#and in those last few seconds it's “What are you doing? versus ”I love you. How much will this hurt you when I'm gone?“ | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

storiesforallfandoms · 9 months ago

Text

icdiwabh ~ joseph quinn

word count: 3688

request?: no

description: after finding out that her recently broken up with ex is already in a new relationship, she puts on a happy face for the public. but she can't do the same with him

pairing: joseph quinn x female!reader

warnings: swearing, angsty angst, rpf, use of y/n

based on this song

masterlist (one, two, three)

To give her credit, my best friend and guitarist, Chloe, tried her best to keep me from looking at my phone before our show. And it was working. I didn't even think anything of it, just that we were goofing off before a show as usual.

And then my phone chimed with a text from my mom. She always sent me a good luck text before a show. I unlocked my phone to respond, then saw that my social media notifications were blowing up more than usual.

I shouldn't have looked, but you know what they say about curiosity and the cat.

I opened Twitter to see I was being mentioned a lot. Mainly in replies to other tweets, and most of the tweets were along the lines of, "What happened to @(Y/U/N)?" I clicked on one to see what that context was, and was brought to a tweet from Pop Crave.

"Joseph Quinn photographed on a date with Doja Cat," followed by various photos of my ex-boyfriend getting cozy with another woman.

I felt my heart drop and break into millions of pieces.

I know what you're thinking: why would seeing my ex moving on hurt so much? It's not like we were together. We were both free to see whoever we wanted now. But there were a few reasons this news was upsetting; for one, we had only broken up three months ago, which apparently is around the time when these pictures were taken. Second, Joseph had broken up with me due to the fact that I was a singer, which meant we didn't get to spend as much time together as either of us would've wanted. I understood at the time. I mean, of course the break up still hurt, but I kind of knew it was coming when things between us had felt different the last month or so of our relationship.

Then there was the biggest reason: Doja was the woman he told me not to worry about.

I am not joking.

Joseph and I were together when the whole Doja versus Noah stuff happened online. We both laughed about it at the time, and i had jokingly asked Joseph, "Should I worry about you getting stolen away by Doja Cat?" He had wrapped me in his arms, kissed me, and said of course not.

Obviously, that had changed.

Chloe found me just as the tears started to fall. She was quick to hug me and whisper comforting words.

"Sweetheart, I'm so sorry," she said. "But we have to get to the stage."

Performing was the last thing on my mind, but I had thousands of fans waiting for me. I couldn't let them down just because I was heartbroken.

I followed Chloe to take my place. I wiped the tears from my eyes, hoping my face wasn't too red or puffy. Our backstage crew passed me my microphone as the countdown for the show to start started in my earpiece. I took a deep, calming breath, pushing everything out of my mind. As the blinding stage lights hit me, I put on my best show smile.

~~~~~~

The next few weeks were tough. I had to go on a full social media hiatus, meaning I deleted all social media apps from my phone to keep myself from seeing any more updates on Joseph and Doja. Chloe took up posting on my accounts so no one suspected anything. We had already decided the best course of action was to ignore the questions and comments, and to pretend like the news didn't even hurt me.

But it did. It hurt me more than any words could ever describe. Having to go on stage two to three nights a week and sing the love songs I wrote about him made it even harder. I struggled to keep it together on stage sometimes. I saved the emotions for when I'd get back to the hotel or the tour bus. Then I'd be able to cry until my eyes hurt and were too heavy to stay awake.

Some nights were sleepless, though. On those nights, I'd usually just lay awake or try to use one of the streaming services on my phone to distract myself. One night, I found myself too hungry to be distracted. My stomach was rumbling enough that I could hardly hear the show I was watching. After some quick Googling, I found a 24 hour diner that seemed like it would be slow enough for me to go without being recgonized.

I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a baggy hoodie with the hood up to cover my face. I put my phone and my hotel room key in my pocket, and left to make my way to the diner.

As I expected, there weren't many people there. Maybe one table with two young ladies sat there, plus the workers. I kept my hood up anyways as I ordered, just in case. The host who took my order did look at me like he may have known who I was, but he didn't say anything.

My plan was to get my food and take it back to the hotel to eat it. But that plan was quickly changed when a familiar British voice said, "(Y/N)?"

I froze. There was no way he was actually here. It had to be a figment of my imagination. A hallucination made up by my misery over the breakup and his quick moving on.

But when I looked up, there he was. He was also in a hoodie and sweatpants, but was doing less to hide his identity. Actually, nothing to hide his identity. I couldn't help but glance around to make sure no one was looking at us or there was no paparazzi that had followed him and started snapping photos.

"How did you know it was me?" I asked, then realized it was a stupid question and winced at myself.

"That's...um...my hoodie."

I looked down and realized that he was right. I hadn't even noticed that I had it, even when I packed it for the tour.

"I was wondering where it went," he said with a little smile.

"Here it is," I said, lamely flourishing my hands. "I'd offer to give it back, but I'm not wearing anything underneath."

I saw him swallow at my comment. I thought I saw a tinge of pink creeping onto his cheeks, but I figured it must've been the lighting or something. There was no way I could still make him blush when he obviously had no feelings for me anymore.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I'm in town shooting the Fantastic Four movie," he explained. "I just finished a late shoot, so I stopped in for something to eat. What are you doing here?"

"I had a show tonight. I couldn't sleep, and I'm hungry. So..." I did my lame flourish again.

"Oh yes. The post-show adrenaline."

I ground my teeth to keep from saying anything. The weeks of sadness and misery suddenly vanished and became anger. I was angry at him for reminding me that he knew me so well. That we had shared memories on sleepless nights like this. I was also angry that he didn't think our breakup and his quick moving on would be the cause of my sleeplessness. Did he think I didn't know? Or just that I'd be okay with him and his new girlfriend mere weeks after our two year long relationship ended?

I just shrugged in response.

My order was called and I quickly grabbed it. I turned to give Joseph a wave as a goodbye. I needed to get out of there and get back to my hotel room to wallow in my dispair.

But it seemed Joseph had other plans, as he stopped me before I could leave. "Do you want to sit? Maybe...catch up?"

"Is that a good idea?" I asked.

"I don't see why it wouldn't be."

"You don't want your new girlfriend to see paparazzi photos of you with your ex."

There, it was finally out. No more tiptoeing around the topic.

It seemed to have its desired effect as Joseph was now awkwardly shuffling. He rubbed the back of his neck, which was now undoubtably turning pink. "So, you've heard."

"Of course I heard!" I snapped. I glanced around again, realizing I was raising my voice. "Your pictures are everywhere, and I'm being tagged in them cause we never told everyone we had broken up."

"I'm sorry you had to find out that way."

I scoffed. "How else was I going to find out? Were you going to call me and tell me you were dating the girl you said wasn't a threat to our relationship?"

He sighed. Before he could say anything else, they called that another order was ready, and evidently it was his. It was also packed in a to go bag, so he clearly had no intentions of staying either. With any luck, he'd drop this stupid idea of sitting down for a "catch up" and let me leave to deal with all the emptions I was feeling.

But of course, luck was not on my side.

Joseph grabbed his food and turned back to me. "Just...sit with me for 15 minutes at least. Let me explain."

Even though I very much wanted an explanation, I said, "You don't have to explain anything."

"Just...please, (Y/N)."

And that's how I found myself sat in a booth that was tucked away, in the middle of the night with my ex-boyfriend.

It was a bad idea, and I knew that. Besides the fact that I definitely should not be sitting down with the ex that I had been in shambles over for weeks, it was also a bad idea publicity wise. Joseph wasn't trying to hide himself. Anyone could see us and snap a picture, or call paparazzi to make a quick buck. Even with me trying to hide myself, someone would eventually put the pieces together to realize it was me. Then we'd have a whole new shit show on our hands.

I opened my food and started to eat. There was no point in letting it go cold and completely ruin my night. Joseph wasn't as quick to do the same. He was watching me. When I realized he wasn't eating, I made a gesture for him to start talking.

"Is there anything specific you want to know?" he asked.

Well, that was a stupid question. There was a lot I wanted to know. So much so that I knew we'd be here way longer than 15 minutes if I asked it all.

I decided to ask him the most prominent question on my mind: "Did you leave me for her?"

He seemed stunned by my question. "No! No, of course I didn't. Why would you think that?"

I gave him a look. "Come on, Joseph. We both know why I'd think that."

He shuffled in his seat. "It's not like that."

"Then explain it. That's the whole reason I'm sat here."

So he did. He told me he met Doja (he used her real name, which made my stomach churn) at her concert. He had gone with a few friends, and when she found out he was there she brought them backstage to meet her. He swore it was all casual at first, that they were just friendly and were making light of the situation between her and Noah. When things started changing, he swore it was just a rebound thing.

"I never meant for it to become anything more," he insisted. "I was still so hurt. I just wanted something that would take my mind off of the pain."

I couldn't hold back the scoff that escaped my lips. "What?"

"Oh, nothing," I said. "I'm just so sorry to hear that you were hurting."

"What, you don't think our breakup was hard for me?"

"Weirdly enough, no, I didn't think you took things hard when you dumped me."

Joseph sighed. "It wasn't - "

"And you know what else?" I cut him off. "You told me you found it hard for us to be together because of our professions. And, honestly, I understood! If you weren't away filming, I was away touring. If you weren't doing press for a movie or show, I was doing press for an album. It wasn't easy, and while I was willing to go through those strifes for us, I did understand how it could be too difficult for you. But then you turned around, not even a month after you dumped me, and started dating another singer."

He was quiet. He couldn't even meet my eye.

I felt a lump forming in my throat, and my voice cracked as I said, "If you didn't love me anymore, you could've just said that."

He looked up at me quickly. "That's not - "

He was cut off again. Not by me this time, but by his phone. Someone was calling him. When I looked at the screen, I saw her name. It felt like a knife directly through my heart.

I packed my food and stood. Joseph looked like he was going to say something, but I put a hand up to stop him. "Answer your girlfriend, Joseph."

He didn't try to stop me when I left this time.

~~~~~~

As I expected, photos of Joseph and I got out. I didn't know to what extent as I still wasn't back on social media. My manager confronted me about it and I explained what had happened. She wasn't upset as I wasn't the one who hadn't been concealing my identity, and she agreed that the best course of action was just to ignore everything until it blew over.

Another two months passed and the tour finally ended. It became easier to perform as the time went on. Not completely easy, and I did have a night or two where I slipped up and got emotional on stage, but eventually I was able to put the meanings of my songs aside and just performed them for my fans. I knew some nights weren't as great as others, but I got through it, and finally I was going to have a break.

Chloe reluctantly agreed to let me have my social media back. I was still hurting a little, but I told her I couldn't isolate myself forever. It just wasn't healthy. Besides, I would need something to keep me occupied while I was home, besides just watching mind numbing reality TV. She finally relented when I told her she could watch me block the words "Joseph Quinn" and "Doja Cat" on all social media so that I wouldn't have to see any posts about them.

I was honestly surprised to find that I didn't want to look up anything to do with them. For a long time, the desire to know about their relationship was eating away at me. There were so many specifics I felt like I needed to know, but I eventually realized that I was just going to hurt myself further if I looked into them. Of course, I didn't completely stop thinking about Joseph. I didn't expect to. We had been together for two years, almost moved in with one another. I thought we were going to get married. You don't just let that go easily. But at least it was getting a little easier to live in a world where he was no longer mine.

On one particularly nice day, I decided to go out on the balcony to read. It was one of those fall days where the sun was out and there was a little heat coming from it, but not enough that it was unbearable. A slight breeze would blow through every so often, just cool enough to keep it tolerable outside. I was laid back in one of my deck chairs, engrossed in my book to a point that I hadn't heard someone approaching.

"Must be an interesting novel."

I jumped at the sound of a voice coming from my driveway below. I bookmarked my page and sat up to see the last person I wanted to be around. "What are you doing here, Joseph?"

"I just got back from filming."

"Good for you."

"I...I was hoping you were home."

"Well, you see that I am. Don't let the gate hit you on the way out."

"(Y/N), can we just talk?"

I stood from my seat and leaned over the balcony railing to look at him. "We said all there was to say in that diner months ago. There's nothing else to be talked about. Besides, do you want more pictures of us to come out? I'm sure Doja wouldn't be happy to see her man making a personal visit to his ex's place."

"We broke up!"

I stopped. "What?"

"Last month. It was all over social media, or so Lupita tells me." He tilted his head. "You didn't hear?"

"I-I blocked yours and Doja's names on social media so I wouldn't have to see any tweets or posts about you."

Joseph looked at me for a moment before barking out a laugh. I couldn't help but put a hand over my face as I laughed as well. Of course, by trying to block him out completely, I had totally missed the one thing I would've wanted to see.

I was a bit reluctant, but eventually I invited Joseph to come up. He knew his way through my place, he had been there enough times. I sat back down on my deck chair and pulled another one closer to me, as he appeared in the glass doorway. He sat down next to me and memories of all the times we had been out here flooded back to me.

"I wasn't done talking that night in the diner," he said. "I still had so much to say, and I have even more to say now."

"I didn't want to hear it," I admitted. "In my mind, after hearing how you and Doja got together, it just made more sense if you had broken up with me because you didn't love me anymore."

He shook his head. "It wasn't that at all. I never stopped loving you."

I was itching to ask him if that meant he still loved me now, but instead I said, "Then why?"

"I broke up with you because I loved you so much," he said. "Because loving you but not getting to spend time with you hurt so much, and I knew there was no way around that. When I started getting more job offers I knew things were just going to get so much busier for me, and that our already very short time together was going to dwindle down more and more, and I hated the thought of that."

"I would've taken a break," I told him.

"I couldn't ask you to do that. You love making music and performing. I could never ask you to stop doing that, or to change that. I thought the best thing for you would be if you could find someone who wasn't as busy, and who'd be able to go on tour with you and be at all your shows. Someone who wouldn't be in a different time zone basically 11 months out of a year and only be able to call you for an hour max every night."

"But what if that's not what I want?" I asked. "Yes, it was hard not to get to see you all the time, but I never would've traded that for anything else. I was so proud of you for all those roles you were getting, and even if I only got to talk to you for a few minutes, I loved getting to hear what you were doing. Because you were achieving your dream, and I got to be there to experience it. I don't want someone who can be with me all the time, I want you."

I hadn't noticed that we were both sat on the edge of our chairs. We were so close we were almost touching. I could smell the familiar scent of his cologne and it was making my heart skip a few beats.

"I should've talked to you instead of deciding just to end things," he said, his voice soft and quiet.

"You should've," I agreed. "And then if you were going to rebound, you shouldn't have done it with the girl you told me not to worry about."

He awkwardly chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, not my finest moment."

I sat back in my chair, although I didn't want to. I wanted to keep being this close to him, or maybe to get closer. "So why did you two breakup anyways?"

"She was nice and all, but she wasn't you."

We sat in silence, letting his words sink in. He was looking at me, almost like he was waiting. Maybe I was waiting, too, to see where that confession was supposed to go. After a few moments, my body moved before my mind could comprehend what was happening. I quickly leaned forward, nearly putting myself on Joseph's lap, and started kissing him. He kissed me back immediately, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me the rest of the way onto his lap.

"I missed you," he mumbled against my lips.

"I missed you too," I admitted. I pulled away to add, "But don't think you're completely off the hook. You did still hurt me, you know."

"I know I did. I'll spend the rest of my life making up for it if I have to."

I smiled. "I think I like the sound of that."

He smiled back at me and pulled me back in for another kiss. Eventually, my book was abandoned on the balcony, and the large blinds were closed to keep from anyone being able to see the reunion happening inside.

#joseph quinn #joseph quinn x reader #joseph quinn imagine #one shot #rpf #imagine #fanfiction #fanfic #fandom

154 notes · View notes

singmyaubade · 2 years ago

Text

Forget-Me-Nots

James Potter x Female!Reader

A/N: Hi there! I haven't written in a while, but this idea just struck me, and because I've been struggling with writer's block, I really needed to write it. In a way, it's my salvation. This is the first series I am starting, but I will be finishing and starting others.

IB: The Other Zoey by Sara Zandieh. (This movie so good by the way).

Summary: James could never forget a love like yours.

Warning: It may contain swearing and soon-to-be smut.

There were three things that you couldn't stand.

One was really cold classrooms, which not only made you sleepy but also made it difficult to concentrate on your studies. As a result, you started carrying a jumper with you everywhere you went.

The second was being sick; you detested missing out on opportunities and activities due to circumstances beyond your control, as well as how awful it would feel and how little you could do about it.

Three was crying,

Since fifth year, the idea of crying had both repulsed you and made you dislike how vulnerable everything was, as well as when someone felt sorry for you.

Of course, others could cry in front of you and you would give them comfort but you didn't want people to see you in pain and you making it everyone else's problem.

It wasn't right in your book.

But those were the three things you absolutely despised. They were all simple things you could avoid if you truly tried and you had for years.

But if we wanted to add a bonus point,

You would add James Fleamont Potter.

Quite ironic to hate "The Golden Boy,"

It was one of the most funniest cliches that even you could think of.

The girl who basically had no friends or social standing versus the most popular guy in Hogwarts.

Sounds about right.

But the reason that you couldn't include this in the things you couldn't stand is because it was complex. It wasn't simple and it wasn't something that you could easily describe nor avoid.

You couldn't say that you weren't being immature but what James had done had completely indescribably affected you.

To be fair, it was in fifth year and you were now on your seventh year which means the hatred is pre-historic but when 'The James Potter' cheats on you with Jade Davies AKA the girl you despise that has bullied you since first year,

It gets pretty intense.

Since then, you had refused to talk to James and he let you have your space.

Unfortunately, it didn't mean that Jade would stop bullying you but it only meant that she had more material to bully you with but James did his best to help you avoid her by distracting her when you came by or kissing to distract her.

But you weren't thankful for his gestures, you wished nothing but a quaffle to be shoved up his ass in all honestly.

Then again, it was all so long ago and you wanted to let it go and just have fun for your last year.

Which is why you attended the first Quidditch game of the season.

You were practically freezing, hugging your cheeks with your palms. It was especially cold and you forget to bring another jumper to top over the one you had now.

There was loud cheering all around you as you heard a few chants for James as you saw him dive for the golden snitch.

At the same time, the quaffle came fast in the same direction, colliding with James's head.

He went into instant unconsciousness as he was about to dove straight in the ground.

The crowd went silent as James fell in the air but it felt like he was already moving in slow motion.

Your instincts kicked in as you stood and grabbed your wand from your boot "Arresto Momentum!" You yelled, pointing your wand at him as his movements slowed and he hit the grass floor lightly.

You gasped as everyone watched you, their mouthes agaped but a small part of you only cared if James was okay.

You heard people yelling and whispers asking if he was okay and parts about how you had saved him.

But it wasn't your problem.

You grabbed your bag, moving from the stands as you made your way to the castle. Your feet rushed over to your dorm, trying to make it there as fast as you can.

"Y/N!" You heard someone yell as you looked behind you to see Lily.

You looked ahead of you, trying to rush faster and then Lily said, "You saved him," She panted as a few seconds of silence went.

"It wasn't intentional," You responded, rolling your eyes.

"But you did it instantly," She replied, "You saved him," She looked at you as if she was trying to figure you out.

You stuttered, "Y-You said that and shouldn't you be with him?" You questioned, trying to keep your composure.

"You should come with me," Lily said.

"No, that's a bad idea," You declined, "Jade should already be with him," You cleared your throat, setting your book bag on your shoulder again.

"They aren't together," Lily mentioned, "He wants to see you,"

You raised your eyebrow in confusion, why would James want to see you?

"Lily I don't think-" You tried,

"You must!" Lily responded.

"But-" You tried again.

"You have to," Lily sternly said.

"If I do, will you leave me alone?" You asked, her face lighting up as she grabbed your arm dragging you into infirmary.

You both entered the infirmary, surrounded by hospital beds. You looked around at other sick students as Lily dragged you over to where James was laying.

Sirius, Peter, and Remus were around him, quietly talking as you approached him.

He had a harsh, purple bruise on his temple that was the size of your hand and a bandage wrapped around his head.

"James, I got her for you," Lily said as James groaned, blinking to take a good look at you, his eyes still squinting from the light and how much his head hurt.

"Baby," He sweetly said, a wide grin appearing on his lips as he squinted.

Baby.

He hadn't called you that in so long.

You flinched, trying not to show how taken aback you were in order to not freak him out but you were. You looked at the three boys in front of you but they were equally confused too.

"Potter, have you lost your-" You said as Lily elbowed you, earning a hiss from you.

"Play along," Lily mouthed, making you even more confused.

"But-" You were about to speak before Lily pushed you in front of James.

"Um, are you okay?" You asked, looking at him awkwardly.

"I'm amazing now that you are here," He said, smiling.

"Oh that's great!" You fake excitingly said.

"I missed you so much," James took your hand, rubbing it as your face was hit with surprise, "I heard you in my dreams," He dreamingly smiled.

"That's nice," You awkwardly laughed, "You should sleep, your head is probably pounding," You said, patting the back of his hand as he only caressed yours.

"Stay with me?" He asked, drifting into drowsiness.

You looked around at his friends as they urged you to say yes, "Sure," You sighed.

James's eyes closed as you laid his hand next to him on his bed. You watched at how pretty he looked sleeping, his eyelids fluttering but that was before you snapped into reality.

"What is going on?" You asked sternly, crossing your arms.

"Well," Sirius was about to start but Remus continued for him.

"James had called your name on the field after you performed that spell for him," He explained, making you blush, "And he wouldn't stop calling your name until the nurse gave him a drowsy potion,"

Your eyebrow raised, why was James Potter calling for you out of all people? You couldn't help but question the entire thing.

"And why was he calling my name?" You asked.

"We don't know," Lily answered.

"Well, I can't be with him when he wakes up," You said, looking off.

"You have to," Sirius answered, "Prongs can't be stressed out, it will only worsen his brain and he will end up like a pound of sausage," He said, confusing you.

"Great analogy but I really should be-" You started as you were interrupted.

"James!" Jade yelled dramatically, running over to him, "Oh will he make it?" Jade asked, fanning herself as the group rolled their eyes.

"He will be fine," Remus said.

"But I think seeing you will make it worse," Sirius added with a smile.

Jade scowled at him before looking at you, "What is she doing here?" She furiously said.

You were about to speak before Lily did it for you, "He called for her,"

"No he didn't," Jade laughed, dismissing the ridiculous thought.

"But he did," Peter said as Jade has a disgusted look on her face.

"Well I'm his girlfriend so I'm sure he will want to see me," Jade boasted as if she only cared about the label and not the fact that James had truly gotten hurt.

"You guys have been broken up for six months," Sirius scoffed.

"I would prefer on a break," Jade corrected, glaring at Sirius.

"Okay well, this has nothing to do with me," You said, trying to move past Jade but she blocked you.

"What do you think you're doing?" Jade asked.

"Moving out of the way so that you can coddle James and kiss his boo boo's away," You mocked.

"Honestly, I keep forgetting that James chose me over you, it's actually quite hilarious," Jade smirked as you rolled your eyes.

"Congrats on being easy, it's one of your best accomplishments," You insulted, trying to move past her but failing once again.

"Nice of you to assume that James was only with me because I'm "easy," She gaped, causing you to step back.

"Seriously bugger off Jade," Sirius defended.

Jade kept going, "Or are you sure it's not because I'm better than you in everything I do and that James couldn't stand to be with you for another second with your daddy issues and a failure at everything," She aggrieved.

Your eyes watered as Madam Pomfrey came in, "Oh Mr. Potter must have a lot of admirers," She joked as you only smiled in return, "Which one of you is the famous Y/N?" She asked, looking between you, Jade, and Lily.

You spoke, "I am,"

She smiled at you, "He had been calling you for ages, what a beautiful girlfriend he's got,"

"I'm actually not his-" You started but the nurse kept going.

"Mr. Potter will be fine but a few things are jumbled in there" She said, checking his vitals, "It's best if he isn't stressed out or confused because it could only make matters worse," She finished, looking at all of you.

You all nodded in reply, "Other than that, he is good to go tomorrow morning but he can only have two visitors tonight," She mentioned, exiting.

"Y/N, you should stay with him," Peter said shyly.

"I don't think-" You started before you were interrupted.

You were getting tired of being interrupted.

"No, James would wanna see me," Jade almost yelled.

"You will only give James more brain damage, Y/N stays," Lily spat, clearly annoyed by Jade.

Jade huffed, "I will be back in the morning," She stomped away.

"We'll leave you to it," Remus said as Sirius smirked, leaving with the group as Lily squeezed your shoulder before exiting too.

You sat on the chair next to James's bed, wondering how you got in this situation in the first place.

And then you wondered how you would get out of it.

679 notes · View notes

potterrstar · 11 months ago

Note

Hello!! Idk if you would feel comfortable writing this but would you be able to write something that's a regulus/Sirius x reader love triangle and you can choose who reader ends up with? I mean honestly it can be anyone and Sirius (I am in love with the man). If you don't wish to, I totally understand and hope you have the best of days:) much love ❤️

-🪐

sirius black/regulus black x reader

summary: what can be so bad about starting dating one of the black brothers?

warnings: probably nothing! just slytherin!reader

a/n: hi!! thank u so much for ur request, sorry about the delay, but i hope you enjoy it and also have the best of days! sending lots of love too! 💗 english is not my first language, let me know any mistakes!

───❃•❃•❃───

Lately, it had been raining quite a bit; there was supposed to have been some kind of storm since last week. Regulus could see how the raindrops made water trails on the library window. He listened to the rain showering the castle roof.

He watched as his housemate entered the room, her tie slightly askew and her hair tousled, looking as if she had run all the way there.

Regulus didn't have many friends, to be honest. He believed he didn't need them; after all, they didn't bring him anything. Except for her, a girl he had met in second grade, who, unlike everyone else he knew, he didn't find absolutely and completely unbearable. She could even be kinda nice and a bit pretty, a little.

"Hi! How's it going? Is it difficult?" The girl referred to the herbology homework the younger Black was working on. She took a seat in front of him, placing her things on the table.

"Not really, it's a stupid subject," Regulus replied, focusing his gaze on the parchments in front of him.

"I like it," the girl smiled. "I think it's interesting. Did you know that mandrake is used to cure petrified people?" she commented.

Regulus smiled at her; he really couldn't care less about anything related to herbology, but she cared, so he cared a little too.

"I didn't know that." Of course he knew, but he liked making her think he didn't. He noticed a little sparkle in her eyes whenever he did.

There it was, the sparkle in her eyes. She smiled at him. "I don't think it's as bad as you think; you should give it a chance," she said about the subject.

"I'm not really interested," Regulus turned back to his work.

"Oh," she lowered her gaze until she remembered what her housemates had told her that morning. "Hey! There's a match this afternoon, Slytherin versus Gryffindor. I hope we win!" The girl smiled. "Are you going?" she asked excitedly.

Regulus didn't like those games; he didn't even like half the people who went there. "I don't think so."

"You should, we're sure to win! I heard your brother is playing, I think he's a Beater for Gryffindor." Regulus felt his blood boil.

Regulus never got along well with his older brother. He thought he was arrogant and didn't find him nice at all. He usually didn't care what Sirius thought of him; actually, nothing that came from Sirius Black mattered to him.

"I don't care; he's an idiot." Regulus rolled his eyes.

She really didn't understand why they got along so poorly. When they were in second grade, she thought it was just because they were in different houses, but as they grew older, she realized it wasn't just that—they really hated each other. She never asked Regulus why that was, and she didn't plan on doing so.

As for her, she didn't hate Sirius Black. They had talked a few times in the hallways and when she occasionally visited the Black house since she was friends with the younger brother, so they had a few conversations. She found him nice and really liked the pranks he played with his Marauder friends; she found them funny.

───❃•❃•❃───

With the sky pouring down and the stands painted red and green, the Gryffindor versus Slytherin match began.

The girl was really excited; she loved Quidditch—not to play, of course, but she adored watching it. She loved seeing everyone flying on their brooms, giving their all to represent their house and make it proud. She loved Slytherin and was quite proud to be a snake.

The problem was that Slytherin had been on a losing streak in Quidditch lately, having lost the last two finals—one against Hufflepuff and the other against Gryffindor. She hoped that today she would finally see her teammates in green lift the Quidditch cup.

The match proceeded fairly normally; they were tied at the moment. Slytherin tried to score, but their players were neutralized by the Bludgers sent by the elder Black. Sirius was quite good at playing Quidditch, although it was curious because, as far as she remembered, Sirius didn't usually play Quidditch. She believed he had only signed up this year.

Suddenly, the Gryffindor Seeker, James Potter, caught the Golden Snitch, announcing the victory of the lion house. The green stands booed and deflated with this announcement; it was unbelievable how they had lost three finals.

The girl sighed, waiting for the stands to empty a bit so she could get down without being pushed. Once enough people had cleared out, she descended the stands, running into a couple of Gryffindor players.

"You knocked everyone out, it was incredible, Pads!" said the dark-haired boy with glasses.

"You caught the Snitch; without that, we wouldn't have won!" Sirius replied to the Gryffindor Seeker. Turning around, he saw the Slytherin girl, and a smile formed on his face. "See you later, yeah?" the black-haired boy said goodbye to his friend.

"What's up, pretty? Sad because you lost?" he teased her as he approached.

"Quite, it's a disaster. I don't understand how they let themselves get hit," she rolled her eyes.

"They didn't let themselves get hit; I hit them," Sirius boasted with a smile, a big, white, and perfect smile. She noticed it; she found it attractive.

They started walking, entering the castle. It was dinner time, so they headed to the Great Hall.

"I don't think so. You cheated or something," she laughed.

"Oh yeah? Like the other two times you lost?" Sirius laughed back. There wasn't much to say about it; Slytherin was in decline.

"Well, whatever, I think Quidditch is silly," she lied, rolling her eyes.

"That's not true, you love it. I saw your eyes sparkle from the pitch," he confronted her.

"As if you could see my eyes from the pitch, it's too far," she accused.

"Not far enough to miss you," Sirius said suggestively. The Slytherin girl felt a shiver run down her neck.

"Don't be ridiculous." She laughed a little nervously. Just then, they passed by the Herbology classroom, and a lightbulb went off in her head, remembering she needed wormwood to finish her homework.

"Wait! I need to collect a plant for my Herbology homework," she announced to the Gryffindor.

"Are you kidding?" the boy followed her. "You like Herbology?" he asked the Slytherin.

"Uh, yes, a bit," she murmured. "I know it's a stupid subject, but I find it interesting," she said while picking leaves from the plant.

"Stupid?" Sirius frowned. "Why would it be? I mean, I don't like it much, to be honest, but that doesn't make it stupid. If you find it interesting, it must be fun," he gave her a genuine smile.

"You think so?" she returned his smile, hopeful.

"Of course," he helped her carry the leaves. "I like Transfiguration," he commented.

"Really? I don't like it… it's not that i hate it! I find it amazing, I'm just not very good at it," she laughed a little.

"Well, maybe one day I can teach you Transfiguration, and you can teach me Herbology," he suggested.

"Sounds great," she accepted his plan.

She liked the idea of being able to share what she loved without it sounding like a bother; she often felt that way.

───❃•❃•❃───

Recently, the girl was going out with Sirius, nothing too serious. They went to Hogsmeade for a walk, and Sirius bought her a dittany, which was a plant she adored, so she planted it in the herbology greenhouse.

They also tried to have their little Transfiguration classes, which didn't go very well. (She might have turned a Gryffindor student into a cricket or something like that) But it's the thought that counts!

The girl was now in Divination class with the younger Black.

He took a breath. "Listen, I thought we could go out today. I don't know, maybe go to the Black Lake," he suggested to the girl.

Today? Today she was going to teach Sirius about herbology, though she thought that she hadn't spent much time with Regulus lately, and she enjoyed doing so.

The girl used to have a crush on Regulus some time ago. She never told him, but she was certain that he knew; there was no way he couldn't have noticed. She was far too obvious for him not to figure it out. But just like her, he never said a word, so eventually, the girl tried to mitigate the feeling.

He never did anything to make it clear that he liked her.

"Uh sure, sounds good," she accepted her housemate's invitation.

Of course, she wanted to see Sirius, but despite everything, Regulus was her best friend, and they hadn't hung out for a couple of weeks. Besides, it was just Regulus; he wouldn't hurt her. She could talk to Sirius later, who didn't seem to mind the fact that the younger ones were best friends. He found it totally strange that someone as sweet as the Slytherin girl would get along so well with someone as repulsive as his brother, at least that's what he thought. But he didn't plan to tell the girl; it wasn't necessary. He knew that she cared about his younger brother, and he wasn't going to get involved in that.

They left their class, heading towards the Black Lake. Their walk was silent; Regulus didn't say a word, and she, for some unknown reason, didn’t feel like talking to him. She didn’t even know what to talk about. After spending so much time with Sirius, she discovered that it was very easy to talk to him; conversations flowed effortlessly. Everything with him flowed effortlessly.

“Are you okay?” Regulus spoke for the first time.

“Of course, why do you ask?” she questioned him.

“You always talk, you talk a lot,” he replied.

“That’s not true.” She rolled her eyes, which made the black-haired boy laugh.

As they laughed, the eldest Black appeared in front of them, bumping into them. Upon seeing him, Regulus instinctively took the girl's hand and intertwined their fingers, which made her frown slightly.

Sirius walked calmly towards the girl, completely ignoring his younger brother.

“Aren’t you going to make it to our little date because of him?” he whispered, though not quietly enough for the boy beside her not to hear, of course.

The older brother walked away from the girl with a smirk, not giving her a chance to respond. He was overly confident, it radiated from him, in fact.

When the Gryffindor was far enough away, Regulus abruptly let go of the girl's hand.

“What the hell is your problem? Why are you going out with my brother?” he yelled at her.

The girl opened her mouth in surprise. “I’m not! I’m here with you, you heard him,” she protested.

“I’m not talking about today. Is this why you haven’t talked to me these past few weeks? Because you’re screwing him?”

“What the hell is your problem?” she repeated. “You have no right to say anything to me, much less treat me like this. What’s wrong with you?”

Regulus was angry. Really angry.

His problem was that, one way or another, he was always going to end up feeling less than him. He hated Sirius, but not as much as he hated the feeling of never being as great as Sirius Black, never being as cool as Sirius Black.

“You can’t date someone like him! You can do better, you know that,” Regulus spat.

She let out a sarcastic laugh. “Better? Better like who? Like you?”

“Definitely,” he retorted.

“Go to hell! I spent years of my life following you around like your damn keychain, hoping you’d realize one day how much I liked you! And you knew! You knew I liked you and you just took advantage of it! And now that I’m finally trying something with someone, you come up with this bullshit?” Now he wasn’t the only one angry.

“It’s not ‘someone’! It’s my brother, my idiot brother. You knew I hated him! How can you believe all his crap in just two weeks!?” Regulus raised his voice.

“Well, in two weeks he showed me he’s better than you could ever be in four years!”

Regulus suddenly leaned forward, getting in her face, which made her back away, scared.

Noticing the girl's expression, Regulus felt as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over his head. She thought he was going to hurt her.

“Hey—listen, I—” Regulus tried to speak.

“Go to hell.” The girl pushed him by the shoulders and walked away, leaving him alone in the middle of the hallway with nothing but the storm of regret thundering in his head.

───❃•❃•❃───

After the fight with Regulus, the girl headed to the covered bridge. She loved it there; almost no one ever came by, it had a beautiful view, and sometimes she felt that even the air was purer, more magical.

She felt really bad and wondered if it was wrong to start dating Sirius. Maybe she shouldn't have; after all, he was her best friend's brother, or at least Regulus was supposed to be.

But Sirius was nice, and not just physically—though he was incredibly good-looking—but he was also pleasant to be around. He understood her and made her laugh. She felt comfortable, like she didn’t have to try so hard to make him like her, as she always did with Regulus.

“You look very mysterious there,” Sirius appeared behind her with a smile, looking at the girl with her arms resting on the bridge.

She laughed, as she always did when he was near.

“I’m thinking about whether I should jump,” she joked.

“Don’t say stupid things,” Sirius laughed too, coming closer to her side.

She smiled at him without saying anything. She wasn’t in a very good mood.

“I guess you fought with my brother,” he said, looking at her.

“It doesn’t matter; it was going to happen sooner or later.” She rolled her eyes.

Sirius sighed. “I don’t know; he’s weird. We don’t get along.”

“Really? You don’t say,” the girl said sarcastically while laughing.

“I’m sorry if he made you feel bad, okay? I doubt he’s aware of what he’s doing.”

“I know, I’m sorry too. We were supposed to go to the Black Lake.” She remembered.

“Yeah... I don’t regret that part.” Sirius glanced away with a chuckle.

“Hey!” She gave him a light hit on the shoulder, scolding him while laughing.

“He’s immature. Why should I be glad you spent time with him when you could have a much better time with me?” He moved closer to her.

“Oh, really?”

“Of course. You know it.” Sirius smiled at her.

“I know you’re a narcissist.” She laughed.

He rolled his eyes, laughing. “You know we have a date pending, right?” He reminded her.

“Mmm, no, I think I’ll tell Regulus to go to the lake instead.” She joked, and he grabbed her by the waist.

“Don’t joke about that.” He said with a smile.

“I’m not joking.” She began to walk away from him, laughing as she freed herself from his grasp.

“Hey!” He called indignantly, catching up and taking her hand.

She turned around and kissed him on the cheek.

“Let’s go to the greenhouse, okay?” She whispered to him. He looked at her, entranced.

“Sure, yeah, of course,” he stammered. The girl laughed at this and led him as they walked.

She hoped there would be a lot to do in the greenhouse so they could spend a lot of time together.

Either way, she was sure they would be spending a lot of time together from now on.

#the marauders #sirius black x reader #regulus black x reader #sirus black #regulus black #the marauders x reader #harry potter #love triangle #request

52 notes · View notes

bexorok · 6 months ago

Text

All my thoughts on sonic movie 3 that I can write out in one post (spoilers included)

Where do I start? There’s so much I love about this movie, and just a few things I’m a bit disappointed about. The good stuff first of course.

They’re a family! Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles really act like brothers here and I love that! I also love that Tom and Maddie are still there as parental figures but don’t hold them back from being ultra powerful beings. They trust that they’ll be alright on their mission, and are supportive when they ask for help.

I loved Shadow in this, because of course I did. I was a little hesitant about Keanu voicing him at first, but it really grew on me. Every scene with him looked amazing.

Shadow and Maria are so cute! We’ve never gotten to see them having fun together and it just feels so special that we get that now.

The parallels between Tom and Sonic versus Maria and Shadow! So good!

The action scenes! Every single action scene was awesome!

I kind of like what they did with shadows origin story. It leaves it kind of open ended whether he’s from the same planet as the rest of them or if he’s from the black arms. It’s something that could be explored more in depth in a potential spin off.

LIVE AND LEARN!

AMY! She’s here and she looks great!

METAL SONIC! This leads to so many questions!

God they really turned up the fruitiness of stonebotnik. If you thought they were gay af in the other films they take it to another level. Robotniks last message was basically a love confession.

Both so many references to the games and call backs to the previous films.

I know it isn’t everyone’s favorite thing, but I enjoy the goofiness in these movies. It’s just unadulterated fun, and I feel like that’s really at the core of what Sonic is. Along with the seriousness and the hardships, he just loves life and his friends so much. And we to get to see him growing as a hero from this, balancing that carefree attitude with moments of reflection and maturity when it’s really needed.

And now, just a few things I was left a bit disappointed with:

Look, Maria’s illness doesn’t define her as a character. It’s not her one and only trait that makes her notable. But I think they missed out on the deeper connection that she and Shadow have because of it. That Shadow was literally created because of her. She is his very REASON for existing, she is his whole world. Her death takes such a deep toll because of that. His reason for existence is gone, taken away from him, ripped from his arms. Of course their story is still touching in the movie, and grief over a loss like that is powerful, but there’s a bigger character arc that they’re missing out on. Who is shadow now that she’s gone? What purpose does he now live for?

The pacing is just a bit too fast. I know that’s really saying something about a Sonic movie, but it just stood out more to me than in the other films. It felt like we didn’t get to take in a lot of the hard hitting scenes. Instead most of the more long drawn out scenes were focused on the comedic scenes. And I know I said I like the goofiness of the movies, and I do, I just think it shouldn’t be the only aspect we really get to take in. While the second movie I felt like they should have cut down, I think they could have benefited from just a few more minutes of runtime. Just something that let us breathe and take in a scene or two.

Those are probably my only real complaints about the movie, but they really hold be back from being absolutely in love with everything about this movie. But just like the other movies, despite my few complaints, I had an amazing time with it! My friend that came with me really enjoyed herself, we were laughing together at it, and it was great! I’m already gushing with my other friends who just saw the movie about everything I loved in it.

My one regret is that I didn’t go to a fan event to watch it. My theater was packed, but everyone was just so quiet? Like, everyone after was talking about how much they enjoyed the movie on the way out of the theater, but there was just something in the air. It was a smaller theater, and everyone there either had kids with them or was clearly a Sonic fan wearing merch and dressing up, but there was just this weird vibe. It’s hard to explain. It’s sort of like everyone there was afraid to be seen as a “weird fan”, and while I admit I was low key worried about people cheering at Maria’s death, I think we somehow over corrected? Like even at parts that got a laugh out of me and my family it felt like everyone was just quiet. Maybe the jokes didn’t land as hard with them, but even the moments that I know got everyone hyped felt quiet (I know from what people walking out of the movie were saying). Which is totally fine, but it’s just nothing compared to the energy when I saw the second movie. Of course that was because our game club had rented out the theater as a big trip. Still, I really just missed that energy. I loved feeling as excited as everyone around me that was watching it. As much as my friend enjoyed herself, it just wasn’t the same feeling as being in a room of people cheering.

I’ll admit though, I was the exact same. I’m an autistic person who’s been masking my entire life, if the audience is dead then I’m dead on the outside while I’m internally screaming. I at least had my friend to whisper all my excitement to.

I’m sure there will be many people who have the opposite experience in the theaters. If you can find a fan event to go to, I hope everyone who looks forward to things movie doesn’t feel the need to hide their excitement. (Except maybe don’t cheer at a child getting killed, that is just a bit too much). But for everything else, don’t be afraid to show your excitement. Don’t be ashamed at cheering at a laser shooting the moon, or pissing on the moon if that’s the meme that got you into this franchise. Cheer at super sonic and super shadow. Cheer when live and learn plays. Cheer at the end credits (which is when I really got to hear my theater whisper in excitement). Please, never be ashamed of your interests and what makes you excited.

TLDR: 8/10

#sonic movie 3 #sonic movie #sonic 3 #sonic movie 3 spoilers #sonic spoilers

21 notes · View notes

supernovafics · 2 years ago

Text

series masterlist | last part — next part

pairing: modern!actor!steve harrington x fem!reader

word count: 3.2k words

warnings: explicit language, lots and lots of angst (sorry!)

summary: the weeks start passing by in a quick happy blur. the end of filming is coming sooner rather than later, but you and steve never talk about it ending, though. until you finally do.

CHAPTER SIX | ❝𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒃𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒕 𝒄𝒖𝒑 𝒐𝒇 𝒄𝒐𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒆❞

Filming was slowly but surely coming to an end.

It was something that you couldn’t help but remind yourself of as each day passed, and as double digits turned into single, it started feeling like some sort of bittersweet countdown.

Things started to ebb and flow on set, an easy sign to tell that things were reaching their end. Some days were really hectic, with last second changes or fixes you had to handle, and other days moved slower because there wasn’t much happening and everything was actually going smoothly.

You couldn’t figure out if it was funny or maybe more worrisome that you and Steve never specifically talked about the end; you and him never talked about your “arrangement” soon being over. Of course, both of you were well aware of that fact, but whenever you were together, and as the days slowly winded down, you never mentioned it to one another.

However, weirdly enough, your conversations would easily shift toward talks of your futures. With you talking about how you would be heading to Europe soon to work on Jessie’s next film as the Assistant Director. It was a job that didn’t even feel truly real until Jessie let you read the script, which you breezed through one morning and loved it, and you began having meetings with the Producers and other people involved in the film.

And then Steve would talk about going to New York City soon to do a press tour for a movie that he filmed last year that was coming out in a few months. And there were even short mentions about his new and more long-term assistant, Martin, that would soon be taking over until Sheila was back from maternity leave.

The inevitable ending was implied in those talks about the future, but neither of your uttered words that were anywhere close to, “I can’t believe this is ending soon.”

It felt like two completely separate things, even though they were perfectly related to one another— your futures that you both knew wouldn’t involve each other versus what the two of you were currently doing and how you were with each other practically every night.

“You awake?” Steve asked you, voice soft. On this night, the two of you were in your apartment, specifically in your bed. It was dark and quiet, and it was also quite late, but you knew that he wasn’t planning to leave. Not spending the night at one another’s places after having sex was one of the unspoken rules between you two that had been broken night after night until it didn’t seem as if it had even been a rule in the first place.

Your eyes were shut but you were nowhere close to falling asleep because your thoughts were moving too fast.

“Yeah, I’m up,” You whispered back and then shifted around so you were facing him, adjusting the t-shirt you were wearing as you did so. Your eyes were fairly adjusted to the darkness, so you could somewhat make out Steve’s face. “Can’t sleep.”

“Me neither,” He responded as he moved a bit closer to you. “Why can’t you sleep?”

“Thinking too much,” You said with a quick shake of your head as you further closed the small hint of space between you two and let your legs tangle with his beneath the blanket. “What about you?”

Instead of answering your question, he asked, “What are you thinking about?”

You weren’t entirely sure how to properly sum up your thoughts that felt both scattered and incomplete. However, the darkness made it feel a bit easier to say what had been on your mind, as messy and confusing as it had been.

“We never talk about this ending,” You said quietly as you gestured between you and him. “We talk about the future, which kind of implies that we both know this will be over soon, but we’ve never actually said it. And I don’t really know why but that’s been on my mind a lot lately, especially as filming gets closer and closer to ending.”

Steve didn’t say anything in response to your words, and that kind of made sense to you because you weren’t sure what he could’ve responded with or what you wanted him to respond with. The thoughts you’d been having felt open-ended, as if there was no answer to them. However, actually vocalizing it all made you realize something.

“But, I don’t know, now that I’m saying all of that out loud, I’m thinking that maybe the end doesn’t really matter because we’ll still be friends when all of this is done; our friendship never has to change or end like everything else.”

Steve was still quiet and you almost thought that he’d somehow fallen asleep, but you were quickly proven wrong when he shifted in the bed and turned so that he was on his back and staring up at the ceiling.

His silence in that moment made you realize that he never answered your previous question, so you decided to ask it again. “Why couldn’t you sleep?”

You noticed his eyes fall shut for a brief moment as one of his hands came up to brush through his hair and he let out a small sigh. You had initially expected him to say something light-hearted, but now you had no idea what he was about to say because from the previous actions, it was simple to tell that he was nervous or stressed; you had learned enough of his mannerisms at this point to be able to read him quite easily. However, that didn’t mean that you could read his mind; although if you could it would have made the impact of his next words a lot less strong.

“I think I want more,” Steve’s voice was soft as he spoke. “I don’t want any part of this to end.”

His words sent something that felt equivalent to an electric shock through your body, but at the same time, you were too stunned to make any sort of movement.

“But…” You trailed off when words failed to form on your lips, mainly because your brain felt like it was barely able to function right then. You forced yourself to think of something, anything, to say. “What about everything we agreed on?”

“I know, but I feel like everything is completely different now. This past month has been really great, the greatest month I’ve had in such a long time. And in the beginning, I didn’t think I’d end up caring for you as much as I do now, and I definitely didn’t think I’d want this to be anything more than what it has been, but I do,” Steve told you, he sounded nervous saying all of this, but also so sure of himself. He was putting his heart out on the line and you got the sudden urge to do the same, but when he turned on his side to face you again, you also found yourself wanting to look away. Things became quiet for the briefest of moments before he continued. “I want this. I want you. I want us. I don’t want to be just friends with you. I don’t think I can be, honestly.”

All of that felt so unexpected, and you actually found it hard to process or even accept an ounce of what he was telling you. It wasnt that you didn’t think it was true— in fact, it actually hurt so much more because you could clearly hear the honesty in his tone— it was just that right then it felt easier for your mind to disregard it and push it away, instead of thinking about believing it.

“Steve, we can’t,” You told him, your voice was barely above a whisper and your words sounded shy and unsure, which made sense since your mind was nothing but a mess of confusion and contradictions. The thoughts you’d just been having mixed harshly with what Steve was telling you, and it wouldn’t have surprised you if your head exploded from the overload.

“I can’t imagine us going to only being friends and pretending like none of this ever happened,” He said and then quickly continued speaking. “You’ve never thought about us being real, or never wanted us to be more? Not even a little bit?”

The answer to his question was an easy one. Of course, you’d thought about it. Of course, you found yourself wanting it. You could’ve told him how there had been countless moments where you wanted to give him a quick kiss anytime you briefly saw him on set because any little moment you saw him managed to brighten your day, or how whenever you were hanging at either of your places you almost always wanted to slot your hand in his for no reason other than you just wanting to be closer to him.

However, you didn’t feel like you should say any of that.

Because you had wholeheartedly convinced yourself that something real could never work between you and him and it was hard to force yourself to think otherwise now. Especially because you always reminded yourself that there were way too many reasons why a relationship couldn’t work.

You were suddenly so grateful for the darkness because the fact that you couldn’t really see Steve at that moment made it easier to say your next words. “No… No, I haven’t. Us outside of this context, outside of these nights we’ve been having, doesn’t make sense. Our lives are so different and we wouldn’t work. Like, in a week, when filming is over, we both are going to be doing completely different things and that’s not gonna change. Long distance would suck and we’d probably just end up hating each other.” Your words were coming out slightly rushed as you told him the reasoning that you had continuously told yourself any time you started feeling even the smallest bit of something more for him. And as you said it all aloud, it made it feel even more upsettingly true.

You took a breath as you found his hand beneath the blanket and gave it a light squeeze. “During all of this, you became my best friend, and I really don’t want that to end or change. And if we actually did something, I think the only outcome is it ending badly. So, I think it would be best if we just stayed friends because I can’t lose you as my best friend. The talks we have and the little jokes we share; that friendship is so important to me. You’re so fucking important to me.”

Steve squeezed your hand back and a few long silent moments slowly passed before he muttered out a soft, “Okay.”

Things stayed quiet from there, with both of you simply looking at each other but barely making out each other’s faces in the darkness and hands still intertwined. There were two things you almost did in that moment— took back everything you had just said to him, and let your heart take precedence over what your mind was telling you was the logical thing to do.

However, seconds slowly turned into minutes and you couldn’t bring yourself to say anything. Instead, you pushed away the hint of regret you were feeling, and then allowed yourself to finally fall asleep; the silence and lack of light allowing you to do so easily.

You were unsure how long you had been sleeping before you woke up because you felt the bed shifting. It was still completely dark in your bedroom, so you knew that it was nowhere near morning just yet.

You let out a quick yawn and then rolled over so that you could turn on the small lamp on your nightstand. You squinted in the newfound brightness as you rubbed your eyes and looked at Steve who was now standing close by the foot of your bed, attention elsewhere. “You’re leaving?”

He looked at you for a brief moment as he put on his pants. “Yeah… Sorry, I was trying not to wake you.”

“You don’t have to go,” You told him and then sat up a bit. It felt a little foreign telling him that when staying over at each other’s places felt like such second nature at this point. “I want you to stay.”

Steve was quiet and you could see how deeply he was thinking about either what he wanted to say or how he wanted to say it, or maybe even both.

“I think we should end this part of it all now,” He said softly. He had still been looking away from you, eyes focused on grabbing his shirt from off of your floor, but then his gaze met yours. “Filming is over in a week anyway, and I think it would be easier if we stopped this, y’know? And just fully go into just being friends.”

He was essentially saying what you had convinced yourself you wanted to hear, but if you were being a thousand percent honest with yourself, you didn’t like hearing it.

It was then that you felt a shift happening, the rare but all too familiar feeling. The one that told you that this moment was about to be a defining one in your life, and it was being pushed in a certain direction. Right then it was hard to imagine how you would later look back on this moment because there were way too many possibilities and all of them, even the really bad ones, felt plausible.

You thought you would’ve felt this shift at the beginning of everything, when you and Steve started this arrangement. So, it felt a little weirder that it was hitting you at the end. It made you confused and you didn’t know if things were going to move in a bad direction or a good one; your gut feeling was telling you bad, but you sincerely hoped it was wrong. Everything felt too far gone now and like there was nothing you could do to stop or reverse what just happened. It felt impossible to take back everything you had said now, and your mind was still contemplating whether or not you even wanted to; if it would be worth it or just make things worse.

You ultimately nodded at what Steve had said because you couldn’t figure out what to do instead and you felt as if you’d been quiet for far too long.

“Okay… Okay, yeah, you’re right. That makes sense.” You knew that your voice sounded unsure and awkward, but you tried to hide it behind the tiniest of smiles. “Okay, so I’ll see you tomorrow on set.”

He gave you a small smile back. “Yeah.”

For some reason, the words “I’m sorry” were on the tip of your tongue, and you didn’t necessarily know why you wanted to say it. And then there was the other part of you that wanted to make some sort of joke to ease the awkward tension, but your mind felt effectively blank.

Steve looked at you one more time before he stepped out of your bedroom. “I really do see you as my best friend too.”

His words managed to ease something in you, soften something. It made you think that this decision being made was the right one.

Maybe everything would actually be good.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

It didn’t take too long for you to feel like an idiot.

And it wasn’t because you felt like you had done the wrong thing by dismissing everything Steve had said to you; how he told you that he wanted more and you disregarded it all. Because you had woken up the morning after feeling entirely regretful, but you didn’t allow yourself to do anything about it. And as the hours went by, the feeling settled in your stomach and made a home there, but it didn’t hurt you as much. It lingered but it didn’t make you want to cry, like it had when you first woke up and quickly remembered what happened.

Instead, you felt like an idiot because you actually managed to make yourself believe that everything between you and Steve would be completely normal and okay.

You barely saw him that day on set— when you showed up to his trailer with his coffee and breakfast sandwich he wasn’t there so you just left it on the counter for him, and the same thing happened with his lunch too. Whenever you did manage to see him, he would only give you a quick hello before immediately heading off somewhere else. And that was almost exactly how the next few days went.

He was avoiding you and doing a damn good job at it. And it was hard to really do anything about it because the more you tried, and failed, to make things normal again between the two of you the more awkward you started to feel around him because none of it worked; he just continued to push you away.

The interactions you were so used to having with him— deep talks about everything and nothing or funny and random storytimes also about anything and everything— all too quickly became less and less frequent until your conversations were reduced to nothing but him talking to you whenever he needed something or wanted to ask you something work related.

He didn’t become rude again, though. Other than simply being polite and professional, he just seemed so indifferent. And that made you kind of wish that he was just an asshole to you again because it would’ve proved that he felt something toward you, even if it was animosity. But, he didn’t and you only became more and more confused.

If this whole situation didn’t make you feel so fucking sad, you would’ve found it at least a little ironically funny that he had said that he saw you as his best friend, but him being so distant and pushing you away didn’t feel like any sort of “best friendship,” it more so felt like he didn’t want to be your friend at all. And you couldn’t find the courage to call him out on it because you felt as if all of this happening was your fault anyway; that in some ways you did the first push.

And then you decided that if he could cast you away so easily— with what felt like not even a second thought because he didn’t once talk to you about why he was doing this— you could do the same.

You became good at coping, at pretending that nothing was wrong even though it felt like absolutely everything was going wrong.

You acted as if it didn’t hurt you so badly that your nights were once again quiet and lonely. And you especially acted as if everything in your apartment didn’t now remind you of him. That the two party hats, from the night he surprised you for your birthday, sitting on your dresser didn’t make you feel so irrevocably sad that you had to put them in your nightstand drawer so that you didn’t have to look at them anymore.

You had friendships end before, and ones that ended so much more volatile than what happened with Steve; high school was something adjacent to a rollercoaster for you. However, none of those endings felt as painful as this one.

It felt like you lost so much more than just a best friend.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

next chapter!

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington series #steve harrington fic #steve harrington x fem!reader #steve harrington smut #steve harrington x you #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington x y/n #stranger things imagine #stranger things series #stranger things smut #stranger things fluff

177 notes · View notes

older-brothers-room · 1 month ago

Text

Chasing Amy: A Review

Overview/Plot

A wonderful installment in the Kevin Smith films, aka Jay and Silent Bob Movies, Chasing Amy stars Joey Lauren Adams as a happy lesbian named Alyssa who meets dude bro duo Holden--Ben Affleck--and Banky--Jason Lee--at a comic convention. As Holden learns more about Alyssa, he falls in love with her, and Alyssa figures out her identity as gay women who is still exploring. Holden has a massive hang up in their relationship when he learns about Alyssa's wild and adventurous sexual past. After a while of arguments and distance from each other, the couple part ways when Holden suggests the only way to make himself feel less conservative in the bedroom, for Banky to get over his lesbiophobic ways, and for Alyssa to feel closer to Holden, is for the group to have a threesome. Many years later Holden is no longer in a work partnership with Banky, and sees Alyssa one last time to give her a comic he made of her.

Archie is not fucking Mr. Weatherbee!

Strengths

Where I think this movie is strong is at its characters and plot points. With it's overt commentary on things such as racial inequality, gender, sex, and sexuality, it creates this beautiful atmosphere of drama and keeps you watching while also being well balanced in its light hearted versus its more serious moments. It chooses to focus on the issues of the couple and Holden's unwillingness to accept Alyssa's past sexual adventures while adding in some light touches of Banky's animosity towards lesbians and himself losing Holden as well as the blurry line that can be platonic vs romantic relationships.

Since you like chicks, right, do you just look at yourself naked in the mirror all the time?

Favorite Moments

My favorite part is whenever Alyssa is is arguing with Holden. Joey Adams is such a wonderful actor. Her moments are powerful and emotionally charged and the writing really lends it's hand to hit the watcher in the feels. The character herself has so much agency it's delightfully refreshing to see compared to more modern film. I love the fact they they didn't end up together in the end. Holden's suggestion of a threesome isn't what Alyssa wants. She sees the move as clumsy, and while she still loves Holden, she refuses to be used like that. It's a powerful choice to have the lead couple break up and stay broken up in the end, and it made my heart sore with happiness. These two were only meant for a short while, and tha'ts okay.

Men need to believe that they're Marco Fucking Polo when it comes to sex.

Character Spotlight

Hooper, a gay black comic artist and one of Alyssa's close friends, is introduced in a way that might have you thinking this was written by a conservative white guy. However, this movie was written by a white guy who is normal style. It becomes a little more funny on the second watch. Hooper has an on-going argument with Banky over weather or not Archie from the famous comic book was gay or straight. He makes few appearances as he is a side character, but those appearances are full of energy and he is so atmospheric.

I want you to go down to the corner store, and buy yourself a clue.

Weaknesses

Some of the shots in this movie are simply a product of their time that no longer hold up. Shaky homevideo-esque shots that tend to bother me personally. Other than that, I have very little complaints. Maybe Banky was a little over the top but in the end it was theatrical and made the story more interesting. Not every moment is vying to grab your attention but comparing this to modern movies where everything is stated for a watcher I'd actually call that a blessing.

have you ever seen a nun call a small child a fucking cunt rag?

Final thoughts

This movie is a 5/5 platonic dates and a bonus bisexual flag from me. I wish more movies could even begin to handle romance like this one did. Alyssa had agency and stood up for herself, Holden was frustrated with himself more than anything, Banky couldn't handle the thought of losing his friend. This is one of my most beloved Kevin Smith movies, no matter how fucking sick as hell Dogma is (review coming soon for that movie.) You should watch this for it's wonderful acting, for Jay and Silent Bob (who has a long story this time,) its story, and if you wanna find out why it's called Chasing Amy.

#chasing amy #kevin smith #joey adams #ben affleck #jason lee #movie review #movie recc #movie quotes #movies #film

7 notes · View notes

rachthepoet · 1 year ago

Text

Matilda Analysis

A poignant narrative delving into themes of self-liberation, healing from past traumas, and a journey toward healthy love for the sake of oneself and nobody else. It's a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, delivered in an intimate and comforting atmosphere soundtracked by gentle instrumentation. This eloquent reminder to whoever needs to hear that it's never too late to seek the love you deserve and cultivate a life filled with joy and acceptance. Even if one must do so independently and abundantly.

The listener may not know the character of Matilda personally, but they know of her intuitively, anybody who can spare a few minutes to listen is invited in miraculously, as the song's configuration allows. And, what waits inside for those who venture? Harry sitting with his guitar, a concerned friend right as you need someone to be.

Here's a deep dive into Harry Styles' Matilda, from a poet.

Roald Dahl's 'Matilda' + Harry's Take

Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, and screenwriter. He has composed many children's books, and has been bestowed the title of "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century". His knack was for writing children's books interlaced with rather dark, adult themes — like 'Matilda'.

If you didn't grow up with the book and/or haven't had the chance to read it, here is a summary for a bit more familiarity, which will lead to a more engaged discussion here! But, also, if you're familiar with the 1996 film, as many are, you should be just fine! As mentioned before, much of Dahl's works covered much darker themes. The children's book 'Matilda' speaks clearly of the following: emotional and physical abuse, tyranny, misogyny, scamming, attachment theory, and, the most obvious, child abuse and neglect.

In short, attachment theory believes that every child needs to form a relationship with at least one primary caregiver to develop, healthily, emotionally and socially. In 'Matilda', our main character lacks that primary caregiver until she meets Miss Honey. The impact of Miss Honey's warmth, care, and understanding on Matilda is so grand that trust is built (she reveals her telekinesis power to Miss Honey) and leads to a happy ending, as Matilda's attachment to Miss Honey wins over the weaker attachment of her parents — and Matilda moves in with Miss Honey, finding a loving and caring home/family at last.

Now it's time to circle it back to Harry's Matilda. I believe that Harry has taken on the role of Miss Honey as a complementary to the subject to whom he's disguised as quote-en-quote "Matilda" — a stylistic choice I have no doubt was heavily influenced by Dahl's tale. Not only is Harry a friend giving advice and refuge, but also a welcoming sense of care and a second home, which further ties into the third album's theme as a whole — debates of a house versus a home, and what home means to a person.

In the song Matilda, Harry alludes to similar situations, with direct connections to attachment theory and child abuse/neglect. As the audience solely, we don't know the specifics of the problem, but these are the main issues I grasp from the lyrics alone. Roald Dahl's Matilda, as told in the book, has much intellectual prowess — she's too smart, almost an adult in a child's body, most likely an effect of her circumstances' cause. Yet, set aside the knowledge of her adventurous nature and wits, there's no clear yes or no to answer if Matilda needs comfort. For she never cries, adamantly refusing to do so, and never seems to show weakness. She's too smart for that, after all. The single time she outright exhibits sadness about not feeling the love from her parents is when she's four and confiding in the librarian. I'm going somewhere, by the way, I promise you.

With Harry's Matilda in Matilda, lots of the same traits resurface. An adventurous spirit and a bright mind, but also the tendency to keep sucking it up and not letting one fall to tenderness, because it's been perceived in the brain as a weakness. None of what happened seemed wrong to her until a certain point. This is, apparently, no big deal, or so she says. Harry's Matilda speaks of her experiences like it's nothing at all, but it's everything. She's mighty like her fictional character namesake, so bright and lively that she can light up even the darkest days.

Upon a delicate, sadly playful melody of strings, Harry takes on the role of a friend but also a caregiver to show love to his character of Matilda. The Miss Honey, as alluded to before. In Matilda, Harry makes it a point to show Matilda the love she never received from those who should've given it freely. He expresses that, while none of this is his business, he's been thinking about it in concern. He tells her that she can start a family that will love her, will care for her, and there's nothing to be sorry for. With a wide, bright smile and a sharp mind, Matilda, you can let it go, and you don't have to be sorry for doing so. Let us show you what healthy love feels like.

Lyric Pull Apart

[VERSE 1] You were riding your bike to the sound of "It's No Big Deal" And you're trying to lift off the ground on those old two wheels Nothing 'bout the way you were treated ever seemed especially alarming till now So you tie up your hair and you smile like it's no big deal

You were riding your bike to the sound of "It's No Big Deal" / And you're trying to lift off the ground on those old two wheels: Here a little scene is set, and provides the listener with so much context and information. It's an idyllic childhood moment to picture, riding a bike, but there are cracks already. Cracks in a carefree childhood, cracks in what should've been. The line to the sound of "It's No Big Deal" had people frantically searching for a song to connect, but, from the language used, I never thought of it that way. Rather, it's the soundtrack of dismissiveness, instigated by those Matilda is surrounded with. There isn't a soundtrack of laughter or encouragement, but rather a shrug. It's in the frame of something heard, not something spoken, or, extending, something felt. To the details, the image of the bike is given as those old two wheels — tired, worn, maybe even inadequate. Strong symbolism there.

Then, trying to lift off the ground gives many implications and layered feelings. There's the literal, with a kid trying to play about and do cool tricks, alone on their old bike, maybe dangerous tricks, leaning into the absent parental presence, and maybe seeking attention. There's the symbolic, the imaginative, the evoking of childhood nostalgia and yearning. There's the metaphorical, to fly, rising above where they are stuck, an ache to escape.

Nothing 'bout the way you were treated ever seemed especially alarming till now / So you tie up your hair and you smile like it's no big deal: Those who've experienced trauma may feel or are told that their mistreatment is normal, and/or they shouldn't be the ones to complain because others have it worse. Therefore, they won't speak out because their minds have been conditioned that their issues are nothing to speak of. An internalization. But, as distance and time are gained away from the situation, realization becomes stronger than internalization.

Then, So you tie up your hair and you smile like it's no big deal curates a heartbreaking image of Matilda, self-sufficient and positive because she had to be, tying up her hair with a smile because she never saw the way she was treated as anything but status quo. It's a tragic echoing of the first line of the verse and also parallels Dahl's Matilda with the ribbon in her hair. It relates to the idea of putting on a mask, covering something up by pretending like everything is fine. Matilda, maybe, doesn't want to burden him with her problems and repeats rehearsed mantras in place of it. But, he sees straight through this, and the speaker assures Matilda that she doesn't have to hide, for he's there to listen and care.

And then we get another heartbreaking image, of Matilda as self-sufficient and positive, tying up her hair with a smile because she never saw the way she was treated as anything but normal, and a tragic echo of the first line, where she smiles “like it’s no big deal” - because it’s all she’s heard, the sound of her parents saying it’s no big deal, and she believes them.

[CHORUS] You can let it go You can throw a party full of everyone you know And not invite your family 'cause they never showed you love You don't have to be sorry for leavin' and growin' up, mmm

But the chorus is telling Matilda directly: you can let it go. It's so comforting and beautiful. He is reassuring the character of Matilda that she can drop the smile and acknowledge the inevitable pain caused (see verse 2), and then let it go and let herself grow. It's a gentle, validating way of saying that she didn't deserve the pain back then and doesn't deserve to hold onto it now. The speaker suggests that Matilda, and by extension the listener, has the power to create a new life for herself — one filled with people who have genuine care for her and those who provide the love that has been missing. Attachment theory.

You can throw a party full of everyone you know and not invite your family 'cause they never showed you symbolizes a break from the past and the forging of a new path defined by one's autonomy. Her family, the site of all of this complication and guilt and hurt, whom she now acknowledges caused her pain and never showed her the love she deserved. But now she can go out and seek that love. A reminder to Matilda that she can seek happiness elsewhere and build a chosen family based on love and respect.

Then, the ending line, You don't have to be sorry for leavin' and growin' up, is so important. When trying to extract oneself from an abusive environment, the blame will be twisted and put on the victim. They might try and make Matilda a stranger as a repercussion for her spreading her wings and thriving in the absence of their negative influence. And, here, the speaker is reassuring Matilda that you don't have to feel sorry for leaving and growing up. And, the language choice is interesting, for saying growing up akins it automatically to something natural, something that's bound to happen. Something you shouldn't feel guilty over. He says to Matilda that she should never feel apologetic for her growth.

[VERSE 2] Matilda, you talk of the pain like it's all alright But I know that you feel like a piece of you's dead inside You showed me a power that is strong enough to bring sun to the darkest days It's none of my business, but it's just been on my mind

Matilda, you talk of the pain like it's all alright / But I know you feel like a piece of you's dead inside: This is the only time within the song that there's a direct address to Matilda, although there's an underlying assumption that the song is being spoken to her throughout. This direct address serves a purpose though, as I believe it amplifies the words that follow it, you talk of the pain like it's all alright. While verse 1 framed Matilda as a child, this verse (verse 2) frames Matilda as an adult. She is doing the same thing, the same coping mechanisms, that were instilled in her when she was a child — "it's no big deal" and "it's all alright".

Closely followed by but I know that you feel like a piece of you's dead inside is where the speaker, in one of the few lines in the song to reference an "I", acknowledges Matilda's pain for her. He makes it known that he can see the pain that she's in, even as she tries to dismiss it. It also acknowledges a major recognition of the loss of self due to this past trauma and pain.

You showed me a power that is strong enough to bring sun to the darkest days: This line is just so gorgeous. I have such love in my heart for it. And I feel like many overlook the intention with the word choice, which lends to its touching nature. Choosing the words you showed me a power versus you are the sunshine in the darkest days (or something along those lines) changes the meaning, and makes more of a splash. The meaning shifts from you are sunshine, you are goodness, you deserve to be loved — which is not without its own lovely connotation, of course — to being around you, you radiate this energy and you can teach other people how to love.

In companionship to what's been told about Matilda, to imply that she has this power to bring the sun to the darkest days, to teach someone how to find the sun in their darkest days when she has experienced dark days... it's beautiful. And it's so important to notice that detailed difference and reiterates the notion that as sad of a song as Matilda is, it's also incredibly empowering.

It's none of my business, but it's just been on my mind: And then, the speaker takes a step back. It's not about his experience, and he acknowledges that separation, but does not withdraw his care or concern. It's none of my business is a delicate way to respect Matilda's boundaries regarding her past and the choice of what her relationships look like. He doesn't want to tell Matilda what to do and deny her agency, for then he would become just another one of the people who mistreat her. But it's just been on my mind illustrates the care of the speaker once more, a complement to what precedes it and to the song entirely.

"It's a weird one, because with something like this, it's like, 'I want to give you something, I want to support you in some way, but it's not necessarily my place to make it about me because it's not my experience.' Sometimes it's just about listening. I hope that's what I did here. If nothing else, it just says, 'I was listening to you'." — Harry Styles

[CHORUS ADD ON VARIATION 1] You can let it go You can throw a party full of everyone you know And not invite your family 'cause they never showed you love You don't have to be sorry for leavin' and growin' up You can see the world, following the seasons Anywhere you go, you don't need a reason 'Cause they never showed you love You don't have to be sorry for doin' it on your own

This is the first variation on and second iteration of the chorus, and it hits on the same themes as the first iteration. The first new line is You can see the world, following the seasons. Matilda can leave, not just her family but where she's from, and she still doesn't owe her family justification or reasons. The latter comes from the following anywhere you go, you don't need a reason. The sentiment is continued by the line you don't have to be sorry for doin' it on your own which is the repeated parallel to the previous you don't have to be sorry for leavin' and growin' up. It's so good. In one sense, it applies to the lines immediately preceding it — you don't have to be sorry for traveling and seeing the world on your own. Yet, because of the repetition, there's this parallel created that also refers to growing up. Matilda doesn't have to be sorry for growing up on her own. A grand acknowledgment that Matilda raised herself, and that comes with both sorrow and pride. The sorrow that she had to raise herself alone, but the pride that she is who she is as an adult because of herself.

[BRIDGE] You're just in time, make your tea and your toast You framed all your posters and dyed your clothes, ooh You don't have to go You don't have to go home Oh, there's a long way to go I don't believe time will change your mind In other words, I know they won't hurt you anymore As long as you can let them go

This whole ballad is truly a tour de force, but the bridge is the one to knock me off my feet every time. Much like Harry has done for the listeners with 'Harry's House', the speaker invites Matilda into his home. In the song's case, both literally and metaphorically.

You're just in time, make your tea and your toast: Tea and toast is such a cozy and homey image, and indicates this welcoming, specificity in welcoming into routines, like a fresh pot of tea and a nice piece of toast in the middle of the afternoon. There's no push or rush, as indicated with the you're just in time, as it was and will always be based upon Matilda's timeline. It's a sense of found family and a safe place to land after she's previously seen the world, followed the seasons, and all that. Welcome home, welcome to the party, welcome to the place where you can be you without begging for the allowance to do so.

You framed all your posters and dyed your clothes: I think this is a beautiful way to signify that somebody grew, focusing on the smaller details. But, additionally, there's a full circle moment, calling back to childhood — experiencing the small joys she never had the chance to, as her childhood was spent in a survival state. You framed all your posters and made this new house a home with favorite things from your childhood, now with an added sense of sophistication that was missing previously. You dyed your clothes, changing them to better fit a new stage of life. Parts of Matilda's childhood can be brought into adulthood with her, and reinvented to be rid of the negative connotations that may still be attached. You can let it go.

You don't have to go / You don't have to go home: The speaker reintroduces himself in the song to speak and bring more reassurance to Matilda, with nurturing and welcoming at the forefront. You don't have to go away from where we've invited you, Matilda, with your favorite teas and the way you like your toast, you don't have to go away from this place of people who love you for you. You don't have to go home reminds Matilda that she doesn't have to go back to the people and place she cut ties with, and that's okay. the use of the word home has intrigued me for quite a while, but I think it indicates that Matilda is still presently on the journey to let go of her past.

Oh, there's a long way to go / I don't believe time will change your mind / In other words, I know they won't hurt you anymore / As long as you can let them go: These last lines of the bridge importantly acknowledge the journey — not just of life, and not just the growing up and traveling and exploring — of healing. It's a bittersweet moment here, gently saying there's a long way to go. It isn't solved, it isn't over — for nothing ever is packaged up that neatly in reality. I don't believe time will change your mind, to me, is him saying that it won't be as simple as letting time fall between her and what happened. A lot of blood and tears is going to have to be shed to truly get to the point where it's not a constant background ache. Leading into, I know they won't hurt you anymore as long as you can let them go. Matilda, you need to give yourself permission to let this all go, both the situation and the facade you've been putting on. Let yourself feel, then let it go.

[CHORUS ADD ON VARIATION 2] You can let it go You can throw a party full of everyone you know You can start a family who will always show you love You don't have to be sorry for doin' it on your own You can let it go You can throw a party full of everyone you know You can start a family who will always show you love You don't have to be sorry, no

The shift in the final chorus can be undetectable if the listener isn't paying attention. But, once it's caught, it's impossible to miss again. This is a second variation of the chorus, on its third iteration. In the earlier verse of the chorus, the third line was And not invite your family 'cause they never showed you love. But, after Matilda has worked to let them go, it evolves to You can start a family who will always show you love — highlighting the beauty of found family, a family of choice. And with this evolution in the chorus, the meaning of doin' it on your own has changed, because rather than a reference to growing up or leaving and traveling, but starting a family, one who will love you, and Matilda has done it with her own autonomy. It's the next step on the road to healing, and there's always this reassurance that Matilda can do this on her own. He gives the power back to her and puts it in her palms, for she is strong and she is resilient.

Therefore, the whole message, the thesis statement of the song, lies in the final line: you don't have to be sorry. The song of Matilda is a conversation between her and the speaker, and in response to her unspoken guilt. In the various forms and layers, the repeated lyrics and parallels, context stacked on context, the listener — us, the spectators — is enveloped in the depth of Matilda and her journey. But, in that final line, all specificities and complexities are stripped, to simply conclude it all: you don't have to be sorry, let go of the guilt, and you can be happy.

Matilda left me reeling in a puddle of tears on the first listen, and my emotions are instigated with each listen after. Pieces that send me into a wave of emotions set off a green light, they'll always be my favorite. In a way, Harry has become our Ms. Honey in times we've felt like Matilda, gifted us a chosen family with those who bond over his music. Much like this song, beautiful and evocative it is.

A grand indicator of a great writer is the ability to write so deeply about experiences not necessarily connected to them and their own experience. The times where Harry is the 'outside looking in, narrator of other people's experiences' songwriter has always been something I admire, and the songs I find the most intriguing to study. There's a full narrative, and we are brought into the same emotions Matilda was experiencing at the moment, therefore fully enveloping us in the story. I don't know, you just feel it. And I love that you just feel it.

And he takes such care and consideration with this delicate story. He doesn't have to name them specifically or be overbearing with identifying details, but cleverly uses well-known themes of the Dahl children's book to explore feelings and show understanding. It's a warm song full of strength and bursting with love. A seldom promise to always be there and understanding to a friend who's felt alone and misunderstood in a time when they should've been heard. Making sure they know their power and the power of care and nurturing. And Harry, in Harry's House, will always show you love.

dedicated to this anon <3

Thank you for reading, you’re absolutely incredible! If there are any songs you’d like me to make an analysis of, please send your request to my inbox! along with any questions or insights you might have yourself!

17 notes · View notes

slipping-through-my-fingertips · 7 months ago

Text

Telling the Office

Ao3 <- read parts 1-5 on ao3

Summary: Annabeth tells her coworkers about the baby

When they return from Camp Jupiter, she feels lighter. Mentally at least.

They come home on a Wednesday, which means Annabeth’s work week is really only two days. But going in on Thursday means enduring a workplace happy hour. Once a month, they host an in office happy hour with booze and snacks. Annabeth has been strategically avoiding them for the last few months. Planning meetings during them or leaving early those days claiming date nights with Percy (which quickly turned into real date nights), but she was fresh from a vacation now and she couldn’t escape this one.

She’s going to have to tell them because the office only ever serves beer or wine. There’s no runaround to be played here by making mixed drinks with no alcohol. Or else, be ridiculed for not letting loose (most of the office already sees her as a workaholic). Annabeth is used to having the all-business-all-the-time attitude but she really doesn’t want her coworkers to think that she’s unable to have fun. Especially since she’s missed the last five or so happy hours.

Annabeth debates on how to tell her co-workers. Does she just show up tomorrow morning in a dress that hugs her midsection? Her bump is definitely noticeable when she allows it to be.

Technically she doesn’t have to notify anyone of her maternity leave until a month before she takes it so theoretically she could just wait and see who notices first and just endure the office happy hour ragging.

Or she can turn this whole happy hour into a pregnancy reveal party.

Thus, she spent most of the day cleaning the apartment and thinking about what to do at work tomorrow. At the end of her Big Think, Annabeth decides she would rather be the center of attention for one event than risk having a whisper down the lane situation in the office.

Not that she’s an attention seeker but being pregnant does take up space in one’s life. You get attention without asking for it. Annabeth likes to be in control. Telling people she’s having a baby versus them guessing she is—it's no brainer. Obviously, Annabeth is going to control the narrative.

How to go about telling them was a whole other beast. Maybe she should make cupcakes or something? Percy is pretty fancy with icing and could help her out.

Between loads of laundry, she quietly gets the right ingredients and lays them on the countertop. Percy pops his head in as she’s tiptoeing to reach the flour. He reaches from behind her and pulls it down for her.

“What’s going on?” He asks, gesturing to her supplies.

“Can you preheat the oven?”

He does.

“I want to make cupcakes for work Happy Hour.”

He must spot the blue and pink sprinkles.

“You’re going to tell them.”

Unconsciously, her hand goes to her bump.

“I’m putting in for maternity leave too.”

Percy smiles and rolls up his sleeves, “let’s get to work.”

That’s what she loves about him: total support. He’s always on her side first and asks questions second.

They end up making just over 2 dozen cupcakes. Percy insists on keeping some for themselves. As he adds blue sprinkles, Percy asks “do you wonder if it’s a girl or boy?”

Annabeth pauses her own sprinkling. Honestly, she’s been so focused on simply doing what’s best for their baby she hadn’t given the sex much thought.

“Not really.”

“Seriously? Notable overthinker Annabeth Chase doesn’t wonder what she's carrying?”

“I want a healthy baby,” she says with a shrug, “I mean our parents went through plenty with us, how hard can a normal baby be.”

“You’re forgetting whose kid it is.”

She laughs, “you’re right, you’re a terrible influence. We’re doomed.”

“Hey! You’re just as bad! You did all that stuff with me!”

“Like what?”

He just kisses her in reply.

Annabeth packs the cupcakes in reusable Tupperware and hides it in a tote bag and leaves them in her office until Julie comes to find her for Happy Hour.

Julie peeks her head into the glass wall office, “Please tell me you’re not still working on the Hapner project, put it down for the night, come have some wine.”

Annabeth looks up.

“I’m finished,” she says, closing her laptop. “Let me just pack up and I’ll be there.”

“Are you sneaking out on us again?” Julie asks.

“No, not today. I told Percy not to wait up.”

Julie smiles, “good, we miss you around here. You used to be the one planning these things y’know? And now you can’t even be bothered to show up.”

Annabeth grabs her tote of cupcakes and her work bag. She has no need to come back to her office today.

“Well, you get me today.”

“I have to tell you around this date I got set up on.”

It’s then Annabeth remembers how much fun hanging out with her co-workers can be.

The walk to the conference room they’ve taken over for Happy Hour is short so Annabeth doesn’t hear the whole first date story but she hears enough to know it was awful enough that there would be no second date in Julie’s future. She might have to start seriously considering setting Julie up on a dating app because Julie’s friends clearly had bad taste.

“Look what the cat dragged in!”

Annabeth turns away from the drink table, saved for another moment from having to decline the alcohol.

“Hey, Dan, how are you?”

“We’re planning Caitlyn’s fifth birthday party already. She’ll be in kindergarten soon. I can’t believe it.”

“They grew up so fast,” she replies.

Everyone’s already kinda gathered around so she figures this is her opportunity.

“Speaking of, I made cupcakes.”

She lifts them out of her tote in all their pink and blue sprinkled glory.

The next day in the office is fairly normal until around lunch time when she receives a floral arrangement from her team congratulating her and Percy on their new addition

#percy jackson #annabeth chase #percabeth #Percabeth fanfic #my fics #pregnancy au

8 notes · View notes

falloutbradreviews · 2 months ago

Text

Bloc Party – Silent Alarm

A couple of weeks ago, I started getting into a bunch of 00s music, but I started with the 00s post-punk revival, where I talked about some albums from The Bravery, The Killers, We Are Scientists, and a few other bands, but one of my favorite albums from that era (that I only discovered a handful of years ago, unfortunately, but it’s awesome) is Bloc Party’s debut album, Silent Alarm. Released in 2005, this record turns 20 this year, and it’s an important album for both indie-rock and the post-punk revival. It was one of the biggest albums of that scene, but it’s also one of my favorites. There’s so much to love within this record, and it holds up so well today. I picked up a copy of it a couple of weeks back, so I wanted to go down memory lane and talk about this record a bit. I’m a bit late to the, well, Bloc Party, but I got into them a few years ago when their last album came out. I picked up a copy of 2022’s Alpha Games, because I wanted to get into them, since Hayley Williams from Paramore talked about being influenced by Silent Alarm when Paramore’s latest LP, This Is Why, came out. She talked a lot about how they were influenced by that record, and it makes sense, since they went into a post-punk sound with that record. Alpha Games isn’t half bad, but I got bored of it when I finally heard Silent Alarm. I had already heard their 2007 album, A Weekend In The City, but I guess I never reviewed it or talked about it publicly. The album was okay, from what I remember, but I really wanted to hear Silent Alarm.

I did hear it a few years back, but I put it on the backburner, so I could focus on other things at that time. Now that I’m getting back into the post-punk revival, I made sure to pick up a copy, so I could spend some time with it. If you had to make a Mount Rushmore of post-punk revival albums, Silent Alarm would be on that list. I’d say it’s right up there with Hot Fuss, frankly; Hot Fuss is the king of post-punk revival albums, but Silent Alarm is number two. I absolutely adore this record, but I do have one small issue with it, and it’s a problem that I’ve had with a lot of albums that I’ve been talking about recently – it’s too damn long. This album is almost an hour long, and for what? The album does justify it, because the album is super weird, unique, catchy, fun, energetic, and vibrant, along with being unpredictable and off the wall, but it does wear on me by the end. It also doesn’t help when my two favorite songs are in the first half, so by the second half, I’m just checking my watch a few times, but still having a great time. This thing has a lot going for it, and the first thing we need to talk about is its sound. These guys were unique in that space, because instead of just being a post-punk revival band down to a tee, or being a generic garage-rock band, they took elements of electronic, house music, new wave, and stuff like that, versus the standard post-punk and garage-rock sounds of the time. They have some cool experimentation on this record, and maybe that’s why it’s a bit longer, so they can flesh out that experimentation, but it’s really unique and fun.

There’s a lot of energy on this album, too, but that partially has to do with their vocalist. Vocalist Kele Okereke is a very charismatic vocalist that doesn’t carry the album by any means, but he complements it. His voice is a bit of an acquired taste, I’ll admit, as he yelps and shouts, versus outright sings a lot of the time, but that was the normalcy of post-punk in the 1980s. Vocalists did this talk-sing, yelping, and shouting thing, versus actually singing, so he pulls it off very well, and it’s a ton of fun. My two favorite songs on this album are “Banquet” and “Helicopter,” but those two songs are the best representation of what you’ll get on this album. They’re frantic, energetic, fun, and catchy as all hell, but this album is one of the best post-punk albums of the 00s. It turns 20 this year, too, like I said earlier, and it’s an album still worth talking about. I can understand if you’re put off by the vocals, or even the sound is a bit weirder than you’d expect from a band in this vein, so they aren’t totally a household name, like The Killers or The Strokes, but they’re a band worth hearing if you enjoy that post-punk revival sound. They have kept the torch lit for years, despite their later work being spotty. They’re one of those bands that have been able to reach the same heights as their debut, but they’re not a horrible band these days. Their latest album was pretty decent, especially going back to their earlier work, but they’ve since gone into an alt-rock / indie direction that people are pretty split on. Silent Alarm, however, is a unanimously praised record that is still a classic today.

#bloc party #silent alarm #the killers #hot fuss #post punk revival #rock #pop #punk #alpha games #rock music #00s #2005 #2005 albums

4 notes · View notes

everyones-least-favorite-bard · 2 years ago

Text

this is just a collection of highlights from my last Goofy Presentation Night in which i discussed (read: forced my audience to listen to) orv/yhk thoughts for two hundred and ten minutes

ill add more and rb/tag accordingly n stuff later bc its a lot of words to post and i am one very eepy boy

ON DOKSOO

In 1973, Ursula LeGuin wrote the short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, which, if you’ve been around the English side of ORV fandom for long enough, might recognize due to jomeimei, our yhk scholar’s writings. If you don’t know it, the basic premise of the work is that there exists in some far-flung imagined world, a utopia called Omelas that is perfect in every way, save for the fact that its perfection is maintained via the constant suffering of a small child. (One can surmise from the title of course, that there are those who upon learning this, choose to leave the city and live elsewhere.)

One of the ways this intersects with ORV comes in the Epilogues and what happened to the Avatar of Han Sooyoung living in the 1863rd round. The Han Sooyoung of that round, if you recall, found post-suicide attempt Kim Dokja in the “real” world while looking for the author of Three Ways. Judging by her reactions, we see she has two epiphanies:

EPIPHANY ONE: There was no tls123. It was nearing the end of the year that Three Ways was published (in her and Kim Dokja’s memories), but the novel had not been published yet. The only people with knowledge of the original Three Ways timeline in the world were herself and the Dokkaebi King. If she didn't do anything, if she simply sat back and let the year finish out, she could leave WOS as an unpleasant memory and nothing more. She could save the world.

EPIPHANY TWO: Kim "Three Ways to Survive in a Ruined World saved my life" Dokja would not survive without that story.

She is faced with the same dilemma those who left Omelas were faced with: does she condemn the world to save this child, or does she save the world but condemn this child?

Let's leave that thought to simmer for a while.

Now the moral quandary that she’s dealing with is similar in structure to the Trolley Problem. (Which, if the reader of this has been living blissfully unexposed to 20th century philosophy and 21st century bastardizations of such, is a moral thought experiment in which a tram is headed down a track towards five people, with a lever allowing one to switch the tracks placed before the subject. However, the second track has one person on it who will also surely die from a direct hit by the trolley. Does the subject choose action or inaction?)

And this decision, which, according to other iterations of the Trolley Problem (in which the one person is someone the subject knows and cares about) is still not even in line with those theories or justifications.

ORV is utterly rife with these sort of fun moral messes. There are countless moments in which characters are faced with needs-of-the-many versus needs-of-the-few. Kim Dokja, for one, is perhaps most memorable for these given his propensity for (continuing with the Trolley Problem metaphor) throwing himself onto the track before the tram can reach the fork.

The events of the 1863rd round (and its aftereffects) are the most direct parallel of the experiment.

As has been established, Han Sooyoung of the 1863rd round only knew Kim Dokja for a week, if even that, and yet she is fully willing to burn the world to make sure a life in which he might be happy is given to him. This decision is even further warped when we consider that the moment of her epiphany(s) is not the first time this Han Sooyoung was faced with the Trolley Problem.

We know that (based on the conversations she has with Kim Dokja) in the 1863rd round, Han Sooyoung was operating in a utilitarian space in order to seamlessly complete the scenarios. She chose to sacrifice Yoo Joonghyuk and put him in the position of a “villain” (thereby making him spiritually “dead” to all his loved ones and peers) in order to make sure she made a perfect run. And arguably she did–upon arriving in the 1863rd round Kim Dokja (loathe though he is to admit it) cannot find fault with how she has completed the scenarios thus far, and is even (if I remember correctly) somewhat jealous of her for being able to orchestrate such a clean run.

But instead of working with her to finish her run, to draw the period marking the end of the story she’s made, Kim Dokja’s desire to save Yoo Joonghyuk outweighs his desire to save the world, and he steps in and tears it into a comma. (Yes, I’m deliberately referencing the epilogues. No, I haven’t stopped thinking about the fucking period/comma scene. Don’t talk to me.) He switches the lever back to the track with five people because he refuses to sit back and allow the one man to die.

Now, based on what we see of Han Sooyoung in this round and her immediate reaction to Kim Dokja’s dickery, she would have continued operating in her ends-justify-the-means space. She obviously does to some extent as she reaches the end of the scenarios and wrangles the Dokkaebi King into granting her a wish. Upon arriving in the “real” world she is fully prepared to kill tls123 and save the world. But she doesn’t, she has the key to saving the world in her hands, she could so very easily keep Yoo Joonghyuk from suffering a thousand lives, she could save billions of people and live a wildly successful life as a famous webnovel author but! She! Doesn’t!

Why?

Imagine for a moment, if you will, sitting in a hospital room across from a fifteen year-old boy, sleeping or unconscious, fresh from a suicide attempt. Imagine for a moment, if you will, having met this fifteen year-old boy in another life when he was no longer quite so small or physically close to death, but was equally (if not more) close to it in spirit. Imagine for a moment, if you will, knowing the exact thing that will keep this boy if not happy, then at least surviving, for long enough that you might meet him again. Imagine for a moment, if you will, knowing that withholding that thing is certain death for this boy.

How could she condemn him then? How could she, after knowing the depth with which he will love and will fight to save those he wants to save, leave him here to die, alone?

We see therefore, that as a result of her interaction with Kim Dokja, that she is fundamentally changed in her worldview: she is no longer utilitarianally or unilaterally doling out unambiguous justice, sacrificing Yoo Joonghyuk for the world, but rather sacrificing the world now for Kim Dokja.

It is by this that we know that written into the very condemnation of the world that Kim Dokja uses to justify his consistent self-flagellation is a story of love. Han Sooyoung does not walk away from Omelas--no, she reaches in and says to that lonely, suffering child, I will save you. I will love you as you are. The three ways to survive in a ruined world have always, always been love.

126 notes · View notes

respectthepetty · 2 years ago

Note

Hello hello

I don't know if you talked about this before but is there a show that got colors so right that it WOW-ed you, as in they nailed it all from a to z?

Anon, I love this question. Do you understand? LOVE IT! I'm actually doing a colors award post in December because these shows are doing an amazing job with color coding this year. I'm always pleased with the colors I get, and last year's were a treat, but something about this year is feeding my soul DAILY, so allow me to take some small detours to highlight a few favorites before I answer your question:

I Cannot Reach You's color-coded bokeh effect is driving me mad with excitement each episode.

Destiny Seeker had consistent color-coding every episode, from beginning to end, with no missteps. 10/10 color coding. No notes.

Kiseki: Dear to Me and Never Let Me Go delivered consistent coding through the wardrobe of its couples that has me biting my knuckles simply thinking about them.

The Eighth Sense delivered on its dark versus light color dynamic during that phenomenal colorful kiss and the subway ride.

But Dark Blue Kiss will forever remain the best color exchange during a kiss for me.

Semantic Error could have snatched that top spot because everything was included in the color-coding adventure: lighting, wardrobe, props, TODO!

But if you know anything about me, the champion should come as no surprise because this show understood the assignment, and I devoured it each week with lengthy write-ups, so the winner was always gonna be . . .

Big Dragon

Its color-coding game is unbeatable from start to finish.

The houses, the lighting, the clothing, the phones, the hookups, EVERYTHING WAS COLOR-CODED!

And I'm a sucker for the color coding starting when the characters are kids.

Then those sweet sweet color exchanges! Ah, my heart is gonna explode!

And it wasn't just the colors. Big Dragon was feeding me symbolism every damn episode: Yin/Yang, Tiger/Dragon, Moon/Sun, Dark/Light. AND THE SIDES WERE IN ON IT TOO!

This show knew what it was doing, visually, thanks to cinematographer Ratchanon Kaeosaart who was also behind I Promised You the Moon, and it never missed! This is one of the reasons it instantly gained a top spot in my heart. This show didn't just wow me. It made me fall in love with it, easily, and I have been obnoxiously obsessed with it since.

NOW WHERE IS MY SECOND SEASON?!

#big dragon #the answer is always big dragon #shows that wowed me #understanding the color assignment #color coded boys in love #the colors mean things #and it means I'M OBSESSED!#WHERE IS MY SECOND SEASON?!

52 notes · View notes

denimbex1986 · 1 year ago

Text

'It’s one of those odd April days in Los Angeles, the type that locals know well: Hours after noon, the sun still seems ambivalent about whether it wants to make itself known. An outsider wouldn’t think it possible for the gleaming capital of show business to feel so grayed out. But if you grew up on an island where colorless skies are the norm, it might feel familiar.

“It’s like, Will I? Won’t I?” the Irish actor Andrew Scott quips as he settles into his chair on the rooftop of the Edition Hotel in West Hollywood. He’s been in town promoting his Netflix series “Ripley,” which launched a few weeks ago, and the foreboding weather seems apt. On that limited series, the Italian vistas seem as unsettled as its antihero’s soul. The show’s vibe is “almost like L.A., what we’re looking at here now,” Scott says, as I begin to regret not bringing a jacket to our alfresco lunch. “It’s cloudy. I come from a place where the sky is normally like this.”

Scott’s “Ripley,” an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel about a grifter whose 1950s Euro-trip comes with a body count, is morally cloudy, too, and glamorously gloomy besides. Unlike the 1999 film “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” which placed an uptight Tom Ripley (then played by peak-heartthrob-era Matt Damon) amid the rustic charm of Italy and drew its charge from the contrast, this year’s version is a blunter object. Speedo-clad Damon romped through the Italy of your dreams; the baggily attired Scott staggers through a nightmare.

Written and directed by Steven Zaillian and likely to place Scott in contention for a limited-series lead-acting Emmy, it’s mesmerizing but cool to the touch, using Oscar winner Robert Elswit’s stark black-and-white cinematography to depict a landscape as forbidding as its central character. That may account for why the series got off to a slow start on Netflix’s weekly viewership charts. But “Ripley” has also attracted the kind of positive notices that suggest a potential long tail, especially as Emmy season looms.

The series was a crucial test for Scott, who, at 47, has proven himself a shape-shifter. The out gay actor, who in 2019 stole scenes as the “Hot Priest” on the second season of “Fleabag,” and who had an awards-season run for his lovelorn role in last year’s “All of Us Strangers,” knows how to win hearts. Even playing the villainous Moriarty opposite Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes on the 2010s BBC “Sherlock,” Scott became known for his loopy, outsized line readings. So what would it feel like to play a tamped-down sociopath?

But Scott didn’t see Ripley that way. “I found an enormous amount to like,” he says. “There’s something about that character that, I think, a lot of people see themselves in. And I think it’s to do with being an outsider.” Tom Ripley, plainly gifted, lacks the social connections of the wealthy American expats he meets (played here by Johnny Flynn and Dakota Fanning as layabouts and occasional boors). His flashes of rage — forcing him, later, to methodically dispose of multiple corpses — exist for Scott as a sort of frustrated creative impulse. “He probably is more of an artistic sort, but he doesn’t feel he’s got the class to call himself that.”

There’s something about Ripley, in other words, that’s tortured — a trait Scott can conjure with ease. On “Fleabag,” his unnamed Catholic clergyman struggled through a crisis of faith-versus-lust that was both funny and painful. In “All of Us Strangers,” his conflicted gay writer goes on a dreamlike journey to re-encounter his late parents, forgiving both them and himself for past miscommunications while falling in love with a character played by Paul Mescal.

“Fleabag” cut against, and “All of Us Strangers” leaned into, Scott’s rare status as a gay leading man. “And not afraid to talk about it and be open about it!” marvels Andrew Haigh, his “All of Us Strangers” director. There’s little Scott isn’t open about: In a wide-ranging conversation, he volleys back his answers with the relentless self-examination — and the fleeting tearfulness — of a person who’s spent time in his feelings.

It can be hard not to conflate the characters he’s played with the sense that Scott is Hollywood’s new prince of heartache. In fact, he has a direct line to the queen of such matters. “Taylor’s new album is sensational! I texted her yesterday to say how amazing it is,” Scott says about “The Tortured Poets Department,” which came out three days before our conversation. Taylor Swift, he says, is a friend, and he beams with vicarious pride about her 31-track magnum opus: “I think she is just a force of nature, just an extraordinary human, and this album is really, really amazing.” His favorite song on it, for the record, is “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” a ballad that begins with quiet heartbreak and builds toward a dramatic excoriation.

But Scott is perhaps being modest. Some believe that he is as much to credit for the title of the album as the men Swift sings about. Consider the explosion online after a 2022 Variety Actors on Actors conversation between Mescal and Joe Alwyn (who was dating Swift at the time, and is thought to have inspired a few songs on the album) in which they discussed their membership in a group chat called “Tortured Man Club.” Scott, they said, had initiated the chat.

“Let me tell you what that is!” Scott says. Just before Alwyn was to appear in the TV adaptation of novelist Sally Rooney’s “Conversations With Friends,” Scott — Alwyn’s co-star in the 2022 film “Catherine Called Birdy” — set him up with Mescal, of “Normal People,” another series based on Rooney’s work. “So they were about to play these tortured characters, and I had played a tortured character in ‘Fleabag.’ It wasn’t about our own characteristics!” The chat quickly died on the vine, he says. “I think there were three texts, like, ‘Hey, guys.’ You know those groups that you set up, and they just collapse.”

Short-lived or not, the existence of the chat had taken on a second life ever since the announcement of “The Tortured Poets Department.” And the whole incident speaks to Scott’s easy way of connecting people.

“He’s a great guardian of actors, if you’re lucky enough that he admires you or has respect for you,” Mescal says. “He’s got an overseeing quality, in terms of understanding that good art and good actors are hard to come by.”

Mescal, 28, and Alwyn, 33, feel in a sense like peers of Scott’s. “Fleabag” Season 2, which brought Scott to a new echelon of fame, was just five years ago, and in conversation, he has a Peter Pan energy: raffish, barking laugh and eyes that seem to twinkle with each new disclosure. And yet Scott makes for a notably older Tom Ripley — a character written by Highsmith to be just past college age.

“It was just a beautiful film,” Scott says of Anthony Minghella’s 1999 adaptation. “The idea of approaching that again, one of my first questions was ‘OK, who wants to do a carbon copy?’” Scott gestures at what, in the dim light of the patio, appears to be his delicately lined face: “Jesus, look at my age!”

Scott’s take on the character reads as more experienced, and wearier. More tortured, over a longer timeline. Scott can relate. Our conversation is the final stop on a lengthy press tour, which came on the heels of promoting “All of Us Strangers” during Oscar season; he flies back home tomorrow. Before that was “Ripley”’s long road to the screen: After some 162 days of principal photography from summer 2021 to spring 2022, the series, which had been made by Showtime, bounced to Netflix amid a fire sale at the Paramount-owned cable network.

Following “Ripley,” “All of Us Strangers” and his solo show “Vanya” on London’s West End last fall, Scott is on a career high, and he’s become a red-carpet fixture as a fashionista. (His all-white tux-and-tee combo as a nominee at this year’s Golden Globes deflated the pomposity of the event, while looking dazzlingly fresh.) “It’s a way of having fun, being creative — going, OK, well, this is a bit of a laugh.” Scott stammers, but goes on: “My mother was a very stylish, creative person, and it’s something I’ve always been interested in. Why not just have a bit of fun while we’re here?”

Scott has brought up his mother a few times before I get the chance to offer my condolences. She died unexpectedly on March 7 — less than a month before “Ripley”’s premiere. “It came very suddenly to our family,” he says, “and it’s landed in the middle of all of this stuff. Her spirit is so alive in me in the immediate aftermath of her death.”

There are painfully mixed feelings at play: Scott is proud of the work he’s done (and duty-bound to promote it), while part of him is elsewhere. Talking about his mother is a way of keeping her close. She was an art teacher, “and her way of dealing with people was so kind, but she wasn’t very good at small talk,” Scott says. “She connected with people in a very particular way. What I was taught was the idea of being authentically yourself.”

Which extends to Scott’s self-presentation. In our meeting, he’s neon-bright, wearing a teal crewneck sweatshirt under a fuzzy cardigan the precise shade of cerulean that Miranda Priestly popularized. “People say that they look back at photographs and cringe,” he says. “Who cares? It’s about playfulness. It’s about going, How would I be if I wasn’t scared of criticism?”

“Ripley,” in its ambiguity, is a show unafraid to trigger debate. Among the choices Zaillian (best known for his Oscar-winning screenplay for “Schindler’s List”) made was a greater fealty to Highsmith’s text. Minghella’s film untangled her complications: Tom lusted after Dickie (played by Jude Law), and he had to destroy what he could not obtain. Here, though, Tom seems repulsed by Dickie, even as he admires his lifestyle and easy way of being. Tom doesn’t seem to fit into any identity at all, leaving some viewers to wonder whether he’s even gay in this version.

“Everything that I feel on that subject is in the show,” Zaillian says when asked to clarify Ripley’s sexual orientation. “I don’t like to do anything overtly; I think subtlety is best. It’s not that I’m trying to hide anything, but I think it’s all there.”

Scott is willing to go a bit further. “I didn’t want to diagnose him with anything in particular,” he says. “I don’t think he would be comfortable in a gay bar or a straight bar. I think his sexuality is elusive to him.” What he does to Dickie is an expression of frustrated heartsickness, perhaps. “I think he has a feeling of love for him. Sometimes it could be sexual. Sometimes it could be fraternal. And sometimes it could just be amicable.” What was a quarter century ago rendered as an outright homoerotic story here gets into levels of confusion that feel more challenging, more novelistic. “If she was alive today,” Scott says of Highsmith, “I’d love to ask her a bit more about that.”

Highsmith, whose own relationship with her lesbianism was complicated, likely wouldn’t recognize the world through which Scott strides. Indeed, he has previously expressed his dubiousness about language around sexuality — specifically, the term “openly gay,” which he derides. “It’s wonderful to be able to talk about sexuality in an open way,” Scott says. “But I do feel sometimes, other people — and by other people, I mean straight people — don’t have to explain or talk about their sexuality every time they go to work.”

Scott, thus far quick-witted and voluble, has begun to weigh his words carefully. “The idea that I’m being defiant by just being exactly who I am … Be open about it? Why wouldn’t you be open about it?” The distinction between disclosing one’s sexuality and not isn’t lost on Scott, and he doesn’t mind it — that’s what, to him, the word “out” is for. “But the word ‘openly,’ for me, just seems a little loaded.”

The actor’s newfound prominence as a gay leading man is both a turning point for our culture and a fact that might seem to lend him special access to certain characters. In his first conversation with Haigh about “All of Us Strangers,” “he understood so deeply what that character needed to be,” Haigh says. “You want someone to connect to the character on a personal level. And I don’t think Andrew is afraid of that. In fact, it excites him, and he wants to embrace how he can make it personal.”

And yet Scott resists the idea that the story is solely one for gay viewers: He remarks that just today, he received a note from a friend who watched with his wife, and was moved. “A lot of this stuff has really affected me in my own life growing up — God knows I didn’t have a lot of gay content,” Scott says. “We live in an identity-politics era. We’re separating each other more than we need to. This hysteria about your sexuality and how that is something that is only understandable to people who belong to the same tribe as you — it just doesn’t seem truthful.”

Part of Scott’s response might be a desire to sidestep misreadings of his intentions with “All of Us Strangers” and “Ripley.” In both projects, he plays a character who has experienced some version of same-sex attraction; in both, his character also seems miserable. “Sometimes I find it hard when you’re doing press,” he says, “because I feel so joyful and so emancipated. It seems like I always want to talk about the difficulties that I have with being gay, when actually, it’s the greatest joy of my life.”

His presence on the celebrity circuit, though, suggests that culture is still figuring out how to treat an out star at Scott’s level. At this year’s BAFTAs, a red-carpet reporter for the BBC asked Scott about Barry Keoghan’s genitalia as seen in the film “Saltburn,” implying that Scott and Keoghan (who is dating the pop star Sabrina Carpenter) had been intimate. Scott quickly walked away. “It was awkward,” he says. “It was a little bit weird. But I got an apology from the journalist. I think it was a series of unfortunate events. And I totally accepted his apology.”

Scott doesn’t dwell on the incident, saying, “I wouldn’t want him to suffer any more.” But the story resonates with a general sense that Scott’s work, or his public self, is held to a different standard. The understandable excitement around Scott booking massive jobs — and his experience of being the “first” or “only” in many professional settings — feels strange from the inside. “What is the best thing that we could do?” he asks me. “I don’t have the definite answer. Would it be unusual for us not to mention my sexuality at all?”

Well, yes — but we move on. The moment Scott’s experiencing is the culmination of an incremental build, after an initial leap of faith. He’d dropped out of Trinity College in Dublin (alma mater of Irish artists such as Oscar Wilde and, more recently, “Normal People”’s Rooney and Mescal) after six months to pursue theater. “Sometimes you shouldn’t have a safety net,” he says. “If you have a safety net, you’re going to be really, really safe.” Early screen roles included appearances in “Saving Private Ryan” and “Band of Brothers.” The parts gradually got bigger — his performance in the 2014 drama “Pride,” about the gay-rights crusade in Britain, is a fan favorite, and he was an appropriately sinister opponent for James Bond and MI6 in 2015’s “Spectre” before playing the lead in a 2017 London staging of “Hamlet.”

But it was “Fleabag” that lit his career aflame. Scott calls Phoebe Waller-Bridge “one of my main homies” and, to the extent that the Hot Priest phenomenon has followed him, says it’s all for the good. “It hasn’t prevented me from playing any other characters. And I just feel so proud of the process and the product.” Would he return to a hypothetical “Fleabag” Season 3, if Waller-Bridge asked him to? “Of course I would,” he says before unleashing one of those great Andrew Scott guffaws. “But she’s not going to!”

It’s hard to overstate the impact Hot Priest had, turning what had been in its first season a charming critics’ favorite into a world-devouring, Emmy-sweeping hit on the strength of Scott’s chemistry with Waller-Bridge. (Scott was not himself Emmy-nominated for “Fleabag,” but was the following year for an episode of “Black Mirror.”) Sad-eyed yet smiling, H.P. forges a deep understanding with Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag: They both know that they want to be together, and they both know that they cannot.

Which makes “Fleabag” an intriguing counterpoint to Ripley, a character who pushes his way past every limitation he cannot hack his way through. The monochrome look of the show turns Scott’s eyes into vampiric black pools of need; over eight episodes, we witness Ripley’s lower-class life and high-class ambitions, and his willingness to turn to violence to bridge the two. There’s an unholy gnarliness to Ripley that Scott sells well.

“Ripley” is a double risk, as Scott knew when he took on the role. The series updates — by more closely following Highsmith’s tricky, nasty novel — a film that’s widely beloved, and does so with a leading man whose reputation is for suffering sweetly. “I’m just concerned about how it would be perceived, how it would change things for me,” Scott says. He acknowledged that fear — then let it go.

“When I played James Moriarty, I was younger than people wanted the character to be. And they’d go, ‘I wanted the character to have a beard and wear a top hat, and this little fucker is now playing it like this, and I don’t want that!’ The biggest challenge for you is to put your dukes up and go, Sorry, but this is this.” Risk — in comparison to what Scott calls “cynical and unconfident” compromise — works.

His co-stars have noticed the chances he takes. “Technical brilliance is one thing. And then there’s this other part of Andrew that is incredibly raw in his performance,” Mescal says. “You could sit around and talk to actors about their lives all day — they love nothing more than talking about themselves. But Andrew lets an audience into the corners of themselves that we don’t talk about.”

Sam Yates, the director of Scott’s 2023 “Vanya” — which won an Olivier Award for best revival in April — describes the places Scott would go onstage as “trancelike.”

“How do you go through that without a level of someone else taking over?” Yates says, adding that Scott “is being led by a certain degree of technique, but by a huge degree by his aliveness to his own emotions. He would surprise himself constantly onstage.”

He seems to surprise himself in conversation, too, returning with frequency to a subject that’s evidently joyful to recall and painful to discuss. Previously this season, while being interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” his voice got tight when she asked him, seemingly not knowing the answer, if his parents were both still alive. Now, though, his mother feels like the third person at our table under a gray L.A. sky.

“You keep your Irishness alive by telling the story,” he says. “Thinking about my mom recently and talking about her — it was really important to me, in the eulogy, to celebrate her.”

I remark that his mother — her artistic sensibility, her impatience with pleasantries — feels very present to me. He pauses, seems to shudder slightly. Like a sudden storm, tears are rolling down his cheeks, and he takes a moment to speak. When he finally does, his voice is steady.

“It’s a really funny thing, to be honest,” he says. “I can’t disappear the fact that this has happened in the midst of all this. The juxtaposition of these two extremes in my life where all these projects are coming out, and I’ve had to be much more public-facing than I usually am, at a time when I’m going through this extraordinary personal loss.”

He begins talking more rapidly, becoming more animated as he wills himself out of crying. “I’m not even sure if it’s the right thing to do, but you have to tell your own truth. My job is to understand what it’s like to be a human being, and I don’t like perpetuating the myth that we’re all perfect. That you have to be a movie star.”

Scott’s production company, he tells me, is called Both/And — he notes the slash in the middle. “I’ve always believed that things are always both something and something else. It could be the happiest day of your life, and you’re hungry. You’re at a funeral, and you have a laugh. There’s always something else.”

I can relate: I’m pleased to be connecting, but sorry that I upset him. And so I apologize.

“No, no, listen! I’m upset anyway!” he says, then lets loose another hearty laugh, loud and rich enough to crack the tension of the moment. In its gusto and its surprising timing, it does feel like a laugh at a funeral, but sometimes those are the kind one needs.

“Ripley” may represent the greatest challenge this versatile actor has experienced — he’s at the center of each of its eight episodes, and nothing happens without him.

“We would do what we could in our time off, but I know it was really taxing for him,” Fanning, Scott’s co-star, says. “We found a lot of common ground, because we’ve both done this for the majority of our lives. We approach work in a very similar way — there’s a time and place to be serious, and there’s a time you need to tell some stupid joke. And we did that too.”

The presence of co-stars was a balm, but Ripley, necessarily, is alone a great deal. “Spending a lot of time with a character who is solitary when I was feeling solitary myself was quite tough,” Scott says. “I love that about my job — that you can go into a particular world — but it was very different from what gives me joy. It’s the sheer stamina that was needed: It’s a lot of acting.”

The show’s two bravura set-pieces involve the disposal of bodies. “It was important to me that this character was not a professional killer,” Zaillian says. “And so we have to see him think each one through. And Andrew can bring us into his thoughts and feelings.”

Scott, compact of frame, lugged his fellow actors (rather than dummies) as much as was feasible: “I remember doing a long take, seven or eight minutes, me just trying to lift something up, and Steve just let the camera go as I struggled, and didn’t cut.”

He doesn’t linger on this aspect of the shoot. Easily able to access heartache and joy, he tends to stop short when specifics about the work come up. “It goes into a sort of PR-speak,” he says, “where you have to tell people how much suffering you’ve been through.” He draws an analogy of a host throwing a dinner party: “If you spend the whole night saying, ‘Well, I couldn’t find any organic chicken, and the vacuum wasn’t working’ — they’re like, ‘Just give me my fucking dinner!’”

“He’s aware that his work isn’t for him,” Mescal says. “You’re providing a service to an audience. Nobody really gives a fuck about your process, and if they do, they’re boring.”

Elsewhere in our conversation, Scott edges up to describing his method for finding Ripley: “I’m always really interested in the vulnerability of people. What’s the thing they’re unconfident about? What are they hiding? It was hard to access that.” What he found, in the end, was less “a biographical sort of solution,” he says, than an absence — of the ease it takes to get through life. “Not everybody is charming and capable and socially adept and sexy. You have to advocate for people who don’t have it easy. That’s what made me have some degree of affection for him.”

Affection, even on a dark project, is what it’s all about. “He’s a big advocate for play,” Mescal says. “He takes the work very seriously, but he wears it lightly. And that allowed our chemistry to be pretty playful and organic.”

On “All of Us Strangers,” the pair, already acquainted, bonded deeply. “It developed into a genuine love between them, and you can still see that now,” Haigh says. “I felt like I’d been a dating agent, and I brought these two people together.”

The film, shot quickly after “Ripley”’s protracted production, helped Scott emerge and reset after playing Tom. “Sometimes a change can be as good as a rest,” he says. “Although, I have to say, I do need a rest now.”

I have one last question before I let Scott go. He’d said he wondered how “Ripley,” with its grand ambition and with Scott at the center of the story, might change things for him. What kind of change would he want?

It turns out the real question is what kind of change doesn’t he want. “You want to keep your life,” he says. “I like my life. I don’t want people to become the enemy. Because I like people.”

He lets out a sigh. “I’m glad to be wrapping up the promotion aspect of it, because it’s been quite a big journey, and obviously, I need to go and be with the people I love.” He smiles, and his eyes turn down slightly. “So it’s just time for me to exit stage left for a little while.”

I turn my tape recorders off; Scott has given me enough. But he waits a second, his gaze once again as eager as during the formal part of our interview: What had I meant when I used the word “obversely”? (I’d said that the Hot Priest persona seemed like a gift, but — obversely! — potentially limiting as well.) He usually uses the word “conversely” to describe what he thought I meant.

We both look up definitions on our phones, and conclude that the two words mean the same thing: two feelings coursing at once, in seeming opposition to one another. Like the lovability and loathsomeness dueling within Ripley; like happiness and sorrow in a single charged moment. Both/and, or something like that. Words are funny things! And isn’t it amazing, Scott muses, that we can use language to communicate what we’re feeling. What an invention. What a gift. He grins. And if there’s another feeling behind it, both the smile and something else, the sun is suddenly shining too brightly for me to see.'

12 notes · View notes

apsupmix · 6 months ago

Text

Apsup’s Top games of 2024

At the start of the year, I decided to start putting down games I finished, to make a little list I can look at the end of the year. I probably forgot to update it couple times, and it doesn’t have anything I didn’t “finish”, which means no matter how much I played Granblue Versus, it ain’t on the list. Ultimately it was something meant just for me, and now I’m using it to make Top 5 list. Bit late to the GOTY party, but that’s because everyone else is early, December still counts. Not an ordered list, I’m not comparing these to each others.

1. Trails Through Daybreak

I’m Trails fan, there was a new one, it’s really good. Loved the cast, and am looking forward to the sequel in few months. While I didn’t dislike the combat, I don’t think it was strongest combat in the series, and thankfully apparently next game improves on that.

2. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

I’m Like a Dragon fan, there was a new one, it’s really good. While not at good as the previous game, 7 was the best in the series, no shame falling short of that. And this game introduced Yukata Yamai, whom I liked and hope he could stick around in some form.

3. Sakura Wars

The fact that this doesn’t have official translation and western release is a shame, a disappointment, a crime. Cute girls and mechs, (quite simple) tactical combat, power scaling based on how much the girls like you, anime opening at start of every chapter, “in the next episode” -sections at end of every chapter. Sakura Wars is good and deserves more.

4. Ace Combat 3

I wrote a whole post trying to convey the impact of this game hitting my face, I’m not repeating that here. Ace Combat 3 is amazing. Every Ace Combat fan should play it, and anyone who isn’t Ace Combat fan, should fix that.

5. Demons Roots

I’ve seen people call Demons Roots the best written jrpg in last decade or something like that, and I don’t think it’s quite that. But it’s good enough that I understand some people getting that far in their praise. It’s just not “good for rpg-maker eroge”, it’s genuinely good. I do recommend it, just be an adult and know what you are getting into, it’s still rpg-maker eroge.

Bonus: Deadlock

In the handful of months it’s been out, Deadlock has become my third most played game, based on playtime, on Steam. I don’t understand this. I’m afraid it will be my second Dota 2, game I’ll pour hundreds of hours into, not getting particularly good at, but just playing match after match, chilling. I can’t even say if it’s “good” or if I “like” it, in this case those terms feel meaningless. But I have to give some respect on the time it has stolen from me.

#videogames #trails through daybreak #like a dragon #sakura wars #ace combat #ace combat 3 #demons roots #Deadlock

2 notes · View notes

fableworld · 2 years ago

Text

I don't ship them but I don't really care if people do. but if I have to call this ship name anything else than "Tendershipping" it would differently be "Rentshipping" because their dynamic is really Landlord/tenant or Housemate/roommate. I even play around with that idea even if I don't ship them romantically but more familiarly.

anyway, I have made Ryou Bakura's and Bakura's relationship more over to roommates or sibling dymanic. I just find it funny to play around with the idea that they learn to respect(Bakura) and being in control of his own life(Ryou)

in my fanfic "Raise the Sun", Bakura is only giving a second chance because Ryou felt bad for him. their power dynamic is shifted over to Ryou having all the power which, of course, Bakura is not happy about but deal with it. they do learn to live with each other even if they abselutly sometimes just want to throw the other out from the balcony.

A few of the scenes I made here are from the fic. Rest is just me trying to give the very few different expressions you see Yami Bakura make over to the Thief King.

(Scene from Fanfic "Life of the Thief King")

“Yeah, because I am going to drag you with me,” Ryou threatened, but it was quickly replaced with an undignified “Hey!” when Bakhura leaned up against him with both of his arms resting on top of Ryou's head

“Hey, Malik. Do me a favor if he ends up dying of fright. Do revive him. I don't want to die in such an embarrassing way,” Bakhura said, completely ignoring a fighting Ryou under him.

“I wouldn't do it for your sake, that's for sure,” Malik commented. He couldn't even hide his amusement in his voice.

“Bakhura, get off me!” Ryou yelled and finally managed to push the former spirit off him. He was built like a brick house, so it was not an easy task.

- Bakura and Ryou do have a few shared interests. They both love food, and they both love roleplaying. Bakura prefers to build things or be the gamemaster, but Ryou doesn't allow him to be the game master because he does have the GM versus player mentality. Bakura also prefers spicy food, while Ryou is more of a mild food type of guy.

Scene/Text from fanfic "Black Phoenix"

(Scene from "Life of the Thief King") his first bath in ages. You might note that Bakura has something on his chest in some of the images. It is a new spell put on him through an infused pendant with his heart. It is what keeps him alive and binds him to Ryou's lifespan. When Ryou dies, so does he. Ryou can kill him before this happens by removing the pendant, but he has only been close to doing that once. No one can remove it besides Ryou. This spell also makes sure that Bakura has to follow orders from Ryou. Ryou has only put up two rules, which are no killing and not hurting his friends. Bakura has a lot of freedom even if he is a ward of Ryou.

The red cloak Bakura has in some of the pictures is stolen from the same people who tried to bind him to them instead of Ryou. Ryou is still trying to get the blood stains out of it.

Ryou have gotten a lot more sassy and confident after he put Bakura in his place. He is not scared of provoking Bakura anymore and can even order him to do things just by a look. Ryou is one of those people who have seen the edge and gotten back from it. He might look like a cute and gentle guy(he is), but he also has embraced the darkness and the occult. They both give each other nicknames. Host and Spirit. Landlord and Tenant. Shadow and Idiot. Ibis and Sheut(pronounced Shoot). The last two are only said when they are on better terms with each other.

#yugioh #yu-gi-oh!#ryou bakura #thief king bakura #yu-gi-oh #Bakura

11 notes · View notes

withered-rose-unbreakable-lotus · 2 years ago

Text

MY-GOD! WHERE-DOES-ONE-START! Ok so I watched a few scenes from the last 2 Tokyo Revengers live action movies (couldn't watch the whole thing cause there were no subs but I wanted to see Nijiro play this type of role soooo bad to wait) and...just get me fucking there pleaaase! When this live action came out, people were like ok it's coming for Crows Zero-WHAT CROWS ZERO, CROWS ZERO COULD-NEVER! Back when I started watching Japanese series, I was watching lots of those with deliquents and all and, because I was crazy about Oguri Shun, I had watched Crows Zero too. Even back then, I was disappointed after watching, cause I had heard soooo much about it, but after all that I had watched, that movie wasn't that of a big deal for me. I felt the pacing was weird, the characters didn't have enough depth, but I enjoyed the fights. It's also one of my least favorite movies of Oguri Shun. But back to Crows Zero, cause the comparison isn't why I'm losing it.

First of all, I think they did a decent job with the plot, which isn't always easy to see in live actions. Second of all, the choreography is probably one of the best fighting choreos I have ever seen in a Japanese movie of this type. The strong launches were brutal too, so much in fact that I hoped they were yanking dolls around and not real people, like you know, stunt men. If those were real people *slow clap, standing ovation* omg and I hope you're ok.

Now for the acting part....I have seen most of these actors in other roles and I can't stress enough how important it is to have a good director, cause some of these guys...I have no words. I won't speak for everyone just for those who stood out to me the most. I can't tell a lot about Ryo Yoshizawa, cause, even though I fell in love with his acting from the first movie, I haven't watched his work anywhere else, but, this man's eyes...he acts with the fucking eyes alone sometimes like...I dunno, it's like, the way he depicts Mikey, the pain, that look like "I've seen shit in my life", etc. And that immense difference of his stare as Mikey in the past versus the one in the present from the previous movie. It's amazing to me how a person can have a straight face, like 1 expression on and still be able to depict different emotions the way he did. All my life I thought that if you wanna act, especially when it comes to feelings, you got to use your expressions a lot (not exaggerate them though cause then we move to overacting which I am personally not a fan of) but this guy proved me wrong. Moving on to Yuki Yamada. I have a love and hate relationship with this dude, cause in some stuff I hated him and others I liked him, but as Draken? Take my money. I think his character is a little more huggable when he plays him though. I didn't get that feeling from the anime from Draken. Like, I like him and all, he's fun, an amazing friend etc but somehow, maybe because Yamada's face is cutesie and not as "blank" or "chill" like the anime, he looks like this big bear you wanna hug. Like, it's a little cuter for me for some reason. As far as this movie is concerned, I liked the consistency. Everyone who played in the previous movie showed amazing consistency and sure that is also because the movies weren't made that far away from each other, imo. I reaaally really liked seeing him in this role again. Next up, Mahiro Takasugi. Honey dove, petit man I never expected I'd see in such a movie...I liked him. But, like I said earlier overacting isn't my thing so, there were moments I think he could have played it at a lower tone, but at this point I think it's his style. I used to think he did that only with comedy but, based on what I've watched so far from him, this is how he shows strong emotions so I get it. I loved his casting first and foremost. I think the guy he played really matched his uhhhhhh how do you say that, presence, his demeanor? It just felt like it really suit him, you know? And I just couldn't get passed that hairstyle at first and how it actually worked when he acted all deliquent like when he went to pick a fight with Baji. Now I want to see him in such role again. So surprised, so happy to see him like that and nailing the role. But I have to admit this isn't the first time he's surprised me. I think nth beats the pierced bad boy role he once played. I don't even remember the name of the movie cause I hated it but his role-my goodness xD. Full on visual kei out of nowhere. xD I like it when actors try many different things. Next up I'd like to give it to Kento Nagayama who, even though I didn't watch the full thing and had no subs to understand everything, he managed to make me like him, laugh with him, get insanely angry at him and then sympathize and cry with him from scene to scene. I think it takes real skill to do that without your audience knowing what you're saying or following the plot step by step. I'd also like to mention that I have watched only the first season of Tokyo Revengers in anime so I knew very few and vague stuff about the season on which these 2 movies were based off, which made me even more impressed about what he was doing. I want to see this man in other movies too, now, cause, like Yoshizawa I have yet to watch sth from him and I am really interested to see his acting in other things. (1/2)

#imagine not being able to watch a film fully but still want to talk about it so bad oooohhhh #i can't wait for the subs #it looks reaaally good

2 notes · View notes