#I’d rather forget about a series I’m interested in and let it marinate for years so it’s completed

[glumplumss]

So. I’m the kind of person who goes all out and consumes all content there is for a media I become interested in and lose interest in it as soon as I’m caught up. I’ve found that the losing interest part is inevitable no matter what I do to try and prevent it.

SO WHY do I keep getting obsessed with media that’s ongoing and not completed, where I have to wait for weekly updates.

I HATE DOING THAT SHIT SO MUCH 😃😃 WHY DO I KEEP DOING THIS TO MYSELF

A cycle of never ending pain,,,

[baiyunli]

how to watch baseball now: a primer

This is a long, hopefully-comprehensive guide on how to watch baseball for hockey fans feeling adrift during the offseason — I have constructed this from the perspective of not only how to understand what you’re watching, but how to make it interesting to yourself.

If the numbers aren't interesting to you, forget about the numbers! They don’t have to exist in your version of baseball. Make up your own rules and use them to watch the game. Watch games only for the one kind-of okay player you like. Pick your favourite team because of a video you saw of one of them bouncing a baseball off his ass (Sean Murphy, then of Oakland A's and now of Atlanta Braves). Baseball Olds will try to pretend like the game is this big thing that only people who already watch it can appreciate, but you just have to find what you love most about it. 

I’m using the NHL as my best point of reference: in terms of growing the game, I’d say MLB suffers from a very different problem than NHL (other than like, the current uproar around letting queer people exist, which is a throughline in both), in that while the NHL has a very exciting product but can’t reach people where they’re at, baseball is by and large perceived as a boring, slow game and the league will bend over backwards to make polarizing changes to the Boringest and Slowest parts rather than capitalizing on what excites fans about the game. However, both leagues are plagued by Shitty Commissioner disease. Such is the way of life.

Feel free to read all of this, or none of it, but I’ve tried to split it up in a way that makes sense and is easy to navigate. Last note: many people will tell you baseball is the only major sport going on in North America at this time of year. This is false. The WNBA and NWSL are both in full swing—not to mention the World Cup next month. Supplement your baseball watching with a wide variety of sports where you can!

How to Love Baseball

Pick a Team, Any Team

The first step in becoming a baseball fan is obviously picking a team! I could probably give you NHL comparatives and let you figure it out from there, but I don’t personally think your favourite NHL teams have much bearing on your favourite MLB ones, so I’ll give you a quick and dirty rundown of my teams instead and how you might want to pick a team.

The easiest team for me to love is the Seattle Mariners because I live just across the border, and they aren’t good enough to be annoying but also not bad enough to be embarrassed about. They’re just kind of there, which I enjoy greatly. I also love the Philadelphia Phillies because they’re my friend’s favourite team. They went on a Cinderella run to the World Series last year (before losing to the Astros in the final) and are now solidly middling. My other favourites are the Washington Nationals because of their fantastic social media presence and their hilarious stadium traditions. The current-day Nats are very much the epitome of "how can we lose when we're so sincere?"

Some teams you might want to look into are the LA Angels (actually of Anaheim) for Shohei Ohtani, the Milwaukee Brewers for — at least from what I understand — their boyband energy similar to the New Jersey Devils, the Baltimore Orioles or Tampa Bay Rays for an exciting and winningest team, and the Oakland A's for a miserable fan experience including horribly dysfunctional team management and a coming relocation to Las Vegas. 

The easiest team for me to hate is the Toronto Blue Jays, which is a result of their god complex re: being the only Canadian team. A funny thing from this season is that the Rays opened their season with a historic 13-game win streak, only to be killed 6-3 by the Blue Jays to end it. Something about Toronto teams and ending another team’s 13-game heater, or whatever.

Also look into any local teams if you can. In Vancouver, our local minor league team is the Vancouver Canadians, and setting up a little picnic on the grass with friends while watching a Canadians game is a summer staple. Here’s a very cute article about them. There are a variety of lower-level and exhibition teams across the world, especially in countries where baseball is incredibly popular. One exhibition team is the Internet-famous Savannah Bananas who are dearly loved on TikTok. If there isn’t a huge baseball foothold in your area, it’s worth looking into which MLB teams are most popular where you live and/or have the most coverage. Some analytics sites like FiveThirtyEight will occasionally create maps showing each team’s popularity in different states, countries, etc. and that can be a great guide.

Petty Rivalries 101

You can always just Google these, but I decided to just list off a few major ones for your perusal: the Yankees and Red Sox, the Rangers and Astros, the Dodgers and Giants, and the Orioles and Nationals. As Toronto Maple Leafs scholar Acting the Fulemin once put it, the point of sports is to be sad in a group, and the counterpart to this is that it absolutely rules getting to see a team you hate lose.

A quick note on the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is that it's brought us one of my favourite ever quotes from ex-Mariner and current Yankee Nestor Cortes:

Once you’ve chosen a favourite team, they’re bound to have some kind of geographic or historic rivalry, and you can search those up to find out the background behind them. Also, I highly suggest deciding on a random team you hate for no reason. It makes the season experience much more interesting and gives you the chance to pray on their downfall whenever possible.

Where to Watch

As with most things about baseball, this will vary by your team. Depending on your cable package, you might be able to watch your favourite team already! That’s great news. Even if you can’t, feel free to turn on the TV, find a random baseball game, and imprint on either of those teams like a baby bird. The MLB website offers games broadcast with an MLB.tv subscription, but if you have an account you can also watch the Free Game of the Day and collected highlights from previous games! This is a great way to expand your team repertoire and figure out which team broadcasts you hate with a burning passion. Local radio stations do commentary on games if you like listening to that. 

If you just want to get your feet wet rather than diving in straight away, pretty much every major game of the postseason will be uploaded by some “FirstName BunchOfNumbers” user on YouTube: for example, you can watch Game 1 of the World Series last year by just searching 2022 World Series Game 1 Full Game. However, watching the full game might be a slog if you don’t know what’s going on, and you can learn the intricacies of the sport without having to watch all four hours and twelve minutes of like, the 1962 World Series Game 7 (although that is a very exciting game). In that case, skip to the ‘How the Game is Governed’ section and read on.

All of this pertains to MLB teams, but there’s plenty to watch elsewhere. If you have a local baseball team, you might be able to catch a game or two in-person! Minor League Baseball also has their own broadcasting services and highlights are available on YouTube or their website. 

League Structure

The MLB season is 162 games long. Spring training, aka the preseason, begins in February. During the regular season, teams play a three or four-game series with the same team before playing another with a different team. For example, this month the Philadelphia Phillies played 3 games in a row against the Washington Nationals on consecutive days. The day after the conclusion of their last game against Washington, they started a series against the Tigers, which was three games with one rescheduled due to weather, and then another three games against the Dodgers. This leads to a schedule that looks like this:

Occasionally, due to weather issues or other postponement reasons, a game will be rescheduled for the same day as another game against the same team — so they’ll play two full games in one day. This is called a double-header. They used to be routinely scheduled in MLB, but now they’re only played as a result of scheduling problems.

Team-wise, it’s a little more complicated than the NHL. Like the Eastern and Western conferences, MLB is separated into two ‘leagues’: the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). Both leagues have fifteen teams, and until the 1990s teams in different leagues didn’t play each other during the regular season at all, leading to different styles of play, tactics, and rules implemented between them. This is no longer the case! However, it’s important to recognize that unlike the NHL, NBA, NWSL, etc., Major League Baseball comprises two leagues, rather than two conferences of the same league. This matters because individual awards like the Cy Young or Gold Glove are given to the best players at their position in both the AL and NL, and the MLB MVP includes both an AL MVP and NL MVP. 

MLB is made up of six divisions, with three in each league: AL East, AL Central, AL West, NL East, NL Central, and NL West. A division has five teams. If you know much about US geography, you might notice that the teams in each division don’t actually correspond very well to their geographic location: this is for a variety of reasons, not least of which is expansion teams requiring change in division partitioning, but nobody’s going to fix it at this point. And that’s okay!

Fandom and Things As Such

Baseball fandom, regrettably, is not much of a Tumblr phenomenon these days, but Baseball Twitter does have some incredible gems. The Baseball RPF tag on AO3 is also fairly fleshed out (albeit not to the extent of HRPF) and you’ll find that many authors who write HRPF have dabbled in baseball as well. If you’re lost on where to start choosing a team, going through the AO3 grab bag and choosing a random player who you really like in a fic is also a very respectable avenue.

I cannot stress this enough: the easiest way to learn the game without having to learn the characters is reading baseball AUs. That’s it. They’re ten times more approachable than trying to memorize everyone on your favourite team’s roster, and they abound in HRPF if you’re looking for a landing port. I have witness testimony from Lil (@wymgreenteam) that she learned what pitching signs and shortstops were from the wonderful Jack/Nico baseball AU. It works! Obviously fanfiction won’t teach you everything, but if you’re feeling overwhelmed they can be a fantastic first step and really illustrate the game from a fan perspective.

Other Media

I will caution against taking the ‘consume baseball-related media’ advice too seriously, because I find that unlike baseball AUs, other media involving baseball does not always come from someone who watches and loves the game. Think of it like hockey romance books—just like the main characters of those novels are probably not scoring hat tricks in 5 consecutive games, they probably aren’t reaching such baseball heights either.

With that said, I have not watched Daiya No Ace but I’ve heard that people do enjoy it! For genuine baseball culture-oriented media, Roger Angell wrote fantastic articles and books on the game. I love his book ‘Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion.’ Then there are movies like Moneyball and shows like A League of Our Own which tackle specific aspects of the game and how it’s played. Depending on your eventual favourite team(s), hometown coverage will also play a huge part: for the Phillies, that’s outlets like the Philadelphia Inquirer or Penn Live.

Narratives

Once upon a time there was a young man named Shohei Ohtani who was breaking records set in the 1920s while playing on a horrible, failing team that refused to build around him. I assume you have some familiarity with Ohtani, but he is very difficult to describe because he is literally making history. He is the only two-way player in MLB right now: a two-way player is someone who is both a pitcher and a batter; there are a ton of rules about what constitutes a two-way player, but currently Ohtani is the only true two-way player at the Major level. This is not a perfect analogy, but he’s sort of like if Jason Robertson went out there and had a 50-goal season, then immediately jumped into net and played like Juuse Saros. He’s the best all-around player in MLB, and even though he isn’t the best pitcher or the best batter, the fact that he’s incredible at both of them makes him stand out. He also plays with Mike Trout, who’s breaking records of his own, while trying to drag the LA Angels to any sort of notoriety. Here is a prescient article about the Ohtani-Trout era in Anaheim.

Each team has their own current narratives and pairings, but Ohtani and Trout are the biggest one right now. People compare them to McDavid and Draisaitl, but it’s more like if the Oilers had McDavid and Draisaitl but were also one of the worst teams in the league right now. However, Trout is currently in the worst slump of his career while the Angels have won the last 11 of 14 games, so really all this means is that baseball is fake.

Baseball is rife with redemption and villain arcs—you just have to dig a little to find them. I have presented the Ohtani and Trout trainwreck because it’s the closest comparable to the Oilers tragedy, but there are plenty others that really depend on team and current events.

Bush Leagues

MLB teams have a very different relationship to their minor-league affiliates than NHL teams do. There are about five hundred various regional minor leagues, but the MiLB levels are Rookie, Single A, High A, Double A, and Triple A, each of which has two or three individual leagues similar to the AL-NL system in MLB.

The fun thing about MiLB is that it’s a lot closer to home than MLB! Most places don’t have an MLB team, but there’s a good chance anywhere in the USA has a nearby MiLB or regional/collegiate league team. They also have way more interesting names, like the Portland Pickles, Rocket City Trash Pandas, and Sugar Land Space Cowboys. The prospect pipeline in MLB runs a whole lot slower than it does for the NHL, and generally through those Double or Triple-A affiliates, so it’s definitely worth paying attention to minor-league teams and their standout players to see who might be the next rookie on your favourite team.

MiLB player compensation has been an issue for a long time, and the players recently unionized! A few great write-ups on it: 1, 2, and 3.

Regional Popularity

I’ve said this plenty, but I truly do think that finding your baseball niche hinges upon imprinting on a hometown team or a player you just really like. This sport isn’t just an American pastime: it’s hugely popular in Central America and parts of East Asia, and some of the best and brightest up-and-coming (and current) players hail from countries that haven’t traditionally been viewed as bastions of baseball. The game is growing every day, and it’s wonderful to see.

Baseball is very popular in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Japan, and Korea. Out of those, I’d probably say the Dominican Republic has the largest MLB presence, with only American players outnumbering Dominican ones in the league, but the sport is also fast-growing in Japan, Korea, and Australia. Japan won the 2023 World Baseball Classic, which is the baseball equivalent of the World Cup of Hockey, where the best players in the world compete against each other and Shohei Ohtani (captain of the Japanese team) pitched to Mike Trout (captain of the American team) in possibly the most electric moment of baseball in the 21st century.

How to Understand Baseball

How the Game is Governed

Rather than doing a big writeup on this, I figured I would just find some articles and videos that go through the rules well and hold your hand through it! Think of these like helpful assets, similar to the first time you search up ‘what is goaltender interference’ or 'what is offsides' after hearing it mentioned on the play-by-play and a goal got turned over and all the fans were mad and you wanted to be in on the reason why. This is that search.

Baseball Explained in 5 Minutes

How to identify baseball pitches

Everything there is to know about the The Strike Zone in Baseball.

Intro to Baseball: Positions

What’s going on with the DH in MLB? (MLB Originals)

Rules Glossary | MLB - PDF Version

Lastly, once you’ve got a good grasp on the rules and positions, I probably wouldn’t go straight to watching a full game—you want to make sure you’re using your three hours well rather than staring at a game you don’t really get or don’t care about, or both. Instead, watch YouTube highlights of various players and best (or worst) plays of the week! This gives you an idea of what creates excitement in a game and why, and different positional strengths. From there, you can start watching longer clips, like full innings or the highlights uploaded after each game, which give you a better idea of the game’s pace. 

Pressing Play

While I was writing this I remembered that a fun and unique baseball tradition is players having walk-up songs when they’re up in the batting lineup.

Most teams will post their players' walk-up songs on Spotify, YouTube, etc. and while there are a few songs that are synonymous with legendary players - like Mariano Rivera's "Enter Sandman" - players usually like to switch up their songs. Often, a song will become emblematic of an era in that team's history (Anthony Rizzo's "Intoxicated" and the Cubs' 2016 playoff run). After a while, you'll notice patterns in what players pick.

Learning about each player’s song rotation can be extremely revealing, like Mark Canha switching his walk-up songs to Born This Way, Vogue, and I Wanna Dance with Somebody in honour of the Mets Pride Night last week!

Diamond Sports Bankruptcy

I’m not going to pretend to know anything about broadcasting or RSNs, but Diamond Sports, the group that runs Bally Sports, recently filed for bankruptcy, which has really affected some franchises’ profit margins and where their games can be streamed. Not sure if this interests you, but you can read about it here!

The Oakland A’s Relocation

Again: I’m not an Oakland fan, but there’s a lot of debate right now about the owners of the Oakland Athletics moving the team to Vegas despite the wishes of the town and city. Rob Manfred, the MLB commissioner, also made rude comments about Oakland fans as a result of their Reverse Boycott Night, where almost 28,000 fans came out to support the team. A professional sports league commissioner acting like an asshole to fans of a small-market team is nothing new, but it’s the culmination of a lot of drama between terrible owners and a market that loves their team.

The Long, Storied History of Cheating

The long, storied history of cheating in MLB encompasses not only stealing signs and tipping pitches, but also foreign substance usage on hands (which pitchers sometimes try in order to change how they pitch the ball), illegal equipment, and more. It’s kind of a lot. The most notable, recent case is the 2017 Houston Astros World Series Win.  

Houston’s Fucking Astros

Nobody likes the Astros except Astros fans. They won the World Series last year and are universally hated, not least of all because of the 2017 cheating controversy. 

In baseball, ‘signs’ are what catchers use to communicate to pitchers what kind of pitch they should throw. These rely on knowledge of the hitter currently on the plate and catching them by surprise. Each pitcher-catcher battery will usually have their own signs. In 2017, a year in which Houston won the World Series, the team set up a video camera in the center field seats with a full frontal view of the catcher, and they would use that to figure out what pitches the pitcher would throw. Then from the dugout, whoever was watching the video feed at the time would use a signal (audio cues, like banging garbage can lids) to tell the hitter who was up what pitch they had to expect. This was mostly possible because of the time delay between a catcher signalling and a pitcher throwing, which has been changed by this season’s pitch clock implementation. 

In 2020, The Athletic published the first exposé article about the Astros cheating scandal, and it rocked the baseball world. Several immediate consequences followed: the Astros GM and field manager (head coach) were suspended for the full 2020 season, and although players received no punishment, the team gave up four draft picks (their 1st and 2nd round picks in 2020 and 2021). 

Pitching and Sticky Stuff

Pitchers applying foreign substances on their hands is always a controversy in MLB games. Recently, star pitcher Max Scherzer was ejected and suspended 10 games after an umpire decided his hand was unusually sticky. TLDR: cheating is common, and consequences vary. Nobody has gotten over the Astros cheating scandal.

Expected By Whom

A quick rundown on the analytics side of the game and how baseball stats look very different both in their progress and insights than hockey. This is how you can sound like you know ball.

The Moneyball book does a great job explaining the rise of sabermetrics (baseball analytics) in the early 2000s, starting with Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s. Because MLB doesn’t have a salary cap and their luxury tax isn’t difficult for big-market teams to pay, small-market teams like Oakland have to constantly innovate in their game tactics in order to stay competitive, and that’s why the game today is so numbers-oriented. Watching a baseball game, you’ll see far more stats than you would in an NHL broadcast: OBP (On-Base Percentage), ERA (Earned Run Average), pitching speed, slugging percentage, pythagorean win percentage, and more. Do not fear the big numbers. You don’t have to know what every stat means in order to love the game, but if you watch enough and you hear commentators discussing what, say, Kodai Senga's ERA is, you’ll come to learn what they mean! In a pinch, you can also easily just search up ‘league average [stat]’ to figure out what the standard is.

Some websites that are really instrumental in baseball analytics are Baseball-Reference, FiveThirtyEight, and FanGraphs, plus YouTube channels like Foolish Baseball and statisticians like Bill James and Tom Tango. Baseball is a lot further along in its analytics revolution than hockey, and as a result, such analysis is not just a thing for Stats Nerds but also a huge part of the way the game is played and watched today. Personally, I love stats that assess umpire accuracy in calling strikes, and so Umpire Scorecards on Twitter is one of my favourites.

It's Too Long and Too Much Money

If Connor McDavid played in Major League Baseball and was close to the kind of player he is in the NHL right now, he would be getting paid north of 400 million dollars, not to mention endorsement money. Instead, he sold his soul to a sport where reporters ask about his biological clock and his only consolation for living in Edmonton is his heated driveway.

Because MLB payrolls are so much larger than the NHL’s and they have a luxury tax rather than a salary cap, contracts are worth much more. The sport itself is less volatile as well: both a product of the longer season (larger sample size) and the luck factor inherent in chance-based games like hockey that isn’t present as much in baseball, a player's year-to-year performance is easier to predict and therefore teams feel more comfortable betting on their production. In contrast to the NHL’s 8-year limit & penalty for long contracts (like the Kovalchuk deal), and bridge deals made when a player hasn't demonstrated that their performance is sustainable, MLB GMs often give their stars contracts over 10 years, and for hundreds of millions of dollars total. Mike Trout is on a 12-year contract for almost $430 million, and by several estimates, his endorsements and the money he receives for being named All-Star, AL MVP, etc. brings that up significantly.

MLB front office terminology is very similar to the NHL, but their contracts differ in another important way: baseball players can opt out of a contract and enter free agency. For example, last season Carlos Correa agreed to a 12-year, $310m deal with the New York Mets, but the Mets were worried about the results from his physical and his injury history, so they pulled out of the deal before the season began and instead, Correa signed with the Minnesota Twins on a six-year, $200m contract.

The Used Boy Auction

Drafting in MLB works very differently than the NHL. The amateur draft (the Main one, which is also called the Rule 4 Draft) takes place mid-season and lasts 20 rounds (used to be 40), plus picks that teams are given as compensation for other events. Teams can draft players either out of high school or college baseball—while the majority of players in the early days were picked right out of high school, nowadays the largest percentage are collegiate players. High school players are only eligible after graduation, and they don’t have junior leagues like the OHL or USHL. Players at universities can only be drafted after their 3rd season there in order to avoid going to a university only for drafting purposes. 

Teams retain the rights to sign the players they draft until July 15 of the following year, and a player who does not sign with their team is eligible to be signed once again as long as they meet the age and educational requirements (attending an academic institution, three years of college, etc.) Unless the player has consented to be re-selected by their old team, they cannot be chosen again in another draft year. This leads to players like Brandon Belt having been drafted three times, by the Red Sox, Braves, and Giants, and ultimately playing for the Giants after his college career.

The Rule 5 Draft is another major part of the MLB drafting system. It's sort of similar to what happens in the NHL with an expansion draft, but it takes place in the winter every year. As the MLB prospect pipeline moves slower and it's easy for teams to Stockpile high-quality prospects and bury them in the minors due to the team's current success, this draft aims to ensure that young players have a chance to play in the bigs on a team that needs more manpower. Not every team has to select a player in the Rule 5 draft; last season, 15 players were taken, including the Nats selecting Thad Ward and the Phillies selecting Noah Song.

Here's the official MLB description of the drafting process:

Podcasters or Whatever

My most toxic trait is that I unfortunately love listening to sports podcasts, so here are some good baseball ones:

The Athletic Baseball Show

Ballpark Dimensions

Effectively Wild

The Strike Zone

I hope this serves as a useful first step! Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or want to yell about baseball - I wrote this for two people, so if either of those two people find it helpful, the three hours I spent on it will have been worth it.

[starlight-starbright1918]

masterlist

smut 🥵 fluff 💕 angst ⚡️ personal favourite *

Steve/Bucky Oneshots

fight to the finish ⚡️

shall we play a game?

the sun and the black hole part one part two ⚡️*

James Barnes is a monster.

Or at least, that's what HYDRA made him. Natasha says that he can be something different, that he can be good again, but how can he be good again when Steve was all the good he had?

you were made for me ⚡️

they deserve that—to be together, to be happy.

you were all I ever longed for 🥵💕

Bucky knows the best ways to pull Steve apart, and put him back together.

make ups and make outs ⚡️🥵

Steve and Bucky have a fight.

of thunderstorms and seances 💕

Bucky opens his home when Steve locks himself out during a thunderstorm.

bad days 💕

some days are worse than others.

rain and pizza part one part two ⚡️

Steve and Bucky broke up two months ago.

silence in the library 💕

Steve and Bucky are brought together by an interesting event in the campus library.

cookies and coffee 🥵⚡️

Steve takes shifts at the cookie shop on campus.

the mission 🥵⚡️

“They knew we were coming. It was a trap.”

like a drum (baby don’t stop beatin’) ⚡️💕🥵*

Bucky returns to find something very wrong with Steve.

blessed be the boys time can’t capture 💕🥵

Steve works at a tattoo shop after being discharged from the military and he's been looking for Bucky Barnes for two years with no luck until James walks into his store. Feels, fluff, movie nights, and sex ensue.

unstable 💕🥵*

He takes comfort in the strong hands protecting him from the chill, from the monsters in his head. They still have no clue what’s coming.

there’s more to living (than being alive) 💕🥵*

“If I’d known all I had to do was get beat up for you to come find me, I’d’ve done it months ago, Buck.”

self-starter 💕

“I’ll always come for you,” Steve murmurs. “’Till the end of the line, Buck.”

flaws ⚡️🥵

Tony tells Bucky about Steve and how Cap handles missions. It doesn't go over well.

underneath the water 💕🥵

Steve an Bucky are on separate missions when Steve has a nightmare.

let the ocean take me ⚡️🥵

Bucky has been recovering for months but seems to be more closed off than ever. Steve gets back from a mission and everything changes.

you can make it (to the sunrise) ⚡️🥵💕

Bucky is an ex-marine going back to college where he meets Steve Rogers—the hot guy in his 8am math class. Steve is an artist who drinks too much coffee and gets sick a lot.

Steve/Bucky Series

Goner (wip) 🥵⚡️*

Steve meets Bucky through a pen pal program, and their relationship grows from there.

1 2 3 4

my sun, my moon 🥵⚡️*

a soulmate AU where Steve is a warlock adopted into a werewolf pack after the death of this parents and Bucky is a werewolf from a mysterious background taken into Steve's pack.

part one part two

dead inside ⚡️🥵*

Zombie apocalypse fic with lots of angst, pain, regret, and love.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

dog tags ⚡️🥵*

"Prove it—prove you’re my friend, prove I was who you say I am, prove I’m anything but the gunmetal in my mouth and the slaughter to my name." Steve just reaches up and removes the dog tags from around his neck and presses them, gently, into Bucky’s open palm.

1 2 3

fire alarms ⚡️🥵

Something sets the fire alarm of and, thankfully, Steve forgets his room key.

1 2 3 4

Finan x Reader Oneshots

are you mine? ⚡️🥵

Your life had been rather simple until tragedy struck and you were taken in by Uhtred. Years later, you have sworn yourself to him and his cause, traveling and fighting with his men.

Finan x Reader Series

sometimes you meet the right people at the wrong times (wip) ⚡️🥵*

You and Finan dated for six years throughout high school and college. When Finan moves to Ireland, he breaks it off and three years later, appears back in your life. You’re still in love with him, but you refuse to allow him back in your life. Can Finan change your mind, or will you finally move on?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Eskel x Reader Series

what it cost series

the death of peace of mind (PT I) ⚡️💕🥵*

You’re a witch, a healer, and you’ve been traveling with Geralt for a long time. This winter, he’s decided to return to Kaer Morhen with you in tow. Along the way, you meet one of his brothers, and your relationship only grows from there.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

careful what you wish for (PT II) ⚡️💕🥵

You follow Eskel along the path.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

[sunflowerheartsandstarryskies]

The Devil and the Mermaid - Chapter Three: Lucifer x Mermaid!Reader

Warnings: None

Author’s Note: Hehe, I’m back??? kinda anyway, I had gotten some energy and motivation to finish up chapter three, while also getting ideas on where the goal of this series is headed. The inspiration here came from a dream of mine, also one of my favorite shows “The Legend of the Blue Sea” has some heavy inspiration in here as well. Thank you so much for the support in the first parts! I will also create a tag list for this story since I saw someone interested in that. Again I love reading your guys’ comments and if you want to be part of a tag list for this series please let me know :) Thank you so much for all the new followers and notes!!

Prev Chapter | Next Chapter

Taglist: @magnet-girl​

_______________________________________________________________

You woke up when a blinding light hit your face, you let out a groan and opened your eyes. You looked up to see Lucifer was the one to open up the blinds with a big grin on his face. “Good morning sleeping beauty, you gotta get up because we got some things that we need to get for you if you are planning to stay here with me,” he points to a closet, “Go in there and pick whatever you want.” 

You begrudgingly stretched and rolled off the bed, when you walked to the closet you caught your reflection and you got a huge smile on your face. “The moon really did grant my wish! This isn’t just a dream!” you squealed and with more enthusiasm, you went to open the closet. 

You didn’t know what over half of the stuff in there was or how you were supposed to put it on your body, so you just looked over at Lucifer with a sheepish look in your eye. He sighed playfully and he goes, “Oh alright, I thought you might have some ideas, why don’t you wear one of my dress shirts and I think I can find sweatpants for you somewhere.” 

So after some time of debating in his head on what would look best on you, and with some comments coming from you, Lucifer managed to put on the outfit for you as well as some very unfitting shoes. 

With all that settled Lucifer clapped and then escorted you towards the elevator as he says, “We are going to be getting you clothes for you as well as actual good shoes for you. As a human, you need to protect your feet so it won’t get hurt. We may even get some breakfast or lunch depending on how long we’re out.”

 “That sounds awesome, but how can I help you with that?  Don’t people buy things with something? I’ve seen humans use green things to get things, I don’t have any of that,” you questioned as you tilted your head. 

He just lifts his hand as he tutted, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about a thing like that, and might I add how perceptive you are of humans, it’s quite impressive.” You blushed at his compliments and he grinned when he saw your red face. 

“Now, let’s get going, shall we? I had my whole schedule clear for you, I want to make your first day in the human world a good one,” he said as he walked with you to the elevator.

As Lucifer kept spending more time with you the more he felt entranced by you, your beauty, curiosity, and just absolute adorableness. ‘Maybe you were a siren instead of just a mermaid?’ he thought. 

The first stop of the trip was a shoe store and he let you pick whatever you thought looked the nicest, which there were some boots, high heels, and a pair of sneakers. It was pretty awkward for both of you to try to figure out what size shoe you were but you ended up getting it right for all the pairs of shoes you got. 

The next stop was you ending up going clothes shopping, never in all your life had you seen so much life before, well not aquatic or marine life that is. You were at a mall, and all the smells and sights were flooding your senses and you felt so giddy at everything around you. Lucifer found you incredibly adorable to watch as you found your way through the mall. He noticed that you did have some odd effects on aquatic creatures, like koi. 

After shopping for quite a bit both of you were pretty tired from all the shopping and there was a seating area near a koi pond. Lucifer has sat by here before, he found the little koi to be rather serene so he wondered what you would think of them. After a while of you staring at them you turn to Lucifer and say, “They’re very homesick, they don’t like it here. Well at least the oldest ones don’t, the kids don’t seem to mind they like watching people.” 

“Oh? You speak fish?” He asks with a smile. You scrunch up your nose at him and replied, “Something like that, my clan we are more attuned with speaking to dolphins, whales, and sharks but when you get to be surrounded by so many different species you learn to pick up a thing or two.” Lucifer gives a hum in response and nods his head as if he’s thinking about what you said. 

After a couple of moments of you having a conversation with the eldest koi, who calls himself Melvin, Lucifer decided that he would treat you to some lunch. “Now what is it that you normally eat?” he questioned. “Well depends on where we are, sometimes we can only eat the plant life, other times there will be an abundance of fish that we can eat and still keep the local life sustainable,” you explained. “I think you might like sushi, it’s fish mixed with other human food, it can be quite good,” Lucifer grinned. With that being said he took off in the direction of the sushi place, and you followed along with him.

You ate with your hands and stuffed your face full of the delicious food that you got there. Much to the amusement of Lucifer, who had tried to teach you how to use chopsticks. Your eyes are bright with delight from all the good food you had and Lucifer cracking jokes with you, even if you don’t understand most of what he is trying to say to you.

As you were walking back you felt that someone was following the both of you and you tried to get Lucifer’s attention to notice that someone was following you at the tail end of your trip. Lucifer snuck a glance at who you thought might be following you, he let out a long sigh and he rolled his eyes. “Stay close to me,” he told you as he turned fully around with arm blocking you protectively.

As the creeper approached you, you recognized them as the woman from Lucifer’s place earlier, you think he called her “Maze”. She swaggered forward to the both of you, and Lucifer said exasperatedly, “What do you want, Maze?” “I’ve just been keeping tabs on the two of you, wondering what it is about this one that you seem so keen on keeping this time,” Maze taunted as she stuck out a finger towards her. 

You just look up at Lucifer with a curious tilt to your head wondering what in the moon’s light is she talking about? Lucifer shrugged his shoulders at you while he went back to Maze. “Look Maze, you are going to have to get used to her being around the club and me. She is-you are,” as he turns to you, “amazing and has reinvigorated me with energy that I haven’t felt in years. Not even the humanity that the detective seems to inspire within me, but (Y/N) here is simply extraordinary, now what is exactly your problem with her? I’d like to get this over with now. I don’t want any miscommunication from us.”

“Does she know who we are? What we are? I don’t want you to forget what your responsibilities are while we are here. And what about your precious detective? Hmmm? Have you tossed her aside while you picked up this new plaything?” Maze sneered. 

You pursed your lips as you were observing what was going on, even if you were new to this whole human emotion thing, you can easily tell that Maze was giving off a vibe of her defending her territory, what territory she was defending you couldn’t tell. You left this conversation to Lucifer, not knowing how to appease this strange woman. Was she like Lucifer, you wondered, because of her line of questioning you assumed so. 

“Yes, she knows about me that is a part of the reason why I like her so much, I doubt the detective would be so at ease with me if she found out about who I was. However, she doesn’t understand our world or the rest of the world for that matter. I would also like to emphasize a point I made last night, I do not like the tone you have with (Y/N) fix it. She is not my ‘plaything’ as you so delicately put it. She’s a confidante of sorts for now,” he rectified. 

As his answer seems to register to all of you, Maze crossed her arms as she gives a hum of acknowledgment. Lucifer took your hand in his and started to walk away from Maze, seemingly ending the cold confrontation. 

You looked back at Maze who glared at you but sighed in resignation as she walked in the other direction of you guys. 

When you guys got back to LUX anxiety seemed to be creeping up on you as the conversation kept sinking further into your mind, but you tried to be strong because of your faith in what the moon brought you to. Your clan didn’t believe in much but it believed in the powers of the moon because it had given you protection and gifts in many varieties. 

So, you just had to keep pursuing what your heart was after, and your heart was after Lucifer. You just hope that your faith and love was strong enough for you to stay on land, for the sake of both of your futures together you hoped so.

[firebirdsdaughter]

Mrrrrrrrrh…

… Okay.

Here’s the thing.

There’s a rumour (there seem to be several forms of it?) that we’re gonna get a RyusoulWhite who is a lady and is gonna have Kishiryu.

Now, this is not me saying that I do not want this to be true. It would be cool if this were true.

But personally? I find it unlikely. And there’s something else.

Given certain things, though, including some mixed signals/indications from the series, people are assuming it’s the PM.

I am ninety-nine point nine percent sure it is not gonna be her—at least, not if the rumours about White having Kishiryu are true.

Primary reason? The actress is thirty nine years old. Now, in life, that’s not old. But this is a kids’ show. Specifically a kids’ show in Japan, where my impression is that, esp when it comes to women, in media, they tend to scale younger. And, I mean, in this situation, it makes a certain amount of sense; they want kids to see these ‘young, energetic heroes’ and relate to them etc. Especially in recent Sentai; Keisuke being thirty three I think is the oldest we’ve gone w/ a core senshi—and he was a guy. For female characters? I don’t think we’ve ever seen one over thirty (core senshi, I mean—I’m not forgetting MagiMother, I mention her below). I find it distinctly unlikely (not impossible, mind you) that they will introduce someone close enough to being a core Ranger as to have personal, unique mecha, w/ an actress of that age.

Now, I should note that people aren’t making this guess w/out evidence. There is the thing w/ her having the pendant. However, the stuff about the Kishiryu themselves is also pretty suspect; apparently the source it originated from isn’t the most reliable, and another version of the rumour I saw was listing alleged release dates and prices… Except it included the GaisoulKen, and while they did get the release date… The price is wrong by 2,000 yen (are the characters for three and five easy to mix up? Alternatively, do they write them in Arabic numerals? Bc that would make it even harder to mix up). Also, the creatures listed are a dolphin and sea lion. I realise we have a Tigersaurus, but a smilodon (or even a mammoth, should one appear), are creatures that, at the very least, are generally vaguely associated w/ dinosaurs in media. They’re from the same ‘ancient creatures’ category. Breaking out a sea lion and/or a dolphin… Feels like too massive a break from the main theme, even for Toei. Besides, they’ve proven themselves capable of identifying water-living dinosaurs—why not use something else from the Mosasaurus family? The fact that these alleged Kishiryu are marine animals at all is also suspect, combined w/ another version of the rumour I saw that alleged this ‘seventh member’ would be from the Sea Tribe. The PM cannot be from the Sea Tribe. Not just bc she knows Banba, who we know for a fact is from the village of the Land Tribe, but bc she specifically says that she left the village three hundred years ago. It has also been stated that the Sea and Land Tribes broke it off during the initial conflict millions of years ago. For her to be from the Sea Tribe, she would have had to leave the sea and move to the village, then in turn leave the village—which, given what we know, seems unlikely, since the two branches seem to be feuding and she specifies her reason for leaving being that she wanted a normal life (plus, since the Sea Tribe’s apparently declining… They really gonna just let folk leave like that?).

Now, I am specifically saying that I don’t think she’ll be ‘officially joining’ the core team and have unique mecha of her own—there is still the matter of her having the necklace. My guess is that, if they do have a seventh, and it be her, it will be a MagiMother situation (esp since she’s around the age that actress was), where she’s sort of an ‘eleventh hour ranger’ who comes to help in the last few battles. That wouldn’t surprise me. But I highly doubt we’ll see her as a ‘main’ team member w/ designated Kishiryu. It’s not impossible, of course. Toei could very easily surprise me. But I doubt it.

We do have other options—there’s Oto. But the actress is twelve, and I’m not convinced they’re gonna break out another ‘kid’ senshi so soon after the last one (like, technically she’s probably a hundred fifty or something, but the actress is twelve and looks it), esp not the first girl. In contrast to the PM actress being above the usual age range, she’s below it. Again, not impossible, but I doubt it (and while she is from the Sea Tribe… My thoughts on what the alleged Kishiryu allegedly are still apply).

Other option is Ui. But the whole concept clashes rather drastically w/ her. She’s more associated w/ yellow than white (and I would love to see her become RyusoulYellow). On the other hand, we currently don’t know whether she has any connection to the Sea Tribe or the Ryusoul Tribe in general (but the sea lion and dolphin remain suspicious choices).

Last option: new character. This… Seems to me possible the most unlikely.

This is, also, assuming that there will be a ‘seventh’ at all, which I also doubt. They’re playing back to the basics w/ this season (don’t get me wrong, I love the basics), and I’m still getting very Zyuranger and Gingaman vibes, which notably both only went to six members (something a number of the older Sentais did, post Zyuranger). My guess is that Ryusoulger will do the same, w/ the possible exception of someone using the Gaisoulg armour for good, which wouldn’t technically be a seventh ‘Ryusoulger.’

Now, like I said, Toei could still prove me wrong. If it all does happen, that’d be really cool (I’d just have to fiddle about w/ the colours for my ocs again XD). It would be a little ‘break’ from the norm in show that they’re mostly playing safe. Would be an interesting twist.

Though… I do have to admit… Not feeling the dolphin/sea lion thing. Even if everything else is true… I hope that isn’t. I’d accept crocodiles, those guys are billions of years old. But dolphins and sea lions?

(I should note—I originally saw this in the same set of rumours that claimed Daigo was related to Gaisoulg. Given how that’s very unlikely (and something I sincerely hope is false), it would also cast doubt on the whole of these rumours as well. Also: NONE of this is confirmed. These are just my thoughts on some unverified rumours.)

[ursafilms]

Jedi Knight and Homicide

In 1996, LucasArts and Steve Dauterman called again. Did I have any interest in producing Jedi Knight? A more complex videogame requiring a lot more actors and ones that would actually have to be able to act and not just ensconce themselves in a rib-crushing costume or rocket seat the size of basic coach as they had in Rebel Assault II, my previous effort for George Lucas.

Me: "Uh, yes?"

Steve: "How soon can you get here?"

I arrived at LucasArts, just as Dauterman hung up the phone. 

He handed me the cut-scene storyboards. They showed Aliens requiring original design, set pieces needing original construction, and wardrobe not currently in the Lucasfilm Museum. We had cannibalized the company’s museum for its stock of costumes from the Star Wars canon for Rebel Assault II. That first game also needed no Aliens.

All these tasks in the previous paragraph translates to a real job. At Lucas this meant I’d have to be blessed by George since a lot of the art direction, costumes, and other visuals would be original and not stock. This would entail me meeting George . . . at Skywalker Ranch . . . in his office.

And more than the time I’d spent in the business being embarrassed in public by the topflight commercial directors of the 80’s, or my own personal Nightmare Before Christmas with Tim Burton and the coffee maker, or even having to ‘handle’ the likes of Carol Channing, Sammy Davis Jr., and Bill Cosby (Jell-O pudding. Mmm. Mmm. Good.) nothing could have prepared me for actually sitting down to get vetted by George Lucas.

The closest experience to professional fear I could remember was being cut right away, more than once, by Michael Bennett during auditions for Chorus Line. Or, having to sing ‘Blue Skies’ acapella for Bob Fosse. Or, maybe it was the time one of the ensemble dancers in Hello Dolly picked up a napkin as opposed to a tablecloth during the waiter’s ballet. But that’s another book.

After a coin flip, I’d have to say the knee-knocking of my illustrious dance career came closest.And like most things in life, the anticipation exceeded the actual event. Not the part about meeting the man who changed filmmaking forever, but the fear factor. George Lucas could not have been nicer. I don’t recall a lot of the conversation. He did ask me about my work on Nightmare and, of course, on Rebel Assault II. 

George impressed upon me the same things he probably imparted to everyone who worked on Star Wars franchise projects. Consistency with the mythology (For lack of a better term) was most important. The archetypes of bad guys. Wardrobe choices for good guys, particularly those of the Rebellion. Color palettes for certain planets depending on their ‘role’ in the video. Found him to be soft-spoken and genuine. And, again, though I don’t remember much, I will never, ever forget that meeting, which took place at Skywalker Ranch in West Marin. I walked into the antebellum house that served as his office and sat with him and looked out over the beautifully manicured landscape through the bay window in front of the house.If not for the fact that he looked like an Ewok during this Heavy-Facial-Hair-Period of his life, I’d have passed out. I just kept imagining him as a little furball, per Harrison Ford. It made me exhale enough to not hyperventilate.

****

Jedi Knight inflicted one of the most dreaded departments in the history of filmmaking on me.Wardrobe, which is part of the Vanities Department. If I could have dressed and made up actors all by myself, I would have. Nothing gave me more understanding of serial killers than having to deal with the collection of Macy’s make-up floor rejects that passed themselves off as hair stylists, two-legged cosmetic applicators, and the worst of them, costume or wardrobe designers.

I’d much rather deal with Directors of Photography on their overloading of lens orders than have to discuss fabric textures with these recent escapees from the Lord & Taylor couture department. 

We cast a very trim and beautiful woman for the female bad guy on Jedi Knight. As I sat in the costume shop at Lucas, cleaning my .38, I was subjected to the following from some Coco Chanel wannabe as she did her level best to hide the actress’ well-toned figure.

Coco: “I think it should have a soft drape. Perhaps tulle?

Me: “Something used for ballerinas ain’t a great idea for an evil FEMALE Sith Lord.”

Coco: “Really? And what did you have in mind, Mister Producer?”

Me: “Given her figure and her role, how about Vampire chic?”

At this time the use of the bloodsuckers for reference in films and TV shows was not a microwaved concept. True Blood hadn’t arrived to tantalize us with its brilliant dialogue and ridiculous concept of somewhat benign predators purchasing a house in a quiet suburban neighborhood.

Dimbulb Neighbor Wife: “Honey, look there’s a new family of vampires moving in next door. I should take something over.”

Dimbulb Neighbor Husband: “That’s nice. There’s still some type O in the freezer from the last vampire family. Where did they move to by the way?”

Dimbulb Neighbor Wife: “The Arteri clan? I think they went back to Italy.”

Dimbulb Neighbor Husband: “Okay. Take the leftovers, and if you never come back, I’ll wait for your metamorphosis and then you can come home and feed off me for an eternity.”

Dimbulb Neighbor Wife: “Oh that would be lovely.”

As an aside, when my good friend, Dan Ogawa, got hitched I attended the wedding. He put me at a table of production professionals, but since they all worked for public television, it put me in the difficult position of carrying on a conversation, especially after the wife of one of the guests postulated DIVERSITY as the overarching concept of True Blood.

Me: “Is that right? From what I can tell, the cast had just finished a series of L’Oreal commercials. So does the diversity of True Blood lay in the difference between a nine and a ten?”

If not for the presence of a justice of the peace and Dan’s elderly parents, a wedding cake food fight might have ensued. After Lee kicked me under the table several hundred times, I relegated my comments to oohing and aahing over the DIVERSITY of True Blood. 

However, had I known that Dan would be divorced within two years I’d have stood on my chair and castigated the politically correct twit for daring to virtue signal at my table.

****

But back to the Coco Clone, the head of the Vanities Department for Jedi Knight. She had drawn a line in the sand over her wardrobe choice for evil female Sith Lord.

Coco: “I think the actress playing Sariss will be able to perform admirably in tulle.”

Me: “I’m sure, but I’ve got a market of teenage boys whose hormone levels are in the red zone 24 hours a day. If I put her in tulle, sales will drop by millions. I guarantee it.”

Coco: “I don’t think we should get hung up on stereotypes.”

Me: “No one is stereotyping Sariss. The actress is a workout freak. She’s cultivated that body for jobs like this. So, let’s get to work on spray-painting some black spandex on her shapely behind and move onto one of the guys.”

Coco was about to accuse me of some heinously stupid crime of sexism, but before she could the marketing department of LucasArts lined up behind me, as did the director, and Steve Dauterman. The marketing department and Steve had financial success and hormone clanging male customers motivating them. The director would have preferred that Sariss perform the entire game naked, but spandex provided the next best glimpse.

All I wanted to do was move onto the rest of the 14 leads that required specialty wardrobe, which we did after agreeing that Sariss needed to having nothing between her and her catsuit.The other attractive female in the cast played the Princess Leia knockoff role, so that limited the controversy to what shade of white battle ensemble we needed to squeeze her into. The male parts, a collection of good and bad guys occupied the rest of the meeting.

Coco, however, kept gravitating towards her Marin County roots, which consisted of channeling ideas germinated from Woodstock. If she hadn’t been a Lucas employee, I’d have bounced her right off of Skywalker Ranch.

Me: “No. Tie-dye is a bad fit, unless we’re in Mos Eisley, which we are not.”

Coco: “Mos’ what?”

Me: “Are you f$#king kidding me? How did you get his job?” 

Coco: “I’ll have you know—”

Me: “Don’t want to hear about it. It probably involves a wet—”

Dauterman: “Okay, let’s move on.”

So I did.

Me: “Colors in a darker palette for the bad guys. Lighter palette for the good guys. Don’t know how much clearer I can be. I can’t put Sariss’ consort in hippie-wear. This game is about a war between these two factions. The concept is military. I need form-fitting outfits that are just loose enough to allow for quick movements. The fight choreographer is on this job for every shoot day for good reason.”

I got my way, but discussions like this, now a regular occurrence on any job with a Vanities Department exhausted me. More than most, I appreciated a well-developed POV on creative matters. Missing the concept, or letting your ego sidetrack a project is crippling.

****

Jedi Knight needed so many stellar resources that I opted to shoot in Los Angeles. Kooktown, USA (That’s San Francisco, for those of you reading this as your first excerpt.) just doesn’t have the talent level to pull it off. On many levels, a great call on my part. On just a handful, a stomach acid producing one. 

First up for indigestion, studio space. While an abundance of it occupied much of southern California, stage owners and managers have a tendency to look at out of town productions as a way of boosting their profit margins from 1% to 50%. 

The local production manager, Beth, toured dozens of stages before taking me out to look at three prime candidates, and after a negotiation that consisted of lowering expectations of the rapacious owners, we settled on Hayvenhurst Studios, a home to early TV and film westerns. It still had the sheriff’s office building, replete with hitching post and horse trough, which it used as an office. Beth and I moseyed on inside the office. First order of business? Getting the deal in writing to avoid any surprises on the back end. Guaranteed, if a stage contract doesn’t include everything down to paper products, the invoice will have a charge for toilet paper higher than the entire Lighting and Grip cost.

Beth: “$1200 for load-in. $1500 for Pre-Light and Shoot. $1200 for strike.”

Sheriff Hayvenhurst: “Rate card is $1750 for—”

Beth: “Don’t care what rate card is. $1200 for load-in. $1500 for Pre-Light and Shoot. $1200 for strike.”

Deputy Hayvenhurst: “Next item.”

Beth: “Grip and Electric package as listed in the stage’s package is $500/Day flat. Items not listed are a la carte, but must be approved prior to use by me or George.”

Sheriff: “Rate card is $800—”

Beth: “Don’t care what rate card is. Grip and Electric package as listed in the stage’s package is $500/Day flat. Items not listed are a la carte, but must be approved prior to use by me or George.”

This went on for another hour. By the time we had moseyed out of the Sheriff’s office, Beth had a signed contract that fit within the confines of our budget. Eternal vigilance would be required for the duration of the job, since any crack of fiscal daylight a vendor in the film industry can find would be exploited to the point of financial ruin for producers. 

We moved into the studio on a Monday for the build and pre-light day. 

This is what greeted us on the main wall of the cyc. (See Below)

Here’s the view of the left and right side walls of the cyc. (See Below)

And here’s the floor. (See Below)

Beth George stopped everyone just inside the studio. She had a look on her face that would have scared the Gestapo out of Poland.

Beth: “Nobody f$%king move.”

We all froze, including Jason Chin, the game supervisor from Lucas, who had a thousand pound desktop computer under each arm. Nick No Last Name, the prop department intern who talked me into working on the project, started giggling like a fourteen-year-old at a Jon Bon Jovi concert, didn’t stop walking and found himself face down on the floor. Beth had him in a hammer lock.

Beth: “No one walks on that floor without these.”

She stuffed a pair of the dreaded clean room booties into Nick’s mouth. The poor guy, so traumatized by his first encounter with an experienced P.M., did not wear regular shoes for a month after the job finished. I went back to visit him at his regular job at Kinko’s and when I heard the shuffling noise emanating from the supply closet, I knew he still wore the accursed footwear.

I hate booties. I also hate clean room masks, coats, gloves, and pants. Add hardhats to the list, along with steel-toed boots. Over the years the enthusiastic Safety Overlords, have trussed film crews up in every capability killer imaginable. It only took one job in one high-tech chip manufacturing facility to make me swear off entering any similar business. 

Oh, I’d take the job, but only at the point of gun would I ever slide one of those dopey white jumpsuits over my clothes. Not after seeing the employees walk in to these supposed sterile environments carrying a Sloppy Joe lunch and smoking black cigarettes.

But Beth would not be denied. We all changed our shoes. Oddly, production and folks on flat rates put them on so quickly we went back in time. The hourly hires took most of the morning to do the same thing which neutralized any positive use of the clock. 

And there we stood, surrounded by . . . (See Below)

Me: “I really like what we’ve done with the place.”

****

For two weeks, I lived at the Van Nuys Best Western. I endured about a dozen shooting days of one way conversations with my deaf DP, but the absolute soul-crushing interactions continued with the, ahem, Vanities Department. See the short list to follow.

1. Coco and her colleague, Igor, both of whom were forced hires because they were Lucas employees, delivered a grand total of Zero of the 14 principal wardrobe pieces on time, which was the aforementioned Monday build and pre-light. We were supposed to do the fitting that day as well. More on that to come. 

Early on I clearly told them I would NOT be taking them to southern California for the shoot and was assured everything would be finished in time for me to ship and/or drive said wardrobe for the first shoot day. The first people that greeted me at the hotel? Coco and Igor. They had just finished dinner and wanted to know about per diem. Me: “F$%K off.” 2. The efficiencies of Coco and Igor necessitated the hiring of a full-time seamstress to both finish and adjust the wardrobe. I had just added a seamstress and her assistant to my Vanities Department, in addition to the two incompetent Lucas employees who decided NOT to deliver the wardrobe when they said they would. With Prosthetics, I now had ten people in Vanities.

And I needed two fittings. Not one. Two. And in the interest of elucidation, I had ONE WARDROBE PER ACTOR. Not two. ONE. 

And why did I need more than one fitting? 

I’ll tell ya.

Despite the theoretical calculus employed by the Vanities Department our lead bad guy looked like someone had taken half of Siegfried’s costume and half of Roy’s and sewn them together in an ugly Yin/Yang combination the size of Totie Fields. His henchman, a part-time bouncer for the southern California mob, took a gander at his getup in the mirror after his fitting. He called Billy Barty and joined The Lollipop Guild. Coco and Igor looked the two actors over.

Coco: “Looks like we were slightly off in our measurements.”

Me: “If you try and put Sariss in tulle, you’re leaving Southern California in a body bag.”

The last time I heard someone say they were slightly off in their measurements, an actor took a joy ride through Central Park while tethered to a medieval catapult launcher, also called a flying rig. Images of Coco and Igor landing in the Loeb Boathouse Lake, as the aforementioned performer had, drifted delightfully through my head. Also, holding them underwater for several hours made me giddy.

Me: “Would you like another fitting? My current record is two unnecessary fittings per outfit, and there is a personal best is in my future. I can feel it.”

Coco: “I don’t see any other way.”

In order to avoid raiding petty cash for bail money, Beth and the director carried me out of the fitting room while I screamed, if memory serves, “I’ll tell you what else we could do. I could go back in time, and abso-f$&king-lutely refuse to hire any of the slugs that draw a paycheck signed by George Lucas.”

The job finished on-time, only $10,000 over budget, and without homicide.

[jjorgee]

Dear Hunter

God, I don’t know why I’m writing this. I thought about you today, I used to think about you a lot (sorry if that’s weird) but I don’t anymore. You’ll probably never read this or figure this out but I just wanna be free and finally tell my story about you.

I first saw you in APUSH junior year of HS the day I started at a new school. Cute. Blonde. Basically my type. Somehow I was lucky and got to sit in front of you and that day I remember you said “Wow a new kid, we never have one of those” or something along those lines and I thought “Wow he acknowledged my existence I might die.” But of course I was in the closet so I probably told myself that I just had a friend crush on you.

A few weeks went by and I switched my schedule around and I got into the same math class as you. That’s where I remember you first talking to me. “Cool, Jorge is here! Hey Jorge!” I don’t know why you were so excited that I was there but damn you got more and more friendly and excited around me, I swear you were either flirting with me or weirdly obsessed with me. You’d just constantly say hi to me randomly and try to talk to me. I think you liked that I was into Harry Potter and thought we might become good friends over it. You were obsessed with Harry Potter. I mean, so was I, who isn’t? But you were over the top in love with the series and I thought that’s I was a crazed HP fan. So we got to know each other a little better and I was excited to be talking to you, even though you were always a talker, you’d talk non-stop about anything and everything. I thought it was cute at first.

That summer you wanted to hang out with me as much as possible. You texted me every day to hang out downtown or get Starbucks or go to the park. I liked that you were so interested in me, until I actually started hanging out with you. I couldn’t get one word into the conversation whenever we talked or rather, you talked. I loved your enthusiasm and charm and your excitement for things and life, but I couldn’t share any of my own thoughts with you. So it turned me off and I decided that you probably weren’t the one for me, so I kind of ignored all your texts and messages, which btw sounded kinda flirty most of the time, and I stopped hanging out with you for a while. It felt like you liked me more than you liked your own girlfriend. I was so confused.

School started back up, senior year. It was a weird time. I came out that year. I felt a lot of sexual tension with a lot of guys. But the tension that I felt between you and me was the most frustrating. Now this is all speculation, and maybe just my imagination, but I swear, we didn’t talk much that year but it felt like we had our eyes set on each other. I tried to avoid you and forget about you but you kind of stole my heart again throughout the year. I felt like you were staring at me at times... like I stared at you sometimes before you looked my way, especially at lunch cuz you sat at the table next to ours. That’s probably why I couldn’t get over you, you were always there. I liked it and I hated it at the same time. I wanted you so badly. My stupid heart broke every day seeing you with another person. And I wanted you to know that. At the end of the year, you told me that we’d be going to the same community college. But your plans had changed and I was relieved and disappointed at the same time.

I think year went by without me seeing or talking to you after that. I finished my first year of college and then that summer, you randomly hit me up to hang out again. I wanted to give you a second chance, and even though I haven’t heard from you in a year, I thought about you a lot that year, so I said yes.

One day I was talking to my friend about you and how I was so confused and frustrated with you. I felt like the universe was trying to bring us together for some reason. Was it meant to be? Did you change? Would we fall in love somehow? It was a crazy and beautiful idea to think that I could fall in love with a boy like that.

Me and my friend were eating pizza while I told her about you and you randomly hit me up. It was crazy. You asked if I was busy or free to hang out and I told you I was with my friend. But right after we ate pizza we went to the pet store next door and guess who we ran into. You. Fucking you. There was no way you could have known where I was or that I was planning to go to that store!... I hope... that was weird. I thought it was a sign. Maybe we were meant to be...

After that, a few weeks went by and you hit me up again. You asked me to meet you at the park and I said yea. But I was freaking out. I was wishing and hoping that this was the day. The day you’d confess your feelings for me. The day I’d finally hold your hand and let you wrap your thick arms around me. I was so nervous and excited, it felt like a dream.

I walked to the park and saw you coming towards me with your bike. You looked so nice in your tank top and your cute little face and hair and smile. We met and you hugged me and I really wished that you didn’t let go of me. We walked over to a nice shady area under the summer sun and I was feeling the breeze and watching the leaves rustle and sway as if to say “good luck.” We sat on top of a picnic table and I was just mesmerized by you the entire time. I wished that you would’ve leaned in next to me or laid your head on my lap playfully or just stopped talking for a second and looked into my eyes as we leaned in closer and closer until we finally kissed... but no... you told me that you were leaving for the Marines. My heart sank.

Why? How could you do this to me? I just watched and listened as you told me what led you to want to leave and it was heart-breaking. You said that she was the only reason that kept you there and now that you’ve broken up, you were okay with leaving everything behind and training in hell and living in Virginia for a year or two while I was processing everything that you were saying. So you did leave.

And you didn’t only leave, you changed. You changed into someone that was different from the positive bubbly person I met and fell hard for. Once you came back, I didn’t know what would happen if I saw you again. And there were times we ran into each other and times that I thought I saw you but I saw you in a different light. And you got a new girlfriend, too.

I was mad. I felt like I was led on. I felt like I wasted so much time investing all these feelings for you. And I questioned why I ever liked you in the first place. Did you have any feelings for me at all? Was it all in my head? Were you just weirdly obsessed with me and wanted to be my friend? It’s probable. But there were so many things.....

So now I don’t really know what I think of you. But I hope you’re doing okay... I just think about you in times like this when I’m lonely and wanna remember a time that feels most like a love story I never had... I hope that I can have a real love story and not just wonder what could have been... but thanks for making me feel like I had something back then. Maybe I needed it. I kinda miss you. Take care.