eight.  Then turned round onto Sigourney.  David didn’t like her tone, which suggested that Ripley thought Aaron was a dick.  He didn’t think that was right at that point in the story.  So. One more.  Turn over. Sound Speed. Scene 178 take 17.  Mark it. And….Action! Blah blah blah.  Cut.  Same result.  He’s not your enemy.  Take 22.  Don’t sneer. Take 29.  You think it’s a good idea. Take 34. By which time we were all so exhausted and dizzy from the repetition that Sigourney said the line in a kind of dazed acquiescence and Fincher had the take he wanted.

About a year later in Los Angeles, after the re-shoots, I had two days of ADR in a West LA studio on Olympic Boulevard.  David remembered the scene well, 34 takes.  He’d never done ADR before though – Automated Dialogue Replacement – where you can change the inflexion, emphasis, tone, shade and meaning of a line just by using your voice and matching the lip movements on screen in front of you precisely.  Movie magic.  Some actors hate it, I made friends with the process very early on after I had to voice the whole of my performance as Danny in Withnail & I for the US market. The test screenings had indicated that audience members couldn’t understand what he was saying.  Who could? I did that piece of work at Twickenham Studios in 1987 where the engineer consoled me having to re-do my entire performance at the same speed except more intelligibly by telling me that Michael Caine had done Alfie and Bob Hoskins had also done The Long Good Friday for America.  And yet we were expected to understand Stallone’s mumbles or Pacino’s – hey that’s what it means to be an outlying part of The Empire right?  I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen the US version of Withnail but I suspect it would be a bad idea.  But having said that the experience toughened me up for future sessions.  Especially the Alien 3 session which was two long days – the reason for that was the amount of atmospheric smoke and steam in the design of the film which was very noisy to produce.  Often back in the day on big movies the Sound Department knew that they were recording a guide track only, to be completed and polished in ADR.  So here we were down on W. Olympic and David says – if I’d known about ADR in Pinewood I would never have done 34 takes just for a vocal inflection…

It’s hard to recall now in 2019 how difficult that experience was.  Jenny can remember quite clearly how I would come home every day, full of doubt, full of worry and anguish, just because I was trying to do my best work.  What a fantastic opportunity for me, but you know I was running fast just to stand still.   I remember a visual image I used to produce while trying to explain it to friends, as a learning curve which came from my chest, looped back over my head and stabbed me in the back.  I wondered if, at some point, whether the fact that we were making a horror film in space meant that we had to have a horrible experience in space.  I called Richard E. Grant one day who was shooting Hudson Hawk in Italy – another picnic – and he asked me how much I was getting. I told him. He said

“well – that’s the amount of shit you have to eat then.”

I could almost understand why Bill Drummond had formed The K.L.F.

  My Pop Life #220 : 3am Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.) – The K.L.F. 3am Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.) - The K.L.F. ( The Ancients of Mu Mu )

[adambstingus]

Creepy, Out-Of-The-Box Sex Studies That Were Maybe Illegal

Ever since Edgar D. Scienceman invented science in 1957, a very specific subset of researchers have busied themselves by researching romance and sexual attraction. The problem is that with all the weird brain chemicals and general stickiness involved, the mechanics of mutually agreed-upon boning have proved extremely challenging to conclusively figure out. As such, some of our boner scientists have gotten creative in their research.

#5. People Started To Accept Gay Sex Meetings Because A Sociologist Creeped on Gay Guys for Three Years

What would you do if you wanted to study a sexual behavior that was so looked down upon by the general public that those who partake in it could only do so in secret, anonymously, and in constant fear of beatings (or worse)? Get to know the community and earn their trust? Or perv around them for years, presenting yourself as a voyeuristic fapsmith who’d sit quietly in the corner, watching their every thrust? Just watching and sweating.

And taking notes.

“And just a couple of pictures for sci– uh, masturbation! I meant masturbation!”

If your answer is the former, clearly you’re as sane as you are ill-equipped for 1960s sociological research. Well, at least the school Laud Humphreys, the author of the Tearoom Trade study, bought into. For three years in the late ’60s, Humphreys hung around an undisclosed American city’s “tearooms” — ie. public restrooms where men went for plow each others’ pumpkin patches. Humphreys took on the role of “watchqueen” — the voyeur/spotter who ensured the guys in the stall weren’t caught in the act. He collected all the information on the tearoomers and their sexuality that he could, occasionally by revealing his true identity, but generally just abusing the shit out of their trust. He’d even track down their addresses by their license plates and show up on their doors disguised as a census taker.

Were his methods ethical? Shit no! Very few fucks were given about his subjects’ consent — which is ironic, considering the many levels of fucking otherwise involved in the study. However, here’s the absolute craziest part about Humphreys’ study: It worked. Not in a “earned the dude scores of grants and accolades” way — although the Tearoom Trade study remains a scientific landmark, that’s mainly because it’s a textbook example of unethical social research. No, the study actually yielded positive results for the gay community.

Plot twist, motherfuckers!

Before Humphreys’ study, the public opinion about men participating in public gay shenanigans held that they were dangerous social and sexual deviants. The study revealed that they were mostly regular folks and upstanding citizens. In fact, the majority of them were regular family men who, due to the attitudes of the era, had no other outlet to this side of their sexuality. Though this presumably opened a whole new can of worms of the “Hold on, you told me you were working overtime” nature, the gay community by and large welcomed the study. Hell, even the 1960s police found itself putting one foot in the “gays are people, too” bandwagon (sort of), as many precincts realized the tearoom trade was a victimless “crime” and stopped actively stomping on the people practicing it, instead focusing on being the tolerant and fair organization we know the police as today.

#4. A Rogue CIA Operative Ran A Prostitutes-And-LSD Experiment For Years

If you’ve spent any time on the internet at all, you probably know what Project MKUltra is — a particularly turd-stained 1950s-60s chapter in CIA history wherein they forgot the “intelligence” part in their name and started armpit-farting about with mind control.

Operation Midnight Climax was a sex-themed side project of MKUltra that was deemed too silly to even fit under the main umbrella of their stupidest, most sinister programs. This is the guy who ran it:

At least, this is the only photo I could find of him on a somewhat reputable site. It was that kind of project.

His name was George White, and he was a noted federal narcotics agent and CIA “consultant” who somehow ended up with something of a no-nonsense reputation, despite being all nonsense. At some point in 1953, the CIA put White in charge of Midnight Climax, an illicit, barely-controlled operation that would run rampant until the Agency would relocate its bag of fucks to give in 1964. Over the intervening 11 years, White acted as a strange Opposite Batman. During the day, he was a hardass Federal Bureau of Narcotics agent. When the sun set, he put on his silk pajamas and started overseeing Midnight Climax, in which he and his cohorts spiked the drinks of thousands of unwitting San Francisco and New York men with LSD, luring them into agency-sponsored brothels just to see what would happen. Yes, the government created a Bill Cosby Division.

Spoiler: As much illicit sex as the Johns could see behind the pretty colors would happen.

Amidst the dirty posters, velvet curtains, and barrages of nudity, agents were watching behind two-way mirrors and recording everything with hidden cameras and microphones. In the middle of it all sat George White, a demigod drunk on power and boobs, and presumably also the pitcher of martini he had about him at most hours. Again, not the wisest move in CIA history.

Technically, the program was all about finding out if LSD had military and/or espionage applications. In practice, things soon devolved into “titty titty titty titty beer!” However, they were able to uncover many handy things re: surveillance techniques, along with the inevitable experience in sexual blackmail, because of course. Perhaps most interestingly, the old adage that the post-coital cigarette break is the optimal time for a man to spill his secrets is said to hail from this study. Because sometimes, a good trope is worth the mental torture of thousands.

#3. Researchers Proved Sex And Fear Are Linked By Stalking People Who Crossed A Perilous Bridge

Let’s say you’re ambling around in a forest, when suddenly you come across a deep, wide chasm. Crossing it is a scary, ancient suspension bridge that looks not unlike the one Indiana Jones was forced to hack up in the finale of Temple Of Doom. Beside the bridge there stands an old man. He gives you a quest: You must walk across this dangerous, scary bridge. Then, once you get to the other side, seek out a pretty lady nearby and have a sexually suggestive conversation with her.

What the fuck, right? Are you now a character in the world’s worst video game? Some strange, politically correct remake of Custer’s Revenge with pixelated nudity and racism replaced with awkwardness and plain old stupidity?

Nope! Not only was what I just described an actual 1974 scientific experiment known as the Capilano suspension bridge experiment, but they didn’t even play fair and recruit volunteers — they just hung around a scary-ass suspension bridge and latched onto whatever action hero outdoorsman / complete idiot dared to cross it.

“What about the 17 people we’ve seen falling down in the last hour?” “Eh, just chalk them up as a control group.”

The bridge, as seen above, was a goddamned nightmare: a five-foot-wide, 450-foot-long rickety wooden-boards-and-wire-cables thing that was known to “tilt, sway and wobble”, and was equipped with extremely low wire cable handrails which added to the “Fuck, I’m going to fall and die” effect seemingly custom-built into the design. During the experiment, the men who dared to cross the bridge were greeted on the other side by an attractive lady, who pounced on the adrenaline- and terror-addled guys. She said she was conducting a survey, and had them fill out a specifically designed questionnaire. After they were done, she’d engage in conversation, and cap things off by offering the subject her phone number “in case they wanted to discuss the results.” Then they repeated the experiment with a male interviewer, and brought in a control group who crossed a nearby bridge that was much sturdier and a lot closer to the ground.

While no one really gave a crap about the male interviewer, the female one received a lot more calls. Incidentally, the same group also peppered their questionnaire with far more sexual imagery than the others. And that, friends, is how researchers found that fear and sexual desire are linked through misattribution of arousal, using the most bullshit plot available to science.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/creepy-out-of-the-box-sex-studies-that-were-maybe-illegal/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/183343277572

[allofbeercom]

Creepy, Out-Of-The-Box Sex Studies That Were Maybe Illegal

Ever since Edgar D. Scienceman invented science in 1957, a very specific subset of researchers have busied themselves by researching romance and sexual attraction. The problem is that with all the weird brain chemicals and general stickiness involved, the mechanics of mutually agreed-upon boning have proved extremely challenging to conclusively figure out. As such, some of our boner scientists have gotten creative in their research.

#5. People Started To Accept Gay Sex Meetings Because A Sociologist Creeped on Gay Guys for Three Years

What would you do if you wanted to study a sexual behavior that was so looked down upon by the general public that those who partake in it could only do so in secret, anonymously, and in constant fear of beatings (or worse)? Get to know the community and earn their trust? Or perv around them for years, presenting yourself as a voyeuristic fapsmith who’d sit quietly in the corner, watching their every thrust? Just watching and sweating.

And taking notes.

“And just a couple of pictures for sci– uh, masturbation! I meant masturbation!”

If your answer is the former, clearly you’re as sane as you are ill-equipped for 1960s sociological research. Well, at least the school Laud Humphreys, the author of the Tearoom Trade study, bought into. For three years in the late ’60s, Humphreys hung around an undisclosed American city’s “tearooms” — ie. public restrooms where men went for plow each others’ pumpkin patches. Humphreys took on the role of “watchqueen” — the voyeur/spotter who ensured the guys in the stall weren’t caught in the act. He collected all the information on the tearoomers and their sexuality that he could, occasionally by revealing his true identity, but generally just abusing the shit out of their trust. He’d even track down their addresses by their license plates and show up on their doors disguised as a census taker.

Were his methods ethical? Shit no! Very few fucks were given about his subjects’ consent — which is ironic, considering the many levels of fucking otherwise involved in the study. However, here’s the absolute craziest part about Humphreys’ study: It worked. Not in a “earned the dude scores of grants and accolades” way — although the Tearoom Trade study remains a scientific landmark, that’s mainly because it’s a textbook example of unethical social research. No, the study actually yielded positive results for the gay community.

Plot twist, motherfuckers!

Before Humphreys’ study, the public opinion about men participating in public gay shenanigans held that they were dangerous social and sexual deviants. The study revealed that they were mostly regular folks and upstanding citizens. In fact, the majority of them were regular family men who, due to the attitudes of the era, had no other outlet to this side of their sexuality. Though this presumably opened a whole new can of worms of the “Hold on, you told me you were working overtime” nature, the gay community by and large welcomed the study. Hell, even the 1960s police found itself putting one foot in the “gays are people, too” bandwagon (sort of), as many precincts realized the tearoom trade was a victimless “crime” and stopped actively stomping on the people practicing it, instead focusing on being the tolerant and fair organization we know the police as today.

#4. A Rogue CIA Operative Ran A Prostitutes-And-LSD Experiment For Years

If you’ve spent any time on the internet at all, you probably know what Project MKUltra is — a particularly turd-stained 1950s-60s chapter in CIA history wherein they forgot the “intelligence” part in their name and started armpit-farting about with mind control.

Operation Midnight Climax was a sex-themed side project of MKUltra that was deemed too silly to even fit under the main umbrella of their stupidest, most sinister programs. This is the guy who ran it:

At least, this is the only photo I could find of him on a somewhat reputable site. It was that kind of project.

His name was George White, and he was a noted federal narcotics agent and CIA “consultant” who somehow ended up with something of a no-nonsense reputation, despite being all nonsense. At some point in 1953, the CIA put White in charge of Midnight Climax, an illicit, barely-controlled operation that would run rampant until the Agency would relocate its bag of fucks to give in 1964. Over the intervening 11 years, White acted as a strange Opposite Batman. During the day, he was a hardass Federal Bureau of Narcotics agent. When the sun set, he put on his silk pajamas and started overseeing Midnight Climax, in which he and his cohorts spiked the drinks of thousands of unwitting San Francisco and New York men with LSD, luring them into agency-sponsored brothels just to see what would happen. Yes, the government created a Bill Cosby Division.

Spoiler: As much illicit sex as the Johns could see behind the pretty colors would happen.

Amidst the dirty posters, velvet curtains, and barrages of nudity, agents were watching behind two-way mirrors and recording everything with hidden cameras and microphones. In the middle of it all sat George White, a demigod drunk on power and boobs, and presumably also the pitcher of martini he had about him at most hours. Again, not the wisest move in CIA history.

Technically, the program was all about finding out if LSD had military and/or espionage applications. In practice, things soon devolved into “titty titty titty titty beer!” However, they were able to uncover many handy things re: surveillance techniques, along with the inevitable experience in sexual blackmail, because of course. Perhaps most interestingly, the old adage that the post-coital cigarette break is the optimal time for a man to spill his secrets is said to hail from this study. Because sometimes, a good trope is worth the mental torture of thousands.

#3. Researchers Proved Sex And Fear Are Linked By Stalking People Who Crossed A Perilous Bridge

Let’s say you’re ambling around in a forest, when suddenly you come across a deep, wide chasm. Crossing it is a scary, ancient suspension bridge that looks not unlike the one Indiana Jones was forced to hack up in the finale of Temple Of Doom. Beside the bridge there stands an old man. He gives you a quest: You must walk across this dangerous, scary bridge. Then, once you get to the other side, seek out a pretty lady nearby and have a sexually suggestive conversation with her.

What the fuck, right? Are you now a character in the world’s worst video game? Some strange, politically correct remake of Custer’s Revenge with pixelated nudity and racism replaced with awkwardness and plain old stupidity?

Nope! Not only was what I just described an actual 1974 scientific experiment known as the Capilano suspension bridge experiment, but they didn’t even play fair and recruit volunteers — they just hung around a scary-ass suspension bridge and latched onto whatever action hero outdoorsman / complete idiot dared to cross it.

“What about the 17 people we’ve seen falling down in the last hour?” “Eh, just chalk them up as a control group.”

The bridge, as seen above, was a goddamned nightmare: a five-foot-wide, 450-foot-long rickety wooden-boards-and-wire-cables thing that was known to “tilt, sway and wobble”, and was equipped with extremely low wire cable handrails which added to the “Fuck, I’m going to fall and die” effect seemingly custom-built into the design. During the experiment, the men who dared to cross the bridge were greeted on the other side by an attractive lady, who pounced on the adrenaline- and terror-addled guys. She said she was conducting a survey, and had them fill out a specifically designed questionnaire. After they were done, she’d engage in conversation, and cap things off by offering the subject her phone number “in case they wanted to discuss the results.” Then they repeated the experiment with a male interviewer, and brought in a control group who crossed a nearby bridge that was much sturdier and a lot closer to the ground.

While no one really gave a crap about the male interviewer, the female one received a lot more calls. Incidentally, the same group also peppered their questionnaire with far more sexual imagery than the others. And that, friends, is how researchers found that fear and sexual desire are linked through misattribution of arousal, using the most bullshit plot available to science.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/creepy-out-of-the-box-sex-studies-that-were-maybe-illegal/