#& also will probably not lend me another camera to do my half of the filming that i need to do so i don’t fail this class

[junewild]

paid $130 to have a package overnighted & they simply did not deliver it :)

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Here's a shortlist of those who realized that I — a cis woman who'd identified as heterosexual for decades of life — was in fact actually bi, long before I realized it myself recently: my sister, all my friends, my boyfriend, and the TikTok algorithm.

On TikTok, the relationship between user and algorithm is uniquely (even sometimes uncannily) intimate. An app which seemingly contains as many multitudes of life experiences and niche communities as there are people in the world, we all start in the lowest common denominator of TikTok. Straight TikTok (as it's popularly dubbed) initially bombards your For You Page with the silly pet videos and viral teen dances that folks who don't use TikTok like to condescendingly reduce it to.

Quickly, though, TikTok begins reading your soul like some sort of divine digital oracle, prying open layers of your being never before known to your own conscious mind. The more you use it, the more tailored its content becomes to your deepest specificities, to the point where you get stuff that's so relatable that it can feel like a personal attack (in the best way) or (more dangerously) even a harmful trigger from lifelong traumas.

For example: I don't know what dark magic (read: privacy violations) immediately clued TikTok into the fact that I was half-Brazilian, but within days of first using it, Straight TikTok gave way to at first Portuguese-speaking then broader Latin TikTok. Feeling oddly seen (being white-passing and mostly American-raised, my Brazilian identity isn't often validated), I was liberal with the likes, knowing that engagement was the surefire way to go deeper down this identity-affirming corner of the social app.

TikTok made lots of assumptions from there, throwing me right down the boundless, beautiful, and oddest multiplicities of Alt TikTok, a counter to Straight TikTok's milquetoast mainstreamness.

Home to a wide spectrum of marginalized groups, I was giving out likes on my FYP like Oprah, smashing that heart button on every type of video: from TikTokers with disabilities, Black and Indigenous creators, political activists, body-stigma-busting fat women, and every glittering shade of the LGBTQ cornucopia. The faves were genuine, but also a way to support and help offset what I knew about the discriminatory biases in TikTok's algorithm.

My diverse range of likes started to get more specific by the minute, though. I wasn't just on general Black TikTok anymore, but Alt Cottagecore Middle-Class Black Girl TikTok (an actual label one creator gave her page's vibes). Then it was Queer Latina Roller Skating Girl TikTok, Women With Non-Hyperactive ADHD TikTok, and then a double whammy of Women Loving Women (WLW) TikTok alternating between beautiful lesbian couples and baby bisexuals.

Looking back at my history of likes, the transition from queer “ally” to “salivating simp” is almost imperceptible.

There was no one precise "aha" moment. I started getting "put a finger down" challenges that wouldn't reveal what you were putting a finger down for until the end. Then, 9-fingers deep (winkwink), I'd be congratulated for being 100% bisexual. Somewhere along the path of getting served multiple WLW Disney cosplays in a single day and even dom lesbian KinkTok roleplay — or whatever the fuck Bisexual Pirate TikTok is — deductive reasoning kind of spoke for itself.

But I will never forget the one video that was such a heat-seeking missile of a targeted attack that I was moved to finally text it to my group chat of WLW friends with a, "Wait, am I bi?" To which the overwhelming consensus was, "Magic 8 Ball says, 'Highly Likely.'"

Serendipitously posted during Pride Month, the video shows a girl shaking her head at the caption above her head, calling out confused and/or closeted queers who say shit like, "I think everyone is a LITTLE bisexual," to the tune of "Closer" by The Chainsmokers. When the lyrics land on the word "you," she points straight at the screen — at me — her finger and inquisitive look piercing my hopelessly bisexual soul like Cupid's goddamn arrow.

Oh no, the voice inside my head said, I have just been mercilessly perceived.

As someone who had, in fact, done feminist studies at a tiny liberal arts college with a gender gap of about 70 percent women, I'd of course dabbled. I've always been quick to bring up the Kinsey scale, to champion a true spectrum of sexuality, and to even declare (on multiple occasions) that I was, "straight, but would totally fuck that girl!"

Oh no, the voice inside my head returned, I've literally just been using extra words to say I was bi.

After consulting the expertise of my WLW friend group (whose mere existence, in retrospect, also should've clued me in on the flashing neon pink, purple, and blue flag of my raging bisexuality), I ran to my boyfriend to inform him of the "news."

"Yeah, baby, I know. We all know," he said kindly.

"How?!" I demanded.

Well for one, he pointed out, every time we came across a video of a hot girl while scrolling TikTok together, I'd without fail watch the whole way through, often more than once, regardless of content. (Apparently, straight girls do not tend to do this?) For another, I always breathlessly pointed out when we'd pass by a woman I found beautiful, often finding a way to send a compliment her way. ("I'm just a flirt!" I used to rationalize with a hand wave, "Obvs, I'm not actually sexually attracted to them!") Then, I guess, there were the TED Talk-like rants I'd subject him to about the thinly veiled queer relationship in Adventure Time between Princess Bubblegum and Marcelyne the Vampire Queen — which the cowards at Cartoon Network forced creators to keep as subtext!

And, well, when you lay it all out like that...

But my TikTok-fueled bisexual awakening might actually speak less to the omnipotence of the app's algorithm, and more to how heteronormativity is truly one helluva drug.

Sure, TikTok bombarded me with the thirst traps of my exact type of domineering masc lady queers, who reduced me to a puddle of drool I could no longer deny. But I also recalled a pivotal moment in college when I briefly questioned my heterosexuality, only to have a lesbian friend roll her eyes and chastise me for being one of those straight girls who leads Actual Queer Women on. I figured she must know better. So I never pursued any of my lady crushes in college, which meant I never experimented much sexually, which made me conclude that I couldn't call myself bisexual if I'd never had actual sex with a woman. I also didn't really enjoy lesbian porn much, though the fact that I'd often find myself fixating on the woman during heterosexual porn should've clued me into that probably coming more from how mainstream lesbian porn is designed for straight men.

The ubiquity of heterormativity, even when unwittingly perpetrated by members of the queer community, is such an effective self-sustaining cycle. Aside from being met with queer-gating (something I've since learned bi folks often experience), I had a hard time identifying my attraction to women as genuine attraction, simply because it felt different to how I was attracted to men.

Heteronormativity is truly one helluva drug.

So much of women's sexuality — of my sexuality — can feel defined by that carnivorous kind of validation you get from men. I met no societal resistance in fully embodying and exploring my desire for men, either (which, to be clear, was and is insatiable slut levels of wanting that peen.) But in retrospect, I wonder how many men I slept with not because I was truly attracted to them, but because I got off on how much they wanted me.

My attraction to women comes with a different texture of eroticism. With women (and bare with a baby bi, here), the attraction feels more shared, more mutual, more tender rather than possessive. It's no less raw or hot or all-consuming, don't get me wrong. But for me at least, it comes more from a place of equality rather than just power play. I love the way women seem to see right through me, to know me, without us really needing to say a word.

I am still, as it turns out, a sexual submissive through-and-through, regardless of what gender my would-be partner is. But, ignorantly and unknowingly, I'd been limiting my concept of who could embody dominant sexual personas to cis men. But when TikTok sent me down that glorious rabbit hole of masc women (who know exactly what they're doing, btw), I realized my attraction was not to men, but a certain type of masculinity. It didn't matter which body or genitalia that presentation came with.

There is something about TikTok that feels particularly suited to these journeys of sexual self-discovery and, in the case of women loving women, I don't think it's just the prescient algorithm. The short-form video format lends itself to lightning bolt-like jolts of soul-bearing nakedness, with the POV camera angles bucking conventions of the male gaze, which entrenches the language of film and TV in heterosexual male desire.

In fairness to me, I'm far from the only one who missed their inner gay for a long time — only to have her pop out like a queer jack-in-the-box throughout a near year-long quarantine that led many of us to join TikTok. There was the baby bi mom, and scores of others who no longer had to publicly perform their heterosexuality during lockdown — only to realize that, hey, maybe I'm not heterosexual at all?

Flooded with video after video affirming my suspicions, reflecting my exact experiences as they happened to others, the change in my sexual identity was so normalized on TikTok that I didn't even feel like I needed to formally "come out." I thought this safe home I'd found to foster my baby bisexuality online would extend into the real world.

But I was in for a rude awakening.

Testing out my bisexuality on other platforms, casually referring to it on Twitter, posting pictures of myself decked out in a rainbow skate outfit (which I bought before realizing I was queer), I received nothing but unquestioning support and validation. Eventually, I realized I should probably let some members of my family know before they learned through one of these posts, though.

Daunted by the idea of trying to tell my Latina Catholic mother and Swiss Army veteran father (who's had a crass running joke about me being a "lesbian" ever since I first declared myself a feminist at age 12), I chose the sibling closest to me. Seeing as how gender studies was one of her majors in college too, I thought it was a shoo-in. I sent an off-handed, joke-y but serious, "btw I'm bi now!" text, believing that's all that would be needed to receive the same nonchalant acceptance I found online.

It was not.

I didn't receive a response for two days. Hurt and panicked by what was potentially my first mild experience of homophobia, I called them out. They responded by insisting we need to have a phone call for such "serious" conversations. As I calmly tried to express my hurt on said call, I was told my text had been enough to make this sibling worry about my mental wellbeing. They said I should be more understanding of why it'd be hard for them to (and I'm paraphrasing) "think you were one way for twenty-eight years" before having to contend with me deciding I was now "something else."

But I wasn't "something else," I tried to explain, voice shaking. I hadn't knowingly been deceiving or hiding this part of me. I'd simply discovered a more appropriate label. But it was like we were speaking different languages. Other family members were more accepting, thankfully. There are many ways I'm exceptionally lucky, my IRL environment as supportive as Baby Bi TikTok. Namely, I'm in a loving relationship with a man who never once mistook any of it as a threat, instead giving me all the space in the world to understand this new facet of my sexuality.

I don't have it all figured out yet. But at least when someone asks if I listen to Girl in Red on social media, I know to answer with a resounding, "Yes," even though I've never listened to a single one of her songs. And for now, that's enough.

[specterchasing-a]

Hold On (Part 2) || Eddie & Alfie

TIMING: One month ago, directly after part one.

LOCATION: En route to the woods.

PARTIES: @yikesimonfire​ & @specterchasing​

SUMMARY: Alfie and Eddie have a heart-to-heart in the car.

CONTENT: Internalized homophobia tw

Eddie mindfully secured his filming equipment in the trunk of Alfie’s odiously yellow station wagon. As he took a step back to close the hatch, an idea occurred to him. He hastily ducked back into the trunk and unzipped his bag to pilfer for his camera. Now satisfied, Eddie slammed the door shut and walked briskly to the car’s passenger-side. The moment he settled into his seat, a pronounced frown settled into his features.

“When are you gonna get your AC fixed?” Eddie implored, his gaze settling on his chaperone. “Every time I get in this car, it feels like the air’s been replaced by uncomfortably warm dog breath.” He refrained from adding that it smelled like it as well. Alfie didn’t need to be subjected to verbal beration of that magnitude after agreeing to accompany him tonight.

While Eddie packed his gear into the back, Alfie hopped into the driver’s seat, helplessly turning the ignition repeatedly until the engine sputtered to life. Immediately, he was hit with a blast of cold air before the air conditioning unit forgot how to work. The ration of cool air was quickly replaced with a suffocatingly stale breeze. Alfie stretched over to unlock the passenger door and cranked the window open before rolling his own window down to allow a more comfortable airflow. Soon enough, Eddie was in the seat beside him.

A laugh reverberated in his chest at Eddie’s comment. “What do you mean?” Alfie asked, emphatically waving his hand at the dashboard. “It’s doing its best. Besides, parts are hard to come by.” That’s what he got for being cheap. What he needed was a new car altogether, but that wasn’t happening any time soon. The wagon got him from point A to B; that would have to be enough. It wasn’t like he needed a functioning air conditioner anyway, not that Eddie was privy as to why. “We can always take yours,” he offered with a small smirk.

“I hate to break it to you, but its best doesn’t cut it. It needs to do another car’s best,” Eddie riffed while opening the viewer on his camera. With the press of a button, it became a diligent archivist of its owner’s per view. Without warning, Eddie lifted the device to eye-level and pointed it in Alfie’s direction. He knew well and good his friend didn’t enjoy being in the crosshairs of his filming, but that never stopped him in the past. Why would it deter him now?

“Trust me, I would love to take the Mini, but it’s… well, mini, and you know that. As quirky as your car is, it has better storage options.” Eddie’s voice lacked interest—he found himself too caught-up in recording to have any to spare. “You have a nice profile, have I said that before?” he asked, slipping further into his seat as he rested his feet on the dashboard. Meanwhile, his eyes (and camera) remained fixated on Alfie.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” Alfie chuckled as he shifted the car into reverse and eased out of his parking space. With his eyes now fixed on the path ahead, Alfie didn’t notice the camera focused on him. “You really should have considered that when you bought it. What would you do if I ever wasn’t around to lend my cargo space?”

The compliment that soon fell from Eddie’s lips made Alfie’s brow raise. His eyes flickered to look at Eddie, only to find that he was being filmed. “Wha— Christ’s sake, Eddie, would you turn that thing off?” A fire rose in his cheeks, coloring them a vibrant red. He quickly turned his head away, but was unable to avoid the camera’s watching eye. Damn it. He hated being recorded; Eddie knew that. “Or, I’unno… turn it somewhere else, at least?”

As the car reached the edge of the parking lot, Alfie applied the brakes and looked back at Eddie, the blush still prominent on his face. “And buckle,” he scolded — albeit playfully — with raised eyebrows. “Seriously, are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“Die, probably,” Eddie deadpanned. If he were to make an effort, his car could likely hold whatever necessities he needed it to. Alfie probably knew that, too. However, if he went that route, he wouldn’t be able to spend his time being a nuisance in the passenger’s seat. He much preferred reclining and filming to focusing on the road. A miracle happened the day he got his license, that much was certain.

Alfie’s reaction to being caught on candid camera inspired an impish grin from Eddie. He noticed the change of color in his cheeks—so did his heart, actually. It drummed desperately within his chest, as if also begging Eddie to rethink staring at Alfie for so long. Unfortunately, he rarely listened to what either of them had to say. “I can’t believe you hate art so much that you’d deprive me of my muse,” he said.

Eddie rolled his eyes, also playfully, when Alfie scolded him. “Not today,” he answered before he quickly switched his camera off and buckled in like he was told.

Deprived of his main source of entertainment, Eddie resorted to turning on the radio. Like everything else in Alfie’s car, the display refused to work properly. What should have been words and numbers looked more like hieroglyphs. Eddie briefly toggled through stations before a familiar tune (‘Hold On’ by Wilson Phillips) caused him to turn the radio off with evident disdain. 

A strange sensation tugged behind Alfie's navel at the suggestion that Eddie would die without him. It wasn't true, of course. With any luck, Eddie would go on fine without him; he had to. Still, the thought made him feel… guilty? Alfie's time in this life was growing increasingly limited. He couldn't afford to think about it now. It would only make the time he did have left with Eddie less worthwhile, for fear of causing him any grief. 

"Your muse?" Alfie nearly cooed. "Please—" his voice cracked. "I have complete faith that you'll find something better." Once again unable to make eye-contact with Eddie today, Alfie shook his head with a breathy chuckle and rolled his eyes. His attention was back on the road and as the seat belt beside him clicked into place, assuring Eddie's safety, Alfie merged onto the street to begin their journey.

It didn't take long for Eddie to begin fidgeting. He knew well enough by now that finding a suitable radio station in the station wagon was unlikely. Alfie wouldn't complain about the music as long as it kept the camera off him. But when Eddie abruptly cut the radio off, he successfully piqued Alfie's curiosity. 

"What was that about?" he asked, an impish grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes darting between Eddie and the road. "You trying to tell me you hate Wilson Phillips or something? And you were just getting onto me about hating art," Alfie teased.

Alfie’s insistence that Eddie would eventually move on to something better almost made him laugh. For years, his thoughts revolved around his reclusive neighbor and not much else. Alfie and Youtube; that’s what filled his days since he moved downtown. “No, I won’t,” he gently corrected him. “Besides, I don’t want to.” It didn’t worry him to voice his genuine fondness for Alfie, not when they had years of friendship behind them. At this point, it would’ve been more alarming if he didn’t love the guy enough to negate his self-deprecation.

“Wilson Phillips is not art.” Eddie emphatically pointed a finger at Alfie. “Not that song, at least. ‘Hold On’ is trite and cheap. And, all it does is make me think about the time I spent in group therapy as a teenager when our counselor insisted on performing an acoustic version at the end of every single session. Every session, Alfie,” he looked at his chauffeur with bewildered eyes. “She even made eye contact with us while she sang—who does that? I never felt like I could look away, not when she was tearfully pleading with me to break free from the chains. It was torture. Wilson Phillips is torture, not art.”

Alfie didn't want to argue about how quickly Eddie would (or wouldn't) move on. No matter how much Eddie didn't want to, there would come a point that he would have no other option. Besides, Alfie playing the part of Eddie's muse was clearly a joke. Or, perhaps more accurately, a metaphor for their friendship. All that mattered was Eddie had not meant it in a literal sense. So why had he allowed himself to become so flustered over it?

"Bullshit!" squawked Alfie, who was now fully prepared to enlighten Eddie about his previous love affair with the early 90s pop scene. Before he had a chance to share however, Eddie shared his own history with the song. Alfie's jaw slackened and he shot Eddie an incredulous look. "Every session?" he parroted in disbelief. His face scrunched as he imagined what kind of hellscape that must have been. Being forced to listen to acoustic covers was bad enough, but on top of awkward eye-contact? 

"Okay, yeah… no. I see your point," Alfie softly spoke after a moment. "Who in their right mind thought she was still fit to be a counselor after the first time that happened, anyway? Like — I'unno, you'd think someone would've had to question her capability or whatever at that point." 

"Still," he continued after making a point to showcase his disapproval with a series of disdainful facial expressions. "I stand by what I said. I think there's something beautiful in wanting to turn around and say goodbye — much like how you must have felt after being subjected to that special brand of hell."

Eddie adopted a tight-lipped grin when Alfie conceded. “Every session,” he confirmed. Looking back, he couldn’t remember liking anything about group therapy. Owning up to his issues should’ve never been something that required an audience. As extroverted as Eddie could be, he kept his cards close to his chest when it came to his emotions. Alfie knew him better than anyone else and even he didn’t get the whole truth half the time.

Eddie let out a terse laugh at Alfie’s final comment. “Real cute,” he snarked playfully before his expression became more serious. “It didn’t help that I hated therapy in general. Not only did it well and truly suck to talk about my feelings, but the only reason my parents even made me go was the whole… ghost-vision deal.” Eddie emphasized his annoyance by accompanying the tail-end of his sentence with a flippant flap of his hand. “Funny, that they pegged the one thing that made me happy as the problem.” His brow raised as he pursed his lips.

“But, uh, wow—sorry about the impromptu sharetime,” Eddie said when shame began to collect in chest. “Don’t mind me complaining about therapy while simultaneously making you my therapist.” He hoped levity would be the cure for oversharing.

Alfie’s face lit up at Eddie’s initial response. “I’m the cutest, obviously,” he chided with a lopsided grin. He couldn’t recall any previous conversations about Eddie’s group therapy, but he was well aware of his friend’s relationship to his parents. Maybe he had mentioned it before; it was truly a testament to how solid Alfie’s active listening skills were. “Fuck your parents!” his voice trilled. “Seriously — when have they ever cared about your happiness?” His commiseration was probably unnecessary; Eddie didn’t need another reminder that his family were awful. “Sorry… too far,” he added with a small frown. 

With a clear road ahead, Alfie lifted a hand from the steering wheel and maneuvered it around to rest on Eddie’s shoulder. “Hey, man, don’t sweat it — really. I will gladly take an impromptu sharetime over an awkwardly silent drive to our inevitable doom.” His gaze shifted to Eddie as he gave him an apologetic smile, allowing his hand to linger a bit longer than was probably acceptable. “Besides,” Alfie added, gently squeezing Eddie’s shoulder before returning his hand to the wheel, “that’s what friends are for, right?” 

It wasn’t often that Alfie referred to them as “friends”. The word was scattered few and far between, but that didn’t make it any less true. “From now on, that song is banned. We don’t talk about it. We don’t listen to it. It’s purged from our lives. What song? Wilson Phillips, who? Never heard of ‘em!” Alfie tilted his head in Eddie’s direction and peered at him expectantly, waiting for some sort of positive reaction to ensure he’d sufficed at making his friend feel better. 

Eddie glanced at Alfie in surprised amusement after his initial outburst. “You’re right and you should say it,” he encouraged in a light-hearted tone that didn’t fit the topic. If he didn’t try to lessen the weight of the conversation, he might have to admit to how much it hurt to discuss. He couldn’t risk letting Alfie know the extent of his damage. 

When Alfie’s hand landed on his shoulder, Eddie felt a lump form in his throat. Usually, he initiated whatever physical contact they shared. He didn’t know how to react to being on the receiving end. Alfie’s mention of ‘inevitable doom’ managed to ease his uncertainty. Eddie replied with a soft huff of laughter, his eyes shining with fondness.

Soon enough, Alfie deprived Eddie of his hand, but didn’t give him much time to be upset about it. He called them friends. “Oh, is that what we are?” Eddie asked with a teasing grin. “Could’ve sworn our relationship was more like whatever Bugs and Elmer had going on.” His expression softened, though his grin remained throughout Alfie’s condemnation of Wilson Phillips.

“You’re…. You’re a really good guy, Alfie,” Eddie said. “Thanks for humoring me tonight.”

It didn’t seem appropriate to continue down the path of shit-talking Eddie’s parents, no matter how much they deserved it. Eddie didn’t enlist Alfie on this adventure just to talk about all of his woes. If he was going to do this, then goddamn it, he was going to make the best out of it. Eddie deserved that much. “‘Course we’re friends,” Alfie returned with a playful sneer. “Though, I think you’re way off base with that one. If anything, we’re more like Bugs and Daffy.” His eyes focused on the road, but his mind was lost in thought. “Actually—” Alfie corrected, “come to think of it, that’s really fuckin’ accurate. Just, y’know, don’t ask me who’s who.”

In an instant, Alfie’s eyes were back on Eddie. Immense guilt crept over him for trying to turn down the invitation in the first place. It was glaringly obvious that Eddie was trying to involve him in his life; something Alfie tried to avoid with just about everyone who did. His heart ached. He didn’t want to refuse Eddie, truly. There just happened to be parts of his life that were better off private. But it wouldn’t kill him to hang out with the guy more every now and then. Well, given Eddie’s track record, it very well could. But it would be worth it… RIght?

“Listen, Ed… I know I’m a pain in the ass. It’s not — I don’t do things like this, y’know? I stay at home like the grumpy hermit crab that I am and that’s how I like it.” Apologies were never Alfie’s strong suit. It was rare that the words “I’m sorry” ever made it out of his mouth. “But I’m already pretty glad I came with you.” Once again, he was dancing the conversation dangerously close to heavy. Alfie mentally berated himself; he needed to keep things light. “But if we make it out alive, you do still owe me those Baby Ruths,” he teased, lightly nudging Eddie’s arm with his own.

[longgae]

11 celebrities who've been called out for homophobic comments

This is gonna be interesting...

1. In 2020, Twitter users accused J.K. Rowling of transphobia after comments she made on Twitter. Rowling tweeted, "'People who menstruate.' I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?" Fans on social media quickly told the writer she was not being inclusive to the transgender community. Rowling backed up her statement by tweeting, "I respect every trans person's right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I'd march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it's hateful to say so." She also said, "I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he's a woman – and, as I've said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth."

2. Kevin Hart stepped down from hosting the Academy Awards after his old homophobic comments surfaced, saying, "I am evolving and want to continue to do so."

Between 2009 and 2010, Kevin Hart made insensitive jokes on Twitter and in his standup specials. For example, in one tweet, the comedian said he would break a dollhouse over his son's head if it turned out he was gay. In his 2010 special, "Seriously Funny," he reiterated the point that he would act abusively if his son was gay. "I wouldn't tell that joke today, because when I said it, the times weren't as sensitive as they are now," Hart later told Rolling Stone. "I think we love to make big deals out of things that aren't necessarily big deals, because we can. These things become public spectacles. So why set yourself up for failure?" When it was announced that Hart was going to be the host of the Oscars in 2018, his past jokes resurfaced. After backlash from the public, Hart stepped down as host. "I have made the choice to step down from hosting this year's Oscar's....this is because I do not want to be a distraction on a night that should be celebrated by so many amazing talented artists," he wrote in a tweet. "I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past … I am evolving and want to continue to do so. My goal is to bring people together not tear us apart."

3. After Paris Hilton was caught criticizing the gay community in an audio recording, she apologized, saying, "Gay people are the strongest and most inspiring people I know." In 2012, an audio recording of Paris Hilton in a taxi cab was leaked. According to reports, she was in the car with a gay man who was showing her the gay dating app, Grindr. In the audio, you can hear Hilton say, "Gay guys are the horniest people in the world. They're disgusting. Dude, most of them probably have AIDS. ... I would be so scared if I were a gay guy. You'll like, die of AIDS." Her publicist confirmed that the recording was in fact Hilton but emphasized the socialite was not homophobic. (Are they sure about this? God...) In an apology statement, Hilton said, "I am so sorry and so upset that I caused pain to my gay friends, fans, and their families. Gay people are the strongest and most inspiring people I know."

4. After a member of the audience called out Tracy Morgan for his homophobic remarks during a standup set, the comedian apologized. In 2011, a man chronicled Tracy Morgan's standup set in Nashville on Facebook. In the post, the man said Morgan said being gay is a choice because "God makes no mistakes." The comedian also allegedly said he would stab his son if he came out as gay. (Kevin Hart, you here?) After backlash and a half-hearted apology on "Late Show with David Letterman," Morgan issued an official apology. "I want to apologize to my fans and the gay & lesbian community for my choice of words at my recent stand-up act in Nashville," he said. "I'm not a hateful person and don't condone any kind of violence against others. While I am an equal opportunity jokester, and my friends know what is in my heart, even in a comedy club this clearly went too far and was not funny in any context." (Good sir. There is more to LGBTQ+ then just gays and lesbians)

5. Sarah Silverman used a gay slur in a 2010 tweet. When asked about it in 2018, she said, "I'm certainly creative enough to think of other words besides that that don't hurt people." In 2010, Sarah Silverman tweeted, "I don't mean this in a hateful way but the new bachelorette's a f-----." Although the tweet went relatively unnoticed at the time, it picked up momentum again in 2018 when people pointed out that it was unfair for Kevin Hart to step down from hosting the Oscars for doing something similar. "Yea, I'm done with that," Silverman told TMZ when she was asked about it in 2018. "I think I can find other ways to be funny. I used to say 'gay' all the time like, 'That's so gay!' Because we're from Boston. We'd go, 'That's what you say in Boston. I have gay friends. I just say gay.' Then I heard myself, and I realized I was like the guy who'd say, 'What? I say colored. I have colored friends.' I realized it's stupid, and I'm certainly creative enough to think of other words besides that that don't hurt people. But I fuck up all the time."

6. Eminem has been criticized for using gay slurs in his songs, but he insists he isn't homophobic. In 2018, Eminem released his album, "Kamikaze." In one song titled "The Fall," he focuses on fellow rapper Tyler, The Creator. In the song, Eminem raps," "Tyler create nothin', I see why you called yourself a f----t, bitch." This wasn't the first time rapper had been criticized for using a gay slut. Throughout his career, he has used similar words in his songs and received a lot of criticism for it. Eminem, however, insists he is not homophobic. "The honest-to-God truth is that none of that matters to me: I have no issue with someone's sexuality, religion, race, none of that," the rapper told Vulture. "Anyone who's followed my music knows I'm against bullies — that's why I hate that f---ing bully Trump — and I hate the idea that a kid who's gay might get s--- for it."

7. Mel Gibson mocked how gay men act in the early '90s. While doing an interview in 2001 for Spanish newspaper El Pais, Gibson said, "With this look, who's going to think I'm gay? I don't lend myself to that type of confusion. Do I look like a homosexual? Do I talk like them? Do I move like them?" Throughout the '90s, GLAAD protested Gibson's films, but the actor refused to apologize. "I'll apologize when hell freeze over," he said. "They can f--- off."

8. Alec Baldwin went on a homophobic Twitter rant against a reporter he did not agree with. He later said his remarks were "in no way was the result of homophobia." In 2013, Daily Mail reporter George Stark wrote a story accusing Alec Baldwin's wife, Hilaria, of tweeting at James Gandolfini's funeral. Baldwin took to Twitter to express his anger at Stark, calling the reporter a "toxic little queen," among other comments. In an interview with the Gothamist after the incident, Baldwin stood by his decision to call the reporter a "queen." "The idea of me calling this guy a 'queen' and that being something that people thought is homophobic … a queen to me has a different meaning. It's somebody who's just above," he told the publication. "It doesn't have any necessarily sexual connotations," Baldwin said. "To me a queen ... I know women that act queeny, I know men that are straight that act queeny, and I know gay men that act queeny. It doesn't have to be a definite sexual connotation or a homophobic connotation." He later issued an official apology, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "My anger was directed at Mr. Stark for blatantly lying and disseminating libelous information about my wife and her conduct at our friend's funeral service. As someone who fights against homophobia, I apologize," Baldwin said. "I would not advocate violence against someone for being gay, and I hope that my friends at GLAAD and the gay community understand that my attack on Mr. Stark in no way was the result of homophobia."

9. Chris Brown also used homophobic language (no shockers there) when talking about another rapper, but he later said, "I love all my gay fans." In 2010, rapper Raz provoked Chris Brown when he tweeted about Brown's past assault on Rihanna. Brown responded by attacking Raz on Twitter, referencing the fact that Raz was molested by another man as a child and calling him a "#homothug." "I'm not homophobic! He's just disrespectful," Brown tweeted later. "BTW…I love all my gay fans and this immature act is not targeted at you!!!! Love."

10. Azealia Banks has a long history of problematic comments, but she has since said she will no longer use gay slurs. In 2015, singer Azealia Banks was caught on camera yelling at a flight attendant after getting into a fight with a fellow passenger. In the video, you can hear Banks call the flight attendant a gay slur, according to HuffPost.She later tweeted about the incident, writing, "I don't care. I've said it before and I'll say it again."Banks' history with the word doesn't stop there. In 2016, she used the word to attack fellow singer Zayn Malik on Twitter, leading to the deactivation of her account. She has also called the LGBTQ community "the gay white KKK. Get some pink hoods and unicorns and rally down rodeo drive."In 2016, however, she announced she is never using the gay slur again. "The amount of people that get hurt when I use the word vs. the amount of people I've said it to are just not worth it," she wrote on Facebook. "Honestly... This isn't a cop-out, it's just me realizing that words hurt. and while I may be immune to every word and be thicker skinned than most, it doesn't mean that I get to go around treating people with the same toughness that made my skin so thick."

11. Drake Bell received backlash after posting a transphobic tweet. He later called the remarks "thoughtless." When Caitlin Jenner came out as transgender in 2015, Nickelodeon actor and singer Drake Bell tweeted, "Sorry...still calling you Bruce." After receiving backlash, he deleted the tweet and then posted another, misgendering Jenner. "I'm not dissing him! I just don't want to forget his legacy! He is the greatest athlete of all time," Bell tweeted. "Chill out!" After that, he tweeted out an apology. "I sincerely apologize for my thoughtless insensitive remarks," Bell wrote. "I in no way meant to hurt or demean those going through a similar journey. Although my comments were made in innocence, I deeply regret the negative effect they've had on so many."

Here are some tweets that were mentioned earlier (I couldn't find all of them)

So... yeah

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

Once Bitten, Twice Stupid prt.4

Lance kept the rear view mirror on the two strangers in the back. The shorter one of the two was unfairly hot. Lance might never have had sex, out of fear of losing self control, the fact he was monster, and he didn’t know if he was going to knock some poor stranger up with some half vampire kid, but he knew well enough that the man was edging on his type. Untalkative, the man had his arms crossed, hand clutching the raspberry slushy Pidge had forced upon him. He looked as impressed to be in Lance’s car, as Lance was to have him there.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what is it that you three do that has you out so late at night?”

Lance did mind. Thanks to Pidge these two strangers had been committed to memory for the rest of his undead life

“Man, you don’t want to get Pidge started...”

Hunk was also uneasy. He’d found his way into the bag of chocolate eclairs, the pile of wrappers now more than the chocolates left

“Oh? Pidge?”

“We’re paranormal investigators. You’ve heard all about Garrisons blood past... well, we’re going to be the first to capture it all on film”

Shiro raised an eyebrow, Lance accidentally meeting his eyes in the mirror, quickly averting his gaze back to the road

“Oh, but Lance is a lawyer... He’s the serious one who doesn’t believe in ghosts”

Thanks for that Pidge, now Shiro’s attention was on him

“You’re a lawyer?”

“Yep. Got the fancy piece of paper and everything”

“Wow. What kind of law do you practice?”

“Family”

Yeah, Lance knew his manners were lacking, he didn’t need Pidge kicking the back of his chair like she did

“Ah. That must be tough”

“Some days are worse than others, but it is what it is. What do you two do?”

It was on the tip of Lance’s tongue to mention the photography thing, but being a dumb human meant they didn’t always remember what was said

“That’s right, you said your brother was into photography?”

Aaaaand the attention was back on Pidge

“Yeah, Keith likes to take photos, it’s more a hobby than anything. I’ll save you the details and just say I’m in finance. Not terribly interesting”

Great. A finance guy right next to the registered hacker of the group...

“Sounds boring”

Shiro snorted a laugh. Lance cursing mentally that he now had Keith’s name in his head

“It has its moments. So you guys are into the paranormal? Ever see anything?”

“Not yet. But you never kno-ooow. Watch where you’re driving!”

Turning onto the dirt road that lead to his house, Lance could have probably been gentler on the ditch. Each year the council filled the damn thing up, only for it to all erode away with the first rains of the year

“If you’re not used it by now, you never will be”

“That’s because you can’t drive for shit”

“It sounds to me like you want to walk home in the morning”

“I’ll be good”

Lance’s lips betrayed him with a smile. Pidge would never “good”, her rebellious behaviour was just another thing about her to love

“Yeah, yeah. You’ve told me that a hundred times and I’m still waiting”

“Oh, shut it, dad”

“If I was your dad, you’d be grounded for life”

“That’s fine. People suck anyway”

“With no wifi”

Pidge lunges forward in her chair, an arm coming around him in a hug

“I’ll be good! Please don’t take my wifi away”

“As if I could. You’re the one who set it up”

“Oh, right. Guess I don’t need to be that nice to you then”

Licking his cheek, Lance wrinkled his nose

“You’re so fucking gross”

“You love me”

“That I do. We’re nearly home. Sorry it’s not much, I don’t really have visitors over. And I hope you’re not allergic to cats, Blue likes to shed all over the place”

In the back, Keith scoffed

“What kind of a name is “Blue” for a cat?”

How dare he insult Blue and her perfect little body of complete perfection. Blue was Blue, his number one girl, not a number one emo reject in the backseat of a strangers car because he hadn’t bothered learning basic maintenance

“I don’t know, what kind of name is “Keith” for a mullet”

When Shiro laughed, Lance was certain it was the man’s first real and genuine laugh for the night

“He’s got you there”

“Go fuck yourself”

Pidge laughed as Keith sulked. If he wasn’t good at taking a joke, then he shouldn’t be dishing it out. Not that Lance was one to talk

“Don’t mind him. He gets cranky when he’s sleepy”

The wrinkles between Keith’s eyebrows deepened at his brother’s explanation

“You’re the one who could have just got a hotel room”

“And you’re the one being rude. Lance, and his friends, are doing us a favour”

“Or they’re going to murder us in our sleep”

“Nah, man. That’s too much effort. I’ll make you a deal though, you don’t murder us and we won’t murder you”

Keith seemed even grumpier at Lance’s joke, Lance just anxious to reach his house already. This was terrible idea, a disaster in the making, and the plot of a pretty average b-grade movie. One thing was for sure though, he wasn’t wearing a matching bra and underwear, pretty much guaranteeing he wouldn’t be the first one murdered.

*

Parking by the steps of the porch, the rain started pelting down as Lance cut the ignition. Relieved to finally be home, he could see Blue sleeping on the windowsill of the living room, having decided to ruin yet another set of vertical blinds in her search for the perfect napping spot. Seeing her was what brought the greatest relief, not the warm light filtered between the blinds, and the knowledge his house would be nice and warm with his bed waiting for his tired arse. Opting to leave the equipment in the car for the night, Lance figured he’d collect it once the other’s fell asleep. All Pidge needed was the camera cards, and her laptop, which she was small enough to climb into the trunk for. God. He really didn’t want strangers in his house, judging things, and even worse, touching things. He liked all his things and he liked them where they were. Routine was key to keeping his sanity, and familiarity helped his Mami whenever he brought her home for a visit.

Fleeing from the car, they all managed to get themselves wet despite the short distance. The rain didn’t bother Lance, not when he couldn’t actually catch a cold from prolonged exposure to the cold. It was his guests his had to worry about

“Come on in. Leave your shoes by the door and I’ll grab us all some towels. Shiro, you and Keith probably don’t have a change of clothes with you, so I’ll lend you some robes now. You can chuck your stuff in the machine, then put it in the dryer before heading to bed. Hunk, wanna show them through the kitchen? I know we’ve got snacks, but I would kill for a glass of red”

“You got it, buddy”

The look in Hunk’s eyes seemed to question if he really wanted Shiro and Keith to know where Lance kept his knives. Hunk was too polite to blurt that out, not like Pidge who had no filter

“Out the way losers, I’ve got a date with my princess”

“My princess, is sleeping on the living room window sill. Don’t blame me if you get scratched”

“That’s just her way of telling me how much she loves me”

“Or how much you drive her insane”

“Rude, much. I’ll meet you guys in the kitchen when I’ve got my Blue”

Pidge pushed both her slushies over to Hunk, Hunk seemed nervous about left alone, but mentally rallied as he managed a smile

“The kitchen’s through here”

With three robes and a bundle of towels, Lance returned to the kitchen where Hunk had started stress baking. The signs were obvious, from the flour next to the mixing bowl, to Pidge sitting on the kitchen bench with an unhappy looking Blue held in her lap

“Sorry, some lazy arsehole didn’t sort the linen closest”

It was lie. He simply, really, truly didn’t want to deal with his visitors. Passing Shiro and Keith a robe and a towel each, Lance went on to wrap a towel over Hunk’s shoulders, then throw Pidge’s at her. Catching the towel, she managed to keep Blue contained in her lap, despite Blue’s displeasure

“Let me guess, that means you?”

Lance’s big blue eyes widened, shocked Shiro would make a joke

“Damn, Lance. I think I might just like this one”

“Oh, bite it, Pidge. Yeah. That lazy arsehole’s me. Even if there were more hours in the day, I’d still probably spend them sleeping. Did Hunk offer you guys a coffee?”

“Already on it, man. I’m whipping up some butter cookies to go with the tea”

Lance sighed to himself again, mentally of course because his mother would have smacked his arse had he done it out loud. He didn’t do guests for a reason. The feeding them thing was annoying

“I hope you don’t mind, but can you show us where the bathroom is?”

Right. They were wet. He was wet. He was supposed to be human, which meant sliding his robe on over his clothes, or rather starting too then realising it wouldn’t go on over his jacket. God. He was making an idiot of himself.

With his jacket over his chair, Lance flashed Shiro and Keith a smile

“Yeah, through here. You guys can go ahead and take a shower if you want. I mean, seperate showers, or whatever, no judgment if you’re into that kind of thing. Sorry, I’m not used to visitors. Feel free to use whatever you find in the guest bathroom, most of it’s Hunk and Pidge’s stuff they’ve left here, but there’s fresh soap bars and spare toothbrushes in the second drawer”

Someone needed to shut him up. Stitch his goddamn lips together, then bury him until his embarrassment worse off. Lance’s moves were still as he led his guests from the kitchen to the bathroom

“Here we go. I’ll put you in the spare room down here, and we’ll sleep upstairs. There’s not much down here, just my office which is the end room. Your room will be the next door up, it’s got two twins in there, so plenty of space. Pidge set up a charge pad, because you guys probably didn’t bring your chargers either. If you go all the way the other way in this hall, you’ll reach the laundry. Everything’s out in the open, so help yourself. I know this is awkward as fuck, and probably is for you two, but there’s no saying no to Pidge once she thinks something is a good idea. Oh, yeah, don’t be afraid to take your time, if you get lost, give us a yell”

Shiro thanked him, towing Keith into the bathroom by the arm. Lance not going to question that one. Not at all. Nope. Nooo... God that family had some good genetics though. Under all his brooding pouting, Lance had caught sight of Keith’s eyes... Eyes like two small galaxies had been captured and shoved in there. How they were so damn purple when he was human, Lance didn’t know, but fuck it was unfair.

When the bathroom door closed, Lance headed down to the office. Pidge couldn’t be trusted with electronic locks, leaving him the only option of dead locking the door. His explanation was that the cases he worked on deserved privacy, which his two friends respected. He’d let them in the office once to satisfy their curiosity, Pidge finding the sheer number of books boring. On the outside it appeared a normal office. Bookcases, filing cabinets, his framed diploma, laptop, printer, all those sorts of normal office things. His desk was organised around the clutter, that totally wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t help he had a weakness for quirky stationary. His current favourite pen was decorated with dancing cacti. The small things in life helped him deal with life’s less than pleasant things. Under his desk were the only two anomalies of the room. On the left, instead of drawers, was his wine rack. On the right, behind the drawers, was his fridge. Lance might be the worlds biggest klutz with his glasses on, but he wasn’t stupid enough to leave his blood bags where everyone could see them. Locked behind a heavy iron door, the previous fireplace of the room meant no one paid much attention to the outside protrusion where it once sat. He’d kept the decorative tiles in place, making a feature of it around his desk in order to keep the questions to a minimum. When it came to time leave his current set up, he was going to be devastated.

With precious minutes ticking down, Lance grabbed himself out the blood pack he’d started for the day. He never let himself go hungry, but with two strangers in the house it was better he let himself have a small feed just to keep his nerves in check. Grabbing down a wine glass and the closest bottle of Shiraz, he poured himself a double before pouring in a good double shot of blood. The bag was O+, not his favourite, yet not the worst. He wasn’t one of those blood snobs that only every drank one type. He was grateful for what he could get, and more grateful to the people who donated their blood under their own free will. Naturally they were compensated for their blood and their time, Coran who ran the blood bank in Platt wasn’t a man to be messed with. Lance knew Coran wasn’t human, yet he had no clue what race he was, nor did he have any idea the race of his niece Allura who often helped out. The pair of them were the coordinators for most of Platt city, and the surrounding area, providing safe blood for those not in a coven or forced from a coven due to whatever reason, with in reason... He knew they weren’t human, as neither of them had aged a single day in all the years he’d known them... which was a pretty long time when he stopped to think about it... which he definitely didn’t have time to right now.

Straightening up his office, Lance then headed back to the kitchen. Hunk busy with the cookies he’d just placed in the oven, while Pidge was sipping on her slurpy. Blue knew she wasn’t supposed to be on the kitchen table, yet gave zero fucks, Lance striding over to scoop her up and pepper her with kisses, after placing his glass down carefully

“Who’s daddy’s good girl?”

Blue shot him look that expressed how little she thought of him, done with his craziness and protesting of her less than regal treatment

“Yes, I know. You don’t care, you just want your wet food and the blanket turned back on. It’s such a hard life”

Stooping to let Blue down, she gave him a look of disgust before licking at her fur as if to erase his pats. Picking up his wine glass again, he took another sip, feeling the way the blood coated his mouth as it slid down easily

“Well, that’s done. They’re in the bathroom now, doing whatever. I still can’t believe you volunteered my house”

Pidge shrugged

“I know if it was Matt who was stuck, I’d want someone good to help him out. I promise to pay for anything that gets damaged”

“Damn, girl. How much they pay you for that tour?”

Pidge shrugged again. They both knew she wouldn’t be paying, if she tried Lance wouldn’t let her

“Enough”

Matt was a bit of a tricky topic. He was a firm believer in all things paranormal and supernatural. For all her enthusiasm and research, Matt dwarfed Pidge’s knowledge by a long shot. Apparently when Pidge was younger Matt had got himself in a bit of jam chasing ghosts, since whatever had happened, he’d left to track things all across the world. Pidge missed him fiercely, and was left constantly cranky with her brother at his lack of regular updates

“Speaking of Matt, have you heard from him lately”

Lance was glad Hunk was the one asking, he’d stripped Pidge bare of all her defences, keeping her secrets at the same time as keeping her grounded

“Not for something like 3 months now. Dad said he was in Italy the last time he checked in with him. Mum worries herself sick when she doesn’t hear from him”

“Pidge, if he’s anything like you, then he’s fine. You Holt’s are a touch bunch”

Pidge sighed, Lance sympathising over how hard it could be not to hear from your siblings. There was nothing like the love and hate that came with having a sibling. Half the time you want to murder them in their sleep, but god help anyone else who messed with them. His whole family had changed after he’d been turned, they’d aged while he remained the same. Now he was getting depressed.

Sliding off the counter, Pidge threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around him in a fierce hug

“I just... really miss him”

“I know you do. I’m sure he misses you, but he’s like you and once he’s off chasing something time looses all meaning”

“Yeah. I mean, I know he is, but sometimes it really...”

“Fucking sucks”

Pidge nodded as Lance finished her sentence for her. She was just a baby, while he was an old man of 44

“Have you messaged him lately?”

“Everyday”

That had to hurt even worse. 120 plus messages left on read

“Until he comes back, you’ll have to be happy with the two of us”

“I mean... if I reeeeeeally have to”

Hunk turned from the oven, enveloping both of them in a bear hug

“Group hug!”

Pidge laughed, faking an attempt at squirming her way out. Hunk laughing too as he lifted them both off their feet for a moment. Lance’s poor wineglass barely surviving the ordeal

“You two are stuck with me”

“Yep. We sure are. And we’re the luckiest people alive”

Well, Pidge was alive. His undead arse sure wasn’t getting any closer to living

“Okay, that’s enough, losers. I’m gonna go set the tapes up. Hopefully we’ll see something good”

“Or not. Not seeing anything is good too. Lance, go make sure she doesn’t edit the video in some way... I’m going to have nightmares tonight as it is”

“I’ve got you, bud. Come on, Gremlin. Let’s go set up your videos”

Lance had nearly let himself forget there were two strangers in his house. He couldn’t actually forget, but he was trying his damn hardest as he let Pidge’s techno-babble wash over him. He’d never met Matt in person, but Pidge’s missing him was bringing up how much he missed his own siblings. Mami would let him know how they’re doing, keeping him in the family loop. It had to be Papi’s funeral when he’s last seen them all. Lance lying through his teeth that he was named after his father, Lance, to pass off his young looks. He missed his papi. His papi had worked hard all his life, a farmer through and through, with every analogy somehow farm related. Especially when it came to his tractor, that was the man’s default go to when explaining anything, or attempting to have a father and son chat. He missed him something fierce, like he missed his siblings. None of them had invited him to his papi’s wake, Lance felt like he shouldn’t even be at the service, but his Mami gripped his hand and kept him close the whole time. She was the only one who wasn’t afraid of him. Lance hated them all for leaving him, but he loved them all because when they were kids things were so much less complicated. Late night bonfires, hunting on the farm, surfing, dancing in the rain. Huge family Christmas’s where it felt like everyone in town showed up. Kids in and out the the house, not like Christmases now days where he’d spend time with his Mami in the morning, taking her to church for mass then out for a drive, blow off his friends, binge bad rom-coms come evening and cook a feast up for Blue.

Smacked in the face with a flying TV remote Lance was forced back out of his self loathing shell. He had a good life, and even better friends. There was nothing wrong with the way he lived, and he had a sense pride in the work he did. Not all cases went his way, but he his head on better than most as far he was concerned

“What the fuck?”

“That’s for tuning out when I was trying to talk to me”

“You hit me in the face”

“Good. I was aiming for you chest, if that help”

Lance rose a finger to poke at his eyebrow where the remote had hit, there didn’t seem to be any blood, so he supposed he could let Pidge off

“You have my undivided attention. What did I miss?”

“I was saying it’s good to go, whenever Hunk gets here”

“You know he’s really going to have nightmares tonight”

“Then he can crawl into bed with you”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Uh, hello. I’m a girl, and Shay’s a girl”

Lance rolled his eyes

“Really? I hadn’t noticed”

“I’m just saying, don’t wanna make things complicated”

“There’s nothing going on between you two. It’s fine, you’ve shared a bed before”

“But not when Hunk was this close to finally getting a girlfriend”

Pidge held her fingers together, rather than the normal tiny gap

“Fine, but he sleeps in your room and you sleep with the light on”

“What are we? Twelve?”

“Awww, did little Pidge sleep with the light on all the way up to 12?”

“Oh, fuck you. You’re only like 2 years older than me. I bet you kept your night light on until you last night”

Pidge’s face said she was thinking over her words, knowing that something didn’t quite sit right in what she’d said, but if he was to point that out, he’d be hit for having the nerve

“Yep. I’m completely hopeless. Who knows what lurks in the dark. What if the monster under my bed attacked my feet because they hung over? What would I do then?”

“You’re such an arsehole”

“Hey, Blue has a stage where my toes were her mortal enemy”

“I’m going to tell Blue you’re going around telling everyone she’s a monster”

“By definition, all cats are arseholes. She knows she’s the cutest little monster that’s too tiny to take me down”

“Dude, she’s got you wrapped around her little finger?”

“Oh, so Lance has a girlfriend?”

Caught up in Pidge, Lance hadn’t heard Shiro approaching. He damp near jumped out of his skin at the unexpected voice

“No, this loser is unlucky in love, like the rest of us”

“Ah...”

Shiro sounded confused, Lance embarrassed

“We’re talking about my cat. She’s a pint sized monster. She’s probably going to be cranky all night because I didn’t give her more wet food”

“Ah, I see now...”

The silence that fell was awkward as fuck... Right. He had to be a good host

“We’re going to watch what Pidge filmed tonight, if you’re up to it. Hunk’s cookies should be done soon...”

“Oh, I was thinking Keith and I might just head to bed. You know, get out of your hair”

“Dude, you have to try Hunk’s cookies. They’re like a gift from god”

Shiro gave a nervous laugh, not everyone got Pidge’s humour, or brashness

“When you put it like that, how can I say no?”

Pidge clapped her hands

“Excellent. Now, the most important thing of all, do you believe in ghosts?”

“I can’t really say one way or another. I do have a friend that’s into that sort of thing”

“Then the next time you talk to them, you’re going to sound like a total expert. Sit down and buckle up, it’s time for an adventure into what lies beyond”

Pidge waved her fingers as her voice adopted a spooky tone for the “what lies beyond” part. Poor Shiro was coping Pidge totally nerding out. At least if she managed to scare him away, Lance wouldn’t have to worry about crossing paths with him, or his brother, ever again. Ugh. Being nice was exhausting.

[momentofmemory]

fictober - day thirty-one

Prompt #31: “Scared, me?”

Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe (Spider-Man/Tom Holland Films, Captain America)

Characters: Peter Parker & Steve Rogers, Michelle Jones (mention)

Words: 2917

Author’s Note: i have been patiently waiting for an opportunity to pair these two all month, and today i happened to see a still from ffh that showed art supplies in peter’s room and just. bam. practically 3k. having also done inktober this month, this serves neatly to combine the two. oh—and this occurs about 4-5 months post endgame.

>>Brooklyn & Queens (don’t throw shade, draw it)

Signing up for Ms. Hart’s Drawing I class is the most singularly idiotic thing Peter’s ever done, and considering he accidentally hitched a ride into space four months ago, that’s saying a lot.

It all started when he found Ben’s old film camera in the storage boxes they’d gotten post-Blip. He’d showed it to MJ—it’s artsy and it’s old, so she was sure to know what to do with it—and she’d looked at him with her usual level of curiosity disguised as ambivalence.

“You know Midtown’s offering a Darkroom Photography class next Fall, right?”

Peter didn’t know that, but once he did it was all he could think about.

He brings it up to his guidance counselor, and while she’s surprised by his interest, she tells him he can fit it into his schedule—but only if he takes the spring semester drawing class to meet the prerequisites.

It’s that fateful decision that leads to him sitting in Yellowstone Park for two hours straight, trying and failing to translate the still life from this morning’s class onto the paper in front of him.

He holds his pencil at arm’s length and tilts it to the side, one eye closed. He’s not entirely sure how that’s supposed to help, but it’s what all the artists in the movies do, so he figures it’s worth a shot.

The image looks just as small and useless as it did before.

(Although to be fair, that might be because it’s a photograph on a 4.7 inch phone screen, and not an actual, full-sized object.)

Peter wishes MJ were here—he’d initially picked the park because MJ said she’d help him figure out lighting, but she’d gotten caught up in some kind of decathlon prep right as they were leaving school. He hasn’t heard a word from her since, so he’s honestly given up on the idea of her coming at this point.

Peter groans and flops back onto the grass, notebook falling onto his chest and arm across his eyes.

“I should have stayed Blipped.”

He’s fully intending on lying there until nature takes over and he’s turned into ant food, when he’s interrupted by an elderly gentleman’s voice.

“You all right there, son?”

“Only questioning my own mortality for want of a stable light source—” Peter halts mid sentence, realizing the voice sounded weirdly familiar.

Peter lowers his arm from his face and finds himself staring into the eyes of none other than Captain Steven G. Rogers himself.

“Holy shi—” Peter nearly punches a hole in the ground with the amount of force he exerts in leaping to his feet. “—shingles. Holy shingles. Sir.”

He only just remembered that one story Mr. Stark used to tell about the language thing, but Captain Rogers just seems amused by his slip up.

“Sorry if I scared you there, Queens.”

There’s a twinkle in his eye that makes Peter wonder if he didn’t do it on purpose, but he feels the need to defend himself either way. “Scared? Me? No no no no, I was just… cold.”

It’s seventy-five degrees in the shade, and Peter’s been sitting directly in the sun since he got here.

He shoves his notebook behind him with his foot and brushes non-existent grass off his jeans. “Um, anyway, what’re you—what’re you doing out here? I mean, not that you need a reason, since it’s a public park and you’re part of the public I guess, I mean you’re like half of the reason the public is even still here, so, uh—”

Cap looks like he’s trying not to laugh, and Peter wishes the ground would swallow him whole if only to get him to stop talking. “—what I mean is that I uh, I didn’t realize you were still hanging around in New York, Captain Rogers. America. Sir.”

He’s not entirely sure what the ex-super soldier’s official designation is these days, but Cap just starts to sit down on the grass, gesturing for Peter to do the same.

“Just Steve is fine,” he says, legs folded cross-legged under him. “Pretty sure Sam’ll kill us both if he hears you referring to anyone but him as Captain America now. He’s pretty taken with the new title.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Peter crosses his own legs and twiddles his thumbs. The politics of legacy heroes must be wild. He makes a note to never let anyone go by Spider-Man except himself.

“So can I… help you?”

Even as Peter asks, he can feel his throat seizing up at the thought. Before Thanos, he’d have given anything to team up with Captain America, but now…

Now, his heart’s accelerating from than just hero worship.

“No, no. Nothing like that.” Steve’s looking at him closely, eyes strangely sharp for the hundred plus year old body they’re staring out of. “Actually, Tony asked me to keep an eye on you.”

Peter looks up in surprise. “Mr. Stark said that?”

“The words he used were a bit stronger, but yes,” Steve says. “Not that he needed to. Even if you’re from a trashy borough like Queens, you’re still a New York boy.”

Peter gasps in horror, tensions forgotten. “You’re literally from Brooklyn! That’s like, infinitely worse!”

“Not according to ExtraSpace.com, which ranks it as the best borough for housing.”

“Whoever taught you how to use the internet should be criminalized, sir.”

“Steve,” he repeats.

“Right. Steve.” The name still feels weighty on Peter’s tongue. “…If I’m Queens, can we make it even and I call you Brooklyn?”

Cap laughs, and Peter barely has time to think oh my god Captain America laughed at one of my jokes before he realizes the man’s nodding towards Peter’s sketchpad. “Tell you what, you can call me Brooklyn so long as you tell me what’s got you longing for death this evening.”

“Uh…” Peter flounders, trying to find a cooler way to say homework. “Just some bottles.”

Not cooler, Peter. Very, very not cooler.

Steve raises his eyebrows.

“By which I mean drawing bottles! Glass, still-life bottles. Totally kosher ones. Not like, alcohol ones.” Peter scrambles for his notebook. “I’m not legal yet.”

To his surprise, though, Steve holds out an open hand. “May I see?”

Peter turns red enough that if he looked in the mirror, he’d probably think he had his costume on. “…Sure?”

Steve takes the notebook from him and starts paging through it, lingering every so often to trace over his lines. Peter watches the other man’s gnarled hand to avoid thinking about the fact that Captain America was looking at his high school level, B graded sketchpad.

What even is his life.

The only benefit from Steve looking at his drawings is that it meant the other man’s eyes weren’t directly on him, and that lends Peter the courage to ask the question that’s been in the back of his mind ever since he first saw Steve’s white hair.

“…Did you really go back?”

Steve’s hand stills over a poorly done rendition of an onion skin. “By go back, I assume you mean ‘stay.’”

Peter’s not sure he hasn’t just walked into a dangerous topic, but he’s never been good at knowing when to stop. “Yeah.”

Steve nods in a way that makes Peter think he’s probably a lot like that, too. “Then yes.”

A young couple walk by a few yards away, but pay them no mind—Peter’s not in his costume, and the general public doesn’t know what happened to Steve. They could easily pass as just an average grandfather and grandson, enjoying a day in the park. Peter’s eyes follow them until he’s sure they’re out of earshot, anyway, then he turns his attention back to Steve.

“So that makes you like…” Peter pauses, quickly running the numbers in his head. “…A hundred and ten? A hundred and eighty if you count the ice?”

The corner of Steve’s mouth twitches up. “Something like that.”

There’s a glint in Steve’s eyes that makes Peter think he might have wildly missed the mark; he stows that tidbit away for later. “Huh. Wow.”

Steve turns another page. “Does your professor know you’re drawing from photographs?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess?” Peter frowns, wondering how Steve could tell. “Does it matter?”

Steve hums, his brow furrowed in thought. “Camera lens aren’t the same as an eye—flattens the shapes differently. It can throw off the lighting, too.”

Peter tilts his head, then looks at his phone, still lying abandoned on the ground. “Oh.”

“Don’t worry.” Steve turns the page. “It’s a disadvantage when drawing, but it’s also the main advantage of actual photography. You can distort the world to fit the message you’re trying to tell.”

“Isn’t that lying?”

“All of art is a lie if you think it’s a direct interpretation of reality, Peter. The truth of art isn’t in always in what it depicts. It’s in how it depicts.”

Even though they’re his own drawings, Peter cranes his neck over Steve’s shoulder to look at his sketchbook. To him, they just look like the average still life. 

He wonders what Steve sees.

“How’d you know so much about art?”

“I was planning on being an art major, before the war,” Steve says. “And then I became one in 1957.”

Peter starts, eyes widening as Steve turns the page and finally reaches the sketches he’d been working on that afternoon. “You…”

He trails off, unsure of how to pursue that without offending the older super. Steve, for his part, says nothing further and just flips back and forth between Peter’s second and fourth failed attempt at the three-bottle composition.

Peter clears his throat. “When you—when you decided to go back. Was it hard?”

“Dr. Mortyn’s decision to grade on the curve was infuriating.”

Peter scowls; frustrated at what he can only assume is Steve being deliberately obtuse. “No, I mean—not being able to… change things.”

If Peter’s honest with himself, he’s both a little confused by and a little jealous of Steve’s decision. Confused, because he can’t imagine walking away from the fight when there’s still so much work to be done, can’t imagine going backwards in time when all he ever wants to do is move forward. But also jealous, because…

Because Peter’s tired, and he’s only been doing this for two years—if he’s tired now, then he can’t imagine how he’ll feel once he’s been doing this for as long as Cap did (if he makes it that long). Because Peter’s watched superheroes fight and die and sacrifice everything, and the memorials he passes in the street make him feel so small and insignificant that when he goes out on patrol, it makes him wonder if anything he’s doing really matters. Because he feels like he’s doing nothing right now but he’s terrified he’s going to be called on to do everything one day, and he’s just not sure he’s enough.

Steve finally reaches the last sketch in the notebook—the one Peter’d been working on before he’d given up on the whole thing. Steve looks at the forms for a long moment, then flips to the back of the book and carefully tears out a blank page.

“Where’s your pencil, Queens?”

“My—” Peter’s not entirely sure Steve isn’t just changing the subject on him, but he scrambles for the writing utensil regardless. He finds it and two more laying a few feet away, and gently blows an ant off the tip of the black one before offering it to Steve.

Steve accepts it, and starts sketching an outline of the composition.

“Your grasp of form is good,” he says, shapes quickly coming to life under his deft fingers. “Your proportions are mostly correct; there’s not too much difficulty on perspective. The composition is already set for you, so that’s no issue.”

He finishes the draft, still unshaded, and hands the sketchpad back to Peter. “So why do you keep redoing the same drawing?”

Peter looks between the sketched lines in Cap’s drawing and his own iterations. “Because they’re not the same?”

“The outlines are. Does the rest matter?”

“Well, yeah. Once you add in the shading…”

Peter flips through all the sketches he’d made today—one, two, five, seven; hundreds of eraser marks on all of them. They’re all wrong, but they’re all wrong just a little differently. One has light sources that seem to defy all the laws of physics, jumping in every which direction. Another has marks that were supposed to be highlights, but wound up being darker than the actual shadows. Still another has values that are so close together the shadows make the image look flatter than even Steve’s quick sketch.

He looks up at Steve. “It makes the final thing totally different.”

Steve smiles in response, and starts filling in his own sketch.

“Local colour is your biggest problem,” he says. “You’re trying to match everything to the colour your eye thinks it’s seeing in the photo—like in this one, where your darkest shadow on the white bottle is still brighter than the lightest highlight on the black bottle.”

“And that’s bad?” Peter frowns, catching his lip between his teeth, and starts his eighth version of the image while Cap continues.

“Not necessarily.” Steve runs the pencil over the edge of one of the bottles, darkening its side. “Shading is always a tricky thing. There’s a lot of things to pay attention to—shadows, highlights, halftones. Local colour. One of the most important rules is making sure your lightest dark is still darker than the darkest light.”

“Is that last one supposed to be a metaphor?”

“It wasn’t intended, but you can certainly take it that way.”

Peter hums in response, and moves on to outlining the second bottle. “So in my drawing, do I just ignore the colour?”

“The original context always matters,” Steve replies. He pauses to point out a discrepancy in one of Peter’s lines before continuing. “Your white bottle is always going to be whiter than the black one overall. But if you’ve got a highlight on both—that highlight’s the same. And if you’ve got a dark shadow on something, don’t be afraid to make it as dark as it needs to be to provide contrast.”

Peter nods, and after a few minutes, finishes his outline and starts shading. Steve offers pointers every so often, and he’s barely a quarter of the way through the first bottle before he can see a marked difference between this sketch and his last one.

“So,” Peter says eventually. “When I asked how you handled not being able to change things…”

Steve pauses, his pencil hovering above the page, and waits for Peter to finish. 

Peter looks down at his drawing and thinks about how it’s exactly the same as all the others, and yet totally different, too.

“…The answer is that you did.”

Steve smiles, the edges of his eyes crinkling, and turns his attention back to his sketch. It’s all the confirmation Peter needs.

The scritch-scratch of pencil on paper fills Peter’s ears as he thinks about that revelation. Whatever Steve did, it can’t have been major—not in the universe-shaping, blatantly obvious kind of way he’s used to Avengers working. He wonders if it was enough.

Peter erases a shadow on the middle bottle he’s decided has gotten too dark, and then glances at Steve, who’s started adding all kinds of textures and details to his own drawing.

It’s clearly the same picture, but the art is something else entirely.

It’s enough.

Peter’s certain Steve has better things to do, but the retired soldier stays with him for another hour, either telling him stories about the Avengers or old school New York, or gently correcting something about his art form. By the time Peter’s done, the sketch isn’t great, per se, but it’s at least good. Steve helps Peter pack his things back up, and then hoists Peter to his feet with a strength that belies his older body.

Steve then hands Peter the drawing he’d made, and Peter almost refuses until he flips it over and sees that Steve’s written a phone number on the back.

“Let me know if you ever need anything, Queens. Including, but not limited to, more art lessons.”

Peter grins from ear to ear. “Thanks, Brooklyn. You too.”

The next morning, Peter turns in a drawing that still looks a little wonky, but it’s so dramatically improved from last time that MJ gives him a halfway impressed thumbs up, and it’s enough to make him take back every disparaging thing he’s said about the class.

That evening, Spider-Man heads out onto the streets with more excitement than he’s had in a long time.

He doesn’t do anything of a particularly groundbreaking nature—nothing that will change the outlines. There’re no aliens, no world-ending weapons, no last minute, jaw dropping rescues.

But there is Mr. Delmar, who needs help repainting the store sign that’s too high for him to reach. There’s a sixth grader, who’s putting up posters for her lost dog until he finds it eleven blocks away. There’s a would-be mugger, who’s had one too many bad days but Spider-Man listens to them all, and then helps him register at a homeless shelter.

It’s nothing so grand as saving the universe. It won’t get him shrines in the streets, or murals on skyscrapers, or even a mention in the paper.

But it’s something: a few more highlights, a little more definition, a bit more right in a world where there’s so much wrong.

And that, Peter decides, is not nothing.

[fydk-translations]

Cine21, Jan ‘19 issue: Kyungsoo interview

[mild spoilers for swing kids]

Q. Let’s start from Swing Kids (2018), your latest. Ro Kisoo goes about ruffling feathers, and his flashiness stands out from the rest of your filmography.  I had a lot of discussions with the director on what was best for Kisoo. There was [a boy in] an old reference picture almost exactly like Kisoo’s character. He was in an old school uniform and wore his army cap tilted; even his pants were wide and baggy. He seemed trendy for the time and I drew a lot of direction from the picture. 

Q. Ro Kisoo expresses himself through dance. What sort of experience was it for you, as his actor?  When I stand on stage as an EXO member, our choreography and formations are already determined. It was harder as Kisoo because there needed to be emotion in every one of his movements and expressions. I was especially worried about conveying the scene where he dances to David Bowie’s Modern Love in a way that the viewers would find refreshing and freeing. It reminded me of my first time trying to dance - frustration because my body wouldn’t listen to me, how good it felt to get each move down. Also, I could dance as I pleased because the director would capture the whole routine and the big emotions. Big movements for happiness, fast ones for frustration. To be honest, I was surprised by the final cut of that sequence. I didn’t realize how brightly I had been smiling. That dancing is something happy and to be enjoyed is what I’d felt as a musician too, but I had felt this so strongly that the smile came naturally. 

Q. It wasn’t something you planned to act out, but constant dancing is of course tiring, and that starts to show on your face. I’ve seen other actors say that actors who also know how to dance are better at filming action scenes, so it seems that your music career helps your acting one. All that happens when you try to put emotion into motions you aren’t comfortable making is that you ruin the movements and expressions. So for scenes where they’re both important, like the Modern Love one, I made myself familiar. When my body can move without my input, it’s possible to be expressive. All I could do was practice. Action scenes and dancing do have a lot in common, so I did have a little know-how from applying what I had already learned.

Q. The first and second halves of Swing Kids have totally different tones. As its leading actor, you must have put a lot of thought into handling the clash well. There was a part that I worried over for a while, without straying too far from how Kisoo would feel. The film’s tone shifts after the arrival of a supposed friend, Kwang-guk, to the prison camp. Kisoo’s mood worsens, but a sour face would have thrown off the intended tone. Kisoo wasn’t supposed to get too caught up in the atmosphere of that scene, and I kept his expression flat.

Q. It also seems like acting dryly ties in with your own disposition.  I wonder all the time why, in acting, anger has to be obvious, why there needs to be yelling. Because I’ve never expressed my anger that way. I usually try not to let my emotions complicate issues. Of course, I have to adjust because characters have their own personalities, but I went with what felt natural to me for Kisoo. 

Q. Swing Kids features both snappy cuts and long takes. Did you worry about how the editing room would preserve the rhythm of the scenes? I found it interesting rather than worrying. I liked the long takes because those let me get immersed in a location. I had so much fun with the scenes like the one where Kisoo keeps thinking about tap-dancing even in his sleep, and it would cut away each time with a tak-tak-tak! I really wondered how the end result would turn out. The Modern Love scene in particular, because (Park) Hyesoo and I had practiced and filmed for it separately. I was curious about what kind of picture that would make after editing, and I’m very happy with how it turned out. (laughs)

Q. There were a lot of iconic lines from the tvN drama 100 Days My Prince (2018). Bad delivery for the funny ones like “am I the only one uncomfortable?” and “the feeling you feel” would have weakened a sageuk, but you did really well with them. I don’t really dwell over how my lines should be said. The lines with the potential to become popular might have been funnier if their deliveries were lighter. But that wouldn’t make sense for a crown prince who had just lost his memory. To be honest, I did have some concern over making them more palatable. In the end, the answer was that I should just speak as the character would speak. That’s how I decided on the delivery.

Q. Conventional wisdom says that, for TV dramas, one must act in a way that the viewer will know what your character is feeling even if they’re not paying full attention. It seems your acting in 100 Days My Prince ran contrary to that. In the first half, you didn’t look at Hong Shim like you were in love. I think I just did what felt right. It would have been more romantic to look at each other like honey could fall from our eyes, as the saying goes, but that was unrealistic and wouldn’t have felt natural.

Q. Actor Sung Dongil said in an interview once that when he acts, he thinks of meeting the number 100 when acting with another. If the other is acting at a 70, he acts at 30. I think you make a good case for this with My Annoying Brother (2016) and Room No. 7 (2017) - in Room No. 7, actor Shin Hakyun made much larger actions than you, and in Brother, actor Jo Jungseok put much more flare into his character. I totally get what you’re saying. If there’s a character who brings the energy up, it’s good for watchability and tone and manner to have another who brings the energy down. I also learned how to lend realism to characters from Hakyun sunbae and about Jungseok hyung’s acting style.

Q. You’re the type of person who works diligently outside of the spotlight. I found that, in Room No. 7, you were constantly moving about in the background of some scenes, without distracting the viewer. Some of those parts came from talking with the director, but I wanted to fill up the space too. I found it fun to find things to do as my character that wouldn’t get in the way of the other actors. Even if the camera angle would barely catch a finger and I could honestly relax, I’d rather be doing something. 

Q. The two most disparate pieces in your filmography are director Lee Byunghun’s Be Positive (2017) and the movie series Along with the Gods. Your acting as the problem soldier Private Won was especially convincing in Along with the Gods: Two Worlds (2017). I thought there was nothing smooth about acting as Won Dongyeon, and that was reflected in-universe with the film. I have yet to serve in the military, and I’d never put a noose around my neck over the guilt of causing another’s death. The director helped me a lot. We talked about his personal experiences, as well as the characters. Much of my base [for Private Won] were films and other indirect experiences.

Q. In a previous interview, you said that Private Won was the most saddening of your characters and that you probably wouldn’t act as someone that pitiable again. I found it amusing how he was introduced as a problem soldier who kills an innocent and thus might get hate. Right, that’s not wrong... (with a seeking gaze) but doesn’t he make you feel sorry for him? He made a mistake that killed someone, wasn’t able to defend himself to anyone - I felt so bad for how much he suffered from circumstance. I understand why some would hate him, but I still think of him as the most saddening of my roles. 

Q. To be honest, while your acting as Private Won can be commended, the character himself is not admirable at all. People might misunderstand the actor because of the character. Many of your previous roles were of troubled, depressed youths let down by society. Did you not worry as an actor? Not at all. It’s not like all my roles have been dark, and I try to express a part of myself with each character anyway. I think, as long as I keep trying new things, the people who think that way will stop misunderstanding me. 

Q. Then in that regard, Swing Kids’ Ro Kisoo is an important point for you. Very. He’s a very dear figure to me. I wonder what will come next? What do I have left to show? It’s exciting to think about. 

Q. I can’t help but wish to see you a character with a lot of aegyo, maybe because you dislike it so much that even variety programs comment on it. (laughs) I think it’d be a fun role. I don’t hate the thought. (laughs)

Q. When you appeared on Naver’s Actor Chatter, you mentioned that if you could film a drama with actress Kim Hyesoo, you’d like it to be an introspective office drama where you’re a new recruit to her team. Then Park Kyunglim said, “And not a rom com? Kim Hyesoo might have a word with you!” To which you said, “With me? How could I (dare)...” Why do you think it’s so impossible? How would that even happen! I’d be incredibly honored, but there’s no chance of it happening. 

Q. Maybe if your character was like Jung Haein’s in JTBC’s Something in the Rain (2018), where noonas dote on his cuteness... That’d be really nice. I’d like to try being in a drama like Secret Affair (2014) too. I look forward to melodramas in the future, and trying out thrillers...

Q. Yeah, you were good in I Remember You (2015). Really? (laughs) Someone like him is good too, but I’d like to try acting as a completely average person. I’d rather embrace a variety of characters, not just one type.

Q. It’s Okay, It’s Love (2014) and Cart (2014) were your first and second released projects, respectively. You had to act as a victim of ALS; I wonder how you prepared for it when you’d never even gotten acting lessons before that point. For that, I had watched documentaries for indirect experience that I could use with my imagination to make [it seem believable].

Q. I heard that writer No Heekyung helped you a lot as you were starting out? It’s a given that she taught me skills, like how recounting things in staccato will help me with my pronunciation, but she talked with me about the characters too. I absolutely want to work with her again. I really enjoyed Live (2018) and its focus on daily life; my favorite of her projects is the film The Most Beautiful Goodbye (2011). I related to it a lot.

Q. I’m curious about how you figure out characters when aspects of them don’t overlap with you. Right now, are you more the type to conduct deep research, or the type to think it out? I look inside a lot. Of course I do my research too, but I leave the next step to my imagination. Sometimes seeing the actual props on set help, but the more I think through my character’s personality and mentality and how he would act or speak, the more the set seems to build itself. That’s what I’ve been doing so far.

Q. There are actors who write diaries in-character, or go through the day performing their character’s routines, or make exhaustive notes on their role. Mm, I don’t write anything down. My favorite scripts are clean and light, and I just keep it all in my head. My memory isn’t great, so I think trying to be exact would make acting too complicated for me. It’s easier for me to play things out mentally and then concentrate hard on set. 

Q. Didn’t you say that yelling at your mom in Cart was very hard for you, because it’s something you’d never done? How did you resolve it back then, and what do you do with similar impasses now? I played everything out in my head then, too. I just did it on set. How would I get angry when I’m by myself? I’m too shy to practice being angry in my room all alone or with the EXO members helping. (laughs)

Q. So you’re the type who just needs to be on set. I’m still not good at yelling. During Cart, I just said to myself (makes a sad face) “I’ll just do it when I get there,” but acting it out was actually thrilling. It was a huge thrill to feel what I’d never felt and to do what I hadn’t done. 

Q. When I view your filmography, I get the sense that directors love your eyes. You get unique close-ups that show off the fleeting emotions in your gaze. Is there anything in particular you do to act with your eyes? Uh... (thinks for a long time) I don’t do anything except stay in-character. My eyes are a bit weak. Whenever my immune system drops or I get too much sun, they dry out quickly and turn bloodshot. It would bother the viewer if I blink too much during a touching moment, so I put a lot of focus on my health. My eyesight is honestly really bad. I can’t monitor well on set, so watching the fully produced release, when I can have glasses on, will be my first time properly viewing myself. I can’t wear contact lenses either. I’m told it’s because the surface of my corneas aren’t curved like normal. When I put in lenses, my eyelids will push them down. So I wear glasses.

Q. There must be a certain comfort to live with the other EXO members, who also have their own acting projects. It’s closer to gratitude from their support than comfort. We don’t talk about our acting. Like I mentioned earlier, I get too embarrassed to practice acting with them.

Q. Have you ever given advice they took? I don’t. They’ve pointed out to me when I was slouching or hanging my head before, but we’ve never given each other acting advice. It’s not like I have any seniority. So how could I, when we’re all in the same boat? (laughs)

Q. There are people who police what it means to be a man - including in terms of physical build - and like to suggest actors who fit their mold for certain genres [over other actors who don’t]. It was very gratifying for me to watch you find success in 100 Days My Prince, maybe because you defy those definitions.  I don’t think much of their advice either. The admiration you feel from someone’s abilities, personality, or mentality is what matters. And I act for myself - I just want to figure out my own path, and to give my best in order to show my best. 

Q. Every time, without fail, you seem unsure whenever someone compliments on your ability or charm. Yet, no matter how I look at it, you have high self-esteem. How would you reconcile this? When someone keeps complimenting me, I feel embarrassed. Like I’m seriously going crazy (laughs). Even by my own judgment, I think I have a pretty high self-esteem; it’s important to have self-esteem. Except it might not be connected to my abilities, but with my well-being instead. I have to stay firm so that I’m not ruined by stress, so that I can keep going.

Q. During last year’s appearance on Knowing Brothers, I saw you say you hoped to be a farmer one day. You like cooking too, so I was wondering if you wanted a life like you’d see in Little Forest (2018)? (laughs) The Little Forest series (2014) from Japan is a big influence for me. I’d like to cook with what I grow, and to live in good health in a small, quiet home. I don’t know when it’ll happen, but I hope it’s possible by my late thirties or early forties. 

source: @wallnuut | translation: fydk 

[jaywrites101]

JayReviews: Shazam!

What makes a person pure of heart? Today at JayWrites101 we're looking into the recent "controversy" surrounding Captain Marvel and her DC competitor Shazam!. Some are saying this movie is everything Captian Marvel should have been, others are saying this movie is the hack. Which is true? Let's find out together.

The purpose of this review is to break down The Good, The Bad, and The Strange to find out what makes these stories so unique.

Spoilers ahead.

Medium: Movie. Genre: Superhero, Comedy Premise: A young boy is given the ultimate power of Shazam, and must use this power to recapture the Seven Deadly Sins. Plot: A young boy named Thaddeus is teleported to a magic temple and given a test to see if his heart is pure enough to wield the power of Shazam. He fails the test and spends the rest of his life devoted to finding his way back to that temple.

Enter Billy Batson, a young delinquent living in Philadelphia who lost his mother when he was a very young child. Billy regularly runs away from his foster homes and pulls pranks on cops so he can track down every Batson in Philadelphia. Finally, at the last woman on the list, Billy is crushed to discover that she wasn't his mother either, and he's left without any option but to return to foster care.

Thaddeus, now an older man, finally cracks the code to magic and breaks into the temple. Shazam, being near the end of his power and life tries to stop him, but Thaddeus steals the Eye of Sin, which does exactly what it says on the tin and becomes his eye.

Also, it frees the Seven Deadly Sins from their captivity. Thaddeus can sort of control them, but in reality, they're just using him, and since he's already doing what they want... it works.

Anywho, Shazam, now left dying is forced to give his powers to Billy and pray that the kid won't abuse them as previous heroes did in the past. Smaaaaaaart.

The rest of the story is Billy trying to figure out the limits of his powers with his best friend and foster brother Freddy. Being Shazam makes him grow into an adult. Wacky hijinks ensue!

Billy eventually attracts the attention of Thaddeus who forces Billy to fight by kidnapping his family, and Billy discovers a way to allow them to become superheroes like himself. Together they beat Thaddeus, return the Eye of Sin to its cage, and bind the Sins back into their original prisons.

The Good: This movie is hilarious! This is one of the best modern examples of physical comedy I've seen in years! Between Shazam! and Into the Spiderverse, I'm hopeful that this style of comedy will make a full recovery. 

Aside from the laughs -- which were plentiful -- I have to say the acting was on point for everyone involved. The kids were excellent, the adults were excellent, line readings, facial expressions, all of it was top notch here.

But we're going to give this Good with an asterisk. You see, this film is a comedy, it's fun and light-hearted. This lends itself well to more expressive emotions and any slip-ups made only serve to add to its charm. It's still a really big Good. But it a bar that's a lot easier to clear in a comedy with serious moments than in a serious movie with comedic moments.

The next Good I want to point out is the cinematography. The camera guy had fun with this. And by fun I probably mean hell. The long takes, the swivels, the crane shots! There was action with this camera, and you could feel that each take was shot with dedication and care. It's refreshing to see in a movie like this especially when so many films of late show flat, static shots with the occasional shot-reverse shot thrown in.

The last point I want to bring up is the dramatic stakes.

People died in this movie.

Yeah, okay. I can hear you already tying away like "no duh," but usually in these superheroic, high-action flicks people are getting offed by stray bullets or "Raaar! Monster smashes building!" And you never really see the death toll. Like, you're sure someone died, but you're not really sure who, why, or how. Unless they're a mentor character. But those folks come with an expiration date to begin with, soooooo...

It's usually easy to ignore the damage done in films like this.

Thaddeus locks about twenty people in a skyscraper room, throws his older brother out the window, and proceeds to murder the remainder of the people saving his father for last.

That's frekin hard to ignore!!

Likewise, the scene where Bily reunites with his birth mother just to find out she left him there with the police intentionally... I... I just can't... I can't even...

The Bad: I don't believe in perfection. I believe everything can be improved. The prime example here would be how exaggerated everything it.

Don't get me wrong. In comedy, exaggeration is played off for laughs and it's beautiful, buuuuut. When you use exaggeration in your drama... It comes off as forced.

To the film's credit, the exaggeration mostly comes from the fact that they're all kids. But it's still grating to older audiences at times.

I was left in eternal confusion about how old Billy was before he gained an adult super-form. This is one area where even the internet failed me. Canonically, Billy is 12... Considering he has a crush on his foster sister who is about to leave for college... <.< I'm going to say he's supposed to be older in this film. 

I mean... They try to imply he's still in grade school, but he looks like he's already in high school. He also acts like he's already in high school.

Aside from that, most of everything else I have to go here are nitpicks. Things like "how do no one notice the lightning bolts being blasted into the rooftops?" You know. Nitpicks. They're there in every film, series or story. Nitpicks can add up and snowball fast, but in this film, they're barely noticeable.

The Strange: This section of the review is devoted to the things that probably wasn't thought out as well as you might have expected.

The other foster kids.

Out of the six kids we have: Billy the protagonist, Freddy the cripple, a little black girl, the college girl/ love interest, the fat kid, and the Asian stereotype.

There is nothing done in the movie to address these characters except that in the end, they all do actually get superpowers.

To be clear: I'm not complaining about the diversity. I'm complaining that these characters are little more than their stereotypes, and the film indirectly implies that these kids are living half a life unless they're flawless, swole, and sexy.

I know, I'm a white boy who's never lived in a foster home before. I don't think I have any kind of right to be offended... But I think there's someone out there who should be.

There are plans for a sequel in the pipelines. I hope they address this. Because half-assed inclusion can be more damaging than outright bad inclusion.

I still think this was a good step in the right direction. But they still need to take a few more.

Strongest Scene: The villain in the office scene. To me, that was the most gut-punching part of the movie. They said, "Hey, I'm going to have this bad guy do bad things in what would otherwise be a kids movie," and somehow the studio was like, "eh, whatever we don't care."

And we received gold. 

The suspension was locked on high, the terror was real, and I actually believed Thaddeus was a wicked monster. Not to mention this was our first glimpse of the Sins outside of the statues. There was so much intensity packed into one small scene that I'm absolutely sure better reviewers than I will continue to pick over it for years to come. So it absolutely receives my subjective vote.

Weakest Scene: This one always pains me to write. I'm going to have to give it to Billy meeting his birth mother. Now, this scene did have some powerful moments in it, like Billy giving back the compass and the mother just looking at it blankly like she couldn't see the implications of it. Powerful stuff.

But the execution of it was... off. For one thing, this was a tight scene and it didn't have a lot of time to build up to the big moments. So some things felt rushed.

For another, Billy's mother seemed almost irritated that Billy had found her after all these years. Like, she glossed right over surprised, ignored curiosity altogether, and went straight on into "yeah, kid what do you want?" and that was... maybe intentional? I don't know.

It's hard to express exactly what I disliked about this, but this woman didn't feel like a mom and... I think that was supposed to be the point, but it really undercuts the emotion this scene should've had. And the only thing that connects to the rest of the movie is that Billy has to accept that his foster family is his real family now.

This is still an excellent scene, in any other movie it would've been fine. But Shazam! hit a high bar and this is easily the one scene that doesn't hold up.

Conclusion: This film was genuinely amazing! If you haven't watched it, you probably should. There's a lot to take out of it, and it stands alone on its own two feet so you don't have to worry if you've literally never watched any other DC movie.

How does Captain Marvel and Shazam! compare to each other?

Check back here tomorrow for my detailed thoughts on this and a few other "controversies" floating around on the internet.

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

KAT VON D SHARES THE UNEXPECTED INFLUENCES BEHIND HER LONG-AWAITED DEBUT ALBUM ‘LOVE MADE ME DO IT’

The glamorous gothic queen of art, tattoos, business and beauty now redirects her attention to her original passion – music.

Kat Von D has been a staple in alternative culture and pop culture as a whole ever since first exploding onto the scene in the reality television show ‘Miami Ink’ and then promptly securing her own series, ‘LA Ink’, at her home in Hollywood. Quick to prove herself as far more than just another bland reality TV star, Von D built an empire around her interests and established a unique brand of tattoo artistry, best-selling books, art galleries, clothing lines, and most notably, a massively successful and world-renowned beauty line.

But what most people don’t realize about Von D is that out of everything she’s sunken her teeth into and made business ventures out of, her first and most consistent passion has been music. She’s been a constant presence in the world of rock and metal for quite some time – and not just because she’s dated musicians like Nikki Sixx and Deadmau5 and is married to Rafael Reyes of Prayers. She’s been classically trained on the piano since she was a child, practicing every day and growing an appreciation for all different genres as she’s grown older.

Much like her dedication to veganism and animal rights, Von D has a significant place in her heart for music, adorning her body with tattoos of multiple acts like the Misfits, AC/DC, Slayer, Guns N’ Roses, ZZ Top, and appearing in numerous music videos for bands such as HIM, Alkaline Trio, and Gunship. In 2008, she founded the MusInk Tattoo Convention and Music Festival, which has featured artists like Suicidal Tendencies, Limp Bizkit, The Used, Hatebreed, NOFX, Bad Religion, Deftones and more. She’s even had an entire song written for her by Eagles of Death Metal. Needless to say, her street cred in the scene is well established.

She’s now set to release her debut album, entitled ‘Love Made Me Do It’, a project that has been nearly a decade in the making. Described as “a pastiche of shapeshifting analog synths, post-punk dreamscapes, gothic hues, and shy pop magnetism”, the record deals with heartbreak, disillusionment, and ultimately enlightenment. While some might be expecting a hard-hitting, in-your-face type of attitude, Von D opts for a moodier and more atmospheric feel to her music that rides on soaring synth waves and danceable beats. Joining her are bandmates Gregg Foreman, Sammi Doll, Dave Parley, and Brynn Route, as well as notable collaborators Dave Grohl, Linda Perry, Dave Sitek, Peter Murphy, Danny Lohner, Ladyhawke and Charo.

In a conversation with Knotfest, Kat Von D discusses the many inspirations behind her music and unique sound, the artistry that goes into crafting not only her songs but her music videos and live performances as well, and shares some personal stories like the time she and her husband hit up a Rage Room and a week-long horror movie marathon she undertook with a friend.

What made this the right time to finally release your debut album?

Kat Von D – Music has always been a big part of my life and although most people know me from tattooing, they actually don’t know that music has been kind of the most consistent thing in my life. I’ve been not only classically trained since the age of five, but I’ve been playing with my friends’ bands and singing on all my talented friends’ albums and stuff like that. So I’m not a stranger to it but I think that a lot of people are not familiar with me having some form of musicianship. They’re like, “What? She’s coming out with music?” So it could be a little confusing to some people but like everything else I’ve ever done, I’ve always said the proof is in the final product. I’m not here trying to be like a celebrity just slapping my name on something and you know, collecting a check and not really caring about it. I want music to be my main focus in life. I’m not sure if this is the right time, to be honest. I feel like I probably should have released this album ten years ago when I wrote it, but I think life just got in the way. I was filming the TV show and going on book tours and just allowing all these other other forms of expression to kind of get in the way of focusing on music. Basically like a year and a half ago I decided to sell my makeup line so that I could have the time to go on tour and really give the music the attention it needs. And then obviously last year everything kind of got turned upside down and everybody was put to a halt. So I’ve just been waiting within this last year for everything to open up again so that we can go on tour and finally release the album.

How do you go about mixing your unique brand of alternative style with the kind of synth pop sound you’ve got going on?

Kat Von D – I think a lot of my fans and followers were expecting me to come out with like, metal just because I’m a huge fan of metal and I think people kind of know me for liking that music. But I also love a lot of darkwave and I love analog synthesizers and I’m a huge fan of post-punk era music. I love Depeche Mode, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, that kind of stuff. I feel like when it comes to the music that I want to create it’s more along the lines of that. I love poetry, I love strong lyrics and soulful singing. I love Arch Enemy, but my voice does not lend itself to sing like Alissa [laughs] so I know where I belong.

It’s interesting also because like you were saying, you have your scene with metal and rock and all that stuff, but at the same time, you’ve also always been this kind of like, pop culture icon with LA Ink and everything.

Kat Von D – Yeah, I love pop structure. I’m not a big fan of pop music per se, but I do love the structure of songwriting and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. For us, I feel like we do have pop elements in our music but there’s definitely a darkness to it. Even in a lot of synthwave bands that I love, they tend to sound a lot happier than what we’re producing. I like to live in the more melancholy world. I don’t know how to write a happy love song.

There’s a consistent sound throughout the songs but each one still distinctly feels like it takes inspiration from different genres and eras. There’s definitely that predominantly 80s kind of sound.

Kat Von D – Yeah, especially the drum sounds and not just the synthesizers. I think we only have one song that actually has guitar in it. I really love that era but I also think that when my bandmates and I write songs, we don’t sit there with like, a reference. Like, “Oh, I really like this song, let me try to do a version of it.” We actually just start from scratch and we do a lot of sound design, finding specific synth sounds that are not presets in any way. It doesn’t feel dated to me. I feel like there’s a bit of a modern take on the 1980s I guess, and I think that’s important. We’re not trying to be Depeche Mode or any of those other bands that I mentioned, although you might feel the sentiment of that era.

That instrumental breakdown in ‘Fear You’ is so good, that’s very much in my lane. And that part of the music video looks dangerous as hell!

Kat Von D – Thank you, I love that too. I wanted to do a violent video because I feel like all of our other videos were beautiful. I was thinking, how do we create violence without hurting a person, or violence towards somebody versus like, inanimate objects, you know? So I had taken my husband to this thing called a Rage Room. You can rent these rooms and you buy different packages and you can just break break shit. We obviously got bored after like the first 15 minutes [laughs] but I can see how that could be therapeutic. That was a really cool experience so why not take that experience and make that into a music video?

Did you guys have any protection while you were smashing stuff?

Kat Von D – What’s funny is everybody didn’t want to wear protection, they were like, “we’ll wear some sunglasses”. Dave Parley, our drummer, was the only one that didn’t wear sunglasses and for a minute we thought he got a piece of glass in his eye. Thankfully it was just like, a dust particle but I was like “Oh my god don’t do this, Dave!” [laughs] I think aside from that we might have gotten a few little nicks and cuts but nothing crazy. We did use real glass, there was only a few prop glasses, like the sugar glass. I actually posted a video of Sammi, one of my synth players, breaking a bottle over my head and people were like, “Oh my god, that’s so crazy.” It literally felt like a kitty cat just whispered into my ear. [laughs] Those things break if you just like, squeeze them. I got those red glass skulls made and those were made out of the sugar glass, but other than that we do all our own stunts.

In the music video for Exorcism, you wrote that the song was partially inspired by a week long exorcism-themed movie binge.

Kat Von D – With my friend, Kevvy. We actually ended up writing another song together called Lost At Sea that’s on the album. He’s a huge horror fan and I am too, we’ve seen like, every single one. There’s so many terrible ones. It’s crazy. But there’s a lot of really great ones too and I was fascinated by the concept of demonic possession because it seems like there’s a pattern within every culture and every era in history that calls to some form of possession and exorcism. I just find it so weird that in an era like today, where we have cell phone cameras and all this stuff, you never actually see any footage on YouTube. It’s never like in the movies, you know? I think it’s like this romanticized idea of surrendering control to an outside force. I feel like people write a lot of love songs about the correlation between love and death or love and drugs or addiction. I just wanted to take it one step further and do a song about love that was in correlation with a demonic possession because I think that’s how I felt in the past a lot. It’s like you’re no longer in control or you don’t feel in control and you’ve given this power to somebody that may not be the greatest thing for you.

From that movie binge, which ones were your favorite and which ones were the absolute worst?

Kat Von D – I feel like I’ve subconsciously blocked out the worst ones. I think the worst ones were always like a Blair Witch-style filming, you know? One of my favorites through that marathon was one with Anthony Hopkins called The Rite. I love Anthony Hopkins obviously, who doesn’t? It was shot beautifully and it was the most realistic possession scenes. I don’t want to spoil it but there’s a giant twist at the end which I think was really different than every other exorcism movie out there. I think all of it was shot in Italy, so it’s a very beautiful background. Anthony Hopkins plays an exorcist. I loved The Exorcism of Emily Rose, but I would consider that more like a court case movie. It was so compelling, I think I cried at one point. I didn’t know that there was a part two and three to the original The Exorcist, and I had read the reviews prior to watching and everybody was talking shit about these movies. I thought they were so great. I love part two especially, I love the kind of origin story of Egypt and when you think about that era, they had pretty good CGI effects in that movie. So I gave those a thumbs up.

Were there any other kind of movie inspirations that helped guide the direction of the album?

Kat Von D – So Gregg Foreman AKA Mr. Pharmacist, he’s my other synth player and we’re both huge fans of John Carpenter, especially all the scores for most of his movies. I feel like there is inspiration behind some of those sounds that you find on the album, but as far as inspiration from movies, it was more for the music videos. For the Exorcism video, that one was really inspired by one of my favorite directors, Alejandro Jodorowsky. He did The Holy Mountain and El Topo and Santa Sangre. El Topo was my favorite just because the aesthetic way you would see these like, black silhouettes. The opening scene, for example, is this man in black on a black horse with a black umbrella just cruising through the desert. It was like putting together two things that didn’t belong together and I love that. For the music video for Enough there were definitely some Fellini inspirations with the props of the ocean where we’re kind of like, rowing through the storm and it’s a little bit campy, but in a good way. I don’t feel like the Fear You music video was inspired by any movie in particular, I just had a really clear idea of what I wanted the storyline to be. I love movies, or good movies at least. [laughs]

Do you feel like music videos kind of went away and then steadily came back with stuff like YouTube?

Kat Von D – I don’t know, I think that there are a lot of videos but the filming process for us has been pretty brutal because I don’t tend to do like, the lip syncing videos. I think that’s what the majority of people do, whether it’s hip hop or even metal. It’s like, okay, cool, you’re gonna do a fake performance and then we’re gonna lip sync and we’re gonna have some smoke and stroke. I don’t have any interest in doing that. For me, I’ve always loved music videos that have a narrative. Those just take a lot of time and energy and I can understand why bands don’t do them, but I like these little mini films. It kind of helps storytell the music more than just doing a performance piece. I think there’s creative ways of doing the performance pieces as well, I’m not gonna knock that, but to me, I’m not interested in just shooting a bunch of lip syncing all the time.

It helps show the artistry behind it. I like when artists go the extra mile.

Kat Von D – Me too. It’s funny because I really like our band, we get along so great and we love each other. We always laugh because we’re like The Munsters because we have a contortionist in our band and she looks like Marilyn Munster and then Gregg’s like Herman and so we’re this really weird little kooky family and stuff. I feel like everybody’s so extremely attractive in their own way. When I think of music videos, I always think about different parts that I want to create for each band member. Like, “Oh, this would be a really good scene for Sammi or for Dave.” In the music video for Exorcism, we actually got a stunt crew to come out and put us into those harnesses to make the bandmates fly into the air for those jumping scenes. Then we had to remove the little wires and stuff in post. My drummer always wears this leather fringe fanny pack and then he’s got this long beard and hair and I just want to see that flowing in the wind. It was my favorite jump scene out of all of them.

I just wanted to add that your work concerning animal rights is commendable. Dominion, in particular, that’s an incredibly affecting movie. If everyone was able to view that, you know, maybe things could change faster. I don’t know how you learn and see these things and not be changed by it.

Kat Von D – For sure, there’s definitely some trauma behind all that, I mean you could only imagine. But I always just commend Shaun Monson, because he’s dedicated his life to making those movies. He worked on Earthlings as well and those are just so, so brutal. But thank you, that’s very sweet.

And just so we don’t end on a bummer note, what kind of show can audiences expect to see on your upcoming concert dates?

Kat Von D – I’m a huge fan of going to see bands play and my biggest pet peeve is when you really love a band and you go and see them and it’s just like, a guy standing at a mic. So I definitely want to create an experience, especially with visuals. Like I said, I have a contortionist in my band who’s amazing and she’s part of our group. She is actually going to be playing some sounds but she’ll be moving her body in a crazy way that you won’t even be able to understand. We’ve been shooting all of our live visuals with Linda Strawberry, who does all the art directing for Smashing Pumpkins and a bunch of other bands. Her and I really see eye to eye on finding the beauty in the dark stuff. So we’ve actually been filming and prepping all of the light works and for the LED panels and everything else that we’re doing.I think people are gonna be in for a visual treat. I like that that’s just one other way of storytelling for music and I think that’s how you should be able to present your music to the world. To go back to my bandmates, it’s like they’re all superstars in their own way. I feel like they already have their own fans as well. I’m not interested in just shining a spotlight on myself, we’re all going to be doing some crazy things onstage. We’re like the goth Power Rangers.

[clove-teasdale]

the ticket out

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A/N: practice challenge numero one guys. barely edited really cause  t i m e. hope you enjoy it though! I’m trying present tense and a voice I’m not used to, so sorry if this sucks lol. there are some jumps in time in this just so you know

*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧

So, you all know those power walks TV shows always have with amazing background music that makes the main characters look as cool as possible, right?

You probably also know those don’t happen in real life. Sadly, we don’t have music to create perfect atmospheres every time our lives decide to have a scene and be dramatic—also there’s the fact normal people shouldn’t look that good while walking—but in my head I still do them.

Music blaring in my ears as I walk with my backpack slung over my shoulder in the school’s hallways. It does help that people tend to recognize me when they see me, even when I don’t want them to. It can’t be as nice without the beat my headphones add, however.

Pity...but I don’t really mind.

If you feel confident you look confident.

Unless you’re Wilson. The kid wouldn’t look good even if there were actual music and editing involved. Thinking about the little brat makes me look at my watch out of habit. 7:15. He should be here soon so I take an earbud out, letting new sounds mix with my background music. 

Laughs bubbling out of people’s mouths and different voices overlap each other, more than in your average high school weekday. Anyone can tell the school year is coming to an end and that’ll mean college in a few months for many. I’ve been one of the few who decided to wait another year before starting. Taking a gap year for the fun of it is as good as any excuse. No one really needs to know about my indecisiveness over a major. If I don’t figure it out film student is still at the top of my list.

Just as I’m thinking about the other options I’ve always considered and open my locker, Wilson appears next to me, shoving the book I lent him yesterday in my face.

“You owe me five bucks.”

I spare him a glance and notice his black hair is a bigger mess than usual. “I don’t owe you anything.”

He leans on the locker next to mine, eyes fixing on the opposite row of lockers across the hall. “You said, and I quote: I bet you can’t finish this book in a day.”

“That was a rhetorical bet.”

“You're too literal for rhetorical. I took it as a real bet.”

“So your excuse is that I should pay you because I usually mean what I say and therefore you thought I was daring you to do it?”

“Yes.”

I try not to laugh at his reaching there. “You let your hair be a mess just to finish the book in the morning didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s five bucks you’re never getting, kid.”

“But I didn’t sleep to finish it!”

I snatch the book from his hand as he points accusingly at me with it, then close my locker after putting it inside with a smirk. “And that’s my problem because?”

“Whatever,” he mumbles with an eye roll. However, after a while of walking along the hallway, he adds, “okay, but can you lend me five bucks then?”

I stop before we turn around a corner, suspicion taking over. “Did Cooper steal your lunch money again?”

He clenches his jaw at the name, yet shakes his head. “No, I just lost my money on a bet.”

Glaring, I push him into the hallway his classroom is in before spinning around on my heel.

Taking a peek through the velvet curtain in our suite reveals reporters at the ready. Cameras or portable recorders in hand even though it’ll only take us a few seconds to get to our waiting car. They seem to believe they’ll get to make some questions. They always seem to believe that, but the best they get is a picture of Dad smiling as he walks, his arm behind my back as if to make sure no one gets too close.

The reporters are lucky enough to get that really. Usually, royal advisers avoid the public media unless it’s planned. Dad just happens to be incredibly photogenic and friendly. He could be in the middle of eating the biggest hamburger available, entirely focused on it, and still manage to look frame worthy.

Doesn’t mean there aren’t times when he can’t look good from any angle though. When he’s being stupid for example.

I look over my shoulder to reassure that fact and find him sitting on the sofa, glaring up at Mom as she argues with him in hushed tones. Definitely not picture worthy. He takes a deep breath and looks away from her with irritation before replying back like she’s being irrational. She isn’t. I know that even though I’m not bothering to read their lips. More often than not, he’s in the wrong and just doesn’t want to listen.

One of the downsides of taking a gap year is that now I don’t have an excuse not to go with them on work-related trips, the kind of events where arguing happens easily. I hadn’t thought that through, forgetting how bad things can get quickly, but at least they can’t really yell right now. The risk of being heard by a passing guest in the hotel is too high to take. That’s good news for my eardrums since the volume can stay at a reasonable level and it's sufficient enough to drown their voices out.

Mom proceeds the discussion by pointing at Dad, jaw clenched. That’s the moment my sight drifts back to the window. Before I get too curious about what she’s saying and lower the volume of my music. When she looks that upset she tends to mention the saddest truths.

With some time I learned hearing them fight wasn’t that bad until they got to that breaking point. I can pretend not to care until then, even without headphones. When mom’s voice breaks and her eyes get glassy though, it’s time to push curiosity away. Push it away before you start thinking about how nice it can be when the three of us are in harmony. All jokes and games and laughs. When the broken pieces aren’t overwhelming. The normal family everyone thinks the Teasdale’s are.

That’s what really hurts.

I gulp the lump in my throat and try to focus on the music again, picturing a scene in one of the projects I have in my head at the moment. If only I ever got to writing an actual script instead of leaving it in my head.

Wilson has decided to ‘be more healthy’ and take morning walks with me on weekends now. I take that as his excuse to hang out more with me since I’m not in school anymore.

“So did you receive the letter from the one and only?” He says, completely changing our topic. I pretend not to be fazed by the fact that he’s changing our line of conversation to stop me from prying about this girl he’s probably crushing on in class.

“What are you talking about?”

“The Selection? Come on, Clove. Half the girls in class are sulking about what a bummer it is they’re not old enough to apply, while the other half is squealing about how they could get a chance to meet prince Nate.”

There’s a hint of annoyance in his tone I’d probably identify with if I were in his grade. Still, I elbow him with a smirk and ask, “In which group is our mystery girl?”

His cheeks heat up in a matter of seconds and he looks at the trees around the park. “I asked you first.”

“Well, I don’t really know. I hadn’t considered it.”

“Don’t you already know the dude and all?”

Yeah, before puberty hit hard.

“That’s not really an advantage. I stopped going on trips to the palace with my dad years ago and on important events, the prince is the center of attention so...”

“You stay away, yeah, yeah.”

I look at the neat envelope in my hands and then at my mother again.

“You really think it’s a good idea?” The suggestion is kind of unexpected as she sits on the chair in front of my desk and I get closer to the edge of my bed.

Her lips turn into a thin line at the question. “It could be interesting….”

“But this would mean leaving Columbia to go to Angeles... hypothetically.  If my name gets picked over the other million girls.”  

“I know.” She smiles a bit sadly at the thought, which isn’t a surprise and is why the suggestion strikes me as odd. My confusion is evident and she takes a deep breath. “It gives you a chance to leave the house earlier. No need to wait for college.”

My brows furrow. “What are you—”

“Your father and I have been arguing more lately, I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

I scratch the back of my head awkwardly at that but nod.  

“I… I’m very sorry about that.” She adds with a sad glance at her hands, a sigh escaping her lips before she runs a hand through her hair. I tell her it’s fine. Sometimes it feels wrong to expect her to apologize when she doesn’t really plan for things to become a discussion anyway.

“It isn’t fine. Though it’s become inevitable lately.” She stares at the ceiling for a moment before continuing. “He’s stubborn and I’m done with trying to make him understand simple things, but sometimes I can’t let it slide or he’ll really mess up. Sadly, I can’t let that happen yet.”

I nod again. Whether he admits it to himself or not, Dad wouldn’t be what he is today without mom’s help over the years. “What does this have to do with me applying for the Selection though?”

“I’ll have to deal with your father for a while longer Clove… but you don’t need to be here in the heat of it all… The Selection is your early ticket out of this mess since you’re not leaving for college yet. Your chance to be independent. Or as independent as possible.” When I just stare at her she adds, “I know how overwhelming it can be sometimes when I… disagree on something with him. I know that it’s hard in the moment…” She reaches for my hand with a small smile. “I made a few mistakes and I have to deal with them now, but you don’t have to. You can live your life better than I did, find your own path and maybe even have some fun.”

“With the Selection?” I mumble, skeptically staring at the envelope once more. High-quality paper wasted on something I can’t even reuse.

“Why not? As long as you’re careful not to be fooled by pretty royal smiles...” She teases and I make a face. That earns a laugh from her. “Give it a shot if you want, that’s all I’m saying. You did always say you liked Angeles better and it’s free of your annoying parents.”

“Alright… I’ll think about it.”

And so I found myself filling a form the next day. Taking a picture like hundreds of other girls around the country. 

Maybe I’ll get to see how much Illea’s golden boy has changed.

[the-cryptographer]

I must ask you about JouKai for the meme, predictably. Nice questions, btw!!

Don’t worry! It’s predictable in a good kind of way :D

And thank you! I’m glad you liked the questions! I feel like you can determine my terrible taste in fic by reading these questions~

Rest under the cut:

What they watch during movie dates and what kind of snacks they get from concessions.

Hehe. I think we talked about them watching horrible realityTV and avant garde films that neither of them can stand. But, for the movies,they probably watch really lame live action kids movies with monsters andDRAGONS. Jounouchi also likes genre pieces, like samurai and yakuza flicks.Anyhow, yeah, Jounouchi buys popcorn and sour gumdrops from concessions withthe intent of feeding Kaiba in small increments through the movie, but he getstoo into watching the screen and eats it all himself.

Which one gets in to a fight with the other’s parents.

You’d think it’d be Kaiba given his own parents are too DEADfor Jounouchi to fight with. But, yeah, I can’t really see Kaiba doing it. Hemanages some passive aggressive snark when Shizuka forces Jounouchi and himinto the presence of Jou’s mom, but he’s trying to be nice and also not tryingto pick fights with nobodies, so hekeeps himself contained for the most part. He also tries to be passiveaggressively snarky with Jou’s dad, but Jou’s ready to kick anyone who is meanto his dad straight out the door, so Kaiba also contains himself there too.Anyhow, it’d totally be Jounouchi if Kaiba’s parents or Gouzaburou were stillalive. Jounouchi might be intimidated by Gouzaburou at first, but eventuallyGouzaburou would cross some line in Jounouchi’s presence and from then onJounouchi would be ready to fight him ALL THE TIME, 24/7, NO BREAKS. Ugly, uglystuff :v

What kind of street performance they’d put on to raise money if they were stranded somewhere.

Despite being a comedy routine in motion, I kind of doubtthey’d jump to that immediately. At first Jounouchi’s like – let’s put on aduel as a performance. And then Kaiba’s like – no – and walks off. Jounouchistarts out juggling, and singing/busking, and trying to do a kind of one manstand-up comedy show, and it’s just not working, and so over time it startsdevolving and he starts pleading with every nice looking nee-san and jii-chan thatpasses by – lend me some cash pls pls. And then Kaiba returns because in themeantime he’s hijacked somebody’s street cart and pounded its business intoshape and aggressively sold a bunch of extra units. It’s probably good Kaiba gotback when he did, because Jounouchi’s next method of recourse is probablymugging people…

How they’d be as parents if they had-a-kid/someone-forced-a-kid-on-them.

Jounouchi’s all into being nurturing in my head. So he’s cookingmeals, and blowing bubbles in the bath, and listening to the kid’s problems,and also he functions as a human jungle gym some of the time. Totally fussy, soccermom, and also goofy dad jokes. Also definitely the parent to go to if you’relooking for sympathy and support, and to get away with shit. Omg, he’s theworst at discipline.Yeah, so Kaiba gets to play bad cop a lot. Jounouchi would probably also stickhim with icky jobs like diaper duty a disproportionate amount of time. ButKaiba also maybe does stuff like tell bedtime stories – quiet things. Comparedto Jounouchi – he’s hard to draw approval and affection out of, so the momentswhen he shows these things become very !!! You’d want to make him proud and tonot disappoint him.Also, you totally wouldn’t realise as a kid, but as you’d get older you’drealise that Jou and Kaiba were totally playing you. Like, they were working insynch this whole time and providing really complementary things as parents, andyou’d suddenly be blown away by how much the things you appreciated or blamedone for and not the other were really a joint effort all along, and you wereTRICKED! Haha, I think they’d be good parents x’)

Who would cause the most trouble during a camping trip and how.

Kaiba would be such a bump on a log during a camping trip. Ifeel like he wouldn’t be into it AT ALL. How dare you drag him away from workfor this bullshit.

“C’mon, Kaiba, if you don’t help get this fire started, we can’t eat.”“Wecan just not eat then.”

So, since Kaiba’s not willing to do anything on this camping trip, he doesn’tactually cause any trouble. But, by the same token, Jounouchi’s definitely theone that solves all the trouble he creates by himself. Jounouchi gets themlost, and Jounouchi manages to get them unlost. Jounouchi breaks the frame forthe tent and then repairs it using twigs and woven grass. Jounouchi doesn’t sealup the food properly and wild animals get into it, and Jounouchi has to chaseoff the bears and monkeys and everything by himself and then make entire mealsfrom the one can of beans that’s left over and whatever he forages. Jounouchi’sa resourceful idiot, so somehow they make it out okay.

What they would give each other as both a serious gift and a troll gift.

I don’t feel like they’re a gift-y kind of couple because Jounouchihas no money and Kaiba doesn’t need anything and also Kaiba actually beingsentimental enough to give out presents(??)Serious gifts from Kaiba are probably like ‘my undivided attention forhalf-an-hour’ and ‘I paid for this apartment, and also your health and life insurance’and ‘I am touching your shoulder and attempting to be emotionally supportive. Doyou see how hard this is for me?’ They are spontaneous and touching gifts… Exceptfor the insurance bills; he pays those every month. Troll gifts from him… I’mnot sure Kaiba knows how to troll Jou without being rude and cruel. It isunknown~Serious gifts from Jou are probably in the realm of 500 sandwiches deliveredover the course of a year, or I brought you chocolate for Valentines and friedchicken for Christmas. Troll gifts are probably honestly the kind of thingKaiba gets for his birthday. Jou buys him things like KaibaLand souvenir cups, orridiculous neon glow-in-the-dark-sex toys he doesn’t even think Kaiba wouldlike, or little blue dragon hair clippies for little girls.

Who moves in with them as an unfortunate third wheel roommate.

I’m pretty sure Kaiba is the unfortunate third wheel roommatein most of my headcanons considering both ettuship and battleship. But- okay,let me do this for real.Although I’m sure Kaiba would be annoyed by anybody that moved in unexpectedlywith the possible exception of Mokuba, none of Jou’s friends are really allthat unfortunate. It’d probably be… Pegasus or Siegfried (maaaaaybe Amelda) manipulatingthe fuck out of Seto, and creating some elaborate set of fake circumstances andalso blackmail for why they can’t stay at the hotel while they’re in town, and bothSeto and Jou would very much like them to leave but- no.

How they feel about handholding and sudden kisses in the ear-cheek vicinity.

Handholding: no. not casually at least. Sudden kisses: in public– no. in private – one of the few joys in Seto’s life.

Who’s always snapping photos and who’s pack-ratting clutter.

Jounouchi’s definitely the one snapping selfies andcapturing Kaiba’s frowny face on camera during all important life junctures. Phonecamera is getting worn out.I don’t think either of them is very pack ratty. Probably Jounouchi sometimesgets into moods where they can’t throw the thing out because what if we need it later. (‘We’ll buy another one,’Kaiba says, honestly confused by the question.) But even Jounouchi’s probablyof the personal philosophy that every important thing in life can be carried ina backpack, so I think for the most part he’s not collecting clutter.

Who hogs the bathroom in the morning and who causes toothpaste related drama.

Neither one of them is hogging the bathroom. And, idk, whois the real causer of toothpaste drama – the one doing the toothpaste thing, orthe one making a big deal out of the inconsequential toothpaste thing? Well,squeezing the toothpaste from the top of the tube, leaving toothpaste on the sink,trying purposefully to be annoying and writing messages on the mirror withtoothpaste – Jounouchi does all those things. Also, in an attempt to solve the issueof squeezing Kaiba’s toothpaste tube wrong, he buys his own tube of toothpasteso they each have their own. But he buys annoying flavours like bubblegum andbanana and it kind of pisses Seto off.

What their matching costumes were for that one party.

Probably it should be Duel Monsters themed, yeah?! Lord ofDragons and Red Eyes? Kaibaman and Flame Swordsman? But imagine Jou as Marioand Seto as Luigi and Jou tried to convince Seto to go as Princess Peach butKaiba was like, ‘absolutely not’, and Jou was like ‘yeah, you’re right.Princess Peach actually has an ass’, and everything was terrible.

If I think they’d get married and why or why not.

Never say never. But, honestly, probably not? Headcanon isJounouchi thinks marriage is like, ‘I have a promise and responsibility as aman to always protect and support my spouse and our kids.’ And Kaiba thinksmarriage is like, ‘I want to bind us together for eternity.’ And I thinkneither of those is really compatible with their relationship with one another.Jou’s view is kind of condescending to begin with, but it probably even strikeshim as condescending when it comes to the absurdity of him providing (physical)protection or (fiscal) support to Kaiba. And Kaiba probably spends his timetrying to figure out not how to bind himself closer to Jou, but rather how to createspace and breathing room in their relationship in a way that isn’t cruel orharsh or pushing Jou away for good. So I don’t think either one would reallyhave an inclination to approach the topic with one another – even though I’m allfor them being together until and after they’ve become crotchety old men.Also, you know Seto went through hell and also murdered people to get thatsurname? It’s a big deal for him. He’s not letting his surname go and, also, onlyhim and Mokuba are worthy of the name Kaiba – you have to prove yourself. And, withany luck, by the time Seto and Jou are settled enough for this to ever come up,Jou will probably be sure enough in himself to go, ‘fuck you. I’ve got nothingto prove. you can have your smelly name all to yourself’. And, also, we shouldpity the poor girl or boy Mokuba decides he wants to marry, because who knowswhat hell awaits them before they are accepted™ by Mr Kaibaman.

Who has over a thousand unread emails in their inbox or five hundred icons on their computer desktop and how the other reacts to this gross mismanagement.

Kaiba. Definitely. Thousands of emails. Hundreds of desktopicons. It’s a kind of orderly disaster. Jounouchi doesn’t care. He reacts byslowly trying to shut Kaiba’s laptop, and then Kaiba tells him to knock it off.

What their hidden artistic talents are and how appreciative the other is of these talents.

Jounouchi’s handy and canonically good with model kits and stuff,but I think Kaiba’s the more classically artistic. For some reason I think he’sboth a good singer and good at drawing – although he doesn’t do more thanrandom sketches. Kaiba himself doesn’t put much time or value into either ofthese talents (except when drawing comes in handy for invention concept art andconstruction blueprints) but Jou – Jou kind of thinks it’s both super cool andsuper annoying bc, gdi, why is Kaiba good at everything?!

What they consider each other’s most attractive quality and/or their favourite thing about the other.

I think I answered this one a while back, but Kaiba’scharmed by Jou’s smile and that Jou is so unrelentingly sturdy. And Jou kind ofadmires Kaiba’s pride and persistence, and also how much he cares for Mokuba.

…

Thank you for the ask :D

[brigidandlydia]

Holidays & new beginnings.

Heya!

Thought I would write a new post as feels like its been ages! Seen you are away on your holidays at the moment -  looks great! You’re doing and seeing loads. And trying lots of yummy food! I do think that when I travel or visit somewhere new a big part of the experience is trying the food there.

I was in Valenica last weekend, a kind of last min break away! I only booked it about a month ago, I’d been thinking I’d like to get away for a few days and find it hard to organise friends to go with. Everyone has different commitments and things, also its been a bucket list thing – wanting to holiday on my own so I just went for it. I was away three nights, four days which was perfect. I’ve never been to Valenica before but my cousin has been a few times and he has great things to say. I did study Spanish at school up to AS level and I love the language, so I guess that gives you a bit more confidence when you go somewhere foreign.

Honestly I think it is one of the best trips I’ve been on!

I absolutely loved being there on my own. It was a real confidence boost just taking myself away and little things like finding my Airbnb, asking for directions or recommendations in Spanish and just planning my days all added to it. I love staying in Airbnbs – have you stayed in many? This one was lovely, pretty basic but just little things like the tiled floors and the little balcony off my room were beautiful. I think when you are creative person then you really buzz off things like that! I love shopping home wares and things – cannot wait to have my own little nest to decorate.

One of the things I loved about the city was the Turía gardens, they stretch quite a way down through the city and have paved areas, running routes, big grassy areas and lots of trees. I visited these nearly every day I was there, just walking through and sunbathing on the grass, reading my book, drinking Sangria! On the Sunday I was walking through and at one part there is this paved area with fountains in the middle and there was a traditional band playing and all these people in traditional dress and castanets performing these set dances, it was really cool to just come across it. There were lots of orange trees too, which were beautiful and I had proper freshly squeezed orange juice a few times – there is something so much better when it is that fresh, the taste and smell!

I walked loads just taking in all the buildings and enjoying the sun, it did rain a bit but it didn’t take away from it at all. I visited the beach on the Sunday as a lot of things were closed, it took me ages to find it and then when I finally did it started to pour with rain! I also went on an Airbnb experience one day – I think it’s a relatively new thing, when I booked the place to stay they came up with advertised things to do in the area. There are difference things like tours, cooking lessons, etc. all run by people in the area. I booked a bike ride with a host. It was only me and another couple; which was really good, you felt like you got chatting and the host was really great making sure everyone was getting on fine and enjoying it. I think it was about 30 kilometres we cycled! I haven’t ridden a bike in ages so I was a bit wobbly but it was a great way to see more of Valenica. We cycled along a few beaches that were further out of the city and more popular with locals, ending up at at Albufuera National Park. On the way back we went to an authentic café for lunch - this photo above was seafood in tempura batter and aioli - its like a garlic mayonnaise - so good! And paella! I found that even though I was only there a few days I just slotted into their way of bigger lunches and then a more tapas style dinner. I did get my shoulders pretty burnt that day as it was sunny.

On the last day I made sure to get in all the Spanish specialities in! I went to the Central Market – it really reminded me of the big market in Barcelona - La Boqueria. Just walking around and seeing all the fresh food, the fishmongers and butchers was so interesting. I’d been told to try this drink that they have in Valencia – it’s actually the only place in the world they have it! It’s called Horchata and its made from tiger nuts. It kinda reminded me of a nut milk – like almond milk. It was really good, usually they have it with these pastires called Fartons (lol)! I didn’t get one of those as I had a big croissant from the market for breakfast. I think that’s one of my favourite breakfasts – especially on holiday – croissants, coffee and fresh orange. So good!

I brought home some paella mix and paella rice – so will have to do that some night for my friends or the fam!

I also had paella for my last lunch – I love it, my favourite is seafood paella, traditionally Valencian paella is chicken and rabbit – I have been pescaterian for a few years but this time when I was away I let myself have some things with meat or chicken in them – as I said I do think it’s part of the experience.

I would recommend visiting Valencia if you ever get the chance, I’d probably go back!

I had a lend of a few books from a friend when I was away that I found easy reading as they were good stories. One was called ‘The Wife between Us’ by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. If you liked ‘Girl on a Train’ and ‘Gone Girl’ this would be up your street, plenty of twists! I also read ‘Lullaby’ by Leïla Slimani which was pretty short – it was originally written in French but has been translated. It was a bit dark but I read it really quick I was enjoying the story so much.

I found that I came back on a high from my break away, sometimes a change of scenery really does you good. Things are grand here, I can’t really believe that we are at the end of May. In some ways Christmas seems so long ago but then I feel I cant account for the last few months.

I have been applying for jobs – looking for part time ones to add to my part time hours at the salon or another job, full-time in creative or hospitality. On my last day on holidays I was sitting having gelato and got the call that I’d been offered a new job! It is in Derry and is a Restaurant Manager position! I was over the moon! I have worked in a few different cafes and I love being on my feet, keep busy and working with people. It’s an independent place, which really appeals to me as I think you can have more input and really make a difference to a place. I start next week, it’ll be a big change with a lot more hours and responsibility but I am ready for a new challenge and to take on a higher role. Of course I am nervous about starting and a bit apprehensive but looking forward to it! Wish me luck!!!

Also – one of my aims this year was to move out – something that I think would really benefit me mentally as well. I am in a very luck position that my parents are fine with me being at home and coming and going as I like but I don’t feel like it is my space and still feel a bit like there is always that parent – child relationship where I feel I’m a bit accountable to them all the time. So this new job will mean that I can hopefully move out – definitely an incentive and something to look forward to.

I do believe in the right thing happening at the right time and although part of me wonders about design and illustration I know that in this new job I will be able to be creative. Also I can always be creative outside of work too. I brought my film camera on holiday with me, but I didn’t take many photos on it, using my phone far more. I am currently talking to a girl about helping design t-shirts for her boutique, based in Derry. It’s that worry/struggle though of any kind of freelance work – keeping yourself organised and on track with projects and juggling this with more work. It is good to be keeping up with a creative project though.

I am hoping that this new job will help me with my time management a bit! Sometimes when you are busier you get more done. I have been trying and failing and trying and failing to get on track with regular gym and eating better. Why is it so hard sometimes?! I find that I can be better during the day with eating well but my downfall comes at evening and I just crave all the junk!

I have a wedding at the end of June which I am keeping in mind to try and encourage myself to stay on track.

Saying this I also believe in enjoying your food – when I was away it was the most relaxed I’d been about food for a while, and I didn’t overeat or over do it on the drinks. I think that I was just feeling in control of everything as I was on my own and when I am at home then my emotions and food become a bit wrapped up in each other :(

I’ve been watching ‘The Assassination of Versace’ on Netflix at the moment. I’m about half way through the series and I think it’s really good. I liked the other docu-series thing on Netflix about O.J. Simpson and I think that this programme was produced by the same people. I also watched ‘Top of the Lake’ recently – some episodes were a bit slow but over all I enjoyed it, I think that the actress Elisabeth Moss is great. She was in Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale too.

Have you watching the Beyonce documentary? I’m not a massive Beyonce fan to be honest, but I’m kinda interested in it. I haven’t been to the cinema in a while, but Rocketman is in now – the one about Elton John. I thought Bohemian Rhapsody was good and I like watching films where you learn about people through the story line. So I might give that a watch soon.

Music wise – I heard this track on Annie Mac’s show on Radio 1 one evening, he’s called Joesef and I think hails from Glasgow. Just thought it was something a bit different!

Did you see I posted on my Instagram stories I did some artwork for a musician in Derry – Bairie, for her latest release, ‘Rambling Boys’. Look it up on Spotify!

What do you think of Billie Eilish? I wasn’t so sure the first few times I heard her music but I now really like her stuff.

I am going to see SOAK play on Friday, she recently has brought a new album out, so much music talent that comes out of Derry! My favourite song off her new album is Déjà vu.

I cannot wait to hear about your big trip! I hope it’s got you feeling inspired – I think I seen your sketchbook out in one of your pics! Enjoy the rest of your time away & take care!

Brigid x

[lynchgirl90]

#TwinPeaks revival: 8 things fans need to know

“Twin Peaks is a mystery that holds other mysteries,” says David Lynch when asked to sum up his legendary TV creation in a sentence. So it’s fitting that he wants to keep Showtime’s forthcoming revival of the cult classic as Laura Palmer as possible: wrapped in plastic and full of secrets. He’s doing it for your own good, you know! “People want to know right up until they know, and then they don’t care,” the director tells EW. “It’s really beautiful and you go into another world not knowing what you’re going to find.” 

 Still, we can tell you some stuff. The 18-hour limited event series is “a feature film in 18 parts,” says Lynch, who wrote the script with Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost over a period of three years and shot for 142 days over seven months, but not on Saturdays and Sundays. (Lynch doesn’t do weekends.) The script started in the area of 400-500 pages, but it grew during pre-production, and more so during production, as the cast kept expanding. Lynch used digital cameras for the shoot. “Film is organic, it’s beautiful, no two ways about it, it has a quality that I don’t think has been surpassed, but there’s so many drawbacks to it,” says Lynch, whose movies include lovingly crafted celluloid masterpieces like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, and Blue Velvet. “Digital has gotten to a good point where you can get a pretty beautiful thing, and there’s a million things you can do with it. And even if you shoot on film, you’re going to end up transferring it onto a digital format eventually. So digital is pretty beautiful, and it assures you you’re going to have a chance of everybody seeing the same thing.”

Angelo Badalamenti, a frequent Lynch collaborator who did the music for the original Twin Peaks, is doing the music for the revival. Lynch is a musician himself, and he plays a mean, home-made guitar. When I asked him if he’ll be playing on the soundtrack, he said no, but then his producing partner, Sabrina S. Sutherland, corrected him. “There are a couple things.”

“There are?” he asked.

“Yes, there are,” she said.

He shrugged. “Okay, then maybe I did.”

Here are some other things that might be true about Twin Peaks:

1. Everyone in Hollywood is in it.

Okay, that’s not true at all, but it sure feels like it. There are 217 people in the cast, including most of the original cast. Notable omissions include Lara Flynn Boyle (Donna), Moira Kelly (who played Donna in the Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me movie), Michael Ontkean (Sheriff Harry S. Truman), Joan Chen (Josie Packard), and Piper Laurie (Catherine Martell ). Jack Nance, a longtime Lynch player (Eraserhead) who played Pete Martell, and Frank Silva, the set dresser whom Lynch famously cast on the fly to play BOB, passed away before the project was conceived. Notable newcomers including Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Monica Bellucci, Michael Cera, James Belushi, Tim Roth, Robert Forster, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder, and more. Lynch won’t say who the newbies will be playing, and it’s quite possible many will have blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos. The way some actors tell it, it sounds like some people called up, asked if they could be in the show, and Lynch said, “You bet!” Says Kyle MacLachlan: “I would hear stories from them about how they were heavily influenced by Twin Peaks, and so they wanted to be part of the new series, even if it was just one day of shooting. For others, it was about working with David because he is so phenomenal. It just kept growing.” Asked who Vedder plays, MacLachlan says: “You know, I didn’t know Eddie was there. But I think he sings.”

2. That fan theory you like might be true. Or not.

In the season 2 finale of Twin Peaks, which ended up being the series finale of the show, Agent Cooper enters The Black Lodge and encounters the specter of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). “I’ll see you again 25 years,” she says. Then, after adding, “Meanwhile…,” she strikes a vogue pose and freezes. The popular theory among fans is that the revival — which arrives nearly 26 years after the last episode aired — will retroactively turn the line into a prophecy. Put another way: The new Twin Peaks will be set in the present. Frost said as much in the early press about the project, and if you look at EW’s first look photos from the production, you’ll see there’s no attempt to make the actors look anything any younger than they are. (Although we think it’s odd that many of them still dress as they did back in the day.) But the official word from Lynch — clearly the lead creative pilot on the revival — is that you shouldn’t assume anything about what you’ll see on screen. He won’t even confirm that the original cast will actually be playing their original characters in any real way, except for one: Kyle MacLachlan will reprise his role as FBI Agent Dale Cooper. Lynch himself will be in it, playing Cooper’s boss Gordon Cole, or some version of him. “Gordon is a fantastic person,” is all Lynch will say about the character. What’s it like directing himself? Lynch laughs. “Gordon doesn’t need much direction,” he says.

3. It doesn’t all take place in Twin Peaks.

“It takes place all over the country,” says David Nevins, Showtime’s president and CEO. “Twin Peaks is an important locus, but it’s not the only locus.”

4. Expect a lot of Agent Cooper, and a lot of mythology.

Nevins says that he was prepared to say yes to the new Twin Peakseven before Lynch and Frost pitched the project to him in 2014. But he did need to hear two things; we’ll tackle them separately. First, he wanted to hear that the story would have a lot of Agent Cooper. Check! “I’m really interested in the journey of Agent Cooper — where he’s coming from, where he’s going to, and what the obstacles in his way are,” says Nevins. “That, to me, just as a viewer, was my core interest in what happened to Agent Cooper.”

The original Twin Peaks ended with a number of cliffhangers, none more shocking or disturbing than the fate of Agent Cooper. While trying to rescue his girlfriend Annie from the clutches of former partner Windom Earle in The Black Lodge, Cooper was assaulted by his own dark-side doppelgänger. In the episode’s final shot, we saw that it was Cooper’s dark half — or, to put the same idea a different way, Cooper possessed by demon BOB — that made it out of that red-curtained underworld. “As we left, evil has established a beachhead in Twin Peaks through Agent Cooper,” says MacLachlan, who declined to elaborate further, other than to say that he found it very rewarding to play Cooper’s dark side, and that we might be surprised how Cooper reconciles and resolves this crisis of duality. “Twin Peaks is a cosmology,” says Nevins. “What I think is satisfying about the new version is that it’s a deeper exploration of that stuff. What is the red room? How does the red room work? Where is Agent Cooper? Can he make it back?”

5. Expect pure grade Lynchiness.

The second thing Nevins needed to hear was that Lynch would direct the whole thing. Check! Nevins was quoted earlier this year as saying that new Twin Peaks is “the pure heroin of David Lynch.” Asked to elaborate, Nevins recently told EW: “What I really meant was like uncut and that it’s just a very pure form. We are getting to observe a master artist, master filmmaker getting to use all of the tools that he’s developed over the course of his career. It just feels like that sort of uncut, unadulterated version of it.” That’s important, he says, because “my only anxiety was that the show not feel like the ersatz version of Twin Peaks. We weren’t going to do ‘Twin Peaks: The Remake,’ and David would lend his name and someone else would write and direct it.”

6. Okay, but what kind of pure grade Lynchiness?

Lynch’s films often feel dreamy or nightmarish or both, but some are as linear as The Straight Story and some are as looping as Mulholland Drive. Which one will the new Twin Peaks be? “The honest answer is both,” says Nevins. Adds Gary Levine, Showtime’s president of programming: “There’s a very compelling spine through this story, and yet there are diversions, tangents, fantasy.”

7. It might not be as TV-MA as you think.

Some fans are assuming that Lynch will take full advantage of pay cable’s creative freedoms and deliver an R-rated version of Twin Peaks, à la Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. “He is taking advantage of cable freedoms and there are moments of very strong material, but David’s pretty clean,” says Nevins. “There’s darkness and there’s scariness, but a lot less cursing and probably somewhat less nudity than most of our other programming. Definitely a lot less cursing…. Part what defines David as such an entertaining filmmaker is he’s got such a range of tones. It’s funny, it’s dramatic, it’s emotional, it’s shocking, and occasionally it’s violent, but a lot of times the violence is more implied than shown. That’s one of the things I really like about the show, there’s just such a satisfying range of tones. I don’t like things that are one thing. I like things that are lots of things.”

8. Lynch wants you to watch the show on a TV with a great sound system.

Lynch doesn’t just take great care making images — he’s also known for his dense, intricate soundscapes. Hence, he really hopes you have a home entertainment system that’ll flatter it, and if not, you’ll invest in one. Because art, people! Art! “It’s not just for me, it’s important for everyone! Sound and picture flowing together in time is the thing, that is cinema, and it’s just so beautiful, it’s got to be protected. So on little speakers on a computer or laptop or something, it’s like you have a B-52 bomber flying close in the sky, just barreling along, and it becomes like a mosquito on the little machine. It’s pathetic.” Besides, we hear there’s someone plays some mean guitar on the soundtrack, and you surely don’t want to miss that.

The Twin Peaks revival debuts May 21 at 9 p.m. ET on Showtime.

(TP)

[alexteltevskiy]

Vintage camera mini review - Argus C3 w/ 50mm f/3.5

There's something special about using old film cameras from days long gone. Maybe it's the thought that the camera being used has real history behind it, having taken untold legions of exposures in the decades since it was assembled, passing hands of maybe two, three generations of users. Or maybe it's the easily traceable evolution of human engineering thought and craft, where each successive decade of camera technology brought with it new tricks, affecting the way it looks, feels, functions as well as the the style, the character, the soul of the camera...

I have owned a number of film cameras from different time periods, always on the lookout for something new to eat through rolls of photosensitive polyester. Araki once said that in order to change your photos, you need to change cameras. I'm a firm believer in this, and lucky for me and other like-minded photographers, there's around a century's worth of different cameras to saddle up and try to tame.

The story

At a friend's party I spied a couple of old cameras, tucked away in the far corners of a dusty bookshelf. One was a collapsible Kodak Tourist 6x9 which, unfortunately, had a few parts missing and couldn't be reanimated, and the other was a little brick-shaped art-deco-inspired 35mm camera - the Argus C3. Covered with thick layers of dust, it responded well to basic operation and had nothing missing. The camera would stick at all shutter speeds as well as require Hulk-like strength to change focus and aperture. The back wouldn't even stay shut. But the doctor had high hopes for the patient.

Having borrowed the Argus, I began the immersion process, surrounding myself with wikis and manuals. Made from 1939 till 1966 by Argus in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The camera was surprisingly entry level, designed in the late 30's. Saw use by photojournalists during WWII, even managed to snap some iconic shots from the front lines. In the later years it saw widespread use in many American homes, its affordability, ruggedness and repairability fueling its popularity. Even Jimmy Carter had one. But with the flood of inexpensive Japanese SLRs in the 60's, the archaic rangefinder design of the C3 phased it out into obscurity.

The Brick (as it was affectionately known) had a coupled rangefinder mechanism with a separate viewfinder. Focusing had to be done in one window, framing in another. Both finder windows were some of the smallest I've encountered - even smaller than in my Olympus Stylus Epic - which didn't lend to usability. The leaf shutter speeds went from 1/300 to 1/10 and included provisions for cable release and bulb. Winding the film was manual and separate from winding the shutter. The lens is, surprisingly, interchangeable, but required tools and minutes to change and an external finder for any other focal length than 50. The bare essentials were there, but literally nothing else.

This skeleton crew of camera functions was a contributing factor to its simplicity and ruggedness. The camera proved incredibly easy to disassemble and work on. The original lubrication had half-evaporated and half-turned-to-stone, but that was quickly remedied with a fresh coating. Play had developed over time in the gears, knobs and dials giving that bucket-full-of-bolts effect - but everything was tightened to spec with simple garden variety screwdrivers and wrenches. Very easy to see why the camera continues to work well even 61 years after it rolled off the production line - inside was a date stamped indicating a 1955 production year.

After everything was put together, the kid-on-Christmas-Eve syndrome took over and the decision was made to test the camera next day. Weather conditions were highly unfavorable for testing out an all-metal, f/3.5, all-manual camera from 1955. Nearly sub-zero (that's in Fahrenheit, folks) temps, hours of traffic and inches of snow separated us from our intended destination of Downtown Chicago. Mercury was dropping faster than the sun on the horizon as I hoped I could still feel the unfamiliar controls of the C3 through my thick winter gloves. Film of choice was Ilford Delta 3200, rated at 1600 to keep the grain from consuming the image. Original choice was Kodak Tri-X 400 to keep the entire package in the same era, but the mailman failed to deliver forcing the switch, which actually allowed me to shoot for much longer because the light got sucked out pretty quick with all the extra snow in the air.

The destination was chosen simply because there is no better fit to the form and function of this photographic relic and its place in history than Chicago's own iconic architecture, with its arcane pillars of weathered steel and iron, chiseled art-deco-esque bastions of concrete and slabs of modernist lines receding into infinity. Chicago's facade went through many styles and movements, fueled by advances in construction technology and architectural sciences. But its roots are still bare for the eye to see with the future layered over it. Much of the same applies to the C3.

I was joined on this trip by lovely fellow 43S-member Kris (wo)manning the A and B cams for our video review of the trip. Dodging snowflakes, she kept the video rolling while I was busy keeping a mental checklist of the 10+ steps I had to do before taking a single shot on the Argus. Plan was to try to score shots that would reveal the gritty limestone-laden angles of a city that originally inspired Batman's mobster-mastertown of Gotham. Segue through to Ohio Street to Michigan Avenue, make our way down to the Riverwalk and continue clicking all along Wacker Drive. Sneak peaks of the Water Tower, John Hancock, NBC and Tribune towers, as well as the transformers building (35 E. Wacker Dr.) and Merchandise Mart - all were on the snowed-over map that was increasingly harder to follow.

One of the reasons I like using medium format cameras is because you have less frames to worry about, allowing you to focus more on quality, than quantity. All of a sudden having 36 shots to work with sometimes feels like a burden on short, one-day trips. I actually found that fact comforting the first time using a new old camera, resurrected from the dead. Which leads me to mention some of the things I disliked while using it - first of which is ergonomics. Or rather lack of them. It takes very little time to figure out that this camera is not going to be comfortable to hold. Ironically it takes much longer to figure out how to hold the darn little brick in such a way as to not cover up any viewports or get the shutter finger jammed in the way of the shutter cock/release lever. When the shutter button is actuated, the cocking lever springs back, and if the finger is in the way, you get a very, very long exposure (if you know what I mean). At least some shots fell prey to this malice. The other biggest gripe I had with this camera is that everything is manual and separate, including the frame advance winder. Accustomed to using mainly 60s Japanese SLRs and up, where the shutter cock and frame advance are all in one lever - here it's actually three(!) separate mechanisms. One for the shutter cock, one for the frame wind, and one safety latch to allow the frame winder to wind. While probably the stuff of pink fluffy dreams for fans of multiple exposure photography, I was actually quite enfuriated at having to remember to do so much to accomplish something so simple - leading to multiple shots being overlayed one atop another. Did I also mention that I wasn't a fan of the brick-like shape and ergos? I did? Good, I'll mention it again, because it really is not made for human hands. Maybe for robot hands...

But it wouldn't be a proper camera review without mentioning some of the positives of this fully mechanical monster. And there are quite a few. Surprisingly they have more to do more with its flaws than anything else. The main reason I picked it up is because I really wanted to create some imagery that looked like it came from another time period. Anachronism is the name of the game for me when I use vintage gear and the included 50mm lens delivers in spades giving you that vintage "look". Supposedly coated, the effect is thankfully nowhere to be seen, with images full of silky-smooth, flat-as-LOG gradations of gray almost completely devoid of contrast. Due to a short focal flange distance the lens is surprisingly sharp in the center with minimal distortion, while its antiquated optical formula contributes copius amounts of vignetting that's present even when stopped down. All combined, makes shots look like newsreel footage from the past. Second positive is that just like any film camera, this one slows you down and lets you think more about the content. But where other film cameras are more of a moderately mindful experience, this one is hands-down almost ritualistic in the way it forces you to adhere to the craft. Almost nothing short of actually picking up an old 8x10 - complete with bellows, dark slide, curtain, ground glass and all - can compare. And third is, of course, the conversation starter effect. Just that day alone, three people approached me interested to find out more about the camera. Just not that many crazies like us out there any more, I guess...

All in all it was a wonderful experience, will be a sad day when I have to return the camera back to my friend. The Argus C3 is a great camera for very niche and very vintage-looking photos. Just treat the cons as pros and embrace the craft. Already looking forward to my next vintage camera to try out - have an old 4x5 from the 30's which I still have yet to fix...

PS: ending the review with a little poster I designed commemorating the trip ;)

[pigballoon]

Roma

(Alfonso Cuaron, 2018)

5 years after wowing multiplexes with the CGI propelled, 3D aided blockbuster Gravity, for his latest trick Alfonso Cuaron goes to the total other end of the spectrum, perhaps just to prove he can. Indeed, making a movie of this nature probably requires a little bit of clout that only the success of something like Gravity could bring.

Taking its title from a neighbourhood in Mexico City, the movie features something in common with another movie of similar title, Rossellini’s Roma, citta Aperta, and the other work of the Italian neorealist movement in that it is almost a study of mundanity, or more to the point a study of people and place grounded in the mundane. At 2 hours in length that could make the movie something of a chore to many, its gentle pace, joy sapping black and white photography, and intimate attention to the every day, commonplace details of a life are not exactly the hallmarks of great drama, though for anybody that appreciates the intricacies of cinematic craft, Roma is a gold mine.

Indeed, if I was to have one criticism of the movie it would be that it called to mind Andrzej Wajda’s debut, Pokolenie, another movie that called back to the neorealists, set in war torn Poland, where the starkness of what Wajda was capturing was a little bit off set by the magical touch he displayed from behind his roving camera. Cuaron too with his by now famous long takes, and exquisite framing has you so in awe of what he’s doing, it can take you a little bit out of the stark reality he’s dropping you in the middle of with the minutiae of his observation.

The only other qualm I have with the movie comes in its later stages when in the midst of a film that as already touched on is so grounded in the mundanity of day to day life, Cuaron drops a melodramatic moment with a man and a gun in a furniture store which feels like something from some soap opera, and to me was totally out of step with everything that happens around it. To go back to the Rossellini Roma comparison, it’s the Harry Feist moment of Cuaron’s movie. A moment of ridiculous movie phoniness in an otherwise gentle stream of cinematic observation.

And observation is what the movie does best. Less important what is said, certainly less important is any kind of actorly posturing, or grand narrative. Roma is a movie built around its imagery. I’ll make another comparison, Tarkovsky’s Zerkalo, another movie constructed like a dream, a cinematic story of memories. Like that movie (as I recall, my memory is more hazy than these movies) this one makes minimal use of close ups, holding its subject at an arms length. Not only does this lend the movie a quality of the real, a quality of the observational, and of distant sort of memory, but it allows Cuaron to frame the intimacy of his subjects lives in full blown cinematic grandeur. Where Terrence Malick once accomplished a similar trick contrasting a family in Texas suburbia in the 1950s with a larger tale of the formation of the cosmos, Cuaron achieves it via simpler means, his images are wide, often shot from low angles, and make the most mundane moments look majestic and painterly, lend them a grandeur and pomp that puts the importance of said intimate events on a pedestal any chronicling of personal memory deserves.

It isn’t only the photography itself that is key though. Serving not only as DP but also editor of his film, the choices that Cuaron makes in cutting his movie are every bit as important to the success of its visual language. The movie is defined, as his have come to be, by long takes, but his occasional use of montage editing, or of showing one thing while hearing another also provide some of the movies most telling, communicative moments early on.

It is a movie of such wondrous details you could go on pouring over it for hours analysing its every frame (the use of the planes in the sky!) as no student of his countries history I can barely even begin to get beyond the surface of the seemingly class divide driven sociopolitical commentary that is the underlying concern of the majority of the movies minimal plot. It’s a tale of a family remembered while representative of something larger. For me the quality of the moviemaking and what it communicates is enough. Cuaron may not be as free and natural and loose as he was when last working in his native tongue in Y Tu Mama Tambien, but the artist he’s grown into can do so much more with the specific language of his medium, and this movie is better representative of that than any of the larger scale ones he’s been making for the past decade and a half have been.

[dweemeister]

The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968)

Hardcore Disney fans know how crucial Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman – the Sherman Brothers – were to Walt Disney Studios in the 1960s. From Mary Poppins (1964) The Jungle Book (1967), the Winnie the Pooh films, and numerous songs for Disney theme parks – most notably “It’s a Small World (After All)”. But did you know the Shermans were behind a musical about a Missourian family that moves to the Dakota Territory with the United States presidential election of 1888 as a backdrop? This is not figment of my imagination, but Michael O’Herlihy’s The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. Yes, that title is too long. Tough!

The film aired as part of Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) occasional Treasures from the Disney Vault bloc on March 29 and has not been released on home media since 2004. This review is based on the print that aired on TCM, which was presented in the correct screen aspect ratio (1.85:1) – unlike the 2004 DVD release (previous releases were 1981 on VHS and 1982 on LaserDisc). The film has been buried deep in the Disney Vault and thus has barely seen the light of day. That is not any fault of the film – imperfect as it is – itself, but a perception it would not make any money nowadays for the House of Mouse (given their financial health these days, Disney’s refusal to make its most obscure titles more accessible annoys me). Nevertheless, spelunking into the least-visited crevices of the Disney Vault always uncovers something worthwhile, and that includes this film.

Patriarch Renssaeler Bower (Walter Brennan, acting in his usual role as a boisterous elder) is the leader of the family band – including his son Calvin (Buddy Ebsen), daughter-in-law Katie (Janet Blair), and grandchildren Alice (Lesley Ann Warren), Sidney (Kurt Russell), Lulu (Debbie Smith), Mayo (Bobby Riha), Nettie (Smith Wordes), Rose (Heidi Rook), Quinn (Jon Walmsley), and Laura (Pamelyn Ferdin). Grandpa Bower, a lifelong Democrat and Confederate veteran of the Civil War (this is before the GOP and Democrats became the parties – ideologically, racially – that they are today), petitions the Democratic National Committee to perform at the 1888 convention in St. Louis. Their song is accepted, but Alice’s boyfriend Joe Carder (John Davidson) convinces the family to move to Dakota Territory – which is heavily Republican (“Reee-publican” to Grandpa Bower). Political tensions simmer underneath the front of a musically harmonious family. Where Calvin and Katie Bower are both Republicans but not terribly political, Joe’s firebrand dedication to the GOP and Alice’s love for him make life uncomfortable for Grandpa Bower – whose actions in Dakota Territory jeopardize Joe and Alice’s relationship. Things come to a head on Election Day: incumbent Republican Grover Cleveland (after one term) versus Democratic challenger Benjamin Harrison.

I do have one question above all. If Grandpa Bower was so invested in electing Cleveland, why did he allow the family to move to Dakota Territory? After all, territories have no say in presidential elections!

Within Family Band’s 110-minute runtime, the Sherman Brothers are able to pack in nine songs (excluding reprises) of hopefulness, wholesome romance, and American political mythos – the last of which the Shermans never attempted before this film or after. It is a decent musical score which ends weakly, but not without some genuine musical marvels. The titular song (the video provided in that link does not contain the entire song) appears immediately after the opening titles showcases a Walter Brennan who does not know how to conduct. Otherwise, the song should exemplify exactly what the viewer should be expecting: a light-hearted musical family film. Moments later, Alice receives a letter from Joe – whom she has never met; for younger readers, know that before there was online dating, newspaper dating was a thing – and breaks out into “The Happiest Girl Alive”. That is two songs within the film’s first 5 minutes. Lesley Ann Warren’s expressive, strong voice lends so much emotion to a beautiful, ponderous song placed too early in this movie. “The Happiest Girl Alive” is about an introspective young woman who has never known romantic love and is nervous to meet the fellow she has exchanged love letters with. The song is riddled with questions of self-doubt and self-worth, and it takes Alice ninety seconds to sing the song’s title (after singing the following, notice how her body opens to the camera, how her movements become freer as she puts her insecurities into song):

For I have been saving this part of my life till the heart of my life would arrive. And seeing him there may be too much too bear for the happiest girl alive.

Another rehearsal soon follows as Grandpa Bower runs through the campaign song he has composed. The song is “Let’s Put It Over with Grover” – incorporating elementary school-level history while praising Grover Cleveland to level of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Sure, Grandpa Bower, whatever you say (Cleveland was a middling president harmed by recession and constant union striking in his second of two nonconsecutive terms). Soon after, the Bower family is admitted to the DNC, and they spontaneously sing and dance “Ten Feet Off the Ground”. “Ten Feet Off the Ground” is the third of too many songs taking place in the Bower family barn, no matter how good the choreography (by Hugh Lambert) is. And for those keeping count, this song marks four songs within 25 minutes – whether this was the Shermans’ decision or Michael O’Herlihy, it creates serious pacing problems for the film’s second half (which was heavily cut against the wishes of the Shermans, but more on that later).

Riffing off “Oklahoma” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! – in lyrics and the song’s function within the plot – is “Dakota”. The comparison is unfavorable in all aspects, but one cannot fault John Davidson’s conviction and vocal talents. The day after the Bower family arrives in Dakota, Family Band’s best singers sing “‘Bout Time” – one of the finest love songs composed by the Sherman Brothers. Like the fully-orchestrated “The Happiest Girl Alive”, the upper strings and woodwinds complement Davidson and Warren’s vocals in this affirmation of love despite the increasing political antics within the Bower family.

Joe has unambiguous lyrics expressing how he does feel for Alice; the song does not have as interesting, meandering lyrics like “The Happiest Girl Alive” nor should it. If I have any criticism for what is probably the best song in the Family Band, the lyrics are too slanted towards Joe (one close cousin of “‘Bout Time” has a similar problem with the same performers and composers – “Are We Dancing?” from 1967′s The Happiest Millionaire). One wishes for Alice, after “The Happiest Girl Alive”, to sing about the certainty of her feelings for Joe.

Three lesser songs follow Alice and Joe’s countryside frolic: “Drummin’ Drummin’ Drummin’” (Grandpa Bower’s playful song about a young Civil War drummer boy), “West o’ the Wide Missouri” (a celebration of American Manifest Destiny sung on Election Day), and “Oh, Benjamin Harrison” (a condescending campaign song by the Dakotan Republicans on Election Day).

I imagine many who see The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band are expecting a cheerful musical and will not be expecting the amount of 1880s American politics in this film. With the 2016 presidential election in recent memory, Family Band’s final minutes might feel familiar – here’s a hint: the 1888 election resulted in the second of four times that the popular vote winner lost the Electoral College. Thankfully, the political violence (yes, political violence) here is not motivated by white supremacy, but just a vigorous scuffle among a bunch of Dakotans on opposing sides of the aisle. If screenwriter Lowell S. Hawley (1961′s Swiss Family Robinson, 1962′s Babes in Toyland) is attempting to draw allegories to the turbulent politics of that time, Family Band is a failure. In retrospect, the film’s politics are quaint given that, in the months after its release, assassinations, race riots, and violence at the Democratic National Convention would engulf the United States. Hawley draws little relevance for the 1888 election – a time of industrialization without transformative presidents. Instead, Family Band is like an awkward, overlong political conversation with relatives of different ideologies who hear what you have to say, but do not listen.

Production on Family Band began in the 1960s when Walt Disney purchased the rights to Laura Bower Van Nuys’ book The Family Band: from the Missouri to the Black Hills, 1881-1900, intending to adapt it for his anthology television series. Requesting the assistance of two of his favorite employees at the studio, Walt enlisted the Shermans to enliven a story he felt was going nowhere. “The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band” was composed first and, with Walt’s approval, that became the film’s title. As one of his last decisions before his passing, Disney (who did not live to see this film) ordered more songs to turn Family Band into a feature-length musical, overriding the Shermans’ objections that the plot was too uneventful to justify such an effort. But such an effort they made – the Shermans composed more songs that appear in the final cut of the film. Prior to Family Band’s debut at Radio City Music Hall, the film was cut from 156 to its current 110 minutes. Also on the cutting room floor were two songs – again, the Shermans protested, claiming that those two songs were important for character development and revealing motivations. It is unknown if the 156-minute version exists in any form; the Walt Disney Studios has not retouched this film since its DVD release. Sheet music of the deleted songs exists.

Family Band also marks the screen debut of Goldie Hawn as a giggling girl at the election night brouhaha. With the film also starring Kurt Russell (Hawn and Russell are a real-life couple) as one of the Bower children, this is the first of three films they made together before Swing Shift (1984) and Overboard (1987). As Russell was a child at the time and five years younger than Hawn, one probably thinks the two did not pay that much attention to the other.

Following Blackbeard’s Ghost (1968) as the second film released by Walt Disney Studios without their namesake’s involvement during filming, The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band still feels like it has Walt’s touch. In a decade of prestige musicals, Family Band’s are refreshingly modest – even if that means its story has been overextended. Audiences may have rejected it upon release, but a handful of songs by the Sherman Brothers make Family Band entertaining viewing for families and a devoted set of Disney fans willing to explore the studio’s older, near-forgotten relics.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.