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sybright · 4 years

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Grizabella being Munk and Tugger’s sister au

I’ve had this idea brewing in my head for a while and I’ve finally gotten the motivation to write it out. Fair warning, this whole thing is a COMPLETE mess, I have no idea where I was going with this, it got a longer than I thought it would, um, read at your own risk?

I think the “Griz is Munk and Tugger’s mom” headcanon is a neat idea, but it never vibed with me personally. For my “main” universe I see Griz as being unrelated to any of the Jellicles. However, for productions where Griz has a younger appearance (which can apply to both the pre-revival Griz design and the post-revival one), I really like the idea that she’s Old Deut’s daughter and siblings with Munk and Tugger.

Headcanons:

-She’s the eldest (of the trio at least, Old Deut has obviously had countless children in past lives, but Griz, Munk, and Tugger are his only children in this life), Munk is the middle child, and Tugger is the youngest.

-She was expected to become the next Jellicle leader. I have the feeling that the current life Old Deut is living is his last, and he feels confident in passing the role of Jellicle leader to his first born child in this current life.

-For a long time, becoming the Jellicle leader was a feeling of pride for Griz, for most of her youth she was excited to take on this role. She was confident, mature, caring, and deeply respected by the tribe, especially by her younger brothers. Simultaneously, she was laid-back, fun loving, and well, glamorous. This only earned her more respect from the tribe, she knew when to have fun, and she knew when to be serious. This is where she got her reputation as “the glamour cat.”

-During her late-teens to early adulthood is when she reached the height of her days as “the glamour cat.” It was around this time that she begun her Protector training, which was sort of like a prerequisite to her Jellicle leader training that would come later on.

-When Griz started her Protector training, she began to rethink her life goals. She was young, just a little while out of kittenhood, and she reveled in the freedom she had prior to her training. Griz had big dreams, she wanted to see the world, and suddenly she felt constrained by her obligation to stay with the tribe and complete her training. Her life felt caged, like it was all laid-out for her, she was having second thoughts about the whole “leader” thing.

-Griz was too scared to confide her doubts to anyone because she didn’t want to disappoint them or let anyone down. So she continued her Protector training, pretending like everything was fine.

-Over time, the pent up emotions in her led Griz to start resenting the tribe, she never said anything, but she grew more frustrated with them as each new day passed. The tribe started to see a change in Griz’s attitude, she became more cold and distant.

-This culminated in an argument Griz got into with Munk the day before her Jellicle leader training was going to begin (Munk is a teen at this time btw). Basically, Munk was asking what was going on with her lately, and why she had changed so much during her training. He had asked out of worry and concern, he wanted to help her. Griz snapped at him and a huge argument ensued. A lot of feelings were hurt that day, Munk didn’t know if he even knew his sister anymore, Tugger (who’s around preteen age at this time) overheard some of the arguing, and felt equally hurt by their exchange.

-The next day, the day she was supposed to start her Jellicle leader training, Griz was gone. She left without telling anyone or saying goodbye. She left to see the world and pursue fame, she walked out on them. This was a massive blow to the tribe, everyone was beaten down by it, Munk and Tugger especially so. They had looked up to Griz, and admired her for a long time, and this event, what felt like a betrayal, was awful for the two of them. Old Deuteronomy was more worried about Griz than anything.

-Years passed, Munk took up the mantle of becoming the next Jellicle leader, he started his Protector training and was determined to pickup where Griz left off. Meanwhile, Tugger took on a very care-free and rebellious attitude.

-Jemima shows up around this time, and it isn’t realized now, but after the events of the musical it’s decided that Jemima suits the role of Jellicle leader much better than Munk. Munk, while responsible, takes on far too much stress from the job, so he remains a Protector and storyteller.

-Everything started out great for Griz, she was free from her responsibilities and nothing could hold her back now. After a few years, however, it started to fall apart. She fell on hard times and wound up on the street, completely alone. She had too much pride, too much shame, to return to the tribe just yet, so she remained on the streets for a while.

-The events of the musical happen. Griz shows up after she finally gets over herself, it’s been roughly ten years since she left. Everyone’s on edge, the only one who had seen Griz prior to her return is Demeter, who encountered Griz on the streets many times in the past, and it’s only her, the kittens, and Old Deut who show her any empathy.

-After the final Memory, Griz is forgiven and welcomed back to the tribe. I haven’t fully decided yet whether Griz should be reborn or stay with the tribe. I’m leaning towards staying with the tribe, because it’s a neat idea that I want to play around with. Griz mending her relationships with the other tribe members and her direct family would take a lot of time, and her getting back into the swing of her old life is an interesting concept, there’s just so much good material in that setup that I want to explore, I’m just trying to decide whether I want to differentiate it from this au or not.

Extra stuff for this au:

The idea that I was trying to get across with this, is that everything came down to a lack of communication. In reality, no one was ever pressuring Griz to become the leader, if she had said something, the tribe would have supported her decision, but on the other hand no one ever asked her how she felt about it either. It’s the lack of discussion from both ends that causes the misunderstandings and tension, and eventually the falling out.

As an aside, this whole thing is apart of my “idiot universe.” To briefly explain, I have three distinct Cats universes, (which may or may not have been created for the sole purpose of having all my ships be canon, don’t judge me), they’re all separated by how Macavity is characterized. Universe one is my “main” universe, where Macavity is his typical self, universe two is the “redemption” universe where Macavity is less awful and gets redeemed, and universe three is the “idiot” universe where Macavity is just a dumbass who doesn’t pose a threat to anyone. He’s still a criminal, but only moderately worse than Jerrie and Teazer. So yes, this Griz sibling thing is in the “idiot” universe.

If any of you are more interested in the three universes Mac’s, here’s a full post on it from like two months ago, it’s pretty shit and there are some things I’ve changed my mind about since then, but it still has some nice details. It’s also from before I had all these followers, so I was still posting to the void lmao. Also, that post was from before storyweaverofgondor made that excellent post explaining Mungocavity, so I was just throwing ideas against the wall for the pairing and trying to come up with a ship name XD. I’m so glad her post made the pairing a bit more popular because I thought I was doomed to be alone in shipping it lol.

I’ve really been liking the “Tugger and Demeter are siblings” idea thanks to return-of-the-skimbly and thepansexualspoon, and I kinda want to incorporate it into one of my universe’s somehow, but I haven’t decided which one. I also can’t decide if I’d still have Munk as their sibling too if I went that route, but I know for sure that it won’t be in my “main” universe because of Demebombastrap. I’ve been thinking about putting it in the “idiot” universe, in which case I’ll have to edit some of the headcanons in this post. In fact, I’ll probably need to make a separate post explaining Deme’s whole side of it if I do that. *Sigh* there’s just too many fun ideas to work with!

#cats the musical #grizabella #munkustrap #rum tum tugger #my rambles #my original posts #long post #old deuteronomy #cats headcanons #cats aus #I wanna make more posts about my three universes because they keep getting more elaborate and I need to talk about them ajdsakms #I'm not @ing the people I mention because the @ is at the very bottom of this post and this post is very long #I don't want to put them through the pain of having to read this mess so I'm just not @ing them #might also be because of my anxiety where I want to post this but simultaneously don't want people to read it hsadjjaka #also yeah I know 'idiot' universe isn't the most proper name but I might come up with something better later on

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parkers-gal · 3 years

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hey honey! how are you doing?

i was wondering if you could write something where the reader is either tom or harrison’s sister, around 19-20 years old, and she hears her brother talking bad about her behind her back and she gets distant towards them and her brother realizes how much he’s missing out on (her first boyfriend and stuff like that)

sorry if it’s long or if you don’t wanna write it lol it was just an idea!!

don’t be sorry! i loved this! also doing pretty good :-)

i didn’t really understand what was in the ending parentheticals so i hope this is what you wanted!

wc: 1.7k

—

Being the established girl in a group of four boys meant a lot of things. Often, you were confused as a girlfriend to whichever boy you were accompanying, aside from your brother, of course. There was a lot of territory that came with being close family-friends with the Holland family. Especially since your brother used to be Tom’s assistant. It was expected, though, because they had been close friends growing up, especially since being in the same grade.

You were younger, which meant you were in between ages for the twins and Paddy. You didn’t consider yourself too young for them, though, and found yourself in the presence of the boys for most of your time.

Today, however, you were with your friend Aisha, walking around the shops. She had to leave unexpectedly early, so you parted ways. You came into the house quietly, setting a few things as you silently made your way into the kitchen. It wasn’t actually your house, but you practically spent all of your time there anyways. You heard voices coming from the den. Though you knew it was wrong, you halted in announcing your arrival, choosing to listen in on what they seemed to be joking around about.

“Finally got ‘er off your back, huh mate?” You heard Tom’s voice, followed with joined laughter from everyone else. Your mind wandered, thinking maybe Harrison had a girl he was interested in, though he never brought that up, so you stayed quiet to hear more.

“Yeah. Out with Aisha or whatever.”

Your eyes widened as the realization dawned on you. You purse your lips and think not to assume anything just yet.

“That her only her friend?”

“Honestly,” Harrison laughs in agreement. “Mum said to be a good older brother but I’m tired of playing babysitter.” They all laugh again and you will yourself not to burst into anger — or worse: cry. “She’s gotta grow up or something.”

“Mate.” Tom snickers. “She needs a life. The boys are a tight circle; can’t let no baby sister in on that.”

“Yeah,” Harry’s voice pops in. “Who else would we spill disgusting secrets to?” They laugh seemingly in universal knowledge.

“Anyways,” Tom settles down. “Good thing we finally got the superior Osterfield alone, for once.”

You abandon your station near the kitchen door and speed walk out the other swing door. You pick your bags up quietly, making for a quick escape as your tears attempt the same. You’re almost done putting your shoes on when Sam comes down the stairs, brows furrowed while he wipes his damp hands on the front of the shirt. You curse in realizing he was probably in the bathroom.

“Y/N? Everything okay?”

“Uh…” You glance to the hallway that leads to the kitchen, wearily hoping nobody comes out. “Yeah, just uh… forgot I had to do something. I’ll see you later.”

You quickly make your way out of the house, shoving everything into your car while you can, starting the engine with great speed. Sam was in the middle of saying something else to you on your wait out, but he never got around to finishing because you were already out of the door.

He didn’t mention anything to the boys, trusting that you were okay and that you did actually have something to do.

That night, you tried not to cry yourself to sleep in your small apartment, one you shared with Aisha. When you woke the next morning, she wanted to go to the skating rink for some fun, so you agreed, eating breakfast before showering. You spent the entire day there, really, and let your phone in a rented locker, ignoring the texts from a few of the boys asking if you wanted to come over for a movie and some pizza.

When you did have the chance to reply — over five hours later — you gave them scarce replies in the main group chat, apologizing without much sorrow. From their end, they shook it off, knowing you probably just had other plans that specific day. The five of you were planning on going to the golfing course tomorrow, so you’d get time together then.

But they were wrong, because you cancelled on them, simply stating that “golf isn’t your mood, today.” They’d accepted that, but Harry knew that was bullshit, because half of the fun of golfing was competing with you.

They tried not to think much of your absence while they were on the field, but it was weird and awfully quiet without you. They’d figured it might be different throughout the week, but they were still wrong. You were with other people throughout the week while you could be, and it only made it worse for the boys because you were posting it all over your social media. Not in a flaunting manner, but just for the aesthetics. They didn’t find it very pleasing, though.

Harrison knew something was off, knew you didn’t normally just start ghosting people unless you had a real reason. He intended on figuring out what that reason was, and Tom was hell bent on learning it too. They drew up a plan to get you to come over, telling you they had a few of your missing things. You complied, figuring you’d have to face them at some point.

Strolling up to the house for the first time in ten days, you opened the door as casually as you could, only to be met with four pairs of eyes staring in your directions from seats in the open living room.

“Uhm,” You cleared your throat. “Where’s my stuff?” Tom wordlessly points to a bag on the head of the couch, and you pick it up wearily, sifting through it while you hummed. “Thanks, I’ll just take this and get out of your hair.”

“Well, wait-” Tom stands abruptly. “Why… why don’t you hang out for a bit?”

“I mean… do you want to?” The tone in which you speak catches him off guard for all of ten seconds before each of the boys are nodding their heads.

“Of course we do.” Harrison smiles and you nod wearily.

“Okay.”

However, you don’t make any move in settling down for the long run, and Tom huffs. “What’s going on here?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re avoiding us!” Harry concludes. “Why?”

You clear your throat, looking at your feet while your tongue clicks. “I, uhm, I heard you guys talking the other day.”

Harrison raises his eyebrows as a silent message for you to elaborate a little.

“You said you were tired of babysitting me, so I gave you guys some space.” They all physically defeat and you begin to defend yourself. “I just thought it’s what you wanted! You don’t have to explain.” You’re unknowingly beginning to tear up, and they all know it before you do.

“I think we should talk.”

“No, I- uhm…” You glance out the window to your car. “I should really get going.”

“No!” Harry pleads with you. “We just… we miss you.”

You stop short in your tracks, turning around slowly. “Well I don’t really think you get to. Not after what I heard.”

“That’s not fair, Y/N/N, and you know it.” Harrison’s stern with you, and you can feel the tension beginning to set nicely like a creamer.

“None of this is really fair for me, so why should it be fair for you?” You point a finger up in their direction while you shrug offendedly. “I mean, if you’re gonna say one thing don’t act like you don’t mean it.”

“But we didn’t,” Harrison says.

“Really, we didn’t. It was a stupid thing to say.” Tom adds on.

“Yeah, we’d never say it knowing you were there.”

“Oh, but you’d say it if I wasn’t around?” You’re making this more difficult, you realize, but you don’t much care, because when feelings get hurt, things get difficult, and you’ve come to terms with that.

“That’s not what I meant.” Harrison crosses his arm.

“No, but that’s what you implied.” You jab him back with your next words.

“Stop making this hard.” He’s reminding you of what things were like when you were young and arguments were regular.

“I’m not the one that started this.” You huff angrily, hand finally gripping the handle of the front door, swinging it open and slamming it harshly with an “I’ll see you all around.”

Tom blinks, glancing to Harrison in question on what to do next. Harrison sighs and so does Harry.

“I saw her leaving that day she heard you guys.” Sam speaks calmly, almost nervously. “She was- uh… she was crying.” “Oh jesus.” Tom groans, hands running through his curls. “We made her cry, Haz.”

“I know, I know.” He speaks hastily. “C’mon, I know what to do.” He picks his coat up, opening the front door as the rest of the boys follow him out.

You’re coming home that night after spending the rest of your day at the country club with some friends. You’re alone, of course, expecting to eat dinner with Aisha, though the two of you normally dine separately because you’re always with the boys and she’s always with her girlfriend. Things are different now, though.

As you open the door to your flat, you expect to find it dark and empty, but you’re met with your favorite take out meal and four very sorry boys, a large teddy bear sitting on the couch for you. You drop your bags and glance at each of them.

“What’s all this?”

“We’re really, really, really sorry.” Harrison steps forward with an apologetic smile and three DVD disks in his hands, all of your favorite movies. “But me especially. I love having you around… even if you are my baby sister.” You slap his arm playfully and he laughs. You let a smile creep onto your face at his demeanor. “We really missed you this past week.”

You nodded, fiddling with your fingers. “It just… hurt. You broke the one rule I thought…. The rule I thought we all swore to keep.”

“I know.” He sighs, looking at the boys as everyone says it simultaneously. “The circle before yourself.”

You’d seemingly all established it during your first all-nighter as a group of five. You vowed to put them before your own silly ego or public facade. Obviously, some things are harder for others.

“Can you ever forgive me?”

“Can you ever forgive us?” Tom speaks up, eyes deep.

You smile softly, voice laced with feelings. “Of course I can.” You don’t miss the smiles that break out onto their faces, and when everyone comes in for a group hug, they know things are going to be okay.

read the spinoff! - circles before yourselves - rule #2

#harrison osterfield x reader #tom holland x reader #tom holland fic #harrison osterfield fic #harrison osterfield fanfic #tom holland fanfic #tom holland angst #harrison osterfield angst #peter parker #harry holland #osterfield!reader #tom holland x osterfield!reader #reader fic #reader

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angelz-dust · 3 years

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masters of none - part 4 (jason todd x reader)

summary: after many months, we are back in action and back in reader’s head. pls enjoy these jason crumbs. if you need a refresher on the plot, the other chapters will be linked below!

word count: 3.7k

warnings: food/eating. alcohol. cursing.

part 1 /// part 2 //// part 3

gravity

ever since i ever felt ya, right there life couldn't seem better. tulip flowers in my sweater. ask me now, is this forever?

…

you rested your chin on the table before you, your arms hanging limply between your knees as you listened to your manager, dana. you were really just watching her mouth open and close while she pointed at a powerpoint. god, what you would've given for an extra hour of sleep. the all nighters in the studio were starting to take a toll.

the feeling of the back of daisy’s soft hands brought you back to earth. the smell of cocoa butter dancing beneath your nostrils as her smooth engagement ring rolled across your cheek. you breathed in her smell, exhaling in content through your nose.

“you good?” she mouthed and you closed your eyes, giving her a little nod. the bassist rubbed her calloused fingers against your forehead, pushing strands of your hair past your hairline. you pouted when she eventually pulled away, leaving you only with the sensation of touch that once was.

you heard tyler shift in his seat and then felt some air graze against your hand. you looked under the table, noticing he was holding something out to you. you two made eye contact briefly before you scooted back in, grabbing what felt like an envelope. looking down at your lap, you saw a sticky note attached to it. jason’s money was what it said. you carefully put the envelope in your jacket pocket, sitting back in your seat now and looking at dana’s powerpoint. she was going over reports from your publicist, jerry, which you didn't particularly care about.

“now, i have to ask,” dana’s words pierced your bubble of inattention. “have you all thought about what i said about this next album?”

jordy raised his hand like a school kid. “yes?”

“y/n and i decided that we'd be okay with making our album a group project. it has been, admittedly, kinda hard and boring without everyone else. we’d honestly be doing ourselves a disservice by not doing it together,” jordy explained, dana clapping her hands together.

“wonderful,” she nodded, keeping her hands clasped. “i know you two were excited to do your own thing, but i was talking to jerry and he was really pressing me to get a group album from you guys. the people wanna see you guys as a unit of established artists, which you all are. so what's the concept? we never discussed it.”

“uh,” you verbally paused, raising your arms above your head to stretch. “disco, jazz, and funk. it's a mix of those.”

“retro is in right now,” dana nodded, pacing around the room. “how far back will this set us on a release date?”

you grimaced, leaning back in your seat, the back of the seat lightly bouncing as it absorbed your weight. you pondered the question for a moment. “if it’s gonna be a group thing, it'll have to be significantly longer. we have a decent starting off point but i'm gonna need way more songs now.”

“what about the rest of you? any tracks that we could swing?” dana asked, looking at the rest of the group.

grabbing a pen and piece of scrap paper, you started jotting down notes as everyone spoke out to you. dex and quinton didn’t have anything, but they wouldn’t be a problem. you just needed to give them a beat to rap over and you’d be set. the twins had a finished song already that fit the concept, which was good. with tyler’s voice and aly’s excellent song writing abilities, you doubted very seriously that anything else needed to be done to it. daisy and hector had plenty of lyricless songs, too. funk and soul was their specialty, after all. misha even had a demo track she was willing to share.

you looked over the notes you had taken, tapping your pen on the table as you hummed to yourself. “this could probably work. we’ll need to go over everything in the studio, though.”

“we should just do it now. no one is doing shit else today, right?” dex asked the group, who all shook their head.

“i have a request,” you raised your finger, looking at dana. “i want gotham to be involved in this project.”

“gotham…” dana repeated slowly, unsure of what you meant. “care to elaborate?”

“music videos directed by student directors from gotham university, commissioning local artists for album art. dancers, actors, musicians, whatever. all of them have to be from gotham. i don't want any of the money we put into this project leaving this city,” you stated firmly, dana giving you a blank look.

“i like that idea,” hector said, giving you a kind smile before turning to dana, shifting in his seat. the drummer was like a big brother, always backing you up in moments like these. “accessibility to the arts is really limited here and we should change that.”

“i’d rather give back to the city, too,” quinton agreed, playing with the gold cross hanging from his neck. “we’re one of the only groups in gotham known outside of gotham. we should use that as an opportunity to rep our city.”

“it sounds like you have your minds made up on this,” dana narrowed her eyes, letting out a sigh. “it would definitely be good PR.”

“because god forbid we do something out of the kindness of our hearts,” misha laughed, rolling her eyes. “we're trying to put the city on and you're worried about how it makes us look.”

“that's my job, misha. don't you want me to do my job?” dana retorted. “besides, i'm more concerned with the funding. you all don't have disposable income, believe it or not.”

“but i know someone who does,” she said with a singsong tone, giving you a look.

“i hope you're not referring to me,” you deadpanned. your income was far from disposable.

“i’m referring to our good friend, bruce wayne,” she explained, grabbing a business card out of her purse, handing it over to dana. “ever since i got invited to that charity gala, i've had a direct line to a representative with the wayne foundation. i say we ask them to help fund the project.”

“now that could work,” dana admitted, eyeing the card as she tapped her foot. “if we pitch for more youth involvement, it'll probably go over better. we all know how much bruce wayne loves saving the children.”

you frowned at how dana described bruce’s initiatives as a philanthropist. you were sure his motivations for favoring youth projects were good intentioned, considering his parents had been killed when he was just a little boy. you wanted to go into this good intentioned, too and you hoped that they'd agree. they being the wayne foundation and subsequently, bruce himself.

“ty and quinton could do something with forrester. if we’re going for the youth involvement route, i mean,” aly spoke up.

“forrester correctional. our old stomping grounds,” quinton sighed wistfully as he patted tyler on the shoulder. “i think that would be a good idea.”

“they use the arts as an outlet for them, so it could be beneficial for everyone,” tyler nodded. “there are a lot of good kids there. just unfortunate circumstances, that’s all.”

“wasn’t one of bruce’s son’s a troublemaker before he was adopted?” aly continued, not noticing the look you and tyler shared. “i’m sure he’d probably be interested in doing something with them if his son comes from the same background.”

“it’s settled, then. you all keep working on the music. jerry and i will handle the rest. we need this album out before hector and daisy’s wedding,” dana said, grabbing her suitcase.

…

hey, i have your money. did you still want it?

you stared down at the unsent message, your thumb floating over the send arrow. you hadn’t spoken to jason since that night after the race, as per his request. your mind kept wandering back to it, even as time still went on. what happened was scary, to say the least. fun, but scary. you wondered how the hell jason didn’t get the two of you killed. that part, you didn't want to think about too hard. everyone in gotham had their secrets and it was an unspoken rule amongst citizens to not pry. secrets were secrets for a reason. nothing good ever came from unearthing them.

speaking of secrets, you hadn't exactly told tyler and quinton what happened that night. not in detail. you conveniently left out the chase and stopping to get something to eat. omitting the first part was obvious, but the second one was for your own sanity. you didn't need them teasing you over nothing. besides, all that mattered was no one was dead or arrested. and for the way the three of you used to get down, that was a win.

you considered texting jason earlier this week, just to check in on him, but you decided against it. he obviously wanted you to text him and you obviously had to do the opposite. his little mind game wasn’t going to work on you. you pressed send, frowning immediately as you did so.

maybe it already had.

“it’s too many people in this bitch,” dex sighed, the cold of the water bottle you had asked him for against your hand bringing you back to reality. blinking, you were suddenly very aware of the chaos surrounding you in the studio as you put your phone back in your pocket. you looked to your left, where jordy was leaning against the wall and scrolling through his phone. to your right was aly, who was scribbling in her songbook in the chair next to you. you remembered you were supposed to be working, too. “we need a new stu.”

“i’m working on it!” hector hollered from inside the booth as he and daisy were setting up equipment and instruments. you glanced up at the glass in front when you heard his voice, accidentally catching the pair share a little kiss. you quickly averted your gaze, smiling to yourself.

“new stu, new view, what it do?” quinton began to freestyle to a beat he was making on the coffee table in front of him. “off 92, posted up with southside crew.”

“okay,” dex laughed, noddinh his head as he was vibing with the beat, making his way out of your line of sight. you heard someone, presumably tyler, join in and add some depth to the beat. it sounded like he was hitting a pencil against a shot glass.

“i got a new boo, but i’m tryna slide with misha, too,” quinton continued, dex adlibbing in the back as quinton lowered his voice to his signature melodic whisper. “on the low, nobody gotta know.”

“would you shut the fuck up?” you heard misha say, followed by a barrage of muffled smacking noises and verbal objections from quinton, who you assumed was on the receiving end of what sounded like an assault by pillow.

laughing to yourself, you leaned your head in aly’s direction, not fully facing her. “pass me the flash drive?” you held your hand out weakly. once you felt the plastic in your palm, you leaned back over and put it into the computer, pulling up the proper files.

“we’re done back here,” daisy smiled at you, she and hector coming out from the booth.

you clapped your hands together. “wonderful. everybody shut up, please.”

you pulled up the twin’s song and let it play, your eyes fixed on the colorful audio loops on the screen. the green ones were tyler’s vocals, the purple were aly’s. it looked like blue was reserved for instruments and red was any added sound effects or layered sounds.

“you two sound really great,” jordy walked up behind aly’s seat, leaning against it as he swayed his head to the beat.

“thanks. i wrote it with our mother in mind,” aly said, the words coming out of her mouth uncomfortably. you placed your hand on hers and gave it a little squeeze, which earned you a look of appreciation.

“it's missing something, though,” tyler scratched the back of his head. “i need the producer squad to give us some assistance.”

“oh, say less,” dex laughed, snapping his fingers to the beat with one hand and holding his glass of hennessy in the other. he danced his way over, taking aly’s seat as she, tyler and jordy moved to give you all some space.

misha sauntered her way over, sitting against the table and flipping her hair over her shoulder. the smell of her sweet perfume floated in the air around you. “i think it just needs some fluffing up. some snapping might work. more vocal layering in certain spots.”

“i agree,” you nodded, dex letting out a satisfied sigh as he took a sip of his cold drink.

“is it good?” misha asked him teasingly and he took his final swig, letting out a more dramatic and drawn out sigh. this time, though, it was on beat with the song. you were pretty sure it was unintentional on his part, since he and misha just shared a laugh before returning their attention to the screen.

after a moment of pondering, you swiveled around in your chair, looking at tyler. “okay, hear me out…”

…

two weeks of very diligent working between the nine of you had given you a lot to work with for the album. all that was left was to start putting things together. you still had a ways to go, but you had a good starting off point. as much as you hated to admit it, it was a good call on dana’s part to have you all do a group album. the fans seemed to be greatly anticipating the release and the work ethic the nine of you shared was incredible. even in that cramped little studio, you all made it work.

you all agreed to take the day off, but you were still working at some capacity. you had just traded one small space for another, working in your walk-in closet/home studio for the day. you still needed said walk-in to function as a closet, so there were still garment bags pushed up into a corner and shoe boxes haphazardly stacked, surrounding your desk that you had shoved in there. there was just enough space for you to move your chair and safely get out without twisting an ankle, a fate you often flirted with in that room.

in the spirit of your day off, you hadn't done anything too difficult. you were just trying to decide what order you wanted the completed songs to go in. it may seem like an insignificant detail, but the order was important. the transitions between songs couldn't be jarring for the listener. everything had to flow together with natural progression. at this point, it didn't matter since you weren't done with the album, but it was just giving you an idea of how to fill the gaps with future songs.

the sound of your growling stomach indicated that it was time to stop for the day. you quickly saved all your work and headed to the kitchen. you popped some leftovers in the microwave and scrolled on twitter while you waited. the microwave beeped at you, so you set your phone back down and grabbed the bowl, mixing up the contents with your fork. the flash of light coming from your phone got your attention. a text notification.

are you home?

oh, so now he wanted to respond? cute.

despite your annoyance with the situation, you quickly responded with a yes and set the phone back down. you leaned against the counter, eating what little food you had in your reheated bowl. you mixed the contents around with your fork, grumbling. stupid jason and his stupid inability to text back. he could have at least had the decency to leave you on read. he probably didn't even have read receipts on. you weren't sure which was worse. tossing your now empty bowl into the sink, you grabbed your phone to read his next message.

i’ll be over soon.

soon was very vague and you wished that you would've demanded an exact time, but that opportunity had passed by the time you thought about it. you busied yourself with tidying up, trying to make your place look presentable. you even lit your new candle, which you found yourself focusing your attention on while you waited for him to show up. staring at the flame was much more entrancing than you anticipated.

you heard the door buzzer go off. you weren't expecting anyone else, so it had to be him. you leaned against the wall, pressing your finger to the button.

“who goes there?” you presented the question as a joke, but your tone was a little flat.

“it’s the irs,” jason’s voice came through and you buzzed him in.

not too long after, you heard him knock on the door. you cracked it open and the first thing you noticed was his cologne. it was a strong but pleasant scent. spicy and sweet. it was very intoxicating, actually. so much so that you almost forgot you were angry at him.

“hi.”

“hello.”

you opened the door fully and handed the envelope to him. jason eyed it suspiciously. he opened it up and began to count it out in front of you. he made an effort to do it very slow, the sound of the crisp dollars echoing in the quiet hall. his eyes stayed glued to yours as he counted out loud. you leaned against the doorframe as you watched.

“six… seven… eight,” he said, pulling out his wallet and stuffing it with the cash. “thought you would've skimmed some off the top.”

“i should have with how long you made me wait,” you said matter of factly, letting your annoyance be known now.

“i know. i’m sorry,” he sounded honest but you couldn't see it in his face or in his eyes, which was worrisome. it was a nice alternative to listening to a sputter of excuses, though. “let me make it up to you?”

“how do you plan on doing that?”

“i’m so glad you asked,” he smiled. “as it turns out, i've recently come into some money. let me spend it on you?”

“so you like throwing money at your problems?” you asked him. well, you weren't really asking. it was more like you were telling him.

“no,” he said, sounding a little offended. “i just thought-”

“you just thought that throwing money at me would make me forget about the fact that you ignored me for a month.”

“no, no,” he shook his head, sighing in frustration. “listen, i-”

“i really don't wanna hear it,” you said honestly, watching as his frustrated look turned into kicked puppy. you almost felt bad. “i don't like feeling stupid, jason. that's how i feel right now. i want you to make it up to me but you'll have to be a bit more creative than this.”

“you want me to make it up to you?” jason had repeated, confusion on his face.

you poked him harshly in the chest. “you do that or you leave me alone. those are your options. goodbye.”

you shut the door in his face and let out the breath you were holding in. you weren’t sure how jason was going to react to your little ultimatum, but those were your terms. you liked him but you weren’t going to stress over someone you barely knew, especially with your assumptions about him floating around in your head.

“i’ll be right back,” you heard him say through the door, catching you off guard.

“what?”

“don’t go anywhere.”

you didn’t respond but you heard his footsteps getting quieter as he walked down the hall. the elevator ding indicated that he had left. you stood there, confused as to what it was he was trying to do. you were still stewing in your negative emotions, so you went and busied yourself again. you decided the dishes needed washing and got on it right away. in the middle of scrubbing the stubborn sauce stains out of your plate, you heard your door buzzer go off again.

so he did come back after all. interesting.

you buzzed him in like you did before and waited by the door for him. he knocked and when you opened it, you were met with two gifts: a bouquet of pink tulips and a small box of something from the bakery around the corner.

“i shouldn’t have ignored you. it was rude and stupid and i’m sorry. it won’t happen again,” he said to you, holding out the items to you. you hesitantly accepted them, taking the opportunity to look through the plastic opening of the box to see chocolate covered strawberries.

“it better not happen again,” you pouted, looking up at him. you had to appreciate the effort he put in at such short notice. it was a sweet gesture and he actually looked sorry this time.

“it won’t,” he assured you and you smiled.

“i forgive you. but you’re on thin fucking ice,” you reminded him and he grinned at you with a nod.

“i’m going to make it up to you. just you wait,” he said confidently. “not all of us are naturally creative like you, though. you gotta give me some time to think of something else.”

“seems like you’re getting your feet wet with the flower selection,” you noted, taking a whiff of the delicate and fresh scent. they’d look nice on your coffee table.

“lady at the shop said they would convey my sincerest apologies,” he explained, a hopeful look in his eyes. “did it work?”

“for now,” you shrugged, setting the items down on the table next to the door.

“i can accept that.”

“you’re gonna have to because that’s all i’m giving you,” you said firmly. his charm wasn’t going to get him out of this one. not completely. “now go away. i want to eat my berries in peace.”

“i’ll text you as soon as i get the chance,” he told you as you were shutting the door. you peered at him, narrowing your eyes before shutting it again. “i’m serious!”

“goodbye, jason!” you said through the door. you heard his faint farewell as you walked away, plopping on the couch with your dessert in hand.

were you still a little mad at him? yes. but you weren’t going to pass up free stuff, even if you had made all that fuss about the money earlier. at least the gifts had some thought behind them. so long as he held up his end of the deal, you had a feeling being friends with jason wouldn’t be that bad.

hopefully, anyway.

#jason todd x reader #red hood x reader #dc x reader #jason todd #red hood

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toriwakes · 3 years

Text

Pretty Boy 187 [s.r x reader]

summary: reader finds out that her new found tumblr crush is none other than her coworker.

content warnings: she/her!reader, mentions of alcohol

a/n: hi!! i’m so happy to be posting again. i’m really proud of this, so i hope you all like it! as always, let me know if you have any requests!

convincing spencer to get tumblr was tough. not only did he hate technology, he didn’t like social media either.

“it’s gonna be fun! c’mon, please?” you’ve been bugging him about it for about a week. “spencer, please just download it. if i have to hear (y/n) whine again i’m gonna loose it.” said derek, plopping is papers on his desk. “you like it when i whine.” you teased, causing derek to flash you a toothy grin. “alright! jeez.” you clapped of joy and jumped to help spencer, but he stopped you. “no way, i’m not letting you follow me.” he kept his phone facing away from you, your arms dropping to your sides in defeat. “fine. i’ll find your account somehow.” “we’ll see about that.”

♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥

over the next few weeks you acquired a few new followers, only one catching your eye. ‘prettyboy187’ followed you on a quiet friday afternoon. the username caught your attention at first, but when you checked is profile? that’s when you were hooked. half of his pictures were just aesthetically pleasing: outside of his window, his extreme sugary coffee, some books. but others...

it was an excerpt of a poem and his hand was holding back the pages. you doubt he meant to capture it so beautifully. just his hand was godly. you wasted no time dming him.

hey :)

how desperate did you look right now? he followed you barley an hour ago. you cant stop staring at that picture.

hello

he didn’t sound happy. well, he didn’t “sound” anything, you guys were texting. but you could feel his tone through the screen. where you overthinking this too much? you shuffled into your bed, wrapping yourself in the covers as you pondered what to say next.

i just wanted to tell you i really like your account. are you a photographer or something?

no, i’m not. my friend convinced me to get this app and i noticed people post aesthetically pleasing photos on here, so i’m just doing the same haha.

ok, well you don’t post nice pictures. at least, not that type. maybe you’d post a picture of the snow or your bed, but every now and then you’d bless the feed with a picture of you in a swimsuit. it was more for opinions on the suit than anything else.

ohh. maybe i should start doing that.

how do you mean?

oh.

that sounded like a very judge-y ‘oh’. your eyes scanned your own profile to see what he could’ve hated. there was you in your favorite red swimsuit, a picture of your computer with netflix on the screen. the rest of the posts were of the same type, so you couldn’t pinpoint what the problem was.

what is it?

no, nothing. your recent picture. that’s a nice swim suit.

oh. that’s what he meant. you practically threw your phone across the room and squealed. thank the universe that he didn’t dislike you already. you shot him another text. just like that, you had your first ever tumblr crush.

♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥

“what’s up with you pretty girl?” derek asked when you walked into work. you supposed you still had the blush on your face when pretty boy wished you a good morning and day at work. “nothing!” you said, obviously it being something. as if on cue, spencer walked in behind you also giddy. “what, you’re both sweet on someone now?” when neither of you responded, derek laughed. “what?” emily inquired, taking her seat. “spencer and (y/n) both have a crush.” emily’s jaw dropped. “spencer has a crush?” everyone broke into laughter, jj overhearing and almost dropping her files. “why is that so surprising?” spencer defended himself, derek giving him a ‘you know the answer to that’ look. “well?what’re their names?” he pushed. you bit your tongue. you didn’t even know his name. yikes. “let’s start.” aaron called. saved by hotch. thank goodness. “this ain’t over.” derek warned the two of you. yes it was. by the end of the day morgan would’ve forgotten all about this.

♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥

you were right like always. morgan didn’t ask anymore about it, instead offering to get drinks. you turned it down, desperate to get home and text your boy. and you did, only at 11pm.

hey, sorry it’s so late. had a long day at work.

no worries, so did i. listen, i have a question.

this boy only sent messages that would make your heart drop. with a pacing heart, you texted back.

yes?

his ‘online’ button flashes on. then he was typing. then he was deleting. it seemed like hours before he responded.

what’s your name?

godamnit. you didnt have a display name because you didn’t want anyone you knew finding your account. what’s a fake name you can use? maybe...

lila.

why did you pick spencer’s ex’s name? you don’t know. you remember being insanely jealous of her because she got to kiss spencer in the pool while you were posted outside. your crush on spencer was still very much alive, but not as much as it was with pretty boy.

that’s a pretty name.

thanks. now you have to tell me yours ;)

you’ve never been so nervous for a text conversation in your life. for some reason, the back of your head wondered what it would be like if you were texting spencer. it was just a thought, though. spencer would never say half of this stuff.

call me morgan.

oh NO. please no... you stalked his profile again, terrified that you’ve been flirting with your coworker this past month. alas, your eye caught another body picture- this time of his arm. no tattoos like derek. not to mention he was much smaller. not that that’s a bad thing. you don’t think you’d ever be able to handle derek...

♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥

you arrived at work yet again with a blushing face. “come on, you can’t keep hiding this from me! tell me something at least!” derek whined. “okay! his name is morgan. and i know what you’re thinking, and no, it’s not you, my boy is much more attractive.” derek’s mouth formed into an ‘O’ shape in fake offense. “that’s damn near impossible. ain’t nobody prettier than derek morgan.” spencer walked in now, again with a dorky smile on his face. “spencer. (y/n)’s got a crush on-“ you jumped to cover his mouth, the sound of your crush’s name muffled. “what- hey! no fair! derek gets to know but i cant?” spencer whined. derek held his hands up and sat back down, not wanting to get you mad. smart. “three can’t keep a secret.” was all you said before sitting down to clean your workspace.

♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥

the new highlight of your day was texting morgan. you learned several things about him; he has a job he can’t specify for personal reasons, he really wants a dog but he feels like animals hate him. you told him about your cat joel, and how they could absolutely love him. he appreciated that.

if i tell you something, do you promise not to freak out?

depends. are you about to tell me you’re a serial killer?

no!

you giggled to yourself at your humor.

i wanna meet you.

you promised not to freak out, but you were freaking out. it was just now setting in that you didn’t know this man at all. where he lived, how old he was, even what he looked like. you took a few deep breaths and asked a question.

where do you live?

quantico virginia.

no hesitation on that one. he lived in the same town as you? you didn’t know how you’d be able to turn this down...

shit, me too. let’s meet up then.

i’ll send you a good place to get drinks.

♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥

“every time you walk in here, you’re blushing. now so are your ears.” you beamed at derek, sitting at your desk before spilling. “i’m gonna meet him.” “wait what? are you sure that’s safe?” you rolled your eyes. “i’m an fbi agent. i’m not scared of a little danger.” you playfully winked and derek blew out a huff of air. “if anything happens, you know you can call me.” you pouted at your friend and nodded, appreciating his concern. spencer was spinning in his seat. “you happy too?” you asked. he only nodded and didn’t elaborate. you we’re going to press on, but hotch called you all in and you lost your chance.

♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥

on rare occasions, the bau got tough cases with very happy endings. this was one of those cases. the plane ride home was extremely joyous and derek offered to get drinks again. this time, everyone accepted (all except hotch). you texted morgan telling him you were going out tonight and you wouldn’t be back till late. you laughed to yourself. it was like he was your boyfriend.

♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥

the night was young and you were fairly tipsy. ok that’s generous, you were drunk. you were spending most of your time with penelope and it took you a minute to remember spencer. “ohmygosh! spence!” he was startled at your presence but he gave you that flat mouthed smile of his. “how are you! you’re my favorite scorpio.” you nodded as you said it, as if trying to convince him it was true. “thanks? i’m good. you’re drunk.” he pointed out. “no shit. hey!!! you never showed me your tumblr user! you gotta show me that girl you like, bet you she’s really sexy.” you didn’t even know what you were saying at this point, whipping out your phone and snapping a picture with spencer. “what are you doing?” he asked, watching you type. “posting this on tumblr! i want everyone to know you’re my favorite in the world.” he wanted to ask favorite what, but a ping on his phone distracted him. lila posted. he smiled and checked her page.

holy fuck.

♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥♡♥

“(y/n)?” he asked, not looking away from his phone. “yess?” you responded. “what’s your tumblr?” what is your tumblr? “uhhh..i don’t know, check.” you tossed him your open phone, and his eyes only grew wider. “you’re lila?” the words rang through your ears like a siren. “what?” the word was breathy, you couldn’t add stability to what you said. spencer showed you his phone, ‘prettyboy187’ on the screen. “you’re morgan?” still no confidence in your voice whatsoever. your feelings were supposed to change, you weren’t supposed to like that morgan was spencer. but they didn’t. you didn’t even think about the fact he saw your swimsuit photos. you loved that morgan was spencer, and you still wanted to see him on the weekend. “are you mad?” you asked, not being able to stop yourself from sipping from your glass. “no. should i be?” you smiled. “no. do you still wanna meet up this weekend?” “yes. but i don’t wanna get drinks.” he wasn’t even drinking, why is he complaining. “where should we go then?” “my house.”

#spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x fanfiction #spencer reid x you #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid smut #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid #ssa spencer reid #ssa reid #dr spencer reid #doctor spencer reid #criminal minds

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emtornado · 3 years

Text

Miraculous but make it Squid Games

Inspired by https://www.instagram.com/p/CUm02T7BCGr/?utm_medium=copy_link

Do I know why I keep making Miraculous posts? Nope. But here we go with another one~

(Also this takes place in Korea cuz I don't know any French children's games and didn't wanna complicate my own life so just roll with it)

Let’s introduce our characters first.

Marinette Dupain Cheng— A French student studying fashion in Korea who has lost all her money and is in severe debt.

Adrien Agreste— Marinette’s friend from France, and a former model who left his father and his company behind to travel the world ending up in Korea where he gets a very interesting offer.

So let’s start with the fact that there are obviously no miraculouses here. Both were two normal students who used to be friends but drifted apart, not even knowing that the other was in the same country, years later.

Marinette, who used to study in Sungkyunkwan University, is completely broke and the only reason she could afford school is because of her parents. Now, with a degree and no jobs (Korea is hard to foreigners, and even after years, that’s what she is to everyone), she's lost all motivation in life. Her sketchbooks, once full of life, now lie empty.

At her lowest moment, Marinette sits at a subway and contemplates what to do with life when a dude comes and offers her money, and all she has to do is play a Korean game. Ending with a stinging cheek and 40,000 won in her hands, the man offers her a card and tells her to think. She gets a lot of money, and all she has to do is play some games.

On the other side, we have Adrien. Adrien, who is more like Chat— confident, witty and VERY flirty. He left his father’s house when he was 18 and has been travelling ever since. He and Nino went to the states, travelled Europe by car, went to India (cuz yes) and currently makes a stop in Korea, where he is approached by a man. This man asks them if they’re up for a job, where they gets a decent amount of money and all he has to do is follow the rules and keep his mouth shut.

Adrien has experienced many things in his life so far, and his money supply is depleting. Thinking of this as some drug shit, he agrees and signs the contract (fucking idiot. After staying with his father and being a model for so long he should’ve known to at least read things properly smh). Seeing him, Nino does too.

Fast forward to the very first game. Adrien has been training for almost a month now and has a little idea of what he’s working for here.

He knows not to ask any questions, to only take the head mask off when he’s in his room and do whatever the man in the black mask tells him to.

He doesn’t ask a single question cuz he’s seen what happens to those who do. What happened to Nino, as his best friend’s brains splattered all across his mask. (sorry, but like. People had to die.)

When the participants play their first game, he doesn’t even flinch at the absolute massacre happening on his screen. He thinks about how nothing can faze him anymore when he catches sight of two pigtails on the screen. Two pigtails that look almost blue under the sun’s glare.

And that is when his stomach DROPS.

Let's yeet back to Marinette. Our sis is dying inside but she WILL NOT die outside. She came here for the money and now she has a greater motivation to survive— her life.

She is the last person in the game— number 467, and all that goes on in her head as three people beside her are shot due to the creepy doll’s eyes is the fact that she will remain the last one standing. It’s not about the money anymore, it’s about survival.

After the first game, when given the option, she presses her hand on the cross without a second’s hesitation.

As she makes her way home, she is relieved, that the torture is over.

And then she meets Adrien.

Back to Adrien. When all the participants head back, he uses two of his precious leave days from this fucked up organisation to track Marinette and meet her. When they do, they fucking collide cuz he saw her almost die and she almost died. They have reason to cling onto one another shush.

And then Adrien tells her. He tells her everything. He tells her what is happening, how many people have died, how Nino had died, and how he needs her help to shut all this down.

Marinette runs away. She doesn’t wanna be there. And then she starts looking at all the chats and pictures of her and Nino. How he was one of her very first friends. And so she goes back to the same cafe and meets Adrien again.

They make a plan. They will make sure she survives, for which she will need allies in the game (not outside the games, cuz she will always have him there).

And so armed with knowledge, Marinette goes back into the game and meets a naïve Korean man who teams up with everyone, a bitch who will survive somehow (and will kill anyone to do so— yes I mean Lila) and a young man who seems so fucking familiar.

And so the games go on and Marinette keeps surviving. And as that happens, she starts to spend her nights in a secluded area with Adrien, where they talk, they reminisce and they find a reason to live in each other.

And then the marble game happens. She partners with the boy, Luka, who turns out to be another face from back home. She partners with him because she trusts him and she is afraid nobody else will partner with him because of the growing bloody wound on his head courtesy of the thugs trying to kill him.

Adrien is the guard assigned to her and Luka, and he watches as Luka slowly and steadily grows more and more out of it and Marinette starts full-on sobbing. Right when the time is about to end, Luka gives his marbles to Marinette and begs her to survive this game and live, and go back to Paris and tell Juleka about all this, as his final goodbye. He looks her in the eyes with a smile until the very last second when Adrien shoots him.

That night, the VIPs arrive and both Mari and Adrien know that they need to move on with their plan, but they spend the whole night by diving tanks they know won’t be used anymore, cuz the Black Mask Man made an example out of everyone who tried to betray him. Marinette is curled into Adrien and in the silence, she vows to end them. That morning (night?) when they are sneaking back, they come into contact with one of the black-masked dudes who would serve the VIPs and Adrien knocks him out and switches outfits.

He kisses Marinette before making his way to the VIP chamber.

Imagine his surprise when after almost half a decade he hears his father’s voice behind the mask of a man wearing an elaborate gold butterfly headset.

He watches in rapt attention as Marinette thankfully chooses number 15, with Lila right in front of her. Now we don’t like Lila (here specifically) because after Tug of War she started to turn people against Marinette, because of whose strategy their team won the game. Marinette was almost killed by many of the thugs in the nighttime because of Lila, and when there’s 30 seconds left and one step left to be determined, Marinette pushes Lila off one and scores victory for her and number 16, Alya Cesaire. (Who is in Korea for journalism internships or some shit and got roped into this because of lack of money, and became Marinette’s greatest ally)

They both know that one of them will die at the end, and so Marinette tells Alya of hers and Adrien’s plan to end this thing once and for all, and so they go and play the final Squid Game, where at the end, Alya very convincingly stabs herself, making Marinette the winner.

On the other side of the glass, Adrien, who has gotten the interest of a disgusting old VIP, puts an idea into his head about how the VIPs should really go and really be in the scene and see what has happened, and that old man, fascinated by the idea of being in the zone, convinces his 'friends' that they should go.

And so they all go, surrounding a blood-soaked and sobbing Marinette and start laughing and congratulating her. (cue Gabriel recognising her and being condescending as fuck. Imagine dialogues like "you had so much potential and now are just reduced to this", which cements the fact that he really is Gabriel Agreste).

That is when Adrien, who was escorting them along with the Black Mask, pulls his gun on them, Alya pulls the knife “out” of her and takes the old fat man who liked Adrien hostage and Marinette pulls out her own knife to Gabriel.

They try to make a deal, and when Gabriel almost gets the better of them (cue seggsy fight scene which I don’t have the words to describe rn) Marinette stabs him in the neck.

After threatening the VIPs and getting all of their identities, as well as the black mask dude’s identity, they go to the nearest police station and give all of their gathered evidence.

Due to the physical and psychological trauma and torture faced by Alya and Marinette, as well as part of a settlement plea from the VIPs, they both get all the money.

The two girls plus Adrien fly out to France and reconcile with their families. Adrien and Marinette visit Nino’s family, Juleka and Rose and as many of the people as they can.

The two of them get a small apartment together, unlike the huge mansion that Adrien was left after Gabriel’s death (which he sells and uses the money to be given to all the victim's families)

He also becomes the owner of Gabriel, and with Marinette turns it over into a completely different company (cuz Gabriel was one corrupt bastard)

And so they live happily with weekly therapy sessions and a traumatic, but happy ending.

Gods I need help, I wrote almost 2000 words for this lol. Maybe I'll write this properly someday hahaha.

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evilvarric666-archive · 3 years

Note

This is gonna be long, so sorry in advance, but as someone who enjoys long fics here are my two cents:

I get why some ppl may not want 75 tags in fics, but this is gonna hurt long fic writers. On a long fic there are probably gonna be more relationships that are central to the plot that aren't the main ship. And side pairings that may be a squick to some ppl. Not to mention trigger warnings and tone tags.

For example: a long fic with the pairing Y x Z. Z had an abusive relationship, and that's gonna be explored. So the author tags abusive relationship, bc that's a trigger, but an explanation next tag saying "not current ship" or smth.

Then Y has very important friendships with some of the cast. These are central to the plot so they're tagged too.

Turns out, character W is controversial in the fandom, but they're central to the fic too. The author is gonna tag after the character tag W positive/negative; so ppl who don't wanna see positive/negative things about W can skip this.

And guess what? Ship A x B appears in this fic too. Maybe it's not that central, but this ship is also disliked by some people, so the author will tag it, so ppl can filter through.

Another problem is with media that has different mediums, like, the media Y, Z, etc are from has movies, and books, and games and a tv show. All these things actually have different stories, different enough at least that ppl may only want to see fics written for the movies! But the author wants to take plot from the movies and the books. So instead of just tagging the all media tag for that media, they also tag media (movies) and media (books)

These tags end up accumulating. And especially in long fics. The author could make the first chapter a list of tws and stuff that they keep updating, but that destroys the purpose of ao3 tags: you can't filter content like that, you can only filter tags.

I honestly think they should just find a way to delete the fics with the trolling tags, or make a readmore thing so it doesn't hurt the browsing. At the very least make the tag limit longer.

sorry in advance that this is going to be rambly and weird. I have a lot of thoughts.

I get where you're coming from but I also still disagree. Like it's definitely going to change the way longfic writers tag, but I really don't think it's going to hurt them. I think it's going to encourage more effective tagging and that that's going to be better for everybody in the long run. If anything, I think that overtagging is what's hurting longfic writers, it makes their works look unappealing, and actually important information gets buried in a wall of text.

i will admit though that I do understand better now why less room for trigger tagging is going to be an issue. My preferred tagging style is "General/umbrella warnings in the tags, with whatever elaboration/specifics the author deems necessary in an author's note/author's notes at the beginning of each chapter" (example: "animal death" in the tags, so that the filters catch it + people who can't handle the subject At All know to keep scrolling, and then the author's note specifying that its in the context of game hunting & not a pet death, so that people who were uncertain and needed more info could click in and get the specifics.) and I thought that preference was pretty universal? But apparently a lot of people use the tags as an exhaustive list of warnings, which I didn't know because when I see a work with more than, well with more than 75 tags, I just start scrolling until it's gone.

(this is a tangent and I get that my experiences are not universal. but I genuinely dislike full warning lists in the tags because, for me at least, it makes it harder for me to figure out if the story is something I can/want to read. The things I Really Do Not Want To Read about are rare, and rarely tagged the same way twice, so the exclusion filter isn't really helpful for me. I have to actually read the full list of warnings and if the things I'm looking for are sandwiched inbetween a bunch of trope/character tags in a big wall o text I am going to miss it. This has happened to me multiple times.)

I think that that's an ineffective tagging style, basically. Lots of tags is kind of the opposite of useful tags, imo. Short, to the point and consistently worded warnings are better and I think having less space will encourage people to do that. I understand why people do this other style, though, and also why it would frustrate them that they can no longer do that. I think it really sucks that ao3 let everyone wild west their website for so long that it managed to spawn like three distinct groups of people who all use the website in completely incompatible ways, and now it's at the point where any new rule implemented is going to screw a lot of people over no matter what. But I digress.

Anyways, as long as someone isn't putting Revolutionary Girl Utena levels of warnings in their tags (and if your fic needs that much... maybe you should just put yur top 10 biggest warnings on there and slap a Dead Dove Do Not Eat on the end there, yknow?), I think that 75 tags will fully accommodate them. I get that tags start adding up, but also I think a lot of people are underestimating how many tags 75 tags is.

Like to just add up how many tags are used in your example: three / pairing tags, lets go crazy and say three more & pairing tags, tag every character tag in those pairings that's twelve, #abusive relationship + #not main pairing tags, three fandom tags bc multiple source mediums, a #[controversial character] positive tag... that's 24 tags. Like all the necessary character & pairing tags are handled in less than a third of the space given (and personally I consider this slightly over tagged. I think the only character tags you should put on a fic are the very mainest/pov characters, but yknow) and honestly if you can't then figure out a way to communicate the rest of the necessary information about your fic in 51 tags and a 1250 character summary then I really don't know how to help you. I personally would have to really push myself to figure out how to put more than 75 tags on one fic, regardless of the length of the fic. And I can't help but notice that a lot of the fics I could find with over 75 tags while searching last night had a lot of... unnecessary duplicate tags, often for information that could've been easily otherwise intuited (tagging #mandolorian #mandolore #mandolorian character and #mandolorian culture on a Jango Fett pre-series fic, for example)

I do have some criticisms about the current change though. I think it would've been better to have individual tag number limits for each individual field (x number of fandom tags, x number of character tags, etc.) instead of a 75 tags over all limit (or make a "warning tags" field that's separate from "additional tags" but that's a separate essay and would... probably mean overhauling the whole site. so not very practical.) A readmore option would be good too, and I'm not sure why they didn't go for that? I also think that this change will be most effective if done in combination with other changes. Like posting very loosely or not at all enforced official tagging/style guides for the site. I really think that even a tepid attempt at standardization will increase the site's usability like, A Lot.

I'm not sure how cohesive that was. TL;DR I appreciate hearing your thoughts, mine are that I still think this is a step in the right direction. And that cutting back on overtagging will lead to more concise, effective tagging which will make browsing and filtering easier in the long run.

#ao3 tag

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yoonia · 3 years

Text

Share Fun Facts about Your Fics!

↳ Tagged by @bonvoyagenoona & @kpopfanfictrash – thank you so much! This looks like so much fun and I love reading all your behind the scenes!

↳ Instructions: Maybe you’re proud of a line of dialogue. Maybe you were playing with story structure, and something unexpected happened. Maybe you gave a character an idiosyncrasy that’s based on a person you know. Or maybe you just like something for no reason at all. Inquiring minds wanna know.

↳ Tagging: @randombtsprincessa @softyoongiionly @avveh @yeoldontknow @kookdiaries @jungkxook @kookingtae @kittae @ladyartemesia @hobidreams @jamaisjoons @propinqxity @kithtaehyung

Pick three of your fics and share a fun detail from each!

Wow, I really couldn’t decide which ones to talk about. But here we go:

↳ The Half-Lycan

It all started from one single drabble, and then have the character (werewolf Tae) haunting me during one NaNoWriMo period for me to return to it. Have I planned to have this one become a part of the Shifter Series/somehow connected to Blood Moon Rising? Never. But I was already working on Vampire Jimin while I was planning this one out and I must admit that I’ve had the universe all pictured inside my head before I even began writing this one. I can’t remember if anyone had pointed this out on Tumblr (which is understandable, since I posted this as a monster fic of a whooping 40k words so details might have been off lol), but I’ve had readers from Wattpad pointed a few things that I should clarify here too:

Age difference: Taehyung was 14 yo when he met OC the first time, while she was 6 going on 7 yo. Which means that she was still a child when Taehyung reached the age of 18 yo, when he was finally able to recognise her as his mate. I had to add this little detail to make it a bit more sense why Taehyung had to leave when she was a teen and to line up the story with Blood Moon Rising

The main goal of this story (together with Of Bears & Bonds and the upcoming The Agile Fox) is to simply show that it’s possible for a shifter to have a mate from a different species, something that will be useful later on Blood Moon Rising

I had initially planned to give the rest of the supporting stories in Shifter Series original characters instead of reader insert. It was unfortunate that Fever came out 2 years before this prologue did and that one had already been written with a reader insert so I had to void the idea

7 yo OC was wearing a red coat and was carrying a basket filled with wild berries and mushrooms for her sick father when Taehyung found her in the woods. Yes, this scene was partly inspired by Red Riding Hood

The scene where adult OC woke up to find wolf Taehyung stuck in the hunter’s trap was a part of my original novel which I scrapped the year before cause I lost all motivation to finish it hahaha I’m glad that I could still use it in the end. And I’m quite happy to put this one in cause it shows the connection to their first meeting. 1) because they keep meeting while Tae is in his wolf form 2) they first met by having Taehyung getting her out of trouble, while it’s OC’s turn to help Taehyung in their reunion

↳ Show Me Something

Ever had a fic that you’ve worked on for like forever and then right before you managed to finish it, all inspiration and motivation to work on it suddenly vanished? That’s what happened to me with this one. This fic was supposed to be released June/July 2020, but we all know what happened since then :”)

I’m not sure if anyone has ever noticed this but there are a lot of metaphors in this story.

The way OC described “using” Jungkook as her anchor to keep her grounded in the tilted tower represents the fact that she had kept Jungkook in her mind through life despite their initial fallout

The go-kart race and the way Jungkook kept catching up to her represent the same thing happening in real life, how now matter how much she had tried to move on, he’d always be there to remind her that he’s still present

The massage at the beach may have come out of nowhere. It did, actually, but it represents how each time they are alone, they still find the old connection between each other still going strong

There are also the constant competition going on between them and the ferris wheel ride that represents the way their life has been changing at the same time without them even knowing it

↳ Clair De Lune

I love how it had seemed as if @meispace had created this moodboard specifically for me lmao

The moment I was sent this moodboard for the colab at the time, I was instantly compelled to give this beautiful art some justice by creating something elaborate that could represent this moodboard the way it deserved. I also wanted to give this picture something unpredictable. Yoongi and his piano seemed to be a given as the main factor of the story, but I suppose nobody had truly expected to see an escort OC/reader as the female lead and I found myself loving this story more because of it.

I never truly encountered any problem while finishing this story. I remember going right into it as soon as I got my assignment, if you will, and made up a whole story that I felt so pleased with in the end. Choosing the title was a different matter, but I think the song Clair De Lune was a fitting title to represent the pace of the story (how it had flowed smoothly at the beginning before it began to rise as it reached its climax) and it made it even more fitting as we came to the scene where Yoongi took OC in their romantic dance under the moonlight while revealing his song, “Moonlight”, to his muse.

#tagged #fic talk #fic talk: the half-lycan #fic talk: show me something #fic talk: clair de lune #fic tag game

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dabidagoose · 3 years

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What's your fave video game sountrack(s)? =^o

Ok that is a very loaded question so this is gonna be a long ass response, I hope you're prepared for what you've done.

(ok there's a tl;dr at the end if you want it sorry for this lmao)

FIRST POINT my immediate thought was the Ikenfell soundtrack (actually my immediate thought is I can't fuckin' choose they're all amazing but. then ikenfell). On the personal side, I was pretty much obsessed with the game for like three months straight, and i fuckin' love aivi and surasshu's music. I am also a simp for chiptune so jot that down. Moving past what may very well just be personal preference there are some incredibly interesting musical choices and impeccable choices story-wise that hit just. SO fuckin hard. Like emotionally. I won't elaborate on to the context and why the song works so well but the final battle theme is absolutely SPECTACULAR. (I could elaborate though so. ask if you will and i'll write another spiel on why it breaks my heart and soul). But also to reference a less-plot relevant piece I'm gonna bring up Alchemy is for Everyone. The squish bass sounds at the beginning are SUCH a fun environmental sound, it is really just NOT a sound I hear often which makes the track really stand out. And it fits SO perfectly for all the slimes and just. It's so WET. I love it. Makes me wanna wriggle. Which ok is probably also personal preference on reflection because my friend hates a wet song that I love but. Ok it's GOOD. Anyways continuing to the melody the fuckin PITCH bends. This is digital music at it's peak. We get the fun sounds. We get the fuckin pitch bends. Which are so fun because having slightly out of tune notes is such a fun feeling. It's a little off kilter, it's a little different. It's just SO funky and sounds so awesome to bend those pitches just a little bit, take full advantage of the medium and play around with it. Now I'm gonna talk a bit about why I love aivi & surasshu's music so much which. Ok so I believe(?) they coined the term "digital fusion" where you're mixing all these fun fresh digital sounds with real instruments/more traditional sounds and it can work SO fuckin well (for extra musical literature on this subject I'd like to suggest Yoann Turpin and specifically Chip Ship). Which we already get a taste of that where the pitch bends are playing on piano but it really kicks in when the violin takes over the melody and it's SUCH a graceful instrument in comparison to all this funky/awkward stuff we've had. The dichotomy is fuckin awesome. The violin is like a graceful victorian socialite ballroom dancing in after these pitch bends just pinned their arms to their sides and wiggled their hips around. We then get a third spacey instrument (I. have no idea what it is.) and it is. SUCH a switch. We have moved from awkward and stilted to almost too perfect and graceful (I forgot to write before but the high piano at the violin adds so much) to a moment of awe and discovery. We are now exploring the universe, the world of science and alchemy, and it is fantastic. The song almost seems to have it's own little narrative, and this is just a backing track for exploring one of the buildings!!!! This is within the first couple hours of gameplay, it is incredibly non-plot-relevant but SUCH a piece of art. I am absolutely in a slime ball watching amazing science happen so precisely and it is. so fuckin cool. And I could probably go off about every single other song, but in the interest of keeping away spoilers and finishing this post before 2 am, I will not. (Addendums because I can: this is less wet than the one my friend hates, and also this song is MOIST. I would also like to mention It's Showtime and Between the Lines as other song favorites but if I went into them I would never sleep.)

Okokokok. So. So SECOND point (I'm. so sorry.) I looked at my video game music soundtrack (I have two main soundtracks one for just every music but I didn't want to overwhelm it with VG music so I made one just for that that has ENTIRE soundtracks from almost every game I've played which. oops.) and I found two other contenders based mostly on I Really Liked The Games. The Oneshot soundtrack and the Night in the Woods soundtrack. Ok I'm gonna talk about Night in the Woods first cause HOLY shit. holy shit. The fucking astral songs. Those are fucking masterpieces. Such a simple ensemble but it creates such an INTENSE atmosphere. I really love instrumental music can you tell. I specifically want you listening to Astral Train for this one (played it for my senior recital and even though I had to play the violin part on clarinet I maintain it was one of the best choices I've ever made), but we the way the layers blend together is a fucking masterpiece. Since this song had to be designed so that any layer could play alone and each one could join in any order, each part of the quartet has to be interesting, but they still all must blend together and so they each get melody moments but the harmony/bass lines have to be interesting as well and. They ARE. This is such a hard task and it's accomplished SO. INCREDIBLY. WELL. (Side note: also makes for a good ensemble piece for, say, your and your friends' senior recitals, so everyone gets fun parts, a chance in the limelight, and a chance to rest, haha totally irrelevant note right there definitely no connection to my real life). With Astral Train we really get this cool ghostly train feel and through all the Astral pieces we REALLY feel the absolute intensity of Mae's dreams and the music creates such an immaculate vibe. It is unmatched. The rest of the soundtrack contains plenty of bops in a variety of genres too, where the bass songs have to be both playable and fun (Die Anywhere Else my beloved), and we get nostalgic and mischievous music fit for this ragtag team. This is the feeling I've had hanging out with my teenage friends at 10 PM in a parking lot. It is absolutely perfect for this video game. The music is SUCH a bop and really emotionally connects to me cause the game is such a bop of a plot. It is truly fantastic. (Addendum: Ok listening to Gregg rn and. Holy shit bop. I love him. I love this)

Ok now onto Oneshot, which, admittedly, does not have as strong a holding on the podium as these other two do, but curse me for having been emotionally destroyed by the video game because now I am emotionally attached to the music too. But, again, ATMOSPHERE. I am once again gonna be speaking in the interest of spoilers here, so I hope anyone who's finished the game will forgive what I'm not saying, but the entire landscape of this desolate planet is just SO much. The world is so simple and empty, and yet awe is often mixed with this feeling of despair. This is incredibly fitting for Niko, for the hopeful little pal they are, and creates an incredible effect. (I included specific song reccs for the last but I don't quite for this - so I'll just say now that I'm listening to On Little Cat Feet). The visuals are fairly simple, the map small, and just looking at the game the world feels incredibly small. But the music makes it all seem so vast. We really get put into Niko's shoes (or their little cat feet I suppose), and get to see this world for the vast, terrifying, but incredible place it is. The music makes you feel like that child seeing a new world for the first time, (this isn't spoilers past the first chapter but I'm warning you anyways) even though you are meant to be a god, you are still made to feel small and the world still large. The music does so much of this work, and it's incredible. Throughout the soundtrack the underlying angst, the despair, remains present, and the game has so much more impact for the music. No game is incomplete without it's music, and Nightmargin does a fantastic job creating this music for Oneshot. I haven't analyzed the actual music instruments/structure so much, but it's those instrumental sounds again tearing at my heart strings again. I would also like to recommend this game beyond the soundtrack, since it is an incredible story, with some puzzling gameplay, and it has made me feel how no other game has. It is a masterpiece of a game, and I implore everyone to play it through. Get hints if you need to, or play alone, just make it to the Ending. You'll know when you're there. (Addendum: I think I'm very repetitive here but I refuse to edit it so you have to live with this. Anyways gonna say it again: Play Oneshot!!)

Now I have chosen three game soundtracks that had a story that incredibly connected with me, and music to bolster that story and those emotions in incredibly meaningful ways. But there are so many others with great music, but that didn't necessarily connect on such an emotional level. Portal and Portal 2 have fantastic soundtracks, Celeste has beautiful music, Underhero has some funky and spectacular beats, Undertale and Deltarune are famously incredible (although I also did emotionally connect with them... but they're already talked about enough. Lancer beloved.), Clam Man is just. Fun., Oxenfree is also incredibly atmospheric and spectacular, Sewer Rave just has nice beats, and Minecraft is nostalgic as all hell. There are so many games to choose from, that from the moment I saw your question I knew I would be writing a far too long Tumblr post to answer you, because it feels an injustice to just answer one without reasoning, or without bringing to light all of the other amazing sounds I've discovered.

To finally answer your question, I think Ikenfell deserves the top spot in my heart. My instinct was right, there's fresh sounds, great musical structure (see: Between the Lines that I didn't elaborate on), incredibly emotional sounds, and fantastic storytelling within the soundtrack. But I love all of these other soundtracks, so I must bring them up. For they also have spots in my heart.

TL;DR - Ikenfell wins but I also love Oneshot and Night in the Woods and many others so I don't know what to say chief (lies i have too much to say)

#i will not apologize you brought this on the world by asking #i'm so sorry you had to find out i'm such a nerd This Way #i want to ask my friends to proofread this for legibility before posting but lets be real thats not happening. it wont be legible #so sorry about being this much of a nerd. not really but. wow that got long. mm vulnerability my behated #ikenfell #night in the woods #oneshot #only tagging those three cause theyre the ones i got too emotional about.#ok ok im gonna post this now lmao #wait am i legally allowed to mention blaseball cause the garages or is that not allowed #ok i think its not allowed #but the garages r very good i listened to the newest album today and *chefs kiss*

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neutral-emerald · 3 years

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SILVER THE COSMIC TIME-JANITOR (or: dude, what's with all the alternate futures)

silver the hedgehog has a very simple backstory. he's a kindhearted, sorta-naive but altogether very driven psychic hedgehog here to save the world by time-traveling to the past (also known as present-day) to prevent the apocalyptic future he was born into from coming to pass!

[ID: A screenshot of Silver from Sonic 06. He’s glowing with cyan energy as he flies over a dark, post-apocalyptic city.]

...wait, if he's time traveling 200 years into the past to completely change the shape of the timeline, how do the stars manage to align such that he manages to be born at the exact same point in the new timeline with the exact same genetics? how are his parents born? does silver have parents?? and how does he do this no less than THREE SEPARATE TIMES??!

hey everyone, i'm tumblr user neutral-emerald here to make good on the idea i vaguely gestured at yesterday and point out silver's wildly inconsistent backstory(s) and then explain to you how this isn't just sega playing hopscotch with the concept of time travel, but actually TOTALLY EXPLAINABLE if you don't mind a whole lot of conjecture and "fuck dude i just think it'd be cool."

LET'S GO.

before i get started, a few things to establish.

first, this is about… half serious, tops. it’s less of a theory and more of an observation of something that’s weird and then throwing some possible explanations at it because i am a massive sucker for time-based nonsense. if you wanna take my observations and build your own conclusions, go for it. i’m not your boss.

second, i'm basing my conclusions off of both the games and the idw comics. the conclusions i draw are applicable to either continuity, but the logic does rest a decent amount on the comics, so just a heads-up in case you were expecting pure game canon from this.

and third, i'm working off like half a brain and very intermittent checks of the wiki and cutscene compilations, so there's probably many things i'm missing! if you notice something i said was wildly off-base, go ahead and correct me in the replies and i'll either edit the post or explain to you just how that detail doesn't actually matter, depending on whether it. y'know. matters.

with that out of the way, let's get into the first topic of discussion!

part 1: the future is inconsistent, y'all

now, i'm not sure if you've heard, but in the year 2006 sonic team released this little indie game creatively entitled Sonic the Hedgehog. it was a smash hit, won countless awards, and for some reason went down in history as a messy, incomplete bugfest. but that's not what matters. what matters is that it introduced Silver the Hedgehog.

silver hails from 200 years in the future. the world is a bleak, fiery place, and has been since the monster iblis was unleashed after princess elise's death. silver was born into this world, which we know since it's literally the first thing he says in his story.

[ID: A cropped line from Silver's story in Sonic 06. "This world was devastated before I was born."]

i'm not going to drag you through a beat-by-beat summary of the entire plot of sonic 06, you should know it already. silver meets mephiles, gets lied to about who caused the apocalypse, mephiles yeets him and blaze into the past, he tries to murder Sonic the Hedgehog™, and so on. eventually he helps kill god, and then sonic and elise travel further back in time to kill god even deader so that none of the game ever happened, and the bad future into which silver was born never happened, thus thoroughly scrubbing silver's existence from the timeline!

...until.

sonic rivals.

i'm not going to speak much on sonic rivals, mostly because i'm not super familiar with it. but what matters is that silver is back! he's still from the future, he's still here to change the past, and most importantly he wasn't deleted from existence by the destruction of solaris, unlike everything else from sonic 06 including everyone's memories of it. and obviously, whatever state his future is in, it's not the same as it was in sonic 06.

now, i don't have a single clue what is going on in rivals 2, so do inform me if there's some big information i'm missing from that one. all i know is he's fixing yet another possible apocalyptic future, like always. correct me if i’m wrong, i don’t have the patience to trawl through it myself.

then we've got sonic colors, in which silver is again from the future. notably, he’s definitely not from an apocalypse!

[ID: Some screenshots from the DS version of Sonic Colors, again cropped to just the text. Tails and Silver are talking to each other.

Tails: What's the future you came from like, Silver? Silver: A lot brighter than this. Silver: The sky is blue, and everybody's got a smile.]

sonic generations doesn't add much. again, correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't think we learn anything about what kind of future silver is from, and he's definitely not here to fix it this time. that's sonic's job! he's just hanging out like everyone else.

now, up until this point the future has been reasonably consistent, setting aside my somewhat abstract understanding of the rivals games. there's nothing to say that silver's not coming back in time from the same point in a single timeline, which is the one and only version of the future ever since the destruction of sonic 06.

UNTIL.

[ID: Two panels from the comic Sonic Forces: Stress Test. In the first panel, Silver looks worried as he lands in front of Knuckles, who looks skeptical.

Silver: We've got big trouble! Eggman— Knuckles: How can you be here? I thought you returned to the future?

In the second panel, Knuckles looks away with a self-assured grin, while Silver looks more panicked.

Knuckles: Oh wait— I must be dreaming! Silver: What? No! I've come back with a dire warning from the future!]

i have a lot of issues with sonic forces, especially with how its story is written. something i do NOT take issue with is the supplemental comics, mainly because they are WONDERFUL evidence for my crackpot time travel theory.

like i said, up until this point we don't really know whether silver has been experiencing separate instances of the future, or simply traveling back in time to prevent an also-time-traveling eggman nega from messing things up in the past. but here, we get some very juicy information:

[ID: Knuckles and Silver again. Knuckles has his arms crossed and is looking at Silver, who has a nervous look on his face as he slams a fist on the palm of his other hand.

Knuckles: Come again? Silver: Something happens that brings the world to ruin! But the historical records are sparse or make no sense. I came back to hopefully head off whatever's about to happen and save the future.]

silver travels back in time to prevent a terrible apocalypse. this is not the beautiful future silver came from in sonic colors— but this is the same silver. everyone recognizes him. he recognizes everyone. and yet, the future he came from is different.

part 2: silver is a walking paradox

allow me to remind you of what i pointed out when i was talking about sonic 06. silver was born into the iblis-apocalypse. considering no elaborate timeline nonsense happened to him before the events of the game (by his reckoning) i think we can safely assume he was born like a regular person with parents.

in the first post-06 timeline, silver was probably also born. let's be charitable, acknowledge that sonic team doesn't overthink the butterfly effect like i do, and say that silver was born to the same parents, because the universe likes to keep things nice and simple and contrive itself to make this particular character exist in this time period.

so, it's entirely fair that silver comes to exist in a post-06 timeline at the equivalent point in time, aka 200 years in the future. it's also fair that he travels back in time to prevent some kind of apocalypse, because that's his narrative role! it's what he does. when it's time for him to exist in the story, that's what he's there to do.

what isn't fair is the fact that it keeps happening.

[ID: A panel from the IDW comics. Sonic is stretching his legs while looking faintly exasperated at Silver, who is nervously holding his arm.

Silver: Er… No. I came back because defeating Eggman didn't save the future. Sonic: Couldn't even play along. Had to bring the mood down. Sonic: *sigh* Okay, what happened this time?]

[ID: The following panel, cropped to just Silver's text bubbles narrating over a starry sky.

Silver: When I left, my time had been conquered by the Eggman Empire. Everyone lived in fear, choking on polluted air. Silver: When I went back, the Eggman Empire was gone— but so was everyone else. Silver: There was nothing left. No people, no animals, no machinery. Only water and sparse, metallic plant life.]

allow me to summarize my understanding of all this: silver is from the future. normally, the future is good. sometimes it isn't. when it isn't good, he goes back in time and fixes things, then returns to the future to check if that fixed things.

the least conjecture-y interpretation i can come up with is that sometimes silver will go into the past, then go back to the future but end up in a Bad Timeline and thus go into the past again to fix things. there's no weird warping directly between bad timelines, he only gets there by way of the past.

but that's boring, so here's my PREFERRED interpretation.

silver hails from a good future, but sometimes it just changes. he's unstuck from time— if something weird happens in the past, he's the only one to know that the passage of fate was changed, because he went to bed in one timeline and woke up somewhere categorically worse, and the only way he can fix it is by figuring out just what caused this and going back in time to fix it.

or, to say it in a meme:

[ID: A picture of someone lying in a hospital bed with a nurse standing next to them, edited so that Silver is in the bed.

nurse: sir… you've been asleep for 2 hours silver: oh boy i can't wait to wake up in the same timeline i went to sleep in]

part 3: how did this happen?

it's one thing to point out that silver doesn't experience time like a normal hedgehog, and another thing to explain how and why this happens.

fyi, this is the part where i go wildly off the rails and start saying whatever i want. there's a ton of explanations one could come up with, most probably stemming back to sonic 06. i'm just going to go with my own, and probably not come up with a whole lot of concrete evidence because i'm just spitballing. this is me having a fun time. going "heeheehoohoo time traveling hedgehog go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"

so. something i haven't touched upon is that in all games after sonic 06, silver can time travel. we never see him do it, it's never explained how he does it. all we know is that he's doing it under his own power.

which is kinda odd, don't you think? should he be able to do that?

in sonic 06, we see three mechanisms for time travel. first is the chaos emeralds. if two people perform Chaos Control with a chaos emerald apiece, they open up a swirling rift in the air which can send them to different points in time and space. silver can't be doing that, for obvious reasons— he's only one hedgehog, and he's not exactly running around with a chaos emerald at all times. that can't be how he does it.

second is a time machine eggman built. that obviously can't be it; the machine doesn't exist at all after the timeline gets wiped, and again, silver is doing this on his own. he's actively antagonistic towards eggman, even. absolutely not this one.

third and finally is mephiles, who can make big purple orbs to take himself and passengers to different points in time. this obviously can't be it either, for similar reasons to number 2, right? after all, mephiles is one half of solaris, who was destroyed before he could be split off. he doesn't exist to be silver's time-traveling uber driver.

...right?

well, obviously. i'm not going to try and tell you that mephiles is secretly alive and shepherding silver back and forth between timelines for no reason. that's ridiculous. no, i'm going to try and tell you that silver is mephiles.

or rather, he's solaris. or RATHER, he's the new solaris, sorta-ascended to the role of Time God after the old one got blown out like a birthday candle.

like i said, i'm going wildly off the rails and as such don't have any concrete evidence to explain why it's this instead of something else, but hear me out. after elise blew out the flame of hope, the universe was left in an interesting situation. someone needs to be in charge of the flow of time, but the previous time-god was just unceremoniously destroyed. but all the power and energy of a time-god has to go somewhere, in some form, in some time.

with nothing else to go off of, the role of time-god starts flipping through every notable being it had interacted with. they're all solidly accounted for in the timeline, except for one. silver the hedgehog was born into a timeline that cannot exist. silver the hedgehog does not, and cannot exist. silver the hedgehog interacted quite a bit with both sides of solaris— he spent a substantial amount of time fighting back iblis, and associated with mephiles, even being one of the few people to directly experience his time travel abilities. silver the hedgehog tried and failed to absorb iblis into himself.

here's my theory: after sonic 06, the universe reasserted itself such that silver was the new Solaris. silver is not consciously aware that this is what he is, but he knows that he can time travel. sometimes the timeline will rearrange itself around silver. he is unaffected by this because he is a higher being unaffected by such petty trifles as "an origin" or "paradoxes".

silver the hedgehog probably doesn't have parents. he sprang into existence one day and everyone just kind of went with it, himself included.

oh also something i thought was neat but couldn't think of where to put:

[ID: More cropped dialogue, this time from Team Sonic Racing.

Silver: I'm fine. It's just, something bad is gonna happen. I can't explain it. I just feel it. Blaze: Have your travels through time given you precognition? Silver: I don't know. Maybe they have. Or maybe I'm just thinking too much.]

silver might be becoming psychic in a future-vision kinda way. that, or he’s riddled with anxiety. possibly both.

TL;DR

silver hails from no less than three separate timelines, his existence is a tangled web of who-knows-how-many grandfather paradoxes, and i choose to believe that he's god.

if anyone who cares more about evidence wants to gather up like, little one-off clues that support or conflict with my conclusions, go right ahead. or just throw your own arbitrary headcanons for what's going on with this at me. or incorporate these ideas into an au or something! i just want more people thinking about what the Fuck is up with silver post-06, because by god there is a WHOLE lot of potential packed in there

anyway thanks for reading make sure to like comment and subscribe—

#hey guys check out how hard i can gesture at a corkboard #is it remotely coherent? not a clue! i cannot process my own writing #sonic theory #silver the hedgehog #text #dot txt

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rattyarts · 3 years

Text

Huge-ask post (I am VERY funny)

Because I have so many questions that can be answered with just text, and I have mentioned my dislike of filling my art blog up with Words Words Words... let’s get them all done in one go!

(You guys can blacklist #rattytalks if you’re just here for the draws, btw)

A shit ton of asks under the cut!

Anonymous said: So for the center of the world, what with it being forcefully PG and all Bad Thoughts TM being prevented, how does having kids happen? Do parents just black out and wake up holding a child in their arms and vague memories of the last 9 months?

Ever seen a movie where they do that “and one day... a baby was born!” thing and a kid just appears offscreen with no explanation?

(This is how it works everywhere, Edgelands included; no one does the do or gets pregnant in this setting.)

Anonymous said: Hello! Quick question, and sorry if you’ve answered this before, but can other elves see the “intangible” bits of one another? Big fan of your work btw!

Nope! And thank you!

Anonymous said: Leopold was in my dream last night but I sadly cannot remember any of it.

I am SO sorry. I will try to keep my stinky murder men out of your head in the future.

Anonymous said: are the floaty bits stuck in one spot, or could the one they are attached to learn to move them around their body as long as its still within a certain distance? like, someone with the Floaty limbs, lets call him Ray, can move his limbs all over his body, allowing him to do all sorts of neat things that others with their attached limbs probably couldn't?

Whatever you want, honestly. As a general rule of thumb I don’t like putting down TOO many hard rules that prevent people from having fun with this setting. (Please ignore and scrap anything you think is stupid, I do this all the time and enjoy keeping this setting inconsistent and contradictory)

Anonymous said: Do elf names work off of Death Note rules, or is it like, if you know one elf’s name, all elves with that name are now unable to harm you? So if all the elf brothers are named Martin, for example, does it only work with blue?

I think it’s prolly just the one! Probably? Idk, might change if I think of something funnier.

Anonymous said: Can elves do magic on themselves or does thst go against the knowing name rule

Most people tend to know their own names, lol. So in my opinion, no, but don’t let me stop you if you got a fun idea.

Anonymous said: Could an Elf stitch on parts from another elf and have them work? i.e an Elf's finds the arm of another Elf. "Hey, free arm, might as well put it to good use", so they attach the arm and now they can give three high fives at once!

Same deal as previous questions, I personally would say no, but I also encourage people to do whatever the hell they want. It’s more fun that way!

Anonymous said: I bet elves are greasy to the touch.

They’re very powdery! Like if you rolled them in flour. And by flour I mean nasty glowing elf dandruff.

Anonymous said: Can elves fly or are their wings just for show?

No flying!!! (Unless you’re a mousefly)

Anonymous said: Something tells me that the elves would LOVE Obatzda.

Had to look that up, but definitely!

no1fan15: Not sure if someone asked already- Does Edgeworld have any equivalent to demons and angels? Like the old rubberhose cartoon kind?

Demons, yes! That’s what imps are: basically any demon, devil, or generic monster, but tiny! Even a couple of pop culture critters in there, there’s probably a very small gillman or robot monster running around there somewhere.

Angels, not so far.

Anonymous said: How come Margaret hasn't yeeted George's jar into the Edge yet

I’d say being locked in a closet is good enough! (and also I need him for plot reasons, don’t tell anyone)

Anonymous said: If elves have knees bulges in the front then do they have butt bulges in the back?

i do not want to think about elf bulges

Anonymous said: So if you find a baby Therewoof and you say "aw you're so cute", their true name is So Cute?

Yep!

Anonymous said: Since a Therewoof's true name can be something like "cutie pie" or "dingus", does their name have to be spoken with "intent" for it to doggo-fy them? Or do they just have to live with the reality that any casual conversation/flirting can make them lose up to a month to Doggy Mode? My mom has little terrier dog named "Sweetie" so that got me thinking 'bout Therewoof names. & Anonymous said: here's a good question: If someone says a therewoof's true name, but not reffering to them, does it still affect them?

Just saying it will do! It’s based on those old werewolf stories where calling out the person’s name will change them back into a human/cure them, and a lot of the time it was by accident.

(My favorite is the one where they slam the door on the wolf’s tail and then say his name, and the dude ends up with a wolf tail for the rest of his life.)

Anonymous said: Would Seeing eye Therewoofs be a thing?

I... guess? Probably? Since regular dogs can turn into woofs, yeah. You might have to start paying em once they turn into a person tho.

Anonymous said: Was ChalkZone ever an inspiration for you? Because I just love the silly world of ChalkZone and I noticed getting that same warm feeling when thinking about Edgeworld.

Maaaan, I wish. I’ve only seen about three episodes or so, but it seems really fun!

Anonymous said: So I saw your mimic post, and even though I don't think I've seen any other of your art before I was absolutely HAMMERED with an indescribable sense of slightly unsettling strangeness and comfortable familiarity. Your art feels like something from like, an old point and click computer game I would have had formative memories of before accidentally losing or scratching the disc therefore making me unsure if it ever REALLY existed. Sorry for being weird but I love the wacky nostalgia feel here

Aaaaaah, THANK YOU! That is SUCH a cool comparison and I appreciate!!!

Anonymous said: If the Edgeworld is based on cartoons then is there a Reverse Edge-world that’s based on anime?

Lol, I mean I DID have an anime phase for a while there, so...

caydebug: Man I’d love to see this as a cartoon some day

Honestly, same. Best you’re gonna get is the occasional animatic or gif, tho.

Anonymous said: Does anyone..."go" in Edgeworld? or is it like Pleasantville where bathrooms exist but there are no toilets in them because acknowledging it is yucky?

Oh god I keep getting asked this and have been avoiding it like the damn plague. But... Uh. No. No they do not. I am begging you all not to send any followup questions.

Anonymous said: Have you considered putting computer viruses or illnesses in with the buggymen? Since those are typically called ‘bugs’

Sure!

Anonymous said: are there any limits to what an Animimic could posess? i.e if they were in a costume of a Buggieman with multiple arms, could they control all of them? what about a small Mousefly costume? can multiple fit into one costume like a clown car? and what about in pitch black darkness, where you can only see the lights of their eyes and not their bodies? could one fit inside the pocket of a jacket you are wearing and help you steal things/wield a gun like a living turret?

Since clothing fills into the body type of the intended wearer, they would indeed be able to control all arms/legs in buggieman clothes.

Size restrictions is one of these things I wanna try to be vague about: I personally have been imagining them sticking to hiding in things no smaller than, um. Maybe imp sized, but really, whatever. It’s a cartoon eyeball critter!

You can put multiple animimics in one outfit!

They can move around just fine in darkness without being off screen, yeah!

And sure why not. lol

Anonymous said: I know you have been asked this once before, and you said nah you don't, but with a few more months of worldbuilding, do you have an idea for what could be down the edge now? 🤔

Not really! It’s not super important, honestly. I’d say any fan theory is about as valid as anything else I can come up with.

ps2polpo: I doubt you’ll ever elaborate on The Edge but I like to imagine there’s just one dude there like the Nowhere Man from the Yellow Submarine movie. Mostly cause the thought of someone accidentally winding up there being like “where am I?” And there’s just a guy casually waving at him like a friendly neighbor is funny to me & Anonymous said: The implication that the Edge is the physical manifestation of edginess so there’s probably like, Trevor Henderson monsters hanging out down there.

See above question! Valid! I also accept falling forever, getting erased from existence, ending up in another universe, getting stuck in limbo with thousands of other people, whatever you want, really!

Anonymous said: " he has very few bones and weighs basically nothing, " "Fastball special" trope, but with Leo?

YEET THE NASTY MAN

Anonymous said: did you ever watch dragon tales as a kid? because george and margaret make me think of murderous zak and wheezie from that show, and i love it to bits

I did not, but I would have loved it. Definitely up my alley!

(watched Quest for Camelot a loooot, though!)

Imma go ahead and stop here! There’s more but I’ve been writing for well over an hour and I have things to do. If your question is missing I’m either saving it for later, wasn’t entirely sure how to answer, or it’s spoilery.

Will probably do another one of these at some point!

#rattytalks #asks #edgeworld

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your-ace-cousin-clover · 3 years

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ahhhh hi sorry for the LATE response, life's been kinda wild lately

anyway, i'm really glad you liked the poem & i don't mind you sharing it :)

(plus, a new prompt sounds nice)

(&btw, richard siken's new book is gonna be called "blue jupiters" (as far as i know copper canyon press will publish it))

also, happy you liked the recs! i found it cool how you said "the way god chooses to escape from his own reality through someone who does not believe enough in him to question him at first"! couldn't have put it better myself.

(sorry if this ask seems all over the place, i just have to get somewhere and i'm gonna be mad late - but i really want to finally send a response)

i enjoyed your recommendations a lot so let me elaborate real quick-

the problem with travel:

right off the bat, same.

traveling does always make me feel like i'm starting a new chapter and i should act accordingly.

love "kill the kid stuff, start to act my numbers" - the choice of words you use when writing is so important. (thats why i cant judge anyone who spends a long ass time on thesaurus! sometimes writing really does feel like looking through a lost & found or fishing the right word out of a goodwill bin! flipping through a magazine in search for the right word to cut out and stick on your collage!) imagine how substantially different the poem would sound if limon had written "start to act my age" instead of "start to act my numbers"

"[...] - we’re small

and flawed, but I want to be

who I am, going where

I’m going, all over again."

this^ part kills me in a good way

accident report in the tall, tall weeds:

"my ex got hit by a bus"

gets right to the point. kinda like a short story? an immediate jump into action

i might've said this before but i like it when poems tell stories (i mean i guess they all do, in a way, but i specifically mean the ones that have clear characters? if that makes sense)

"No tampering with the great universal brake wires."

ahhh yeah - when you feel like a thought can cause real life consequences

"When the plane went down in San Francisco,

I thought of my friend M. He’s obsessed with plane crashes.

He memorizes the wrecked metal details,

the clear cool skies cut by black scars of smoke.

Once, while driving, he told me about all the crashes:

The one in blue Kentucky, in yellow Iowa.

How people go on, and how people don’t.

It was almost a year before I learned

that his brother was a pilot.

I can’t help it,

I love the way men love."

^ don't you love it when a poem beats your heart to a pulp?

"What I saw in the men who came before,

sometimes I don’t want to say this out loud,

was someone I could hold up to my ear

and hear the ocean, something I could say my name into,

and have it returned in the inky waves."

self recognition through the other! yeah! sometimes people are people and sometimes people are mirrors and i know this wasn't her point but aren't we all just saying "hey! this is how i feel! do you feel like that too?" and sometimes "language is complicated but i think you know exactly what i mean and i know what you mean too!" and "when our experience overlaps the cosmic alone-ness becomes bearable!"

shit i'd love to drop another rec but i REALLY have to go now! hope to hear from you soon

-cat

Well, lmao Cat now, I'm the one who's late in replying, but yeah, I've been really busy. Now, I've got a bit of a time to reply to your ask.

First of all, "Don't You Wonder, Sometimes?" by Tracy Smith is a really interesting poem especially centred around Bowie. I love how the poet makes Bowie into a mythical being, like a sort of a spirit rather than a mortal man.

"Not God, exactly. More like-

Some thin-hipped glittering Bowie-being"

I love how the poem takes in the spirit of Bowie as something that will keep living on -

"Saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on waiting only

To be wanted back badly enough?

Bowie will never die. Nothing will come for him in his sleep

Or charging through his veins. And he’ll never grow old,"

It's just a beautiful way to think of the artist living on despite their death. They live through those they have touched with their art as well as their art themselves.

"In which I’m forever a child looking out my window at the night sky

Thinking one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands

Even if it burns."

And I just simply love these lines ^^^ . I love the poem touches up on reincarnation. It's interesting as it mentions how people are reincarnated a few times and then, they go to the beyond.

"And how many lives

Before take-off, before we find ourselves

Beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?"

And finally, I love how the deification fo Bowie continues making him into a cryptid? That's the best way I can describe it honestly.

"When a man his size can meet

Your eyes for just a blip of time

And send a thought like SHINE

SHINE SHINE SHINE SHINE

Straight to your mind. Bowie,

I want to believe you."

(I followed your style of picking up lines and talking about them - it's a pretty fun thing to do)

{Purple happens to be my fav colour so, yeah I annotated with purple}

And yeah, language is funky like that. Honestly, I love the fact that people swap art with each and it's like every though we're different, you go through the same emotions. No matter whatever niche emotion is, someone has already written about it! If they haven't, you can always write it!

This reminded of a favourite poem of mine (tw : homophobia and sort of death ? though) which reminds me of the awkwardness of telling people I'm queer / coming out to them. It's called Three A.M. by Jill McDonough.

Also, I've been reading some more stuff to rec them and to hear your thoughts on them. It's all food - themed because I really got into food poetry last week. And as I was talking to a lovely mutual about the intimacy of cooking food and feeding someone.

I'd highly rec the movie "Big Eden". It's a wonderful gay rom-com movie with no homophobia at all and a lot of intimate cooking and wanting to make sure that your crush is loved and taken care off.

But anyway -

Having a Coke with You by Frank O'Hara

Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo

The Orange by Wendy Cope

For Grace, After A Party by Frank O'Hara

Eating Together by Li-Young Lee

And these two posts are where I got these poems from, so perhaps you could read the other ones in the list.

Food Poems 1

Food Poems 2

And also, you're into Succession! Yay!! Are you into Tomgreg? If you're not, that's chill. But, like more Tomgreg people the better. I'd love to hear your thoughts about the show too! :) And like I said before, I really enjoyed your Kendall edit! Did you get a chance to watch my Tomgreg edit? It's called Don't Blame Me, I put it on my Tumblr. (No pressure if you can't)

And I have to ask, because I forgot, what are your pronouns, Cat? I use she/they. I just wanted to ask what you want me to use while referring to you. And let me know if you wanna do another poetry writing swap again.

Anyway, that's it for now! Let me know what you think! I hope to hear from you soon :)

#Cat Anon #Succession #Poetry #Clover speaks #Food

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meta-squash · 4 years

Text

A ramble on Dallas Theater Center Les Miserables

So, 5 years late, I jumped back on the bandwagon and finally watched a bootleg of Dallas Theater Center’s 2014 production of Les Miserables.

And wow. I can’t believe I waited 5 damn years to watch it. So here’s a long rambling write up on it based on the live-tweeting I was doing as I watched (and a little bit on me skipping through the bootleg video right now). It’s partly just me summarizing scenes so I can nerd out about the little details I loved and towards the end me talking about the show as a whole and why it was so fucking important.

First of all I wanna say that I'm surprised it took this long for a professional theater company to do a "modern day" Les Mis. I know all the fans fucking love their Modern AUs fics, I've been reading them since like 2012 and I love them. But also I'm SO glad someone finally did it because Les Miserables' themes are universal and they are amazing but they're also really relevant to what's going on today, or 5 years ago (since it's only gotten fucking worse tbh).

My first big impression was how great the costuming was. You can tell the socioeconomic class of the characters just from what they’re wearing, from how they posture and interact with others. Which is easy when it’s period costuming, you just make everyone look dirty and ripped up vs not dirty, but this (aside from the Thenardiers) is a little more subtle.

Also re: the costuming, I absolutely LOVE that they modernized Javert’s costume into a cop’s uniform but managed to retain the classic Javert Silhouette by giving him that trenchcoat, so we still get the expected Inspector Javert Silhouette despite the fact that he’s a modern day cop. Also all of the other cops/soldiers being straight up SWAT was an excellent decision, not only because it shows the sheer violence of a police that isn’t supposed to necessarily be SWAT, but also because the helmets completely cover their heads, so when the soldiers sing lines, they don’t even sound human. Yet another layer.

Nehal Joshi as Valjean was great. Honestly the moment I keep thinking about is actually from the very beginning, just after Valjean is released. Joshi looks so happy, delighted, like his heart is light again. He smiles as he sings “ Drink from the pool / How clean the taste” while looking up into the sky like he’s amazed at being in the open air. Then suddenly his posture changes completely, becomes guarded and hard, his expression gets closed off, and he sings “Never forget the years, the waste” before thumbing at his nose in that tough way and grabbing his bag off the ground. It was an emphasis on a pair of lines that I’ve never seen properly emphasized before. Usually the emphasis is on the next lines, when Valjean is saying “Now let’s see / what this new world has in store for me”. But here they emphasize that despite being free, he has traumas he has to deal with, and experiences that mean he’s wary of the world. It makes his theft of the silver make a lot more sense; it’s not just opportunistic, it’s also that he straight up doesn’t trust anybody.

(Another note on costumes: Valjean’s post-prison costume is his orange jumpsuit with this weird ratty, torn up sweater thing over it. I do very much wish they’d given him a hoodie that was equally as ratty instead of a sweater because I feel like that would’ve been another interesting layer of commentary.)

Two notes I made specifically about this production’s Soliloquy: This production had Valjean rip his prison papers accidentally, while he’s in the middle of an emotional gesture, then he stares at the rip in disbelief, and comes to the realization that he could just rip it up, and so he does. I thought that was a very cool mechanic. The audience literally watches him get the idea of changing who he is. Also, when he sings “I am reaching, but I fall / And the night is closing in” he actually wraps the rope of his bag around his own neck, like he’s considering death, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. I thought it was really interesting considering those are the lines that directly mirror/parallel Javert’s Suicide.

This production also has all the Bad People roles played by white people, which is just fantastic. The foreman, Javert, all the cops, etc etc. I thought it was an excellent decision, since all of the main characters (minus the revolutionaries) are POC.

Fantine was amazing, has an incredible voice, and her I Dreamed A Dream sounded genuinely miserable, almost frantic with the fact that not only is she a single mother struggling to pay for her child who’s living with some other family, she now has nowhere to turn for money at all, and she’s completely alone. I think she’s my favorite Fantine of any of the ones I saw.

And Lovely Ladies absolutely blew me away. This was the first Lovely Ladies I’ve ever seen that felt Real. Not just that there was sex going on (because there was, there’s people fucking and getting blowjobs etc in the background the entire time), but it doesn’t feel like something silly or shallow. The entire thing feels desperate and exploitative and miserable and painful. Most of the other characters are dressed in provocative, revealing clothes. But there are a few in just jeans and t-shirts, looking desperate and kind of bedraggled. And then you have Fantine, who is literally just in a slip and long socks, looking out of place and terrified.

The usual Lovely Ladies shenanigans do ensue, but there’s a tinge of horribleness to it that is sharper than in the traditional show. In the traditional show, the moment where the music suddenly slows, and all the women sing “Lovely ladies / Going for a song / Got a lot of callers / But they never stay for long”, it usually feels like kind of a weird and unprompted moment of introspection after so much ruckus, but in this version the reason everyone slows down is because the pimp plucks their cash out of each of their hands one by one. And then the horribleness is increased tenfold because all of the women are in a line with men behind them simulating sex, and Fantine is in the center, bent double, the Captain behind her, staring down the audience. With each thrust she grits her words out like she’s in pain in every way imaginable. And the Captain ‘finishes’ just as she hits the line “dead!” Which is just. A lot. But so good. It packs so much more of a punch than Fantine leading the Captain offstage, or to one side of the stage.

The way that Confrontation was staged was also so cool to me. In the shows I’ve seen the first part of Confrontation is Javert and Valjean facing off with Javert stage left and Valjean kind of up beside Fantine’s bed, but they’re on the same “level,” in that Valjean walks a few paces forward a few lines later and they grapple. In this version, they stood quite literally on either side of Fantine’s hospital bed, so that they’re arguing across her dead body.

Madame Thenardier made me think of a bizarre cross between Miss Hannigan, the mom from Matilda, and Patsy Stone from Absolutely Fabulous. She did a great job. M Thenardier is a douchey hipster pirate type guy with white guy dreads. Also they made him an ex-con as well, but he displays the numbers tattooed on his chest with pride compared to Valjean who hides them, which was yet another interesting decision.

This version of Les Mis has taught me that “My mom doesn’t let me drink” is the absolute BEST piece of spoken dialogue you could throw in before Master Of The House kicks the fuck off.

Also this version has Eponine participating in the scams during Master Of The House: she takes peoples’ orders, carries plates, dances, etc. She’s cleaner and more pampered than Cosette, but she’s still being used.

Look Down was really interesting to me. Now, I think what I’m about to say is partly informed by costuming. That is, I think with period costuming an audience has a harder time distinguishing more subtle roles between (non-main) characters. What I mean is, in traditional Look Down, it just seems like three characters having an argument with each other, but with a modernized version the costuming makes it clear that it’s an old beggar woman, a prostitute, and her pimp. While that’s obvious from the actual dialogue, the period costuming makes it a little harder to glean the separate character types other than “beggar type”. Anyway, the roles being clearer via costuming makes all the interactions seem a lot more Real. It’s not just people all dressed alike singing lines at each other, it’s actual separate people having actual conflicts.

Also, I really really liked Mark Hancock as Gavroche. He’s older, or at least bigger, than most kids who end up playing Gavroche, and he’s not the most beautiful singer, but I think that works all the better for a production like this one. He’s not a cutesy Oliver Twist-type character. He’s a kid living rough on the streets, and he’s got a sense of humor but he is a badass.

This version also had a LOT more flirtatious behavior between Marius and Cosette. Like it’s not just one glance on the street. During The Robbery, Marius and Cosette are giving little glances and flirty waves the whole time, all shy and cute, little hand signals like “I want to talk to you oh my god” etc. Also this Cosette has glasses! She’s so cute!

Stars as a song feels very weird when it’s a Modern Day Cop singing about such a philosophical topic, and at first I was kinda ??? about it. Because you know, in a period piece, you kind of expect more elaborate language, you expect certain types of morality, etc. It sounds weird coming out of someone dressed like a pig you’d see on the street in real life. But then at the end of the song Javert takes a rosary out of his breast pocket to sing “Lord let me find him...” etc, and suddenly it actually made a lot of sense. It finally connected the religious references and morality displayed in the lyrics. Because a lot of shitty cops in real life are masquerading as Christians, so again, a good decision.

Ah, the ABC Cafe. Always lovely to hear those horns. John Campione was AMAZING as Enjolras. At first I was a little disappointed they made him a white guy, but then I thought about it and it actually makes a lot of sense. Despite his passion about justice etc, Brick Enjolras is a wealthy student; what better way to show his privilege in a modern setting than to have him be white? Anyway, I think Campione did a great job of portraying a leader who is so passionate, and so dedicated, and so intent on his cause but also kind of stressed out as the day draws nearer. (More on that later.)

Similarly, this Grantaire is a little shit. He does this hilarious like “call on me!” hand raise before “I am agog, I am aghast” which I thought was quite funny and cute. Also after “It’s better than an opera,” the Amis all laugh and clap, and Enjolras does this extremely sarcastic slow clapping before admonishing Marius with “It is time for us all to decide who we are” etc. Also Grantaire and Enjolras are actually standing beside each other for Marius lines, so that when he says “struck to the bone in a moment of breathless delight,” Grantaire looks directly at Enjolras and stays staring at him, so that when he moves downstage to stand across from Marius and sing “Red!” and “Black!” at him, it feels more like solidarity than mocking.

But then Enjolras pulls Marius further downstage for his “Marius you are no longer a child” etc lines. His body language is great here. When he sings “Who cares about your lonely soul,” he doesn’t just look like some charismatic leader man. He looks like someone who’s stressed out and a little annoyed/exasperated that this person is causing a distraction right when things are started to get important. He runs his hands through his hair, his gestures are clipped and fast, like he’s got too much energy and isn’t quite sure where to put it. It’s so good. He sings “Our little lives don’t count at all.” And then there’s a long, long moment of silence. A long one, where Marius looks around at his friends and realization that what they’re undertaking is much bigger than his emotional outburst, that Enjolras is right and he has to be with them instead of off in the clouds. And he raises his hand tentatively and then more surely towards Enjolras and sings that next “Red! The blood of angry men!” all on his own before the rest of the Amis join in. GREAT decisions there. SO COOL. (Also this is the moment when an Amis Hand Sign is established, which is important later on.)

This show uses silence in a way that I’ve never really seen another version do it. After Gavroche yells “General Lamarque is dead!” there’s usually a beat of silence before Enjolras begins to sing. In this version there is a long, long moment of silence when everyone looks around at each other, a moment where Joly tosses his pamphlet angrily onto the table and sits down with his head in his hands, a moment where Marius and Grantaire are the only two who turn away and face upstage at the news, a moment where they all process that this is fucking Real, and everything that they’ve been planning is suddenly Actually Happening. And then Enjolras begins, and his voice is so soft, and so sad, and it’s like he’s delivering a eulogy, but it’s only when he gets to “Is the sign we await!” and we get those trumpets that it changes into Enjolras The Leader, and it’s go time, and everything is Intense. Campione is fantastic as Enjolras because I think often people play Enjolras as this solid, charismatic leader who is stoney-faced and sure of himself etc. Which works for the period style (and is fairly Brick-accurate), but I think would seem a little odd in a modern day setting. This Enjolras is in it, he’s into it, he’s fucking intense and ablaze with energy. He sings Do You Hear The People Sing like he’s giving a speech, like he’s trying to convince (And “the real glory is to convince” so y’know).

And Do You Hear The People Sing as a campaigning song is brilliant. It starts out not with march, but with handing out fliers made of red paper, passing them out and getting out the word. Only then do they pull out signs and put on red caps and start marching.

In My Life/A Heart Full Of Love was so fucking hilariously cute. Marius and Cosette are both excellent levels of awkward, and there’s a lot of nonverbal flirting going on, and I just thought it was really well done.

I was told while I was live-tweeting that during One Day More the sort of dancing march they do (because it’s like a dance, instead of the in-place marching of the traditional version) is actually the Toyi-Toyi, a South African dance that was used as a form of protest during Apartheid and during other times as well. So that was a very cool addition. I’m sure there are other callbacks in this show to other protests or protest traditions like that that I didn’t even catch. The dance also reminded me of the body percussion used in A Quoi Tu Danses from 1789: Les Amants De La Bastille, so that was cool as well. We also get face paint and signs and red berets and button pins and a lot of stuff that has been seen in a lot of modern protests/movements lately.

Side note: Javert’s disguise is amazing because he retains his cop boots and trousers and crisp white shirt; he just puts a brown jacket and a red scarf over it and wears a red beret.

OKay SO. This is possibly the BEST On My Own I’ve ever seen. Now, I’m highly partial to Briana Carlson-Goodman as Eponine because the emotion in her voice is just mind-blowing. But this On My Own was so amazing. First of all, I’m amazed I’ve never seen any other production do this: when Eponine sings “pretending he’s beside me”, she puts out her hand like she’s holding some imaginary lover’s hand, like she’s genuinely imagining him walking with her, and it made her self-deception that much sadder. And this version was so good, I think because it was this perfect combination of angry and disappointed and yearning and self-deceiving. You can tell this Eponine KNOWS she’s deluding herself that Marius will ever love her, that she’s hugely disappointed and almost angry at that fact, but she still loves him and wants him and wants that love, and it just makes that self-deception all the stronger.

This version of Les Mis brings the barricade in as a flown set piece, which I think is an interesting decision. I definitely prefer the US Tour version, where the downstage scrim is backlit/lifted and both the audience and Eponine are suddenly confronted with the fully-built barricade. However, the barricade being flown in does give the Barricade Boys a moment to stand and admire their handiwork, so that’s kind of also cool.

(Somewhat unrelated, but throughout the show this Grantaire is a lot more still than other actors’ versions of R, but also more still than the other Amis in this show, so it’s clearly a choice. Other version of R are slumped over a table or slumped on the ground a lot, or they’re wobbly, or just generally restless and upset. This R is so still and just standing unmoved and blank it’s definitely a choice. Very much taking the “he seemed to be waiting there for a bullet which should spare him the trouble of waking” quote from the Brick and translating it to the stage version, in that he does move to shoot his gun but aside from that he’s so stock still it’s like he’s given up. Anyway. Back to the actual show instead of me just waxing lyrical about my favorite character.

When Eponine climbs over the barricade, Marius waves down all the guns just as Joly yells “There’s a boy climbing the barricade!” This kind of happens in other versions, but it seems like most of the traditional Les Mis versions all the Barricade Boys just kind of accept someone’s climbing the barricade and let Eponine over? In this one Marius like actually is waving down their guns, blatantly being like “don’t shoot, I know this person.”

And when Eponine is revealed to be shot, they don’t just let her die in Marius’ arms. The first half of A Little Fall Of Rain is sung with Eponine in Marius’ arms, but there’s also Feuilly there as a medic, pressing handkerchiefs to her wound, his hand on her with Marius’ hand on top of his and Eponine’s on top of them both. When Marius is saying “and you will live ‘Ponine,” medic/Feuilly shakes his head at him as if to say, ‘don’t tell her that, she’s not going to make it, I’m so sorry,’ but he still has his hand on her wound. It’s only when she sings “Just hold me now, and let it be” that Eponine pushes the medic/Feuilly away so she can die just with Marius. I really, really, really loved that because it seems so Right. Like, they’re fighting for a better world, they’re not just going to let an injured person die, they’re going to try their best to help her even if she’s dying and there’s nothing they can do. And I really liked that there was a medic there, but he was faced upstage, away from the audience, as if he was trying to help but also not intrude on this private moment. But when Eponine does push him away, he goes fairly easily, like he’s realized that she’s realized that she’s going to die. Also, instead of carrying Eponine offstage like a ragdoll, Grantaire and Feuilly bring over a stretcher and she’s carried off in it by Marius and Feuilly while Grantaire collects the handkerchiefs that were bloodied by her wound.

Valjean’s soldier disguise is the SWAT gear, even the helmet, although he mostly carries it in his hand rather than wearing it. It’s interesting because the difference between the SWAT gear and the suits he wears as Fauchelevent are a hugely stark difference, whereas the difference between his nice period clothes and the soldier’s period uniform isn’t quite so intense.

I noticed that during Drink With Me, Joly put his hand on Grantaire’s shoulder during “Let the wine of friendship never run dry,” which is sweet. I also noticed that aside from the moments where he was shooting his gun and the few moments he was being helpful re: Eponine’s death, Grantaire spends most of his time very very still, staring down at the floor with his shoulders slumped. He judges moments with just a shake of the head and turning away while others watch. His part in Drink With Me is sung with a bitterness that is more final than it is angry, like he can’t understand why they’ve all chosen to sacrifice themselves like this and he hates it and he’s bitter that all his friends are going to die but he’s realized there’s nothing he can do about it.

Bring Him Home is SUCH a hard song to sing and it’s actually really interesting in this version, I think. Because in traditional shows I think Valjean is played as a fairly calm person who is just always calm. Joshi plays his Valjean like he has taught himself to be calm, but inside he’s still kind of angry and traumatized and still has those instincts and still doesn’t quite know whether to believe in god or not, or something like that. So Bring Him Home is a moment where it seems like at first he’s just hoping, and then by the end of the song he’s genuinely imploring god to save Marius. Like it’s the first time he’s ever really begged a higher power to do something instead of just acting of his own power to make the good happen. I have no idea if I’m articulating myself well.

Again, Campione is a FANTASTIC Enjolras who plays him like a stressed out passionate leader who is constantly stuck between This Is Finally Real Hooray and Holy Shit This Is Too Fucking Real Oh God. In The Second Attack he portrays it really well, looking around at all the people he suddenly feels responsible for, body language like he’s trying to make too many split-second decisions. It’s just really good.

Death Of Gavroche is also great because even though this Gavroche is not the best singer, he gets shot once and keeps reaching for the bullets, and only stops when they riddle him with bullets. Also, I didn’t realize this until skipping around in the video to write this, but I think they kind of tried to retain some of the Gavroche-Grantaire relationship that the US Tour established? Grantaire goes from being kinda listless stage left to bolting over to the barricade once Gavroche starts climbing, reaching for him desperately; he gets shot in the leg and goes down and spends the rest of Gavroche’s lines up to his death with his head in his hands. Once Gavroche dies, Enjolras actually checks on Grantaire and wraps a tourniquet around his leg while Feuilly and Marius tend to Gavroche’s body.

Marius gets a thigh injury during The Final Battle (we know this because this production shows Actual Blood! Gavroche is actually bleeding! Eponine, too! And Marius! And Enjolras! Like there’s actual red and it makes it so much more intense! Anyway, Marius gets a bullet to the thigh, which frankly I think makes a lot more sense than the shoulder injury he gets in canon at least in terms of him being unconscious for so long (although I guess in canon he also has at least one head injury so meh). Anyway, Valjean sees it and immediately tourniquets him as one by one all the revolutionaries are picked off by bullets.

This Enjolras death is my favorite I’ve ever seen. We don’t get a permets-tu scene, but that’s okay because this is fantastic in another way. Enjolras doesn’t die on the barricade.

Enjolras is standing center stage, the bodies of his friends around him. He’s shot once, in the stomach, and goes down on all fours. As he’s on the floor, SWAT cops surround him, pointing machine guns straight at him. Enjolras struggles up, standing, and faces the cops and the audience. He raises his hand in a defiant fist to the air and is shot in the head.

Then there is a long, long stretch of silence. Quite literally an entire minute (I just counted) of silence, where there is no music, no speaking, nothing. Just the sounds of SWAT walking around, checking the bodies on the floor, and the indistinct sound of walky-talky chatter. Only after a whole minute of silence has passed and the SWAT leave the stage do the little plucked notes and the clarinet playing the Bring Him Home instrumental begin as Valjean stands up.

Valjean actually goes over and checks Enjolras’ pulse to see if he could possibly be alive, which I think hurts A Lot. And then there’s a moment where he looks around at all the bodies on the floor and kind of doubles over in shock, but only for a moment, and then he’s bolting back over to Marius to make sure he’s still breathing and then heaving him up into his arms.

(By the way, the bodies of the revolutionaries remain onstage through all of the proceeding songs.)

Dog Eat Dog is a boring, crap song in every production, and this one is no exception. The guy playing Thenardier is quite good but there’s really no way to redeem how boring a song Dog Eat Dog is. Also, this version cuts out the long instrumental part of Valjean walking with Marius through the sewer due to the fact that they don’t have that crazy projection thing. Instead it’s just a few seconds of him dragging Marius before encountering Thenardier and then also a few seconds before encountering Javert. Also, Valjean straight up puts his chest against Javert’s gun while he’s asking to save Marius’ life. Brave as fuck.

Okay this Javert’s Suicide was mostly really really good. Edward Watts gives Javert this sort of frantic emotion that Valjean spared him on the barricade and then is only asking to save this stranger. He looks genuinely freaked out and distressed. It’s not just confusion, it’s like actual Freaking Out. The only part I didn’t like was the actual throwing himself off the bridge part, but honestly I feel like there really is no way to do that part in a way that isn’t a little ridiculous-seeming. It’s hard to have a show where they never had any sort of fly rigs or any special types of practical effects at all and then suddenly there’s a guy flying through the air? and take that seriously. I dunno. But in any case, the rest of it is really good because the frantic confusion and questioning and anger and sadness and everything is so well done. Also, he takes his cross out of his pocket and drops it on the ground before he jumps, like he believes even god has failed him.

And then the lights return and the bodies of the revolutionaries are still onstage, with police tape cordoning them off. Turning begins with women in black mourning clothes coming onstage: at first they stand behind the tape with candles and flowers and teddy bears, then someone breaks the tape and they move to sit beside the bodies and set flowers down beside them. As Turning is going on, as the women move to sit beside the bodies, Marius also enters and sits in a chair upstage.

So Empty Chairs At Empty Tables happens with the bodies of the revolutionaries lying on the floor right in front of Marius, and women in black kneeling beside the bodies, facing upstage. But as Marius sings “Phantom faces at the window, phantom shadows on the floor,” the revolutionaries rise and move downstage, looking at him. They all make their little group hand sign before exiting, until it’s just Enjolras looking at him, then he makes the sign as well and exits and Marius is left alone with the mourning women in front of him and his hand raised in farewell. It’s just SO GOOD because I think it makes it all the more real. It feels like he’s actually singing to the bodies of his friends as well as their memories, like he’s full of survivor’s guilt and he’s watching them walk away from him and doesn’t know what to do. Combining the Turning Women’s mourning with Marius’ mourning is really cool, because it shows it’s really not just Marius that’s affected by this, and essentially he’s singing Empty Chairs for himself as well as the women in mourning kneeling on the stage before him.

Side note: Dorcas Leung, who plays Cosette, is a True Fucking Soprano. Her voice is SO high. It’s wild. Like, really wild. Like, glass-breaking high but in a good way. Also she’s really cute.

Anyway, the next thing I took note of was Valjean telling Marius why he was leaving without telling Cosette goodbye. He sings “Promise me, Monsieur, Cosette will never know” and puts his hand out in a way that’s partially imploring, and partially asking for a handshake on the promise. Marius says “For the sake of Cosette, it must be so,” but pointedly does not shake his hand. He’s going to honor the promise but he’s not gonna fucking like it.

Wedding Chorale/Beggars At The Feast is mostly unremarkable except that Mme Thenardier is dressed like Cruella de Ville. Oh, and Thenardier gets a kick in the balls instead of a punch to the face from Marius. Also the actor who played Combeferre and the actor who played Bossuet are dancing together so during Beggars At The Feast when Thenardier sings “This one’s a queer, but what can you do?”, the Combeferre actor does a little wave.

I’ve always hated in the musical that Valjean goes from being perfectly healthy to straight up dying in a matter of minutes but I also understand that montages of like a year are hard to do in musical format, so I forgive it but it’s still annoying.

Anyway, this Epilogue is FUCKING FANTASTIC. Valjean does this beautiful laugh of relief and amazement when Fantine tells him “And you will be with god” like he’s still amazed after all these years that he’s a Good Person Who Deserves Heaven.

Also, Fantine sits down on the bench beside Valjean, and then when Marius and Cosette enters, Cosette runs and sits down between Valjean and Fantine, facing Valjean, and there’s a moment where Fantine smiles in disbelief and strokes Cosette’s hair like “oh my god this is my daughter!”

Finally, the fucking kicker for me: “Take my hand, I’ll lead you to salvation / Take my love, for love is everlasting.” That’s always the moment in the show when I start actually crying and this one made it even sadder: Eponine is not the only one to enter in that moment. Eponine enters singing the duet with Fantine like usual, but Enjolras and Gavroche also enter, standing behind her, not singing.

This was such a great, fascinating, unique decision, and I fucking loved it. Because with that group, you have all the types of love and belief that are Important in the Brick: Fantine, the love of a mother. Valjean, the love of a father and the faith and belief that comes from someone else suddenly believing in you and the goodness that is a result of that. Marius and Cosette, romantic love, but also love of children and chosen family. Eponine, unrequited love and sacrifice. Gavroche, not necessarily love but an innocent death, a death from the goodness that comes from wanting to help. And Enjolras, the love of the people, the belief in the people, love of patria and the belief in justice. Just all of these important symbols standing together.

Then Do You Hear The People Sing reprise starts up, and the rest of the cast enter and stand at the edges of the stage around the group at center before everyone scatters out and spreads across the stage.

So basically that was an incredible fucking show. Like, okay. Since joining the Les Mis fandom in late 2011-ish or something I've read A LOT of Les Mis fanfics, I've read the entire book, seen the show live half a dozen times plus a ton of filmed boots and movie adaptations and last year's BBC miniseries. I've got a Les Mis tattoo and I'm vaguely thinking of getting another one. I've read fanfic taking place in canon era, modern day, Mai 1968, the 90s, the 40s, and on and on. All of them are important because all of them interpret the themes differently. Basically what I'm saying is I've consumed A Lot of Les Miserables.

But this version of Les Mis is So Important. Like, it's important enough I'm really surprised they didn't give in to the call for a DVD recording back in 2014.

Because the difference between like, the traditional version of the show, and reading a modern day AU fanfiction, and this Dallas show is that this Dallas show is In Front Of You. It's important because you're used to seeing this show with 19th century clothes and 19th century mannerisms so you don't necessarily connect it to today, or you do on a surface level only.

And in fanfics you can imagine it, but it's not the same.

But this show takes the music we all know and the characters we all know and places it in front of us NOW. We get Valjean in an orange jumpsuit, posturing like we've seen people posture in real life. We get Enjolras in a denim vest and button pins. We get Fantine, a woman of color, being fired for having a child out of wedlock and being accused of prostitution, and having to actually turn to prostitution. And we get a depiction that shows so viscerally how horrible that is. We get white people as cops (SWAT, no less) while POC are abused.

Suddenly this is a show that connects on every level.

And not only that but the visuals of the actual rebellion can be connected to so many movements and protests and things that have happened in recent years. Like with the Toyi-Toyi. And all the signs and pins and face paint and weapons and clothes and even to some extent the barricade.

And the cops going from soldiers with bayonets (which, to be fair, back in the day were pretty daunting weapons with their triangular blades, but we don't see them that way) to SWAT with helmets that black out their faces and semi-automatics is a a hard-hitting message.

And I've always thought it was funny that people who see the show casually think it's about Marius & Cosette's romance. Because that’s not all it’s about, of course. But this version made me really, really realize how little that romance matters in the musical. How much the musical is about Valjean, and then in tandem about the rebellion. Because place the whole "I've known you a day and I'm in love" thing in a modern setting and you realize how ridiculous it is, and how much more important Valjean's growth is, and how much more important the movement and the rebellion is. I mean the entire book is just about the Power Of Love And Belief In All Its Forms etc etc. But I think this version pointed out better than any other how many other forms of love exist in this story, besides the romance of Marius and Cosette.

But truly I think the most important thing that this show did is what I mentioned earlier: it placed the story, its themes, its characters, its rebellion, it's Love and Belief, in the Here And Now, and made it really, truly connect with its audience and the present world. This is a show that people always say is so relevant, so important, and it is. It really is. But sometimes, for a casual viewer, it’s hard to see past the period costumes and sets. And then you transplant the show into modern dress and modern sets and suddenly it’s a story that is just as believable and hard-hitting and important now as it was then. Suddenly you can connect with these characters and you can see these things happening in real life, in present day, and you can believe that it would happen.

It just blows my mind that we have all these Modern AU fanfiction pieces, that we have multiple groups of people doing Modern Les Mis Youtube interpretations, that there’s a Spanish musical out there that’s purely about Grantaire (which, god I wish there was more info on!), that there’s a ton of music and TV adaptations and yet this is the first time I’ve seen a professional company do any sort of modern interpretation of the show. And it works SO incredibly well and is SO hard-hitting and just took my breath away.

Uh so yeah such massive praise to the Dallas Theater Center for having the courage and imagination and awesomeness to finally do a modern version of this story because they knocked it out of the damn park and made an already important story even more important.

#les miserables #les mis #dallas les mis #dallas les miserables #dallas theater center #dallas theater center les miserables #les mis dallas #les miserables meta #les mis meta

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angrylizardjacket · 5 years

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the things we do for likes {Joe Mazzello/Reader/Ben Hardy}

Anon asked: lol ben and joe having instagram wars on who can post the most embarrassing content of reader

A/N: again, written on my phone because the writing demon possessed me at 2am. I'm probs gonna have this as a series akin to B/R/R, aka disconnected vignettes in the same universe. Lemme know if you wanna be tagged. A case of the mondays is a McElroy reference, before you ask. 😊😊

It starts when Joe wakes up to an empty bed and noises coming from the kitchen; noises being footsteps, a loud bang, and some half coherent swearing. There's silence for a moment, then the opening and closing of the fridge. As soon as he's got his wits about him and realises it's just you in the other room, he opens his phone.

"So I wake up to no girlfriend and noises in the kitchen," Joe says after a minute of searching through his closet for his baseball bat, ready to film a bit for his Instagram. As he makes his way to the kitchen now, he holds the bat in frame, "I'm ready to rescue her if it's robbers." He assured the camera, voice still quiet and rough with sleep. Once he gets to the kitchen, however, he stops dead at the sight before him. There's a very long couple of seconds where all that the camera catches is his surprise.

"Why do you have a bat?" Your voice is muffled, as if you're speaking around something, and that's when Joe seems to remember he's filming, he changes to his front facing camera and turns on his phone light, exposing the fact that you're sitting cross legged on the kitchen island, eating a banana with a carton of juice in your other hand. You hiss at the light, arm coming up to sheild your eyes. The light doesn't move, and after a beat you shift your arm so he can see your face scrunched up where you're squinting at him, clearly unhappy about this intrusion into your snacking time. You take another bite of banana.

"Why are you on the counter?" He breathes, a little flabbergasted, and you chew, looking down at where you're seated, as if it's only just occurred to you that it's not exactly a normal chair. After a beat, you shrug, and raise the juice carton to your lips taking a long swig. You were so focused, so deliberate, and so obviously tired and half asleep that Joe couldn't help but laugh.

"Seriously, why do you have a bat?" And you finished the banana and put the peel down beside you with far more delicacy than it reasonably warranted.

"I heard noises and you weren't there, so I thought I'd come protect you from robbers." He explained, moving forward until he was standing next to you by the counter. You gaze into the middle distance for a moment as you contemplated his words.

"I was the robbers." You say, nodding sagely as the realisation comes to you. As if to prove this point, you reach out blindly for the fruit bowl that you'd already accosted once, picking up a lime and trying to fit the whole thing in your mouth. The last thing the video catches is Joe lunging forward to pull the fruit from between your teeth with a surprised exclamation before the video cuts off.

It's there that he realises that you're not half asleep, you're completely asleep, and sleep-eating at that. You're compliant enough when he leads you back to bed, though you adamantly refuse to let go of the juice, and you sit it triumphantly on your bedside table before promptly falling back into bed. Despite everything, Joe can't help but be endeared as he settles in beside you.

The video goes up the following morning after he shows it to you for your approval.

@joemazzello @yourinstagramhandle: "I had a case of the Mondays!" Me: "What does that even mean?"

@benhardy1 there's so much to unpack here

@benhardy1 also @yourinstagramhandle caught red handed drinking straight from the carton

@joemazzello @benhardy1 listen it was a lot to take in but youre right @yourinstagramhandle there was a cup right beside you!!!

@gwilymlee what is happening over there??

@benhardy1 @gwilymlee i know, im gone for one week......

@yourinstagramhandle I HAD A CASE OF THE MONDAYS!! 😂😭 @benhardy1 @gwilymlee @joemazzello

@yourinstagramhandle dont bully me @benhardy1 i miss you x

@benhardy1 @yourinstagramhandle 😘😘

@joemazzello @yourinstagramhandle @benhardy1 gross (im kidding, come home)

@benhardy1 @joemazzello 🙄🖕 (😘)

It becomes a thing, much to your chagrin, 'a case of the Mondays' becomes a meme the moment Ben posts a video from set, of him walking into his trailer where you'd been waiting for him, only for him to find you laying on his sofa under a fluffy blanket, watching Netflix with a face mask on.

"You took too long, now I'm having me-time." You announced. In the background, the Friends theme song starts.

Ben captions the video 'when you're hit with a case of the mondays', and tags you.

Not fifteen minutes later, Joe responds with his own video posted to his Instagram story captioned 'are mondays contagious? asking for a friend'. The video seems to have been taken not long after Ben's since you're still in a facemask on his sofa in the trailer, the difference is that Ben's in a face mask, and you've got your feet in his lap. The video starts in the middle of a heated argument, and it takes a few moments for the two of you to realise Joe is there, filming. Ben's the first to reach out to him.

"Monica's the worst Friend, right? Back me up here." He asks, and before Joe can even think about answering, you groan loudly, rolling your eyes.

"Ross is obviously the worst Friend, are you kidding me? He's manipulative, he's mean, he's-" you start, carefully extracting yourself from beneath the blanket as you spoke, peeling off your face mask.

"He's a terrible boyfriend and brother, yeah, but he's not the worst Friend," Ben elaborates, following behind you, and Joe quickly takes your spot on the sofa while you're in the bathroom. The argument continues as you wrinse your faces, you taking it in stride easily when you realise your seat's been usurped, sitting yourself in Joe's lap while Ben takes back his original seat. Finally the two of you look to Joe who had been waiting for this moment. The Friends laugh track goes off in the background.

"Well, you're both wrong; the worst Friend is Phoebe." He announced very matter of factly, like it's something he's been sure of for a while. After a beat, both you and Ben groan in unison, you even going so far as to move from Joe's lap to Ben's. That's where the video stops.

You update your Instagram story not long after with a picture of Joe in a face mask, grinning like an absolute fool, captioned 'we got him'.

There's more videos, more pictures, all showcasing you in the worst lighting or weird situations, and all of which you approve before they're posted, despite how embarrassing some of them may seem. Despite all of this, you don't care; it's posted because you're comfortable enough to share yourself with them, even in less than flattering situations, and when you look up, their gaze meeting yours where they're grinning behind their cameras, you can see in their eyes the fondness, the 'yeah, this is the fool I love'.

Ben posts a candid video of you recreating the Risky Business sock-slide scene when the song comes on your Spotify while folding the laundry. The moment you spot him, he stops filming however, because he sees the mischief in your eyes, and the way your hips are moving as you step towards him; you're feeling silly and sexy, climbing into his lap on the sofa, still dancing, though it's more grinding now, and singing the half remembered words. That's not for the rest of the world to see.

Joe posts a series of photos chronicling you forgetting to use an oven mitt to check on the frozen pizza you'd chucked in the oven, and even goes so far as to draw a red circle around the mitt that was literally sitting on the counter beside the oven as you sulked in the foreground of the final photo, holding a bag of frozen peas to your hand. He doesn't post about how he sits you down in front of the TV and brings you a proper ice pack, how he finishes getting dinner all ready and how he and Ben spend the rest of the night doting on you as much as they gently tease you.

They post dumb, nonsense arguments, but not sleepy morning kisses; your reaction to trying food that's way too spicy, even for you, but not how you smile so sweetly over desserts; the way you nap in the weirdest places, bit not how cute you look when you fall asleep on one of them. That's by design. From the outside the relationship is fun and chaotic and bright, but you don't owe the world a confirmation of just how much you love these men. But honestly, the world seems to understand, and somehow that doesn't make you uncomfortable. Though even the small snippets the three of you have shared, it's clear you love and trust each other.

And it comes out in other ways too, other cast members, not that you really mind.

"Tell us about Ben, Joe, and Y/N, are they actually sappy on set?" Gwilym reads out a question during an Instagram live session he's hosting in his trailer to kill time between scenes. "Listen, I'll tell you what, they're worse on set," he tells his audience with playfully annoyed expression, getting up. "Joe's trailer is right next to mine and if I check-" leaving his own trailer he takes his phone with him, knocking on the one next door as the comments of his live show go absolutely nuts, "I bet all three of them are in there." He mused.

Joe opens the door, yawning and rubbing his eyes, clearly having just woken up. "Keep it down, man," Joe mumbles before he sees the phone in Gwil's hand.

"Sorry I woke you, say hello to Instagram, Joe." Joe grins, giving a wave when Gwil holds up the phone. "They were asking about you three," he knows without having to ask that you and Ben are with him. Whenever you came to visit the set the three of you stuck pretty close together.

"They're still asleep," Joe steps aside to allow Gwil to peak inside. As promised, you and Ben were draped over each other on the sofa, though your feet have clearly been moved where Joe had to extract himself to answer the door. The UK Office is playing on someone's laptop. You yawn in your sleep and nestle in against Ben further, even Gwil's heart melts a bit at that.

"Alright, sorry to wake you," Gwil smiles and retreats as Joe stifles a yawn and assures him it's no trouble at all. When he's back in his own trailer, Gwil takes a breather before going back to looking at his live stream.

"They're cute, it's disgusting at times, how cute they are, and yeah, no, they don't show a lot of that in public, but they do really care about each other." He paused, shrugging, "and sometimes they're just weird. I saw Joe dare Ben to try and eat a whole apple in one bite, and he tried, and Joe video called Y/N when it got stuck, but it turns ou her solution was for her to eat a whole apple in one go too, to see how to get out of it; it just got stuck. They all seemed surprised by this, and it was just one of those times where I was like 'ah, yes these people make sense together', you know?" He shrugged, grinning as he read a few comments, "yeah it really did feel like they all got hit with a case of the mondays."

Taglist: @cosmicsskies

shoot me a message and I'll add you xx

#ben hardy #ben hardy imagine #joe mazzello #ben hardy x reader #joe mazzello imagine #joe mazzello x reader #the angry lizard writes #gwilym lee #borhap cast imagine #borhap cast #bohemian rhapsody imagine #borhap imagine #bohemian rhapsody #borhap #bo rhap #ben x reader x joe #ben hardy x reader x joe mazzello

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fromdirectorlanawachowski · 5 years

Text

honest and unmerciful endgame thoughts

a sequel to this post

this is deadass one of the worst movies i’ve ever seen.

a few brief thoughts before i get into the more or less play by play.

- making jokes about how time travel in movies isn’t really how time travel works doesn’t work if you’re a fucking movie dude

- fat thor was a fucking disgrace

- professor hulk has to have been 80% ad-libbed because there’s no way someone actually wrote that garbage dialogue

- using a past thanos was a mistake because we don’t actually give a shit about him

OKAY LETS GO

actually fuck it i was gonna do plot point by plot point but i’m just so exhausted i don’t have the strength to do it. i’m gonna go in broad strokes and if you want me to elaborate on WHY something was bad feel free to yell at me in the DMs

okay lets go

right away the whole thing with clint fucking turning on the spot as his family disappears was goofy as all hell. i know exactly what they were going for but having him literally turn on the spot instead of go into the house or go into the shed just draws attention to the absolute hilarity of how fast they vanished compared to others.

why the fuck was tony skin and bones when he got back to earth. i know he was in space for three weeks but they clearly show him eating during the montage of him and nebula doing.... things?

also everyone just kind of trusts nebula? okay? i’d be wary of purple aliens in light of what just happens but inclusivity i guess

also you mean to tell me that in three weeks they scanned the entire universe for gamma radiation? also enough gamma radiation that would show up on a scan from light years away but not fry everyone nearby when thanos snapped?

as soon as they killed thanos i knew the climax of this movie was gonna suck ass.

the writers have no idea how fast human hair grows if five years later natasha still has that godawful blonde dye on her tips

a fucking rat got scott lang out of the quantum realm. i don’t have any commentary for this because this scene speaks for itself. a rat.

moreover how did they even get the van down from the rooftop it was on at the end of ant man 2

fat thor. i don’t have any commentary about this either. the whole thing reeks of the russos looking at taika and going “you wanna be a funny man? you want thor to be fucking funny? you think he’s hilarious? fuck you”

oh i guess i did have commentary on that after all

i’m glossing right over the gay scene because again, taika fought tooth and nail to get bisexual valkyrie and now the russo shitters get to say they had the first canon lgbt character and it’s a couple of throwaway lines that can be redubbed for china. seriously. i don’t think there’s ever a scene where he says “he” or “him” while his lips are on screen.

apparently i am doing this relatively plot point by plot point but i digress

if i was keeping points like cinemasins (ew) i’d take a few off for morgan stark. i’m an bitch but not that much of one.

oh yeah pepper potts’ first of, i believe, four lines in this movie is “yeah i’m reading about compost”. i have no commentary for this either. it speaks for itself.

tony hits upon time travel in a day

i’m so glad we couldn’t get any real character development for anyone but we had time for the four minute “ant man becomes various aged forms of himself and then makes a peeing your pants joke in 2019″ scene.

“that’s how time travel works in movies this is real life” that’s great except that joke falls flat cause you’re a fuckin movie bro

i’m skipping over the entirety of the battle of new york thing because that was just fucking.... *benny hill music*

oh no i’m addressing the ancient one thing. love to have characters retconned into previous movies so they can try and explain the time travel in a way that actually makes it more confusing and also isn’t the way the movie follows

steve leering at peggy through the blinds was creepy, i’m sorry. actually the way he was suddenly obsessed with her this whole movie was really creepy.

howard potts

tony meeting his dad was so awkward and uncomfortable and they really meant for it to be heartwarming but i’m sorry it was fucking hilarious and i was howling with laughter in the theater

likewise thor with frigga. a really nice, emotional moment where thor gets closure with his mom and she overtly says she knows she’s going to die soon but she loves him and she’s so proud of him....

..... and then tops it off with a fat joke. the russos can’t let any kind of emotion hang without making a joke.

when they killed natasha a guy three rows down said “if they were killing her here why the fuck did they greenlight her movie then”

why did thanos get a scene confronting the cost of the stone but clint just wakes up in a puddle? are you gonna tell me thanos cared more about gamora than clint did about natasha? ok.

okay i’ll admit seeing quill dancing on morag without the background music was funny as fuck. rhodey explaining the punchline was not funny as fuck though

three cheers for nebula inexplicably having new abilities

as soon as they brought in past thanos i knew the climax of this movie was gonna suck a big ass

hulk snaps the iron infinity gauntlet because he’s the only one that can withstand the gamma radiation that it allegedly emits and has been mentioned only once before in this movie

the fact that it works is demonstrated by not anyone coming back, but ant man looking out the window at some birds. yeah. gee.

okay i have a question here that may take a little bit to explain.

earlier in the movie it’s explicitly stated they only have enough pym particles for one round trip each. that’s why steve and tony had to go back to 197X to get the tesseract and more particles.

so.

past-nebula takes current-nebula’s place and uses her particles to travel back to the present, leaving current-nebula with no particles

so how did past-thanos bring his ship to the present with no pym particles

anyway past-gamora and current-nebula kill past-nebula to get the iron infinity gauntlet back

the final battle was whatever. i couldn’t for the life of me tell you what happened or where anyone was in relation to anyone else because it was cut so poorly

everyone comes back. remember at the end of my infinity war thoughts when i said the end had no stakes because obviously everyone snapped came back and you all got mad at me? everyone comes back.

the ladies all running the gauntlet would be cool if it wasn’t encompassed by shots of all the men running the gauntlet, drawing attention to the fact there’s literally only like seven ladies and one of them isn’t even a hero

joss whedon was the cinematographer the day they shot wanda fighting thanos, judging from all the gratuitous shots down her shirt. i know elizabeth olsen has nice boobs. believe me, i do. i’m envious. but for the love of christ stop being creepy voyeurs about it

also “you took everything from me” “i don’t even know who you are???” that was a great setup for her to use her mind powers and make thanos experience some suffering but they just didn’t do that so those lines are hilarious

tony gets the stones and snaps, killing thanos and all his army. thanos fades away into dust while a woman vocalizes in the background in a manner that’s less satisfying than when voldemort did the exact same thing in deathly hallows part 2

tony dies because i guess?

at the funeral everyone is there and there’s shots lingering on everyone including this weird kid who looks like he’d microwave a gerbil? i had to google him and it’s supposed to be the kid from iron man 3. i feel like seven years later you should probably put in a line like “thanks for coming <whatever that kid’s name was>

okay we’ve reached the part i have the absolute most beef with.

steve’s ending

from the start of this movie he’s been inexplicably obsessed with peggy. the ending is telegraphed from a mile away and i was still shocked and stunned that they actually did this.

so steve just gives up everything, all his friends and family, to go back in time to be with a woman he knew for max a year, in the heat of war, where emotions run high and they may very well have latched onto each other in case they died.

steve rogers, the man who wielded mjolnir, the man who broke his friend’s mental conditioning just be refusing to fight him, just sits back through the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s. the cuban missile crisis, the LA riots, the assassination of JFK, the death of howard and maria stark, the infiltration of shield, the berlin wall, 9/11, the war on terror, and he just.... did nothing?

what the fuck was that

sam is captain america now though so i’m down with that

but i’m still so angry

this is beyond character assassination for steve. it’s... outright brutal murder and mutilation. anywhere i can, i give endgame a half star review FOR THIS ALONE. setting aside fat thor and how they treat Ragnarok, the fact they think steve rogers would, after everything he’s done and learned, go back into the past where there was still a chance he could help his friends in his own way, and do NOTHING, is the most infuriating thing about this barely-polished turd of a movie.

IN CONCLUSION i said infinity war was the worst movie marvel had ever put out and marvel went “haha we can do you one better”

endgame is just three hours of setpiece, gag, setpiece, gag, setpiece, gag, occasionally punctuated with emotional moments that aren’t allowed to hang long enough for the emotion to sink in before a joke is made, usually at thor’s expense.

#avengers #endgame #endgame spoilers #endgame critical #endgame critique #infinity war critical #avengers endgame

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sturlsons · 5 years

Text

french in 1.5 years anon

Kinda random but I just found out that I’ll be required to be intermediate/advanced in French by the next 1.5 years; ALL I KNOW IS THAT MEIRDE IS A BAD BAD WORD! Idk if you’re a native speaker but I was wondering if you could provide me of any good French language resources (or language in general since I’ll be needing to learn Arabic soon as well), and like tips for language learning and how to go about it? Sorry to bother you haha this is MY stress but I appreciate any help! Have a great day!

HEY. so i really fucking dropped the ball on this one, i’m sorry. 2019 has been one health fiasco after another (or more like the same fiasco again and again) and i kept telling myself i want to sit down and make a proper post for this, until i realised that that’s just never going to happen given the way things are rn. and i’d rather give you a quickly-written post which is actually helpful than never write that perfect bullet-pointed one.

first of all, i’ve been in your EXACT position (so no, i’m not a native speaker) except i had about...six months to go from je m’appelle teesta to voyez-vous, le problème qui se cache derrière tout ça n’est pas le manque de respect mais la personne dont il s’agit or whatever. i was like, i can so do this. (spoiler: i didn’t, because i was 18 and overconfident and stupid and didn’t actually know how to learn a language.) GOOD NEWS: having learned 3 more foreign languages since then, i am now REALLY GOOD at learning languages REALLY FAST. 1.5 years is a good amount of time, so don’t stress.

i’m going to go generic on this, with some extra tips about french since i speak it, unlike arabic.

first thing, that typical thing everyone hates to hear but knows is coming from the mouth of an accomplished person (pat on my back) in any field whatsoever: you’re going to have to work really hard and practice like fuck.

there’s just nothing else that can replace it. i’ve filled up notebooks and notebooks with japanese verb conjugations, once i did like 1800 of them in one sitting. but you better believe that a bitch will never forget those now. resign yourself to putting in at least three hours of your day to this until you get to the level you need. (and three hours is...kind. at my peak i was literally reading through french dictionaries at the library, 10 AM - 8 PM. i treated it like a workday.)

now, what you need to establish is: are you a hands-on learner or a digital one.

i don’t really care for all the auditory learner and visual learner stuff, i don’t know about anyone else but i personally used those as excuses to avoid certain exercises. unless you have actual disabilities preventing you from accessing certain methods of learning, you can train yourself into anything. it’s a matter of practice. i could barely understand a new song without reading its lyrics first, now i eat up podcasts.

SO. the question here is different. a hands-on learner, like i used to be more or less throughout my bachelor’s, is someone who absolutely cannot retain information unless they’ve written it down BY HAND at least once. pen and paper. (i’m still like this but i’ve learned to combine it with digital methods to go faster.) if this isn’t a hurdle for you, congratulations. your process is going to go that much faster, at least for french. (you’ll have to spend hours practicing your written arabic however, if you’re not familiar with the script.)

now, if you’re a hands-on learner, you need to add an extra hour to your daily time. no matter how fast you write, you will take that time. and you cannot shorthand your way into languages. you need to understand how french is spelt, what accents it uses, that they put a space before exclamation points, question marks, and semicolons. (side tip: learn the IPA. it will be useful to you forever in language learning, at least for the romance languages.) i’m not gonna teach you how to make notes since i’ve never benefitted from copying someone else’s style, so if you don’t have a set method start establishing that. you need regularity and rhythm when you learn a language. my grammar notes look the same regardless of the language. i don’t have my french ones since it’s been years and i didn’t take good ones then anyway, but here’s my japanese and russian stuff.

JAPANESE NOTES // RUSSIAN NOTES

now, it bears mentioning that these notes are NOT the notes i take when i don’t know shit. these are final level notes. they’re brief, idiosyncratic, and only reminders. something to refer to when i’m revising and suddenly forget a rule. the first notes i make are much more elaborate, whether they’re pretty or not. i’ve gradually lost the fucks i had about really going ham on academics so my russian notes are very messy, but my japanese ones from back in the day are magnificent. here’s a look. during lesson one i realised that japanese and my mother tongue, gujarati, are syntaxically similar as shit, and i started taking notes with references in gujarati. it sped up my learning process 2x while my french classmates were still going “BUT WHY IS IT LIKE THAT”.

PRACTICAL GRAMMAR // THEORETICAL GRAMMAR

if you plan to learn more languages in the future, this will be so valuable. sometimes a phrase i learn in russian doesn’t make sense in its french explanation, but a phrase in english might use the same logic. bam, put down the translation in english then. you get what i’m saying? the more languages you learn, the easier it gets to learn languages.

now if you’re a digital learner, i’ve got great news for you. duolingo and anki are your best friends. duolingo’s memed to hell and has a system that might not work for everyone, but they’ll do the brunt work of compiling grammar notes for you in the beginnings/ends of their lessons. note those down and transform them into anki flashcards, and you can learn grammar concepts without doing 20 exercises. (do those exercises if you can, though, nothing beats mindless practice.) now anki is an intimidating-looking but actually super intuitive app that basically builds digital flashcards for you and shows them to you in a rhythm based on your own learning speed. it’ll show you the front of a card, let’s say merde. you say the english translation out loud, shit, and hit enter. correct! was that easy? anki’ll show it to you in 10 minutes. hard? it’ll show you in 1 minute. super easy? merde won’t come up again until tomorrow. eventually you get so good at it that you can bury a card for 2 months. anki will also show you the same cards reversed, which is harder but trains you better. you’ll see shit and have to remember what it’s called in french, which is more difficult than you’d think it is.

you can use anki for more than just vocab, like i mentioned. it’s a little tricky learning to convert grammar concepts into front/back flashcards, but you can do it. for example, here’s a sample of one of my russian grammar cards:

front ^^

back once i hit enter^^

see? not that difficult. now don’t be an idiot like me who manually entered every single flashcard into anki. you can find pre-made packages online (but you can’t guarantee they’ll be correct) or you can make your own without killing your fingers. what you wanna do is open up a spreadsheet and make two columns, A for front of the card and B for back. it’ll look like this:

then you’re gonna save that spreadsheet as a .CVS (comma separated values) and import that into anki. bam, your flashcards are made for you with half the effort. there’s also a script floating around somewhere to make excel translate words automatically for you, but i don’t recommend that unless they’re really easy words. google translate can fuck up. reverso is your friend.

you need to review your anki cards every day. it’ll take less and less time as you go along. i can review 300 russian cards in 15 minutes now. but you need to keep the rhythm going. download ankiapp and sync your cards, review them on commutes or in the hallway or whatever. trust me, it’s magic.

apart from this, if a traditional textbook helps, go for that. i’ve always used textbooks and workbooks, more as supports than as principal methods, but it does help. it’s structured and organised and these people know how to train you. bescherelle is a good go-to for french.

media is always a great way of immersion too, until you get to the country itself. it’ll show you how french people speak french. when i first came to france i didn’t have that experience and even though i spoke an arguably decent amount of french when i got here, it was like, if this is french then what the fuck was i learning in high school. if you like watching movies this is your chance. watch the classics first so that you can get an idea of french pop culture. amélie (though the pop culture aspect here is about shitting on it) and les intouchables, for starters. watch your favourite films, first subbed, then subbed and dubbed, then just dubbed. i watched all ten seasons of friends with french subs, it was wild. with music you want to start off with some indie-ish singers since they will universally sing softer and slower, making things easier to understand than idk, la tribu de dana. (if you’re into bts there’s a hilarious video of their baepsae choreo set to la tribu de dana.) anyway - angèle, cœur de pirate, céline dion, fréro delavega, uhhh that fucking french sufjan stevens. what’s his name. VIANNEY. don’t fucking listen to biglo and oli or like, fatal bazooka right away. you will not understand shit. i barely understand it. white people are wild. ooh listen to stromae. orelsan too, he’s a rapper but he has a relatively clean diction imo. he also sang the french opening for OPM. they call him orelsan-san in japan.

last but not the least: if you have the opportunity to interact in french with people, DO IT. native speakers will do their best to help you and be kind about it. people who learned french might sometimes be assholes from experience. it’s a whole superiority complex thing, and very hypocritical. anyway - online or IRL, wherever you can practice your french, do it. it’ll be immensely helpful. there’s nothing like the frustration of not being able to express simple things to get you motivated to get better. do your best to immerse yourself - changing the language on your devices can make a difference too.

i think that’s all i have and again, i’m sorry for taking this long to finally deliver, thanks for your patience! if you have any specific questions don’t hesitate to hit me up, on anon or not.

good luck - it’s not going to be the easiest but nothing is as gratifying as beginning to understand the workings of a language. you’re gonna love it!

#teesta talks for ts #uni tag #anons #replies

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