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iinsertblognamee · 2 years ago

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Buzzfeed; The 10 Times Sam Kerr and Y/N Arnold Made Us Believe in Love

any pictures are just for illustrative purposes, no face claim

10. They've Known Each Other for Years Before They (Finally) Started to Date

As many Matildas fans may be aware, the couple had met on the field back in 2011 when Y/N made her debut for the national team. It was Caitlin Foord (Matildas team member) who spilled the beans years later, claiming that from the moment they met, that was it. Although the pair weren't hiding their attraction to each other - when Y/N scored the second goal against Norway sending them into the next stage of the World Cup, Sam had been seen kissing Y/N during the celebration.

Picture Left; Westfield Matildas FIFA Women's World Cup 2011 squad Picture Right; Y/N Arnold scoring the second goal for Australia against Norway

In later years, Arnold was asked about the attraction between her and teammate Kerr, and she answered "We were both young when we met, she (Kerr) had taken me under her wing and a great friendship bloomed because of it. I think it was very much puppy love, rushed and a little naive - the rush of sneaking around and all that was thrilling and we liked each other enough to fall into it I guess. Feelings got hurt in the process and we removed ourselves (from the fling) before it could get too serious. She's always been my friend first and I think that really stood true during the following years and when we were both older and more mature we decided to go for it again - and here we are."

Clip; '21 Questions with Chelsea's Sam Kerr' The Women's Football.

Bonus; While being interviewed Sam Kerr admitted that she had a crush on Y/N Arnold from the moment she met her, although she didn't think the feeling was mutual. "It was our first training session together (Y/N and Sam), and we had been paired up and I was just so distracted by her that I kicked the ball too strong and hit her right in the face." she continued to explain, "I thought well that's my chance gone, though Y/N was so nice about it and even joked that she'd be able to tell our kids all about it later. Always nice to hear your crush talk about your non-existent kids." The interviewer adds, "Did she end up telling your daughter?" Sam nods her head as she laughs "It's one of Delilah's (Sam and Y/N's Daughter) favourite bedtime stories"

Turns out not even Sam Kerr can escape having a crush on Y/N Arnold. Do we blame her?

9. They Rekindled Their Romance in 2015 when both were signed on by Sky Blue FC

Picture Left; Y/N Arnold and Sam Kerr Picture Right; Y/N Arnold, Caitlin Foord and Sam Kerr

Both girls were signed on in 2015, joining Matildas team member and friend, Caitlin Foord. It's not certain what exactly happened during the off-season between the pair but by the time they were both on the field the attraction to each other was obvious.

One incident included when Y/N had been involved in a rough tackle, Kerr running to aid where fans spotted Sam planting kisses on her forehead as she was looked over by the team medic. At the end of the game when asked about the incident Sam simply said " I went to check on my teammate".

Clip; Interview with Sam Kerr regarding the game

Although we don't know what was said between the pair or if kisses were shared, we can't deny the chemistry the two have.

Dating rumours started after that match, with a 'source close to the couple' claiming that 'the pair had been living together for months and were very happy. Although the hit Y/N had taken a few days before had put everything in perspective for the pair. The two of them are ready to take that next step and come out to the public'.

These claims sent fans into a spin, asking both Kerr and Arnold as well as the other Sky Blue team members about the pair. The answer simply was that they were just 'close friends'.

8. Their love language is physical touch

'Close Friends' is one way of putting it. The pair when seen together can't seem to keep their hands off each other - and we're not mad. The public displays of affection are one we're living for.

so cute

7. They post about each other

It's no secret that these two scream 'couple goals' and continue to prove it with their Instagram posts. From birthday posts to game-day celebrations these two are each other's biggest fans. (And so are we!).

and of course with the post that started it all.

Instagram post; samanthakerr20 'Guess we should make it Instagram official'.

It was Y/N Arnold's big sister who gave us the confirmation we needed, with her comment 'Been dealing with this for years, it was bad enough in person and now I have to see it on social media too?'

6. Their Families

It's not gone unnoticed that Y/N Arnold's big sister is another Matilda star, Miss Mackenzie Arnold. Who also holds the place as one of Sam's Best Friends.

Although Sam wasn't sure that was quite the case when asked in an Interview what was one of the scariest things she's ever had to do. Her answer "Telling my girlfriend's sister (Mackenzie Arnold) that we were dating." she went on to explain that the pair had been keeping their relationship private in the first few months before Mackenzie had walked in on the two of them in a comprising position. "I just remember throwing the blanket over us and trying to explain what was happening but nothing would come out, I mean was in bed with my best friend's little sister. Y/N thankfully managed to break both me and Mac out of our shock and within seconds Macca was out the door. We ended talking later that night and I was so sure that she was going to kick my ass, but instead admitted that she had known for weeks and was seeing how long it would take for us to confess."

Thank god the two besties made it through. It seems that Sam and Mackenzie aren't the only two best friends. Y/N and Sam's sister seem to be close too, with Y/N being a part of her bridal party and the Godmother to one of her children (Along with Sam).

Picture Left; Y/N Arnold, Sam Kerr, Unknown and (Bride) Maddi Picture Right; Maddi, Sam Kerr and Maddi son (Y/N and Sam's Godson)

The Aussie girls have been seen having shared Christmas with both families and Y/N mentioned in an interview that both her mum and Sam's mum would catch up with each other - as far as sharing a hotel room when the pair would come over to London to see the girls.

Seems the Arnold-Kerr families are as tight as can be.

5. Tattoos

It's not a secret that Sam loves her tattoos, showing them off whenever given the chance. But we recently learnt that Miss Y/N Arnold had given Sam her very own tattoo tribute.

Take about permanent love.

4. A wedding

Yep. That's right, the pair got married back in 2020 with family and friends to witness just before the pandemic took over. Although we still have no pictures from the ceremony itself the honeymoon photos are just as cute.

When asked about the wedding, Sam gushed about how beautiful Y/N looked in her dress (we can imagine) and said it was the best day of her life. Although we're sad we didn't get an invite in the mail - we are very happy for the couple. And of course, at the confirmation from Y/N herself that she was now Mrs Kerr (the back of her jersey is now Arnold-Kerr)

3. A Scare

Any soccer fan knows what happened on the 11th of March 2022. The collision between Y/N Arnold and a West Ham team member had the soccer world at a still.

After the game, a statement was released explaining that Y/N was at the hospital getting medical care and would be out until further notice. It was also noted that Sam would be out for the next two games.

As scary as the situation was, Sam had been by Y/N's side the whole time, when Sam scored the next goal after Y/N had been taken off she kissed her ring finger. It didn't take long after the final whistle for both Sam and Mackenize to be off the field and making their way to Y/N.

A week later Sam posted a picture of Y/N, with a thank you for all the kind wishes.

We are just glad that Y/N was okay.

2. A baby

The pair certainly know how to surprise us - on Boxing Day in Australia (2022), Sam posted a snapshot of Y/N and a bump.

Instagram post; samanthakerr20 'hey baby & baby'

Fans (and us) went wild, the comments flowing with congratulations and support from fans, friends and family members. Although we were unsure when the baby was due, we didn't have to wait too long.

The next month (January 2023) Sam posted once again.

Instagram post; samanthakerr20 'Delilah Arnold-Kerr, 21/01/2023'

And from that the newest member of the Arnold-Kerr clan was born.

In separate interviews for the Matildas, Y/N and Sam were asked about parenthood. Y/N stating 'It's definitely crazy, I mean she's been here for three months and she's already grown so fast".

Sam commenting 'Our family and friends have been really supportive and helpful y'know. Both Y/N and I training for the World Cup so the time management with a baby and training is hectic. And of course, Y/N is just superwoman, D and I are very lucky to have her in our lives."

My favourite part was when at the end the interviewer asked how parenting looked on Sam and Y/N responded 'Well she's definitely my favourite milf'.

We 100% agree with you Y/N.

1.The World Cup

Although Sam was called out of the game due to a calf injury that didn't stop her (and baby Delilah) from cheering on the girls during the match. Every time Y/N would get the ball, a cheer could be heard from Sam. Talk about a supportive wife!

And when Sam was let back on the field the next game you best believe that Y/N cheered the loudest on the field.

But it was at the end of the game when Sam ran towards the crowd, grabbing Delilah and bringing her over to Y/N - the two of them sharing a kiss as the crowds around them cheered. Their little family is forever in our hearts.

#sam kerr x reader #sam kerr imagines #sam kerr imagine #woso imagine #woso imagines #woso x reader

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ariel-seagull-wings · 15 days ago

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TOP 10 SONGS ABOUT S*X FROM MUSICALS

@themousefromfantasyland @the-blue-fairie @thealmightyemprex

Back in 2011, inspired by the... "classic" songs about bumping uglies from Grease 2, the Nostalgia Chick counted down her top ten songs about doin' it from the stage and screen! It was a fun list, but since it mainly came from a mainly humorous and north-american perspective, the list didn't went deep trough the subject as it could, and missed some gems as well.

As a humble attempt to expand the horizons in the erotic potential of musical theater and film, I decided to come up with my own list: my Top 10 Songs about F* from the long, proud history of musicals as an art form.

10. Sodomy (Hair)

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"Sodomy Fellatio Cunnilingus Pederasty... Father, why do these words sound so nasty?

Masturbation Can be fun Join the holy orgy Kama Sutra Everyone!"

This is the shortest song, so that is why is low on the ranking like in Nostalgia Chick's list, but is still a memorable number confronting taboo that forbids talking about sex from one of the most important works of theatre later adapted into an underrated film.

09. Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me (Rocky Horror Picture Show)

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"Now all I want to know, is how to go I've tasted blood and I want more (More, more, more) I'll put up no resistance

I want to stay the distance I've got an itch to scratch

I need assistance

Touch-a, touch-a, touch-a

Touch me I wanna be dirty Thrill me, chill me, fulfil me Creature of the night"

Rocky Horror went an extra mille in borrowing counter-cultural elements and bringing it to the musical stage and screen: extablishing that it takes place in a world of sci fi and horror stories, it invites us to leave away our body and soul at the door, refuse being trapped by appearances of normality and respectability, and defy any labels while embracing sexual liberation, and this song is an anthem to this liberation.

08. Little Bird in the Cinnamon Tree (Man of La Mancha)

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"Little bird, little bird

Beneath this tree This cinnamon tree We learned to love We learned to cry For here we loved And here we kissed And here one cold and moonless night We said goodbye"

I have come to terms with the fact that when it comes to pairing narrative with music, Man of La Mancha is one of the weakest musicals.

Unlike contemporaries like Pippin and Camelot, which are consistent in combining their narratives with their songs fitting their inspirations and create a strong, whole cohesive message, Man of La Mancha tries to pair a message on the value of idealism while still keeping the humor from a satyricial, cynical source material, which makes it an uncohesive narrative as a whole.

However, I can accept that while the story is weak as a whole, some individual song numbers are good on their own, and the best example is this song, especially as performed in the 1972 film adaptation: it contrasts the softness of a sweet, folk like love song with the agressiveness of a band of bandits who hound around Aldonza with the intension of sleeping with her... wether she wants it or not.

This effectively comes to show that something that should be an enjoyable experience of pleasure can and will be twisted into an instrument of violence and control by a predator who still presents their act of ignoring consent as "something sweet and romantic" in an attempt of justifying it.

Speaking of predactors...

07. Hello Little Girl (Into the Woods)

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"Think of that scrumptious carnality Twice in one day... There's no possible way

To describe what you feel

When you're talking to your meal!"

From the words of Diva from @musicalhell

"Into the Woods is all about returning Fairy Tales to their original roots, which doesn't mean just putting back all the death and morbid stuff that several centuries of bowdlerization cut out, but exploring their simbolic and psychological implications: and that means tackling the stranger danger subtext in Little Red Riding Hood in all its dark glory, with a Wolf that embodies every modern parents Predator Fears. Not for nothing is the original costume disturbingly anatomically correct. Sondheim leaves a chilling justaposition between the Wolf's jaunty seduction of Little Red Riding Hood and his sinister lascivious inner dialogue, watching him lure the little girl out of her path while savoring the tought of devouring her (take that in whatever context you like) is sure to make your skin crawl. And that's exactly what it should do."

Surprise: the next one is a tye...

05. Le Val d'Amour (Notre Dame de Paris)/Lovely Ladies (Les Misérables)

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"At the top of Saint-Denis Avenue

There is a blessed place

From which you can see the candles shine

As soon as nightfall comes

Over there in the middle of the plane

It's enough that you go there one day

So you you always go back there

At the Cabaret of the Valley of Love

In the Valley of Love, the women of love

Will make love to you for a few sous

No need for gold or jewels

No discussion nor sweet words

Just a few sous to make love to the

women of love in the valley of love

Andalusians, the Jews, the dead

Come from all over from all the ports

Travellers and merchants

Come to rest here as they pass by

Catalonians and Flemings

Come to burn all their money"

youtube

"Old men, young men, take 'em as they come Harbor rats and alley cats and every kind of scum Poor men, rich men, leaders of the land See them with their trousers off they're never quite as grand All it takes is money in your hand!

Lovely ladies Going for a song Got a lot of callers But they never stay for long

Come on, Captain, you can wear your shoes Don't it make a change To have a girl who can't refuse Easy money Lying on a bed Just as well they never see The hate that's in your head Don't they know they're making love To one already dead!"

If I had a nickel for a sung-trough musical based on the literary works of Victor Hugo that makes a sardonic and matter of fact aproach to present the world of prostitution, I would have two nickels. Which is not much, but is curious that happened twice.

In the french language rock-opera adaptation of Notre Dame de Paris/The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the narrator Pierre Gringoire acts as the announcer of the bordello Val D'Amour (the place where the cad Captain of the Guard Phoebus Chateaupers intends to trick the romani street urching Esmeralda to give her virginity to him) a place known even by people outside of France who come to sleep with the ladies, whose work is represented in a ballet simulation of the act in shadowed sillouetes.

Meanwhile, in Les Misérables, we see the single mother Fantine slowly degrading by selling her necklace, her hair implicitly also her teeth like the book, until culminating to need to become a prostitute to try and feed her daughter who she left in the inn of the Thénardies.

Both songs sound fun and joyfull in their arrangement, while presenting images that this profession is clearly not an "Easy Life" like some people usually call it.

04. Les Rois Du Monde (Roméo et Juliette: de la Haine à l'Amour)

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"We, we make love and live life Day after day night after night What's the use of being on Earth If it's to live our whole lives on our knees We know that time is like the wind To live is the only thing that matters We don't care much about morals We know for sure that we make no harm"

Roméo et Juliette: de la Haine à l'Amour is a French musical based on William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. Differences from Shakespeare's plot include that the nature of the lovers' deaths is different, depending on the production.

New characters such as Death (French, Belgian, Japanese, Netherlands, and Moscow productions only) and the Poet (French production only) appear for dramatic effect.

Lady Capulet has a greatly increased role and in the case of the Hungarian version, has an affair with her servant. The role of Tybalt has changed slightly from being purely dark to a more pitiful character because of his growing up with the hate and a dark childhood, as well as an unrequited attraction to Juliet.

Sang by Romeo, Benvolio and Mercútio, this song idealizes a contrast between the carefree life of the young men who view the older generation in positions of autority as having an isolated, fearful existence.

It is an anthem to a romanticized idea of hedonism, emphasizing the importance of living life to the fullest, disregarding societal norms and focusing on love and enjoyment, rather than being constrained by fear and power struggles.

This carefree moment is a scene of levity that will bring stark contrast to the darkness that comes ahead, as well as extablishing that before meeting his true love in Juliet, this version of Romeo imitated his companions in impulsively going trough sexual escapades as an adventure.

03.Johanna (Mea Culpa) (Sweeney Todd)

youtube

Johanna, Johanna I'll keep you here forever I'll wed you on the morrow Johanna, Johanna The world will never touch you I'll wed you on the morrow

As years pass, Johanna You'll tend me in my solitude No longer as a daughter As a woman

Johanna, Johanna I'll hold you here forever then You'll keep away from windows and You'll Deliver me Johanna From this Hot Red Devil With your Soft White Cool Virgin

Palms...

We are back with Sondheim, with a song that is considered so disturbing that most stage productions and the movie addaptation of Sweeney Todd cut it out. Why?

Let this description by Diva of @musicalhell from her number two ranking of Top Five Musical villains give you the context:

"You have to be pretty awful to come off as worse than an obsessed serial killer barber and his equally obsessed cannibalistic accomplice and Judge Turpin fits the bill. We're all too familiar with the type: Stern moral Crusader on the outside, sexual deviant who abuses his power to his own ends on the inside. Such is the extent of Turpin's corruption that it ends up tainting his one good deed in the entire show: he takes in Sweeney's foundling daughter Joanna which is decent of him, I mean considering that he kind of had her father imprisoned on false charges and raped her mother, causing her to go insane and drink poison. But when Joanna grows up, the charity goes right out the window and the perving begins. Turpin's hypocrisy and sexual dysfunction are so unsettling that his big villain song is almost always cut from the production for being too intense it's a chilling insight into his psyche as he alternately lusts over his lovely ward and brutally chastises himself for that lust crescendoing until..."

Sondheim's attempt at writing the first major musical number in a Broadway show that has an orgasm is presented in a villain song contrasting religious guilt with violence and lust, following a tradition that goes back to Va Tosca (Te Deum) from Puccini's Tosca and would go on to inspire later villain songs like Hellfire from Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

"Spicy, even for Sweeney Todd", its legacy couldn't get out of the conversation on this list.

02. Gently Johnny (The Wicker Man)

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"I put my hand o-on her knee And she says, do you want to see? I put my hand o-on her breast And she says, do you want a kiss?

Gently, gently Gently Johnny Gently Johnny My giggalo

I put my hand o-on her thigh And she says, do you want to try? I put my hand o-on her belly And she says, do you want to fill me?

Gently, gently Gently Johnny Gently Johnny My giggalo"

The Wicker Man is an interesting case where people often only praise it as a good work in folk horror cinema (justly deserved), yet it is rarelly discussed as a musical, when there are several diegetical musical numbers that not only serve to pass the time, but move the story forward and add to the story's theme, as all great musicals strive to do.

The story explores the cultural and ideological clash between a devout christian police officer, who has a very repressive view of sexuality, and a neo pagan comunity in a scottish island who treat sexuality not as a taboo, but as a natural part of Nature's Cicle of Life, Death and Rebirth, and a form to enter in contact with the Gods.

There are a total of five song numbers that talk about sexuality, and the most memorable, with a song covered by several folk singers since, is Gently Johnny, sang by the custommers inside a tavern as Lord Summerisle introduces Ash Buchanan to Willow McGregor, the Landlord's Daughter who, acting as an avatar of the ancient goddesses, receives the ‘sacrifice’ of Ash's youth while Summerisle reflects on watching the animals mating:

"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained! They do not lie awaken in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick, discussing their... duty to god. Not one of them kneels to another or to his own kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one of them is... respectable, or unhappy all over the Earth."

Now, the moment all have been waiting for...

01. Geni e O Zepelin (Ópera do Malandro)

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"One day it came, shining,

Between the clouds, floating,

An enormous zeppelin.

It hovered over the buildings,

It opened two thousand apertures,

With two thousand cannons, just like that.

The city, terrified,

Stood there

Ready to turn into jelly.

But from the gigantic zeppelin

Stepped down its commander,

Saying: "I changed my mind!"

"When I saw in this city

Such horror and iniquity,

I decided to blow it all up.

But I can avoid the drama

If that beautiful lady

Serves me tonight."

That lady was Geni!

But it can not be Geni!

She is made to be beaten!

She is good for spitting on!

She will fuck anyone!

Damned Geni!

But, indeed, it was her,

So pitiful and plain,

Who captivated the stranger.

The warrior, so fancy,

So feared and powerful,

Was her prisoner.

But it just so happens that the maiden

(And that was a secret of hers)

Also had her whims.

And to lay with a man so noble,

So smelling of luster and copper...

She'd rather lay with the beasts.

On hearing such heresy,

The city, on pilgrimage,

Went to kiss her hand:

The mayor on his knees;

The bishop, red-eyed;

And the banker with a million.

Go with him, go, Geni!

You can save us!

You will redeem us!

You will fuck anyone!

Blessed Geni!"

Ópera do malandro (The Rascal's Opera) is a brazilian musical with libretto and music by singer and composer Chico Buarque, based on John Gay's Beggar's Opera (1728) and Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera (1928).

The story told in ‘Ópera do Malandro’ takes place during the Second World War, when Getúlio Vargas was president of Brazil. The epicentre is the bohemian neighbourhood of Lapa. Chico Buarque chose to set his reinvention of ‘The Threepenny Opera’ in the 1940s as a strategy to escape censorship during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship (1964-85).

"Even Brecht took precautions and set his opera at the beginning of the century. John Gay even put the Minister of Justice of his time, 1728, on stage. But that's not possible today. Corrupt police officers would inevitably be identified with the ones everyone knows. The problems that would arise wouldn't allow the play to be staged," Chico told the press at the time of the play's launch.

When Chico Buarque wrote ‘Ópera do Malandro’, he was already coming from very intense experiences with the theatre.

Firstly, in 1967 (a year after the success of ‘A Banda’), he composed the score for ‘Morte e Vida Severina’, a poem by João Cabral de Mello Neto. This was followed by ‘Roda Viva’, a play that led to his arrest and subsequent self-exile in Rome, “Calabar”, which was banned by the military, and ‘Gota D'água’ (written with Paulo Pontes).

In the 1960s, Bertolt Brecht was one of the main references for the main Brazilian authors and theatre groups. From Augusto Boal to Oduvaldo Vianna Filho, from José Celso Martinez Corrêa to Plínio Marcos, including Gianfrancesco Guarnieri and many others, Brecht's plays were synonymous with political engagement and research into new forms of dramaturgy.

His theory of critical distancing, based on the idea that a play should not transport the spectator to a fictional world, but rather awaken them to reflective reality, inspired groups such as Arena, Oficina, Opinião and later Ornitorrinco to create what is for many the greatest moment in the history of Brazilian theatre.

In the musical, we follow a pimp by the name of Duran, who poses as a big businessman, and his wife Vitoria, who has inherited nothing of the name. Vitoria a who made a living from the commercialization of the body. Her daughter Teresinha was in love with a high-ranking officer, Max Overseas, who lives off scams and conniving with police chief Chaves.

Other characters are the prostitutes, presented as saleswomen in a boutique, and the transvestite Geni, who to society "only serves to beat, spit on and give to anyone."

The lyrics of Geni e o Zepelim describe the long story that defines the episode that took place with Geni, a harlot, who was harassed in the city.

Faced with a threat of attack from a Zeppelin, the commander is enchanted by Geni's skills, and she ends up being treated differently by her detractors.

Once the threat has passed, she returns to her ordinary daily life, in which people offended and excluded her, revealing the false-moralistic and hypocritical nature of society.

The song is an adaptation of Pirate Jenny, featured in the Threepenny Opera.

In the original song, Jenny dreams of the arrival of a pirate ship with 50 cannons that will destroy the whole town and take her away.

Geni e o Zepelim has become so iconic that it obfuscates the other characters, songs and the whole story of Ópera do Malandro in people's memory, more often being performed on its own rather than as a number in the show.

That is how powerful this song is! And that is why it receives the number one in my Top Ten Songs about S*x from Stage and Movie Musicals.

Honorable Mentions: Loud as the Hell You Want (Avenue Q), Say No To This (Hamilton), Point of no Return (Phantom of the Opera), Two Ladies (Cabaret)

#Youtube #movie musicals #musical theater #ópera do malandro #sweeney todd #rocky horror picture show #hair #the wicker man #roméo et juliette: de la haine à l'amour #notre dame de paris #les miserables #into the woods #man of la mancha

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fictophilianworld · 7 months ago

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So, hear me out:

When I first watched Captain America: Civil War, I was confused. I expected Steve to be one of the first Avengers to agree to the Sokovia Accords, since he’s a soldier and it should be his nature to like, follow orders and higher power, right? Right?

And then when Rhodey goes “That’s dangerously arrogant. This is the United Nations we’re talking about.” I realized something very crucial:

Steve was born in 1918, and went under ice in what, 45?

Think about it. WWI ended in November 1918. The first international organization (The League of Nations) was conjoined in 1920. It did a *shitty* job in keeping world peace, right? And if you think about it, most of us have very strong memories of childhood (from I’d say about age 7 and onwards). So if you think about it, Steve would’ve been 7 in like 1925. What was going on in the 20s and 30s? The Great fucking Depression (1929-1939). Not to mention the shitty childhood he had. So overall Steve couldn’t have developed a very good image of international organizations or societies. He doesn’t understand the weight, the gravity of it. The United Nations was formed in October 1945, about eight months after Steve’s fall. He never really saw the impact of it. I mean, he woke up in like 2011 or something, right? He never really got to feel the importance of it. He has no respect for international societies, and believes they are overall pretty powerless. Also let’s not forget the fact that this man *desperately* wanted to join the army, and then got turned into a super soldier. Like, this man has this unconscious idea that *he’s* gotta be the one to save the day. He’s the hero through and through. And he’s thinking that if he can’t be there to save the day, if he’s restricted by some *useless* organization that’s just (seemingly) afraid of power and doesn’t understand the Greater Good, no one can save anything/anyone in the end.

That’s why he’s against the Accords. Everything makes sense now.

#Steve Rogers #Captain America #Civil War #Marvel #mcu

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gilverrwrites · 6 months ago

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this isn't really a request but what draws you to hal jordan? i've always been a jason fan but he's been really interesting me lately and i wonder what you like about his character, and how you put that in your writing? sorry if this is weird, but i love how you speak on the characters you write and your writing in general :3

I appreciate you asking this, and I hope you keep looking into Hal because I do think he's an interesting, and very underrated character at least within fandom space. But this seems an odd question to ask me specifically as I've only ever written one headcanon, and a match-up for him. I haven't written about him enough to have a grip on what exactly about him works for me on paper (or screen).

However, I want to write more about him going forward so i’ll try and surmise what I like about him.

Disclaimers: I am hangging out of my ass rn. A lot of my understanding of Hal comes from pre-2011 and obviously this is just my personal view of the character.

As a Hero, I like that he's kinda different in his orgin to most. He didn't choose the lanterns, they chose him and he embraced it, quite willingly, and I thinks because he's:

a) always chased a sense of purpose.

b) good. Something deep inside him craves to do good.

(not saying he was blindly indoctrinated but I think I know which JL member is most likely to unwittingly join a cult.)

He's often billed as being ‘without fear’ but I don't think thats true. He's often shown to be afraid of things and he’s constantly surrounded by peers and foes that are alien, or immortal, or super-powers, but despite the constant reminder of his own mortality, he still runs toward his fears. He’s not without fear but he is exceptionally brave.

He's flawed. I know that most characters are flawed. His bravery is often driven/over shadowed by his recklessness and thrill-seeking which in my cases I've always considered to be a coping mechanism. Its hard to dwell on your unwanted emotions when you're high on adrenalin, drunkenly hurdling through the sky at 100 miles and hour, you know? (or whatever a realistic speed for a plane is idk)

He's quite a prideful character, he likes to show off the things he does well and downplay his mistakes, but when he does do bad, he always eventually take responsibility for his action. Its a big theme of his earlier stories.

He's got a strong personality, you have to in order to fit in amongst the JL and the likes.

He portrays himself very confidently, some would say overconfident, cocky, abrasively so. Which is a kind of character I've always been compelled to. I like a character with bravado, especially if they’re funny and charming too, which tick and tick.

Despite his pride, Hal also knows when its time to buckle down and get a job done.

(About to start muddling canon and my own fanon now) Yet, in his down time he's kind of a loser? I mean, ACAB to start (yes even space cops). But like, in his off time, when he's back on earth, he couch surfs, or finds someone to shack up with then spends most of his days in his boxers, drinking beer, scratching his balls, watching re-runs of MASH and Miami Vice.

Can't keep a job cause he's not really dedicated to anything but the crop (commitment issues ammiright?)

Gets kinda jealous and defensive when he finds out characters like Bruce and Ollie are also just human, like him. Thought he was special, you know?

There's a lot more going on with his character, I'm barely scratching the surface here, but these are just the first things that came to mind for me.

Oh, and if may add one last thing:

#anon #gilverranswers #hal jordan #green lantern #thanks for the ask!

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lloydmontgomerygarmadon · 2 months ago

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HAPPY 10 YEARS TO THIS NINJAGO BLOG!! 🎉🎉

I still can't believe 10 years have already passed since I created this blog! I started this blog since 2015 (between NS4 & NS5) and time flew by quick!

Back in 2011, I was just a small kid waiting at the television for Ninjago to air. Now as an adult, even though I'm not as free as I used to be, the little kid in me still feels excited whenever I hear news about a new season. Ninjago holds a special place in my heart, it's the very first fandom I've joined in my life after all HAHA

It's kind of surreal looking back at how far Ninjago has come. I remembered how LEGO wanted to replace Ninjago with Chima/Nexo Knights, and I'm really glad they didn't. We used to be so worried about whether we're going to get another season or if it's the end of Ninjago.

Yet, here we are, completed 15 seasons and now with the new Dragons Rising seasons! I hope Ninjago will still go strong after all these years!

I also want to thank my followers, you guys are really the best!! 💖 I'm sorry for my inactiveness on here but thank you so much for staying with me!

Hope everyone here is doing well! And whoever needs to hear this: Don't give up and remember that NINJA NEVER QUIT! I believe in you! You are stronger than you think! :)

From the biggest fan of the little green boi, Denise ♡ (aka @lloydmontgomerygarmadon)

#i still find myself coming back to ninjago now and then but ofc life has to hit u with stuff #and yes my habit of ranting in the tags is still there HAHA #i feel so bad this blog is so inactive im sorry omg #i still love my smol tiny baby lloyd HES SO CUTE AHAHA I WANT TO SQUISH HIS CHEEKS #if you are still reading at this point u are a legend #if anyone wants to chat about ninjago my dms and asks are always open! replies would take 1-2 business days HAHAHA JUST KIDDING #i just rmb abt my ninjago skype grp and went to login many years later and i saw its dead 😭😭 sighs...#im still here if anyone wants to chat :')#ninjago #lloyd garmadon #ns4 #ns5

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turtlevariabilis · 11 months ago

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Ok, this post is going to be somewhat long because I want to vent about a topic and ask for advice. I've noticed that in this community, there are many neurodivergent people, perhaps because Rise Donnie was confirmed to be on the autism spectrum, and Rise Mikey was confirmed to have ADHD (which wouldn't surprise me at all if it were the same in any version of TMNT).

Well, the thing is that BEFORE discovering Rise Donnie in early 2023, I had already spent a year with a strong suspicion that I might be on the autism spectrum due to something very specific that I discovered about myself (this is something I normally don't share with anyone, but since I'm anonymous here, I don't mind talking about it).

Back then, I discovered that I had ARFID (an eating disorder in which your diet is extremely selective). It’s something I’ve struggled with since I was a baby, from the first food I ever tried. I won’t go into detail about this part, which has always been very difficult in my life, but when I found out that what I was suffering from had a name… it meant that I wasn't the only one in the world 🥺 I'm 26 years old, so I've been suffering from this since 1998, and I found out that it was only given a name in 2013, and I only learned about it in 2022!

There wasn't much information, but I definitely discovered something about this disorder that disturbed me greatly.

Most people with ARFID (though not all) are on the autism spectrum. And something clicked in my mind. Because I've always felt different, I've always had social difficulties. When I was in college, around 2011, before Asperger's was included within the autism spectrum, I had already researched it and concluded, with doubts, that it wasn't my case. I didn’t have a good memory, nor was I very intelligent—I got good grades in school because I worked hard and was interested 🥺 (when I was in elementary school, they suspected I might be dyslexic, another diagnosis that was never pursued because it eventually "got better"). I also ruled it out because they say people on the spectrum are very routine-oriented and organized, and I considered myself the opposite.

But in 2022, I started searching for a lot more information (yes, somewhat obsessively—I even read books on the topic). And in 2023, I discovered rottmnt and Rise Donnie, which intensified my search for answers about myself...

The thing is, recently, I've been reflecting on 2019, the year I hit rock bottom mentally (and irresponsibly, I never went to a psychiatrist). I thought it was depression that I'd been dragging on for years... but what if it was something else? The way I tried to push myself forward was completely opposite to what is recommended for people with depression... and what if it was autistic burnout? Depression and autistic burnout share symptoms but require opposite treatments! (Talking about non-medical treatments, of course).

I made a list some of my autistic traits, things I've been gathering, and I'm sharing them here:

1. ARFID: I'm extremely selective with my food, and I have been for as long as I can remember.

2. People have told me that I "seem like I'm from another planet."

3. I've been told that I don't know how to comfort people (not in a bad way, just as an observation).

4. Before I turned 15, I barely spoke at all outside of the house. But I knew how to communicate in other ways... If I needed to complain about something to a teacher, I would write a note on paper and hand it to them. If I wanted to play with other kids, I could easily join in without saying anything.

5. I discovered this recently: when people talk about their problems, I tend to propose solutions instead of simply understanding what they're feeling.

6. I also discovered this recently: I don't understand what's happening with my emotions until they accumulate and I break down in tears.

7. I’m not comfortable with physical contact. Even as a baby, I wouldn’t go into the arms of strangers. And people, even family and friends, naturally ask me if they can hug me before they do... and of course, if they ask, I'll say yes!

8. The few times I listen to music, it’s rare and always on loop (just one song on repeat, and I have to force myself to stop after a while because I don’t have a natural limit).

9. My obsessions, like TMNT (though I've had others at different times in my life).

10. The simple fact that, at 26 years old, I’ve never had a boyfriend, and I’ve never kissed anyone, despite imagining it many times.

11. The times I’ve gone out to party late at night, I would end up crying when I got home, even if I had a “good” time. Now I understand it’s because I was exhausted.

12. I’ve always described having a switch in my mind that allows me to disconnect from my surroundings if the noises are too much (so they don’t bother me). Even though my mom told me that once, when I was little, she took me to see fireworks, and I apparently had a meltdown and covered my ears because of the noise, this never happened again, and I wouldn't say noise is an issue for me.

13. I NEVER, and I mean NEVER, make eye contact unless the other person isn’t looking directly at me. The thing is, I never realized this could be bothersome to some people. No one ever told me I had to look into people’s eyes, so I just never do it!

14. Crowds are definitely what bothers me the most. I think I could lose my sense of reality if I stayed in one for too long.

15. I need instructions to be given to me step by step, exactly as they need to be done; I also have difficulty understanding some jokes, double meanings, and I take things quite literally. For example, when we studied metaphors in school, I never understood them, and that’s because we never talked about them at home, haha.

And I could go on with many more specific things and anecdotes!

And why, if it seems like I never really did the famous masking, did no one ever suggest that I should seek a diagnosis?

What happened is that the more I researched the topic, not only did I recognize my own autistic traits (though I wouldn’t say I’m autistic without an official diagnosis), but I also realized that my parents and sisters fit well within the neurodivergent spectrum too. This created a mutual understanding between us, and we didn’t see any flaws in each other. I think I grew up in a very safe environment 🫶🏻 and was somewhat sheltered from the outside world.

As I mentioned, I don’t know if I’m on the spectrum or if I have other neurodivergences, but after what could have been depression or autistic burnout, and all the introspection I’ve done in recent years, I’ve realized that yes, I’m different, I’m "odd" in many ways, and I need to accept myself as I am. I’ve even forgiven myself for not eating as I should. While it would be good to work on it a bit, I don't need to feel guilty about it, and as long as I’m healthy, there shouldn’t be a problem.

Honestly, I’m not sure if it’s worth seeking a diagnosis or not. I wouldn’t know what to say, who to go to, or if they would take me seriously after all the self-discovery I’ve already done… I just don’t know. On one hand, I think I’d like to know, not just for myself but also for the people closest to me so they can understand me better… but at the same time, we’re all different, and we all have our quirks and deficiencies… so I’m not sure what to do with everything I’ve learned—whether to leave it as it is or to pursue it further in a professional way.

Tell me about yourselves—if any of you suspect or know that you’re neurodivergent, and what your thoughts are on the matter.

#tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #autism #adhd #neurodivergent #neurodiversity #actually autistic #arfid #burnout #ninja turtles #rise of the tmnt #mental health #autistic adult #autistic burnout

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lassoknewmyvibe · 3 months ago

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NGotP Chapter 1

Nerves spread through my system as a cab pulled up alongside the curb that formed the walkway to AFC Richmond’s front doors. Never had I been so nervous to start a new job, most likely because I’d never worked, or even dreamed of working, outside of the states. I opened the door and stepped out onto the cement curb, staring up at the entrance of my new workplace.

The cab driver opened the trunk of his car and helped me unload one large suitcase and two duffel bags, then drove away after my payment without a word. I was left all alone in the shadow of the large club building.

I breathed deeply and clutched all three of my heavy bags, dragging them behind me stacked on top of the suitcase, and entered through the doors. By the looks of the decor and carefully placed signs with arrows to direct foot traffic, I assumed I had entered in through where the fans would, meaning I was 100% and completely lost. I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my notes app, trying to find the directions I had taken down during my last phone call with a man named Leslie Higgins. He was kind enough on the phone. He seemed a bit nervous, but that could just be him. I hadn’t ever actually met the man after all.

After following the directions and finally ending up on what I assumed was the right track, I climbed what seemed like a billion stairs to reach the office of the club’s owner, Ms. Rebecca Welton. I’d researched her a bit before coming, and the internet was full of the beautiful, broad-shouldered, and confident owner. Her smile seemed worth a million bucks, and even with article after snarky article of her divorce from the club’s previous owner, Rupert Mannion, I could tell she was a force to be reckoned with.

I knocked on her office door.

“Come in!” I heard a voice call from the other side of the door. It was a female voice, powerful, but still musical. Setting my sweaty hands on the door handle, I took a breath, helping my shoulders straighten up and my face become friendlier. I smiled at the door and opened it.

Inside, all the way to the other end of the room, sat a woman at a desk. Her crimson peplum dress matched her lipstick, and her soft blonde curls just brushed the top of her shoulders. I glanced to the left where a man, trying to decide between sitting and slouching, rested on the windowsill. He stood as I entered and beckoned me in.

“Ms. Bozzelli! May I introduce you to Richmond’s owner, Rebecca Welton. Ms. Welton, this is Josephine Bozzelli, our new media director.”

My confidence grew as I recognized his voice as the one I’d spoken to on the phone. This was Leslie Higgins. I approached Ms. Welton’s desk with an outstretched hand as she stood and smoothed her dress. As we shook hands, I took note of how tall and strong she was. The fire behind her eyes flickered as she pulled her hand away and gestured to a cushioned chair just across the desk from where hers was.

“Please, have a seat, Ms. Bozzelli. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” We both took our seats. “I trust your trip went well?”

“Oh yes, Ms. Welton, thank you.” Mr. Higgins had arranged for me to fly first class across the pond to begin working on and organizing my work in peace.

“Good. And please, call me Rebecca. Higgins-” Rebecca turned to the man, and he straightened his spine at attention. “Go fetch the coach, won’t you?”

“Right away,” Higgins promised. He was in the hallway in a flash.

“So, Ms. Bozzelli, I – may I call you Josephine?” I nodded. “Josephine, I hope you find your accommodations to your liking. I made sure Higgins arranged for a flat within walking distance of the club. He mentioned commuting was a concern of yours.”

Again, I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. “I look forward to moving in.”

“Well,” Rebecca started. “We are thrilled to have you join AFC Richmond. I’m certain your contribution will greatly benefit the team. I know I sent over a list of duties as media director, and I want to make sure to answer any questions you may have before sending you over to your office.”

She stopped talking and bore her gaze into me expectantly. I fidgeted with the hem of the shirt I had been wearing the last two days.

“I guess I would just like to know what area you’d like me to focus on. I’m a skilled writer, so I’m happy to do any print or online writing, but I am capable of more as well.”

Rebecca smiled reassuringly. “Josephine, you’re going to do wonderfully here. I would love for you to work closely with our marketing girl, Keeley Jones. She puts together any sort of sponsorship and partly handles PR, but I’m sure you’ll both find that you’ll need each other as a valuable resource.” She stood once again and moved to the window, which overlooked the field. “You’ll also be the one to help direct press conferences. Any question that gets asked is up to you for approval. If anyone asks something too personal about a team member or anything of the like, your responsibility is to step in. Let them know we won’t be answering those types of questions. You know that sort of thing. You won’t necessarily be the face of Richmond, but you’ll control it. Does that make sense?”

“Absolutely,” I affirmed. “I can’t wait to get started. When will I be able to meet the team? I’d love to schedule one-on-one meetings with each of them over the next week to acquaint myself with them.”

“Higgins will be returning with our team manager slash head coach. He will be the one to show you around the club and introduce you to everyone. I’ll ensure he settles you in your office. You will share a wall with Keeley so you can work closely together. You’re going to love her.”

Just then, the door swung open, and Higgins entered the office with a man in tow. “Ms. Bozzelli, this is our head coach, Ted Lasso,” he said, gesturing to the man.

Coach Lasso stood tall with perfectly gelled hair and a combed moustache, but most striking were his golden-brown eyes, glittering as he reached his hand out to shake mine.

“Well, hey there Ms... Bozzelli was it?” the coach asked.

“Josephine is fine,” I answered, beaming.

“That’s mighty pretty, Josephine. Reminds me of my neighbor, Josephine, back in Kansas. She’s this ol’ lady with the most beautiful flower garden. Always let me use ‘em to make my wife a nice bouquet. You see, there was this one time-”

Rebecca cleared her throat. “Ted.” The coach looked over at her and realization hit his eyes.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” he said, turning back to me. “I tend to get carried away. Long story short, I’m proud and honored to work with ya.”

“Coach Lasso,” the boss interjected once again. “Are you still available to take Josephine on a tour of the place? You know, show her the office she’ll occupy, take her to the locker room, out on the pitch. Anywhere she will need to know inside and out for her job.”

“Happy to, Scooby Doo. Are these your bags, Josephine?” Coach Lasso pointed down at my luggage.

“They are,” I answered, leaning down to pick them up.

“Oh no, no,” Coach Lasso cut in. “Let me help ya out there.” He hoisted my two duffel bags up over his shoulders and then clutched the handle of my suitcase. “Shall we?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Thank you, Rebecca, Higgins. I truly appreciate your help.”

“Let us know if we can do anything more,” Rebecca assured. “What’s ours is yours.”

She beamed at me, and I gave her a nod and a smile back.

“Alright,” the coach said. “On the road again.”

He led me out of Rebecca’s office and down the three flights of stairs to the ground floor. I couldn’t tell if he struggled with my bags because of the weight or the bulky size, but by the time he landed from the last step, he dropped the bags to the floor.

“Please, Coach Lasso, let me take a turn. They’re my bags after all.”

“Ted is fine,” he replied as he tried to casually catch his breath. “And it’s light work, I don’t mind.”

I decided to change the subject, instantly knowing that arguing over who needs to carry the bags would get nowhere. He was too kind to let me do it. “Okay. Well, Ted, my focus this week is on meeting the players. I hope you don’t mind. I want to learn about each of them. I think it’ll help me settle into the dynamics here.”

“I’ll do you one better. The guys are in the locker room now, so let’s head over and I’ll introduce y’all. Follow me.”

He picked my bags up once again and led me down the hallway, following the noise coming from the locker room.

“Alright fellas,” he proclaimed. “Focus in. I want y’all to meet our most important team member!” He stepped aside to make me the center of attention. “This is Josephine Bozzelli. She’s gonna be meeting with each of you here pretty quick to get to know y’all. I expect 100% from all of you. Don’t mess it up either. She’s our new media director, so you’ll wanna stay on her good side.”

A couple of laughs rippled through the team, but most of them stared at Ted as if he’d proposed they join a cult or something. I stepped in.

“What he means is that your public perception is my job, so don’t be stupid. No scandals, broken laws, you know, that kind of thing.”

One of the players raised his hand and I pointed to him. “Yes?”

“Uh, yeah, so I’m guessing by your accent you’re American like Coach.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Isaac. McAdoo. Captain.”

“Thanks for the question, Isaac. Yes, I’m from across the pond. Small town.”

“Please tell me you’re not another midwestern wanker,” another player asked. He wore no shirt and sat under the name over his locker.

“’Tartt.’ And you must be Jamie. I’ve read loads about you. And don’t let it get to your head. Not all of it is good.”

The team laughed more at that jab than they did at Ted’s humor.

I continued. “I guess that’s a mystery you’ll have to solve the longer I’m here.”

“I hate to cut you boys off, but there’ll be plenty of time to get to know Ms. Bozzelli. I’ve gotta finish showin’ her around so Coach Beard and Roy will be out on the field with y’all for training. Don’t be late, or you guys get to deal with Roy this time.”

The team stood to finish changing, and as I saw a few more shirts being removed, I turned my attention back to Ted.

“Let me show ya to your office. Right next to the ever-beautiful Keeley Jones!” Ted cheered. He picked my bags up once more and walked me two doors down from the locker room.

The room only had a desk and chair, but on top of the desk was a small pink paper box with a note written on top. I walked over to read it.

“Welcome to the team! -Ted”

“Just figured you might like some of those biscuits. I usually bring some every morning for Rebecca. I’m not one to brag, but she usually has the whole box gone in a whopping ninety seconds.”

My heart warmed a little at the gesture, and I watched Ted closely as he set my bags down neatly against the wall just inside the door. “You’re a gentleman, Ted Lasso. Carrying my bags, biscuits every morning, fresh bouquets for your wife. You’ve gotta give me something, man. You’re making me look bad!”

I meant it as a joke, but Ted only gave a small smile and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

“I’m sorry if I overstepped,” I offered, just barely above a whisper.

He drew his eyebrows together and shook his head as if to shrug it off.

“Don’t worry about it. Just not all of it is true these days is all.” He quickly changed his demeanor, walking into the office and knocking on the wall behind my desk. “Keeley! Get in here and meet our new friend Josephine!”

Not even ten seconds later, a small girl with her ponytail as high as her heels sashayed into the room.

“Well I’ll be fuckin’ damned. You must be Josephine!” Keeley hurried over to me and threw her arms around my neck, pulling me into a hug. “I’m so excited to finally meet you!”

She released me from the hug and stepped back, looking me up and down. Insecure, I said, “these aren’t my normal clothes. I’ve just been wearing these for the trip over.”

“No, not even. I’m looking at how fuckin’ fit you are! Ted, she’s fit, yeah?” She paused for a moment, not looking away from me but awaiting Ted’s answer.

“If by ‘fit’ you mean ‘she’ll fit right in,’ then I’ll agree with ya,” Ted chuckled.

“Babe,” Keeley continued. “Don’t even worry about your clothes. You’re rockin’ that top.”

“Everyone was right,” I said, returning the conversation to a speaking level. “I do like you.”

“Aw, thanks. That’s so nice, Josephine.” Keeley was a fairy princess. “You’re officially invited to every girl’s night with me and Rebecca.”

Ted took a peek at his watchless wrist. “Hey ladies, I’ll give you two a few minutes to chat. Gotta go deal with somethin’. I’ll be back to take you outside for training, Josephine!” He rushed out the door.

Keeley stalked over to my chair and sat down, looking around at the grey walls. “These offices are nice, yeah? Just gotta add your own personal touch so it’s not so dreary.”

“I didn’t bring much to decorate with, but I’m sure I’ll collect things over time. It’s just nice to have my own office.”

“Hang on, babe,” Keeley said as she quickly stood. She left the room but returned a few seconds later with a green leafy plant growing in a bright pink pot. “This is Beatrice. She’s yours now.” My new friend placed the pot down on the desk next to the box of Ted’s biscuits.

“I’m loving the color theme. Good thing pink is my favorite color,” I laughed.

“Oh, don’t say that too loud. I’ve got a shopping addiction.”

“Uh oh, me too,” I chuckled. “I might need you as my partner in shopping crime so I can make this room my own.”

“You bet! Just tell me when and I’ll clear my schedule.”

I turned at a knock on the open door, and there stood Ted, now donning sunglasses, a whistle, and an AFC Richmond visor. “Knock, knock ladies. Sorry to interrupt your girl talk. I know how important that is. Josephine, you ready to head out to practice?”

I walked over to one of my duffel bags and unzipped it, digging into a side pocket to pull out my sunglasses. “Ready.”

A couple minutes later, Ted was leading me out of a tunnel and over to where two men were standing watching the team.

“TARTT,” one of the men yelled. “WHAT DID I JUST FUCKING TELL YOU? GET YOUR HEAD OUT YOUR FUCKING BUM.”

“This lovely guy here,” Ted started, gesturing towards the angry man, “is Roy Kent. Roy? This is Josephine.”

“Hey,” Roy growled in my direction without looking away from the team. He had dark hair and scruff and wore a scowl as his natural expression.

“Always a pleasure, Roy,” Ted joked. “And this here is Coach Beard. Followed me over from the U.S.”

“Howdy, little lady,” Coach Beard greeted. “Good to see ya again.”

I paused and looked over at Ted, having never met Coach Beard before. “Don’t question it,” Ted whispered to me. “That’s just Beard. He saw your picture when we extended the job offer.”

Nodding at Ted’s explanation, I turned my attention to the players dribbling the ball across the field.

“I won’t lie,” I started. “I don’t know too much about sports. I’m not sure why Rebecca hired me.”

Ted laughed. “I didn’t know much about soccer either when I accepted the job. ‘Course it was because she was tryin’ to burn this place to the ground to get back at her ex-husband, but that’s ancient history. Things’ll be peachy keen, James Dean.” I smiled at his rhyme. He turned his attention back to the field. “Alright guys, huddle up! Time for dribble drills!”

I watched each player line up behind a row of orange cones, evenly spaced down the long end of the pitch. Coach Beard heaved up a netted bag of footballs and walked halfway between where we stood and where the first player, Obisanya, stood. Beard removed one of the balls from the bag and rolled it quickly to the young player, who received it and dribbled the ball back and forth through the cones. Ball after ball, each player followed the other on the same path. Once they all cleared the cones, they lined up again on the other end and Beard blew his whistle as the boys did the same routine all the way back.

“HUSTLE,” Roy bellowed. The players picked up the pace, but only slightly, as they battled to mix speed and control. Once finished, Roy yelled, “AGAIN.”

The boys repeated the exercise three more times, each time trying even harder to satisfy Roy.

A ringtone interrupted Roy’s berations, and Ted fished his phone out of the pocket of his track pants. “Ope, ‘scuse me guys.” He walked over to the entrance of the tunnel but stopped and put the phone to his ear, his other hand resting in his pocket. I lost focus on the practice as I heard Ted say, “Hey, Buddy! How are ya this mornin’?”

It was barely 1 PM in London, which made me realize he must be talking to someone from the U.S. I listened as he talked, most likely to a child.

“Have a good day at school! Help your mom and your teacher out... Yeah, I know, I know. Just makin’ sure your memory hasn’t completely gone away!... Okay, love you too, Henry. Say hey to your mom for-”

He pulled his phone away and looked down at the screen, his shoulders slouched just a bit. I pretended I hadn’t been eavesdropping when he turned and jogged back to where Roy and Coach Beard were running the team through passing drills.

Once he rejoined, Beard split his attention between the team and Ted, asking, “How’s the kid?”

“Aww, he’s good. Just headin’ out for school. Couldn’t talk too long this mornin.’”

“You have a kid?” I asked the head coach. “How old is he?”

“Goin’ on ten now. Gettin’ busy with playing soccer but also learnin’ the piano, which I’ll tell ya, he doesn’t get from me. Kid’s a talented little bugger.”

“Piano!” I exclaimed. “I play too. I taught for a while through college a few years ago.”

“Well next time I have Henry on the line, I’ll have to introduce the two of you! He’s real eager to play but doesn’t have anyone around who knows it. His mom and I are kinda helpless in that department.” He puffed his chest out and put his hands around his mouth to be heard over the team’s back and forth trash talk. “Gentlemen! Short practice today for the team dinner. Hit the showers!”

Every team member turned and sprinted to where the coaches stood, a few of them pulling their jerseys off. I held my hand over my eyes to block the sun as I watched them run, and I laughed as a few players offered me a high five or fist bump, saying, “Hi,” “Hope you liked it,” or even just flirtatiously whistling. Jamie brought up the rear and instead of reaching out for a high five, he winked at me. I swung my hand down and smacked his butt, causing him to turn around and skip backwards, holding his hands up to his heart and blowing a kiss into the air.

“Day one and you’re already flirtin’ with one of the guys,” Ted joked.

“You could do a lot better, Josephine. Tartt’s a fucking prick,” Roy grumbled.

“It’s all in fun, boys,” I chided. “Jamie doesn’t peg me as the kind of guy to take some light flirting too seriously.”

“You might get pegged by him eventually,” Beard teased.

“Fellas,” Ted interrupted, putting his hands up to signal his new control over the conversation. “She just said it’s not serious, so let’s believe her. Besides, Jamie’s come a long way. He thinks a bit more with his heart now.”

“Yeah, but his dick’s still got control,” Roy argued.

“Okay,” I laughed, jumping into the conversation. “Wow, didn’t realize playfully responding to the guy’s wink would have the three of you up in arms.” I reached my hands up to place one on Ted’s shoulder and the other on Roy’s. “Let’s not get carried away by it all. I’m here to do my job, but making friends with the guys is also important to me.”

“I’m sorry for gettin’ us all worked up,” Ted apologized.

“Don’t worry too much, boys. I’m glad you guys will have my back. It’s tough moving to a new country alone at my age.”

“That’s how Beard and I felt, and we’re in our fourties,” Ted reassured.

“Thirty-three,” Beard cut in.

“Yeah, what he said,” Ted smiled. “Anyways, now that I’ve shown you pretty much all the club, is there anything else we can do to help you out?”

“I think I’m just going to go back to my office and get everything set up. I want to jump right in first thing tomorrow morning! Keeley already volunteered to go shopping to transform the space into my own.”

“Ah FUCK,” Roy interjected. “I’m gonna have to go too.” Coach Beard chuckled as Roy rolled his eyes.

Ted gave a quick laugh as well, then turned to me and explained, “Keeley and Roy here are a couple.”

“Ah,” I started. “Well Roy, it’ll be wonderful to have you there to offer your glitter expertise.”

“Fuck, no.” I tilted my head back and laughed, unphased by Roy’s menacing glare and clenched fists.

Back inside, before I had the chance to cross the threshold of my office, Ted invited me into his. “I wanna go over a couple-a things with you for when you dive right in tomorrow.” He led me the few paces down the hallway and held the locker room door open. I waited a moment to step in, giving any of the guys a chance to be decent. Once inside, I turned back to face Ted, and he waved his hand to show the way to his office. I glanced over at the players, noticing Jamie throwing his teal t-shirt over his head to complete his outfit.

“One moment, Ted,” I said as I turned to walk towards the flirt. “Hey, Jamie. Can I speak to you a moment?”

“Yeah, but only a moment. I’ve got things to do.” He said these words with a grin, letting me know he didn’t want his words to be rude, just honest.

I walked closer to him and lowered my voice so that his teammates wouldn’t hear me. “Listen, it’s my first day and I shouldn’t get carried away in the fun, especially since we hardly know each other. I crossed a line back there.”

“Eh, it’s good.”

“We’re good?”

“We’re good.”

“It won’t happen again. Thank you.”

“Besides,” he started with a glint in his eye. “Most girls can’t resist me bum. I’m pretty used to it... I mean, I’m Jamie Tartt for fuck’s sake.”

I giggled at his joke, and he laughed with me. Though I knew it was just a bit of fun, I felt relief to know that he understood my intentions.

“Josephine,” Ted called. I whipped my head around and saw him standing in the same place he had been when I approached Jamie, hands stuffed in his pockets, his shoulders tense, and his brow a bit furrowed. “Come on over here.”

His look made me slightly anxious, so I looked over at Jamie and shoved my fingers into his hair, messing it up. “That’s better. Catch you later.”

I followed Ted into his office, and he sat down behind his desk, gesturing for me to sit in the chair at the opposite desk.

“First off,” he started with an energetic expression, “I just want to say I look forward to workin’ with you.”

“Thank you.”

“Second off, you and Jamie? Up top.”

He held his hand up over the desk and I smacked it, but still said, “it’s truly nothing, just making friends.”

“Whatever you guys call it these days, I guess. Third, wanted to invite ya to the team dinner tonight.”

I blinked in excited surprise. “That sounds like fun! Is this black tie? Casual?”

“Not quite black tie,” Ted said in a higher tone than usual. “But not casual. It’s just here. They’re clearing out one of the larger conference rooms. We’ll have a little press, but don’t worry, they’ll go easy on ya. You’re a lot younger and prettier than I was when it was my first day with them.”

“That’s promising,” I chuckled. “So anyway, what you’re saying is I’ve gotta go shopping? Deal.”

Just then, Keeley walked through the open door. “Did I hear someone say shopping?”

I nodded.

“Ted, I’m taking her out right now. We’re going to try on every sexy dress in town!” Keeley’s purse was already slung over her shoulder, and her faux fur jacket shook as she jumped up and down. “Let’s get your bags, babe. Roy can drive us to your flat to drop them off and then he’ll come with us!”

I looked over at Ted with a knowing smile, and he showed a toothy grin, his moustache perking up on both ends and his eyes conveying his amusement.

“I bet Roy’d love that!” he chided. “Best idea I’ve heard all day.”

#ted lasso #afc richmond #roy kent #keeley jones #jamie tartt #rebecca welton #fanfic #Spotify

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blackseakraft · 9 months ago

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I’m preparing some stuff for whumptober, mostly gonna be OC stuff I think. I’ve only very recently gotten into fanfiction (I’ve been on tumblr since 2011 and was never interested until I joined TBB fandom) and have been doing a lot of reflection on why I love fluff and whump so damn much. Sometimes I feel bad about actively seeking out fics where my favs are suffering. Then I learned the German/Yiddish word “Verklempt” from my coworker, she said it after I drew a pic of her dog and showed it to her. And it perfectly describes that intertwining of pain and love I feel about certain things.

It’s the same feeling I get when I see something so cute, but there’s something slightly sad about it (like really cute old dogs). Tragic cuteness? Like the proclivity to listen to really sad music late at night just to have a good cry. Ugly crying to 3rd planet by modest mouse while driving home on a Friday night, for some reason that song gets to me so hard. It’s that pinching feeling that hurts good, and I am sure there’s some amount of oxytocin release going on related to it. It feels like getting one of those hugs that you really needed. That’s the same sensation I get when I read really good fluff/whump fics and I’ve become totally addicted to seeking it out. I’ve always had this sensation but never had any words to describe it. I get it ESPECIALLY strong when a fav is getting taken care of by found family, or a love interest. Anyway, this is a “I can’t sleep” sideblog ramble. I’m trying to decide if I should post my whumptober stories/drawings here or in my main.

Anyway, if y’all wanna recommend any Star Wars whump/fluff fics I’d love to find more.

Actually this makes sense why I love the sw prequels so much, is their inherent tragedy. You can feel every story building up to the ultimate demise of everything. That verklempt feeling of loving these characters who are doomed. Here’s a post that describes it really well.

#rambling #can’t sleep

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dustedmagazine · 1 year ago

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Listening Post: Kim Gordon

Kim Gordon has long been one of rock’s female icons, one of a tiny handful of women to get much play in Michael Azzerad’s underground-defining Our Band Could Be Your Life and a mainstay in the noise-rock monolith Sonic Youth. It’s hard to imagine that quintessential dude rock band without Gordon in front, dwarfed by her bass or spitting tranced out, pissed off verses over the storm of feedback.

Yet Gordon’s trajectory has been, if anything, even more fascinating since Sonic Youth’s demise in 2011. A visual artist first — she studied art at the Otis College of Art and Design before joining the band — she continues to paint and sculpt and create. She’s had solo art shows at established galleries in London and New York, most recently at the 303 Gallery in New York City. A veteran of indie films including Gus van Zant’s Last Days and Todd Haynes I’m Not There, she has also continued to act sporadically, appearing in the HBO series Girls and on an episode of Portlandia. Her memoir, Girl in a Band, came out in 2015.

But Gordon has remained surprisingly entrenched in indie music over the last decade. Many critics, including a few at Dusted, consider her Body Head, collaboration with Bill Nace the best of the post-Sonic Youth musical projects. The ensemble has now produced two EPs and three full-lengths. Gordon has also released two solo albums, which push her iconic voice into noisier, more hip hop influenced directions. We’re centering this listening post around The Collective, Gordon’s second and more recent solo effort, which comes out on Matador on March 8th, but we’ll likely also be talking about her other projects as well.

Intro by Jennifer Kelly

Jennifer Kelly: I missed No Home in 2019, so I was somewhat surprised by The Collective’s abrasive, beat-driven sound though I guess you could make connections to Sonic Youth’s Cypress Hill collaboration?

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The more I listen to it, though, the more it makes sense to me. I’ve always liked the way Gordon plays with gender stereotypes, and “I’m a Man” certainly follows that trajectory. What are you guys hearing in The Collective?

Jonathan Shaw: I have only listened through the entire record once, but I am also struck by its intensities. Sort of silly to be surprised by that, given so many of the places she has taken us in the past: noisy, dangerous, dark. But there's an undercurrent of violence to these sounds that couples onto the more confrontational invocations and dramatizations of sex. It's a strong set of gestures. I like the record quite a bit.

Bill Meyer: I'm one of those who hold Body/Head to be the best effort of the post-Sonic Youth projects, but I'll also say that it's very much a band that creates a context for Gordon to do something great, not a solo effort. I was not so taken with No Home, which I played halfway through once upon its release and did not return to until we agreed to have this discussion. I've played both albums through once now, and my first impression is that No Home feels scattered in a classic post-band-breakup project fashion — “let's do a bit of this and that and see what sticks.” The Collective feels much more cohesive sonically, in a purposeful, “I'm going to do THIS” kind of way.

Jonathan Shaw: RE Jennifer's comment about “I'm a Man”: Agreed. The sonics are very noise-adjacent, reminding me of what the Body has been up to lately, or deeper underground acts like 8 Hour Animal or Kontravoid's less dancy stuff. Those acts skew masculine (though the Body has taken pains recently to problematize the semiotics of those photos of them with lots of guns and big dogs...). Gordon's voice and lyrics make things so much more explicit without ever tipping over into the didactic. And somehow her energy is in tune with the abrasive textures of the music, but still activates an ironic distance from it. In the next song, “Trophies,” I love it when she asks, “Will you go bowling with me?” The sexed-up antics that follow are simultaneously compelling and sort of funny. Rarely has bowling felt so eroticized.

Jennifer Kelly: I got interested in the beats and did a YouTube dive on some of the other music that Justin Raisen has been involved with. He's in an interesting place, working for hip hop artists (Lil Yachty, Drake), pop stars (Charli XCX) and punk or at least punk adjacent artists (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Viagra Boys), but nothing I've found is as raw and walloping as these cuts.

“The Candy House” is apparently inspired by Jennifer Egan's The Candy House, which is about a technology that enables people to share memories... Gordon is pretty interested in phones and communications tech and how that's changing art and human interaction.

Andrew Forell: My immediate reaction to the beats was oh, The Bug and JK Flesh, in particular the MachineEPs by the former and Sewer Bait by the latter. Unsurprisingly, as Jonathan says, she sounds right at home within that kind of dirty noise but is never subsumed by it

Jennifer Kelly: I don't have a deep reference pool in electronics, but it reminded me of Shackleton and some of the first wave dub steppers. Also, a certain kind of late 1990s/early aughts underground hip hop like Cannibal Ox and Dalek.

Bryon Hayes: Yeah, I hear some Dalek in there, too. Also, the first Death Grips mixtape, Ex-Military.

It's funny, I saw the track title “I'm a Man,” and my mind immediately went to Bo Diddley for some reason, I should have known that Kim would flip the script, and do it in such a humorous way. I love how she sends up both the macho country-lovin’ bros and the sensitive metrosexual guys. It's brilliant!

This has me thinking about “Kool Thing”, and how Chuck D acts as the ‘hype man’ to Kim Gordon in that song. I'm pretty sure that was unusual for hip hop at the time. Kim's got a long history of messing with gender stereotypes.

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Bill Meyer: Gordon did a couple videos for this record, and she starred her daughter Coco in both of them. The one for “I'm A Man” teases out elements of gender fluidity, how that might be expressed through clothing, and different kinds of watching. I found the video for “Bye Bye” more interesting. All the merchandise that's listed in the video turns out to be a survival kit, one that I imagine that Gordon would know that she has to have to get by. The protagonist of the video doesn't know that, and their unspoken moment in a car before Coco runs again was poignant in a way that I don't associate with her work. And of messing with hip hop!

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Tim Clarke: “Bye Bye” feels like a companion to The Fall’s “Dr Buck’s Letter.”

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Bill Meyer: From The Unutterable? I'll have to a-b them.

Tim Clarke: That’s the one.

Jonathan Shaw: All of these comments make me think of the record’s title, and the repeated line in “The Candy House”: “I want to join the collective.” Which one? The phone on the record’s cover nods toward our various digital collectives — spaces for communication and expression, and spaces for commerce, all of which seem to be harder and harder to tell apart. A candy house, indeed. Why is it pink? Does she have a feminine collective in mind? A feminine collective unconscious? The various voices and lyric modes on the record suggest that's a possibility. For certain women, and for certain men working hard to understand women, Gordon has been a key member of that collective for decades.

Jennifer Kelly: The title is also the title of a painting from her last show in New York.

The holes are cell phone sized.

You can read about the show here, but here's a representative quote: “The iPhone promises freedom, and control over communication,” she says. “It’s an outlet of self-expression, and an escape and a distraction from the bigger picture of what’s going on in the world. It’s also useful for making paintings.”

Gordon is a woman, and a woman over 70 at that — by any measure an underrepresented perspective in popular culture. However, I’d caution against reading The Collective solely as a feminist statement. “I'm a Man,” for instance, is told from the perspective of an incel male, an act of storytelling and empathy not propaganda. My sense is that Gordon is pretty sick of being asked, “What's it like to be a girl in a band?” (per “Sacred Trickster”) and would like, maybe, to be considered as an artist.

It's partly a generational thing. I'm a little younger than she is, but we both grew up in the patriarchy and mostly encountered gender as an external restriction.

As an aside, one of my proudest moments was when Lucas Jensen interviewed me about what it was like to be a freelance music writer, anonymously, and Robert Christgau wrote an elaborate critique of the piece that absolutely assumed I was a guy. If you're not on a date or getting married or booking reproductive care, whose business is it what gender you are?

There, that's a can of worms, isn't it?

Jonathan Shaw: Feminine isn't feminist. I haven't listened nearly closely enough to the record to hazard an opinion about that. More important, it seems to me the masculine must be in the feminine unconsciousness, and the other way around, too. Precisely because femininity has been used as a political weapon, it needs imagining in artistic spaces. Guess I also think those terms more discursively than otherwise: there are male authors who have demonstrated enormous facility with representing femininity. James, Joyce, Kleist, and so on. Gordon has always spoken and sung in ways that transcend a second-wave sort of feminine essence. “Shaking Hell,” “PCH,” the way she sings “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

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Jennifer Kelly: Sure, she has always been shape-shifter artistically.

The lyrics are super interesting, but almost obliterated by noise. I’m seeing a connection to our hyperconnected digital society where everything is said but it’s hard to listen and focus.

Bill Meyer: Concrete guy that I am, I’ve found myself wishing I had a lyric sheet even though her voice is typically the loudest instrument in the mix.

Andrew Forell: Yes, that sense of being subsumed in the white noise of (dis)information and opinion feels like the utopian ideal of democratizing access has become a cause and conduit of alienation in which the notion of authentic voices has been rendered moot. It feels integral to the album as a metaphor

Christian Carey: How much of the blurring of vocals (good lyrics — mind you) might involve Kim’s personal biography, I wonder? From her memoirs, we know how much she wished for a deflection of a number of things, most having to do with Thurston and the disbandment of SY.

Thurston was interviewed recently and said that he felt SY would regroup and be able to be professional about things. He remarked that it better be soon: SY at eighty wouldn’t be a good look!

Andrew Forell: And therein lies something essential about why that could never happen

Ian Mathers: I know I’m far in the minority here (and elsewhere) because I’ve just never found Sonic Youth that compelling, despite several attempts over the years to give them another chance. And for specifically finding Thurston Moore to be an annoying vocal presence (long before I knew anything about his personal life, for what it's worth). So, I’m in no hurry to see them reunite, although I do think it would be both funny and good if everyone except Moore got back together.

Having not kept up with Gordon much post-SY beyond reading and enjoying her book, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this record. After a couple of listens, I’m almost surprised how much I like it. Even though I’m lukewarm on SY’s music, she’s always been a commanding vocal presence and lyricist and that hasn’t changed here (I can echo all the praise for “I’m a Man,” and also “I was supposed to save you/but you got a job” is so bathetically funny) and I like the noisier, thornier backing she has here. I also think the parts where the record gets a bit more sparse (“Shelf Warmer”) or diffuse (“Psychic Orgasm”) still work. I've enjoyed seeing all the comparisons here, none of which I thought of myself and all of which makes sense to me. But the record that popped into my head as I listened was Dead Rider’s Chills on Glass. Similar beat focus, “thick”/distorted/noisy/smeared production, declamatory vocals. I like that record a lot, so it's not too surprising I'm digging this one.

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Jennifer Kelly: I loved Sonic Youth but have zero appetite for the kind of nostalgia trip, just the hits reunion tour that getting back together would entail.

Jonathan Shaw: Yeah, no thanks to that.

RE Christian's comment: Not sure I see deflection so much as the impossibility of integration. We are all many, many selves, always have been. Digital communications interfaces and social media have just lifted it to another level of experience. Gordon sez, “I don't miss my mind.” Not so much a question of missing it in the emotional/longing sense, more so acknowledging that phrases like “my mind” have always been meaningless. Now we partition experience and identity into all of these different places, and we sign those pieces of ourselves over, to Zuck and the algorithms. We know it. We do it anyways, because it's the candy house, full of sweets and pleasures that aren't so good for us, but are really hard to resist. “Come on, sweets, take my hand...”

Bill Meyer: I would not mind hearing all of those SY songs I like again, can’t lie, although I don’t think that I’d spend Love Earth Tour prices to hear them. But given the water that has passed under the bridge personally, and the length of time since anyone in the band has collaborated creatively (as opposed to managing the ongoing business of Sonic Youth, which seems to be going pretty well), a SY reunion could only be a professionally presented piece of entertainment made by people who have agreed to put aside their personal differences and pause their artistic advancement in order to make some coin. There may be good reasons to prioritize finances. Maybe Thurston and/or Kim wants to make sure that they don’t show up on Coco’s front door, demanding to move their record or art collection into her basement, in their dotage. And Lee’s a man in his late 60s with progeny who are of an age to likely have substantial student loan debt. But The Community is just the kind of thing they’d have to pause. It feels like the work of someone who is still curious, questioning, commenting. It's not just trying to do the right commercial thing.

Justin Cober-Lake: I’m finding this one to be a sort of statement album. I’d stop short of calling it a concept album, but there seems to be a thematic center. I think a key element of the album is the way that it looks for... if not signal and noise, at least a sense of order and comprehensibility in a chaotic world. Gordon isn’t even passing judgment on the world — phones are bad, phones are good, phones make art, etc. But there’s a sense that our world is increasingly brutal, and we hear that not just in the guitars, but in the beats, and the production. “BYE BYE” really introduces the concept. Gordon’s leaving (and we can imagine this is autobiographical), but she’s organizing everything she needs for a new life. “Cigarettes for Keller” is a heartbreaking line, but she moves on, everything that makes up a life neatly ordered next to each other, iBook and medications in the same line. It reminds me of a Hemingway character locking into the moment to find some semblance of control in the chaos.

Getting back to gender, there’s a funny line at the end: one of the last things she packs is a vibrator. I'm not sure if we're to read this as a joke, a comment on the necessity of sexuality in a life full of transitory moments, as a foreshadowing of the concepts we’ve discussed, or something else. The next item (if it’s something different) is a teaser, which could be a hair care product or something sexual (playing off — or with — the vibrator). Everything's called into question: the seriousness of the track, the gender/sexuality ideas, what really matters in life. Modern gadgets, life-sustaining medicines, and sex toys all get equal rank. That tension really adds force to the song.

Coming out of “BYE BYE,” it's easy to see a disordered world that sounds extremely noisy, but still has elements we can comprehend within the noise. I don’t want to read the album reductively and I don't think it's all about this idea, but it's something that, early on in my listening, I find to be a compelling aspect of it.

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#dusted magazine #listeningpost #kim gordon #the collective #jennifer kelly #jonathan shaw #bill meyer #andrew forell #bryon hayes #tim clarke #christian carey #ian mathers #justin cober-lake

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bubblegum-glitch · 10 months ago

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The Lines We Won't Cross and How They Change

Let's rewind time a little bit, back to the year 2011. I had joined this little website called tumblr and had made an acquaintance whose confidence would begin to inspire me to branch out and try all kinds of things I never could have seen myself doing before that point in my life. I began recording and publishing vocal covers to YouTube, I started showing off my artwork publicly, and I even posted a single topless photo of myself online - all because I couldn't stop comparing myself to this random fucking girl. If she could do it, so could I...

But I was determined that I could do it better.

The "relationship" I built with this online stranger is a little odd, and probably would throw up several red flags for some people. I can't explain why I felt such a strong sense of rivalry between us, and I know she never felt the same, but there was just something about my interactions with this person that made me want to always do better than her, even to this day (even though I'm 100% sure she doesn't even remember who I am).

Creepy? Weird? Stalker-y? I dunno. Probably. Harmless? Absolutely. All I can say is she is the one who ultimately introduced me to the world of "Topless Tuesdays" and the alternative modelling site "SuicideGirls."

She had posted a set to SuicideGirls as a hopeful, and being in full rival mode at the time I had considered doing the same. Ultimately I decided against it however, as the fear of any member of my family every finding out gave me far too much anxiety to overcome (hold this thought). Not to mention I couldn't bring myself to believe I was "pretty enough" to succeed.

I often wonder what would have come of that if I had ever gone ahead with that hopeful photo-set submission.

But I digress.

Let's jump ahead in the timeline to around 2017/2018 (I can't quite remember when). I had a case of the retail woes, a certificate in photography, and a foolish idea to escape the Hellscape that is customer service once and for all. The internet had informed me that feet pics were in and there was mountains of cash just waiting for me, all I had to do was step on a twinkie or two.

Long story short (or short story shorter) I failed in this business venture pretty much immediately. It's harder than you think to market and sell pictures of your tootsies.

Now, let's spin back a bit to where I mentioned my fear of my family discovering my nudity online. This is a topic I will address a bit more in a future post, but I will let you know now that although my parents do try their best to steer more towards the life of liberal boomers, they are still very uncertain of LGBTQA+ topics and VERY against sex work. I have built a strong and close relationship with my mother, but if she ever discovered what I've begun doing for work I believe it would ruin all of what we have.

Early in 2023 I began weighing that fear of my family discovering me against the possibility of actually making a living wage by taking my shirt off for strangers online. After many discussions with my husband (who has been fully supportive since day one) and a long time of back and forth with my decision, I finally decided to give OnlyFans a try.

Originally I had no intentions of posting more than some topless photos. I used what I knew about photography, photo editing, and makeup to my advantage to create some high quality, if a little bit minimal, content. Upon seeing there was some interest, but being unable to hold the attention of anyone for long, I decided to step over that initial line I had drawn for myself and posted some full nudes. Immediately I started seeing a positive response and suddenly I had a little extra spending money.

At that time I said that this was as far as I was willing to go. Excuse my vulgarity here but I had no intentions of doing pussy pics or spreading my asshole. Tasteful nudes, and no farther.

I stuck to that line for about a year, until the inevitable "Fuck it" moment I previously posted about occurred in July of 2024. I stepped over the line again and started posting some more risque content at a premium rate. It was then that my OnlyFans really started to take off and I was seeing actual financial gain in response.

Once more I drew a new line for myself that I swore I would not cross. Absolutely no video content.

But then I couldn't stop considering making that video content. I would think about it so often that I actually began frequently dreaming about creating pornographic films.

So once again I turned to my partner and we discussed the pros and cons, and eventually I decided to dip a toe over the edge and get a sense of the temperature of the deep end.

Admittedly, that first masturbation video I made embarrassed the fuck out of me. I felt exposed, I felt ugly, and I felt very stupid. But then the response to it came.

"I love this."

"That was so hot."

"You're so gorgeous."

"More, please."

So I decided to try again, and again, and then suddenly I fucking LOVED making the videos. The sense of empowerment, the ego boost - It gives me this absolute sense of control. Something I have been missing in every single career I've ever had in my life.

It was about the third video that I realized "This is it. This is exactly what I want to keep doing with my life for the next several years."

But this is the point where I want to say this to anyone reading my blog who is considering this vocation as a future (or even current) option:

Set your rules early. Understand what you do and do not feel comfortable doing, and express that to your followers. You NEVER have to do anything that you are not comfortable with, even if it's what people are trying to push you to do. At the end of the day it is about your level of comfort, not their level of enjoyment. Set the line you will not cross and do not cross it unless YOU want to. You might have to work a little harder to build a community, but you can get there.

I still have multiple things I will not do, some of which I will likely never do, and others I might be open to one day exploring.

There is no timeline in existence where I will ever be comfortable sexting someone. I'm not even comfortable doing that with my own husband. It's just not for me.

I will not do the dom/sub stuff.

BDSM - Yeah, not happening.

Fetish content - It depends, I have no problem sitting on a cake and giving my husband a foot job, but most Fetish content is a nope from me.

Threesomes? Absolutely not.

Meetups? Hell to the fucking no. My husband is the only person I'm sleeping with and I'm firm on that, thank you.

In this industry you are the boss. What you say goes and your followers can either take what you're giving and appreciate what you do, or they can pack up and find someone else to pester with their more extreme requests.

Who you are and what your destiny is belongs to you and only you. Don't let anyone convince you to change if that's not what you want to do.

Never be afraid to say no.

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As a side note before I close out this entry, I've opened up an Askfm account so you can ask me anything anonymously. It can be about me, about my journey, or even just general advice for starting work in this industry. I'm by no means an expert, but if I can offer some insight to help you out I would be honoured to do so!

#lifestyle #blog #mental health #ask me anything

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zlenvs3000w25 · 5 months ago

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04: Nature through Art...

My whole life, I have always had a strong connection to art. As soon as I was able to hold something in my hands, my mom gave me a paintbrush and paints, and put me in front of an easel. She gave me the tools to create whatever I desired. The poor woman has boxes and boxes of art pieces as I’ve grown up. I see she treasures them all, whether they are 2 year-old scribbles or 15 year-old dark, experimental work. I have always defaulted to expression through art, whether it is through painting, drawing, dance, acting, or some other medium I have decided to try out. I love visual arts so much that I became an animator, and worked in that industry for a number of years before deciding to go back to school for my Zoology degree. Although I loved animating, I left because the industry is experiencing an increased use of AI, therefore resulting in mass layoffs for the real people. Since I joined the industry because of my love for the art, it didn’t feel right to stay in it.

In animation college, we would go on field trips with the intention of drawing our observations throughout the day. These experiences connected me so strongly with my surroundings, and it made me appreciate every place we went. It made me really look at where I was, who was there, what they were doing, what was beautiful. We got to draw people, rooms, nature, animals, and more (truly whatever inspired us). I think connection and appreciation is a common experience for artists when they are trying to represent a new location or experience. And for those that may not be able to produce art, they can experience that connection through the artwork of others.

“The arts are a medium for the gentle awakening of the unconscious good people and we desperately need more unconscious good people becoming conscious” (Beck & Cable, 2010).

This quote really spoke to me. I think the right piece of art can truly do so much. A good piece of art makes the viewer think, whether this is a simple thought such as “where is this”, or perhaps a more complex thought regarding the symbolism, story behind the piece, etc. Any question is a good question because it awakens curiosity in the mind. Once one question is asked, it opens the door for a million others. Art can simply represent a place, or it can represent a story, a goal, a message.

Nature is a great subject for art interpretation, and can be represented beautifully in visual arts, poetry, storytelling, drama, music or even dance (Beck, Cable and Knudson). The right kind of art can “[enrich] art museums, folk music festivals, sculpture, photography, dance, and drama.” (Beck, Cable and Knudson). All of these mediums may speak to the audience in different ways, and different people may connect to certain types more than others. As an interpreter, the main goal is to connect with your audience, and all interpreters should at least consider how art may be used towards this goal. “The greatest interpreters make their best works within the hearts and minds of those they interpret to” (Beck, Cable and Knudson).

“Interpretation should instill in people the ability, and the desire, to sense the beauty in their surroundings –to provide spiritual uplift and to encourage resource preservation” (Beck & Cable, 2011).

This is one of the principles of nature interpretation associated with the Gift of Beauty. I think this statement is very powerful and speaks to the true intention of art. Art is such a strong form of self-expression, and really provides a chance to fully see something for what it is and figure out what is appealing about it. I’ve always found that art makes me see the beauty in everything. To spend an extended period of time looking at a shape, a colour, the light and the shade, it makes you see how beautiful the subject is. I’ve never truly walked away from a subject without having a moment to admire the beauty of it. Even if something may not be traditionally beautiful, art makes you appreciate it for what it is. You cannot change the tree that appears to be disfigured, but you can appreciate the knots, the shape of the misaligned branches, the uniqueness that arises from the imperfections. That is the Gift of Beauty.

Beck, L., & Cable, T. (2010). Interpretive perspectives: A collection of essays on interpreting nature and culture. Fort Collins, CO: National Association for Interpretation. Beck, L., & Cable, T. (2011). The gifts of interpretation: Fifteen guiding principles for in-terpreting nature and culture (3rd ed.). Urbana, IL: Sagamore. Beck, L., Cable, T. T., & Knudson, D. M. (2018). Interpreting cultural and natural heritage: For A Better World. SAGAMORE Publishing, Sagamore Venture. Edwards, Y. (1979). The land speaks. Toronto, ON: The National and Provincial Parks Association of Canada.

#science communication #nature interpretation #animals #art #art in nature #art interpretation #blogpost

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nitewrighter · 1 year ago

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A little while back, you answered a question on what you'd do for a "Spider-Man in DC Comics" type of fic and honestly, I'm enamored with the idea of him being the New Gods/Forever People's de facto Earth buddy and designated minder. Like Spidey and his Amazing Friends, but instead of Firestar and Ice Man, it's Mister Miracle, Big Barda, and Orion sometimes.

That being said I feel like, for better or worse, a lot of folks would be more focused on how Spidey would interact with the more recognizable names in DC Comics, as well as their close family, friends, and associates.

So... what would Peter Parker's dynamic with the New Gods and Forever people end up looking like? What does the Justice League overall, and its individual members think of him? How many would buy into the narrative of him being a Wall-Crawling Menace that the Daily Bugle keeps pushing? How many would call J. Jonah Jameson on his baloney?

Do you think a young Peter Parker would have been scouted to join the Teen Titans back in the day? Would he have accepted, or continued flying solo well into adulthood?

Well going back to the Kirby roots of the Fourth World, I feel like Spider-Man's bonds with the New Gods/Forever People would start out very similar to the initial Fourth World introductions---disorienting and overwhelming!!!! Like, this stuff started back, not with the Superman title, but with the Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen title, and the thing with the introduction of the Hairies and Cadmus and the DNAliens, was that Kirby kind of flipped things on their head by having a hapless Superman being dragged along in Jimmy's adventures, though Superman took on a more established and authoritative role as Cadmus got more developed. So I feel like having Spider-Man be the Designated Fourth World Minder would basically put him a role that's kind of a combination of both Superman and Jimmy Olsen in those initial issues. At first you have Spidey starting out as kind of a youth advocate--some weirdoes start showing up in New York and Spider-Man sees, despite some culture clashes and these people talking about crazy large-scale stuff that he has no idea about, that ultimately these new visitors mean well and actually have an incredibly strong appreciation and even awe for earth. I love the Forever People so much because they are honestly THE CUTEST about how much they think earth is cool. They came to our planet from a planet that basically touts itself as SPACE OLYMPUS/HEAVEN and instantly fell in love with us. I like the idea that they would come to earth at a time when Spider-Man's feeling particularly lonely about the weirdness of his own situation and suddenly finds himself surrounded by Space Hippies who kind of give him a fresh perspective on being the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, and right when he thinks, "Yeah you know, this is a lot easier with friends :)" WHUH-BAM WE HIT HIM WITH THE NEW GODS AND PARADEMONS AND GLORIOUS GODFREY AND ALSO HE PROBABLY HAS TO GET BEAMED TO NEW GENESIS AT SOME POINT.

Honestly I haven't read enough Marvel comics where Spidey is teamed up with the Avengers to really feel confident in describing how Spidey would mesh with the League. The thing is, I'm very much in the Spider-Man as "Scrappy Local Hero" camp--that's the core of his appeal for me, so like, even though Spider-Verse is so devastatingly popular right now, when I see Spider-Man, like... in Space™ with The Avengers™, I'm kind of like "What's he doing there. It's a school night." Most of my comics experience with Peter Parker's Spider-Man is grounded in the 2000-2011 Ultimate Spider-Man run because that's the comic my library had growing up, and I didn't really make it that far past Norman Osborn so like, I've also seen enough of the MCU to know that Spidey's adventures get way way way way WAY scaled up, but Spider-Man's core for me is "Some kid in NYC."

It's interesting that you ask about Spider-Man interacting with bigger names, because I recently read an arc in Superman that featured a guy with HARDCORE Spidey vibes and an appearance that definitely had some Spider-Man/Impulse inspiration.

Outburst had magnetic powers and was part of a group, "The Young Supermen of America" who were a very youthful, scrappy Superhero team that formed in Metropolis following Superman's death from Doomsday, and--okay this will eventually lead into a "Superman went fascist but it wasn't his fault because he was being manipulated by the Reality-Manipulating Entity Dominus don't worry it got fixed with THE POWER OF LOVE" arc--but Outburst ended up filling this role that felt a lot like the kind of role Spider-Man might fulfill in the DC universe, a kid who idolizes other superheroes but also holds them accountable through their admiration. It's a role very similar to the one Spidey came to inhabit in the MCU (despite being gentrified by Tony Stark...). So Spider-Man in the greater-scale DC universe, I feel, would inhabit a role that is midway between Shazam and Green Arrow.

(Look at Outburst down there on the side of that building. That's a fucking Spider-Man pose. "It's magnetic adhesion." IT'S FUCKING WALL-CRAWLING AND YOU KNOW IT, DC.)

So just looking at Outburst, I feel like that kind of answers a lot of questions about what kind of position Spider-Man would hold in DC. Still youthful, very "Local Kid" angle, desperately doesn't want to make an idiot of himself in front of the BIG TIMERS.

And similarly, there would be a lot of sort of... sympathy and protectiveness from the League towards Spider-Man both for his youthful optimism and because Spider-Man maintains a very strong connection with the civilian community he serves. They wouldn't be helicopter parenting, but there definitely would be a handful of situations where a League member swoops in like "Okay yeah no, you are 16 and WAY OUT OF YOUR DEPTH and while I respect you as a hero, I, as an adult, am not going to stand here while you get your ass handed to you"--probably to Spidey's frustration because he feels that kind of overreach undermines the trust his community has in him. So basically a much more light, optimistic, and trusting version of, "Other superheroes don't interfere with Batman's rogues" and also played with a bit more flexibility. The League is also no stranger to bad press themselves, so I think they'd take J. Jonah Jameson's takes with a grain of salt.

I honestly don't see Spidey joining a team like the Titans or Young Justice--I feel like that takes too much away from how big of a role Peter Parker's civilian life plays in his character. I feel like he would be scouted as a sort of, "Hey do you need a support system" sort of thing, but he backs away because he wants to be there for Aunt May and Mary Jane.

#dc #spider-man #outburst #justice league #superman #marvel

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