#nobody was doing it like Fran and Max

[the-firebird69]

Mission: Impossible (1996) - Close Call Scene (5/9) | Movieclips

Yeah there's a lot of stuff going on but this works and we're gonna get it together and really he's saying there's a few aspects of this scenario one is it's his design and it came from somewhere other than Max and we don't know where that is it could be JC and he's the one who sings this song it's kind of a derivative of of Freddie Mercury song believe it or not and Mercury is a liquid metal robot so we wanna see if that's the case or who it is and we know about it too and the max wanna see it too and we don't think the max have this car

tom cruise holy **** I have to see what the document is that delay person or what we're gonna say in two minutes figure out next Saturday yeah that's over that's good what do you do about Valentine taking off the air he's bleeding now he erupted he's like 1000 of height because he don't like stuff so I get a little angry and saved hey don't do that that was not what so you look like people watching you and possible everything else we're getting my life it's kind of for later but scratch that wouldn't you see this stupid **** so I guess they picked up what he was saying he's trying to get rid of this growth of his back it's really a capillary that grew out and he needs to have it cauterized or it will go away when he grows but yeah I have to go in there and do stuff but really this car is an interest to people and for some reason nobody can get it out of there even BJA and they can't pull it out and they can't get the design and that's this is where it is and it's the one that Dylan will took and it's a scan and they said some of his different because he's inventing stuff but they know about his ideas now we have to see this car and we want to try and replicate it there'll be a secret project but we'll probably have to do it like we're talking about and make a whole bunch of them and that's what the Max want and he says we can forego seeing the obvious and it's true

tom cruise

After about a month we should offer the rear engine model for the new Corvette people will actually start doing it and people see what we're seeing. yes them neck proper

Thor Freya

Olympus

good

Hera 

we roll now

Nuada Ariannna

and on this

Fran castle Hardcastle

now too

Duke Nukem Blockbuster

[weraceasone]

Hey :) I'm sorry, I'm quite new to the whole F1 fandom.

But did Max Verstappen did abused as a child? Or what is your post about? I didn't really find anything online..

Have a good evening!

hey there! welcome to the f1 community, I hope everyone treats you well 😊. feel free to ask me a question if you’re wondering about something! 🧡

to answer your question, I will first give a ‼️ HUGE TRIGGER WARNING: abuse ‼️, so if anyone that is reading this right now doesn’t feel comfortable reading about that, please don’t feel pressured to continue reading. I will also tag this with a trigger warning, so people who have the tag blocked won’t see this.

I will try to link as many articles as possible, but a lot of them are in Dutch which I do speak, but I know that not everyone does of course, so I will try to translate them as good as possible.

so let’s start with the most important one: Jos has gone to jail for assault. he first had to appear in court because his ex-wife, Sophie Kumpen (which is Max’ mother), accused him of harassment and assault. according to her, Jos had threathened her by text, assaulted her and slashed her tyres three times. Jos brushed this off by saying that he acknowledged there were some “relationship problems”, but that he thought the legal proceedings were excessive. he never went to jail for this, so maybe you would think “oh, maybe it wasn’t true” but then it happened again. in 2012, his then girlfriend accused him of abuse and even attempted homicide. on the 4th of January 2012, Jos deliberately hit her with his car and this is how he ended up serving 8 months in jail.

Jos’ own dad accused him of beating him up. apparently between the Hungarian and German Grand Prix back in 2016, there had been an incident where Jos started beating his own dad. his dad, Frans Verstappen, said (and I quote): “We've seen before that Jos has loose hands, but this was the limit. Jos is very bad tempered.”

apparantly Jos also got into a fight back in 2017 and beat someone up. he was taken into custody and actually had to go to court again.

so, not the best start, but what did he actually do to Max? well, a lot and Max keeps telling these things like they’re some sort of funny story.

for example; back when Max was 15, he lost a race which apparently “he should have been able to win easily”. Max made a mistake, as you do when you’re young and inexperienced, but Jos response to this was a bit off. basically Jos stopped at a gas station in the middle of Italy, kicked Max out of the van and left him alone. and mind you, 15-year-old Max did not speak one word Italian or English. Max had to call his mother to pick him up and Jos did not talk to Max for weeks. Max has said in an interview before, “I’ve never had any problems in F1, cause nobody has ever been as hard on me as my dad.”

in a Carnext podcast Jos and Max did together a few weeks ago with David Coulthard, they talked about how Jos would hit Max on his helmet after a bad performance and how others in the paddock would be concerned, but according to them it was “tough love”. they also said that Jos used to make Max drive around in the cold for so long he couldn’t feel his fingers, just to get the data. Jos also made Max drive karts in the rain on slicks deliberately so he could find the grip. (via @struggleism)

only a few weeks ago at the Turkish GP, Max explained that he won’t use padding because his dad will laugh at him if he does. I quote: “I remember my very first F3 test I did, after one day I couldn't hold my neck straight and then I had to put the padding in. My dad was laughing at me because I was using that, and since that day, I refuse to put padding next to my head. I'd prefer that my head falls off then I'm running with padding! So it will be the same also this weekend.”

there’s also been plenty of rumours in Dutch media that Jos would physically abuse Max, but there’s no proof for that so I won’t go into that any further.

I bet there’s more, but that’s all I know. I think it’s safe to say that he’s basically just a piece of shit. I hope this cleared everything up!

[hobbitsetal]

8

Clancy stopped short just inside the front door, jacket halfway off. “Why in death’s name are you here?”

I gave him a baffled look. “It’s chowder night, moron. Why do you think I’m here?”

“Where’s my wife?”

“Not making the chowder!” I raised my voice so Fran could hear me. She poked her head out of the living room and gave me a dirty look. I grinned at her. 

Clancy hung his jacket up and came into the kitchen, eyeing me dubiously. “Are you putting corn in the chowder?”

“Of course I am. It’s a chowder.” 

He frowned at me. “Fran doesn’t put corn in the chowder, so it’s not an unreasonable question, buddy.”

“That’s exactly why I’m here, because we’ve already learned we can’t trust Fran to make chowder.”

“I heard that!” Fran yelled.

“Good!” I yelled back. 

Clancy chuckled and went to the sink to wash his hands. That was a nice sign. Usually when he wasn’t expecting to see me in his house, he got hostile, which was frankly unreasonable of him. If he couldn’t remember by now that every second Tuesday was chowder night and that sometimes I came for Friday Free-For-All, that wasn’t my problem.

“So,” he said over his shoulder, “you making cornbread?”

“Wasn’t planning on it…” Mother Urs and all her bears, he probably had no idea how long cornbread took to bake. How much work did he think I was putting in for him and his rotten kids?

On cue, I heard small bare feet pattering across the floor. Little Max was up from his afternoon nap, which meant Zoe was allowed out of her room, which meant…

“Jay!”

I dropped the ladle on Fran’s ceramic spoon-rest and ducked behind the kitchen island.

They came skidding in. I could hear Little Max breathing heavily, as if he’d raced all the way down the hall. If he’d been trying to keep up with Zoe, he probably was out of breath.

“Daddy, where’s Jay?”

“How about you hug me first, you scrunch?”

She squeaked and giggled. Probably got swept off her feet in a big hug. Little Max yelled and started laughing too, the big belly laughs that only Clancy seemed able to get from him. Whatever was going on, Clancy had them distracted, so I popped up from behind the island and yelled, “Boo!”

Zoe and Little Max screamed. Clancy, who had both of them in his arms, flinched and glared at me.

“Hey bug,” I said, “come here.”

Zoe wrapped her arms around Clancy’s neck and said, “No, I want daddy!”

From the smirk on the little tyke’s face, she intended that to wound me. I uttered an exaggerated gasp. “Bug, I thought you loved me?”

“No, I love daddy!”

“Me love daddy,” Max agreed.

“Forget it, then,” I said. “You freaking suck.”

Fran came into the kitchen and said, “Don’t talk to my babies like that.”

To Zoe, I crooned, “You suck. You suck like a kitchen sink.”

“Kitchen sinks don’t suck, they drain,” Clancy said. “Is your chowder burning?”

I grabbed the spoon and stirred the pot. It wasn’t even close to burning. I glared at Clancy, who smiled cherubically and said, “About that cornbread.”

“Forget it,” I said. “You freaking suck.”

“Language, AJ!” Fran scolded.

I opened my mouth.

She said, “If you tell me I suck, I won’t tell you when I make cheesecake.”

I thought about it. Nobody told me what to do, not since I was a kid at the Academy. I’d picked fights before and gotten my tail kicked because Clancy told me not to.

But cheesecake…

I closed my mouth.

She smirked at me and turned to her husband. “No cornbread, we’ve already got way too much corn in the chowder. I’ll make muffins.”

“Cornbread would tie the meal together,” I pointed out.

She gave me a distasteful look and said, “Some of us aren’t obsessed with corn, AJ.”

“You suck too,” I muttered.

[aion-rsa]

Godzilla vs. Kong Director Almost Made a Sequel to Peter Jackson’s King Kong

https://ift.tt/3fEpCBc

Director Peter Jackson’s 2005 version of King Kong is something of an anomaly: although the film was a box office hit—grossing $562 million worldwide against an admittedly hefty budget of $207 million—and garnered a generally positive critical response, it doesn’t seem to have made a lasting impression on the pop culture landscape in the same way that Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy did. In fact, in some quarters it’s considered an underperformer.

That, however, apparently didn’t stop Jackson from developing the idea for a sequel to his Kong movie, reportedly titled Skull Island. And while Jackson himself was not interested in directing the film, he did have someone in mind: Adam Wingard, the filmmaker who just helmed the recent indie horror hit You’re Next—and yes, the same Adam Wingard who has directed the newly released Godzilla vs. Kong.

Wingard revealed this information recently, and Den of Geek asked him for the story when we spoke recently during the promotional rounds for Godzilla vs. Kong. “You’re Next was about to come to the theaters and I had just wrapped photography on The Guest,” he says. “Mary Parent [who oversaw Jackson’s Kong at Universal and is a producer on all the current MonsterVerse films] comes to me with an art book from Skull Island as sort of a gift saying, ‘Peter Jackson just saw You’re Next. He’s interested in you and [Wingard’s writing partner] Simon Barrett developing a sequel to his film called Skull Island.’”

Wingard says that the proposed film “didn’t get quite far enough down the line where we got into the nitty-gritty details,” but recalls that Jackson was thinking of it as a sequel to King Kong set during World War 1—which would technically make it a prequel, since Jackson’s Kong was set during the Great Depression.

“I don’t think there was anything beyond that,” Wingard says now. “The feeling I got was that the studio wasn’t really that interested in doing a World War I film. But funnily enough, Simon and I have a World War I script that we’ve been working on. It’s one of our main passion projects over the years that we plan on doing at some point. So naturally we were like, ‘Well, we don’t want to do a King Kong World War I movie, because we have an actual World War I film. We would rather do it modern day.’”

Although Wingard says that he and Barrett had to pitch their idea to Universal execs, he can only summon up a few details about it now, eight years later.

“I remember Mary talking about my pitch for Skull Island, and she seemed to remember thinking it was great,” he explains. “I don’t remember it hardly at all. I remember a couple of details. It was modern day. There was some sort of opening scene where characters were in a museum and they’re talking. Then at the end of the scene, it’s revealed that the museum has these giant King Kong bones. He’s like this relic from the past and Skull Island is this sort of myth and nobody knows what happened to it. And somehow these characters are going back there.”

Wingard continues, “I remember there was this whole element of the island being cloaked somehow by some sort of technology. Those are the main things that I can remember. I don’t remember what the plot was going to be about. Simon might remember better. Somebody should ask him at some point, because I’d be curious myself.”

Read more

Movies

Godzilla vs. Kong Director Says There’s Enough Footage for ‘Five-Hour’ Cut

By Don Kaye

Movies

Godzilla vs. Kong: Where The MonsterVerse Should Go Next

By David Crow

Although the project was eventually canceled at Universal, Wingard says it was still memorable because he and Barrett got the chance to communicate and talk shop with Peter Jackson and briefly (at that time) find themselves in the rarefied and often strange world of Hollywood tentpole filmmaking.

Wingard recalls, “The whole thing actually got real when Peter Jackson and Fran [Walsh, Jackson’s wife and producing partner] actually wrote Simon and I an email apologizing to us saying, ‘Hey, we’re really bummed out that this isn’t going to happen. It’s out of our hands. We’re off the film. It’s a real bummer, because we were really looking forward to making this our next movie and we wanted it to be with you guys. Best of luck.’ It was only then that it really felt real, when it was over.”

But Wingard adds that his conversations with Jackson did yield some valuable insights which he carried into the making of Godzilla vs. Kong. “I remember talking to Peter Jackson and kind of mentioning, ‘Look, I don’t have any experience with VFX.’ The advice that he gave me was, ‘Don’t worry about it. Your job is just to dream these things up. These VFX animators are so talented. Anything that you can imagine, they can do.’

“That’s a good mentality to have when you’re working on a film with a huge budget and with great animators,” he continues. “It really is something that I took with me to [Godzilla vs. Kong] where I just said, ‘You know what? I might not understand the mechanics of every little bit how VFX is put together. That’s not my job. My job as a director is to dream big, think big and push everybody into just doing these insane, crazy ideas.’”

Although Jackson’s Skull Island is now nothing more than a lost project among many in filmmaking history, Kong himself eventually found his way from Universal to Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Entertainment, where he starred in the unrelated Kong: Skull Island in 2017. The film was explicitly linked to 2014’s Godzilla reboot in what has now come to be known as the Monsterverse, which eventually opened the door for Wingard to direct Godzilla vs. Kong.

“I got to make the movie I wanted to make ultimately,” he concludes about the long journey to this point. “And that’s more than some people are able to say.”

Godzilla vs. Kong is out now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.

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The post Godzilla vs. Kong Director Almost Made a Sequel to Peter Jackson’s King Kong appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3sRIRL2

[lilietsblog]

and then theres Turnabout Big Top and I’m very angry at Miles Edgeworth

in which Franziska von Karma

- unlike Miles in Turnabout Samurai (SLAM DUNK) actually investigates everything attentively and talks to all the witnesses

- really doesnt want to put the clown on the stand

- like... really really doesnt want it

- can you blame her given his first testimony is just complaining how nobody likes his jokes

- promises she’ll have someone listen to him after the trial AND FOLLOWS THROUGH ON THAT

- puts up admirably with the fucking ventriloquist puppet

- actually convinces the judge to drop the ‘so who IS the witness’ question

- puppet marriage

- has no clue nor explanation for the missing footprints but Max is the only one theres ANY evidence against

- I suspect she was not the one who decided when the trial would be held

- does not even try to connect the ‘flying man’ claim with Max Galactica because its bullshit and she knows its bullshit

- it might have worked on the judge he is that stupid

- even Phoenix thinks its plausible

- Franziska doesnt

- shadows Wright’s investigation of Acro while also pursuing her case against the defendant at the same time

- orders the surprise search on Gumshoe’s suggestion but does not connect the dots on the wheelchair thing

- comes to court the next day once again knowing who did it but with no clue about the murder weapon

- when the judge asks her about the bust actually breaks down in tears

- the police are searching for it right now

- even Phoenix notices shes stalling for time YET DOES NOT CONNECT THE DOTS SOMEHOW

- Phoenix why would she want to stall for time in a trial that’s already going her way because Acro is a concrete wall

- sets up the most bullshit objections that Phoenix doesnt even need a pause to counter

- my favorite one is screaming MORON at the top of her lungs with no explanation whatsoever

- did Phoenix not realize he had no case without any non-circumstantial evidence

- the judge was the one who had the problem with his claims not Franziska

- if she had gone for this argument and changing the defendant mid-trial herself shed be up against the same problem

- she stalls desperately

- who cares about why exactly Acro blamed Bat’s death on Regina, ‘she’s the animal tamer’ is enough of a connection for most people

- does not notice the pepper on the scarf and connect any dots because see above

- the scarf was literally irrelevant otherwise

- when Wright works up to the pepper explanation Fran actually ends up continuing his thought and explaining his reasoning to the judge herself

- prosecution and defense dont normally finish each other’s lines

- except when Franziska von Karma is doing her best to nail her own witness

- after Maya’s HOLD IT demands that Wright tell the court where the weapon is

- not asserts he doesn’t know where it is but demands he tell them because THAT IS HER GOAL HERE AND THE LAST HOPE IS WRIGHT

- breaks the fuck down when the witness suggests she knew about the wheelchair and did this on purpose

- she didn’t

- she realized nothing

- she made herself look like a complete idiot for the entire trial because she did not realize this

- I am so angry with Miles Edgeworth

- did he figure out the wheelchair thing and if so why did he not tell Franziska

- there is precedent for changing defendants mid-trial

- Farewell My Turnabout had better have some really fucking good explanations there

[kyloren]

«you have witchcraft in your lips» —famous!Bughead

When Jughead Jones and Betty Cooper were cast as leads for HBO’s Harry Potter prequel show Magic is Might, they thought they did not know each other. They were wrong.

note: this is a collaborative work between myself and @lilibug--xx. I wrote Jughead’s POV and she Betty’s. Be warned, we are each other’s betas, too. 

read it on ao3. 

“A dress made of air and webs and you,

The wet dreams evaporate as they come true.

To anyone else just endless blue,

An invisible kite string connects me to you.”

— Pieces of Sky by Beth Orton.

CHAPTER ONE: mr jones and me, we’re gonna be big stars…

@Variety: HBO picks up four pilot episodes, including Toni Topaz’s Harry Potter prequel project.

@Deadline: Up-and-coming musical director Kevin Keller branches off from theatre and confirms working on Harry Potter prequel series with HBO — Magic is Might.

@EntertainmentNews: BREAKING NEWS: Disney darling Veronica Lodge officially casted as one of the leads in Kevin Keller’s upcoming Marauders Era project — Magic is Might.

@Buzzfeed: You will not believe who was just confirmed to be cast in Magic is Might! 

@CherryBombshell: To all my loyal, beautiful followers: Of course, I got the part. How could they not cast moi?

@NZHerald: Singer-songwriter Archie Andrews is rumoured to be involved with HBO’s Magic is Might.

@Deadline: Magic is Might Harry Potter prequel series finds its Sirius Black: “He walked in right off the street and I knew — that is our Sirius Black,” says showrunner, Kevin Keller.

@EntertainmentNews: HBO’s Magic is Might just cast its Remus Lupin, and it’s a very interesting choice.

@Buzzfeed: Magic is Might’s Remus Lupin is now — Remmy Lupin?!

.

.

.

.

THE WAYWARD PRINCE:

The thing about Jughead Jones — he was weird, and he liked to be weird.

Jughead Jones was the following things: adroit wordsmith, razor-sharp, and a smart-mouthed asshole. He was not, however, the sort a teenage girl’s dreams were made of. He was a little too tall and a little too angular with a face that was a little too fond of scowling to be conventionally attractive. He had two girlfriends in the span of his entire life, and first one he’d acquired when he was nine for the span of two days. He was akin to a scalpel — sharp-edged, clinical, and very good at cutting people out of his life.

Except, Sabrina.

Never Sabrina.

And because of Sabrina — he was here, regretting everything.

“This,” Jughead grumbled for the nth time, “is all your fault.”

“Yes,” Sabrina agreed, throwing a dusky-blue button-down at him with a glare that clearly conveyed wear this or else, “it is my fault that you’ve landed the biggest television role of this year. I apologise for being magnificent.”

Jughead snorted. “Potter is the lead.”

“Who cares? Sirius is obviously meant to be the hot one. That makes his role the bigger fish. And you,” Sabrina said, tilting his head sideways and inspecting the carelessly casual style she arranged his hair in (read: brushed once and let it air-dry), “cousin-german, will soon be smiling from a poster on every pubescent girl’s wall and be the main feature in their dreams.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” Jughead’s scowl grew deeper, a feat he had not imagined was achievable before he’d done it. “I’d rather not.” 

Two hours later, two thirds of which were spent navigating L.A.’s atrocious traffic, Jughead found himself lounging in a deceptively comfortable egg chair in a Hollywood studio, waiting to proceed with the first script reading session with the rest of Magic is Might cast. Sabrina, primly perched to his right, was scanning the others over the brim of her rapidly cooling coffee cup with shrewd, pale-grey eyes, as Jughead lazily thumbed through the script.

“Stop eyeing them like you want to wear their faces as a mask, Ree,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

“I am so not. I’m eyeing them like I want to make a fashionable skin suit, obviously. Get your facts straight, Jones.”

Here was the thing; — Jughead firmly believed that if you did something, you better put your best foot forward from the start; to do your very best at everything you undertook and not half-ass it simply because it required effort. (Life required effort, Jughead often reminded himself, if it didn’t it wouldn’t be so damn difficult.)

This stance seemed at odds with his disaffected and cynical slacker persona, but what could Jughead say — he was contrary like that. He could remain apathetic and be a pedantic perfectionist at heart; he had layers, like a lasagna.

But precisely that sort of attitude had landed him the lead role in Magic is Might as Sirius Black.

It had happened nine days ago, when Jughead had accompanied Sabrina to her second audition for Magic is Might — she had failed to get Lily Evans’s role and was trying out for Narcissa Black. Jughead was there for emotional support, for the sort of get your shit together, you walking waste of space pep-talks Sabrina and he excelled at. He was there to permit his hand to be crushed in a vice grip as she waited for her name to be called, and to take her to Wildflower Café by their apartment to gorge on breakfast foods and stuff their faces with toasted marshmallow milkshakes in the face of another disappointment.

Jughead Jones was, by profession, a screenwriter; he wrote seven plays, one of which had been actually made into a film. He was not an actor. The universe disagreed, however. Kevin fucking Keller disagreed, too, apparently, because the moment Jughead had walked up to a dumbfounded-looking Sabrina after her audition — handkerchief at the ready, just in case — he’d been spotted by Kevin fucking Keller’s eagle-eyed stare. Kevin fucking Keller who’d taken one look at Jughead, pointed his finger at him and with eyedrum piercing snap, barked out, “You, there — in here, now.” and Sabrina, that fucking traitor, had pushed him forward into the audition room.

It was serendipitous he knew the script like the back of his hand, having practiced with Sabrina until they were blue in the face, it was also fortuitous his reaction in the face of sheer audacity was to fall back on his most defining traits — sarcasm and generally all-around fuck-you attitude.

Both, as it had turned out, were great characteristics for one Sirius Black.

So here he was, Forsythe Pendleton Jones the third, newly minted actor extraordinaire with no education about the craft and enough talent, according to Keller, to fill the Pacific ocean and then some — out of his depth, and feeling utterly displaced.

It was a peculiar feeling, foreign and unwelcome — Jughead hated it with the blazing ebullition of pure abhorrence.

“Hey,” Sabrina called, soft as a whisper, placing her hand on his knee, stilling it. Jughead hadn’t realised his left leg had been bouncing. “Relax, bro-bro.”

Jughead opened his mouth to reply something along the lines of Shut it, hambone, but was interrupted when a tall shadow of a small person fell across his lap.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Mad Max himself,” commented a small, red-headed girl on berry-red charged murder-weapons on the lam from the law and thus posing as women’s footwear. “So, tall, dark, and inexperienced, how does it feel to finally be in the real show biz?”

There was a refractory set to Jughead’s clenched jaw, so Sabrina answered in his stead, snickering, “I don’t know Big Red, you tell us?”

The girl’s exceedingly red mouth was reset out of its perpetually sullen pout into a grimace of distaste. “For a virtual nobody, you sure have a mouth on you, Emily Strange.”

There were four rules Jughead Jones instinctively followed whenever he chose to speak: Was he being rational? Was he being truthful? Were his words necessary? Were they kind? Often times, if he had not met all of his criteria, Jughead would settle on keeping his silence a while longer.

This, was not such a time.

“Is that all you can do,” Jughead found himself rasping out, “try your utmost to diss people with painfully obvious references? You’re not doing a very good job, are you?”

“You’re a pretty cool customer, huh?”

“I hide my inner pain underneath a stoic visage,” Jughead quipped. Cheryl Blossom looked like would like nothing more than to dig her red-tipped claws into Jughead’s stoic visage.

“Hey, guys,” said a guy in corduroy slacks and a blue-yellow varsity jacket of all things; he was average-height, but with a Heroic Build identifying him as James Potter material. There was a hint of admonishment in his tone, but not enough to reign anyone in. “We’re supposed to be getting along…”

Jughead was utterly unsurprised when he was promptly ignored.

Big Red sneered down on them and with a snazzy flip of gloriously red hair, pointedly perched on the corner of the oval table. Then, she extended a bedazzled with a shape of a cherry phone Jughead didn’t realise she held in front of her on a selfie-stick, and with that godawful pout, began, “See, my lovely cherries, when presented with a choice between either Tim Burton Junior and his blonde Fran Bow or a ginger Kelly Clarkson, Cheryl Bombshell has no choice but to choose herself. I certainly hope their acting is better than their personalities because those are as parched as a dry spell.”

“Oi, Cherry Bomb!” a female producer barked sharply, the one with pink-striped hair and a punk attitude, “don’t fucking live blog a closed script reading, you imbecile!”

“Don’t call me that!” Cheryl Blossom snarled, teeth unnaturally white against the vivid red of her mouth. “How are my cherries supposed to know what I’m doing at any given moment if I don’t blog about it?”

“I don’t know,” Jughead grumbled, too low to be heard by anyone but Sabrina, who promptly elbowed him in the ribs, “maybe try not to seek validation from a faceless mass of people online?” said the kettle to the pot, he mentally added.

The woman with the pink hair was even shorter than Cheryl, but when she stood up, she cut an impressively intimidating figure nonetheless. “This,” she growled, “is what we get for casting a bloody Instagram starlet.”

“She’s a solid choice, Toni,” Keller admonished, softly, gingerly prying away her fingers off his bicep, “she can act and her hair is iconic. What more could we ask for?”

“A fucking professional attitude for one. And maybe,” Topaz, that was her name, Jughead finally remembered, pointedly shouted in red-head’s direction, “not to always pout like she’s about to suck dick.”

Cheryl Blossom looked up from the highly-focused examination of her razor-sharp talons she’d been performing and pouted. “I don’t suck dick on sheer principle, you grotsky little byotch.”

Varsity Jacket raised his hands in placation. “Okay, seriously, maybe you should—”

“Toni, go smoke a fag and find your chill,” cut in Keller, and her hand immediately shot up, giving him the middle finger, but she left the room nonetheless. “And Cheryl, take it down a notch. I’m serious, you hear me?”

Cheryl turned away from him with a huff, but she hadn’t said anything. Instead, she began typing away furiously on her phone.

Huh, thought Jughead.

Kevin Keller was not a tough guy, he noticed, he did not have a commanding presence. Even Varsity Jacket drew more attention to himself with his ridiculous floppy hair, freckled face, and All-American attitude. But, Jughead decided, Kevin Keller understood women. With that in mind, Jughead settled back in his chair, reading over the script yet again.

It was fifteen minutes later when Toni Topaz strode into the room, her combat boots practically abusing the dotted, grey linoleum with the force of her steps, not looking an iota less stressed. “Fuck it,” she announced, “if we wait anymore for those two, we’ll get behind schedule.”

“All right, then,” Keller said, clapping his hands, “places, everyone.”

Like the asshole she was, Sabrina took the seat assigned to him, next to Varsity Jacket, and switched their name planks with a wink. Jughead had neither the inclination nor the naiveté to question her choices, so he dragged the chair he had been sitting for the last half-an-hour towards the table by its back, and positioned himself on Sabrina’s left, straightening the SIRIUS BLACK plaque so it was uniformly aligned with all the others.

The plague before a lounging Cheryl Blossom did not read BITCH FROM HELL, much to Jughead’s surprise, instead, it said — LILY EVANS.

A thought streaked across the forefront of his mind: We are all royally fucked.

Varsity Jacket’s named turned out to be Archie Andrews. Jughead knew that now because the first words out of that kid’s mouth were, quite literally, “Hey, there. I’m Archie Andrews, I’m eighteen, you may know me from last year’s 16 Birthday Wishes, and I look forward to working with ya all.”

Jughead could not have conjured this kid up had he even tried. He shared a concerned glance with Sabrina who mouthed, is he for real? and Jughead only had the energy to shrug. Yeah, he decided, he could see this Archie Andrews as one James Potter. If he squinted.

Cheryl Blossom did not introduce herself. She scowled at all of them, even poor golden retriever puppy personified Andrews, called them philistines, and proceeded with reading her lines. Interesting development: she could act. Expected conclusion: she packed too much malice into her lines and came of as passive aggressive. Keller had to intermediately correct her. That was, however, a correctable quality she could redeem herself from with enough effort; or so Sabrina had said, Jughead’s inescapable, little-devil-on-the-shoulder-type expert on all things acting™.  

When it was his turn to read, Jughead did what he had always done when he read out loud his scripts during editing: tried his damndest not to stutter, keeping his voice smooth and even, and detached himself from the situation, rendering himself utterly impervious to nerves and apprehension. It was not Jughead Jones who had been reciting the script from memory as the lines printed on paper streamed before his eyes in a confusing, maddening swirl — it had been Sirius Black doing all those things; teasing his friend James, flirting with prim and proper Lily, arguing with Narcissa.

Disassociating might have kept Jughead’s anxiety at bay, but it made Sirius Black come alive.

So, of course, once Jughead had gotten into the swing of things, the universe rained on his parade: the door slammed open, revealing two girls standing on the other side of its frame.

“Oooops,” said the shorter one, her dark hair reflecting light attractively as she stode in the room. She had not sounded particularly sorry, Jughead noticed. “Apologies, hadn’t meant to barge in quite so—”

“Veronica,” Toni cut in, as bitingly as a wolf, “you were supposed to be here half-an-hour ago!”

“That late, huh,” muttered Veronica assumingly Lodge, flipping her wrist to check the slim, diamond-encrusted watch on her left hand. “Apologies, Toni, darling, but L.A. traffic is simply odious, as you well know. Got held up.”

“By what — appearance of abominable snowman in the middle of Franklin Avenue?”

“Not quite,” Veronica replied, a sly not-quite smile settling on her face, “Betty and I—”

“Of course, you had hamstrung Cooper, too.” Toni cast a dirty look over Veronica’s shoulder at a willowy, nervous-looking blonde still hesitating in the doorway. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you there, princess.”

“Well, as I was saying, Betty and I,” continued Veronica Lodge, bulldozing over Toni completely and out of the corner of his eye, Jughead could see Call Me Archie Andrews’s jaw unhinge a little, “were late completely by accident, but it was all my fault. Let’s just say, a Lodge doesn’t always land on their feet.

“Still, I had to amend such an insufferable grievance,” Veronica smiled, charmingly, still sly as a fox. “Imagine how tickled pink I was to learn we are not only headed into the same building, but for the same script reading—”

“To which you are late; both of you,” grumbled Toni, but she seemed to have lost most of her heat. Kevin was rubbing her shoulders soothingly as she massaged her temples. Momentarily, Jughead wondered if she was prematurely grey beneath all that pink dye.

“—long story, short: Betty here,” Veronica said, stepping back and drawing the taller girl into her side. “Is my new BFF and I love her to pieces.”

“From a five minute meeting,” Kevin asked, corner of his mouth twitching.

“Boo, you whore,” teased Veronica, earning an unexpect snort from Sabrina, “it’s love at first sight. Don’t judge.” Then:

“You there,” Veronica snapped her fingers in the direction of a fish-eyed assistant Jughead took care to ignore — she’d been making moon-eyes at him, according to Sabrina, and there were times to be wary of his cousin’s advice, but not in instances such as this one. “Fetch me a skinny venti white mocha, one shot, with two pumps of sugarfree vanilla, no whip — pronto. I can’t think clearly without my daily recommended injection of sugar and caffeine.”

Immediately, the situation dissolved into absolute bedlam as everyone clamoured for Ginger’s attention to place their coffee order, too. She’s a sly one, Jughead thought for the third time, smart, too.

Here was the thing about Jughead Jones: he was an objective observer of life, not an active participator. An introvert and a borderline misanthrope, he regarded the world from a safe distance of cool, clinical detachment — he watched and he recorded and he understood because he noticed enough to pay attention in the first place; he was perceptive, and he used this to his advantage. 

And as if enticed by a magnetic pull, Jughead’s eyes drifted towards the leggy blonde to his right. The first thing he noticed her was this — she was uncomfortable. The second was that she was seemed nervous, displaced; and third — well, she was making her way towards him.

This girl, however, was totally throwing him for a loop.

She was dressed in a diaphanous, intricately embroidered, sapphire-coloured blouse, and when she shifted to pull out her chair, Jughead could see her laced brassiere through the silk material. Unexpectedly, she sat next to him, across from a plaque reading REMMY LUPIN. She had a striking look — blue-eyed and golden-haired with a face like a porcelain doll’s; wide-eyed, lovely, and haunting in its stillness. I met a lady on a moor, Jughead though, aureate hair, refulgent eyes; a dancing, starry sprite.

“Hi,” she greeted, turning to him, face splitting into a blooming, honeyed smile, white teeth gleaming, the streaming sunlight from the window behind them set her braid into a molten blaze, “I’m Betty.”

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THE DREAMER:

“Three creams, two splenda, please.”

Betty Cooper was already running (hopefully, fashionably) late; not exactly a good first impression. She had woken up behind schedule (she had sort of fallen into the black hole that was Tumblr, recently, and had taken to staying up late); her cat, Caramel, had thrown up all over the kitchen floor. One side of her hair had dried flatter than the other — she was never going to bed straight from the shower ever again. And her uber had been running behind. Fantastic, she had uttered when finally arriving at the address given. The time on her phone alerting her that she should would have been inside already, had her morning gone accordingly, sipping on her coffee without a care in the world.

Well, that last bit was a stretch. If you asked anyone who knew her, they would say without a doubt that, Betty Cooper cared too much, about everything.

It was kind of her thing, though. Betty had a profound sense of perseverance and applied it to anyone in need of help that she came across. Polly (her older sister and recently, albeit somewhat regrettably, her manager) akined it to her being like a new mother, babying her fresh-faced ducklings. It often impeded her own desires and well-thought out plans.

Betty was a goner for a schedule. She could plan her day like nobody’s business — rarely did it ever actually go according to plan though. She would describe herself as being meticulous bordering the edge of perfectionist — Betty actually detested that word. Being in control of the situation, however, gave her life.

This was all new to her though, at least, fairly. Acting, that is.

She had been on edge of booking a flight back to San Francisco for what seemed like months. With only $200 to her name, and a can of cold soup sitting like a rock in her belly, Betty had auditioned for a role in Magic is Might. She had been failing auditions for months, her savings account was gone, and she was exhausted from working two menial jobs in order to have money to even go to auditions.

So, by all accounts, Betty figured an extra boost of caffeine was in order to make it through the whirlwind day that had been plotted ahead. A table read with her cast mates of Magic is Might, who she had yet to meet, was slotted for the whole day. As well as some promotional pictures of the group. The whole thing came together rather quickly for an HBO show, as she understood. Betty would be forever grateful that they hadn’t found anyone for the part of Remus Lupin yet.

Somehow, her name had been misspelled (she wanted to glare at Polly) and they thought it had said Elizander, on her papers. Whoever had been manning the audition hadn’t done a thorough look-through at the time and had barely looked up at her, just shooed her through the door. They seemed desperate.

To be fair, she hadn’t realized that the part of Remus was male. Of course, she had read the Harry Potter books, who hasn’t? But Polly had simply implored her to get her ass to this audition, without much else to go on.

Everyone had stared at her when she entered the room, but the guy in the middle of the group seated before her had stood up, planting his hands on the table with a loud smack.

“Excuse me, this isn’t —”

“No, excuse me, but that was incredibly rude.” A blush bloomed across her chest, streaking upwards, despite her outward display of confidence. “I’m here to audition, so let me audition before turning me away.”

It turns out that the man was Kevin Keller, one of the showrunners. Betty had desperately wanted to curl into a ball from mortification when she found out, but instead she had been engulfed in a hug while he had exclaimed “Such fire!”, and had let her do the audition.  

They had complimented her afterwards. Apparently she had an inner voice that matched Remus’s suppressed darkness à la werewolf unequivocally. They were going to change the character and rework the script for her. Betty was unperturbed usually, but she had been floored by their sentiments.

Now, granted, they had done the same thing for the character of Snape, but that was for Veronica Lodge — ex-disney starlet who had bowed out of the limelight for several years only to return and turn everyone’s heads when she demanded the part of Severus Snape.

Betty mussed her life was going to be very different from here on out (assuming the show gets picked up after the contingent episodes), but she was looking forward to not cringing every time they ran her card through a register. She loved food, and coffee was a vice she wasn’t willing to give up.

In L.A. there seemed to be a Starbucks on just about every godforsaken block, so she had been thankful there was one conveniently close to the building she was now ardently walking toward. Betty was practically jogging as she took a sip of her drink, the mouthful of cold coffee was sweet and creamy. It was really refreshing — had she not just spilled it all over her shirt when someone plowed into her shoulder, jarring the cup from her hand.

Betty had stood frozen in place, her muscles turning tense as she panicked. Of course she had worn her favorite outfit today. Her pale pink sweater was now sticking to her skin uncomfortably, but thankfully there were only a few drops on her jeans — the dark color of them would prevent a stain from being noticeable, but her sweater…

“Oh my god, fuck, I am so sorry.”

Betty looked up from where she was still staring at her coffee soaked front, hand crushing the now empty cup. She blinked owlishly at the girl who had spoken. A dark haired girl with an equally empty cup, however stain free clothes — impeccable, by the way, in front of her. Small hands covered in white lace gloves (really? The urge to roll her eyes was strong) were reaching out for her and grabbing hold of her arm, gently albeit forcefully. Betty had no choice but to be tugged along and out of the path of the ravenous L.A. goers on the sidewalk.

“It’s… fine, really,” Betty hadn’t wanted to use the word, but there wasn’t anything else on the tip of her tongue. “I’m running late to my read through anyway, I should —”

Veronica interrupted her, raising her impeccably arched brows even higher. “Read through? As in, script?”

Nodding, Betty looked up to the tall glass front building they were almost in front of. She had been so close…

“Well, I think we’re headed to the same place then. Veronica Lodge,” the raven haired girl extended her glove covered hand and Betty raised her hand that wasn’t a sticky mess to shake it. Veronica continued, “pleasure to meet you…” she trailed off and Betty interjected.

“Betty Cooper.”

“Betty, allow me to offer you a new blouse, I simply can’t let you in there like that.”

Betty had started to shake her head, fingers itching to reach up and tighten her ponytail, but alas, she realized, she had worn her hair in a loose braid that brushed the edges of her collarbone. “No, that’s okay, you don’t have to do that.” she waved a hand, tossing her empty cup into the trash bin they had stopped by.

“I insist. Come,” it wasn’t up for debate anymore, that white glove grabbing Betty’s wrist again and pulling her toward a sleek black car that was parked some spaces down. “Don’t worry about being late, if we both are then they really can’t do anything about it."

Betty was surprised that the words didn’t sound pretentious coming from the other girls mouth, but humble. Veronica had pulled her inside the car, instructing her to pull the door closed. She hesitated before doing so, the door shutting with a soft click. She never thought being in a car alone with Veronica Lodge would ever be on her agenda, but here she was, with a collection of delicate tops spread over their laps that were distinctly not at all Betty’s style.

But beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Her green-blue eyes examined the choices carefully, taking in the price tags still dangling from them. Her throat was dry, her swallow surely audible. Everything was more-than-her-rent expensive. Plucking the one with the smallest numbers up, a transparent (okay maybe she had made a mistake here…) sapphire-blue blouse with colorful embroidered flowers, “This one is great,” she smiled at Veronica.

“Oh, excellent choice. Can’t go wrong with Derek Lam 10.”

She scrunched her nose up, fingering the material. Veronica had leant back against the seat, arms crossed expectantly. Betty glanced around to the car windows. “You want me to change here?”

“I expect you, too, yes.”

Betty sucked in a breath of courage and peeled off the stained sweater. Thankfully, her white (unlucky, she had decided) lacy bralette would be suitable underneath the barely-considered-a-shirt. She felt Veronica’s dark eyes on her, watching as she slipped the garment on over her head. Betty tugged it down gently, it only hit the top waist of her jeans.

Veronica reached out a hand to snap the price tag off, tossing it into the empty front seat. “There, oh you have to keep it, it looks perfect on you.”

The blonde smoothed a hand down her somewhat exposed stomach, wishing she were thinner or more toned. “Sure. Thanks, Veronica.”

“You’re quite welcome, darling. Nothing bores friendship quicker than the sharing of clothes and gossiping over boys. So one down, one to go.”

Betty couldn’t help the smile blooming across her face at Veronica’s words. She could use a friend. L.A. had been a lonely place the past two years, which did nothing to help her anxiety.

“Of course, I’m looking forward to it. We’ll be spending a lot of time together after all.”

The other girl smiled back, tucking glossy black hair behind her ear. “Indeed, we might as well make the best of it.” she paused, checking the fancy was fastened around her delicate wrist. “We are incredibly late now, darling. We had better hurry along before Toni sinks her teeth into us.”

Betty nodded, climbing out the car door as gracefully as she could with shaking hands. Veronica had saddled up to her side, linking their arms together as they walked. Feeling a burst of adoration for the girl Betty felt she had wrongly judged in the past (she grew up watching Disney channel, after all) she vowed not to judge any of the other actors based on the same principle.

The ease of being by Veronica’s side made her nerves calm until they were in front of the appropriate conference room door. A wicked smirk graced the raven-haired girl’s features and she disentangled their arms. A dainty platform heeled foot kicked the door in with surprising force for such a small girl.

It had Betty stepping back, hiding away from the doorframe a ways, eyes darting around the room and taking in the scene. It looks like they had already started the read through, and the ball of nerves in her stomach started to grow again.

She did not think it would ever leave her.

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tbc.

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note: Title comes from Shakespeare’s Henry V: “You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate. There is more eloquence in a sweet touch of them than in the tongues of the whole French council.” Chapter title comes from Mr. Jones by Counting Crows. 

[lilibug--xx]

》you have witchcraft in your lips《

—famous!Bughead

When Jughead Jones and Betty Cooper were cast as leads for HBO’s Harry Potter prequel show Magic is Might, they thought they did not know each other. They were wrong.

note: this is a collaborative work between myself and @strix. I wrote Betty's’s POV and she Jughead’s. Be warned, we are each other’s betas, too. 

read it on ao3. 

“ A dress made of air and webs and you,

The wet dreams evaporate as they come true.

To anyone else just endless blue,

An invisible kite string connects me to you.”

— Pieces of Sky by Beth Orton.

CHAPTER ONE: mr jones and me, we’re gonna be big stars…

 @Variety: HBO picks up four pilot episodes, including Toni Topaz’s Harry Potter prequel project.

@Deadline: Up-and-coming musical director Kevin Keller branches off from theatre and confirms working on Harry Potter prequel series with HBO — Magic is Might.

@EntertainmentNews: BREAKING NEWS: Disney darling Veronica Lodge officially casted as one of the leads in Kevin Keller’s upcoming Marauders Era project — Magic is Might.

@Buzzfeed: You will not believe who was just confirmed to be cast in Magic is Might!

@CherryBombshell: To all my loyal, beautiful followers: Of course, I got the part. How could they not cast moi?

@NZHerald: Singer-songwriter Archie Andrews is rumoured to be involved with HBO’s Magic is Might.

@Deadline: Magic is Might Harry Potter prequel series finds its Sirius Black: “He walked in right off the street and I knew — that is our Sirius Black,” says showrunner, Kevin Keller.

@EntertainmentNews: HBO’s Magic is Might just cast its Remus Lupin, and it’s a very interesting choice.

@Buzzfeed: Magic is Might’s Remus Lupin is now — Remmy Lupin?!

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THE WAYWARD PRINCE:

The thing about Jughead Jones — he was weird, and he liked to be weird.

Jughead Jones was the following things: adroit wordsmith, razor-sharp, and a smart-mouthed asshole. He was not, however, the sort a teenage girl’s dreams were made of. He was a little too tall and a little too angular with a face that was a little too fond of scowling to be conventionally attractive. He had two girlfriends in the span of his entire life, and first one he’d acquired when he was nine for the span of two days. He was akin to a scalpel — sharp-edged, clinical, and very good at cutting people out of his life.

Except, Sabrina.

Never Sabrina.

And because of Sabrina — he was here, regretting everything.

“This,” Jughead grumbled for the nth time, “is all your fault.”

“Yes,” Sabrina agreed, throwing a dusky-blue button-down at him with a glare that clearly conveyed wear this or else, “it is my fault that you’ve landed the biggest television role of this year. I apologise for being magnificent.”

Jughead snorted. “Potter is the lead.”

“Who cares? Sirius is obviously meant to be the hot one. That makes his role the bigger fish. And you,” Sabrina said, tilting his head sideways and inspecting the carelessly casual style she arranged his hair in (read: brushed once and let it air-dry), “cousin-german, will soon be smiling from a poster on every pubescent girl’s wall and be the main feature in their dreams.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” Jughead’s scowl grew deeper, a feat he had not imagined was achievable before he’d done it. “I’d rather not.”

Two hours later, two thirds of which were spent navigating L.A.’s atrocious traffic, Jughead found himself lounging in a deceptively comfortable egg chair in a Hollywood studio, waiting to proceed with the first script reading session with the rest of Magic is Might cast. Sabrina, primly perched to his right, was scanning the others over the brim of her rapidly cooling coffee cup with shrewd, pale-grey eyes, as Jughead lazily thumbed through the script.

“Stop eyeing them like you want to wear their faces as a mask, Ree,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

“I am so not. I’m eyeing them like I want to make a fashionable skin suit, obviously. Get your facts straight, Jones.”

Here was the thing; — Jughead firmly believed that if you did something, you better put your best foot forward from the start; to do your very best at everything you undertook and not half-ass it simply because it required effort. (Life required effort, Jughead often reminded himself, if it didn’t it wouldn’t be so damn difficult.)

This stance seemed at odds with his disaffected and cynical slacker persona, but what could Jughead say — he was contrary like that. He could remain apathetic and be a pedantic perfectionist at heart; he had layers, like a lasagna.

But precisely that sort of attitude had landed him the lead role in Magic is Might as Sirius Black.

It had happened nine days ago, when Jughead had accompanied Sabrina to her second audition for Magic is Might — she had failed to get Lily Evans’s role and was trying out for Narcissa Black. Jughead was there for emotional support, for the sort of get your shit together, you walking waste of space pep-talks Sabrina and he excelled at. He was there to permit his hand to be crushed in a vice grip as she waited for her name to be called, and to take her to Wildflower Café by their apartment to gorge on breakfast foods and stuff their faces with toasted marshmallow milkshakes in the face of another disappointment.

Jughead Jones was, by profession, a screenwriter; he wrote seven plays, one of which had been actually made into a film. He was not an actor. The universe disagreed, however. Kevin fucking Keller disagreed, too, apparently, because the moment Jughead had walked up to a dumbfounded-looking Sabrina after her audition — handkerchief at the ready, just in case — he’d been spotted by Kevin fucking Keller’s eagle-eyed stare. Kevin fucking Keller who’d taken one look at Jughead, pointed his finger at him and with eyedrum piercing snap, barked out, “You, there — in here, now.” and Sabrina, that fucking traitor, had pushed him forward into the audition room.

It was serendipitous he knew the script like the back of his hand, having practiced with Sabrina until they were blue in the face, it was also fortuitous his reaction in the face of sheer audacity was to fall back on his most defining traits — sarcasm and generally all-around fuck-you attitude.

Both, as it had turned out, were great characteristics for one Sirius Black.

So here he was, Forsythe Pendleton Jones the third, newly minted actor extraordinaire with no education about the craft and enough talent, according to Keller, to fill the Pacific ocean and then some — out of his depth, and feeling utterly displaced.

It was a peculiar feeling, foreign and unwelcome — Jughead hated it with the blazing ebullition of pure abhorrence.

“Hey,” Sabrina called, soft as a whisper, placing her hand on his knee, stilling it. Jughead hadn’t realised his left leg had been bouncing. “Relax, bro-bro.”

Jughead opened his mouth to reply something along the lines of Shut it, hambone, but was interrupted when a tall shadow of a small person fell across his lap.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Mad Max himself,” commented a small, red-headed girl on berry-red charged murder-weapons on the lam from the law and thus posing as women’s footwear. “So, tall, dark, and inexperienced, how does it feel to finally be in the real show biz?”

There was a refractory set to Jughead’s clenched jaw, so Sabrina answered in his stead, snickering, “I don’t know Big Red, you tell us?”

The girl’s exceedingly red mouth was reset out of its perpetually sullen pout into a grimace of distaste. “For a virtual nobody, you sure have a mouth on you, Emily Strange.”

There were four rules Jughead Jones instinctively followed whenever he chose to speak: Was he being rational? Was he being truthful? Were his words necessary? Were they kind? Often times, if he had not met all of his criteria, Jughead would settle on keeping his silence a while longer.

This, was not such a time.

“Is that all you can do,” Jughead found himself rasping out, “try your utmost to diss people with painfully obvious references? You’re not doing a very good job, are you?”

“You’re a pretty cool customer, huh?”

“I hide my inner pain underneath a stoic visage,” Jughead quipped. Cheryl Blossom looked like would like nothing more than to dig her claws red-tipped into Jughead’s stoic visage.

“Hey, guys,” said a guy in corduroy slacks and a blue-yellow varsity jacket of all things; he was average-height, but with a Heroic Build identifying him as James Potter material. There was a hint of admonishment in his tone, but not enough to reign anyone in. “We’re supposed to be getting along…”

Jughead was utterly unsurprised when he was promptly ignored.

Big Red sneered down on them and with a snazzy flip of gloriously red hair, pointedly perched on the corner of the oval table. Then, she extended a bedazzled with a shape of a cherry phone Jughead didn’t realise she held in front of her on a selfie-stick, and with that godawful pout, began, “See, my lovely cherries, when presented with a choice between either Tim Burton Junior and his blonde Fran Bow or a ginger Kelly Clarkson, Cheryl Bombshell has no choice but to choose herself. I certainly hope their acting is better than their personalities because those are as parched as a dry spell.”

“Oi, Cherry Bomb!” a female producer barked sharply, the one with pink-striped hair and a punk attitude, “don’t fucking live blog a closed script reading, you imbecile!”

“Don’t call me that!” Cheryl Blossom snarled, teeth unnaturally white against the vivid red of her mouth. “How are my cherries supposed to know what I’m doing at any given moment if I don’t blog about it?”

“I don’t know,” Jughead grumbled, too low to be heard by anyone but Sabrina, who promptly elbowed him in the ribs, “maybe try not to seek validation from a faceless mass of people online?” said the kettle to the pot, he mentally added.

The woman with the pink hair was even shorter than Cheryl, but when she stood up, she cut an impressively intimidating figure nonetheless. “This,” she growled, “is what we get for casting a bloody Instagram starlet.”

“She’s a solid choice, Toni,” Keller admonished, softly, gingerly prying away her fingers off his bicep, “she can act and her hair is iconic. What more could we ask for?”

“A fucking professional attitude for one. And maybe,” Topaz, that was her name, Jughead finally remembered, pointedly shouted in red-head’s direction, “not to always pout like she’s about to suck dick.”

Cheryl Blossom looked up from the highly-focused examination of her razor-sharp talons she’d been performing and pouted. “I don’t suck dick on sheer principle, you grotsky little byotch.”

Varsity Jacket raised his hands in placation. “Okay, seriously, maybe you should—”

“Toni, go smoke a fag and find your chill,” cut in Keller, and her hand immediately shot up, giving him the middle finger, but she left the room nonetheless. “And Cheryl, take it down a notch. I’m serious, you hear me?”

Cheryl turned away from him with a huff, but she hadn’t said anything. Instead, she began typing away furiously on her phone.

Huh, thought Jughead.

Kevin Keller was not a tough guy, he noticed, he did not have a commanding presence. Even Varsity Jacket drew more attention to himself with his ridiculous floppy hair, freckled face, and All-American attitude. But, Jughead decided, Kevin Keller understood women. With that in mind, Jughead settled back in his chair, reading over the script yet again.

It was fifteen minutes later when Toni Topaz strode into the room, her combat boots practically abusing the dotted, grey linoleum with the force of her steps, not looking an iota less stressed. “Fuck it,” she announced, “if we wait anymore for those two, we’ll get behind schedule.”

“All right, then,” Keller said, clapping his hands, “places, everyone.”

Like the asshole she was, Sabrina took the seat assigned to him, next to Varsity Jacket, and switched their name planks with a wink. Jughead had neither the inclination nor the naiveté to question her choices, so he dragged the chair he had been sitting for the last half-an-hour towards the table by its back, and positioned himself on Sabrina’s left, straightening the SIRIUS BLACK plaque so it was uniformly aligned with all the others.

The plague before a lounging Cheryl Blossom did not read BITCH FROM HELL, much to Jughead’s surprise, instead, it said — LILY EVANS.

A thought streaked across the forefront of his mind: We are all royally fucked.

Varsity Jacket’s named turned out to be Archie Andrews. Jughead knew that now because the first words out of that kid’s mouth were, quite literally, “Hey, there. I’m Archie Andrews, I’m eighteen, you may know me from last year’s 16 Birthday Wishes, and I look forward to working with ya all.”

Jughead could not have conjured this kid up had he even tried. He shared a concerned glance with Sabrina who mouthed, is he for real? and Jughead only had the energy to shrug. Yeah, he decided, he could see this Archie Andrews as one James Potter. If he squinted.

Cheryl Blossom did not introduce herself. She scowled at all of them, even poor golden retriever puppy personified Andrews, called them philistines, and proceeded with reading her lines. Interesting development: she could act. Expected conclusion: she packed too much malice into her lines and came of ass passive aggressive. Keller had to intermediately correct her. That was, however, a correctable quality she could redeem herself from with enough effort; or so Sabrina had said, Jughead’s inescapable, little-devil-on-the-shoulder-type expert on all things acting™.  

When it was his turn to read, Jughead did what he always did when he read out loud his scripts during editing: tried his damndest not to stutter, keeping his voice smooth and even, and detached himself from the situation, rendering himself utterly impervious to nerves and apprehension. It was not Jughead Jones who had been reciting the script from memory as the lines printed on paper streamed before his eyes in a confusing, maddening swirl — it had been Sirius Black doing all those things; teasing his friend James, flirting with prim and proper Lily, arguing with Narcissa.

Disassociating might have kept Jughead’s anxiety at bay, but it made Sirius Black come alive.

So, of course, once Jughead had gotten into the swing of things, the universe rained on his parade: the door slammed open, revealing two girls standing on the other side of its frame.

“Oooops,” said the shorter one, her dark hair reflecting light attractively as she stode in the room. She had not sounded particularly sorry, Jughead noticed. “Apologies, hadn’t meant to barge in quite so—”

“Veronica,” Toni cut in, as bitingly as a wolf, “you were supposed to be here half-an-hour ago!”

“That late, huh,” muttered Veronica assumingly Lodge, flipping her wrist to check the slim, diamond-encrusted watch on her left hand. “Apologies, Toni, darling, but L.A. traffic is simply odious, as you well know. Got held up.”

“By what — appearance of abominable snowman in the middle of Franklin Avenue?”

“Not quite,” Veronica replied, a sly not-quite smile settling on her face, “Betty and I—”

“Of course, you had hamstrung Cooper, too.” Toni cast a dirty look over Veronica’s shoulder at a willowy, nervous-looking blonde still hesitating in the doorway. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you there, princess.”

“Well, as I was saying, Betty and I,” continued Veronica Lodge, bulldozing over Toni completely and out of the corner of his eye, Jughead could see Call Me, Archie Andrews’s jaw unhinge a little, “were late completely by accident, but it was all my fault. Let’s just say, a Lodge doesn’t always land on their feet.

“Still, I had to amend such an insufferable grievance,” Veronica smiled, charmingly, still sly as a fox. “Imagine how tickled pink I was to learn we are not only headed into the same building, but for the same script reading—”

“To which you are late; both of you,” grumbled Toni, but she seemed to have lost most of her heat. Kevin was rubbing her shoulders soothingly as she massaged her temples. Momentarily, Jughead wondered if she was prematurely grey beneath all that pink dye.

“—long story, short: Betty here,” Veronica said, stepping back and drawing the taller girl into her side. “Is my new BFF and I love her to pieces.”

“From a five minute meeting,” Kevin asked, corner of his mouth twitching.

“Boo, you whore,” teased Veronica, earning an unexpect snort from Sabrina, “it’s love at first sight. Don’t judge.” Then:

“You there,” Veronica snapped her fingers in the direction of a fish-eyed assistant Jughead took care to ignore — she’d been making moon-eyes at him, according to Sabrina, and there were times to be wary of his cousin’s advice, but not in instances such as this one. “Fetch me a skinny venti white mocha, one shot, with two pumps of sugarfree vanilla, no whip — pronto. I can’t think clearly without my daily recommended injection of sugar and caffeine.”

Immediately, the situation dissolved into absolute bedlam as everyone clamoured for Ginger’s attention to place their coffee order, too. She’s a sly one, Jughead thought for the third time, smart, too.

Here was the thing about Jughead Jones: he was an objective observer of life, not an active participator. An introvert and a borderline misanthrope, he regarded the world from a safe distance of cool, clinical detachment — he watched and he recorded and he understood because he noticed enough to pay attention in the first place; he was perceptive, and he used this to his advantage. 

This girl, however, totally threw him for a loop.

And as if enticed by a magnetic pull, Jughead’s eyes drifted towards the leggy blonde to his right. The first thing he noticed her was this — she was uncomfortable. The second was that she was seemed nervous, displaced; and third — well, she was making her way towards him.

The girl was dressed in a diaphanous, intricately embroidered, sapphire-coloured blouse, and when she shifted to pull out her chair, Jughead could see her laced brassiere through the silk material. Unexpectedly, she sat next to him, across from a plaque reading REMMY LUPIN. She had a striking look — blue-eyed and golden-haired with a face like a porcelain doll’s; wide-eyed, lovely, and haunting in its stillness. I met a lady on a moore, Jughead though, aureate hair, refulgent eyes; a dancing, starry sprite.

“Hi,” she greeted, turning to him, face splitting into a blooming, honeyed smile, white teeth gleaming, the streaming sunlight from the window behind them set her braid into a molten blaze, “I’m Betty.”

.

.

.

.

THE DREAMER:

“Three creams, two splenda, please.”

Betty Cooper was already running (hopefully, fashionably) late; not exactly a good first impression. She had woken up behind schedule (she had sort of fallen into the black hole that was Tumblr, recently, and had taken to staying up late); her cat, Caramel, had thrown up all over the kitchen floor. One side of her hair had dried flatter than the other — she was never going to bed straight from the shower ever again. And her uber had been running behind. Fantastic, she had uttered when finally arriving at the address given. The time on her phone alerting her that she should would have been inside already, had her morning gone accordingly, sipping on her coffee without a care in the world.

Well, that last bit was a stretch. If you asked anyone who knew her, they would say without a doubt that, Betty Cooper cared too much, about everything.

It was kind of her thing, though. Betty had a profound sense of perseverance and applied it to anyone in need of help that she came across. Polly (her older sister and recently, albeit somewhat regrettably, her manager) akined it to her being like a new mother, babying her fresh-faced ducklings. It often impeded her own desires and well-thought out plans.

Betty was a goner for a schedule. She could plan her day like nobody’s business — rarely did it ever actually go according to plan though. She would describe herself as being meticulous bordering the edge of perfectionist — Betty actually detested that word. Being in control of the situation, however, gave her life.

This was all new to her though, at least, fairly. Acting, that is.

She had been on edge of booking a flight back to San Francisco for what seemed like months. With only $200 to her name, and a can of cold soup sitting like a rock in her belly, Betty had auditioned for a role in Magic is Might. She had been failing auditions for months, her savings account was gone, and she was exhausted from working two menial jobs in order to have money to even go to auditions.

So, by all accounts, Betty figured an extra boost of caffeine was in order to make it through the whirlwind day that had been plotted ahead. A table read with her cast mates of Magic is Might, who she had yet to meet, was slotted for the whole day. As well as some promotional pictures of the group. The whole thing came together rather quickly for an HBO show, as she understood. Betty would be forever grateful that they hadn’t found anyone for the part of Remus Lupin yet.

Somehow, her name had been misspelled (she wanted to glare at Polly) and they thought it had said Elizander, on her papers. Whoever had been manning the audition hadn’t done a thorough look-through at the time and had barely looked up at her, just shooed her through the door. They seemed desperate.

To be fair, she hadn’t realized that the part of Remus was male. Of course, she had read the Harry Potter books, who hasn’t? But Polly had simply implored her to get her ass to this audition, without much else to go on.

Everyone had stared at her when she entered the room, but the guy in the middle of the group seated before her had stood up, planting his hands on the table with a loud smack.

“Excuse me, this isn’t —”

“No, excuse me, but that was incredibly rude.” A blush bloomed across her chest, streaking upwards, despite her outward display of confidence. “I’m here to audition, so let me audition before turning me away.”

It turns out that the man was Kevin Keller, one of the showrunners. Betty had desperately wanted to curl into a ball from mortification when she found out, but instead she had been engulfed in a hug while he had exclaimed “Such fire!”, and had let her do the audition.  

They had complimented her afterwards. Apparently she had an inner voice that matched Remus’s suppressed darkness à la werewolf unequivocally. They were going to change the character and rework the script for her. Betty was unperturbed usually, but she had been floored by their sentiments.

Now, granted, they had done the same thing for the character of Snape, but that was for Veronica Lodge — ex-disney starlet who had bowed out of the limelight for several years only to return and turn everyone’s heads when she demanded the part of Severus Snape.

Betty mussed her life was going to be very different from here on out (assuming the show gets picked up after the contingent episodes), but she was looking forward to not cringing every time they ran her card through a register. She loved food, and coffee was a vice she wasn’t willing to give up.

In L.A. there seemed to be a Starbucks on just about every godforsaken block, so she had been thankful there was one conveniently close to the building she was now ardently walking toward. Betty was practically jogging as she took a sip of her drink, the mouthful of cold coffee was sweet and creamy. It was really refreshing — had she not just spilled it all over her shirt when someone plowed into her shoulder, jarring the cup from her hand.

Betty had stood frozen in place, her muscles turning tense as she panicked. Of course she had worn her favorite outfit today. Her pale pink sweater was now sticking to her skin uncomfortably, but thankfully there were only a few drops on her jeans — the dark color of them would prevent a stain from being noticeable, but her sweater…

“Oh my god, fuck, I am so sorry.”

Betty looked up from where she was still staring at her coffee soaked front, hand crushing the now empty cup. She blinked owlishly at the girl who had spoken. A dark haired girl with an equally empty cup, however stain free clothes — impeccable, by the way, in front of her. Small hands covered in white lace gloves (really? The urge to roll her eyes was strong) were reaching out for her and grabbing hold of her arm, gently albeit forcefully. Betty had no choice but to be tugged along and out of the path of the ravenous L.A. goers on the sidewalk.

“It’s… fine, really,” Betty hadn’t wanted to use the word, but there wasn’t anything else on the tip of her tongue. “I’m running late to my read through anyway, I should —”

Veronica interrupted her, raising her impeccably arched brows even higher. “Read through? As in, script?”

Nodding, Betty looked up to the tall glass front building they were almost in front of. She had been so close…

“Well, I think we’re headed to the same place then. Veronica Lodge,” the raven haired girl extended her glove covered hand and Betty raised her hand that wasn’t a sticky mess to shake it. Veronica continued, “pleasure to meet you…” she trailed off and Betty interjected.

“Betty Cooper.”

“Betty, allow me to offer you a new blouse, I simply can’t let you in there like that.”

Betty had started to shake her head, fingers itching to reach up and tighten her ponytail, but alas, she realized, she had worn her hair in a loose braid that brushed the edges of her collarbone. “No, that’s okay, you don’t have to do that.” she waved a hand, tossing her empty cup into the trash bin they had stopped by.

“I insist. Come,” it wasn’t up for debate anymore, that white glove grabbing Betty’s wrist again and pulling her toward a sleek black car that was parked some spaces down. “Don’t worry about being late, if we both are then they really can’t do anything about it.“

Betty was surprised that the words didn’t sound pretentious coming from the other girls mouth, but humble. Veronica had pulled her inside the car, instructing her to pull the door closed. She hesitated before doing so, the door shutting with a soft click. She never thought being in a car alone with Veronica Lodge would ever be on her agenda, but here she was, with a collection of delicate tops spread over their laps that were distinctly not at all Betty’s style.

But beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Her green-blue eyes examined the choices carefully, taking in the price tags still dangling from them. Her throat was dry, her swallow surely audible. Everything was more-than-her-rent expensive. Plucking the one with the smallest numbers up, a transparent (okay maybe she had made a mistake here…) sapphire-blue blouse with colorful embroidered flowers, “This one is great,” she smiled at Veronica.

“Oh, excellent choice. Can’t go wrong with Derek Lam 10.”

She scrunched her nose up, fingering the material. Veronica had leant back against the seat, arms crossed expectantly. Betty glanced around to the car windows. “You want me to change here?”

“I expect you too, yes.”

Betty sucked in a breath of courage and peeled off the stained sweater. Thankfully, her white (unlucky, she had decided) lacy bralette would be suitable underneath the barely-considered-a-shirt. She felt Veronica’s dark eyes on her, watching as she slipped the garment on over her head. Betty tugged it down gently, it only hit the top waist of her jeans.

Veronica reached out a hand to snap the price tag off, tossing it into the empty front seat. “There, oh you have to keep it, it looks perfect on you.”

The blonde smoothed a hand down her somewhat exposed stomach, wishing she were thinner or more toned. “Sure. Thanks, Veronica.”

“You’re quite welcome, darling. Nothing bores friendship quicker than the sharing of clothes and gossiping over boys. So one down, one to go.”

Betty couldn’t help the smile blooming across her face at Veronica’s words. She could use a friend. L.A. had been a lonely place the past two years, which did nothing to help her anxiety.

“Of course, I’m looking forward to it. We’ll be spending a lot of time together after all.”

The other girl smiled back, tucking glossy black hair behind her ear. “Indeed, we might as well make the best of it.” she paused, checking the fancy was fastened around her delicate wrist. “We are incredibly late now, darling. We had better hurry along before Toni sinks her teeth into us.”

Betty nodded, climbing out the car door as gracefully as she could with shaking hands. Veronica had saddled up to her side, linking their arms together as they walked. Feeling a burst of adoration for the girl Betty felt she had wrongly judged in the past (she grew up watching Disney channel, after all) she vowed not to judge any of the other actors based on the same principle.

The ease of being by Veronica’s side made her nerves calm until they were in front of the appropriate conference room door. A wicked smirk graced the raven-haired girl’s features and she disentangled their arms. A dainty platform heeled foot kicked the door in with surprising force for such a small girl.

It had Betty stepping back, hiding away from the doorframe a ways, eyes darting around the room and taking in the scene. It looks like they had already started the read through, and the ball of nerves in her stomach started to grow again.

She did not think it would ever leave her.

.

.

.

tbc.

.

.

.

[zeemonkey1]

Why?

“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” 

I wish I were lying about all of this.

I used to ask why a lot, y’all. Why Curious George does the things he does, why he gets away with it, why everyone defers to MYH like he is the Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu of the universe. Whatever pain-starved and masochistic readers I have left will no doubt agree that I have attempted in my ramblings to understand the why, and I have failed as utterly as when I tried to play basketball in high school. Know your role, saith the universe, basketball is not for you. Not only was basketball not for me, certain things were for me, and none of them were athletic, nor were they attractive to high school girls. That, in itself, was enough why and why me and why them to keep me filling notebooks with whiny, maudlin, cringy bullshit for years, chasing an unobtainable goal through various adolescent stages of goth, emo, grunge and whatever-the-fuck else in an attempt to be something (anything) different than what I was.

It took longer than it should have for me to realize that ca-caw, ca-caw and tookie, tookie DON’T WORK.

Yell for the monster all you want; he will not show up until his time is fulfilled.

Ask why all you wish; God will ignore you and focus on the what and the who because, if thou canst not draw out leviathan with a hook, then buddy, God ain’t got to explain shit, feel me?

ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die

Consider Kafka. There is no point, and that is the point. Sometimes people wake up as insects; sometimes people get arrested and stabbed for no reason at all. Sometimes people get beaten up by hoboes and change their name to “Negro.” Sometimes the moment is structured such that our protagonist lives in a village for no reason, has sex with a barmaid for no reason, and bides his time by fighting against a faceless bureaucracy for reasons he doesn’t understand towards a goal that doesn’t matter and we don’t even get to know what that goal is because Kafka died before he could finish Das Schloss. And anyway we wouldn’t even know or care if Max Brod would have just burned the notebooks filled with whiny, maudlin, cringy bullshit like he was supposed to.

The Man in the Yellow Hat knows what Kafka was throwing down. There is no point to the monkey; there is no purpose to be served. Life is a serious of random happenings that occur without our interaction, without our blessing, and without any manner of the control we like to think we have.

This is why clowns are funny.

This is why clowns are fucking terrifying.

Clowns do not follow the rules society has set down; they perpetually exist in a netherworld of obfuscation and misdirection. Why do they look like that? Why do they do all the patently ridiculous things they do? Why do they exist?

Because they do.

In this episode, MYH and George are traveling to a clown school. Nobody knows why other than a vague MacGuffin of wanting to see Pepe El Loco, ”the world’s greatest clown performer.”

But it is not a clown school.

It is madness.

And I don’t mean Lovecraftian Mountains of Madness, where the countless gibbering things at least have an unfulfilled hunger, a desire to devour , a desperate yearning to escape the foul darkness and feast upon the cracked psyches of all who behold them. I mean the kind of madness that plagues Pink Floyd’s Lunatic on the Grass, a meaningless madness, laughing at things that aren’t funny, laughing at nothing at all.

MYH almost finds a parking space, but then a clown car full of two other clown cars and like fifteen clowns cuts him off and steals it. Thus, it is the parking lot that becomes MYH’s Kafkaesque hellscape, and Curious George must brave the clown school alone. He is told to proceed to the ninth floor, where the Pepe El Loco show will be held.

First Floor: George sees a clown dancing with three dogs dressed as clowns around a fountain that is also a clown. The lobby looks like somebody paid Betsey Johnson to gravely insult Banksy using only decorations available at Party City. Another clown comes in, joy-buzzes himself for no reason, and leaves. Then, a messenger clown gets attacked by yet another clown who comes out of the elevator with a bucket filled with confetti.

Somehow, this means two things:

A. George cannot use the elevator. He must take the stairs.

B. George acquires the messenger clown’s bag, hat, and nose, which now makes George the messenger, like what happens to that suicidal guy in the Piers Anthony book about Death.

doctor you have to help me

Third Floor: George is distracted by a clown walking down the stairs on his hands. He forgets what floor he is on, and so opens the door on the third floor to ask for directions. The third floor looks like the playroom in that Richard Pryor movie The Toy. The woman behind the desk looks like one of the Murmurs joined the Swiss Guard and sounds like Fran Drescher.

She hands George what looks like a twisted green bongpipe and then genuflects to the portrait of Dear Leader Pepe El Loco on the wall. She explains that the bongpipe is part of the “greatest clown gadget ever” and George must go to the fifth floor to pick up another piece of it. George tries the elevator, but as soon as the doors open, a clown shoots another clown out of a cannon. The clown that is thus ejaculated bounces off a trampoline and back into the elevator. Who could use an elevator with all that mindless bullshit going on? Not George—back to the stairs.

Meanwhile, MYH finds another parking spot, but it is reserved for elephants. A clown shows up on an elephant and demands that he move. MYH keeps driving; elephant is parked. The clown leaves the elephant, but only after he hits a button on his keyring and the elephant-car-alarm beeps.

At this point, I paused the show and screamed at the heavens. The heavens did not answer.

i am sad and depressed

Fifth Floor: George is dumber than a football bat. I wonder if his intelligence fades in and out, like a variable Flowers for Algernon. Sometimes he can build fabulous machines. Sometimes he can solve mysteries. Today, trapped in the Tower of Madness, George cannot count from three to five, and thus must walk all the way down to the first floor and start over.

On the first floor the clown and his dogs are still dancing. Stop asking why—hear you nothing that I say?

On the fifth floor a clown riding a baby’s tricycle and sounding like Snagglepuss gives George some sord of weird-ass metal thingie with a red disk on the end of it like that orgasm-game Commander Riker played on TNG. This clown says go to the second floor. George still can’t count, so he goes down to the first floor and watches the clown and his dogs for a bit.

A worm crawling in my brain tried to make me say WHY? but I ignored it.

life is harsh and cruel

Second Floor: Second floor was just Paul Lynde bouncing around on bedsprings tied to his shoes. George collects another piece of metal tubing, heads down to the first floor to watch the dogs-and-clown, and then climbs the stairs up to the eighth floor.

pagliacci is a famous clown

Eighth Floor: Edith Bunker is dusting a bicycle seat in front of the Macedonian flag. She gives the seat to George and tells him to go to the fourth floor.

George has an epiphany. Instead of walking back down to the first floor and then up to the fourth, he can instead tape numbers to all his fingers and use them to subtract eight from four.

MYH is still circling the parking lot. As soon as he says “I’ll NEVER find a parking spot!” a clown jumps out of nowhere and paints a parking spot around his car.

I begin to believe Marcel Duchamp and Frank Zappa wrote this episode in a Navajo sweatlodge.

pagliacci is in town today

Fourth Floor: The fourth floor is the swimming level from Super Mario Brothers. A seal gives George something that looks like a can of pepper spray. A clown with a Minnesota accent unfolds from a filing cabinet and tells George to go to floor ten.

Now, follow me on this. We were told at the beginning that Pepe El Loco’s show happens on the ninth floor. That was the whole reason George and MYH came to the clown school. Now we know there is a floor above nine. Why this made me want to eat aquarium gravel will be soon made clear.

you should go see pagliacci

Tenth Floor: Clown on stilts gives George a toilet plunger and says he better hurry to the first floor to meet Pepe El Loco. George hurries. The clown and dogs are gone. MYH and the great Pepe El Loco are there.

pagliacci will cheer you up

FIN: They all take the stairs to the ninth floor. Pepe El Loco’s all-important gadget is a disassembled pogo stick with the plunger as the bouncy part. He gets to the center ring of a three-ring circus just in time to bounce around and do little flips with it.

Y’all.

Y’ALL.

The ninth floor of this ten-floor building is a cavernous bigtop the size of the dadgum Astrodome. The ceiling is made of vaulted tent-canvas.

There is no tenth floor. THERE IS NO TENTH FLOOR EVEN THOUGH I SAW GEORGE GO TO THE TENTH FLOOR AND RETRIEVE A TOILET PLUNGER FROM A CLOWN ON STILTS

but doctor I am pagliacci

[mrmaleficent]

Ummm.... probably unpopular but Imma say it anyway...

Not every TV show needs to be rebooted. Hell, most of them don’t. Raven’s House is sometimes funny. Fuller House was trash. 90210 was nice for like the first half of the first season. Dallas was even cool until JR passed away. I know people were happy when Queen Latifah said Living Single might be coming back.... and I didn’t say anything because I do love the original show- but if they come back and they’re 40 and 50 year olds still Living Single, wouldn’t that fuckin’ be depressing? . There was some talk about Charmed coming back but being set in the 70′s... bitch, why? No! Leave Charmed alone. Grown-ish.... I’m entertained with the show, but of all the characters, I always felt like Zoe was the least charismatic. If they someone was going to get a spin-off, I would’ve thought it would be Pops, the mom or Charlie- which, I guess Charlie is a part of Grown-ish so whatever. I do like Grownish though. Roseanne... how are they even gonna get around the fact that Dan is dead? But I digress... However, the latest show to get talked about as a reboot is Martin... fuckin Martin. Why? Some shows were good for their antics, but don’t nobody wanna see old ass Martin & Gina when Tommy has passed away. And do y’all think empowered black  twitter is gonna let half the shit Martin used to say to Pam slide? Some stuff is classic because it’s relevant to a time period.I think Hollywood is suffering from it’s own MAGA nostalgia. Hollywood wants to capitalize off an old idea instead of generating something new and taking a risk with a new investment. I posted before, the only and I mean absolute only show I’d be interested in a reboot of is The Nanny (probably my favorite sitcom of all time). Maybe something where Fran and Max have gotten divorced and Gracie  moves home, so Fran ends up watching her kids. IDK. But the rest of this? The 90′s was a great period.... but bitch, that was 20 years ago now. Let that shit go.

[capath]

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[the-firebird69]

And Trump is getting ready to try and reach the ships as our others as we said but we are telling you it's a large scale assault and attempt and it will have an impact and both sides will fall it's kind of a big huge jerk off session but it's going to end soon and Stan's reign of terror will be over everybody's tortured by it stand it does nothing it bother with him and starts hammering on you cuz he has to he become stupid I got to tell you what it's more like a lazy picked up the ball and said this guy is kicking the s*** out of everybody. He just sits there saying the stuff about what's broken and he's not fixing and it's not really legal and he's been doing it for a year and really our son says just about anybody would who has that little bit of power and it's true and so he's getting his ass kick today and we think tonight is the beginning of the Saga, the Star wars saga and we think that he fights today in a cab, and Lord Vader says that it is Han Solo and it means that he is without the Han and he's going solo because he believes his program computer can do it and it can't and he freezes him not bush. And he's a spaz but I guess he'll get out because it looks like my wife is freeing him. So maybe it's Ken. It says if so where is numb nuts in the movie. stan thinks his kids are working for him, well in fact it seems like they are the trumpsters and that's why it's an attitude. A lot of people think he's fran tarkin. It's true if that's who he is and the rebels are part ken. Our son says that makes a lot of sense, as a lot of Stan's kids would be gifted and would be hit by bjA and trumpsters and that's what happens here now it happened before. Already picked on people so Stan is up there and he's doing the job and Trump would not leave it alone and it's still not and they're his guys up there so he can't stop Trump and the max are kind of supporting stan but to take the fleet and they're going to head into it now using the rebels and Trump who took the fleet from the clones. The rebels that are going after Trump and Trump says he's not on those bases so the question is where his basis if they're not on more like basis and as son says you're on these empire bases and they're in the empire ships and other genre that's true that's where they are. They took like half The fleets but they're fighting clones fiercely as are the others. Shortly people figure out that Stan has nobody and he's a sad person as well as Sherry and he says she's sadder. That can signal opening coming up. She wants to be a superhuman DNA he says what are you going to do with it she says use it if I'm sharing Stone I look pretty good I guess for you he says yeah pretty good.

Thor Freya

[thedesperatehousehusband]

You Named Your Baby What Now?

Naming a child is stressful. Parents tend to have differing opinions. Prefer different names. Have family traditions. Like a “junior” or the “second”. Middle names as first names. Middle names as the mom’s maiden name. Three first names like Zachary Ty Bryan or Jonathon Taylor Thomas.

I have already ranted about dubious spelling. The misuse of the letter “Y” is troubling and I view it as the precipice of the fall of modern society.

No, today is about old names. Because there are some old timey names that are popular and hip and cool. But others that have not really come back to the limelight. They don’t really roll off the tongue. I’m not consulting any sources for the names I will judge and discuss. So if I miss something that you like or named your baby, fuck off. If I dislike something you like, I don’t care. You have bad taste. If I dislike what you named your baby, make better choices.

1.      Owen – I simply and 100% approve. I love kids named Owen. Every little boy named Owen needs hipster clothes, cool little boy glasses and should be artsy.

2.      Oliver – Ditto the above but Oliver can also play soccer.

3.      Vivian – I approve. But only of this spelling. Unless you are French or from Quebec, spelling it Vivienne is pretentious and douchey.

4.      August (nicknamed Augie) – It is a very specific child who can pull this name off. Parents, watch out. You probably need to live in Portland, OR for this to work. No kid named Augie is going to make it in Wyoming.

5.      Violet – Any trend that can be attributed to Jennifer Garner is a trend I can wholeheartedly support. I love Violet Affleck.

6.      Clarence – This old man name isn’t coming back into fashion any time soon.

7.      Ethel – Another old lady name I can’t see making a comeback.

8.      Elsie – I feel like I heard about a baby named Elsie recently. I’ve got mixed emotions. I had a great aunt named Elsie. I believe she was 100 when she was born. This is a child that is likely doomed to have rheumatism and wear crocheted shawls. Proceed with caution. But I fully condone this as a name for a dog.

9.      Lucy – Very cute.

10.   Lucille – Less cute.

11.   Maude – I don’t know if anyone is naming their baby Maude but I support it. I applaud homages to Bea Arthur.

12.   To that end….Beatrice – I’m torn. I think it could work. But, like Augie, any little girl named Bea is going to need to possess a lot of confidence. However, Beatrix is off the table. Not an option.

13.   Bernard – Very few have the chutzpah to pull this off. Unless you are born a Jewish grandpa and go by Bernie.

14.   Same with Morty or Saul.

15.   Chester – Nope. There’s far too much poetry and limerick shit that will haunt this child for his entire life. Nothing good can come of this.

16.   Homer – I think I can build a campaign for this one.

17.   Max – I love it. But just Max. Maxwell is a bridge too far and embodies someone who wears ascots and owns yachts. Nobody likes that guy.

18.   Percy – Make it happen.

19.   Bruce – Not an amazing name. Though I do love “Bruce Wayne” and “Bruce Banner” but RIP “Bruce Jenner”.

20.   Florence – I’m leaning towards no. But I had a great aunt Florence who made the shit out of some homemade caramels that she wrapped in waxed paper. Personal connections to these names matter. But it may be tainted by Flo from the Progressive spots.

21.   Bertha – Like Chester for boys, this name is wrought with issues. Big Bertha is a golf club for shit’s sake. You can’t name your baby after a golf club.

22.   Mabel – Sort in the vein of Elsie, it could work or it could be a miserable failure. This child probably needs to be a free spirit and belong to a grocery co-op.

23.   Clara – No offense because I believe this name is in use in the real world of today but this is a name for a cow.

24.   Bernice – It’s not working for me.

25.   Wayne – I have very strong feelings about the name Wayne and they are not good feelings. They typically get me riled up. Don’t name your baby Wayne.

26.   Walter – I’m almost OK with a kid named Wally. But Walter is just very, very old doddering man-ish.

27.   Stanley – It’s just not good.

28.   Ralph – There is nothing redeeming about anyone name Ralph. Don’t trust anyone named Ralph. Ralph will TP your house and poop in your yard.

29.   Melvin – No. Just no. It will never make a comeback.

30.   Doris – Totally appropriate for a 65-year old woman who enjoys the forgiving fashion available at Chico’s. Not an infant.

31.   Marcia/Marsha – See above.

32.   Frances – I can convince myself this could be cute. Frannie or Fran are fun.

33.   Rhonda – I mean this to be directly judgmental. Nothing implied whatsoever. Rhonda is at the top of my list of trashiest names of all time.

34.   Rita – I think a kid could pull this off. I really do.

35.   Ruth – I think this one is on the cusp of being trendy.

36.   Wanda – I have known very few people named Wanda but the one I remember most is a woman from CK in Chicago. Rightfully so, she was referred to as Wicked Wanda behind her back. Terrible name.

37.   Shirley – Don’t you dare call me Shirley. Leslie Nielsen said it in Airplane. Heed the warning.

38.   Donna – Despite Tori Spelling playing the character of “Donna” on the original Beverly Hills 90210, I have never met a Donna who isn’t currently pushing 70. No one in 2018 looks into a stroller (or what is now apparently referred to as a “travel system”) and says in baby talk: “How is sweet little Donna today?”

39.   And finally the piece de resistence…..Let’s talk about Linda. One of the most popular names in the 1950s. Making every person named Linda 65+. I’ve been hot on this topic since last season on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt­ when Titus dated a guy who had adopted a baby and named her Linda. Titus was baffled and said how he could not look into a crib and say Baby Linda. I agree. It’s a great name for a mom who had her kids in the late 70s or early 80s. Had a sensible haircut, drove a Dodge Caravan and made a fair amount of casseroles. But in 2018 I cannot imagine naming an infant Linda. So of course I am tormenting my work BFF and favorite co-worker (Marisa). She is currently preggers and having a girl. She and her husband are not sharing the baby name until she’s born so I have taken to calling the little one Baby Linda. I put it in emails. I say it out loud. It’s potentially annoying but I find it hilarious. Because you can’t name a baby Linda.

These are my thoughts. Take them. Leave them. If just one person reconsiders naming their baby Bertha then my work here is done.

[rebeccadesigncontext]

Scott McCloud Understanding Comics

          “As children, we “show and tell” INTERCHANGEABLY, (in a way that can be exchanged), words and images combining to transmit a connected series of ideas.”

·         We can show what is being done using little to no explanation using words, or narrate what is going on so the reader may follow more easily.

·         “Generally speaking, the more is said words, the more the pictures can be freed to go exploring and vice versa.”

·         Giving pictures narrative can give then a more integral meaning.

·         However, you can also change the pictures to show a different perspective then before and make the drawings more abstract.

“I guess the basic difference is that animation is sequential in time but not spatially Juxtaposed as comics are.” p.7

Juxtaposed: The notion placing something close together or side by side, especially for comparison and contrast

Scott McCloud looks at the history of comics by looking at pre-Colombian picture manuscripts and tapestry as well as looking into pictorial languages such as the Egyptians.  

The mention of Lynd Ward looking at his work known as the `silent` Woodcut novels that are praised by comic artists for his work due to the negative connotations of comics. 

Frans Masereel - Passionate Journey, 1919.

“Yet, despite the lack of a conventional story, there is no mistaking the central role which sequence plays in the work. Ernst doesn`t want you to browse the thing. he wants you to read it!” p. 19

The pictures from Max Ernst`s A week of kindness is very similar to a comic in the way it has been portrayed for it is showing the viewer a story that he presents, not as standalone works of art but a novel to which the viewer should read to understand the story.

“Pictures in sequence are finally being recognized as the excellent communication tool that they are, but still nobody refers to them as comics! `Diagrams` sounds more dignified, I suppose.” p.20

This means that the word comic is conceived negatively by many people. This maybe due to the connection to children's comics and other picture books.

“There is a long-standing relationship between comics and cartoons.” p.21

“But they are not the same thing! One is an approach to picture-making -- a style, if you like -- while the other is a medium.” p.21

“We may try to understand the world of comics around us, a part of that world will always lie in shadow -- a mystery.” p.23

We may never know the understanding of comics as a whole but what we can do is understand what we already know to make a sense of what comics are about and he also states, “our attempts to define comics are an on-going process.” p.23

Symbols could be in one category of icons.

“Words are totally abstract icons.” p.28

We could use words in a creative way when drawing such as on p.28 he has the drawing of a man with the word eye on his face instead of a drawn eye.

That the drawing of people within comic books can also be an abstract character, however if it goes to abstract then it looks more like an icon or as Scott states “the cartoon?” p.29

Cartoons are an icon due to there popularity through comics and cartoons and how people respond more to a cartoon character more then a realistic due to their simplistic nature. Scott McCloud calls this “as a form of amplification through simplification.” p. 30

“Cartooning isn`t just a way of drawing it`s a way of seeing!” p.31

The way of simplifying an idea of something like a story and focusing on that to present to the audience, whether it being a film or comic book.

Another fact is the way the viewer can see themselves as certain iconic characters, especially those who they can relate to and feel sympathy for the character the story revolves around. 

“We humans are a self-centered race.” p.32

Humans can make out faces in every day objects and Scott McCloud identifies that “we assign identities and emotions where none exist.” He also goes on to say “we make the world over in our image.” In a sense we believe that we have seen iconic characters in many shapes and forms that we can make characters.

“We don`t just observe the cartoon, we become it!” p.36

Again people see themselves as the character which in turn you feel more connected with them throughout the story. And it could also be another way to escape reality and get lost in the story.

“Non-visual self-awareness can, to a lesser degree, still apply to our whole bodies.” p.37

During an interaction as Scott McCloud shows, two people could be having a discussion but their minds could be elsewhere such has the man talking is more worried about dropping his drink and the woman listening to the man is thinking of her ankle, which could mean she is in pain. This could also say that we wear masks to present a false emotion without showing how they really feel.

Clothes can be a representation of ourselves to show other people what we are interested in, what our personalities could be like or how we want to be seen as, if someone dresses in dark clothing people could perceive them as goth or if they wore baggy clothing, people could perceive them as having a laid back personality.

“Very iconic characters with unusually realistic backgrounds” p.42

“This combination allows readers to mask themselves in a character and safely enter a sensually stimulating world.” p.43

Once people place themselves in iconic characters as to sympathise with the character throughout the adventure and the story.

- Jacques Tardi

- Carl Barks

- Jaime Hernandei

- Dave Sim

- Osamu Tezuka

Complex, (consisting of many different and connected parts). - Simple, (plain, basic, or uncomplicated in form).

Realistic, (representing things in a way that is accurate and true to life). - Iconic, (relating to or of the nature of an icon).

Objective, (not influenced by personal feelings). - Subjective, (based on or influenced by personal feelings).

Specific, (clearly defined or identified). - Universal, (applicable to all cases).

- Mary Fleener

- Jack Kirby

- Stan Lee

- Sergio Aragones

- Dave MsKean 

“Capable of expressing each artist`s innermost needs and ideas.” p.57

Artists are capable of creating a comic in their own visual art style to portray the story in their image.