#this was performed by trained professionals (made up people for whom there are no real world consequences) do not attempt
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"consensual but not safe or sane" is my favourite fanfiction tag because it's like prefacing something dangerous with the warning "don't try this at home!" but instead of a risky driving manoeuvre or whatever it's a scene where a character vivisects another and applies an electric current to their nerve endings to see how their insides move (sexually)
#đ#this was performed by trained professionals (made up people for whom there are no real world consequences) do not attempt
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Exploring the World of Gaming Boosts: A Comprehensive Guide to Account Enhancement Services
A boost is any action to improve an account carried out by special services. They help upgrade your character and account as a whole, increase your overall rating and statistics, and earn in-game currency - everything that the owner does not have enough time or skills for. Boosting services like Skycoach are in demand exclusively in multiplayer games, regardless of genre. Often leveling up a hero in games is precisely that notorious nerdiness that kills all the pleasure from the process: you often have to perform the same actions day after day - complete daily tasks, clear the same dungeon from monsters, kill the same mobs, etc. This discourages not only the wealthy gentleman who can afford to order the services of a specially trained person but also the fan who plays for the idea. According to statistics, the average playerâs experience in any project does not exceed three years. Of course, exceptions are possible when, under the weight of nostalgia, a player returns to the project for a short time, plays hard, but then leaves again. The reason is simple: during this time, both the game changes a lot (a few major updates are enough) and the player himself (even if his age has exceeded the thirty-year mark). Now let's talk about the people who help upgrade your account; they used to be called drivers. Boosters These are players for whom upgrading game accounts has become a stable source of additional income. Such players are part of special organizations that help players and provide any services - from the sale of game currency to paid master classes. Today the term boosters is used when a professional gamer is pumping up an account. For boosters, a significant number of clients come from search engines, and it is much easier to find an agency providing such services upon request for boost accounts. Additional and related services In many top games, reaching the maximum level for a character or account is not the end of the game's journey, and often not even the middle, but only the beginning. There are a lot of other attributes that can and should be improved, sometimes spending even more time on this than on pumping itself. Let's look at the most popular boosting services in games. Account calibration In session shooters and MOBA games, the selection of participants for battle is carried out according to their skills - beginners fight with beginners, veterans with veterans. In many games, this requires so-called account calibration - several test battles, based on the results of which the player is assigned a certain rating. Calibration of Dota and CS GO accounts, as well as some less popular games of these genres, are always in demand. Improved statistics The service is often used by fans of military equipment simulators. The most popular is improving WoT (World of Tanks) statistics since these games are the most famous in this genre. Often, based on statistics, it is determined how good a player is (the percentage of victories to the total number of battles, the number of killed opponents per battle, the average damage caused, etc.), and based on this, a decision is made about his admission to a platoon or regiment. Getting achievements An achievement is an in-game achievement that is awarded for fulfilling certain (sometimes very difficult) conditions. For example, defeat 5000 players in the Arena. This system is more common in RPG games. Jobs for leveling up WoW (World of Warcraft) characters are always relevant, as well as for obtaining achievements because this game still occupies a leading position in the MMORPG genre. Mercenaries for the clan The service is popular in MMORPGs, where you can wage guild wars and capture territories and castles. Victory is not only a matter of prestige but also a significant increase in the guildâs treasury, which is why leaders of top communities are willing to pay real money for the services of virtual mercenaries. Obtaining Unique Items In games of the MMORPG genre, getting almost all the equipment comes down to going through a dungeon (dungeon) with a boss at the end with a group of five people or a raid with a group of ten participants. The higher the difficulty level, the higher the likelihood of getting top equipment. However, you have to work hard - for example, a raid in the same WoW can last three hours. Help in passing the dungeon is another income for a group of gamers with âstraight handsâ. The difficulty is that there is no guarantee that you will get the right thing on the first try - everything is decided by chance. Farm game currency Not all games allow you to donate to the developers to buy game currency for real money. In several projects, this is done deliberately to equalize all players, without giving anyone an advantage. In addition, this way you can save money - a booster for farming game currency can get more game values for the same money. Leveling up professions Peaceful professions, although profitable, are often very boring. Many players who enjoy fighting in the Arena or completing dungeons avoid peaceful activities in every possible way. The same applies to collecting resources - some people prefer to hire a driver in the game to protect themselves from such boring leisure time. Whether to use boosting or not is the choice of each player, but with these services, it is easier to play. Read the full article
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Raise the Barre (Ch. 8)
Author: kpopfanfictrash
Pairing: Jimin / Reader
Rating: 18+ (Eventual Smut)
Genre: Enemies to Lovers / Dance Academy!AU
Warnings: underage drinking, angst, hoseokâs bare abs
Word Count: 10,705
Summary: You and Park Jimin have been rivals for as long as youâve known one another; ever since he tripped you in the front row of your first dance convention. When you graduate from high school and enter Russet Ballet Academy, you tell yourself youâre leaving all past quarrels behind. The main problem with this though, is that your past seems determined not to leave you alone.
Worse still, the obstacles you face while out in the real world might prove more challenging than anything your enemy has to offer. Â
âOkay, even you have to admit this is too soon.â Finn stared, appalled at the chalkboard. âItâs not even Halloween!â
Laughing a little, you looped your arm around his to drag him towards the back. Plopping down in a chair, you placed your order number in the center of the table. Seating himself across the table from you, Finn began to undo his coat.
âCome on.â He grinned, brown hair flopping when he leaned forward. âAdmit it â this is too early for holiday drinks.â
âOkay, maybe itâs a little early,â you acquiesced. âBut Halloween is tomorrow! They probably just put up the holiday drinks so they donât have to do it on Sunday.â
âLaziness!â he cried, jabbing a finger in the air.
Shaking your head, you smiled when Namjoon, the barista, placed a pumpkin soy latte before you.
âThanks!â you said, pulling this towards you.
âNo problem,â he said, flashing his dimples before he turned to leave.
Taking a long, slow sip of your drink, you groaned. âOh my god. This is it. This is heaven.â
Finn laughed. âIs that seriously your first pumpkin drink of the season?â Sadly, he shook his head. âI remember our senior year, you dragged me out of bed at 7:00 AM on a Saturday just to get the first pumpkin drink of the year.â
âI know,â you sighed. âBut Iâve needed the extra caffeine jolt each morning. Sweet drinks just donât cut it anymore.â
âAh, the first step in addiction.â Finn nodded sagely.
Smiling, you settled back in your seat as he took the first sip of his black coffee. It had been two weeks since your fight at the club and since then, Finn had been on his best behavior. For about a week, things between you had been awkward but slowly, your relationship was returning to normal.
Seated in the corner of your favorite coffee shop, you drank from your cup and glanced around the room. This was what youâd pictured when you imagined you and Finn living in the city together. Coffee dates, going on new adventures and continuing your relationship where it had left off.
Of course, this morning was only possible because Miss Brittâs ballet class had been cancelled. A contemporary master class had been scheduled for the afternoon, but your day before then was free â something youâd immediately taken advantage of by calling Finn. It was becoming easier to fit each other into your schedules, more like second nature, but things were still tense whenever things didnât line up.
None of this was eased by the burgeoning whatever-it-was youâd shoved to the back of your mind regarding Jimin. Since the day of Mr. Vladâs ballet class, youâd managed to keep your emotions in check, but were constantly on the lookout for dangerous situations. You and Jimin were professionals, obviously, but you were also only human. It was reasonable to have subconscious wants and desires, but these werenât important unless you chose to act upon them.
You didnât tell Finn about it because honestly, there was nothing to tell. Okay, so youâd felt an errant spark one day during a lift. Big deal. Finn had been your boyfriend for over two years â it would take more than that to threaten your relationship. A relationship which, frankly, had been getting stronger as of late. Telling him something as inconsequential as a spark you had with Jimin would only take you further down the wrong path.
âAre you sure youâre okay with us doing separate things tomorrow?â Finn interrupted your thoughts. His brow furrowed. âIt is Halloween, after all.â
âAh, yes.â You nodded. âHalloween, the internationally known coupleâs holiday.â
He laughed. âOkay, point made â but still.â
âItâs fine,â you assured him. This was something youâd already been over. âIt just makes sense like this! Your friends are going to that off-campus party and I promised Noelle Iâd go to this club thing with her.â
âRight, of course.â Finn grinned. âIâm bummed Iâll miss seeing you as the Powerpuff girls, though. Whoâs going to be the third one, again?â
âWell, Iâm Blossom â obviously.â
âOf course.â He nodded. âMiss Responsibility.â
A twinge of annoyance went through you, but you pushed it aside. You didnât think you were always the responsible one but admittedly, youâd been more on edge than usual lately.
âAnyways,â you continued with a roll of your eyes. âIâm Blossom, Noelle is Buttercup and Irene is going as Bubbles. Itâll be fun! Aside from the whole club part, of course.â
âIt does sound fun,â Finn admitted, a tad mournful. âMeanwhile, Iâve been roped into the classic college bro costume of Ghostbusters.â
âOh, come on! That is classic! Youâll be super cute in your⊠suit? Cargo pants? What do Ghostbusters wear again?â
âKnowing Ben, something tragic from Party City. Pray for me.â
âIâll light candles.â
Finn grinned, sipping his coffee again and your conversation slipped naturally to other topics.
Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, which meant every college campus was gearing up for some epic parties. Noelle had managed to snag tickets to a club fancy enough to require an RSVP. Apparently, said brother she missed was a DJ and could get tickets to a lot of things if Noelle bothered to ask.
A bunch of people from Russet were going, which made you excited. There hadnât been many parties with your classmates so far this semester. Despite technically being in college, your classmates were all under the same intense pressure, only made worse by constant early morning ballet.
This week though, even your teachers seemed to have decided you needed a break. Aside from the master class you had this afternoon, there were zero Russet classes until Monday morning. The break in schedule meant you could actually go out â and drink â if you so decided. You and Noelle were planning on attending a ballet class tomorrow, but your entire day after would be free.
Youâd originally planned on seeing Finn during the day, but then heâd been invited to a Halloween darty (day party) starting at noon. Despite not seeing Finn on Halloween, you werenât feeling stressed. It was only one holiday and not even a coupleâs one, as youâd said.
After coffee, you kissed Finn goodbye and headed to class at Danley Hall. The atmosphere was different as soon as you entered the classroom â all of the students were buzzing, excited by the prospect of the weekend ahead. The excitement only grew when coupled with the fact that todayâs class was contemporary.
For nearly two months, your training had been mostly ballet. This was the foundation of all western dance, and where most dance students were expected to start. Finally though, you were being given a chance to show off. Todayâs teacher, Luna Jordan, was a well-known contemporary choreographer across the globe.
Youâd done a master class with her once back in high school and honestly couldnât wait to learn from her again. She wasnât alone, though, you noticed as you walked in â an unfamiliar, dark-haired guy stood beside her, stretching lithely before the roomâs mirror.
âHoly shit,â Noelle whispered as she came to a stop. âThatâs Jeon Jungkook.â
Startled, you looked twice and saw she was right. You hadnât recognized him without his bevy of followers, but Jeon Jungkook was known in the dance world. A child prodigy, heâd been on Americaâs Got Talent at age eleven and finished in second place. Following this, his family had moved to LA and heâd been in high demand for movies, music videos and performances ever since.
You remembered hearing he worked with Luna Jordan, but the thought hadnât crossed your mind before now that he might be here.
Noelle cocked her head to one side. âHeâs hot.â
âNoelle,â you hissed, trying to shush her.
âWhat!â A devious grin spread across her face. âAm I supposed to be blind, as well as mute?â
âWell, no, but ââ
âAlright, everyone!â Miss Luna clapped her hands together. âI know everyone is excited for the weekend, but we unfortunately have an hour and a half together before then. Everyone spread out for warm-ups!â
A few people laughed, spreading out on the floor as class began. Noelle wriggled her eyebrows, pulling you towards the front in order to get the best spot. Hiding a smile, you ducked your head and settled beside her into a stretch.
Noelle was nearly as excited as you were for the opportunity to dance contemporary. Most of your classmates knew this to be your forte â you caught glances from the corner of your eye while you warmed up, trying not to let their attention get to your head.
Jimin was also near the front, although on the opposite side. You suspected your class was equally excited to see him perform â as talented as Jimin was at ballet, there was a reason you hadnât thought heâd be at Russet this fall. Jiminâs strength in jazz and contemporary was unparalleled. You wouldâve thought heâd gone to LA to become a dancer like Jungkook.
Speaking of whom â Jungkook really was attractive; that much couldnât be denied. He had dark, wavy hair pulled into a bun and cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. When he glanced up from his stretch, his gaze somehow found yours and he smiled.
Eyes widening, you stared until you caught sight of Jimin behind him. Glancing between the two of you, Jiminâs expression soured before he looked away. Lips parting, you felt the sudden urge to say something, but there was too much distance between you.
âYou ready?â Miss Luna called, an upbeat pop song blasting from the stereo. âLetâs go!â
She launched into isolations, leaving the rest of the class to follow. Warm-ups passed quickly and before you knew it, you were gathered at center to learn the combination. Miss Lunaâs style was right up your alley. The steps came easily and, once youâd learned the whole chorus, she left you alone to practice.
You were helping Ari with a difficult move when you caught sight of Sabrina as you turned. Sheâd positioned herself near the back, which had to be a first. Usually, Sabrina was front and center to allow for maximum receipt of teacher praise.
The decision to stand near the back couldâve been strategy â sometimes, dancers did that at conventions. Conventions were giant weekends of competition with teachers from all over the globe who taught master classes to hundreds of dancers in hotel ballrooms and convention centers. Space at the front tended to be limited, so some stayed at the back, where there was more room to dance and be seen. You had a greater likelihood to capture the teacherâs attention when you had the room to do incredible leaps.
Sabrinaâs decision didnât seem strategic, though. While you watched, Sabrina stumbled transitioning from one move to the next. A brief twinge of pity went through you.
It was easy enough to spot ballerinas dancing anything but ballet. Although ballet was the root of modern westernized dance, it could be hard to translate into other styles. Ballet was more rigid than contemporary, jazz or hip-hop. In ballet, each position was defined, individual style was limited, and dancers were expected to all look the same. Standing out in the corps de ballet was equally frowned upon as missing an entrance.
Not that ballet wasnât important to all dance styles, mind you. Even hip-hop dancers took ballet to improve their balance, core strength and general understanding of the body. There was an element of individuality in other dance styles, though, which lacked in ballet. Contemporary and hip-hop dancers were expected to have relentless technique all while creating their own, unique flair.
Just looking at Sabrina you could clearly see the holes. She was trying so hard to emulate the moves of Miss Luna, she was kind of missing the point. When Miss Luna did a certain flick of the wrist, it wasnât a defined part of the choreography, but rather an individual choice.
Without thinking, you took a step forward â only to stop. Sabrina wouldnât want your help; sheâd already made that abundantly clear. Besides, you knew her friend Katie to be a contemporary dancer. She could help Sabrina and yet, when you looked, you saw Katie practicing near the front with Jungkook.
Jungkook obviously knew the steps, since this was probably the tenth time heâd learned the combination. Dance teachers often did that â selected a dancer to attend classes with them, traveling to different cities to demonstrate the combination and help when they werenât free.
Before you could decide whether to help Sabrina, Miss Luna clapped her hands again.
âLetâs do groups!â she declared. âIâll count you off into groups of four, and each group will showcase. Sound good?â
It wasnât really a question so much as an announcement. The rest of the class nodded, waiting while Miss Luna counted you off. You ended up in the same group as Irene, Paulo and a few others. Jimin and Noelle were in the group two, while Sabrina was in the group after theirs.
Jogging off to the side, you waited while the first group took center. You were part of group four, which meant youâd be amongst the last to dance on the floor. When the music began, you closed your eyes and began to mark the combination. You tried not to focus on what anyone else was doing, but this became difficult once Noelleâs group stepped up.
Noelle had trained in jazz and contemporary, although sheâd stopped in high school to focus mainly on ballet. Still, her artistry shone in her movement. She could definitely stand to loosen up a bit but was still one of the best in the bunch. You found yourself smiling when she landed a turn, silently cheering her on from the side.
While you were watching, Jimin cut across your vision.
Dropping to the ground, he rolled and arched as his forehead brushed wood. His quality of movement was breathtaking and for a moment, you felt like you were back in high school.
Suddenly returned to those dimmed auditoriums, you watched Jimin take the stage like an otherworldly being. His body seemed to move before your mind could comprehend. Barely did he finish one move before he was starting another, the steps flowing endlessly together like unhindered water. Although you knew the combination and knew how you would dance it, watching Jimin perform was a different experience entirely.
Ballet required dancers to stay on the beat but in contemporary, they were expected to lag. Extensions were all the more breathtaking when they clung to the last second, seeming as though the dancer might not make it before they caught up. Jimin was an expert in this, knowing exactly when to hang precariously over the edge and when to pull back.
Watching him dance, that pesky, strange something bloomed in your chest again.
Squashing this quickly, you looked away and resumed marking the combo. The end of the song was improvisation though and, unable to stop yourself, you found your attention drifting to Jimin again. He was ridiculously beautiful â you nearly didnât hear when Miss Luna called for them to stop. As she turned off the music, she applauded the group while they walked from the floor.
Breathing heavily, Noelle came to a stop alongside you and â somewhat guiltily, since you hadnât been watching â you gave her a high-five.
âThat was awesome!â you said with a grin. âYou definitely stood out in the group.â
Noelle snort-laughed. âNot with Jimin up there, but thatâs okay. This is his specialty â and yours,â she added with a wink. âIâm psyched for group four.â
âAh,â you groaned, rubbing your neck. âToo much pressure.â
Noelle laughed, shaking her head as group three took the floor. Both of you fell silent to watch, your curious gaze finding Sabrina in the back. Sabrina looked almost nervous; an emotion which seemed out of place on her features. It made her look almost human.
As soon as the music began, you stifled a wince. Sabrina stood out from the group, and not in a good way. She had the combination down but moved with a woodenness you wouldâve expected from someone half her age. It was enough for you to glance at Miss Luna, wondering if she had noticed.
âWow,â Noelle whispered, looking almost gleeful. âSabrina is terrible.â
âNoelle!â you whisper-laughed.
âWhat? After everything sheâs done? After everything sheâs said?â Noelleâs gaze narrowed. âSabrina deserves this.â
Despite privately agreeing, you couldnât help but feel bad as Sabrina continued. Not wanting to watch any longer, you turned towards the front and resumed marking the combo. As soon as Miss Luna cut the music and polite clapping ensued, you turned back around.
It was time for group four. A shaky, sick feeling entered your stomach as you walked to center. So many eyes were on you, but it had been so long since you danced contemporary. You couldnât help but wonder if you were as good as people seemed to imagine. Surrounded by so many dancers at Russet, surely your own talent would pale in comparison.
As soon as the music began though, everything faded. Insecurities slipping away, a lightness entered your chest as, eyes falling shut, you slowly inhaled.
Taking a step forward, you opened your eyes and began.
To you, dance had several phases. The first was learning, where you memorized each step and put them in order. The second was understanding, where your muscle memory began to take over and the combination felt smoother. The final phase, performance, was when you thought not of the steps, and were free to just dance.
This was your favorite phrase. In this phase, your mind separated from your body, leaving you only with sweat and emotion. Dance was the only art form composed solely of the body. An odd combination of physical strength and artistic beauty, it was both a testament to human capability and human emotion.
Losing yourself in the music, you ebbed and flowed through the combination until the choreography ended and improvisation began. Finally, you let go and held nothing back. Raw, unbridled passion poured out as you lost sight of yourself, so consumed by the movement.
When the song finally finished and you came to a stop, you were panting for breath. Glancing up, the first person you saw was Jimin.
He stood off to one side, leaning casually against the rungs of the barre, but his expression was anything but. Focused on you, his gaze had turned dark in a way which made you catch your breath.
Miss Luna clapped both hands once again, returning your attention to her. Blinking, Jimin shook his head and in your peripheral, you saw him straighten.
âVery good!â Miss Luna scanned the group. âI know our time is nearly at and end, but why donât we have a few students come out and demonstrate?â
Again, this was fairly common in master classes. After learning the combination, teachers would often single out students to perform as examples. It wasnât always the students with the best technique who got chosen. Oftentimes, it was as much for passion and performance quality.
Taking a step forward, Miss Luna began to call out names. You were one of the first â setting your water down, you jogged back to center. Jimin was the next person called, then Noelle, much to your excitement. Jungkook was also instructed to join on the floor.
Turning the lights halfway down, Miss Luna pressed play and let you improvise until the combination began. Jungkook started dancing and honestly, he was beautiful, but you couldnât linger on him for long.Â
Catching sight of Jimin again, you were once more transported to earlier times. This wasnât the first time youâd been called out together. Oftentimes, this had happened at conventions but back then, your mind had been too clouded to see him for who he was.
Youâd always wanted to beat him in high school, but now, you were consumed by the oddest desire to see him do well.
Glancing up, Jimin caught your gaze and he smiled â but then, the combination began.
By the time you were finished, you could hardly catch your breath but somehow, you felt the most alive youâd been in ages. Back in your own element, surrounded by some of the most amazing dancers in the world â this was what youâd imagined when you came to Russet.
People around the room clapped, some of them begrudgingly. You got the impression many of your classmates werenât used to not being chosen. As you walked from the floor, you saw surprisingly, Sabrina wasnât amongst them.
Instead, Sabrina simply looked tired â as though sheâd tried her best and it hadnât been enough. You knew that look. You sympathized with that look.
The look lingered in the back of your mind while you packed up your things and listened to Noelle discuss Halloween tomorrow. When she mentioned Ari had decided to visit her family this weekend, an idea began to form in your mind.
âWait,â you interrupted, looking up. âAri canât come tomorrow?â
Noelle shook her head. âHer brother just turned eighteen, so her whole family is having a party or something.â
âSo⊠her ticket is free, then?â
âYesâŠâ Noelle paused. âWhy? Y/N, what are you planning?â
âOkay. Hear me out,â you said as you shrugged on your coat. It was cold enough now for the coat to be necessary.
Noelle sighed, slinging her bag over her shoulder. âAlright, Iâm listening.â
Glancing away, you saw Sabrina packing her things on the other side of the room. Before you could talk yourself out of it, you returned to Noelle.
âWhat if we invited Sabrina?â
Noelle snorted. âPass.â
âNoelle,â you laughed, reaching out for her arm. âCome on! Do you really think sheâs doing anything for Halloween?â
âProbably not. And thatâs her own fault.â
âMaybe,â you said, glancing at Sabrina once more. âBut how could it hurt? We have an extra ticket, thereâll be tons of people tomorrow night. Sheâll probably say no â at least this way, you can claim a write-off on your way into heaven!â
Noelle upper lip twitched. âOh, is that how write-offs work?â
âWell, I can only assume.â
Finally, she laughed. âUgh, fine. You can invite her â but only because itâs Halloween, and Halloween is a time for peace. And slutty costumes.â
âThanks, babe,â you said, squeezing her waist in a one-armed hug.
Sighing exaggeratedly, Noelle waved aside your thanks. Hiking your bag higher, you began to make your way across the room. As you closed in on Sabrina, you began to rethink your choice. It had been nearly a month since anything bad had happened between you but still, you found yourself feeling wary. As tough as you pretended to be, rejection hurt you just as much as the next person.
Still, dancing with Jimin had been a reminder of just how bitter your relationship used to be. If that relationship could change, you had to imagine things with Sabrina could, too.
Coming to a stop at her bag, you waited for her to look up. When she finally did, her brow wrinkled in confusion.
âWhat?â Sabrina asked, sounding defensive. âWhat do you want, Y/N?â
You couldnât really blame her for her suspicion. Had your situations been reversed, you wouldâve been equally distrustful. It was likely Sabrina thought you were coming over to gloat, or say something to do with class today. Another twinge of pity went through you as Sabrina zipped her bag shut to stand.
âI just wanted to know what you were doing tomorrow,â you said, trying to smile. âNoelle has an extra ticket to a Halloween party, and we thought you might like to come.â
Sabrina stared. âWhat?â
âTomorrow is Halloween,â you said, a bit slower. âYou know â when we were kids, it was all about costumes and candy. Now, itâs about costumes and booze?ïżœïżœïżœ
Sabrina failed to crack a smile. âAnd you want⊠me to come to this party?â
Something about the way she said this made you sad, as though she genuinely thought this might be a joke. As though at any moment, someone might jump out and yell SIKE.
âYeah,â you said, softening a little. âLook â itâs not a big deal if you canât make it. A bunch of our class is going though, so we thought of you.â
Sabrina hesitated, then glanced at the door. âOkay,â she said, looking back. âOkay, yeah. Iâll come.â
Stifling your surprise, you nodded. âGreat. Iâll text you where to meet us tomorrow before the club. Wear a costume,â you added before walking away. âNoelle said itâs required.â
âAlright,â Sabrina said, so quiet you almost missed it.
Walking away, you were nearly at the door when Jungkook popped up before you. Flashing a smile, he fixed a loose strand of hair away from his face. Feet fumbling to a stop, you could only stare.
âY/N, right?â he said, sounding shy.
Unable to find the words, you blinked in response. The way Jungkook danced had been so confident, youâd only assumed this to be his off-floor persona, as well. Hearing him sound shy was unexpected.Â
Also â you hadnât expected him to know your name.
âI⊠yeah, thatâs me.â Shaking your head, you smiled. âJungkook, right?â
âYeah.â He nodded. âI just wanted to say Iâm such a big fan of your dancing. It was great to take class with you today.â
Without meaning to, a laugh escaped your lips. Jungkook stared at you, baffled until you quickly waved him off.
âOh, no â no! Sorry,â you said. âIâm not laughing at you! Iâm just laughing at the ridiculousness of you saying youâre a fan of me.â
Some of Jungkookâs wariness disappeared, and a small smile played across his lips.
âWell, I am.â His grin widened. âI used to assist on the convention circuit, too and I remember you being called out all the time. You and Jimin,â he added, glancing across the room.
You looked, too and saw Jimin still packing his things. His back was stiff, pointedly not looking in your direction. Lingering on him a moment, you returned to Jungkook.
âStill,â you said with a laugh. âItâs a bit of a stretch to say we took class together when youâre the teacherâs assistant.â
âTrue.â Jungkook paused. âWell, next time youâre in LA, letâs fix that. Let me know if youâre ever in town and we can take a class together.â
Despite yourself, your brows raised. It was harmless, but Jungkook was definitely flirting with you. He was attractive, sure and seemed nice, but he lived in LA and you had a boyfriend. You should probably leave before things had the chance to go any further. The last thing you needed was another complication. Adjusting your bag, you gave Jungkook a small smile.
âSounds like a plan,â you said before turning away.
Jungkook chuckled from behind. âBye, Y/N.â
As you joined Noelle at the door, she stared over your shoulder.
âWhat?â you said, coming to a stop.
Noelleâs gaze moved to yours in disbelief. âHow?â she demanded as you exited class. âHow do you have all these men just⊠tripping over themselves for you?â
Heat rising to your face, you shook your head. âThatâs â I,â you sputtered. âYouâre being ridiculous!â
âAm I?â Noelle grinned. âFirst Jimin, now Jungkook⊠and all this while having a boyfriend.âÂ
âI⊠you... Jimin is not tripping over himself for me!â
Both her brows shot way, way up. âIs that the only part of the sentence you took objection to?â
âShut up,â you groaned and shoved her in the side.
Noelle laughed but nodded. âAlright, fine! Iâll stop. Did Sabrina say sheâll come?â
âShe did.â
âGreat. I still donât like her,â Noelle said, pushing open the door. âBut I guess youâre right, I have an extra ticket. Itâs nice to be nice.â
You laughed, pulling your coat tighter as you walked outside. âYouâre a saint.â
While you walked, your phone dinged and pulling this from your pocket, you saw a notification on Instagram. Jeon_Jungkook97 has followed you.
Shaking your head, you returned this to your jacket as you continued. While it was nice of Jungkook to compliment your dancing, his approval didnât mean as much as certain other peoples had. This realization stuck in your mind, making you wonder about Noelleâs teasing jibe.
She had said Jimin flirted with you, but that wasnât true â was it? You would have known if Jimin were flirting. It was hard to pick out though, since Jimin was friendly with everyone. That was just who he was; as heâd said earlier, he liked to be liked. A note of uncertainty entered your thoughts though, recalling the ballet class with your chest pressed to his. Shoving this away, you forced yourself to focus on the upcoming weekend.
Halloween was a night for fun, for letting loose and enjoying yourself with your friends. You refused to let the night be spoiled by any lingering feelings â either from you, or towards you.
The next night was perfect Halloween weather.
Chilly, but not cold enough to risk snow falling. There were several Halloweens from childhood you could recall trick-or-treating with a winter coat flung over your costume because the temperature had dropped below freezing.
You, Noelle and Irene showed up to Pauloâs house around 8:00 PM, shivering a little while you stood on his doorstep. Paulo was one of the few freshmen who lived off-campus, having known several upperclassmen before he came to Russet. The brownstone he lived in was cute, with window boxes you imagined hosted flowers in the summer.
Tugging your pink and black minidress down, you adjusted your bow as Paulo opened the door.
Blinking, he took in your costumes. âThe Powerpuff girls!â He cheered, raising an arm overhead. âTry not to take down any of the villains upstairs, yeah?â
âNo promises,â said Irene, flicking hair over her shoulder.
Entering the house, you heard thumping bass from an apartment upstairs. Paulo lived on the third floor and as you climbed the steps, the music grew louder. It took Paulo two tries to shove open the door â âwarped wood,â he explained â but once you were inside, you saw familiar faces.
âThe Powerpuff girls!â Jasmine cried, jumping up from the couch. âFinally! Thank god â can you take down Eamon? He came here dressed as a potato, or something.â
âItâs an avocado!â Eamon shouted from the kitchen. He was dressed in a round, green costume with a halo overhead. âIâm âholy guacamoleâ â get it?â he said, pointing at the halo.
Jasmine stared at him a moment. âThatâs terrible. Worse than mine,â she said with a wave down her body. âIâve been Princess Jasmine for the past five Halloweens. Itâs easy to remember and I already have the outfit.â
Laughing, you shrugged off your coat and added this to a pile on the couch. âItâs a classic,â you agreed as you turned.
Noelle had managed to procure at least twenty tickets to the party tonight, so a lot of your freshman Russet class was in attendance. Including Sabrina, who stood in the corner, talking to Louis over cups of red punch. She looked up when you entered, pausing before she gave a small wave. Surprised by the gesture, you did the same.
âNo.â Noelle groaned, coming to a stop alongside you. When you looked, you saw sheâd already removed her coat. âTell me Sabrina didnât come to this party dressed as a ballerina.â
âWe did invite her at the last minute,â you laughed. âHard to find a good Halloween costume in a day.â
âHey,â Noelle argued. âThereâs no we here. You were the one who invited her, and youâll be the one to accept the consequences should your social experiment fail.â
âDone,â you agreed. âSpeaking of social experiments though, Iâm ready to get drunk tonight. Whereâs the alcohol?â
âKitchen!â Irene called, brushing past. âOr â thatâs where Brian disappeared to when we entered, so I can only assume.â
Telling Noelle youâd be back with drinks, you wound through the room towards where Irene had pointed. The kitchen was tiny, on par with most city apartments. There was only room enough for one or two people, so you were lucky it was deserted when you entered.
Surveying the counter, you found the usual party staples. A bowl of red punch, a bunch of beer and various liquor bottles with chasers. Skipping over the communal punch bowl, you reached for a bottle of diet coke and coconut rum.
âOh,â a voice said as they entered the kitchen. âSorry â I didnât know you were in here.â
Glancing up, you saw Jimin and froze.
Heâd dyed his hair black â that was the first thing you noticed. Jiminâs hair was no longer blonde, but completely dark. His outfit confused you at first â a frilly, white blouse with slicked-back hair and dark trousers â until you saw his bright red contacts and the dribble of blood at his mouth.
âA vampire,â you said, finally recovering your voice. Scanning his body, you frowned. âWhere are the teeth, though?â
Jimin blinked, his gaze jerking up from your waist.
âHuh?â he said, sounding a bit strangled.
Cheeks heating a little â your dress was pretty short â you repeated yourself. âThe teeth,â you said, pointing at your own lips. âDonât vampires have fangs?â
âOh, right.â Jimin dug around in his pocket â fuck, were his trousers tight â to produce twin fangs. âI took them off when I got here. Theyâre really hard to talk in.â
âGo on then, Park,â you said with a grin. âPut them in.â
âOne second.â Twisting to face the wall, Jimin popped them in his mouth. Turning around, he bared his teeth. âSexy?â
With the teeth in though, the word came out more like shex-shie and you burst into laughter. âSo sexy,â you agreed, reaching past him for a cup.
Jimin stiffened when your arm brushed his front. Unbidden, you thought about what Noelle had said â Jimin had been flirting with you. Pulling away, you resumed making your drinks and tried not to look in his direction.
Even so, you remained aware of his presence. Jimin inched his way behind you, reaching for the whiskey on the other side. His arm brushed your elbow as he went, right knee nudging yours in an intimate gesture.
Glancing up from the counter, you accidentally caught his gaze. Despite your earlier joking, he did look sexy. Devastatingly so. Even the blood-red contacts werenât enough to deter the shiver which ran down your spine.
Shaking yourself free from your trance, you grabbed both cups and pulled back.Â
âSo, whatâre you drinking?â you asked.Â
You decided it was best to steer the conversation away from how sexy Park Jimin was or was not.
Seemingly oblivious to your inner turmoil, Jimin poured whiskey into his cup. âWhiskey and coke. Can you pass me that bottle?â
âSure,â you said, leaping at the chance to prevent him from walking past you again. âHere you go.â
Pushing this forward, you watched Jimin pour both drinks all the way to the brim. He paused near the end, staring into the depths before he looked up. He seemed to be warring with something, debating whether or not to speak whatever was on his mind.
âSoâŠâ He paused. âDo you know Jungkook, or something?â
You blinked. âJungkookâŠ?â
âYou know, Miss Lunaâs assistant. Jeon Jungkook.â
âOh! Jungkook. No, I donât really know him.â
âYou were talking to him at the end of class, though?â
Hearing the curiosity in his voice, both your brows raised. âAnd?â
âAnd nothing,â Jimin said, sounding uncomfortable. âI just⊠I didnât know you knew him, thatâs all.â
âI mean, I donât.â You paused. âBut even if I did, what does it matter?â
âIt doesnât.â His cheeks began to redden. âItâs just â ah, never mind. We donât have that great a history, thatâs all. Heâs kind of the reason Iâm at Russet this year.â
You stared at Jimin a moment. âWow, what a tragedy,â you said, stifling a laugh. âTo have been forced to attend one of the most prestigious dance institutions in the world.â
His upper lip twitched. âItâs not that. I was deciding between attending Russet and accepting a job offer out west. I was asked to join this pop star on tour⊠anyways, Jungkookâs never liked me much. Itâs a long story.â Jiminâs brow furrowed. âMy offer was rescinded at the last minute. The artist never said why, but I always got the feeling he had something to do with it.â
You stared at Jimin a moment, unsure how to respond. Jungkook hadnât seemed like that kind of person, but you supposed youâd only talked to him for a few minutes. If that was true, what happened to Jimin sucked and yet, the next words from your mouth nearly had you face-palming.
âAnd here I thought I was your biggest rival, Park,â you said.
Jiminâs eyes widened. âAre you⊠jealous, Y/N?â
He sounded almost pleased by the notion, which sent a different kind of shiver down your spine.
âNot at all,â you said quickly, turning back to your drinks.
Jimin made a soft tsk-ing sound, as though he didnât believe you.
âThat sucks,â you continued, determined to change the subject. âIâm sorry that happened to you.â
âYeah. Maybe it was all for the best, though. Things happen for a reason, right?â
Looking up, you caught Jiminâs stare. He didnât look immediately away and you got the oddest sensation he meant more than what he said. Hastily, you pushed this feeling aside, clutching your drinks as you entered the main room. Jimin followed close behind, two cups in his hands.
âWhen did you get here?â you asked. âBeen here long?â
Jimin shook his head. âNah. Hoseok and I got here like, ten minutes ago. He should be around here somewhere, he ââ
âY/N!â
You looked up just in time to see Hoseok, Jiminâs roommate, barreling towards you.
âItâs been so long!â Crushing you to his chest, Hoseok wrapped you in a hug. âHope Jimin isnât boring you to death,â he stage-whispered before he pulled away.
âJust for that.â Jimin arched a brow. âBoth these drinks are for me.â
âNo â wait, wait. Iâm sorry!â Hoseok pouted. âHand over the drink, Park. Itâs been the longest fucking week.â
Jimin grinned and relented, handing Hoseok his cup as you laughed. Hoseok was a newer friend, but he was close to Jimin, so heâd gradually bled into your latest gatherings. Despite not being on the ballet track, most of the dancers at Russet knew of him. Hoseok had that way about him.
Glancing down at your outfit, Hoseok held up a finger. âLet me guess â Blossom,â he said, turning to scan the room. âWhich means⊠aha! Irene is Bubbles and Noelle is Buttercup. Makes sense.â
âAnd you areâŠâ Pausing, you squinted at his outfit. âSomeone at the spa?â
âSure.â Hoseok shrugged. âHonestly, I just wanted to wear a bathrobe.â
Said bathrobe was paired with only boxers, the front of the robe open to display his toned abs. The costume didnât surprise you, based on past interactions with Hoseok.
Casually, he twirled the robe tie in a circle. âImpressive, no?â Hoseok glanced away. âWhoa, wait â they have beer pong? See you all later!â
Hurrying off, he left you alone with Jimin. Shaking your head, you glanced in his direction and saw Jimin down his whole drink. Arching a brow, you were about to ask why when Irene called your names from across the room.
âY/N!â She waved her hands. âJimin! Get over here, you two â we need more for flip cup!â
You found yourself pulled in this direction despite your insistence you didnât do well under pressure. Jimin ended up at the other end of the table and you lost sight of him when you started to play, paired with Jasmine for a partner.
By the end of the first round, you discovered you werenât as horrible a player as youâd imagined. Then someone suggested mixed drinks for the second round, and things became fuzzier. There were more people present than just current students of Russet. One of Pauloâs roommates knew Seokjin, so you saw him in the room, along with Sana.
You chatted with both over the course of the evening, in addition to a guy whoâd recently debuted on Broadway, Kim Taehyung. Apparently, there was already buzz around him for a Tony. Taehyung was nice, but it was sometime during this conversation you realized how tipsy you were. Apparently, not drinking for several months and then going ham made for very low tolerance.
Collapsing onto the couch, you joined Irene and Brianâs conversation. In the corner of your eye, you caught sight of Noelle â a terrible flip cup player, sheâd roped Hoseok into giving her private lessons, but these seemed to be going terribly. Or perhaps very well, given how much the two of them were laughing.
You completely forgot about Jimin until you spotted him across the room talking to Sabrina. Seeing them together, you straightened. Both seemed fairly comfortable, which struck you as odd. Since that morning in Jiminâs dorm, you hadnât really seen them hang out together.
Despite this, Jimin was laughing at something Sabrina had said. Tearing your gaze away, you forced yourself to focus on the conversation at hand. It didnât matter who Jimin spoke to, or even who he decided to go home with tonight. He was your dance partner and friend, nothing more and besides â you had a boyfriend.
Blinking, you reached into your clutch and pulled out your phone. To your disappointment, youâd gotten no texts from Finn since this morning. You assumed he was still at his party but didnât know for sure. Shooting him a text, hey, you waited for a response and when you got none, returned your phone to your purse.
Across the room, you heard Noelle yell your name. âY/N!â She cupped her mouth with both hands. âWe need another person for flip cup!â
Laughing, you pushed yourself from the couch and were immediately roped into your fourth game of the night. The night blurred again after that, turning into a pleasant hum of conversation and booze. At some point, Ubers were called to bring you to the club. As you rushed downstairs, you realized you forgot your coat as soon as you stepped outside.
Shivering violently, you rubbed your arms and cursed yourself for poor foresight.
âY/N?â Jimin came to a stop alongside you. âHey, whereâs your coat?â
âInside,â you said through chattering teeth. âI-itâs fine, though. Iâm fine!â
Jimin gave you a look. âWhereâs Paulo?â he said, glancing around. âIâll grab him, we can get your coat before we go ââ
âThe Uberâs already here, though,â you argued, grabbing his sleeve to drag him towards the curb. âIâll be fine from here to the club!â
Jimin sighed but gave in, following when you rushed to the grey SUV. Irene had claimed the front seat, so you and Jimin pulled open the middle door â Noelle and Hoseok were crowding behind you, so you and Jimin ended up together in the backseat.
Collapsed in a heap, you giggled as Jimin tried to squish himself in a corner. âSorry,â he said, trying â and failing â to keep his knees separate.
âJimin.â You snorted. âAre we going to go through this again? Your hands have been in way more inappropriate places than that this semester.â
Jiminâs lips parted, shocked, but you were already hoisting yourself over the middle seat. Draping your arms next to Noelle, you begged her to play your favorite song on the radio. Had you been more sober, you mightâve recognized your position to be precarious â perched on the edge of your seat, your ass hovered inches away from Jiminâs face.
Plopping back down, you glanced sideways at Jimin and found him frozen. Suddenly, you realized the visual heâd had.
âUm, so what happened to the teeth?â you blurted, determined to change the subject.
Jimin blinked and managed to meet your gaze. âCasualty of flip cup,â he said. âOne of them fell out during the game and I couldnât find where it rolled.â
âWell, thatâs okay. You can just be one of those vampires who blend in with normal humans. You know, the kind whose fangs only come out when they want to bite someone.â
âThatâs true.â Jimin arched a brow. âLucky for you, Iâm not hungry.â
âLucky for me? Lucky for you,â you retorted. âMy blood is about half alcohol right now. If you drank my blood, youâd be a very silly vampire.â
The idea of a silly vampire made you laugh â even more so when you pictured said vampire as Jimin. He seemed much too coherent for your liking right now.
âA silly vampire, huh?â Jimin looked on, amused. âDamn, Y/N â when was the last time you went out? Your tolerance is shit.â
âI know,â you sighed. âI havenât drunk much this semester. Too much dance, too little time. I think the last time I went out was ââ
âWeâre here!â squealed Noelle, throwing open the door.
A blast of cold air hit you and you shivered, wishing youâd worn your coat. Jiminâs gaze remained steady on yours.
âAre you sure youâre okay?â he said lowly. âI can give you, uhâŠâ
âYour shirt?â you said dryly, lifting a brow as you brushed past. âThen youâd be shirtless, Park. Letâs think this through.â
Jimin chuckled before he followed suit, although you cursed as soon as you left the car. He was correct. It was freezing, even with your alcohol-induced blanket.
âCome on!â you yelped, following Noelle towards the entrance.
Bypassing the line, Noelle walked straight towards the bouncer and showed him her phone. He nodded and waved her past, counting your friend group who followed. Not everyone from Pauloâs place had gone to the club, but enough for you to make quite the entrance.
âY/N!â Noelle doubled back to link arms with you. âCome on â this way! That guyâs going to show us to our table.â
âTable?â you asked her, wide-eyed.
Tables in a club on Halloween night were ridiculously expensive, but it seemed Noelle had downplayed her brotherâs connections. Your group was led right to the front of the upper balcony, getting a coveted spot overlooking the dance floor below.
This was undeniably the coolest club youâd been in. Not that youâd been in many, mind you, but this one had to take the cake. A half-circle of tables took up the top floor, with twin staircases descending to the main room below. Most of the lower floor was for dancing, although you saw additional tables pushed to the sides. Fluorescent bars and dance platforms were dotted throughout and above all was the DJ booth, blasting the latest songs.
âWhoa,â you breathed.
Noelle grinned, squeezing your arm to pull you into the booth. As soon as you settled in, Jasmine leapt up and clapped her hands.
âI want to be in one of those!â she said, pointing to a glowing cage at the center of the dance floor.
âOo, me too!â Irene leapt up to join her.
âMe, three!â said Paulo, clambering out of the booth.
âAwesome.â Irene beamed and glanced your way. âWhat about you, Y/N? You in?â
The idea was tempting for a moment, but then Finn flashed through your mind. You highly doubted heâd be on board with you gyrating for a room full of strangers without him. Somewhat dejectedly, you plopped back on the bench.
âThatâs okay,â you sighed. âI think Iâm going to stay here for a while. Iâll join you later!â
Irene frowned but nodded, following the rest when they left for the stairs. About half the group went, clearing out the table while you stared at the dance floor.
Jimin slid into the bench alongside you. âYou donât want to dance?â
Startled, you glanced in his direction. While you watched, Jimin began to undo his cuffs, casually rolling the sleeves of his shirt. His hair, which had been slicked back at the start of the night, was starting to fall. Several dark strands hung over his forehead, although this only seemed to make the look more appealing.
âNo,â you said, crossing your legs. âI just⊠donât really feel like it.â
âIs this the whole hating clubs thing again?â
âKind of.â You laughed. âI donât know. Club dancing isnât like normal dancing, you know?â
âIt is when youâre at the club with all dancers,â Jimin pointed out, nodding towards the floor.
Following his gaze, you saw Jasmine dancing full-out in a lit-up cage. She wasnât so much gyrating as she was creating choreography on the fly. The mere mortals around her looked on in awe. Fighting a smile, you returned to Jimin.
âOkay, that does look like fun,â you admitted. âThe last time I was at a club was with Finn.â
Jimin blinked. âSorry â what?â
âIn the cab,â you said, leaning closer in order to be heard. âYou asked me when I last went out. It was that night⊠um, the night you came and picked me up.â
Jimin stared at you a moment, as though contemplating something important. Abruptly, he stood and held out a hand. You blinked at this like heâd offered a football.
âWhat are you doing?â you said, glancing up.
âTaking you down to the dance floor.â Jimin retracted said hand. âCome on, Y/N! You donât have to give out dry lap dances, or whatever.â
âHey!â In disbelief, your mouth fell open. âYou said youâd forget all about that!â
His smile turned impish. âSeriously, we can just do the sprinkler, or something. Itâll be fun!â
âThe sprinkler?â Starting to laugh, you stood. âWas that really the first move you thought of?â
âNah. My go-to move is the criss-cross, but I figured this was more your speed.â
Snorting, you shoved him in the arm before following Jimin to the dance floor. It didnât take you long to spot your other friends, clustered near the front and around the DJ booth.
âY/N!â Noelle cheered, breaking off from the pack. âYou made it!â
She nearly spilled her drink while she danced, catching herself just in time as she spun around. You grinned, entering the circle with Jimin by your side. He did, in fact, pull out the criss-cross â Hoseok joined in and soon, there was a Fortnite dance battle between them. You truly havenât lived until youâve seen a TikTok dance-off between two semi-professional dancers.
This ended with both declaring mutual defeat, and Hoseok disappearing to buy the next round. Noelle shimmied her way over to Jasmine, accepting the hand given to stand on the platform.
You laughed at their ridiculous dance moves, choosing instead to stay on the ground. The crowd around you had thinned since youâd joined. Eamon disappeared a few minutes later, saying something about needing a drink upstairs. Before long, Irene had joined Jasmine and Noelle on the platform, leaving you alone with Jimin on the floor.
Under other circumstances, you might have felt uncomfortable, but Jimin was so good at putting you at ease. Determined to keep you in the present, he came up with more and more complicated dance moves which had you snorting with laughter.
On a particularly flamboyant spin, Jimin accidentally smacked the drink from someoneâs grasp. Blue vodka splattered everywhere, drenching its owner â a burly man in leather who snarled in frustration.
Looking up, he met your gaze and his eyes narrowed.
âShit. Run!â you blurted out.
Grabbing Jimin by the arm, you dragged him into the crowd.
âNo, wait â let me apologize!â Jimin tried to twist around. âI can pay for his drink! I can ââ
Once there was suitable distance between you and the guy, you came to a stop. Laughing so hard you nearly fell over, you turned sideways to face him.
Bodies pressed against you from every side but rather than feel claustrophobic, all you could think about was Jimin before you. His hair had become thoroughly mussed during the night and you fought the sudden desire to smooth it down.
Although your breath came hard, the club around you seemed to slow. The music somehow had narrowed to pinpricks, a heady thump of bass while everything dulled.
What you shouldâve done was taken a step back â but you didnât.
Instead, your gaze drifted across his face. Jimin stared back, something intense to his gaze you couldnât quite name. Breath caught in your throat, his eyes dropped to your lips.
Before you could react, someone bumped into you from behind, sending you careening forward. Jimin caught you easily, one arm around your waist and your chest pressed to his. You could feel every hard line of his body, his thigh wedged between your legs while you grasped at his arms. Heart thudding traitorously against your ribcage, you tried to ignore the emotions which followed.
It was impossible.Â
The song playing was slower, sexier than the one which had inspired the dance-off. Without meaning to, your weight subtly shifted. This caused your hips to move against his as Jimin quietly sucked in a breath. The effect this had on him was instantaneous. His grip on you tightened, gaze heady with desire and something more. Before you could second-guess what you were doing, you moved your hips again â this time, on purpose.
Jiminâs eyes darkened. Without looking away, his grip on you tightened as he slowly dragged you up his thigh. Suddenly breathless, your hands gripped him tighter while your eyes fluttered shut. The heat of his body on yours, the faint smell of cologne and sweat, the tension in his limbs and the knowledge of what he could do to you â it all left your head spinning.
âY/N,â Jimin murmured, low in your ear.
You werenât used to him saying your name like that.
You were used to him saying your name in every other way, but not that. Sharp with dancerâs critique, brusque with instruction, light with teasing â but not like something heavy was lodged in his throat. Maybe his heart.
Panicked, your eyes flew open.
What were you doing? This wasnât some random stranger and this sure as hell wasnât your boyfriend. This was Jimin. Stumbling backwards, you broke from his hold. Jimin seemed equally stunned, staring at you on the dance floor.
âI have to go,â you blurted and whirled around.
Shoving into the crowd, you heard Jimin emit a soft groan. Despite this, he didnât immediately pursue, for which you were grateful. Stumbling through strangers, strobe lights flashed brightly overhead. You squeezed between someone dressed as a go-go and another person dressed as a werewolf. Skidding to a stop on the edge of the floor, you scanned the room and saw no one from Russet.
When you glanced over your shoulder, you saw Jimin now followed. Panicking again, you began to move. Beside one of the bars, you spotted a hallway labeled restrooms. Heading in this direction, you quickly disappeared inside the door marked women.
Once inside, you locked yourself in a stall, lowered the lid and sat down. Head in hands, you slowly exhaled. You were a coward; that much was clear. Jimin was probably out there looking for you right now, but youâd rather hide in a bathroom than face him.
The fluorescent lighting overhead was too bright â it made you feel overexposed. After a long moment, you fished around in your purse and pulled out your phone. Flipping to your thread with Finn, you saw heâd sent no response since your text. Complete and utter silence.
Heart cracking a little, you slid this in your bag and stared at the door. This wasnât how things were supposed to go. When you imagined you and Finn at college, youâd always pictured you together, attending the same parties and sharing the same adventures. Tonight though, had proven to be anything but that. Finn hadnât once glanced at his phone judging by the unread mark next to your text.
Dimly, you wondered why you werenât more upset about this. It should bother you that Finn hadnât called or even texted throughout the day. Sure, he was out with friends, but so were you and youâd reached out â as soon as you thought this, your heart sank.
You werenât sure you could call Jimin a friend after what had just happened.
Sure, youâd only danced, and it had only been for a second but still, guilt bloomed behind your ribcage. The idea of Finn doing the same thing with anyone else made your heart twist. You wouldnât feel that way if what youâd done wasnât wrong.
Groaning out loud, you lowered your head to your hands. After several minutes, you felt calm enough to stand and pretend-flush the toilet. As you exited the stall, you walked to the sink and began washing your hands. Staring at yourself in the mirror, a million things ran through your mind.
Clearly, the situation with Jimin was worse than youâd thought. The spark youâd felt kept returning, no matter how much you tried to ignore it. Maybe the only solution was to find a new partner. The very idea made your heart sink, but you couldnât deny things had gotten out of hand.
Before you could seriously consider the option, the door to the bathroom flung open and banged against the wall. Sabrina stormed in, wiping both eyes with the heel of her hand. You froze, staring at her in the mirror but she didnât seem to notice your presence.
When she finally lowered her hands and took a deep breath, she saw you and froze.
For a moment, you both only stared at each other and then â you coughed. Awkwardly, you began to dry your hands.
âAre you okay?â you asked, tentative.
Sabrina stiffened. âIâm fine,â she muttered, walking to the sink.
You watched her wash her hands, struggling and failing to control her expression. Sabrinaâs hair was a mess and you stared, wondering where sheâd been. You hadnât seen her since youâd entered the club, but had assumed sheâd stayed on the second floor.
âAre you sure?â you pressed, remembering your night at the other club. âYou know, you can ââ
âWill you⊠just stop.â Sabrina closed her eyes. âWill you âŠÂ stop pretending like weâre friends, or something?â
Struck with disbelief, you could only stare. âI⊠are you serious?â
âYes.â
âWow.â You shook your head. âJust wow.â
Her lips tightened and finally, she whirled around. âWhat?â Sabrina demanded. âWhat is it?â
The look in her eyes was familiar. Her frustrated, angry look was mirrored in your expression, but you found you didnât care. Sabrina was clearly going through something, but her rudeness to you was the final straw. Tired from Finn, Jimin and the constant pressure you were both under, something about Sabrinaâs words made you break.
âWhy are you always such a⊠such a bitch,â you blurted, hurling the word like a knife. âWhat did I ever do to you? Why do you always act like you hate me so much?â
Sabrinaâs upper lip curled. âWhy do you always think this is about you, Y/N? Maybe I just wanted one second of peace and instead, here you are. Like always.â
âHere I am, in the public restroom of a club weâre all at?â
âNo. Here you are in my life,â she snapped, pushing herself from the sink. âPeople wonât talk to me? Itâs because youâve run your mouth about things you think Iâve done. Iâm falling in the class ranks? Itâs because youâre after my spot. Jimin doesnât want to be my partner? Itâs because of his feelings for you. Iâm sick of turning around and always seeing you there!â
âOkay, but none of those things â I, Jimin doesnât have feelings for me,â you sputtered.
Sabrina gave you a look. âOh, please, Y/N.â Her laughter was harsh. âWhy else would he turn me down?â
âUm, maybe because heâs a decent human being? Unlike yourself.â
âGreat, yeah.â Sabrina glared. âMake me the bad guy again.â
âIâm not the one doing that,â you huffed. âYou are. You want to blame me because no one wants to be your friend? Maybe try reaching out first. Maybe donât talk shit about people behind their backs. And Iâm improving because Iâm taking extra lessons. No thanks to you, of course.â
âDonât try and make me feel bad because I didnât have time to give you lessons.â
âIâm not trying to make you feel bad. Iâm trying to explain why Iâm improving and youâre not.â
Sabrina bristled. âAre you saying I donât work hard, too?â
âNo.â Mirthless, you laughed. âI know you work hard â maybe even as hard as I do. But you know what the big difference is between you and me?â you said, drawing yourself to your full height.
Sabrinaâs eyes glimmered while she stared you down. Still, she retained her aloofness when she said, âWhat? Whatâs the big secret?â
âYou think everyoneâs out to get you,â you said, stepping closer. âYou think not asking for help makes you stronger, but itâs the exact opposite. At least Iâve improved since the start of the year. What have you done?â
Not waiting for an answer, you pushed past Sabrina and walked out the door.
Shoving it wide, you entered the hallway. Dance music flooded your senses and you winced, remembering where you were and what youâd been doing. Luckily, Jimin was nowhere in sight. He must not have seen where youâd disappeared to.
Shoulders slumping, you pulled out your phone and dialed a number. Walking to the front, you concentrated on breathing while you waited for them to pick up. Coming to a stop beside coat check, you didnât leave the club â a lesson youâd learned the hard way.
Noelle answered on the third ring. âBabe?â she yelled, barely audible over the din. âWhatâs going on? Where are you?â
âAre youâŠâ Closing your eyes, you paused. âCan we leave?â
Noelle paused, then muffled her phone with one hand. âIrene!â you heard her yell. âYou good to get a ride home for these people? Okay, cool. Bye!â Her phone became un-muffled. âWhere are you, babe?â
After explaining your location, you hung up and hugged yourself with both arms. Noelle burst into view a few moments later, scanning the crowd like a mom on a mission. When she saw you, she rushed over â and you promptly burst into tears.
âOh, no!â Pulling you into a hug, Noelle began to rub your back. âNo, no, babe! Donât cry! Whatâs going on? Do I need to kick someoneâs ass?â
Hearing Jiminâs words said by Noelle only made you cry harder. Wisely sensing this to be a problem not easily solved, Noelle continued rubbing your back while walking towards the exit.
The two of you went outside and, as luck would have it, saw a group of people arriving at the club. Noelle snagged their taxi, helping you in the backseat and giving the driver your address. As you settled against her, your head on her shoulder, Noelle kept rubbing your arm and waited for the tears to stop.
You werenât really sure why you were crying.
Of course, Sabrina was terrible, as was the situation with Jimin, but it was more than that. Dancing with Jimin hadnât caused problems in your relationship with Finn. There had been problems in your relationship Finn and so, feelings had crept in which led you to dance with Jimin.
More than that though, you couldnât help but notice Noelle had come to your aid much faster than Finn ever had. Even Jimin had dropped everything when you asked, and he was someone youâd once called your enemy. Noelle had been having fun, but sheâd cut her night short because you were upset. This knowledge crushed you and for the very first time, you realized your relationship with Finn might be unfixable.
Curled up on the backseat, you let yourself cry a bit more. You could be calm and rational in the morning, you decided but for now, you just felt defeated.
When you finally climbed into bed at your dorm at night, you looked at your phone and saw Finn still hadnât texted.
Authorâs Note: Thank you for reading! đ New chapters of Raise the Barre are posted weekly; dates are listed on the series Master List. Requests for updates will be deleted.
RAISE THE BARRE MASTERLISTÂ
© kpopfanfictrash, 2020. Do not copy or repost without permission.
#bangtanarmynet#btsbookclub#jimin fanfic#bts fanfic#jimin au#bts au#jimin writing#bts writing#jimin series#jimin e2l#bts series#bts e2l#jimin dance au#bts dance au
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What the controversy about trans women in professional sports says about modern cycling
CW : Transphobia, sexism, mentions of racism and eating disorders.
The United Kingdom, my friends, is a cesspool. Boris Johnson infamously exited 10 Downing Street on last July, humiliated by his own party. In between two scandals, Johnson did not care about raging inflation, rising energy prices, crisis in Northern Ireland, the collapse of the NHS, or kids getting fed at school. Instead, the former English PM opted to focus on a fringe issue : he declared that trans women, whom he deems to be "biological males", should not be allowed to compete in professional sports. One may wonder why BoJo cares so much about a group that makes up 1% of the total UK population (though the numbers might be slightly higher nowadays as the last survey on the matter goes back to 2018), and that can be so scarcely found in professional sports. But everything is possible in a country not-so-affectionately nicknamed âTERF Islandâ, in reference to their powerful trans-exclusionist radical feminist lobby, plaging every single major British political party at the detriment of more urgent social issues. It is sadly very likely that his replacement Liz Truss, who ignorantly declared that "a real woman has a cervix", will follow his way, on top of rightfully angering cis women who have undergone total hysterectomy for medical reasons.
Johnsonâs senseless declarations came in last April, after 21 year-old cyclist Emily Bridges was deemed unfit to take part in competitive cycling races by both the UCI and British Cycling, despite having testosterone levels lower than the required 5g/mol. Hearing the latter institution coming at the âdefenseâ of womenâs sports while they allowed known sexist and racist Shane Sutton to operate as their coach for years sounds like peak hypocrisy. If transphobes made as much noise against bigoted or abusive coaches as they did for trans athletes, perhaps there would be less people like Sutton or Marc Braeke in womenâs pelotons. Excluding trans athletes was never about protecting womenâs sports, nor is it scientifically backed. As demonstrated in a 2021 study, testosterone does not improve grip strength or lean mass in cisgender women ; that role is taken over by estrogen and human growth hormone. Bridges herself had teamed up with a researcher from Longborough University to document her performance changes before and after starting hormone replacement therapy (HRT) : in two years, her values indicated a 13-16% drop in her power outputs across six-second, one-, five- and 20-minute durations. While she has retained her original bone structure, she has undoubtedly lost power, VO2 max, and many other components that make her competitive, including in womenâs categories. Not to mention the alleviated risk of bone fracture, since testosterone, just like estrogen for cis women of reproductive age, acts like a protective agent for bone density. Yet, no legislation forbading cis women who use a contraceptive pill of taking part in competitive racing has ever been proposed. Thankfully, though, as cis men taking away the reproductive rights of people with uteruses has become a huge problem in the USA and Poland over the past decade. Because the issue isnât really about trans women, but more about the ignorance of cis men on how categories of gender are policed.
In 2008, Spanish-French philosopher Paul B. Preciado published Testo Junkie, an arduous, 325-page long essay where he details his gender transition and its social, philosophical and physiological impacts. Inside, Preciado coined the term of "pharmacopornographic capitalism", describing the role played by the porn industry, the pharmaceutical industry and traditional gender roles in regulating peopleâs bodies, particularly their gender identity and their reproductive systems. The pharmacopornographic capitalism of cycling sounds like the subtitle of the biography of any 2000's rider. The porn, found in Thomas Dekker's stories of orgies with sex workers, the capitalism, as training methods became more tailored than ever for the sake of performance, excluding in the process riders with weakened mental states (which gets us to the tales of depression from Tyler Hamilton, and those of addiction from Frank Vanderbroucke and Marco Pantani), and of course, the pharmacology. At the time Testo Junkie was released, WADAâs biological passports werenât officially implemented yet, though widely tested in professional cycling after the debacles of 2006 and 2007 Tour de France. Preciado still found time to comment on Floyd Landisâ defense after his positive testosterone sample :
Poor fools. Itâs as if Pamela Anderson tried to pass off her 115E silicone prosthetics for natural breasts under the pretense that she is a biological woman.
He also mentioned that a the time of Landisâ test, four million of cisgender males in the United States were undergoing a testosterone-based medical treatment ; in 2019, these rates climbed to more than 5 million prescriptions, making of T the 126th most commonly prescribed medication in the United-States. While female-to-male transition methods were made more accessible in this 13-year span, it is not enough to explain this uptick in prescriptions, as trans people in general only make up one million of USAâs general population, and thereâs fewer trans males & female-to-non-binary transgender people than there is trans women. That makes of cisgender men the biggest receivers of hormone replacement therapy. They are notably treated for hypogonadism, erectile dysfunction, or simply because âthey were not producing enough testosteroneâ. As mentioned earlier, low-bone density in cis men is associated to unsufficent testosterone levels. That means that not all biological males have an higher bone density than cis women's. Equally, some cis women have naturally bigger bone density than other women, and even some cisgender men. Testosterone supplement therapy is only pathologized in two instances : for trans men, where it is seen, as Preciado describes, as a way of mutilating a "pure" female body through hair and muscle growth, and in sports, where using testosterone is considered as cheating, whether the gender of the user. The idea that trans men are "cheating" the female condition through medical and social transition is a common TERF diatribe ; it is therefore interesting to find this idea of cheating attributed to cis men athletes. Testosterone is considered with the same contempt as any Class-A drug. It makes people aggressive, smelly, hairy, inherently prone to hurt women. Sounds a lot like mediatic tales of people committing violent crimes under the influence of depressant drugs, isn't it? The demonisation of testosterone is a core value of transmisogyny. It's the argument used by transphobes to demine the identities of trans women and AMAB non-binary people, after all. Trans women are evil because their endocrine systems secrete testosterone. Trans men are becoming evil traitors to the âwoman raceâ because they are using testosterone. Wait until they learn that cisgender women also produce T naturally!
Preciado could have much to say about the biological passports. Who decides which rates are acceptable, which amount of testosterone makes you an unsuspicious man or woman. A 2014 study 16,5% of surveyed male athletes had low testosterone levels, whereas 13,7% of surveyed women athletes had high levels with complete overlap between the sexes. The biological passportâs endocrine profiles are therefore not a convincing way to draw a line between the sexes. DNA tests would not work either, as 2% of the worldâs population is intersex, having chromosomes that donât match their official gender. Keep in mind that there's more intersex people in the world than there are twins, or redheads.
Biological passports canât prove an athleteâs gender. Their values serve as a complement to the athleteâs physical appearance. If the crusade against âabnormalâ hormone levels was truly about fairness, then Tadej Pogacar would have never been allowed to race because his VO2 max is higher than his counterparts. Michael Phelps should be stripped of all of his medals because his low levels of lactic acid allows him to recover faster than his opponents. Katie Ledecky should be banned from entering a swimming pool because sheâs taller than her⊠Oh wait. Thatâs the argument that has been used against trans swimmer Lia Thomas. And the same that was used against cis, but hyperandrogenetic, athlete Caster Semenya. But I guess a tall, white, cis woman is not that suspicious, unless she comes from a country that is at odds with the United States like Russia. The Icarus documentary and the Russian athlete ban at the two last olympics come across as ironic considering the United Statesâ recent doping history. As if Balco, or Alberto Salazar had never existed, and Armstrong's Oprah confession was not even ten years ago. Throughout history, âFairnessâ has been instrumentalized against athletes of color, or who do not hail from a Western country. Now, itâs also getting weaponized against gender non-conforming people.
Speaking of subverting gender norms, the aesthetics of cycling are particularly interesting. The sport's most celebrated heroes are glabrous, worryingly thin, cherubish-looking men who wear flashy Lycra jerseys. My gay mates would call them twinks, basically. No amount of homophobic banter off-stage or children before the age of 25 could make up for these looks (sorry Vingegaard!). Coincidentally, some of the past decadeâs pop culture icons, from Tom Holland to Valentin Madouasâ brunette doppelgĂ€nger TimothĂ©e Chalamet, completely fit the description of a twink, despite being overwhelmingly straight. At an age where masculinity is redefined, the twinkâs cuteness has a reassuring quality. Yet, in a cycling context, his characteristic appearance becomes somewhat of a mass destruction weapon. Thanks to his pocket size, Caleb Ewan can sneak between his opponentâs sprint trains. Esteban Chaves and Miguel Angel Lopez may not be taller than 165 centimeters, yet they remain a force to be reckoned with once the road rises (as you notice here, the âcycling twinkâ, unlike his gay counterpart, is not associated with whiteness). Even Tadej Pogacar could be considered as a twink due to his youthful, somewhat androgynous looks. Menâs sports usually celebrate synthetic inflated muscles and taller frames, a prime example being rugby, where only pillars are allowed to be of "average" size (180cms, an average size, really?). Cycling is the counterpoint. Even though most sprinters and rouleurs have that â90s action movie starâ look, sprinters arenât as celebrated as they used to be three decades ago, while climbers, general classification riders and stage hunters are undoubtedly the sportâs most celebrated stars. At its core, cycling celebrates queer bodies, in the unusual and marginal sense of the word âqueerâ. After all, in its early days, cycling was a sport picked up by working class men and unruly women. The sportâs first global star was a Black man, Major Taylor. The legendary Alfonsina Morini Strada won 36 races against cisgender men, and was even allowed to take part in the menâs Giro in 1924 after the organisators mistook her for a man thanks to her tomboyish attitude.
The issue, though, is about womenâs sports. Ah, womenâs cycling, such an heteronormative place! Shanaze Reade, Judith Arndt, Ina-Yoko Teutenberg, Tayler Wiles, Georgia Simmerling, Giorgia Bronzini. All medal-collectors. All lesbians. The phenomenon is in no way recent as Alice Temple, UKâs first-ever womenâs BMX champion, and Petra Rossner, gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics 3 km pursuit track cycling event, are also openly gay. Trans women are already present, such as Natalie Van Gogh, who was cherished by her Bingoal CasinoâChevalmeire teammates before retiring unbothered last year. A late-comer to the sport, as Van Gogh underwent sex-reassignement surgery in 2005, at a time where the vast majority of her teammates hadnât started puberty yet, and who had likely been taking HRT from earlier than this date.
Back on the conversation of lesbian inclusion and erasure. During a MLA conference about her book The Straight Thought in 1978, French theorist Monique Wittig concluded that âLesbians arenât women, theyâre lesbiansâ. An opinion that remains controversial and discussed to this date, often misinterpreted as lesbophobic due to the ongoing masculinization of lesbians in popular consciousness. What Wittig explained throughout her essay is that the category of âwomanâ was created by heterosexual men and only makes sense in their worldview. As a prerogative, all women must center men in their relationship (which also explains the disproportionate rates of domestic and sexual violence in bisexual women, but I digress). This centering of the cishet male thought also explains why transgender lesbians were refused gender-affirming care until the late 1970s, while straight trans women like Christine Morgensen had been allowed to medically transition two decades prior. As for their posture in sports, lesbians are tolerated in the âfemaleâ category because their birth certificates and ID cards classify them as such, and becaus their sexual characters matches with the binary âpussy-XX-chromosomeâ model implemented by male-dominated institutions. Otherwise, lesbians and straight women do not perform their gender the same way. That also explains why a huge amount of athletes recently banned from competition due to hyperandrogenism are lesbians, like Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand ; since the latter are simply tolerated in the women categories, they face more media and institutional scrutiny. Add the fact that theyâre women of color and are not Westerners, and you get the sour Cocktail of Dope Suspicion.
Gender checks do not protect women. Gender checks undanger lesbian and bisexual women. Gender checks endanger women of color. It reinforces a landscape of fear and suspicion that has already pushed so many talented LGBTQ figures out of the sports. Remember that 68% of the LGBTQ youth abstain from sports. While the study did not survey on any possible factors, gender checks and a lack of action against casual homophobic & transphobic remarks might be plausible explainations. The same people who constantly whine about trans lesbians and trans men causing the âextinction of lesbiansâ are supporting measures that drive a younger generation of lesbians away from sports. Erasure happens when cisgender and heterosexual people ignore our struggles from the moment we donât conform enough to their ideal of a feminine, upper-class white woman. Womenâs sports are not the Blonde, white, straight, lithe and powerless Garden of Eden that their âdefendersâ are painting. Womenâs sports are much more complex, much more diverse. Thankfully, all is not lost for queer women in sports. As a fellow sapphic, I can assure you that weâre fighting back to get our voices heard against this very loud minority who claims to speak for us.
With all of these theories in mind, pushing gender conformity in womenâs cycling is nonsensical. Cycling was never meant to be understood by the elites and their uptight notions of gender, morality, and good taste. Womenâs cycling in particular has been a celebration of diversity since its beginnings. Keeping these aesthetic values and this rich queer history in mind, no higher institution can regulate who can ride and who cannot, as these categories are not only arbitrary, flawed and biased, but also go against the philosophy of cycling. Furthermore, this issue is obviously used as a distraction to not tackle systemic bigotry in womenâs cycling, reflected in the sexual harrasment scandals, the racism, the lower pays and undefunded races.
As final words, Iâll pay tribute to the man who inspired Preciadoâs essay, Guillaume Dustan. A long-time AIDS sufferer, the openly gay writer was a victim of a media witch-hunt after he declared he conducted in barebacking practices on national television, a position that earned him ire from Act-Up Paris as well as from the uptight heterosexual Parisian elite. Dustan quit writing shortly afterwards and died in late 2005, following an excessive intake of antidepressants and interaction with his tritherapy meds. Looking back at the controversy after Dustanâs passing, Act-Up Parisâ then director Didier Lestran admitted that he had âspent more energy at fighting against [his] friends rather than [his] enemies.â Thatâs what we can learn from the controversy : trans athletes are not the enemies of sports. Cycling can only gain from more inclusion, as it will force institutions to strip off once for all their racist and heteronormative biases of what a âreal womanâ and a âreal manâ is, and return to its roots, where marginalized people could become heroes of a nation by triumphing over natureâs biggest obstacles. Trans cyclists are our friends, as they love cycling as much as we do.
Sources:
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2022/04/15/womens-cicle-classic-emily-bridges-british-cycling/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/sport/2016/oct/31/shane-sutton-denies-sexism-jess-varnish
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-89232-1
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cen.12445
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/lia-thomas-trans-swimmer-data-b2049615.html
https://archive.ph/20190411113203/https://divamag.co.uk/2018/12/19/not-in-our-name/
#my rants#hashire bicycles#it's an aryicle i had in my google docs since april#more are coming!#cycling#trans rights#testo junkie
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I recently came across a bunch of press articles and photos about Oscar Isaac that are so old, they appear to be out-of-print and pre-date social media. Considering they were probably never digitally transcribed for internet access, Iâm guessing that the majority of current fans have never seen this stuff.
Even though a lot of these digital scans are challenging to read because they are the original fuzzy news print, I think there some gems worth sharing with you guys. Over the next several weeks, I will transcribe and share those gems on this page. Hope you enjoy them!
Letâs start with this fantastic 2001 profile piece done before Oscar was accepted into Juilliard:
South Floridaâs rising star isnât just acting the part
By Christine Dolen - [email protected]
February 4, 2001
As fifth-graders at Westminster Christian School in Miami, Oscar Isaac and his classmates were asked to write a story as if they were animals on Noahâs Ark. Oscar turned in a seven-page play â with original music â from the perspective of a platypus. Then he starred in the production his teacher directed.
He hasnât stopped expressing himself creatively since. Today, Isaac is one of South Floridaâs busiest young theater actors, and certainly its hottest. And not just because heâs a slender five-feet nine-inches tall with an expressively handsome face and glistening brown eyes.
Since making his professional debut as a Cuban hustler in Sleepwalkers at Area Stage in July 1999, he has played an explosive Vietnam vet in Private Wars for Horizons Repertory, a pot-smoking slacker in This Is Our Youth at GableStage, another Cuban on the make in Praying With the Enemy at the Coconut Grove Playhouse, the entrancing narrator of Side Man at GableStage, a Havana-based writer in Arrivals and Departures for the new Oye Rep and, most recently, a young Fidel Castro in When Itâs Cocktail Time in Cuba at New Yorkâs Cherry Lane Theater.
Beginning Wednesday, heâll be juggling five roles in City Theatreâs annual Winter Shorts festival, first at the Colony Theatre in Miami Beach, then at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. But that is not all: During the two weeks he is doing Winter Shorts, heâll also be playing dates with the punk-ska band The Blinking Underdogs (www.blinkingunderdogs.com), which features him as lead singer, guitarist and songwriter.
Oh, and he just got back from auditioning for New Yorkâs prestigious Juilliard School of Drama.
All this for a guy a month shy of his 22nd birthday.
Sure, you could hate a guy whoâs that talented, that charismatic, that transparently ambitious. But the people who have worked with Oscar Isaac donât. On the contrary, theyâre all sure he has it â that magical, canât-be-taught thing that transforms an actor into a star.
Playwright Eduardo Machado, who put in a good word for Isaac at Juilliard, says âhe does have that star quality that makes your eyes go to him. Itâs great that someone with that talent still wants to train.â
âHe has a star quality thatâs rare in a young actor,â adds Joseph Adler, who directed him in Side Man and This Is Our Youth. âWithout a doubt I expect to be hearing great things from him.â
âI JUST LOVE CREATINGâ
Isaac, who also makes short films, canât say exactly why he was attracted to acting. He just knows it makes him happier than anything, that itâs what he was meant to do. And heâs been doing it since he was a 4-year-old putting on plays in his familyâs backyard with his sister Nicole.
âI just love creating, whether itâs music or films or a character on a stage. I love taking people for a ride,â he says. âIn Side Man, every night I would love being that close to the audience. I felt like I was talking to 80 of my closest friends.
âI could feel what the audience was feeling.â
His powerful, mournful-yet-loving monologue near the end of the play, he said, âworked every night. I knew it would get them. Iâd hear sniffles.
âBut it had less to do with me than with the atmosphere [created by the playwright and director].â
You could understand if Isaac, surrounded as he is by praise and possibility, had an ego as burgeoning as his career. Instead, he channels the positive reinforcement into confidence about his work.
âHe has such a charm and an ease onstage, but heâs very modest,â says New York-based actress Judith Delgado, who shared the stage with Isaac in Side Man. âHeâs hungry. Heâs got moxie. I was blown away by him.
âHe saved me a couple of times. I went up [forgot a line] and that baby boy of mine came through. Heâs a joy.â
FORGING HIS OWN PATH
The son of a Cuban-American father and a Guatemalan mother, Isaac was never a stellar student. But he found ways of turning routine assignments â like the Noahâs Ark story â into creative challenges.
His science reports were inevitably video documentaries underscored with punk music. He acted through middle and high school, though he had a falling out with his drama teacher at Santaluces Community High in Lantana over his misgivings about a character. When she refused to cast him in anything else, he got his English teacher to let him play the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors his senior year.
His skepticism about authority and love of playing the devilâs advocate have long made him resist doing things the usual way. His post-high school âtrainingâ consisted of one semester at Miami-Dade Community Collegeâs South Campus (where he met his girlfriend, Maria Miranda), touring schools playing an abusive character in the Coconut Grove Playhouseâs Breaking the Cycle, and working as a transporter of bodies at Baptist Hospital, where he absorbed the drama of people in emotionally intense situations.
âIt was the most magnificent dramatic institute I couldâve attended,â Isaac said. âI was able to observe the entire spectrum of human emotion, people under the most extreme duress. I was mesmerized watching the way people interacted with each other in such heightened situations.
âI learned everything about the human condition, and it was real and harsh and brutally honest.â
Yet even given his propensity for forging his own path, something nudged him another direction while he was in New York making his Off-Broadway debut in December. Walking by Juilliard one day, he impulsively went in to ask for an application. Though the application deadline had passed, Isaac persuaded Juilliard to accept his, noting in his application essay that most of the exceptional actors he admires had acquired âa brutally efficient techniqueâ to enhance their talent by studying at places like Juilliard.
Though he wonât know whether he has been accepted until the end of this month, his audition last weekend went well, he says. He did monologues from Henry IV, Part I and Dancing at Lughnasa, adjusting his Shakespearean Hotspur to a more fiery temperature at the suggestion of Michael Kahn, head of Juilliardâs acting program â though not without arguing that Hotspur wouldnât be speaking to the king that way.
Isaac, not surprisingly, loves a good debate.
Adler, GableStageâs artistic director and a man who is as liberal as Isaac once was conservative, savored the verbal jousting they did during rehearsals for Side Man.
âHe knows exactly how to pull my chain,â Adler says with a laugh. âIntelligence is the cornerstone of all great actors, and heâs bright as hell.
âHe has relentless ambition but with so much charm. Heâs very hard to say no to. He has incredible raw talent and magnetism that is very rare in a young actor along with relentless energy, perseverance and ambition. I see his growth both onstage and off. Heâs mature in both places.â
Part of his growth, of course, will necessarily involve dealing with the rejections that are part of any actorâs life. His career is still too new, his string of successes solid, so itâs anyoneâs guess how failure will shape him. But director Michael John GarcĂ©s, who picked him for When Itâs Cocktail Time in Cuba after Isaac flew to New York at his own expense to compete with a pool of seasoned Manhattan actors for the role, believes his character will see him through.
âOscar is realistic, but heâs so willing to go the whole nine yards,â GarcĂ©s says. âHe didnât go out when he was in the show here. His focus earned the respect of the other actors, some of whom have been working in New York for 30 years.
âHe hasnât had a lot of blows yet, when the career knocks the wind out of you. But he has talent, determination and focus, and if he has perseverance â my intuition is that he does have it â he could achieve a lot.â
FAMILY TIES
His father and namesake, Baptist Hospital intensive-care physician Oscar Isaac Hernandez, couldnât be more proud. (Isaac doesnât use the family surname in order to avoid, in his words, being âput in that Hispanic actor box.â)
âIâm ecstatic that heâs probably going to be going to the most prestigious drama school in the United States,â he says. âSchool will help him focus his energies and give him discipline. Heâs got the raw material and the drive.â
Isaacâs mother, Maria, divorced from his father since 1992, is a kidney-transplant recipient who acknowledges that sheâll miss her son if he moves to New York. But, she adds, she wants him âto live out his dreams. He amazes me every day. He calls me every day. Iâm very proud of him.â
Even the other guys in The Blinking Underdogs are fans of Isaacâs acting, though it could take him away from South Florida just as the band appears to be, Isaac says, on the brink of signing a recording deal (it has already put out its own CD, The Last Word, with songs, lead vocals and even cover photography by Isaac.
âOscarâs the leader of the band, a great musician who amazes me and motivates us,â says sax player Keith Cooper. âIâve been to see every one of his plays. Heâs a phenomenal actor.
âI completely buy into his role in every play. As close as I am to him, I forget itâs Oscar.â
His South Florida theater colleagues credit that to Isaacâs insatiable desire to learn and grow.
Gail Garrisan, who is directing him in Donnie and One of the Great Ones for Winter Shorts, observes, âItâs not often that you find a young actor who is willing to listen and who doesnât think he knows everything. He loves the work.
âHe really brought the young man in Side Man to life. When I saw it in New York, it seemed to be the fatherâs play. When I saw it here, I felt it was his [Isaacâs] play.â
Oye Repâs John Rodaz, whom Isaac calls âthe best director Iâve ever worked with,â gave the actor his first important job in Sleepwalkers at Area Stage. They met when Isaac came to see Areaâs production of Oleanna and the actor, knowing Rodaz ran the theater, introduced himself.
âHe has so much energy and such a sparkling personality,â Rodaz says. âHe knows how to move in the world. He seems to take advantage of every situation in a good way; heâs not a cold, calculating person whoâll stab you in the back.
â[But] he wants it so badly. Everything he does, heâs the leader. When I was 21, I was taking naps.â
Rodaz coached Isaac on his Juilliard monologues and found the experience energizing.
âI got chills just watching him. That happens so rarely. I was so exhilarated when I came home that I just had to go out and run. You just know heâs got all the tools.â
Christine Dolen is The Heraldâs theater critic.
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#oscar isaac#vintage#juilliard#blinking underdogs#area stage company#john rodaz#gablestage#when it's cocktail time in cuba#side man#arrivals and departures#this is our youth#praying with the enemy#sleepwalkers#private wars#winter shorts#the miami herald
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The popular conception of chivalry, as a moral code guiding the behavior of honorable knights, is flat-out, laughably wrong. Thatâs a creation of 19th-century authors like Walter Scott, and the popular fantasy authors (basically up until George R.R. Martin) who built on their worldview in the 20th.
In reality, chivalry was all about one particular version of Guys Being Dudes. Chivalry could refer to a few different things, but the most common meaning was simply battlefield deeds, executed with some style. This, what knights referred to as âprowess,â was at the core of the broader ideology of chivalry: raw, bloody, physical performance, violence done effectively and to an agreed-upon aesthetic standard. The second major concern of chivalry, honor, grew directly out of the first. Honor wasnât an abstract concept to medieval knights; it was a possession, a recognition of their particular status and place in the social hierarchy, which they were well within their rights to violently defend and assert through their prowess. Piety was the icing on the cake, but no knight really doubted that God approved of their actions.
An oral culture, passed around during training sessions and drinking bouts and feasts and military campaigns, produced this culture and inculcated new knights into it. A whole universe of texts, the kinds of things knights read or had read to them, sent the same message, like this 12th-century poem called Girart de Vienne:
When I see the whinnying war-steeds plunge
With worthy knights into a battleâs crush,
And see their spears and cutting blades well struck,
There is nothing on earth I love so much!
These were dudes who loved getting after it, and for them, getting after it meant blood-soaked deeds on the battlefield. Itâs not that there was nothing more to it - sure, there were some bits about romance and ladies, debates about religiosity and moral actions, exhortations to do better - but the core was always physical, male violence. And it obviously wasnât for everyone: Knights were members of a hereditary military aristocracy, and their possession of chivalry was what set them apart from dirty peasants.
Two aspects neatly parallel modern Bro Culture: first, the emphasis on physicality and the body, and how that provided both a sense of the self and secured social status; and second, the restricted, bubble-like world that produced and emphasized it, with its fictional and real heroes, its stories about great deeds, its values, and its models to be emulated. Your average knight would absolutely identify with and appreciate this impossibly toxic meathead sentiment:
Obviously, there are pieces that donât neatly parallel, the biggest ones being the hereditary and explicitly military nature of chivalry. You donât have to be a soldier to be a Bro, though it doesnât hurt. And - much more important - you arenât born into being a Bro; you become one, by doing worthy deeds of prowess.
Thatâs a quintessentially American value: the idea that anybody can make something of themselves if they work hard enough, move enough weight, run fast enough, practice enough to shoot a tight grouping, make the right sacrifices. The physical meritocracy (and its potential rewards of fame and fortune) is open to anyone willing to do whatever it takes to climb the ladder. Even the least intellectually gifted meathead can make something of himself if he does the workouts, takes the right gear, and builds his audience on YouTube and Instagram. Donât forget to like and subscribe, and smash that follow button.
In a moment of stagnant social mobility, rising inequality, and incredible uncertainty around the future, this strongly visual message of self-betterment and improving oneâs socioeconomic status through literal sweat can resonate deeply. Itâs all within the individualâs control, if they simply work enough - an antidote to all that uncertainty, everything thatâs so obviously beyond an individualâs control and reckoning, no matter how misleading and incomplete the formula actually is.
Thatâs especially appealing to the many millions of American men who donât have college degrees (many more of them than women, given the gendered trends in undergraduate enrollment) who are effectively locked out of professional-managerial culture and its straightforward path into the comfortable upper-middle class. Accomplishment through physical prowess is thus a means of building both a sense of self and community.
The connections to this particular moment in American culture and history go much deeper than that, though. This whole edifice of Bro Culture grows out of the broader rise of influencers, performative self-branding through social media, and the construction of identity through consumption.
With the right protein powder, shilled by your favorite strongman, you too can deadlift 800 pounds, or at least tell yourself youâll get there someday. With the right brand of CBD tincture, which sponsors your favorite Crossfit athlete, you wonât feel that burning pain in your rotator cuff after you clean and jerk too much weight with suboptimal technique. By religiously listening to the right Bro-approved entrepreneurship podcast, hosted by some guy who happened to get booked on the Joe Rogan Experience during a slow week, you too can buy a McMansion in an affordable suburb.
Much of what happens in Bro Culture is driven by lifestyle consumption: ads for sunglasses on Barstool Sportsâ Pardon My Take podcast, brand partnerships between supplement companies and YouTube stars, tactical holsters for concealed-carry that an ex-Marine with a million Instagram followers wants you to buy. Itâs self-actualization through sponsor codes.
The tactical lifestyle craze, a natural outgrowth of this particular slice of Bro Culture, is the logical endpoint of all this. Itâs where entrepreneurial late capitalism and influencer trends meet imperial wars, the militarization of the police, and the emergence of Gun Guys as a default protected class within American society. Youâre not a Crossfitter anymore; youâre a âtactical athlete,â doing varied types of interval, cardio, and strength training so you can be a more effective soldier or cop or firefighter or whatever, or you just want to feel like you could be one. The physical training is only part of this, since you can prominently declare your tactical affiliations with a variety of lifestyle products, ranging from coffee mugs to American flag stickers for your car to, naturally, firearms....
Just as much as its coffee, whose quality I canât speak to, Black Rifle Coffee Company is selling the tactical lifestyle. They offer a staggering variety of T-shirts, hoodies, hats, mugs, thermoses, and stickers, many of them prominently branded with the eponymous âblack rifleâ of the brand. There are a lot of American flags and pieces of law-enforcement and military iconography, signifiers of the in-groups to whom the consumers of BRCCâs products belong, want to belong, or for whom they want to signal their support. BRCC has explicitly labeled itself as a coffee company for conservatives, an active participant in the culture wars. If you donât like Starbucks and its effete, refugee-supporting, liberal tendencies, buy some Black Rifle product instead. If you like Trump, youâll be at home with BRCC. Don Jr. endorsed them.
After the picture of Rittenhouse in the Black Rifle Coffee Company shirt appeared, its founder Evan Hafer quickly disavowed the youthful shooter. Even for an explicitly MAGA coffee company, supporting a teenaged AR enthusiast with blood on his hands was a bridge too far. But Rittenhouse had already been shaped by the world BRCC and its fellow-travelers have made. He got the message, loud and clear: You too can become a hero, or at least dress and drink coffee like one, by purchasing the right products, watching the right videos, and following the same Extended Bro Culture influencers. Donât forget to like and subscribe.
The Veteran-owned piece of BRCCâs appeal isnât a coincidence. Theyâre selling a position in the culture wars, a sense of belonging, but also a particular vision of what it means to be American, a man, and an American man. A staggering number of this part of Bro Cultureâs key figures are veterans. Jocko Willink, perhaps the best known (and least openly political) of the bunch, was a Navy SEAL officer; he was actually the commanding officer of the famous sniper Chris Kyle during the Battle of Ramadi in 2006.
After retiring, Willink turned his SEAL experience into a career as a leadership consultant, motivational speaker, media personality, and energy drink salesman. His intensity, built on his military service, is legendary: His exhortations to do hard things regularly, to live by a code, and take responsibility for oneself, resonate with millions of people. And Willink is far from the only one to do so, turning overseas service in imperial wars, especially as a special forces operator, into a key component of his entrepreneurial appeal. This isnât a judgement on his military service; itâs a statement of fact. Being an undeniable badass is a the core part of why Jocko Willink is a quintessential Bro Hero.
Imperial wars overseas always come home eventually, and they do so in complex ways. The fact that millions of people listen to Jocko Willink, buy Black Rifle Coffee Company merchandise, and dabble in more extreme fringes is a product of decades spent elevating not just military service writ large but violent combat overseas against ill-defined Others. For every Jocko Willink, thereâs an Eddie Gallagher, the SEAL who was convicted of and then recently pardoned for war crimes after becoming a cause cĂ©lĂšbre for large swathes of the online right.
If these are the heroes Bro Culture puts forth - special operators accustomed to high-intensity, high-volume fighting overseas, who then develop enormous media platforms - itâs obvious what message Kyle Rittenhouse and the innumerable police officers, tactical fitness enthusiasts, and more run-of-the-mill viewers and listeners will take. Millions of people listen to Joe Rogan when he talks to Jocko Willink, Tim Kennedy (the Green Beret and MMA fighter and increasingly open right-wing figure), or Cameron Hanes (who advocated for Eddie Gallagherâs release). Theyâre warriors. Joe Rogan isnât a soldier, but heâs a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a former competitive kickboxer, a bowhunter, and a firearms enthusiast. If these are the people at the core of Bro Culture, a culture that directly touches tens of millions of American men, then there are bound to be knock-on effects. If theyâre constantly telling their listeners to be ready, to be tactical, to be prepared to fight and to be good at it, that means something.
This is why I think Bro Culture, or at least its extended reaches, deserve more scrutiny and attention. The code of American manhood thatâs developing out of this social-media melting pot has some aspects that bear watching: A love of firearms centered on tactical usefulness (for use in what context, exactly?), a vision of muscular physicality, self-defense as a personal obligation, an unquestioning hero-worship of military culture, and far too often, a deep suspicion of people who donât subscribe to this precise view of being a guy. Support the Troops, and if you donât, youâre not really a man at all. If cops - quintessential subjects of Bro Culture - are told that they need to be bigger and stronger and quicker on the draw, that theyâre basically Troops, and that the targets of violence deserve what they get, whatâs the likely outcome of tense interactions between police and the people theyâre supposed to serve?
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Since ya like experimenting (I think): Headcanons for The Phantom (from the 1989 movie) and a Reader who takes Christine's place in the story?
Ahhh yes! Dude this movie was interesting and I loved Robert as a more horror-based version of Eric. I will do my absolute best for you and I hope this is close to what you wanted! ⥠'Composer by day, serial killer by night'. After rewatching it, I popped tf off and I am not sorry.Â
Christine had been a gift to the opera house, he was her teacher, her angel of music. She felt something for him, but once she knew who he was, what he was, she wanted to be as far from him as she possibly could. Eric would have retaliated badly if it weren't for an odd glimmer in the crowd that caught his eye, but maybe it was nothing. He was distraught by his beloved's outburst. Maybe she just needed time and maybe he did too, but no matter how enraged he felt by Christine's rejection, there was still something that perplexed him.
You were in awe of those who were on stage ever since you were a young child, you had always wanted to perform, but the fear of becoming something like that, it was amazing and terrifying. You'd walk the empty halls there sometimes, singing the composed words the stage held previously, the beautiful melodies resounding in your mind. It wasnât quite possible to do since your family had no status to get in good graces with the right people, but you were happy enough to afford the opera with your family when you could. It was the only thing that really kept you going through life.Â
This evening after the show, which was a complication on its own, you had once again taken your usual routine to walk the empty halls to admire the architectural beauties and play pretend, if only for a little while. Your humming turned to full-on singing a tune as you looked up at the wonders of the stage, imagining what it would be like to be where the greats have stood. You imagined a beautiful ensemble to wear upon that golden stage, the bright lights shining down on you, filling you with a warmth that overtook you.
Your thoughts were short-lived as the sound of an organ took over and filled the room with the melody of the song you sang, chills running up your arms as you fell into the soul of the music. You sang along louder this time, picking up where you left off as you mindlessly belted out the words. If only you could see who had been playing so beautifully! The music they played felt so passionate, so beautiful. As much as you were enjoying this shared moment between this mysterious stranger, you longed to know their identity to praise their musical abilities.Â
As the tune ended and you smiled wide to yourself, your eyes scanned the room for the person who accompanied you in the grand theater, but no one was there. "Please," you'd call out, "let me see you. Your playing was incredible." They would remain silent as you continued on, rambling off until either they revealed themselves or you found them. You never would have guessed the Opera Ghost was incredibly real, but those were all just stories made up to spook the people who would wander the halls alone.Â
You were resilient, you wouldn't give up to see the person who played so beautifully, so filled with pain, but he wouldn't show himself. "Iâm afraid you cannot see me," the voice echoed hauntingly, âyou will be afraid.â His words were pained and sincere, but he didnât know you and he surely didnât know how you would react to someone like him. You were confident that you could withstand the sight of someone like the Phantom. Again, you urged him to reveal himself, and he secretly adored your tenaciousness, but he was still wary, still hurting, he couldnât bear to scare you away. He couldnât take it again, he wouldnât know how heâd react to it, but you were aloneâŠ
He circled you without giving away his position, his eyes upon you like a lion keeping its prey within its gaze as he watches your every move. The way your chest rose with each breath, but your breathing was steady despite being in such a dangerous situation, he was intrigued with you. Your eyes wandered, no idea of the real threat lurking around you. Eric was slowly becoming more and more interested in you, the memory of Christine still fresh but fading, because you were here. He was so tempted to call you to him like he would have for the singer, to pull you into the depths where he poured his heart and soul into his music, where he could feel at ease with himself. Whether you would accept him or not, that didn't bother him, not now. All that mattered right now was this moment.Â
"If you see me, do you promise not to run?" He asked, his words soft-spoken as you noticed his words had sounded closer. You whipped your head around, searching, the acoustics of the room were throwing you off, but you kept on searching until it led you behind the curtains and within the darkness. Here was where you would have your first brush with the phantom and the sense of excitement that you had never felt before, but that wouldn't be the only time you would feel the thrill. "I promise," you would say shyly, unable to hide the smile that grew across your face.Â
When you had seen a glimpse of him, his cape fluttered around his legs as he stood a safe distance away from you, mainly for his own regard and how he was feeling. "What's your name?" He asked you, his voice deep and soothing. You immediately didn't know what to say or how to say it, but you had to start with your name. "Y/N," you responded as you tilted your head to the side, unable to hide your excitement. He noted the way your face lit up and he could see you in a new light the more he spoke to you, and all he wanted was to show you his music and hear you sing his words. "Your voice is quite beautiful, Y/N," he said sweetly, "have you ever thought of singing professionally?" The mere thought of it made your stomach twist and you felt the butterflies within you start to dance. "I've thought about it," you responded carefully.Â
Eric wanted so desperately to take you under his wing and teach you to become the best of yourself, to see you take flight with his music, oh it would be a dream. He would make sure not to fail you like he did with Christine, he would be more careful this time around. If you'd agree, things would be different. You had been self-taught, the things you needed now would be discipline and direction. He could teach you these things. "What if i said I could make that happen for you? Become your teacher, help you spread your wings and fly?" The thought of it was insane! Could he really do this for you and make you into a star? Whatever he had done, whatever magic he cast, you fell hard for it and nodded your head eagerly. "Yes, please, I want nothing more," you cried out in excitement, your hands clasped together. "Please, who are you? Are you the Phantom? I'm not afraid, you know."Â
That's when Eric couldn't help but press forward to see you closer, he wanted to show you just what you would get into if you were to train with someone like him, although he was still terrified to scare you off. The light hit him just right and you had seen his eye, his beautiful orb staring at you, the other half of his face covered by some sort of scarf. 'So mysterious,' you thought. Either way, his presence didn't invoke fear, he brought you an odd sense of comfort. He held out his hand to you, offering for a reason you wanted to take so desperately, you needed this, otherwise, it may never happen again. You hesitated, naturally, but with a deep breath and placed your delicate hand in his gloved one, a growl of satisfaction emerged from his mouth as he pulled you close to him. You could now smell him, earthly, smoke, and a waft of something soft. You could smell that and die with a smile on your face. Eric was feeling quite similar, that familiar bubbly feeling happening within the pit of his stomach, almost like when he was with Christine. He wouldn't hide things from you, in due time, you'd know all there was to know about Eric Destler.Â
When he pulled you down into the darkness of the underground, beneath the opera floors, you weren't expecting another world down there. He had made it his home, although it had been partially destroyed from an accident. He was making do with how things were, though he was still distraught, you could tell with the way he carried himself. Once he removed the wrapping on his face, you were amazed by him, not frightened as he said you would be, and you took a bolder step like no one else had before. Your hand was placed on him, cupping his cheek as he looked at you with surprise, not expecting a beautiful creature like you to show him any affection of any kind. He gasped, his eyes watered as he closed them quickly, afraid to show you just how weak he was for your touch and just how we had wished Christine would have accepted him like this. He would die protecting you, there was no doubt now. You smiled at him, happy to see him feel at ease with you.Â
Your days were spent training with him, teaching you to sing until you were able to become an understudy for the diva herself if it was possible with everything that had happened. You knew Eric was different from the moment you laid your eyes on him, but it didn't bother you in the slightest, all people were unique in their own way and that never bothered you. He would give you longing glances as you read the sheet music to his works, touched by how beautifully written they had been, the music touched a part of you that was only brought out within the depths of under the opera house. You and Eric had slowly begun to feel comfortable around each other, though you took quicker to the situation than he had, hile was always on edge and somewhat distant. You didn't blame him, especially when you found out about his former student, whom he felt so much love and affection for. It was difficult for him to mention her because he felt that there would always be a part of himself with her, but he was doubting that now with you here. Maybe having him as your dark angel wouldn't be so bad.
#tinalbion writings#phantom of the opera 1989#Horror movie#phantom of the opera horror#robert englund#erik destler#erik destler x reader#erik destler imagine#erik destler headcanons
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NoĂ©mie Merlant, in the lightÂ
On February 28, NoĂ©mie Merlant was on the list of the CĂ©sar nominees for best actress for her performance in Portrait of a Lady on Fire by CĂ©line Sciamma. Her role as a painter, whoâs living a love story with another woman in an eighteenth century corseted, made her earned the recognition of her peers. "This nomination is important for the rest of my journey, but given the context, and given the film, the stake is beyond myself" she said a few days before the ceremony.
âAs soon as I read the script, I felt that it was powerful, that this film offered a vision that was missing in cinema and that its material would be innovative.â At 31, the young woman, who spent all her childhood and adolescence in RezĂ©, already has a substantial filmography. She is not, however, a child who grew up in an artistic environment. âMy parents ran a real estate agency in the Saint-Paul district in RezĂ©, where we also lived. We hardly went to the cinema. My sister introduced me to kung fu and horror movies, but I didn't really have a film cultureâ. Dance and song were her true artistic passions, but she never made them professional goals.
A lucky journey
âI was thinking of going to business school after my high school diplomaâ. In 2007, a few weeks before the baccalaurĂ©at (french high school diploma), her father saw an ad for the cours Florent, an artist training school, and told her about it. Rather reserved, NoĂ©mie first said no. "But I finally listened to him. He thought that expressing myself artistically could fit to my personality." After a month-long internship, she joined the Parisian school. "I discover theater, what a movie set is, I read lots of things: I discover the desire to play and to make it my job.â Supported by her parents, who came to join her in Paris a year after she moved there - "we are a little clan" -, she also finances her studies thanks to modeling, which she started as a teenager.Â
In 2010, she obtained a first role in Lâorpheline avec en plus un bras en moins, by Jacques Richard. That first experience confirmed her passion for cinema: "I feel more comfortable (in cinema) than in theater, I can both let go and control myself better. I like the attention to details that we develop in cinema." She then went on to make a few short films and appearances in French series, then small roles until she met Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar with whom she filmed Les HĂ©ritiers in 2013, then Heaven Will Wait in 2016. "Sheâs an important director for me and I made two other films with her."
Something to say
Her role as a young girl ready to go and serve in jihad earned her a nomination for best promising female actress at the CĂ©sar in 2017. Last January, thanks to Portrait of a Lady on Fire, she won a LumiĂšre award for best actress of the year, awarded by the international press. "I was very happy but terrified to speak in public, especially since I wanted to give a speech on the contribution of this film to cinema" she specifies with a relieved smile. And NoĂ©mie Merlant has many more things to say. She has written and shot two short films and is currently finishing her first feature film. The subject ? âItâs a fiction related to the story of a Roma family I know. I discovered this community a few years ago by volunteering and I am outraged by the racism they experience, a racism that seems to be tolerated by everyone. I have lived things with these people that are very far from the stereotypes that are conveyed and I feel like they brought me more positive things than the opposite.â Titled Mi Lubita, her film has yet to be released.
Guérande and Le Pouliguen
With all these activities, NoĂ©mie Merlant hasn't taken a lot of holidays lately. Perhaps she will spend a few days with her family in GuĂ©rande or in Pouliguen. She must also take the time to convert and furnish her new apartment: "This is at least my tenth address in Paris. As chance would have it, my new apartment is on the same street as where I was born.â Under a lucky star, without a doubt.Â
#noémie merlant#noemie merlant#portrait de la jeune fille en feu#portrait of a lady on fire#sometimes i translate things
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viewing guide
At its core, divine knowing is an exhibition about knowledge, power, and agency. Itâs become a more common understanding that governments, institutions, and algorithms will manipulate the public with what information they frame as fact, fiction, or worthy of attention. Though I am early in researching this topic, I've only come across a minimal amount of mainstream discourse on how the initial threat limiting our scope of knowledge is a refusal to listen to ourselves.
In a world faced with so many threats - humans being violent toward each other, toward animals, toward the earth - it can be a bit unsettling to release the reins and allow ourselves to bear witness for a moment, as we slowly develop a deeper awareness of surrounding phenomena and happenings. Â
divine knowing includes works by formally trained and self-taught artists. A majority of the artists are bisexual, non-binary, or transgender. Regardless of degree-status, gender, or sexuality, these artists have tapped into the autonomous well of self-knowing. Their artworks speak to tactics for opening up to a more perceptive mode of being. They unravel dependencies on external sources for knowledge and what we might recognize, connect with, or achieve once we do.
The installation Femme Digitale by Sierra Bagish originates from a series she began in 2017 by converting photographs of women that were taken and distributed online without the subjectâs consent into paintings. Her practice at the time was concerned with female abjection. Sourcing images found via simple keywords and phrases (e.g., passed out, passed out drunk) she swathes a mass-circulated canon of internet detritus that articulates and produces aggression towards women. With her paintings, she circumvents the imagesâ original framing mechanisms and subverts these proliferated images through a sincere and personal lens.
These paintings divulge the blurred space between idolatry and denigration these online photos occupy, asking whose desires these images fulfill and what their propagation reveals about the culture producing them. Â While Bagish's work contends with political motivations, she also remains keenly observant of form and the varying utilities of different media.
âI use the expressive potential of paint as a vehicle to intervene and challenge ideas about photography as a harbinger of the real and everyday.â
Chariot Birthday Wish is an artist and angel living in Brooklyn. They have seen The Matrix 28 times in 2 years and love horses. The tarot series included in divine knowing is their most intuitive project, something they revisit when unsure of what to work on next. The Major Arcana are composed of digital collages made from sourced images, the Minor Arcana are represented by short, poetic, interpretative texts about the cards. The series is played on shuffle, creating a unique reading for each viewer. This is a work in progress that will eventually finalize as a completed deck of digital collages available for purchase.
Chariot's work emerges from a constant consideration of apocalypse and connection. They reference technology in tandem with nature and a desire for unity. Underneath their work's surface conversation on beauty, care, and relationship exists an agenda to subtly evoke a conspiratorial anti-state mindset. Through a collective imagining of how good things could be and how good we want them to be, we might be able to reckon with how bad things are in contrast.
âI think about texting my friends from the middle of the woods...
Humans are a part of nature and we created these things. There's this Bjork quote where she says that "You can use pro tools and still be pagan." I'm really into the idea of using technology as a tool for divination and holy connection with nature. I imagine a scene; being in moss, it's absolute bliss, and then the connection of texting, sharing an image of moss with a friend, sharing that moment through cellular towers.â
The album "adding up" by thanks for coming is composed of songs Rachel Brown wrote during what they believe to be the most challenging year of their life. Rachel now looks back on this time in appreciation, recognizing they grew in ways they had never imagined. The entire year, they were committed to following their feelings to wherever it may lead.
âIf I hadn't been open to following the almost indiscernible signs I was being sent, then I would have missed out on some of the most important moments in my life.â
Kimberly Consroe holds a Masters in Anthropology along with degrees in Archaeology, Literature, and History. She is currently a Research Analyst at the US Department of Commerce. Her artwork is a passionate escape from a hectic professional life and touches on themes of feminism and nature.
Her works begin as general ideas; their narrative complexity growing with the amount of time she invests in making each one. Her decoupage process starts with cutting hundreds, if not thousands, pieces of paper. The accumulation of clippings sourced from vintage and current-day magazines overlap to tell a story. In Domestication, Kimberly borrows submissive female figures from found images of Ryan Mcguinness's work and places them in a position of power.
âI believe intuition is associated with emotion and experience. It is wisdom and fear, empathy and outrage, distrust and familiarity. It is what we know before we know it. This relates to my artwork in that, from beginning to end, there is never one complete idea concerning the outcome: it is a personal journey. It emerges from an ephemeral narrative that coalesces into a definitive story.â
Anabelle DeClement is a photographer who primarily works with film and is interested in relationships as they exist within a frame. She is drawn to the mystery of the mundane. Intuition exists in her practice as a feeling of urgency and the decision to act on it  ---  a drive often used to describe street photography where the camera catches unexpected moments in an urban environment. Anabelle tends to photograph individuals with whom she has established personal relationships in a slow domestic setting. Her sense of urgency lies in capturing moments of peak intimacy, preserving a memory's informal beauty that otherwise may have been forgotten or overlooked.
Gla5 is a visual artist, poet, bookmaker, production designer, and educator. Play is at the center of their practice. Their process is an experimental one embracing impulse and adventure. Their compositions are informed by relationships among bodies of varying shapes, materials, and densities. Interests that come up in their work include a discernment between symbols and non-symbols, dream states, the portrayal of energy in action, and a fixation on forms such as cups, tables, and spoons.
âI generally think of my work as depicting a layer of life that exists underneath what we see in our everyday lives.â
Gladys Harlow is a sound-based performance artist, comedian, and activist who experiments with found objects, contact mics, textures, range, analog formats, present moments, and emotions. Through raw, avant-garbage performance art, they aim to breakdown societal barriers, abolish oppressive systems, and empower communities. Gladys was born in Queens, NY, raised in Miami, FL and has deep roots in Venezuela. Currently haunting in Philadelphia, PA, Gladys is a founding member of Sound Museum Collective. SMC holds space for reconstructing our relationships to sounds by creating a platform for women, nonbinary, and trans sound artists and engineers.
Street Rat is a visceral exploration of the mysteries of life. Attempting to bring heavy concepts to your reality, it is the eye on the ground that sees and translates all intersecting issues as they merge, explode, dissolve, and implode. Street Rat is Gladys Harlow's way of comprehending, coping, feeling, taking action, disrupting the status quo, and rebuilding our path.
All Power To The People originated as a recorded performance intended to demystify sound by revealing the tools, wires, and movements used to create it. All Power To The People evolved into an installation conceived specifically for this exhibition. The installation includes a theremin and oscillator built by Gladys, a tarot deck they made by hand, and books from the artist's personal collection, amongst other elements. Gladys has created a structure of comfort and exploration. They welcome all visitors of divine knowing to play with the instrument, flip freely through the books, and pull a tarot card to take home.
Phoebe Hart is an experimental animator and filmmaker. A majority of her work is centered around mental illness and the line between dreams and reality. Merry Go Round is a sculptural zoetrope that changes in shape and color as it spins. Its form is inspired by nature and its color by the circus. The videoâs sound was produced by Hayden Waggener. It consists of reverbing chimes which are in rhythm with the stop animationâs movement; both oscillate seamlessly between serene and anxious states.
âI often don't plan the sculptures or objects I am fabricating, there is a vague image in my mind, and my hands take care of the rest. I find that sometimes overthinking is what can get me and other artists stuck. If I just abandon my judgments and ego, I can really let go and create work that feels like it came inherently from me.â
Powerviolets is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Violet Hetson who is currently based in New York. After experiencing several false starts while bouncing coast to coast, recording and performing with several lineups, Hetson has finally released her debut album. ~No Boys~ namesake is a sarcastic sign she hung on her suburban CT teenage bedroom door. Violet Hetson grew up primarily listening to punk and hardcore. She parses elements of these genres with influences from bands such as X and Suburban Lawns. ~No Boys~ takes a softer, melodic approach to Hetson's punk roots. Powerviolets' music is linear, unconventional, dark, and airy with a sense of humor.
Mary Hunt is a fiber artist specializing in chain stitch embroidery. This traditional form of embroidery uses vintage machinery and thick thread to create fibrous art and embellishments. They use an approach called "thread painting," which requires each stitch to be hand guided by the turn of a knob underneath the table while the speed of movement is controlled by a foot pedal. Chainstitch works can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 200 hours, encouraging a slow and thoughtful process. Mary uses a Cornely A machine, made in Paris more than 100 years ago.
âI think we are sent messages and guidance constantly. Our intuition is simply our ability to clear the path for those messages. The largest obstacles on my artistic path are usually self-imposed negative thoughts. I simply do things to take care of my spiritual well-being, first and foremost, and the rest follows. If I can trust the universe, trust the process, then I am much more likely to listen to the messages sent my way.â
Jes the Jem is a multi-media artist working with acrylic, watercolor, mold clay, and whatever else she can get her hands on. She uses vivid color to bring joy into the lives of those who view her art. Jes the Jem has experienced a great deal of pain in her life. Through that unique displeasure, she has been gifted a nuanced perspective. She aims to energize the present while paying homage to the past events that shape us. In her art, her life, and her interpersonal relationships, Jes the Jem appreciates the gift of all of life's experiences.
âThe pursuit of happiness and understanding is instinct.â
Pamela Kivi pieces together visual scraps she has saved over the years, choosing to fuse them at whatever present moment she sees fit. Her work reflects on creative mania, fleeting emotions, and memories. Pamela's collages are a compilation of unexpected elements that include: old notebooks, cut-outs, text messages or Facebook message conversations, nostalgic cellphone photos, and visual materials she has chosen to hold onto. She prints out, cuts up, scans, edits, repeats. Pamela's artistic practice is deeply personal. It is a submittal to the process of dusting things off until a reflection can be seen, all enacted without an attachment to the end result.
âI rely on intuition and whatever state of mind I am in to whisk me away. In life, I often confuse intuition with anxiety- when it comes to creative work, I can decipher the two.â
Through sobriety, Kendall Kolenik's focus has shifted toward self-discovery and shedding old adaptive patterns, a process that led her to a passion for helping others heal themselves too. In autumn, she will begin her Masters in Social Work at Columbia University.
âI love how when I'm painting my self-doubt becomes so apparent. Painting shows me exactly where my doubt lies, which guides me towards overriding it. When I paint something and lean into doubt, I don't like what comes out. When I take note of the resistance and go with my gut more freely, I love it. This reminds me of my yoga practice. What you practice on the mat is a metaphor for how you show up in life. By breathing through the uncomfortable poses on the mat, you learn to breathe through challenging life moments.
I think we all grow up learning to numb and edit ourselves. We are taught not to trust our feelings; we are told to look outside ourselves for answers when we already have a perfectly good compass within. Painting is an archway back to that for me - rediscovering self-reliance and faith in my first instinct. When I'm creating these rainbow squares, sometimes I move so fast it's like something else is carrying me. I sort of leave myself and enter a trance. Like how you don't have to tell the heart to beat or the lungs to breathe - thinking goes away and I can get so close to my knowing that I become it. I love how art allows me to access my love for ambiguity, interpretation, and an interpretation that feels closer to Truth. I find no greater purpose than guiding people back to safety and reconnecting them with themselves. The most important thing to ever happen in my life was when I stopped trying to deny my reality - listening to your intuition can be like a freefall - no one but you can ever know or tell you - it is a deep trust without any outside proof.â
Lucille Loffredo is a music school dropout, Jewish trans lesbian, and veterinary assistant doing her best to make sure each day is better than the last. Lucille tries to find the music rather than make it. She lets it tell her what it wants to do and what it wants to be. The Wandering EP was in part written as a way to come out to herself. She asks all listeners to please be gentle.
âChange will come, and it will be good. You are who you think you are, no matter how far it seems.â
Whitney Lorenze generally works without reference, making thick, graphic pictures with precise forms conceived almost entirely from her imagination. Images like a slowly rolling car crackling out of a driveway, afternoon sun rays shining through a cloud of humidity, or headlights throwing a lined shadow across a black bedroom inspire her.
âAs it concerns my own practice and the creation of artworks generally, I would define intuition as the ability to succumb to some primal creative impulse. Of course, this implies also the ability to resist the temptations of producing a calculated or contrived output.â
Ellie Mesa began teaching herself to paint at the age of 15, exploring landscapes and portraiture. Her work has evolved into a style of painting influenced by surrealism where teddy bears will morph into demons and vice versa. Her work speaks to cuteness, the grotesque, and mystical beings. The painting "Kali" is an homage to the Hindu goddess of creation, Â destruction, life and death. This was Ellie's first painting after becoming sober and is an expression of the aforementioned forces in her own life. Through meditations on Kali, Elli has been able to find beauty in the cycle of love and loss.
âTo me, intuition means doing the thing that feels right whether or not it's what you want it to be. When I'm painting or making a sculpture, I give myself the freedom to follow what feels right, even if that means starting over or changing it completely. I allow the piece to present itself to me instead of forcing something that doesn't want to be.â
Mari Ogihara is a sculptor exploring duality, resilience, beauty, and serenity as experienced through the female gaze. Her work is informed by the duality of womanhood and the contradictions of femininity. In particular, the multitude of roles we inhabit as friend, lover, sister, and mother and their complex associations to the feminine perspective.
âIntuition is an innate, immediate reaction to an experience. While making art, I try to balance intuition, logic, and craftsmanship.â
All Of Me Is War by Ames Valaitis addresses the subconscious rifts society initiates between women, estranging them from each other and themselves.
âIt is an unspoken, quick, and quiet battle within me as the feeling of intuition purely, and when I am making a drawing. I am immediately drawn to poses and subject matter that reflect the emotion inside myself, whether it is loud or under the surface. If a line or figure doesn't move me, after working on it for a few minutes, I get rid of it. If something looks right to me immediately, I keep it; nurture it. I try to let go of my vision, let my instinct take hold. I mirror this in my life as I get older, choosing who and what to put my energy into. The feeling is rarely wrong; I'd say we all know inherently when it is time to continue or tap out.â
Chardel Williams is a self-taught artist currently living in Bridgeport. Her biggest inspiration is her birthplace of Jamaica. Chardel views painting as a method for blocking out chaos. Her attraction to the medium springs from its coalescence of freedom, meditative qualities, and the connection it engenders. rears.
âIntuition for me is going where my art flows. I implement it in my practice by simply creating space and time to listen. There are times when what I'm painting is done in everyone else's eyes, but I just keep picking at it. Sometimes I would stop painting a piece and go months without touching it. Then, out of nowhere, be obsessed with finishing. I used to get frustrated with that process, but now I go with it. I stopped calling it a block and just flow with it. I listen because my work talks.â
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FGO Destiny Awakenings: Fujimaru Ritsuka and Fujimaru Ritsuko bio
My procrastination on life, writing my story, anything I needed to do is bad enough Iâm surfing web day by day so.... Might as well get my ass to work on this
This is pretty long since itâs two people bio, so everything is under the cut!Â
Note: In regards to their Magic Circuit quantity, neither FGO wiki or material gives any information about them. Iâve estimated them to be around Emiya Shirouâs level of circuit, but can be lower or higher... But more likely lower as they are only receiving magecraft training in the story
Note 2: Foreign languages in here are courtesy of google translate, if youâre able to improvise its grammar, please drop me an ask so I can edit
Note 3: Some of the info are quite spoilerly but not that much spoiler since itâs a base information for me on their personality, background, magecraft
Note 4: After reading the bio, I know some will be enrage with me at the sensitive topics Iâm about to touch for this story. Some are imagination, some are based on what I experience, and I wonât revealed which of what is imagination or experiences in reality. The bio will contain sensitive potential topics such as Depression & Family abuse, youâre entering this at your own risk to read.
Reminder: Yes this is fiction, but you need to separate in from reality. Iâm not your babysitter to cater your needs, I have put up 4 notes to remind you of the content youâre entering. And yes, Iâve pacing back and forth on their backstory knowing the backlash I received since this is Fate lore weâre going in out of consideration.
Fujimaru Ritsuka
Character Type: Human, Master, Magus
Affliliation:Â Chaldea Security Organization
Gender: Male
*Lineage:Â TBA
Birthday:Â December 6th
Height: 1.72m
Place of Origin: Japan
Alignment:Â Lawful Good
Likes: Meeting and getting to know historical figures, Magi*Mari, Reading and Researching about history
Dislikes: Needles
Talents:Â Stage MagicÂ
Circuit Quality: D
Circuit Quantity: D
Magic: Projection (Illusion), Hypnosis
Elemental Affinity: Air, particularly closest to Mist
Profile
Background
Ritsukaâs father divorced with his birth mother for unspoken circumstances and remarried to Ritsukoâs mother at the age of 11. At their first meeting, Ritsukaâs body was completely frail with his bones visible in plain view, wearing a dead emotionless face that shocked Ritsuko completely. His family situation was only described to young Ritsuko that Ritsukaâs father is doing everything it takes to ensure his mother will never come near him again.
But after spending more time with his new sister, Ritsuka gained back not only his weight, but his ability to speak, where first happened to yell at her for being reckless in fighting against their bullies. Though, he immediately regretted doing so and apologized afterwards when he knew all she did was to protect him.
Whenever someone brought up about his mom, Ritsuka immediately pushed the subject away to another topic. However when prodded further a little, heâs often described to be showing his real self by a broken look with a heartbreaking smile whenever he mentions about her
Personality
Intelligent, compassionate, self-conscious and rational with a reserved personality holding a snarky mouth, Ritsuka is considered the âbrainsâ and leader to his sister and contracted Servants in their goal to restore humanity Â
By many Servants and Chaldea Staff who are Mages, heâs often described as someone âborn with a heart thatâs unfitting to be a magusâ. Ritsuka would often bring his tablet along in each Singularity to inquire and take photos of the historical in each singularity. His scrupulous attention to detail comes in handy when he is off creating strategies to win against the enemies in the Singularity. And his ability to learn magic quickly helps in fasten his pace to be a better Master, but sometimes his answers in avoiding his friends to find out his meeting with Merlin within his dreams leaves others questioning his credibility for his talent.Â
Because of his strategic mindset, Ritsuka is highly perceptive to the others' feelings, and can figure out the source of most people's inner turmoil in a matter of a few important conversations.
âThe last time someone falls in love with somebody, they had either--created a stepping stone to an illegitimate son to bring his fatherâs kingdom fall into ruins, trapped themselves forever in a land of utopia or even knocked up with his Masterâs sister because why the hell not. No offense to you, Caster.â
-- Ritsuka to his sister while mentioning about Arthurâs, Merlinâs and Cu Chulainnâs love life Â
However his lack of experience in love and holding low regards about it from reading tons of historical and mythology books, had made him completely oblivious to his own and other people who had fallen in love with him. Though this is mainly of his own low self-esteem of his own worth as a person may have stemmed from his childhood, despite being considered an ace in everything he does by his sister. Ritsuka usually hide this but immediately quickly putting back up the façade of âa reliable and dependable but also ridiculously goofy personâ when someone notice.
Understanding how critical their situation is, Ritsuka often refuse to sit still when thereâs a given chance to do anything to help Chaldea. He also seems to get a little annoyed sometimes when people think he's cute or adorable, as he wants to be taken seriously like a grown-up from people around him as at most times Ritsuka is more mature and wiser than others.Â
When Ritsuka and Ritsuko are on their adventures in the Singularity, Ritsuka is the one to act as the leader because he is shown to be very brave and smart. He can be very protective of his sister, whenever she is in danger he is always there to help and will do anything to get her free.
It is also well mentioned that unlike his sister whom is open about her problems and sociable, Ritsuka is much more reserved and emotionally distant often avoiding talking about his past and himself. Even though he admired Heroic Spirits greatly and wished to understand them more, some would notice he often forced himself to draw a line from getting too close for some reason. But as the journey goes, Ritsuka has become greatly attached to everyone in Chaldea amd considered them strongly as his secondary family.
With his strong knowledge in history and novels, Ritsuka thinks much like an actual detective.
Despite his serious personality, living with Ritsuko his whole life (who is famous for her silly attitude) has caused him to indulge in childish activities with her. As such often either jokingly teased heâs forced to join with the shenanigans with the Child Servants, or mostly being the butt monkey teasing by them.
He also holds a huge soft spot towards children in particular to Jack and Mordred. When asked why in particular, Ritsuka easily gives his true smile that children like them deserve the love and acknowledgement they needed. But, he does a huge comedic soft spot to Alexandar and Ko-Gil, making his heart thumping when both used their charm while calling him âOnii-chanâ.
He also seems to not mind breaking the rules in order to have some fun, which often having him to be scolded by Emiya when he does so. In particular habit is often staying up late or staying over at Romaniâs room to watch Magi*Mari.
Abilities
âMerlin: After all, you and I are very similar, Ritsuka-kun. There shouldnât be a problem for you to learn my tricks. Ritsuka: By similar, if youâre talking about having the same sexual reproductive organs... Thatâs captain obvious, Merlin.â
-- Ritsuka to Merlin on his first lesson with him
Illusion Magecraft
With his experience in entertainment magic, Merlin had taught him in magecraft of deception and proficiency in Projection. A magecraft that relies on fooling a beingâs psyche to win, a magic which Ritsuka concluded only a mage like Merlin befits this magic for his notorious mischievous behavior.
Misdirection
Under the incantation chant âmaintenant tu me vois maintenant tu neâ, Ritsuka will fool his enemy thinking that he had disappeared by their five senses. Rather than concealing his presence, Merlin described this spell as âPutting oneâs attention focused strongly onto another. Like falling in love at first sight, where your world focus on that person alone!â
This spell Ritsuka commonly mostly to hide himself from enemy, and also additionally do a surprise attack from the back
However due to his quantity and quality of his magic circuits, Servants and enemies with strong sense and Clairvoyance are able to notice his whereabouts.
Projection (Illusion)
Unlike Emiyaâs projection, Ritsukaâs projection creates objects based on his memories and imagination. A skill heâs able to do easily as though itâs strangely natural from his muscle memories, he currently lacks the learning to reinforce his projected works to a reality
Under Merlinâs teachings, Ritsuka is able to create an illusion of manipulating to fool his enemies five senses during battle. But, it may not work if one is able to see through eventually Â
To perform this magecraft, he need to act/pretend of an action in order to project the desired item from his mind into reality. However because itâs like an illusion, not only it lasted for seconds to minutes, that item may not even appeared in his enemy vision if the latter noticed the truth.
Combat
Even if magic circuits is weak, Ritsuka makes it up by physical combat via kendo. In combat, Ritsuka will give commands to his Servants while fighting against the lower mobs summoned by enemy Servants. Lacking any fear towards death, Ritsuka wonât hesitate to step forward to deal against enemy Servants if needed to buy some time for his allies Servant to summon their Noble Phantasm
As such even facing against a professional magus, Ritsuka treats it as an experiment test nearly at the cost of his own life to find a weakness within them.
Role
Ritsuka acts both support and fights with their Servants in Chaldea. He has no specific Servant in mind as being dragged into the World of Magus. Ritsuka admired all Heroic Spirits, often near instantly switched into his fanboy mode when meeting those he admired.Â
While he enjoys their company and wishes to personally know each of them better, he does get exasperated by some of the extremely colorful and chaotic Servants summoned in Chaldea.
But, Ritsuka instantly draws a line between him and the Servants from getting to close by often avoiding talking about himself and his own true feelings. Despite making himself distant from them, he cares a great deal about them and strongly hated the idea of treating them and anyone as tools or weapons to use.
Unlike his sister, heâs the one who supplies mana generally to most of the Servants via a technique Merlin taught him when he requested earnestly for his help.
Fujimaru Ritsuko
Character Type: Human, Master, MagusÂ
Affliliation: Chaldea Security OrganizationÂ
Gender: Female
Lineage: TBA
Birthday: May 29th
Height: 1.58m
Alignment:Â Lawful Good
Likes:Â Sports (mainly excel in softball and basketball), Morning workout as early as 4am, Sweets
Dislikes:Â Studying through reading of books, Anyone who hurts her brother and even attempting to bring up his family problems, House chores
Talents:Â Accuracy in throwing and quick learning speed taught via hands-on
Circuit Quality:Â D+
Circuit Quantity: D+
Magic:Â Nine Hand Seal Magecraft
Elemental Affinity:Â Fire
Profile
Background
Ritsuko mentions to Mash in Fuyuki Singulary Section 9 Part 1 that her real father disappeared on both her mother and her when she was a baby for reasons unknown. As such, itâs noted her mother has been raising her single-handedly by herself before remarrying Ritsukaâs father when she was 10.
At their first meeting, Ritsuko was completely horrified at Ritsukaâs body was completely frail with his bones visible in plain view, wearing a dead emotionless face that barely even respond to her when she first greeting him warmly. His family situation was only described to young Ritsuko when she asked was that Ritsukaâs father is doing everything it takes to ensure his mother will never come near him again, and will only explain to her when she grew older.
She mentioned though he was quiet, he was still receptive if not hesitant in answering to her. But after spending more time with his new sister, Ritsuka gained back not only his weight, but his ability to speak mainly to yell at her for being reckless in fighting against her bullies. Though at that time, Ritsuko chuckled she was unsure why she was crying while he apologized; whether it was the bullies, her brother scolded her, or the happiness she felt when she saw life in her brotherâs eyes after months of wondering if the effort was futile to get closer to her new older brother.Â
Personality
On the surface, Ritsuko is fierce, independent, and pugnacious, but beneath her tough exterior, she possesses a strong loyalty toward her friends and duty as the Humanityâs last Master with her brother. She also has an admirable compassion and devotion, demonstrated when she expresses love toward things such as her family and friends. Unlike the calmer and reserved Ritsuka, Ritsuko is similarly quick witted and impulsive, especially in heated situations. And, she lacked perception towards her rash decisions often resulted in her accidentally insulting others.
Ritsuko is tough, impatient, headstrong, sarcastic, and assertive. Due to her crush on Mash, she tends to pull her away and shield her from others who showed interest in her. Like her brother, Ritsuko fully embraced her position as the Humanityâs Last Master, but lamenting her weakness how she isnât calm and level-headed as her brother. A trait of Ritsuka she admires greatly when they were kids, as sheâll always be grateful during the times she was in near trouble. Mainly Ritsukaâs willingness and accepting of her secret towards her interest in woman, as she didnât want her mother to know out of fear of disappointing her.
Because of this, Ritsuko also tends to be protective and even more so than her brother when it comes to his own well-being. Her mother never told anything about Ritsukaâs parents, except as she quoted:Â
âMom said I was too young understand. Telling me Ritsukaâs mom did something really bad to him so Dad ensured his mom will never come close to meet Ritsuka again.â
As such, Ritsuko often keeps an eye on Ritsukaâs reaction whenever someone asks about his mom; ready to deflect or even pull him away at the uncomfortable situation.
Initially frightened and frozen with fear at Fuyuki Singularity, Ritsuko lamented with regret greatly how if her strength to save Mash from Artoria Alterâs Noble Phantasm could do the same for Olga Marie. But, she knew better she canât wallow in grief, vowing to grow stronger and requested Emiyaâs and Sadakuniâs aid to train her in combat and magecraft respectively.
Abilities
"Boomer-Daggerâ
A pair of dagger crafted specially by Emiya after considering her skillset. It can be used for both physical combat and her magecraft. When thrown to her enemies, it returns to her via an invisible string connecting to her magic circuit. Also, itâs used as a placeholder on her talisman before conjuring her Nine Hand Seal Mudra Magecraft
Talisman
Her catalyst to invoke with her magecraft. Taught by Sadakuni, she needs to place it on her target before doing her Mudras to attack her opponent. Ritsuko often brings her mat of magic circle drawn by her blood to imbued powers into the talisman daily through meditation.
Onmyoudo Kuji-in aka Nine Hand Seals Magecraft
Taught by Section Chief Agano Sadakuni, Ritsuko mainly uses this magecraft for combat. This magecraft relies specifically on specific hand gesture and pattern to conjure her spells. From reinforcing her weapon and physical strength, to summoning fire magic for combat
Rin-Pyo-Toh, ready for battle: Enhancing her physical strength
Kai-Jin-Retsu, release: Conjure an explosion burst of flames
Jin-Pyo-Zai, bind: With ranged of 10 talisman connected by a burning magical rope to bind the target
Zai-Sha-Kai, heal: Transfer her mana for healing or empowering her Servant
Combat
Like her brother despite having slighter better circuits than him, Ritsuko sides along with her brother via physical combat. She often pairs with her brother, acting as a bait to go against the enemy, while Ritsuka pulls off a surprise ambush via his illusion magecraft.
In the face of an enemy Servant, Ritsuko steps back to give orders to the Servant she contracted with.
Role
While she treats Servants who are Kings or Queen with respect by their title, Ritsuko treats everyone equally with respect and as a friend. Sheâs shown to be more than willing to teach them about the modern technology and slang, also joining them in their crazy plans often resulted in chaotic humor, much to Ritsukaâs chagrin.
Like her brother, Ritsuko detested the idea of anyone treating Servants as tools or weapons as she view those who contracted her as their friend. This feeling also extend to her enemy Servant, believing they are living beings with their own free will and emotions.
While her brother generally supplies mana to their Servants, Ritsuko acts second-in-charge right after he finish mana transferring to their Servant which resulted him immobile and carried around by Emiya or Caster Cu Chulainn.
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âYou never heard of yodeling before? fufu I see.....no itâs nothing really Prefectâ
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TECHNICAL INFORMATION
Name: Ferdrick YâOddel
Japanese: ăăŹăăȘăăŻă»ăšăŒăă«
Romanji: Furederikku YĆderu
Other Name:
Ferd (himself)
Boss (Eb)
Sir (Clinton)
Roi de Yodel (Rook)
Rank 3 Narcissistic Player (Idia)
Squid (Floyd)
Yawneler (Leona)
Voiced by Akira Ishida
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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Birthday: March 15
Starsign: Pisces
Height: 184 cm
Eye Color: Pesto Green
Hair Color: Tabasco Red
Homeland: Town of Iron Pistol
Family: Father, Mother, Cole (distant relative)
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PROFESSIONAL STATUS
Dorm: Tumbleranch
School Year: Third
Class: 3-A Student no. 09
Occupation: Student and Dorm Leader
Club: Light Music Club
Best Subject: Music
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FUN FACTS
Dominant Hand: Left
Favorite Food: Scrambled Egg
Least Favorite Food: Canned Beans
Dislikes: Anyone dislike his talent
Hobby: Composing Lyrics, Guitar/Ukelele
Talents: Yodeling
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UNIQUE MAGIC âYodeling is ARTâ
Controlling the minds of mages, even creatures with his hypnotic yodeling. This effect will temporary give a distorted colorful eyes once whom heard him yodel. Anyone couldnât resist the power of his vibrant tune and obediently do what the userâs command and chances are might lose the memory during the hypnotic trance in the aftermath.....unless it was all just a dream.
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PERSONAL INFORMATION
Ferdrick is what the dorm needs for a leader to take over Tumbleranch. Truly industrious and sharp-witted yet confident and narcissistic with very much proud of himself possessing these kinds of traits. There are times he can be annoyingly too prideful having the tendency to flaunt others by his gentleman looks with his smooth talking especially likes to showing off he has the most beautiful yodeling voice than any yodelerâs out there. He does also sing but he prefers to yodel a lot. Very confident of his potential he wouldn't care less what others think about his talent, he's very self-assured of his potential and wouldn't mind demonstrating if they insistently asked also wouldn't mind to butt heads with anyone or dorm leaders if they asked for a challenge from him. He would immediately accept it to prove that he can do better than anyone else
Ferdrick is also a legend fanatic, deeply respected but more adored the dormâs legend âVainglorious and Notorious Outlawâ Ferdrick has a lot of knowledge about the legendâs stories thanks to research and ancient books pretty much loves to tell tales about it with anyone of those who havenât heard of him especially to first years
Being as egoistic as he is but Ferdrick's words and actions are truly friendly & gentle at times. He wouldnât mind to lend a helping hands of his peers, juniors, or friends when the situations are in a pinch but rather done it behind the scenes and little do they know he does care and worries of his dorm mates welfare and show a bit of softness even though when everyone is a bunch of rebelled children. Although for TR (tumbleranch) students, they seem to have mixed feelings towards their dorm head. They have respected him taking the huge responsibility of taking care in good hands while trying to discipline them before doing anything dangerous and do promise heâd make the dorm a better place for a new coming of students to feel at ease and enjoy the life here as shown how much work heâd put through for a leader
Well.....that wouldnât be wicked for him to do. Donât get him wrong, heâs not the type of person whoâd want himself to be involved in danger like all of Tumbleranch would, and besides heâs honestly would never become one of them. Not entirely fond with rebels but heâs kind enough not to spoil everyoneâs crazy fun time, permitting them to do unnecessary things just as much as they want but not too far (people stated him to be called âBossâ of the organization because Ferd does act like one) meanwhile students were frightened by him because of his fury & sadistic nature. His speeches will change to violent containing hurtful or insensitive remarks, subconsciously murmurs with a head full clouded of harsh punishments and using his favorite weapon to threaten others off with just a smile but usually, heâd chose to smack the heads of those who disobeyed, anger, or upset him, thatâs all. Not to mention heâd be more infuriating if anyone say YODEL SUCKS in front of him. With hardheadedness around, he thought of being the leader would likely take over the herd but didn't expect this to turn out frustrating and troublesome to deal with than he ever imagine
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BACKGROUND
Born in a political family. Heâs the only child living with his parents growing up in high-class society. Being pampered and groomed by maids and butlers everyday and his personality were different from before mainly he used to be so obedient towards his parents. His father is the mayor from his hometown âTown of Iron Pistolâ while his mother is a sophisticated noblewoman from a noble family. Most of Ferdâs relatives, his father side, were well known and respectable politicians working part as the supreme democratic parties. His father wanted his sonâs future to follow his footsteps as taking the position of deputy mayor and soon after, being as mayor once he grown to be a fine adult, one day. So during his childhood, both his parents decided to take Ferd in homeschooling and hired finest tutors giving him much proper educations of along with magic training living up to his life with no distractions in playing outside, nor with children, and nor meaningless children activities but books and learning mannerism then soon to realize Ferd felt nothing but bored and dissatisfied what his parentâs contribute to him. Few months later, the family went traveling for business and that time, Ferd happened to listen to country music for the first time by visiting to a concert. Young Ferd was contented by the music dreaming himself to be the famous country celebrity someday. Playing music and yodeling his heart out which is his first time feeling the excitement more passionate about it however none of his were parents approved of it. They thought itâs just a childrenâs fantasy and doubt their sonâs dream becoming a country singer will ever come true and besides, they did the trouble raising him to be a successful son and it was right of them for their son to be one of the public parties just like their family. His dad was upset about Ferd and wouldnât support his sonâs dream by using his force to take away his instruments also forbids him to yodel. Despite the cruel punishment, Ferd had already made up his mind of pursuing his passionate dream, proving he can and will become a country celebrity. Time goes by, his relationship with his family are a bit complicated and constantly argue each other. Starting his college year at NRC, he decided to fake his own background. Lying to everyone believing he was an ordinary orphan who happened to got adopted by a loving and supportive family raised up to be hardworking, intelligent, and passionate boy he was and used that to hide his spoiled rich life behind. None of people of NRC even his dorm members know heâs a noble
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OTHER FACTS
Heâs twisted version of Alameda Slim the Cattle Rustler
Ferdrick & Cole are actually distant relatives
Likes to listen country music related
His hobby is composing lyrics and plays guitar or Ukelele often during his kill time thatâs why he nailed his yodeling performance so effortlessly and rather play solo
Ferd wasnât fond or more like having hard time handling bovines/cows. Itâs not just heâs scared of them but itâs because he learned from his legend was defeated by unusual cows so he doesnât trust them at all
Floyd calls him Squid because he sees Ferdrick & Azul similar because their appearance are slightly alike (long-sided hair but Ferdâs longer, wearing glasses and hat, both have their canes, act like mafia bosses) Both of them hates to admit
He has a cane that can turned into a branding iron and usually fights with that
Heâs good at gun firing and sword fighting
Heâs slow at counting moneys
Made a promise to his favorite Idol that heâll become a country star as them someday from ong time ago
Had a bad relationship with his parents and doesnât want to talk about
YâOdell wasnât actually his surname. He never wants to reveal the real surname to anyone
#twisted wonderland#twisted wonderland oc#twst#twst oc#tumbleranch#tumbleranch oc#ferdrick yâoddel#twst Ferd#ferd#Ferdrickâs profile#profile
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Muhammad Ali vs Antonio Inoki
For many people, they see the birth of Ultimate Fighting in companies like Pancrase which was founded in 1993 by Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki. They embraced the method of mixed martial arts and gave an arena for those who wanted to pit style against style. But some people also reflect back to a time, far before Pancrase, where a meeting of two worlds lit a fire behind those who later went on to created modern Mixed Martial Arts.
In 1975, Muhammad Ali boasted in a meeting with amateur Japanese Wrestling association President Ichiro Hatta âIsnât there any oriental fighter who will challenge me? I will give him one million dollars if he wins!â. This question hit the headlines of every major newspaper and sports magazine in Japan and was eventually answered by Antonio Inoki, who was the founder of New Japan Pro Wrestling established just 3 years earlier.
Muhammed Ali was coming off the back of a fight with Richard Dunn on 24th May 1976 which he won by knockout and was coming towards the end of his boxing career at the time of the proposed fight having fought in the famous âThe Thriller in Manilaâ on October 1st, 1975. His final fight would be only 6 years later against Trevor Berbick.
Antonio Inoki was, at the time, one of the biggest names in Japanese Professional Wrestling. As well as creating NJPW in 1972, he began his professional wrestling journey as a disciple of Rikidozan at aged 17 as part of the JWA (Japanese Wrestling Alliance). Following the murder of RIkidozan by the Yakuza in 1963, Inoki went on an excursion to the United States in 1964, where he continued training under the legendary Karl Gotch. With Gotch, he learned the Catch style that is now synonymous with the Gotch name. Gotch to this very day is still held in high regard and to many fans and players of Japanese pro wrestling is known as âThe God of Wrestlingâ.
Following the return from his excursion in 1966, Inoki working with Tokyo Pro Wrestling and quickly climbed the ranks to become its biggest star, before the company folded in 1967. He then returned to JWA, where he stayed for roughly 4 years, becoming a dominant tag team with his future promotional rival Giant Baba of All Japan Pro Wrestling. Inoki was then fired in 1971 due to JWA officials finding out that Inoki was planning a takeover the company. The following year, New Japan was founded and is one of the biggest wrestling promotions today.
So, in March 1976, an agreement was made between Ali and Inoki to fight at Tokyoâs Nippon Budokan, scheduled for June 26th, 1976. It is believed that the financial backers of the fight had to part with $6 million to convince Ali to take the exhibition fight and then began the press conferences to build the hype for this one-off spectacle between pugilist and grappler.
Ali, in his usual manner, would make fun of Inokiâs appearance, giving him the nickname âThe Pelicanâ due to his prominent lower jaw and chin. Inoki would then reply via an interpreter âWhen your fist connects with my chin, take care that your fist is not damagedâ. Inoki also went as far as to present Ali with a crutch at a following conference âto use after he has been thrown from the ringâ.
Aliâs demeanour during this time appeared jovial and not that he was not taking the fight very seriously. This angered Inoki who began to make more threatening statements to try and make Ali realise how serious the exhibition was to him and many around the world. Inoki said in one Conference âI donât know how seriously Muhammad Ali is taking the fight, but if he doesnât take it seriously, he could suffer damage. Iâm going in there fighting. I may even break his armâ.
These statements from Inoki caused tension within Aliâs team, many of whom were concerned that going ahead with the fight was still a good thing to do. Ali however, continued with his boxing training but also worked with Pro wrestlers in the US to try and gain experience against a wrestler. He worked with The Sheik and sparred with wrestlers Kenny Jay and Buddy Wolf in televised exhibition matches, defeating both.
Due to the growing concerns within Aliâs team, they began creating a list of rules for this unique match-up. The original concept for the match was agreed to be a worked match, common in pro wrestling, but Ali never agreed to determine the winner before the fight had started. It has been speculated by Boxing Journalist Jim Murphy that the original plan for the match was for Ali to accidentally punch the referee and knock him out and while Ali tended to the referee, Inoki would hit him from behind with an enzuiguri (step up kick) or a roundhouse kick to the back of the head. The Referee would then come to and give a ten-count to the incapacitated Ali.
The result was carried out with the intention of both men looking strong, Inoki in front of his countrymen and Ali only losing as he was kicked from behind following the incident with the Referee.
After hearing that he would lose, Ali point blank refused this result and decided that they have a real one-on-one fight.
In the days building up to the fight, Aliâs team attended one of Inokiâs training sessions and were shocked to him using real kicks and grapples on sparring partners. This did little to quell the concerns of his entourage. Inoki has alleged in in interviews that after the training session, his team reported back to him and he asked Inoki âOK, so when do we do the rehearsal?â and Inoki replied âThis isnât an exhibition, itâs a real fight!â
The ever-nervous entourage then scrambled to change the rules once more. Representatives from both sides were called to negotiate the rules of the fight with less than a week before the fight. The list of rules were effectively things that Inoki was not allowed to do to Ali. He was not allowed to use throws, not allowed to grapple or tackle Ali and was not able to land any kicks unless one knee was touching the mat during the kick being performed. They also placed a stipulation that none of the rules were made public before the fight, likely to try and save Aliâs credibility.
Years after the fight, many have disputed the rules that were in place. Referee Gene LeBell denied there were any limitations on grappling or kicking, however Bret Hart, who at the time of the fight was an employee of NJPW, stated that the team working with Ali had said that âif Inoki laid a finger on their champ, they would kill himâ. This statement was also backed up by former New Japan referee Mr. Takahashi who also said that all of the changes came from Aliâs entourage and not Ali himself.
Many professional fighters became discouraged with how credible the fight could look given all of the imposed restrictions, with notable correspondent John Roderick stating ââŠwhat is called by some the worldâs first Martial Arts Championship â and others a multi-million-dollar shamâ.
Ali arrived in Japan the day of the fight, swarmed by a mass of Japanese journalists all looking to get a soundbite from the Greatest of All Time. They were not disappointed as the ever-humble Ali made his way through the Airport proclaiming âThere will be no Pearl harbour! Muhammad Ali has returned! There will be no Pearl Harbour!â. The fight was highly anticipated, by sports fans for the sheer spectacle of seeing 2 sports come together and for professionals and sceptics curious how the fight would be able to function with the level of suspected restrictions that were imposed.
It was estimated that the fight was viewed by 1.4 Billion people worldwide, broadcast to 34 countries. In New York, Vince McMahon Sr. Sold tickets for the fight to watch on a large screen inside Shea Stadium which drew a crowd of 32,897. The Budokan in Tokyo sold out with the most expensive seat selling for 300,000 Yen.
The Fight
Antonio Inoki was the first competitor to make his entrance. He was wearing his now signature purple robe accompanied by Karl Gotch, Olympic Judoka Seiji Sakaguchi, wrestling trainer Kotetsu Yamamoto and pro wrestler Kantaro Hoshino.
Muhammad Ali then followed to the ring, in a red and white robe, followed by his manager Herbert Muhammad, Trainers Angelo Dundee and Wali Muhammad, Cornerman Drew Bundini Brown, Dr. Ferdie Pachecho, pro wrestler âClassyâ Freddie Blassie, Taekwondo master Jhoon Goo Rhee and promoter Butch Lewis.
After the first bell rang, the whole arena was taken by surprise as Inoki ran and leapt across the ring towards Aliâs legs. Ali managed to sidestep this attack but Inoki stayed on his back, spending the round sweeping and kicking at Aliâs legs. This was within the confines of the rules and one of Inokiâs knees were always touching the ground at said time. Inoki did stand up momentarily to try and lure in Ali but quickly returned to the mat, throwing kick after kick towards Ali. Ali taunted the wrestler to stand up but Inoki refused taking the fight to Aliâs legs.
This continued on throughout the 2nd and 3rd rounds with Inoki furiously kicking at Aliâs legs with great volume and power. The tactic was seemingly paying off as Ali was not able to throw punches in his normal way meaning that Inoki was able to avoid many of them during the start of the contest. Ali would take to pining himself in the corner of the ring and lifting himself up out of the way of Inokiâs kicks and stamping downwards, which was deemed against the rules and quickly stopped by referee LeBell. A large wound opened up on Aliâs left knee during the third round and the crowd quickly began to boo due to the lack of action going on in the ring. Ali began to taunt Inoki shouting at him âCoward Inoki! Inoki No Fight!â and âOne Punch, I want One Punch!â
By round four, Inoki had frustrated both Ali and the crowd within the arena. Ali would continue with shouting at Inoki âInoki Girlâ and âI thought Inoki could Wrestleâ. At one point, Inoki got Ali trapped in the corner using his ground kicking technique and wildly hit a flurry of kicks towards Aliâs thighs, Ali trying to avoid by lifting his legs off the canvas while holding onto the ropes again.
In the fifth round, the same pattern continued by Inoki adopting the ground kick strikes to Ali, which paid off somewhat in this round as he managed to knock Ali off his feet with one of the strikes. Ali danced off the stumble in his inimitable fashion while simultaneously avoiding more kicks from Inoki. Despite the frustrations of what Inoki was doing, Ali was nothing less than himself, doing more than enough to keep the crowd entertained. During the same round Ali managed to grab Inokiâs foot after a failed kick attempt and dragged him across the ring but before Ali could do anything with this small advantage, the bell sounded and both men went off to their corners. The crowd were starting to warm up and appreciate the match for what it was, a clash of styles. They could see blood and bruising starting to appear around Aliâs legs due to the sheer amount and power of the kicks that Inoki was hitting Ali with.
During the 6th Round, Inoki continued with his game plan. One of his initial kicks of this round caught Ali in the groin. Referee Lebell stopped the fight momentarily and gave Inoki a warning about the placement of his kicks before returning to the action. He followed up with 2 more kicks before Ali adopted the same approach as the previous round. He grabbed the foot of Inoki with a view to immobilise him and launch an attack of his own, but Inoki being the proficient grappler of the two was able to grab Aliâs left shoe, wrap his right leg around Aliâs right calf and bring him to the mat. Inoki sat on Ali and attempted a leglock but Ali managed to kick his legs to the rope to force a break. Inoki was then issued with a further warning for throwing a back elbow towards Aliâs face during the rope break stoppage. He was deducted as point for this but as the fight restarted Ali was reprimanded for kicking out while holding the ropes.
To start the 7th round, Inoki became the intimidator. He tried to persuade Ali to meet him on the ground, but Ali refused. Ali threw a few missed kicks but then finally threw a long jab but Inoki was quick to knock him down with a sweeping kick which erupted the Tokyo crowd, but more so in favour of Ali. After the round ended, Aliâs doctor treated the wounds on his legs and Aliâs trainer Angelo Dundee approached Karl Gotch to make them aware that Inokiâs leather boots were damaged, and a brass eyelet was causing the cuts to Aliâs legs. The boots were taped up to try and prevent any further cuts from taking place. They also taped the ends of Inokiâs shoelaces as they were tipped with brass.
The 8th Round. Ali had braggadociosly stated that he would end Inoki in the round during the press conferences, however the pattern of the previous rounds continued. LeBell gave Inoki another low blow warning after mistakenly believing a knock down was a result of another misplaced kick by the wrestler. One of the more uneventful rounds of the fight ended in Ali shouting âInoki Nothingâ to his opponent.
Ali attempted to make progress during the 9th round of the contest, he tried to circle Inoki, looking for an opening to try and hit him with only his second successful punch of the fight. Inoki stuck to strategy and landed a huge kick which stumbled Ali into his corner. Ali was waning and his legs were showing the signs of the repeated damage caused by Inoki.
In the 10th round, Ali finally hit his second punch of the match, a jab which caught Inoki in the face. A good punch, but left Ali open to another leg kick. The crowd began to bellow for Inoki to fight standing and he graced them by charging at Ali who grabbed onto the ring ropes. The crowd were now Aliâs. Inokiâs tactics, although working well for him had not endeared him to his countrymen and they continued to chant Aliâs name as he spoke worryingly with his corner about the next 5 rounds.
After conferring with his cornermen, Ali adopted a different approach to save his beaten legs. It was suggested by Rhee, the Taekwondo expert, to block the leg blows using his arms to avoid further damage to his legs. This was successful but Ali was unable to capitalise on opportunities where he grabbed Inokiâs foot.
Before the 12th Round, Karl Gotch instructed Inoki to try and take down Ali and finish the match by pin or submission. A few have suggested that this was imparted due to Aliâs cornermen being obviously concerned for the Boxing champion. But after the last round, Ali came into the contest more confident after blocking many of Inokiâs blows with his arms. During this round, Inoki finally stood up and hit Ali with a low kick, although clean it was against the rules as one knee was not on the canvas. Aliâs corner tried to convince him to use this opportunity to attack the now standing Inoki, but he quickly went back to the ground. Towards the end of the round, people who were ringside had commented on how Aliâs left leg looked to be âdouble the size of the rightâ.
Ali took the centre of the ring in the 13th round, trying to push Inoki into the corner. Inoki would fake a takedown attempt, trying to force Ali into the ropes. Ali blocked him with his glove anticipating another kick, but Inoki charged at Ali grabbing a waist lock to attempt a suplex. Ali hurriedly grabbed the ropes, and the referee broke the hold and returned to the centre of the ring. During this clinch, Ali put all his weight onto Inoki which prompted Inoki to hit him with an illegal knee strike â which would also be Inokiâs 3rd warning for as low blow. After this instance, it looked as if Ali was going to leave the ring but was convinced by the referee to continue on. On the restart of the round, Inoki threw a kick but Ali responded by throwing 2 jabs which connected forcing Inoki back to the canvas as per the previous rounds.
By the 14th round, the crowd were expecting Inoki to follow suit with his tactics, but he came out throwing some bare-fisted jabs and faking a takedown before switching back to his ground kicks. Without any attempt of attack, Ali held onto the ropes which annoyed Inoki and both men exchanged taunts. Ali managed to land a jab before the end of this round, leading into the 15th and final round.
Both men shook hands at the start of this round which drew a huge ovation from the crowd. While many were optimistic about how the fight may end, they were seemingly disappointed that Inoki retreated to his familiar style for this matchup. Inoki managed to land a few kicks, Ali a final jab and the fight was over. The crowd were mixed at the ending of this match, knowing that it wasnât the fight they were expecting and also being more vocal for Ali during the fight.
Both men shook hands after the fight and Ali declared himself the winner of the bout, claiming that Inokiâs âCowardiceâ lost him the fight. 2 judges, one a wrestler who scored in favour of Ali 74-72 and one a boxer who scored in favour of Inoki 72-68 left the decision down to referee Lebell, who given the points deducted from Inoki scored the fight 71-71 so a draw result was declared.
The fans were outraged and rioted within the Budokan, chanting âMoney Backâ. Janitorial staff for the arena took a full day to clean the areas due to the unhappy crown throwing items.
Aliâs leg was so severely swollen and bleeding that it led to two blood clots in his legs after an infection and amputation was discussed at one point though Ali himself downplayed this to the press saying it was nothing serious.
Inoki stated in the press sometime after the fight âI was handicapped by the rules that said no tackling, no karate chops, no punching on the mat. I kept my distance to stay away from Aliâs punchesâ
The fight grossed $20 million in closed circuit television in the US alone after 2 million or more PPV buys at $10 each, 54 million people watched in Japan as the day was declared a holiday for everyone to be able to watch the fight.
Years on from the fight, even though those involved had been divided over the fights legacy, but the impact that it has given to companies to learn from and engineer their own form of MMA has led to Pancrase, Pride, UFC becoming the giants within Mixed Martial arts during the 90âs. Only one of them now stand at present but the groundwork was laid by 2 legends in their respective sports.
Antonio Inoki went on to continue wrestling with New Japan Pro Wrestling, until he officially retired on April 4th, 1998. He did take breaks away from Wrestling to focus on Politics between 1989-1995 and 2013-2019. He successfully negotiated with Saddam Hussein the release of Japanese hostages before the start of the Gulf War in 1990. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2010.
Muhammad Ali continued with his boxing career having 7 more fights before his final fight with Trevor Berbick. His is still regarded as arguably the greatest boxer of all time, his influence on boxing is still evident not only in performance but also, in the press conferences building to the events. He passed away on June 3rd, 2016 aged 74.
Both men, despite their in-ring differences on that day, they became friends later in life. Inoki started using Aliâs entrance music âThe Greatestâ and in 1998, Ali flew out to watch Inokiâs retirement match against Don Frye. After Inokiâs victory, Ali climbed into the ring and hugged Inoki. Ali asked for a message to be read out to the Japanese fans.
âIt was 1976 when I fought Antonio Inoki at the Budokan. In the ring, we were tough opponents. After that, we built love and friendship with mutual respect. So, I feel a little less lonely now that Antonio has retired. It is my honour to be standing on the ring with my good friend after 22 years. Our future is bright and has a clear vision. Antonio Inoki and I put our best efforts into making world peace through sports, to prove there is only one mankind beyond the sexual, ethnical or cultural differences. It is my pleasure to come here today.â
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Margaret Dumont (October 20, 1882 â March 6, 1965) was an American stage and film actress. She is best remembered as the comic foil to the Marx Brothers in seven of their films. Groucho Marx called her "practically the fifth Marx brother".
Dumont was born Daisy Juliette Baker in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of William and Harriet Anna (née Harvey) Baker. She spent many years of her childhood being raised by her godfather, Joel Chandler Harris at his home, Wren's Nest in Atlanta before returning to New York as a teenager.
Dumont trained as an operatic singer and actress in her teens, and began performing on stage in the U.S. and in Europe, at first under the name Daisy Dumont and later as Margaret (or Marguerite) Dumont. Her theatrical debut was in Sleeping Beauty and the Beast at the Chestnut Theater in Philadelphia, and in August 1902, two months before her 20th birthday, she appeared as a singer/comedian in a vaudeville act in Atlantic City. The dark-haired soubrette, described by a theater reviewer as a "statuesque beauty", attracted notice later that decade for her vocal and comedic talents in The Girl Behind the Counter (1908), The Belle of Brittany (1909) and The Summer Widower (1910).
In 1910, she married millionaire sugar heir and industrialist John Moller Jr. and retired from stage work, although she had a small uncredited role as an aristocrat in a 1917 film adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities. The marriage was childless.
After her husband's sudden death during the 1918 influenza pandemic, Dumont reluctantly returned to the Broadway stage, and soon gained a strong reputation in musical comedies. She never remarried. Her Broadway career included roles in the musical comedies and plays The Fan (1921), Go Easy, Mabel (1922), The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly (1923/24) and The Fourflusher (1925), and she had an uncredited role in the 1923 film Enemies of Women.
In 1925, Dumont came to the attention of theatrical producer Sam H. Harris who recommended her to the Marx Brothers and writer George S. Kaufman for the role of the wealthy dowager Mrs. Potter alongside the Marxes in their Broadway production of The Cocoanuts. In the Marxes' next Broadway show Animal Crackers, which opened in October 1928, Dumont again was cast as foil and straight woman Mrs. Rittenhouse, another rich, society dowager. She appeared with the Marxes in the screen versions of both The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930).
With the Marx Brothers, Dumont played wealthy, high-society widows whom Groucho alternately insulted and romanced for their money:
The Cocoanuts (1929) as Mrs. Potter
Animal Crackers (1930) as Mrs. Rittenhouse
Duck Soup (1933) as Mrs. Gloria Teasdale
A Night at the Opera (1935) as Mrs. Claypool
A Day at the Races (1937) as Mrs. Emily Upjohn
At the Circus (1939) as Mrs. Susanna Dukesbury
The Big Store (1941) as Martha Phelps
Her role as the hypochondriacal Mrs. Upjohn in A Day at the Races brought her a Best Supporting Actress Award from the Screen Actors Guild, and film critic Cecilia Ager suggested that a monument be erected in honor of Dumont's courage and steadfastness in the face of the Marx Brothers' antics. Groucho once said that because of their frequent movie appearances, many people believed he and Dumont were married in real life.
An exchange from Duck Soup:
Groucho: I suppose you'll think me a sentimental old fluff, but would you mind giving me a lock of your hair?
Dumont: A lock of my hair? Why, I had no idea you ...
Groucho: I'm letting you off easy. I was gonna ask for the whole wig.
Dumont also endured dialogue about her characters' (and thus her own) stoutish build, as with these lines, also from Duck Soup:
Dumont: I've sponsored your appointment because I feel you are the most able statesman in all Freedonia.
Groucho: Well, that covers a lot of ground. Say, you cover a lot of ground yourself. You'd better beat it; I hear they're going to tear you down and put up an office building where you're standing.
and:
Groucho: Why don't you marry me?
Dumont: Why, marry you?
Groucho: You take me, and I'll take a vacation. I'll need a vacation if we're going to get married. Married! I can see you right now in the kitchen, bending over a hot stove. But I can't see the stove.
Or her age (in their last film pairing, The Big Store):
Dumont: You make me think of my youth.
Groucho: Really? He must be a big boy by now.
Dumont's character would often give a short, startled or confused reaction to these insults, but appeared to forget them quickly.
Decades later, in his one-man show at New York's Carnegie Hall, Groucho mentioned Dumont's name and got a burst of applause. He falsely informed the audience that she rarely understood the humor of their scenes and would ask him, "Why are they laughing, Julie?" ("Julie" being her nickname for Julius, Groucho's birth name). Dumont was so important to the success of the Marx Brothers films, she was one of the few people Groucho mentioned in his short acceptance speech for an honorary Oscar in 1974. (The others were Harpo and Chico, their mother Minnie, and Groucho's companion Erin Fleming. Zeppo and Gummo Marx, who were both alive at the time, were not mentioned, though Jack Lemmon, who introduced Groucho, mentioned all four brothers who appeared with Dumont on film.)
In most of her interviews and press profiles, Dumont preserved the myth of her on-screen character: the wealthy, regal woman who never quite understood the jokes. However, in a 1942 interview with the World Wide Features press syndicate, Dumont said, "Scriptwriters build up to a laugh, but they don't allow any pause for it. That's where I come in. I ad libâit doesn't matter what I sayâjust to kill a few seconds so you can enjoy the gag. I have to sense when the big laughs will come and fill in, or the audience will drown out the next gag with its own laughter... I'm not a stooge, I'm a straight lady. There's an art to playing straight. You must build up your man, but never top him, never steal the laughs from him."
For decades, film critics and historians have theorized that because Dumont never broke character or smiled at Groucho's jokes, she did not "get" the Marxes' humor. On the contrary, Dumont, a seasoned stage professional, maintained her "straight" appearance to enhance the Marxes' comedy. In 1965, shortly before Dumont's death, The Hollywood Palace featured a recreation of "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" (from the Marxes' 1930 film Animal Crackers) in which Dumont can be seen laughing at Groucho's ad-libs â proving that she got the jokes.
Writing about Dumont's importance as a comic foil in 1998, film critic Andrew Sarris wrote "Groucho's confrontations with Miss Dumont seem much more the heart of the Marxian matter today than the rather loose rapport among the three brothers themselves."
Dumont's acting style, especially in her early films, reflected the classic theatrical tradition of projecting to the back row (for example, trilling the "r" for emphasis). She had a classical operatic singing voice that screenwriters eagerly used to their advantage.
Dumont appeared in 57 films, including some minor silent work beginning with A Tale of Two Cities (1917). Her first feature was the Marx Brothers' The Cocoanuts (1929), in which she played Mrs. Potter, the role she played in the stage version from which the film was adapted. She also made some television appearances, including a guest-starring role with Estelle Winwood on The Donna Reed Show in the episode "Miss Lovelace Comes to Tea" (1959).
Dumont, usually playing her dignified dowager character, appeared with other film comedians and actors, including Wheeler and Woolsey and George "Spanky" McFarland (Kentucky Kernels, 1934); Joe Penner (Here, Prince 1932, and The Life of the Party 1937); Lupe VĂ©lez (High Flyers, 1937); W.C. Fields (Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, 1941, and Tales of Manhattan 1942); Laurel and Hardy (The Dancing Masters, 1943); Red Skelton (Bathing Beauty, 1944); Danny Kaye (Up in Arms, 1944); Jack Benny (The Horn Blows at Midnight, 1945); George "Gabby" Hayes (Sunset in El Dorado, 1945); Abbott and Costello (Little Giant, 1946); and Tom Poston (Zotz!, 1962).
Turner Classic Moviesâ website says of High Flyers: "The surprise... is seeing [Dumont] play a somewhat daffy matron, more Billie Burke than typical Margaret Dumont. As the lady who's into crystal gazing and dotes on her kleptomaniac bull terrier, she brings a discreetly screwball touch to the proceedings."
She also appeared on television with Martin and Lewis in The Colgate Comedy Hour (December 1951).
Dumont played dramatic parts in films including Youth on Parole (1937); Dramatic School (1938); Stop, You're Killing Me (1952); Three for Bedroom C (1952); and Shake, Rattle & Rock! (1956)
Her last film role was that of Shirley MacLaine's mother, Mrs. Foster, in What a Way to Go! (1964).
On February 26, 1965, eight days before her death, Dumont made her final acting appearance on the television program The Hollywood Palace, where she was reunited with Groucho, the week's guest host. They performed material from Captain Spaulding's introductory scene in Animal Crackers, including the song "Hooray for Captain Spaulding". The taped show was broadcast on April 17, 1965.
Dumont married millionaire American Sugar Refining Company heir and industrialist John Moller Jr. in 1910 and retired from stage work. The marriage was childless.
Moeller died during the 1918 influenza pandemic, after which Dumont reluctantly returned to the Broadway stage. She never remarried, and died from a heart attack on March 6, 1965. She was cremated and her ashes were interred in the vault at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles. She was 82, although many obituaries erroneously gave her age as 75.
#margaret dumont#the marx brothers#classic hollywood#classic movie stars#golden age of hollywood#classic comedy#1920s hollywood#1930s hollywood#1950s hollywood#1960s hollywood
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You Oughta âGet Carterâ
Another old Night Flight piece, tied to a Turner Classic Movies airing, about a movie I never tire of watching. (Unfortunately, the Krays film âLegendâ turned out to be not so good.) ********** The English gangster movie has proven an enduring genre to this day. The 1971 picture that jumpstarted the long-lived cycle, Get Carter, Mike Hodgesâ bracing, brutal tale of a mobsterâs revenge, screens late Thursday on TCM as part of a day-long tribute to Michael Caine, who stars as the filmâs titular anti-hero.
We wonât have to wait long for the next high-profile Brit-mob saga: October will see the premiere of Brian Helgelandâs Legend, a new feature starring Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road, The Dark Knight Rises, Locke) in a tour de force dual role as Ronnie and Reggie Kray, the legendarily murderous identical twin gangleaders who terrorized London in the â60s. The violent exploits of the Krays mesmerized Fleet Streetâs journalists and the British populace until the brothers and most of the top members of their âfirmâ were arrested in 1968.
The siblings both died in prison after receiving life sentences. Theyâve been the subjects of several English TV documentaries and a 1990 feature starring Martin and Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet. However, the Krays and their seamy milieu may have had their greatest impact in fictional form, via the durable figure of Jack Carter, the creation of a shy, alcoholic graphic artist, animator, and fiction writer named Ted Lewis, the man now recognized by many as âthe father of British noir.â
Born in 1940 in a Manchester suburb, Lewis was raised in the small town of Barton-upon-Humber in the dank English midlands. A sickly child, he became engrossed with art, the movies, and writing. The product of an English art school in nearby Hull, he wrote his first, unsuccessful novel, a semi-autobiographical piece of âkitchen sinkâ realism called All the Way Home and All the Night Through, in 1965.
He soon moved sideways into movie animation, serving as clean-up supervisor on George Dunningâs Beatles feature Yellow Submarine (1968). However, now married with a couple of children, he decided to return to writing with an eye to crafting a commercial hit, and in 1970 he published a startling, ultra-hardboiled novel titled Jackâs Return Home.
British fiction had never produced anything quite like the bookâs protagonist Jack Carter. He is the enforcer for a pair of London gangsters, Gerald and Les Fletcher, who bear more than a passing resemblance to the Krays. At the outset of the book, recounted in the first person, Carter travels by train to an unnamed city in the British midlands (modeled after the city of Scunthorpe near Lewisâ hometown) to bury his brother Frank, who has died in an alleged drunk driving accident.
Carter instantly susses that his brother was murdered, and he sets about sorting out a hierarchy of low-end midlands criminals (all of whom he knew in his early days as a budding hoodlum) responsible for the crime, investigating the act with a gun in his hand and a heart filled with hate. Heâs no Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe bound by a moral code â in fact, he once bedded Frankâs wife, and is now sleeping with his boss Geraldâs spouse. Heâs a sociopathic career criminal and professional killer â a âvillain,â in the English term -- who will use any means at his disposal to secure his revenge.
Carterâs pursuit of rough justice for his brother, and for a despoiled niece, attracts the attention of the Fletchers, whose business relationships with the Northern mob are being disrupted by their lieutenantâs campaign of vengeance. As Carter leaves behind a trail of corpses and homes in on the last of his quarry, the hunter has become the hunted, and Jackâs Return Home climaxes with scenes of bloodletting worthy of a Jacobean tragedy, or of Grand Guignol.
Before its publication, Lewisâ grimy, violent book attracted the attention of Michael Klinger, who had produced Roman Polanskiâs stunning â60s features Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac. Klinger acquired film rights to the novel before its publication in 1970, and sent a galley copy to Mike Hodges, then a U.K. TV director with no feature credits.
Hodges, who immediately signed on as director and screenwriter of Klingerâs feature â which was retitled Get Carter -- was not only drawn to the taut, fierce action, but also by the opportunity to peel away the veneer of propriety that still lingered in British society and culture. As he noted in his 2000 commentary for the U.S. DVD release of the film, âYou cannot deny that [in England], like anywhere else, corruption is endemic.â
Casting was key to the potential box office prospects of the feature, and Klinger and Hodgesâ masterstroke was securing Michael Caine to play Jack Carter. By 1970, Caine had become an international star, portraying spy novelist Len Deightonâs agent Harry Palmer in three pictures and garnering raves as the eponymous philanderer in Alfie.
Caine had himself known some hard cases in his London neighborhood; in his own DVD commentary, he says that his dead-eyed, terrifyingly reserved Carter was âan amalgam of people I grew up with â Iâd known them all my life.â Hodges notes of Caineâs Carter, âThereâs a ruthlessness about him, and I would have been foolish not to use it to the advantage of the film.â
Playing what he knew, Caine gave the performance of a lifetime â a study in steely cool, punctuated by sudden outbursts of unfettered fury. The actor summarizes his character on the DVD: âHere was a dastardly man coming as the savior of a ladyâs honor. Itâs the knight saving the damsel in distress, except this knight is not a very noble or gallant one. Itâs the villain as hero.â
The supporting players were cast with equal skill. Ian Hendry, who was originally considered for the role of Carter, ultimately portrayed the hit manâs principal nemesis and target Eric Paice. Caine and Hendryâs first faceoff in the film, an economical conversation at a local racetrack, seethes with unfeigned tension and unease â Caine was wary of Hendry, whose deep alcoholism made the production a difficult one, while Hendry was jealous of the leading manâs greater success.
For Northern mob kingpin Cyril Kinnear, Hodges recruited John Osborne, then best known in Great Britain as the writer of the hugely successfully 1956 play Look Back in Anger, Laurence Olivierâs screen and stage triumph The Entertainer, and Tony Richardsonâs period comedy Tom Jones, for which he won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Osborne, a skilled actor before he found fame as a writer, brings subdued, purring menace to the part.
Though her part was far smaller than those of such other supporting actresses as Geraldine Moffat, Rosemarie Dunham, and Dorothy White, Brit sex bomb Britt Ekland received third billing as Anna, Gerald Fletcherâs wife and Carterâs mistress. Her marquee prominence is somewhat justified by an eye-popping sequence in which she engages in a few minutes of steamy phone sex with Caine.
Some small roles were populated by real British villains. George Sewell, who plays the Fletchersâ minion Con McCarty, was a familiar of the Kraysâ older brother Charlie, and introduced the elder mobster to Carry On comedy series actress Barbara Windsor, who subsequently married another member of the Kray firm. John Bindon, who appears briefly as the younger Fletcher sibling, was a hood and racketeer who later stood trial for murder; a notorious womanizer, he romanced Princess Margaret, whose clandestine relationship with Bindon later became a key plot turn in the 2008 Jason Strathan gangster vehicle The Bank Job.
Verisimilitude was everything for Hodges, who shot nearly all of the film on grimly realistic locations in Newcastle, the down-at-the-heel coal-mining town on Englandâs northeastern coast. The director vibrantly employs interiors of the cityâs seedy pubs, rooming houses, nightclubs and betting parlors. In one inspired bit of local color, he uses an appearance by a local girlâs marching band, the Pelaw Hussars, to drolly enliven a scene in which a nude, shotgun-toting Carter backs down the Fletchersâ gunmen.
The filmâs relentless action was perfectly framed by director of photography Wolfgang Suchitzky, whose experience as a cameraman for documentarian Paul Rotha is put to excellent use. Some sequences are masterfully shot with available light; the movieâs most brutal murder plays out at night by a carâs headlights. The breathtakingly staged final showdown between Carter and Paice is shot under lowering skies against the grey backdrop of a North Sea coal slag dump.
Tough, uncompromising, and utterly unprecedented in English cinema, Get Carter was a hit in the U.K. It fared poorly in the U.S., where its distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer dumped it on the market as the lower half of a double bill with the Frank Sinatra Western spoof Dirty Dingus Magee. In his DVD commentary, Caine notes that it was only after Ted Turner acquired MGMâs catalog and broadcast the film on his cable networks that the movie developed a cult audience in the States.
Get Carter has received two American remakes. The first, George Armitageâs oft-risible 1972 blaxploitation adaptation Hit Man, starred Bernie Casey as Carterâs African-American counterpart Tyrone Tackett. It is notable for a spectacularly undraped appearance by Pam Grier, whose character meets a hilarious demise that is somewhat spoiled by the pictureâs amusing trailer. (Casey and Keenan Ivory Wayans later lampooned the film in the 1988 blaxploitation parody Iâm Gonna Git You Sucka.)
Hodgesâ film was drearily Americanized and relocated to Seattle in Stephen Kayâs like-titled 2000 Sylvester Stallone vehicle. Itâs a sluggish, misbegotten venture, about which the less that is said the better. Michael Caineâs presence in the cast as villain Cliff Brumby (played in the original by Brian Mosley) only serves to remind viewers that they are watching a vastly inferior rendering of a classic.
Ted Lewis wrote seven more novels after Jackâs Return Home, and returned to Jack Carter for two prequels. The first of them, Jack Carterâs Law (1970), an almost equally intense installment in which Carter ferrets out a âgrassâ â an informer â in the Fletchersâ organization, is a deep passage through the London underworld of the â60s, full of warring gangsters and venal, dishonest coppers.
The final episode in the trilogy, Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (1977), was a sad swan song for British noirâs most memorable bad man. In it, Carter travels to the Mediterranean island of Majorca on a Fletchers-funded âholiday,â only to discover that he has actually been dispatched to guard a jittery American mobster hiding out at the gangâs villa. Itâs a flabby, obvious, and needlessly discursive book; Lewisâ exhaustion is apparent in his desperate re-use of a plot point central to the action of the first Carter novel.
Curiously, the locale and setup of Mafia Pigeon appear to be derived from Pulp, the 1975 film that reunited director Hodges and actor Caine. In it, the actor plays a writer of sleazy paperback thrillers who travels to the Mediterranean isle of Malta to pen the memoirs of Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney), a Hollywood actor with gangland connections. Hilarity and mayhem ensue.
All of Lewisâ characters consume enough alcohol to put down an elephant, and Lewis himself succumbed to alcoholism in 1982, at the age of 42. Virtually unemployable, he had moved back home to Barton-upon-Humber, where lived with his parents.
He went out with a bang, however: In 1980, he published his final and finest book, the truly explosive mob thriller GBH (the British abbreviation for âgrievous bodily harmâ). The novel focuses on the last days of vice lord George Fowler, a sadist in the grand Krays manner, whose empire is being toppled by internal treachery. Using a unique time-shifting structure that darts back and forth between âthe smokeâ (London) and âthe seaâ (Fowlerâs oceanside hideout), it reaches a finale of infernal, hallucinatory intensity.
After Lewisâ death, his work fell into obscurity, and his novels were unavailable in America for decades. Happily, Soho Press reissued the Carter trilogy in paperback in 2014 and republished GBH in hardback earlier this year. Now U.S. readers have the opportunity to read the books that influenced an entire school of English noir writers, including such Lewis disciples and venerators as Derek Raymond, David Peace, and Jake Arnott.
Echoes of GBH can be heard in The Long Good Friday, another esteemed English gangster film starring Bob Hoskins as the arrogant and impetuous chief of a collapsing London firm. Released the same year as Lewisâ last novel, the John Mackenzie-directed feature is only one of a succession of outstanding movies â The Limey, The Hit, Layer Cake, Sexy Beast, and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels among them â that owe a debt to Get Carter, the daddy of them all.
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Robert Pattinson new interview in Elle Magazine ( March 2020)
ELLE: You started acting when you were 18 years old, and in 15 years youâve made 34 movies (and won eight awardsâŠ). Why do stay so active? What moves you?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Now I have more fun making movies! The more I learn about how to do things, the more doors it opens to my mind. And the more comfortable you feel, the freer youâll feel as well. I used to think in acting as a test, in which there was the possibility to fail. But when you stop thinking about the resultâŠYou never know if it will be good or bad, so the best thing is to enjoy it! And, as soon as you start behaving like that, everything becomes funnier.
ELLE: And, as you get older, maybe you can choose the roles you want to play and who you want to work with?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Yes. It happens when you get older and [you] do more projects. You can talk to the director. Itâs more of creative collaboration. When youâre younger, you have that school mentality. Someone is telling you what to do and so you just feel like saying no all the time. But then you realize that they are all in the same boat. And that everyone wants to make a good movie!
ELLE: What would you say to the teachers who discouraged you from joining the theater club?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Iâm glad they did. When I think about it now ⊠At the time, I was so angry that I didnât want to have anything to do with the arts at school. And then, I ended up getting an agent, which wouldnât have happened if I had een a part of the schoolâs drama club. Sometimes having a little bit of resentment is pretty good. It gives you more fire [energy].â
ELLE: Do you really think that you managed to attract a more âmaleâ audience, as some professionals in the field suggested after Cosmopolis?
ROBERT PATTINSON: To be honest, I never thought about an audience. But the first time I noticed that men accepted me better must have been with Good Time. And it was a little strange ⊠But, again, itâs the same logic as the drama teacher. I liked it when the male audience said to me âOh, youâre an idiotâ, because it made me want to go to the fight! These things give you energy. Whatâs dangerous is not having enemies. We always need good enemy!
ELLE: Do you read reviews about you on the internet?
ROBERT PATTINSON: When a movie comes out? Yes.
ELLE: What about the bad ones, does it affect you or do you consider yourself strong enough to deal with it?
ROBERT PATTINSON: When I was younger, it affected me. But now ⊠itâs a strangely addictive thing. Reading the bad reviews is more addictive than reading the good ones. You can read a hundred good ones and a bad and, I donât know if thatâs because of that, but now the bad ones donât affect me anymore. Unless they involve someone else. If itâs just about me, I can take it.
ELLE: What if itâs about someone important to you?
ROBERT PATTINSON: It doesnât happen much. And I think I can separate things well. Itâs one of the advantages of not having an Instagram account. Access is cut off. Iâve always had a barrier and thatâs why thereâs no problem. Itâs all just noise.
ELLE: Youâre turning 34 soon and youâre going to be a part of the so-called Millennial. What does it mean to you? Do you recognize yourself as a member of that generation?
ROBERT PATTINSON: I think Iâm another last stronghold of the previous generation. I donât feel like a Millennial at all. Many of the things that people think are important, such as social networks ⊠are not at all important to me. They annoy me. I donât see what it is the reason to have, to publish, to take pictures of myself and put them online ⊠It all seems crazy to me.
ELLE: Youâve made a lot of movies lately. Waiting for the Barbarians, The King (Netflix), The Devil All The Time, The Lighthouse and Tenet (currently being shot). How many scripts do you receive per month? Itâs you who choose each role?
ROBERT PATTINSON: To be honest, I donât receive that many scripts. Except when it comes to a director I really want to work with. When Iâm not working, I read a lot of scripts, but right now⊠I find it very difficult to read a script when youâre working on another project. I cannot understand it completely. But I love to discover filmmakers that my agents donât know about!
ELLE: And the movie youâre filming now, Tenet? Can you talk about it?
ROBERT PATTINSON: I canât say anything about Tenet⊠nor about Batman! Anyways, I donât know anything. Iâm only starting Batman next year. Weâre not even filming yet.
ELLE: After all the artistic films youâve made, was it difficult for you to decide to be in a film like Batman?
ROBERT PATTINSON: No, I wanted to do it. In every new job, Iâve been trying to do the opposite of the previous one, to be able to surprise myself. And I donât know why, but at the end of last year, I was thinking I really wanted to do a big movie. I hadnât think about exactly what it could be, and then Chris Nolan and Tenet came in and Batman came out shortly after. I had been making small movies, I was already relatively comfortable in what I was doing for a while, I didnât even get nervous anymore. Not even with Tenet, which is a great production. I think it was also because of the directors. I can totally trust Chris Nolan and Matt Reeves. They are very unique filmmakers to whom I would immediately say yes if I wanted to make a smaller film.
ELLE: Do you have to physically prepare to step into Batmanâs shoes? Is that the reason why youâve been running a lot lately?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Yes. As soon as I finish this job, I will immediately start intensive training. In fact, it is quite pleasant, because I have been doing so many hours in the Chris Nolan film that the idea of, for a few months, being really healthy, just doing physical exercise and sleeping seems like a real dream! I canât wait! But yes, Iâve never been a big guy. So I have a certain curiosity about what itâs like to be.
ELLE: Youâre the face of Dior Homme since five years ago. How did this colaboration started and what does it means to you?
ROBERT PATTINSON: I think it was before that. I met them in 2012. I wasnât thinking about doing anything like this. But when I met them, I liked the team very much, the three people who talked to me at the beginning. Theyâre really cool. And Dior is Dior!
ELLE: That was your first ad? Is it the only one until now?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Yes. The only one! Basically, I really liked the way they presented the project to me. At the beginning, I wanted to work with Romain Gavras. And, at the first meeting, I asked: âCan we do it with Romain?â And they said âYes, itâs a great idea!â. Itâs great to work with Dior. I never went to the shows in Paris before, and I never even thought about it. But now I look forward to them every year. With Dior, I have all the glamor of acting, but without the hardest part! When youâre making a movie, you work 20 hours a day, youâre exhausted all the time. This collaboration is fast and very funny. Itâs the best job ever!
ELLE: Do you like to discover underground artists? How was it to shoot the new Dior Homme campaign with the french avant-guard duo, The Blaze (Guillaume and Jonathan Alrie)? Have you met them before?
ROBERT PATTINSON: It was great! I met them in Cannes in 2017* (they were DJs at the Good Time party) and I was talking to them about making a movie together because their films are so cool. They know what performance is. And when it came to Dior, I didnât even have anything to do with it. When I heard it, I thought, âOh, this is great, because itâs a big ad, and they are quite unknown. something like that! Their music is great.
ELLE: There is a dance moment in the ad. It seems to be âpossessedâ. Any preparation?
ROBERT PATTINSON: A shot of tequila and nothing else! I was literally in the dark. I couldnât see anyone around me.
ELLE: Do you like dancing, in real life?
ROBERT PATTINSON: I was always very shy to dance, so when I did that, my thought was,âOh, I broke the curse. Now I can dance in front of people!â About two weeks later, I went to a party, everyone was dancing and I threw myself on the dance floor and it was like âYes, itâs okay. You just have to dance!â
ELLE: How do you feel when you see yourself in a Dior outdoor?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Actually, Iâve never seen any! Iâm always walking around airports and thinking,â How is Johnny Deepâs here and not mine?â Itâs always Johnny Depp! [Laughs] â What beauty care do you have? A diet, a routine? âYes, now, at 30, I really think about what I eat. I didnât try very hard, I ate pizza at three in the morning, but⊠if you donât eat well â especially when youâre always working â you canât even survive.
ELLE: Whatâs the best way to turn off and relax?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Probably, running. As soon as you get used to running, I think itâs better than anything else. It clears the mind so much! But what I really like nowadays is finding ways to sleep better. Iâm obsessed with sleep masks, meditation apps, essential oils⊠I LOVE those things!
ELLE: Do you have any sleep disorder?
ROBERT PATTINSON: A bit. I donât take pills to sleep. But I love that moment when you fall asleep! So, I got a good sleep mask that helps me fall asleep anywhere. On set, I sit on a chair, put the sleep mask and fall asleep quickly ⊠in front of everyone.
ELLE: Are you narcoleptic?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Maybe! [Laughs]
ELLE: And talking about music, whatâs on your playlist?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Iâll see ⊠(opens Spotify on his phone) ⊠what have I been listening to ⊠Oh [Message on the screen] ⊠I didnât pay my last bill ⊠[Laughs] ⊠changing my credit card ⊠Iâve been hear a lot of Aretha Franklin and that sort of classic stuff. When I can!
ELLE: How would you define your style?
ROBERT PATTINSON: It depends. You know what? There is this thing about sneakers. I use these Adidas from a collaboration with Palace, which were made in 2015. They are no longer produced. And I use different pairs⊠I have about 20 pairs of these sneakers in all colors and I use them every day! And when some go bad, itâs scary, because there are only a few left. I already called the company to see if they had any extra stock they didnât sell.
ELLE: Are you a kind maniac?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Yes, with these shoes. I wear the same pair of shoes for five weeks in a row, and I have an alert on eBay. Whenever my size appears, I buy it immediately!
ELLE: Today youâre fully dressed in black, but weâve already seen you wearing extravagant clothes on the red carpet such as capes.
ROBERT PATTINSON: I didnât think much about what Iâm wearing today, but I like to wear crazy things, and I think that if I didnât work with Dior, I would be a little more shy about using more extravagant pieces. With the collection created by Kim Jones, now it makes even more sense (Note: Pattinson was also the first Dior Homme ready-to-wear ambassador).
ELLE: Would you wear a colour such as pink?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Yes, I like the contrast, although a few year ago, when I shaved my hair, wore a lot more pink. When you have you hair dyed blond, long, seems like youâre in Miami Vice. But yes, if I had my hair shaved, Iâd definitely wear skirts and stuff like that.
ELLE: What would you never wear?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Hum⊠I donât like serious and perfect things. But Iâll probably wear then at some point of my career.
ELLE: You confessed ELLE that you obsessed with Kate Moss and Jane Fonda when you were young. Have you met them?
ROBERT PATTINSON: I met Kate Moss and was with her a couple of times, doing things for Dior. And I havenât met Jane Fonda yet, but Iâm still a huge fan of her.
ELLE: She is an activist like you, Robert. You are collaborating directly with GO Campaign. What does this NGO do?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Go Campaign improves the lives of orphans and vulnerable children worldwide by creating local partnerships and solutions. All the children have the right to have opportunities, education, medical care, food, water⊠Two of my friends worked for them and told me to go to an event, five years ago or so. They made an auction and built a school in Cambodja. It is a completely transparent and very efficient non-profit organization. Over the past five years, it has become much bigger than it was when I started working with them.
ELLE: And now thereâs a Robert Pattinson School?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Yes! And the school has been growing every year. Iâm really proud of it.
ELLE: What keeps you alive and motivated in general?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Actually, I only do things to have fun. Your body tells you how to live your life if you listen to it carefully. There were bad times. I watched Amy Winehouseâ documentary a few years ago. And Tony Bennett said something that touched me, âLife shows how to live, if you live enoughâ, or something like that, I canât remember the exact quote. As you get older, the more your body tells what to eat, what to do, tells you everything. If you listen to it and pay attention! And if youâre not having fun doing a certain thing, stop. As soon as you start living like that, you start to feel always well.
ELLE: Where do you see yourself in ten years?
ROBERT PATTINSON: I would love to have a production company. Thereâs a part of me that would like to record an album- but I donât know if it will ever happen. I like to make long-term plans. That is the key of happiness. Thatâs it and having plans for the future â everything you build is towards a goal. And you have to have those plans!â
ELLE: What was the strangest thing that happened to you?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Become an actor! The strangest thing in my entire life! I really donât know how it happened.
ELLE: What do you like the most about your friends?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Positive attitude. I donât like people who like to complain. Itâs really boring.
ELLE: Your biggest flaw?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Pfff, none [Laugh]. Actually, how do you say it? Procrastinate. I postpone everything, really everything, until the last minute.
ELLE: Your idea of happiness?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Being in very creative places. Iâm very happy in the initial stage of the work of a creative project before the problems start. When everyone is very excited.
ELLE: Your idea of unhappiness?
ROBERT PATTINSON: When people that I love are worried about something and I canât help them. And repetitive things. Like being stuck in a circle with the same things always happening. Thatâs unhappiness to me. Like in that Bill Murrayâs movie, Groundhog Day.
ELLE: If you werenât Robert Pattinson, who would you like to be?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Probably a dog. I think Iâll be one in my next like, almost certainly.
ELLE: The heroes of youâre life?
ROBERT PATTINSON: As I get older, the more my parents are. But when I was younger, were a lot of rappers. They were the first people I saw who didnât care about what people would think about them. It looked like they were showing the middle finger to everyone.
ELLE: Favourite cult movie?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Probably Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
ELLE: Favourite series?
ROBERT PATTINSON: The Wire. It is a tv series about a policeman and criminals in Baltimore.
ELLE: A director that you admire?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Claire Denis. I admire her a lot.
ELLE: Favourite book?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Iâve been reading a lot of Batman comics lately. Iâve also read a very good book by Christopher Hitchens called Mortality.
ELLE: Favourite dish?
ROBERT PATTINSON: Any type of pasta. Iâm really boring when it comes to food. Maybe Spaghetti bolognese. More pasta than burgers.
ELLE: Ideal holidays?
ROBERT PATTINSON: An extreme or the other. Doing something with lots of activities, like climbing or going to the beach and do absolutely nothing, with no one around me.
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The roles of my life: Evelyne Brochu's beautiful dating
August 17, 2020
Since the pandemic, actors have never been so busy rummaging through their memory boxes. In this summer series, La Presse asks seasoned performers to comment on landmark roles in their careers. Today, actress Evelyne Brochu shares with us some of her best performances in theatre, film and television.
Her first significant role
Lechy in L'échange, by Paul Claudel, which I played when I left the Conservatoire, at the Auditions du Quat'Sous, under the direction of Patricia Nolin. It's funny to name Lechy because it's not a professional production. But I felt a click, a magic, a flame when I did it. It was a key to getting into the business. What's more, several people in the business saw me play, including producer André Monette who called me later to audition for La promesse. I spent five years playing in this TV series on TVA, at the very beginning of my career. It's great training to shoot about 15 scenes a day with experienced performers like Louise Turcot, Germain Houde, Sébastien Delorme... I absorbed all the craftsmanship of the profession. I learned the grammar of television. When I won a Gemini award for my role in La promesse, I thanked André Monette. André loves going to the theatre. He has given several little-known young actors, whom he used to see in the theatre, the chance to make television.
The role that the audience most often talks to her about
Delphine in @orphanblackâ. It's a science fiction series, with very strong female characters. My character is a doctor and in love with one of the clones [played by Tatiana Maslany]. She wants to cure her sick girlfriend. Since it's co-produced with several countries and the BBC, the series has been seen in about 170 countries. [...] There are people who live in countries where homosexuality is criminal. The couple formed by these two heroines gave them the courage to assume their identity. Many young girls became attached to my character and have been following my career ever since.
A role that made her grow artistically and humanly
Rose in Café de Flore, by Jean-Marc Vallée. I was so happy during this shooting, I wished it would never end. The dance scene to Elisapie Isaac's music, Jean-Marc slipped it into the film three days before shooting it. I had to learn the choreography in a hurry to show it to the 75 extras. His cinema is full of poetry and incursions into what is sacred in life, moments charged with emotion and sensuality. We always want to say yes to Jean-Marc Vallée. It's not a job, to work with this director. It's a deeply human experience. And this film has allowed me to have my manager in Los Angeles and my agent in Paris to open my career internationally.
A role in the theater she dreams of playing one day
Medea, Hedda Gabler and also play Lechy in a real production. Three roles of wounded, betrayed, angry women. There's a lot of talk about sexual misconduct these days. Victims who say they froze in front of their attackers. They felt bad, but they froze. Why do these women feel powerless in these situations? Because, unlike men, we've been raised never to antagonize people, always to be nice, desirable. A bartender is washing glasses behind the counter and is told by her boss and customers: "Well, smile, gorgeous!" So playing a powerful role like Medea, a larger-than-life character who's been expressing women's rage for centuries, is very liberating.
The strangest role she's played in her 15-year career
From a woman who thinks she has a honeycomb in her breast in the short film The Nest. In 2014, I received a call from David Cronenberg, who offered me the opportunity to star in this short film he made at home in his garage in Toronto, to be included in an exhibition about him. With an extremely small team: a make-up artist and her family. Cronenberg plays the surgeon who has to operate on my character. He filmed himself with a GoPro camera attached to his head. His son took the sound. It's a strange offer and I hesitated before accepting. There is frontal nudity and the film will remain on the web. But I thought, what would Tilda Swinton or Kate Winslet do? I can't refuse a film experience with a master of the seventh art. It only happens once in a lifetime.
The next role on her agenda
Paris Police 1900, a series for Canal+, due out in January 2021. I will also shoot season 2 in France next spring with my family [Evelyne Brochu has a 2-year-old son and is expecting twins next November]. It's a very well-produced and written historical series, with very good actors, mostly known in the theatre, including members of the Comédie-Française. I play Marguerite Steinheil, President Félix Faure's mistress, in 1899. He is famous because he died in office, at the presidential palace, almost in the arms of his mistress.
#evelyne brochu#ebro#Orphan Black#delphine cormier#cosima niehaus#cosima x delphine#tatiana maslany#Paris Police 1900#Cafe de Flore#the next
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