#inspired by belle 2013

[kryjjovnik]

This photograph depicts a cadaveric spasm in a drowning victim grasping grass from the river bank. Also known as postmortem spasm, this is the instantaneous rigor cataleptic rigidity —a rare form of muscular stiffening that occurs at the very moment of death and persists into rigor mortis. Nevertheless the condition itself is not part of rigor mortis, which is characterized by a progressive rigidity of the deceased body due to biomechanical changes in muscles occurring 10-12 hours after death. It is a persistent occurrence when it happens, and the individual will continue to hold that pose from death until putrefaction allows for decay of the affected limb. However, cadaveric spasm can be seen in archaeological remains if the affected limb is buried. While the cause is still unknown, it’s generally associated with violent or traumatic deaths and intense emotion. It’s mostly seen in victims who have ended their lives.

[vvatchword]

In Defense of BioShock Infinite

Although I had preordered BioShock Infinite with all its bells and whistles, I did not actually play it until January 2023. And lordy, I had me another Experience with a capital E. How the hell a bunch of urban Yanks could capture my experience as a queer democratic-socialist atheist struggling with her roots as a rural evangelical-cum-fascist is kinda magical, honestly. As to the game itself, it didn’t hurt how good it looked—the kickass skyhook gun battles—that novel setting—the complex characters—that delicious historical setting—that bloodthirsty critique of America—and to top it all off, they had pulled yet another Cassandra. Hell, speaking of which—not only was the game fun, it was fucking smart. It was intelligent, memorable, and meaningful in a way I hadn’t experienced in video games for years.

Now, back in 2013, when I had realized that I would be spoiled for Infinite, I left the BioShock fandom. After completing the game, I headed to Tumblr to re-engage, wagging my whole body like an excitable golden retriever, only to discover that BioShock Infinite was remarkably absent, and when mentioned, brutally derided. 

“I hate BioShock Infinite and all my friends do, too,” someone said in the tags under a post. 

I was utterly befuddled and deeply sad. I wanted to talk about BioShock Infinite! I wanted to dig into it, uncover unexpected ideas, learn new things, talk shit, make new friends—the full fandom experience. And instead I kept stumbling into hateful diatribes and super-charged disgust.

Obviously, I first looked at myself and my own judgment. Had I missed some obvious problem or misread some theme or dialogue? This wouldn’t be the first time I’d snapped down on a hook. But the more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

There are two parts of BioShock Infinite that are unquestionably terrible: the fridging of Daisy Fitzroy and the false equivalence of violence between haves and have-nots (lol what are the have-nots supposed to do, ask nicely?). Additionally, one could look at the use of real Native American tragedies as tasteless. Personally, I do not—in the same way that I don’t find it tasteless that real war victims were used as inspiration for Splicer deformities. This is what really happened; this is commentary on events that really happened to real people. 

At this point, I’m sure I don’t have to explain why two of these themes are Unequivocally Bad. 

Anyway, I thought that perhaps these were the reasons BSI had been condemned to Super Hell.

I was wrong.

How Criitcsim Werk

This wasn’t the fandom I’d made friends in over 2010. Hell, this wasn’t the fandom of 2013. This was a fandom made up of Babies. They were making their first coltish stumblings into media criticism and with it, dredging up the same brain-dead bullshit from Tumblr circa 2008.

Suddenly I was brought face to face with people who seemed to think that if a character couldn’t be likable or good that the story itself couldn’t be likable or good; that one bad element means the story is unsalvageable (lol u pussies); the implication that one is bad for liking it; the destructive juvenile insistence that media accurately measures its fans’ moral qualities en masse like an astrological sign. This goes far beyond simple like or dislike and plunges head-first into Puritanism: praying loudly on street-corners instead of quietly in a dark corner where God might hear you.

At one point I had a kid go off about how they wouldn’t take time to understand Booker DeWitt’s perspective because he had (fictionally) taken part in a genocide. (That same person said the Native American element had been employed for shock value, a thought that sometimes keeps me up at night, because it is legitimately one of the dumbest criticisms the game has ever received.) At another point I saw someone acting personally offended that (fictional person) Dr. Suchong’s (fictional) data was being stolen (in a fiction) by a (fictional) racist who would (fictionally) take credit for (fictional person) Suchong’s (fictional) inventions “while calling him slurs”. Sure, a better question would have been, “Why would the creative team opt to do this” rather than assume intentional racism from a Jewish creative director with an in-office multi-ethnic team in the year of our lord 2013, but why not handwave the choice with prurient moral dismay so your audience won’t beat you to death with bats? 

It was as though fans were treating these completely fictional characters as real people whose personal gods had opted to torment them, and that their tormentors merited the kind of censure that psychopaths should receive. As I hope all of you understand, this is fucking madness.

More than once I saw people posting about hating the studio or the creative director in ways that seemed intense, unreasoning, and excessive—notably an “I Hate [Irrational Games creative director] Ken Levine” stamp (rofl the more things change amirite). People get so performatively moralistic about it that I started wondering if I missed something big along the way. Was there some secret Voxophone I missed swearing fealty to baby Hitler or some shit?

Double Standards

At the same time, I was utterly confused. BioShocks 1 and 2 both featured some absolutely ghastly bullshit based on real-life horrors and a thick mix of complicated human beings—many of them victims who have become monsters. The fact they are grounded in historical tragedies is a huge part of their appeal. Hell, I don’t think those games would have had half their meaning without World Wars I and II and the threat of a third.

A gay man who feels so cursed by his orientation that he is incapable of intimacy and systematically destroys his ex-lovers—including the man he loves the most. A Korean who survived Japanese occupation and a Jewish Holocaust survivor repeat the violence and traumas exacted upon them and their people, subjecting a new generation to agonies unthinkable. Chasing the shadows of Bolsheviks, a Russian citizen becomes the brutal tyrant that he loathed. A rich lawyer with an easygoing drawl designs a concentration camp and systematically harvests hundreds, if not thousands of political prisoners, selling them out to medical testing for a quick buck.

But a Native man who destroys his own people and class to ensure his own survival and social acceptability is too far? This character is where people drew the line, so much so that the entire game is disavowed? Hell, if you’re just talking about Booker (rather than Comstock), he doesn’t have anywhere near the largest bodycount. If we were to judge on the metric of human misery alone, Booker wouldn’t even hit the top ten. 

Keep in mind that the most-discussed BioShock game on Tumblr is BioShock 2, and that one of the biggest fandom favorites is Augustus Sinclair—the easy-talkin’ Georgia lawyer who sells your character into horrors past all human comprehension, as he sold hundreds before and after you. Sinclair is a motherfucker so vile that BioShock 2 gives you no choice but to murder him. But Sinclair is also pleasant; good-looking to some; spends the whole game making sweet love to your ear; is one of the only true positive experiences you experience in a horror story. Unlike DeWitt, a man who is brutal and awful from step one, Sinclair is smooth and sweet. Unlike DeWitt, Sinclair’s victims are faceless, completely fictional, and carry no political or social baggage.

People fuckin’ ship this guy with Subject Delta, his explicit victim. He’s usually described as a squishy cinnamon roll. In most fanfiction, he often gets to escape to the surface and fuck Delta while helping raise Eleanor as Dad 2. It is rare that I find fanfiction that acknowledges his monsterhood in all its glory. In fact, I can only think of two.

Literacy Comes in Levels

My problem with the over-the-top hatred of BioShock Infinite is along the same lines as my confusion at Twilight and Harry Potter hate: there is so much worse out there (how much do the haters actually engage with media if they think this is that bad—yes, even considering the shitty creators themselves!), the hatred far outweighs the sin committed (in BioShock’s case, the truly bad bits are not central enough to derail the larger narrative), people don’t seem to hate it so much as they want to be seen hating it, fans want to enforce an unspoken rule hating it (bitches this is poison. Stop this), and there’s something about the hate that stinks of poor reading comprehension.

A great metric for general literacy is the newspaper. In journalism, you’re writing for the lowest-common denominator, which for years here in the USA has been about a fifth-grade reading level (about 10-11 years old, for my non-American readers). The AP posted an article a couple years back about how the general reading comprehension of Americans needs to be dropped to a third-grade one (8-9 years), and baby, I’m here to say it’s true. 

Most of the problem is that the American education system is shitty as fuck. The rest of it is from an extremely American disdain of intellectualism and the arts. People are not taught how to interpret art or literature—a difficult and subtle skill which involves accepting such truths as “multiple contradictory readings can exist and yet be simultaneously correct”, “the author can be a complete tool and still be right about things”, “the author can be a great person and still write horrifyingly incorrect bullshit”, and “worthwhile works can be ridiculously long and it really is your fault for not having an attention span”. 

Media criticism must be learned through trial, error, asking questions, confidently swaggering into a public space to announce your brilliant insight only to have your ass handed to you (usually by your older self ten years later), being willing to admit you swaggered confidently into a public space to state bullshit and then amending your bullshit only to produce more bullshit, and otherwise making a complete and utter cock of yourself. We are taught to fear and flee pain and failure, despite the fact this is how we learn and improve. Because we judge our value by whether or not we are “smart,” we are afraid of displaying that we don’t know something or might be mistaken–better not to try at all than to reveal ourselves to be fools. And yet the best way to learn is to crash up against someone else and be proven wrong!

American parents are terrified of hurting their children to the point that they spare them cognitive dissonance of any kind, disavowing difficult art—without any appreciation for the fact that art is how we provide safe spaces to explore key human experiences, better preparing us to face those difficult subjects when there are real-world consequences (sex, gender and social expression, grief, violence, predation, illness, interacting with people of different ideologies, whatever new issue is pissing off some smooth-brained old motherfucker somewhere). 

If parents and teachers aren’t teaching us how to interpret art, we’re probably never going to develop the skill at all, or crash unsubtly into it in a piecemeal fashion (hello it me). Another unfortunate side effect is that these readers tend to be blitheringly superficial: they are literally intellectually incapable of reading deeper than the uppermost layer of a text. The curtains are always blue.

And let’s not forget the role moral performatism plays in media criticism, which although faaar from new, has reached hilarious levels in the age of social media. What’s important isn’t understanding something, it’s finding something to symbolically burn at the stake so everyone knows God loves us: please keep loving me, please don’t hurt me, please don’t throw me on the fire—for performatism is not for outsiders. We long for human connection so fucking much that it’s more important to destroy what might point out our fallibilities than it is to let ourselves stand in the furnace and burn out the dross.

What do you think the point of BioShock Infinite was?

Emotional Machines

Let’s face it. Human beings give a lot more credence to how something makes them feel than they do its complex invisible reality. We are not logical creatures; we are emotional ones. Our logic is too new a biological mechanism to override something as powerfully stupid as our primal lizard brains.

Knowing this, let’s take BioShock’s most popular characters. The first two are Subject Delta and Jack Wynand, the protagonists of BioShocks 2 and 1, respectively; and why not? They’re the characters we play. In the first two BioShocks, whether or not you kill Little Sisters determines the ending you receive. In other words, Delta and Jack can only be as “wicked” as the players are. 

How do people want to see themselves? As good. What do people want to see around themselves? Good. (What is “good”? Uh, well,,,,,,) What do they want? Simple moral questions with simple moral answers. And in the first two BioShocks, what is moral is obvious: don’t kill little girls. It’s actually kind of insulting once you say it out loud.

In-fandom, Jack and Subject Delta are almost never painted as murderers or monsters, but as victims and heroes; I saw someone musing about putting Subject Delta on a “gentle giants” poll and I nearly choked on my own tongue. I only saw that musing because someone put Subject Delta and Jack in a “Best Fathers” poll. Nobody in-fandom really considers the “evil” or “complicated” endings as canon choices, despite those versions being fully understandable alternate readings, with a story that doesn’t make sense without them. (I don’t believe Burial at Sea is necessarily canon; in fact, I would bet good money that it is a huge middle finger lol, mostly because a number of brain-dead motherfuckers won’t take unhappiness for an answer.)

Most fandom art and writing is gentle, sweet, good: the symbolic healing of the damaged, the salvation of innocents, the turning of new leaves. These things are not just saccharine sweet—they tend to be unrealistically sweet. Now, far be it from me to demand these works cease. There’s a reason they exist. People write them because they need hope and happiness; I have enjoyed them greatly myself and intend to enjoy them in the future. But if y’all get to have your dessert, I demand the right to have my dinner.

The Colours Out of Earth

Let there be media where the opposite can also be true: where everything is unbelievably complicated and unforgivably fucked-up. Let there be characters who slide slurs into their speech without thinking. Let there be characters who destroy themselves in a thousand different ways, not all of them obvious, some of them horrifying. Let there be well-meaning people struggling with all their mights to do what is right only to destroy everyone around them and then completely miss the fact it’s all their faults. Let there be wickedness painted as goodness, superficial appearances accepted over essential and inherent values, denial of change and transformation, failure to accept that what is old must die and what is new must live, human stupidity and short-sightedness and cruelty in all their flavors. Let’s smash it all together and see how it plays out. 

Oh, badly? No shit! But “badly” isn’t the point. How does it play out?

Let there be a world of gradients—a place I can float from color to color, hue to hue, value to value, while attempting to figure out where, why, how, and by whom they transform—to taste concepts in a hundred different ways, test their textures by a hundred different mediums, insert them into a hundred different contexts. I need to understand why I feel the way I do; I need to understand morality in all its hideous, fragmentary glory. For I have been sold to a ideology of blacks and whites, and let me tell you: it prepares you for nothing, and it will always destroy what is most precious about human life.

I can no longer believe in a world where what is lost always returns, because that world does not exist. I have a reflexive need to come to terms with Finality: what I have lost, what I have destroyed, what will never return, what will never be better. I have a reflexive need to understand Transformation: what I am now, what is as of the present, what has risen shambling from the ashes, what turns to gaze upon me in the darkness. I need to understand what is wretched about me as much as I need to heal myself. How can I heal if I can’t understand how I have hurt and been hurt? 

I need to shine a light in the dark. Not to remodel it, not to destroy it—because I also can’t believe in a world where the wicked is destroyed forever—but to behold it, to learn from it, to view my own impact upon it, to accept how it has become a part of me, to learn how to do my best (because that’s all one can do). I must learn to love people more than causes, I must learn to love people rather than the act of winning, I must learn to love people rather than battle. I need to stand in that endless black with the lamp off and my eyes closed, letting the agony roll over me, burning with a fire that throws no light, rolling back and forth from an intense self-loathing to a fury at a society that destroys what is most valuable because it didn’t make them feel the way they wanted.

The Unforgivable

I believe that there are only two differences between Booker DeWitt and his equally cursed cohorts.

In the Hall of Whores: The Unmarked Slate

First, unlike the previous two games, where you enter the world as a tabula rasa and might roleplay as what you perceive as a good person, you are explicitly put into the shoes of a monster, and nothing you do can save you.

With other shitty BioShock characters, you are passively watching other people, and you are able to hold yourself apart. Sure, everyone else is crazy as fuck from using biological Kryptonite, but you’re too smart to end up a crazy fucking asshole like them! Sure, you are now technically a mass murderer, but those fuckers deserved it, damn it! 

“Look at this crazy bastard!” you say, rolling your eyes at the Steinmans and Cohens and Ryans and Fontaines. “It sure is a great thing I’m not a crazy bastard!”

You are able to escape acknowledging that you, too, in certain circumstances, might be the crazy bastard. You are being challenged to stand in the body of a person who has committed unforgivable sins. Imagine if you yourself committed those sins. Imagine what sins you have already committed. Imagine what brutalities you cannot take back. Imagine what horrors you have wreaked just by breathing.

“Ahhhh!” said players, probably. “What do you mean I’m not allowed to be good?”

Because that’s what the game was designed to do. Because “good” is a fucking cop-out and if it’s how you live with yourself wait until you find out you’ve been doing horrifying bullshit all your life without question. You can be evil by association through no fault of your own.

Original Sin

Second, the plight of Native Americans is a sin that non-Natives will always carry, and the socially conscious are aware of this even if they don’t know how to put it into words. The state of affairs being what it is, it is unlikely that First Peoples will ever be treated humanely, much less have their land returned. They must struggle for scraps of what is rightfully theirs while we lounge on their corpses. We cannot help but benefit from their destruction; we are made unwitting partners with our forebears; we steal the fruits of their lands and make mockeries of their faiths and identities. We have destroyed part of what made this world fascinating and unique and most of it can never be returned. Even if everything were to be made right tomorrow, their genocide is a sin that we will carry until we die, because the only reason we could be here at all is because they were killed. 

The obvious solution stands before us, but the powers that be are so much greater than we that we are effectively powerless, and achieving anything less than total restoration smacks of anticlimax. 

This is unbearable.

How can one think of oneself as a good person if one sees the good that must be done, but cannot achieve it? If one’s actions are meaningless? Goodness without action is pretension.

We are all Booker DeWitt. We have all set fire to the tipi. We swept the ashes away, we ignored the sizes of the bones, we built a CVS on their graves, and then we made statues and holidays commemorating Native Americans like the world’s cheapest “Thinking of You” card. We have de-fanged them, transformed them into cardboard cutouts, and set them up as cute little side characters in our sweeping American dream.

Booker is not a man. Booker is America and Americans—and America and Americans are monstrous: one part hypocrisy, two parts incessant violence, three parts constant peacocking, and four parts dumb as a stump.

The Monsters We Make

Outside of the message about “choice,” an enormous part of BioShock’s thematic ensemble is the creation of monsters. How are monsters created? Who or what is responsible for creating them? What do the monsters think made them the ways they are? Can a monster be saved? How? Is it enough to acknowledge you did wrong and want to be a better person?

Maybe most people are aware on some instinctive level of what facing one’s own monsterhood means. No one wants it. It’s not fun. It hurts. It’s embarrassing. It’s destructive. It’s admitting you don’t have it all together and might never, ever—that despite your best actions, you can have it horribly wrong at any point. In an age where we demand moral perfection, it demands vulnerability: you must admit that sometimes you’re the racist, the transphobe, the sexist, the nationalist, the classist, the homophobe, the violent, the wrong, the dumbfuck. 

Human beings are not built to be moral; human beings are built to survive. We so rapidly learn how to deal with our contexts at such young ages that we don’t have the time or capabilities to question why those contexts are the ways they are or why it is demanded we perform the ways we do.

In a very real way, BioShock Infinite demands vulnerability of us. It demands you look in the mirror and see what is monstrous in you—how you have been created—manufactured—a tool, a machine, a trained animal. It asks you to recognize that you can be a monster simply by association. And if we can’t look into the mirror and truly acknowledge that monsterhood, we run very real risks of becoming or enabling those monsters in one way or another.

Worst of all: perhaps monsterhood isn’t optional. Perhaps the monster was inside of us from the very beginning. It’s not a matter of if you become a monster, but when, under what circumstances, by whose hand. What is more, believing the “right” moral stances will not save you. Monsterhood can afflict anyone, in any ideology, any political stance, in any social movement, in any faith. The only element that can save you is to truly love other people, and even then, you can fail, for there can be states where there is no winner and ways to misread how best to treat another person.

Environment and Society: Context Will Not Be Denied

BioShock 1’s original ending is Jack-as-monster, regardless of how many children he saves, regardless of your feelings as player. He passes through the gauntlet of Rapture, but he has supped of its poison. And he wasn’t poisoned when he entered Rapture the second time—he was poisoned the minute he was conceived. He was born of it. He had no hope of ever escaping it—he never could have—he’d never had a choice to begin with.

No matter what choices you make in BioShock Infinite, Elizabeth will always kill you. Why? Because she has seen every world—every context—every limitation—every boon. And there is no way to stop what has been; there is no way to undo what has been done. The minute you have committed to a decision, you have split the universe; there is no telling what kind of person it will make you. In fact, there’s no telling which of your decisions will matter at all. Only Elizabeth can see because she is the unlimited future: your offspring stands before you, judge and jury, and you will have no choice but to accept her verdict, for despite your name, you are incapable of controlling how you are interpreted. 

Elizabeth sits across from you in the boat and stares without blinking. She sees a million million similar Bookers. Some are a little bit taller, some a little bit shorter, some a little heavier or lighter. Some more-resemble one grandparent or another. They have different colored ties. This one blinks when rain hits him in the eyeball. That one took a brutal beating back on the airship and one eye is swollen shut. That one can’t stop shaking; this one is unable to speak at all; one hasn’t yet lost hope, although even he doesn’t realize it.

They all lowered the torch to the tipi.

The baptism determined Comstock; what determined Booker?

Why Booker Is

In BioShock 1, characters are often stand-ins for larger concepts. Thus Ryan stands in as Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Ubermensch; Bill McDonagh as Andrew Ryan’s conscience; Diane McClintock as the citizenry of Rapture; Captain Sullivan as law and order; Frank Fontaine as the truest expression of Objectivism in its distilled form.

Who is Booker? Most importantly: why is he?

Booker is a fictional character with a brutal background based on historical events, alternative and true. Booker might be Lakota; Booker might have undergone forced Anglicization; Booker might have been ripped from his parents; Booker is a product of violence, perhaps literally. Booker is American exceptionalism distilled. Booker is the past in constant judgment of itself, unable to live with itself and unable to die. Booker destroys what is best in him and around him in exchange for belonging. Booker has sold the future to absolve his sins. Booker has sold his daughter because he is a fictional character in a work of fiction who needs to be propelled.

Booker is a shell, a sluice, an environment. Booker is the broken shape you are meant to fill, horrified. His internal shape should torture you as it has tortured him: the messy slaggy soul of a shitty tin soldier.

Does Booker take the baptism and become Comstock? If so, it might be his second one. His last name literally means “the white.” His first name can mean “author.” It is most likely his second name: an attempt to rewrite himself. And when he was unable to rewrite himself the first time, when the cognitive dissonance boiled at the edges of his skull, he found there was only one way to cleanse himself the second: to remake the world entirely. To force transformation on everyone else. To take vengeance on a world that could never love him, never want him—to create a world that has no choice but to love him. If he can’t change the world’s mind, he’ll change the world.

Note what he opts to do: to take the fight to the environment–to the unyielding universe.

Context Is Everything

It is no mistake that BioShock Infinite occurs in 1912: the sinking of the Titanic is often credited with ending an unfettered optimism, a period when the Western world believed technology had brought the human race into a golden age. With World War I—which would follow a mere two years later—came modern warfare and all the horrors thereof, not the least of which was the realization that humans had created a kind of war that could destroy the entire world. World War I also seeded the rise of the United States: much of the wealth of warring Europe—itself fat on the blood of subjugated peoples and stolen lands—would rattle into America’s coffers.

It is also no mistake that BioShock 1 directly follows World War II. With WWII came a heightened terror—that this war is not the last war, that there will never be an end to war, that war will go on expanding and expanding until it has consumed us all. World War III would not be denied: prettily packaged in the ideals of its children, it simply followed the utopians down to their underwater tombs. According to BioShock 1’s original ending, World War III is not a matter of if—it’s a matter of when.

But even more important than the history in the BioShock games are their settings. Mute leviathans, Rapture and Columbia determine all of your behaviors: from where you can exist in space to all of your desires and goals to how you choose to present yourself to how you opt to behave. Isolated in extremism—whether that extremism is the crushing depths of the ocean or the unbearable lightness of the air—most of their power is that they simply cannot be escaped. You can’t outrun them. They are everywhere. They are everything.

Like Lovecraft before it, BioShock acknowledges the greatest horror of all: you cannot escape your context. Your context does not only involve your immediate surroundings. It is also historical; contains zeitgeists from various cultures and subcultures; is filled with pressures both personal and impersonal, human and nonhuman. Many of these forces can hurt you. Many more can destroy you. What you do to survive depends very much on where, when, and with whom you must live.

Human beings are not built to be moral.

The Death of the Future

In the film Operation, Burma!, a soldier asks Errol Flynn: “Who were you before the war?”

“An architect,” says Flynn.

Who were you? Because that “you” doesn’t matter now. That “you” is irrelevant. So you’re an architect. What the war does to you; what these deaths mean to you; your past, your education, your loves and desires and forward motivation, the you that could have been outside war, the you that slogs alone into the brutal future—all completely irrelevant. Your forebears don’t care so long as you can bleed. 

Children are the manufactured tools of their creators—helpless before the enormous strength of their elders and the zeitgeists that enclose them, poisoned by their parents’ insecurities and flaws, utilized like weapons regardless of the cost—often with great love.

Consider something more than the traumatized culture: consider the society filled with traumatized children; consider the traumatized society. Consider channeling children through that trauma over and over and over again, if you can. Poisoned—poisoned—poisoned—all of us poisoned. Poisoned by those who loved us most. Poisoned by the people we trusted. Poisoned by the people who meant to make a better world.

I believe it is notable that creative director Ken Levine is Jewish; I have read from multiple accounts that the European Jewish diaspora was uniquely traumatized from the Holocaust and passed that trauma down upon their own families. I sometimes wonder if he saw that firsthand.

The fathers eat sour grapes; their children’s teeth are set on edge.

Choice: Player Expectations and Entitlement

For players who experienced BioShocks 1 and 2 with their multiple endings (Good, Bad, and “ok bye then I guess” respectively), it must have been jarring to suddenly reckon with being a monster. How often I see players grousing that nothing they do will change their wicked pasts! These players completely miss that the only meaningful choice had already been made, that it had nothing to do with the player at all, and even if they had been there, DeWitt was still unforgivable. The only way to go on was to bow out and allow the future to redefine herself.

Nobody was ready for that shit. 

Like it or not, BioShock 1 had set a precedent. Not everyone’s going to read up on creator intentions. If any keyword came blaring through the noise, it would have been “choice.” Most players only recognize choice by the ability to make it, not the absence of it, and most of them weren’t equipped to recognize that its lack was the point. The meaningless choices were commentary, and they were as much about the player as they were about DeWitt himself. Not every choice will be meaningful, will it? And there will be choices you make that will be momentous, but they will seem very small when you make them.

Because most players had experienced what they thought was a basic moralistic tale in the first two games, and would see Infinite not as reflection upon America’s destructive personality, its obsession with a meaningless Good/Bad duocracy, and the infinite, cyclical nature of violence, they saw Booker’s death as corrupted artsy claptrap.

“I did the good schuut,” they say. “I want the good schuut end. Where happy end??? Where treat :(”

Bitch the future is here. 

Time to die.

It’s Not Me, It’s You

Generally I despise essays that end with, “But the real fault lay with the clueless motherfuckers who played the game!” Often, if enough people complain, there’s something to it; the message has been obscured somehow. Details or explanations weren’t clear or intuitive enough, some mechanism isn’t working somewhere, some character needs to talk more or less, some setting needs to be transformed. O artist: stop whining and get cracking. If everywhere you go smells like shit, it’s time to look under your shoe. 

But sometimes it’s true that a piece of media is on a level folks aren’t equipped for. Think of every literature and art class you’ve ever had, if you’ve been fortunate enough to have one. There’s always someone scoffing in a back row, like here are all these jokers making more of something than they should. Similarly, some of you have been arguing with me this entire time, saying: “I just wanted a video game. I just wanted to shoot something and feel better and instead I get this bullshit ending that makes no sense.”

First of all, smart bullshit (and even fucked-up attempts at smart bullshit! Hi BioShock 2) gets to exist on this Earth along with Gmod and Roblox or Schuut Big Tits 84 (there are 84 tits and you must shoot them all. They explode into smaller tits) or whatever-the-fuck-else you think is a worthwhile gaming experience. Second of all, miserable bullshit also gets to exist, and what did you fucking expect if you played through either BioShocks 1 or 2? When you hear a football player quavering out in the darkness for his mom to pick him up, how’d that make you feel? What did you think was going to happen to Jack after pounding back the entire Plasmid library, the cancer cocktail that explicitly destroys the fuck out of its users? Third of all, if you missed the smart bullshit going on in BioShock 1 and didn’t think BioShock Infinite might be larger in scope in more ways than one, that’s on you. Fourthly, if you were simply satisfied with saving like, 15 kids from a violently-perishing city of thousands and call it good, I mean… is that really where your thoughts end? Are you really that fucking small?

It’s Not You, It’s Me

You ever meet those motherfuckers who talk shit about Shakespeare or modern art? And you’re just left there staring with dead eyes at this poseur who mistakes playing devil’s advocate for intelligence, cheek resting on your fist, thinking about the fanfic you’re writing, wondering who it’s for, remembering that all your smut-writing friends get ten times the viewers, and considering throwing yourself in front of a bus.

Yeah, there’s a personal element to this: the fact that BioShock Infinite is the kind of art I like and long for and want to make myself, the fact that the game was successful and yet the studio was closed, the way its DLC was so rushed that the story plopped out like half-baked mystery meat—realizing that the same forced rush was at 2K’s behest for BioShock 2, as well, and wondering how good art can ever be made in this unforgiving capitalist hellscape. The game was weirdly niche and I’m not 100% sure I’ll ever experience anything quite like it again. And with the whiners in this fandom, the loud ones controlling the narrative, some fresh brain-dead exec in some brain-dead publisher might be like: “We must keep it safer and simpler for these fuckin babby adult!”

Nah bitch nah. Naaaah. Cry some more while I enjoy me my fucking dinner. I’ll eat it while making loud smacking noises and keeping unbroken eye contact. Come here. Let’s look at each other. It’ll be like Lady and the Tramp but we want to punch each other. What truer form of love can there be here in the modern world?

I keep having to remind myself that this response isn’t new. I keep having to remind myself of my place. I keep having to remind myself why I write, why I read, why I like to experience art to begin with. It’s not for the reasons other people do it. Oh, I want the same emotional release as everyone else, I want the same rollicking plots, I adore the same tropes. I seek out everything and anything for a good time; I’ll read Moby Dick today and a smutty 5,000-word abortion with the world’s most suspect grammar tomorrow. I don’t give a shit if it’s low- or high-brow; there are all kinds of ways to have fun and there are all kinds of ways to engage with art, and lord knows I’ve done my share of smooth-brain criticism. The problem is that I’ve always wandered off by myself, sunk into an all-consuming reverie, on tracks that no one else ever seems to be on, and then looked up to talk excitedly about something only to realize I’m alone. And whose fault is that?

By the same token, maybe I haven’t talked enough. Maybe I spend too much time with my mouth shut. Maybe I haven’t stood up enough for things that are worth our time, worth talking up, worth setting on pedestals.

I tell you, BioShock Infinite will stand the test of time. It’s too good for this. It’s too good for you, warts and all. Some of you will grow to understand that; some of you won’t; many of you will shrug and go on with your lives (and this is fine; it is only a video game). But I’ve truly not seen anything like it. I can’t believe a mainstream video game was allowed to be so fucking brutal about the American juggernaut, and what’s more, that it sold like hotcakes. Plus, I can’t think of any works in recent memory that have struck me so close to my own heart. No creative work has made me start beating a monster’s face into a washbasin for ten hours only to lift her by the scalp and see my own eyes looking back.

Look into those eyes. See your own stupid impulses pouring out. Your own stupid excuses, your violences, your sins—your claws, your teeth, your costumes, your hilarious attempts at interpretive dance. The beast doth protest too much.

O, monster—behold thyself—and tremble.

[ageofbajabule]

Dawn of Love | Chapter 1

Josh Kiszka x F! Reader

Word Count: 4.9k

Warnings: Fluff, Anxiety talk?, (i don’t think i’m truly missing anything. if i am please let me aware!)

Series Masterpost

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Author’s Note: (18+ themes further on in the series) This series is going to be my baby, my pride and joy. I’ve been putting so much time and thought into this, and I truly do hope you all enjoy it and what I have planned. Please understand no themes relating to 18+ will take place until Josh and Reader are of consenting legal age in the series. Other than that, I do hope you enjoy this series.

October 2013

You had moved around different school districts thanks to your father being in the military… But this move was the final one. He had retired from the Air Force and decided to move to a small town. Known by the name Frankenmuth. It was a Bavarian town, everyone knew everyone and everyone was friendly.

Fitting in wasn’t typically hard, but being a new student in school also put you in the spotlight. You never really made the time to make actual friends considering the situation you grew up in being a military family. So this time around, you had to make the effort to find friends. All day you had the boring classes of general studies. But the class you couldn’t wait for was poetry - something about poetry just spoke to you, it always gave you the feeling of a welcoming home.

It wasn’t always just poetry that caught your eye, film and theatre also held a special place in your heart.

Something about the way Shakespeare wrote always called out to you - specifically Macbeth.

The bell rang indicating your Math class had finally ended. And your last class of the day was Poetry. Making your way there, you had entered the classroom. It was a smaller class, giving it an elective course. There was about 9 other people, you sat near the front of the classroom. The first bell had rang, the teacher waited for any last minute students. And sure enough a boy with shoulder length wavy hair cane sprinting in.

“Sorry! I got stuck in a little traffic jam there in the hallway.” The brunette boy laughed,

“Mr.Kiszka… This isn’t anything new. You need to do better on being on time.”

Mr.Zawalski motioned for him to join the class. He ended up sitting at the desk beside you.

“Last week we finished up our readings from Emily Dickinson, we will be starting with Edgar Allen Poe today. I’m sure most of you are well aware of his work, he had a very different approach than most poets.” Mr.Zawalski spoke as he started parading around the classroom. Everything about Poe, he wasn’t typically your style, but you had grown to like his work.

“He’s kind of a bore… I wish he was a bit more enthusiastic when teaching.”

The brunette boy had leaned over to whisper to you, chuckling as he saw you jump at the sound of his voice, making you giggle softly.

“He has a very monotone voice… Makes me want to fall asleep.” You shifted your body so more of you turned to face the stranger beside you.

“I’m sorry. Let me introduce myself, I’m Joshua Kiszka. But you can call me Josh. What’s your name?”

“I’m Y/F/N Y/L/N, but you can call me Y/N.” You smiled at him softly.

“Well, it's a pleasure to meet you. Are you new here?” Then you heard Mr.Zawalski clear his throat, “Mr.Kiszka this isn’t time for mingling. Would you care to enlighten the classroom on what Poe’s poems were inspired by?”

Josh’s cheeks turned a shade of pink, then turned towards the teacher. “His own childhood trauma. At least that’s what most researchers have gathered.”

Seeming to be satisfied with Josh’s answer, Mr. Zawalski nodded and proceeded to carry on with his lecture - leading you and Josh to giggle quietly.

Before the end of class, Mr.Zawalski had announced there would be a project. And you had to pair up with somebody. Being you had been a new student and the only person you really clicked with was Josh, it was obvious who your partner would be.

“Well I guess we’ll be partners then?” He turned towards you,

“If you’re okay with that?” You smiled softly.

“Of course. Here is my number so we can start working on it.” He smiled taking your phone to type his credentials in, you sent him a text right away for him to save your information. “I’m free whenever. Except for this Wednesday night, I have theater tryouts.”

“I’ll be there too!” You smiled at him.

He chuckled softly, your smile turned wider. “Oh really? That’s great.”

You felt a blush creep onto your face.

“So what part are you trying for?” The bell then interrupted your conversation, “Guess you’ll have to find out at tryouts.” He smirked, getting up.

“That is a whole two days away!” You groaned getting up from your desk.

“I’ll tell you what, come over tonight so we can start working on this project. And maybe I’ll run a few lines to give you a hint at what part.” He cocked an eyebrow.

“Fine. You better stick to your word.” You giggled softly, walking towards your locker.

“You can come over around 5, join my family and I for dinner. My mom always makes enough to practically feed the neighborhood.” Josh spoke as he followed behind you, smiling from ear to ear as he spoke.

“Sure, as long as she doesn’t mind.” He shook his head, “She’ll be thrilled.” He smiled, then he was being pulled by a brunette guy who looked similar to him. But his hair was like a Justin Bieber style cut.

“Josh, we’re gonna be late for band practice.”

“Jeez, Jake I would’ve been right out!” Josh shouted, you looked between the two of them confused. “Sorry Y/N. This is my brother Jake.”

He smiled at you, “Twin brother actually.” Jake chimed in,

“But I’m older by 5 minutes!”

“Will you ever live that down?”

You giggled softly at them bickering. “It was great to meet you, but I don’t want to keep y’all from band practice. I didn’t know you were in the school band.” You smiled softly.

“No. Not a band for school, we have an actual band. We’re just getting started still…” Jake shook his head as he scratched the back of his neck nervously.

“Oh. I’m sorry… Well, have fun, and I’ll see you later.” You flashed a smile before leaving the two of them to go on with their business.

➳

You had luckily gotten your license recently before moving to Michigan and asked to use your mom’s car to drive over to Josh’s house to work on your project tonight.

The drive wasn’t too far from where you lived, in fact you only live a couple blocks from each other. You could’ve probably walked. When arriving you parked on the street out front of their house, making way to the front door. You knocked softly, hearing some yelling behind the door - a girl who looked close in age to you answered the door.

“Hi, I’m Y/N. Is Josh here? I’m here to work on a school project with him.” You spoke offering a small smile.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Veronica but I go by Ronnie. I’m his younger and only sister, he is actually finishing up practice with the guys. You can come in.” She motioned for you to come in.

“If you want, we can go out to the garage. That’s where they practice.”

You smiled, “Sure, why not.”

Ronnie nodded and took you out with her to the garage. As you walked in the guys were in the midst of a song, Josh was singing, Jake was playing guitar and there were two other boys. One looked similar to Jake, assuming it was another sibling of theirs. He was playing bass, and the other was playing drums. Ronnie and you had sat on the couch in front of them.

They sounded really good, for being so young. Josh had finally noticed you as a blush crept on his cheeks, he averted towards Jake as they finished up the song, and concluded their practice.

“That was better than the last run. We’ll resume back to this tomorrow.” Jake directed to them, “Sam, we got to tune that better. And Danny, we’ll have to try and rig the snare.”

They all nodded, making way to head into the house.

“I didn’t expect you to come out here.” Josh had chuckled softly.

“Ronnie asked if I wanted to. And figured why not.” You smiled softly, “So how many of you are there?” You whispered to him - in hopes that his siblings wouldn’t hear.

“There are four of us. Jake and I are the oldest, Ronnie is the middle and Sam is the youngest. And Danny, he's Sam’s best friend. But we consider him a brother, he’s been around for so long.” He smiled, a dimple peeking out.

“Dinner is probably ready, we should head in before my mother starts calling.” He chuckled softly, you followed behind him into the house. He led you to the dining room, it was big enough for everyone that was present. Once you stepped foot in, all eyes were on the two of you.

“Mom and Dad this is Y/N. She is new to our school, and my partner for our class project. But also a new friend.” He smiled at you.

“Oh it’s nice to meet you dear! It’s always great to meet one of Josh’s friends.” She beamed with excitement, “Please sit anywhere you’d like. I made grilled cheese and a family recipe of tomato soup.”

She motioned for you to sit. Josh pulled a chair out for you, that was next to Jake, and you sat down as Josh sat in the seat next to you.

➳

Everyone had eaten, and once your bellies were full to content. You and Josh had decided to head to his and Jake’s shared room to work on the project. Both sides were different from one another, Josh having anything film related where Jake had music related posters.

“Jake and I are forced to share a room, while Ronnie and Sam get the luxury of having their own rooms.” He chuckled softly motioning for you to sit on his bed as he sat on a chair from his desk.

“It’s okay, my sister and I were forced to share a room when we lived in Oregon.” You giggled softly remembering the tiny two bedroom house your parents had gotten when your father was stationed on a mission again.

“Oregon? How did you end up all the way here?” Josh chuckled softly.

“My dad was in the military. We moved around quite a lot.” You responded nonchalantly.

“Oh wow. So you’re settled here in Frankenmuth, Michigan?”

“It's a cute town.” You giggled softly.

“We’re really known for Christmas. Whole town goes overboard with all of it, really. But it is nice. I do enjoy Christmas here.” He rubbed his hands together.

“So where are you originally from?” He questioned you.

“Florida.” You said flatly.

Honestly, you didn’t miss it - especially given the fact you had lived close to Orlando for quite some time, you hated the tourists all year round for the 9 years you lived there.

“Sunshine state… Hm. I think I’ll nickname you Sunshine. How does that sound?” He chuckled softly, a blush crept on your face.

“Sure…”

“Now, what role are you trying for Mr.Kiszka?” You impersonated Mr.Kiwalski’s voice. Earning a chuckle from Josh he shook his towards you.

“Don’t laugh.” He chuckled, “But I’m going for Wonka.”

You smiled at him softly, “I think you’ll fit perfectly…you have the characteristics for it.” You giggled softly.

“And how about you?”

“Veruka.” You giggled, sitting up straight.

“Well I guess we’ll just wait and see.”

December 2013

Ever since that poetry class, you and Josh had been inseparable. You finished your project earning an easy A on it. And then got the roles you had both wanted for the Willy Wonka play. Josh had been working on a film script for the last couple weeks, having you help assist him with it.

“You know you are quite the genius Sunshine.” Josh smiled at you, you smiled back. “I’m just doing what I can! I told you I’ll help film, and help with costumes as well.”

You finished writing in your journal with all of the plans for Josh’s film that was coming up early next month.

“Do you think it’s silly?” He scratched the back of his head.

“No, not at all. I think it’s going to be brilliant. You have a very creative mind Josh. You need to stop doubting yourself.” You replied, shaking your head to give more reinforcement to your words.

“It’s just I care a lot about film, and this band stuff with Jake sometimes can be a lot…” He sighed, sitting on the edge of his bed.

“Josh… Jake has told you that he would help in any way.” You sat next to him.

“Yeah, but this is his dream… He’s always wanted to be a rockstar. And I want that for him. Me, I'm just a silly old film guy.” He chuckled as you nudged him softly.

“Aaand he would want the same for you. Don’t beat yourself up. This film is going to be amazing. Now come on, we have a Christmas party to attend.” You stood up, putting your hand out for him to join.

Once he took your hand in his, it felt like electricity had gone through you. During the short time you’ve known Josh. You’ve grown to like him more than just a friend…

He stood up from his bed, dropping your hand from his slowly.

“Yeah, you’re right. Thanks Y/N…” He smiled softly.

“Of course Josh, that’s what friends are for.” You smiled mentally slapping yourself. You wish you could tell him how you felt. But you also didn’t want to freak him out.

The two of you made way to the basement where the party was being held, Jake smiled and walked over to you giving you a tight hug. With how close you got to Josh, you got close to his twin as well.

“About time you two showed up. Was starting to think you were sucking face.”

Josh gave him a glare as his cheeks turned to a crimson. You blushed, staring at your feet. “No, we were just working on the last touches of the film Jacob.”

“Sorry…” He gave Josh an apologetic look, they had some sort of twin telepathy way of communicating. You just went with the flow of it all. Josh ventured off to some other film friends that you would eventually join.

“Hey I really didn’t mean to embarrass you guys…” Jake had spoken to you quietly.

“It’s okay Jake, really…” You fiddled with your hands.

“No, no it's not… Has Josh said anything to you lately?” You gave him a questioning look.

“Said what?” You grabbed a can of pop.

“Forget it…” Jake went to turn, you grabbed his arm.

“Jacob.”

“You can’t say anything.” Jake mumbled as he turned to face you.

You gave him a look, “Cross my heart and hope to die.” You giggled doing the little promise. He pulled you aside.

“Josh really likes you… But he’s just too afraid to admit it.” He said quietly to you, only audible for you to understand. You felt butterflies in your stomach.

“R-really…” You looked up at him.

“Yeah. Why do you think he’s been up your ass so much lately.” He chuckled softly, “But you didn’t hear this from me.” He gave you a stern look.

“Jake, I won’t say a word. Besides… He hasn’t even made a move…” You looked over at Josh watching him talk with your other friends.

“Give it time… He doesn’t really know how to go about these things. He might need a little push, but. He’ll do it.” He patted your back softly.

“Thanks Jake…” You smiled and walked over to your friends and talked about the plans for the new year.

January 2014

“Josh, how the hell did you book a hotel room for the weekend for this film? Don’t we have to be at least 21 to book?” You shot a glare as you settled your bags into the room.

“Sunny, you underestimate my skills… Have I taught you nothing.” He sighs, acting like he’s been hurt. “Okay. Maybe I did, but just a tiny bit.”

You giggled softly setting up your equipment - while Jake came into the room with the rest of their friends.

“Okay, so I totally did not cause a scene in the lobby…” He said nervously.

“Jacob, I swear if we get kicked out of this damn hotel before we even shoot anything. I’m kicking your ass.”

“Some idiot tried fucking with our equipment, what else was I suppose to do.” He defended himself, causing the two of them to bicker.

“Alright! It just better not result in anything bad…”

The remainder of the evening you had set the room up for the liking of how you were filming this short film that Josh had in mind. Jake was one of the main roles, along with their friend Grace. Filming was going great, you had everything pretty much under control so Josh could focus on filming and getting the right angles while you adjusted lighting, make up and props.

After a couple hours of shooting Josh figured it was time to call it a night. You had helped clean up the room while Jake and Grace had finished up their last shots, and proceeded to help clean as well. Josh had already started editing the clips from tonight, and said that we would pick it back up tomorrow.

The twins ended up sharing a bed, while you and Grace had shared the other. It's not like you and Josh haven’t slept by one another before. You had passed out on the pull out sofa bed in their basement a few times when you’d stay over late working on a project. But Jake didn’t want to make Grace uncomfortable.

➳

The next day filming had picked up, but Jake was in a mood as he was tired of filming the same scene for the past hour.

“Well Jacob if you’d actually put effort into it. We wouldn’t have to keep shooting this take!” Josh threw his hands up in frustration.

“How about we take a lunch break!” You suggested taking your headphones off.

“Yeah, that’s a great idea.” Jake huffed grabbing his things, “You want to hit that Sub shop Grace?”

She nodded in agreement following Jake, leaving you and Josh to yourselves. Josh had put some things away grabbing a microwave.

“Joshua, what are you doing with the damn microwave?” You crossed your arms staring at him.

“I want to make stir fry. And I’m not trying to burn the room down, so to the hallway we go!” He made his way to the door, but he could open it considering his hands were full. So you opened the door, following behind him with your camera and other supplies.

Deciding to sprint to be in front of him, you took a picture of him with the microwave. “You’re something else Kiszka.” You giggled, getting to the end of the hallway. He plugged the microwave into the outlet, preparing the meal he had planned.

“Is this even going to be any good?” You gave him a concerning look.

“You have to live on the edge, a little mama.” He chuckled, mixing it together and placing it into the microwave, turning it on and setting it to whatever time and power he had it set as.

“Sir, what are you doing?” One of the maids had questioned him.

“Just making a five star meal. Care for some?” He smiled.

“You can’t do that out here. Why is it even out of the room?” She had questioned him, with her arms crossed.

“What do you mean? It was already out here.” He played a great character.

“Sir, I can assure you that is the room microwave you need to put it back in its rightful place. Or I will have to report you to the hotel staff.” She huffed watching him.

“It’s almost done cooking. It’ll be out of the way shortly.” Josh replied, smirking.

“I suggest you take it back now.” She then started to walk away to clean a room. Josh sat there letting it continue to cook.

“Josh, she seemed pretty serious.” You looked at him with worry.

“Sunshine, you need to liven it up!” He chuckled softly, as the microwave went off he unplugged it and walked back to the room with it.

“You Kiszka’s sure have a way…” You giggled softly, sitting on the bed.

“I can’t tell if that’s a good thing, or a bad thing.” He chuckled softly sitting beside you with his plate, taking a bite he spit it out quickly. “Oh that is mortifying.” He made a gagging face.

“Not so bright Joshy…” You giggled softly.

“Come on, let’s go get some real stir fry.” You patted his back, he nodded, throwing out his creation.

➳

The two of you found a local Japanese restaurant not too far from the hotel. Taking in on dining there, you let Jake and Grace know where the two of you went in case they came back earlier than you two.

“So, the Valentine’s dance is coming up.” Josh had said nervously.

“Yeah, have you asked any special girl?” You smiled softly, taking a sip of your water.

“No, not yet…” He put his head down, like he was ashamed.

“It’s okay Josh, you don’t have to show up with a date. You can just go with friends.” You smiled softly at him.

“Uh actually. Y/N, I was wondering if maybe you would be my date for the Valentine’s dance.” He looked up at you nervously with flushed cheeks.

“You want me to be your date?” You smiled as your cheeks became a tinted pink.

He nodded, smiling softly, “Yeah. I’d really like it if you would?”

“Yeah, I’ll be your date…” You trailed off with a smile, giving him a small reassuring nod.

He smiled, chuckling softly, “I thought I was gonna walk out of here like a sore loser if you said no.”

“I would never say no to you Josh…”

February 2014

It was Friday, school was a complete drag the past week. They had a spirit week in honor of the Valentine’s dance tonight. Ever since Josh had asked you to be his date, the two of you had been inseparable. You had been working on the last touches of the short film you worked on together. It was nearing completion but Josh decided that the two of you should take this week off from editing, since the dance was taking up a majority of the time.

You had joined the student council prior to Christmas break, and helped the council decorate and plan the dance. It was senior year after all, you had to make some memories while living the last of your childhood. Josh knew how much it meant to you to partake in this, since you were never able to do much like this before.

You had been getting ready at home, finishing the last touches of your hair and makeup. You kept your makeup rather simple, not doing too much of a glam look, and your hair had some loose curls.

You went to your closet pulling your dress off from the hanger, it was an indigo dress that rested against your knees and had some slight rhinestone embellishments on the edges of the dress. You slipped it on looking at yourself in the mirror, content with your look you put your heels on and grabbed your small satchel heading downstairs.

Josh was at the bottom of the stairs waiting for you with your parents and sister.

“You look absolutely stunning.” Your mom beamed.

“You look amazing, sweetie.” Your dad chimed in, agreeing with your mother.

Your sister smiled, clapping her hands together. She opted on staying home instead of going to the dance tonight. She was in the same grade as Sam and Danny and you have tried multiple times to get her to hang out with them.

“You look beautiful, Sunshine.” Josh came in front of you holding a beautiful white rose assortment corsage, with a boutineer to go with it.

You smiled softly in response.

“You look dashing.”

Your mom smiled coming over to aid the two of you with putting his boutineer on. Then Josh slipped your corsage onto your wrist.

“Okay! In front of the fireplace, we have to get pictures of you two.” Your mom beamed, as your father ushered you into the living room. Josh and yourself stood in front of the fireplace, as he placed his hand on the small of your back you felt butterflies in your stomach placing your arm around his back. You both posed and smiled for the millions of pictures your mother insisted on taking. Then took a couple with your parents.

“Guys it's not even prom, it's just a regular dance!” You giggled softly after taking enough pictures.

“Yes you’re right dear, but it’s your senior year!” Your mom beamed at you.

“We should really get going, otherwise we’ll be late…” You looked at the time.

“Wouldn’t be the first time I’m late to a function!” Josh chuckled softly, you giggled in agreement.

“Yeah, but I think for once you should be on time.” You smirked and started to head to the door with him.

Before leaving your father gave Josh a whole spiel on his rules and when to have you home by. Typical dad move, but he just wanted to be in good hands.

“Dad, he’s a good guy. Besides I think Mrs.Kiszka would be on him if he didn’t abide by your rules.” You giggled softly as Josh nodded.

“Yeah, my mom would have my butt canned.”

The two of you then left your house, he opened the passenger side to his car letting you get in before he closed it getting to his side. Once you buckle your seatbelt he had gotten into the car buckling himself in the driving over.

After arriving, Josh had parked next to Jake’s car. Jake had gotten out and let his date out of the passenger side. He had asked Valerie to be his date, she was more than thrilled when he had asked her. Valerie was this sweet junior who was a part of the cheerleading squad and Jake was absolutely crushing on her.

“You guys look amazing!” You smiled at them, hugging Jake and then Val.

“You guys look great too!” Jake beamed.

“Well we should head in, it’s freezing out here.” Josh had motioned for everyone to make their way, as he kept his hand on the small of your back.

Once you entered the high school gymnasium there was a photo station off to the left, then a table for water and punch.

“Do you want some punch?” Josh looked over at you.

“Yeah, I’d like some.” You smiled.

“Grab a table and I’ll meet you there.” He wandered off to the refreshment table as you made way to a small table in the corner. Jake and Val had already ventured to the dance floor, making the most of their night.

Josh had returned with two cups of punch, setting yours down in front of you on the table, he smiled softly at you.

“My lady.” He chuckled softly, sliding into the chair beside you.

“Well thank you kind sir.” You giggled softly, taking a sip of the punch.

“You guys did really well with planning all of this.” He smiled, taking a sip of his punch.

“Thank you, I was nervous they weren’t going to like my ideas…” You slouched a bit - suddenly feeling a wave of nervousness hit you.

“Are you kidding! Sunny you are brilliant. Who wouldn’t like your ideas?” He smiled softly at you, you returned a smile as your cheeks flushed.

After conversing for a bit, the two of you decided to hit the dance floor joining Jake and Val. You guys had danced the night away, laughing and acting like complete idiots. But it’s all you ever wanted at this moment.

The DJ then turned things slow for a remainder of the evening starting off with All of Me by John Legend. Josh had you pulled you close to him, wrapping his arms around your waist and you wrapped your arms around his neck. Smiling softly at him, you giggled to yourself softly.

“What is it, Sunshine?” He chuckled softly, catching your giggle.

“Nothing…” You blushed, placing your head on his chest listening to his heartbeat as the two of you swayed.

“Your heart is beating rather fast Josh…”

You giggled and turned to look up at him, he then moved his one hand to caress your face.

“Y/N…”

You looked at his face, he licked his lips nervously.

“Yeah Josh…”

He studied your face, before zoning in closer he then pressed his soft plush lips against yours.

‘Cause I give you all of me

And you give me all of you’

You were taken by surprise, but immediately kissed him back softly letting your lips move in sync. Soaking in this moment together. After a moment the two of you pulled away, smiling while giggling at each other.

“God, I’ve wanted to do that for so long…” He shook his head, sighing softly.

“I think you should do it again.” You smiled brightly at him - he then captured your lips once more with his, giving a few little pecks before detaching his lips from yours.

“Y/N… I. Well, what I’m trying to ask.”

“Yes, Josh. I’ll be your girlfriend.” You giggled softly, rubbing his arm to soothe his nerves.

.

.

.

.

to be continued

Taglist -

@lyndszee @laneygvf @sacredthefran @starcatcherry @fkfearandliveyourlegend @hi-hi-hello11 @gretnavannfleet @themoreyou-love @gvfmuse @meetingthestardust @myleftsock

[beaft]

formative influences/things that live in my heart (inspired by @feytouched's syllabus)

movies

alice (1988) by jan svankmejer

the double (2013) by richard ayoade

nosferatu (1979) by werner herzog

withnail and i (1987) by bruce robinson

books

the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson

the lord of the rings by j. r. r. tolkien

deathless by catherynne valente

autobiography of red by anne carson

coraline by neil gaiman

grief is the thing with feathers by max porter

the little prince by antoine de saint-exupéry

a series of unfortunate events by lemony snicket

artworks

eine kleine nachtmusik by dorothea tanning

tell me the way by kay nielsen

the garden of earthly delights by hieronymous bosch

st george and the dragon by paolo uccello

poems

the love song of j. alfred prufrock by t. s. eliot

sunlight on the garden by louis macneice

i had a dream about you by richard siken

i'm not a religious person but by chen chen

songs

that unwanted animal by the amazing devil

go long by joanna newsom

spaceboy by smashing pumpkins

lord anthony by belle and sebastian

quick! by the magnetic fields

miscellaneous

sleeping beauty concept art by eyvind earle

jeremy miranda's winter paintings

the site-specific installations of rune guneriussen

colleen moore's fairy dollhouse

bird and blend's "campfires and vampires" tea

snowflakes are dancing by isao tomita (the whole album)

viktor wynd's wunderkabinet

in the realms of the unreal by henry darger

jean-paul gaultier 2007 collection

[bidotorg]

Join us in wishing a very happy birthday to the iconic Björk! Known for her ethereal voice, avant-garde visuals, and daring originality, she has been a shining beacon for queer representation in the music industry. As a proud bisexual woman, Björk has used her platform to celebrate diversity and inspire countless fans across the globe. Here's to another year of her transcendent artistry. 🎂🌈🎉

(1) The Swan Dress worn by Björk at the 73rd Academy Awards on 2001, as well as on the cover of her album "Vespertine"

(2) The Pom-Pom Headdress on her 2007-8 tour for "Volta"

(3) Look for her "Biophilia" album tour (2013)

(4) Björk's Alexander McQueen 'Bell' dress, 2004, worn for the 'Who Is It (Carry My Joy on the Left, Carry My Pain on the Right)' video from the 'Medulla' album

(5) The dress she worn while performing “Oceania” at the 2004 Olympics Opening Ceremony, made of over 600 feet of material.

[jgroffdaily]

The Walt Disney Company Celebrates 10th Anniversary of Beloved “Frozen” Film With 10-Week Countdown Featuring Surprises Worth Melting For

Some films are worth melting for and, on November 27, 2013, the world was introduced to the Academy Award®-winning film Frozen from Walt Disney Animation Studios. The global sensation has warmed the hearts of all ages, and both Frozen and its 2019 sequel, Frozen 2, are among the biggest animated films of all time.

The enchanting story of sisters Anna and Elsa—along with their trusted companions Kristoff, Sven, and Olaf—has created a cultural phenomenon that has inspired fashion, theme park experiences, a Broadway masterpiece, and more. And, in 2022, Disney honored the Frozen cast – Idina Menzel (Elsa), Kristen Bell (Anna), Jonathan Groff (Kristoff), and Josh Gad (Olaf) – as Disney Legends for their work in bringing these characters to life on the big screen.

Now, almost a decade later, the film is still a storytelling icon and continues to bring joy to families around the world with more adventures ahead including a third film in the franchise.

In honor of the film’s 10th anniversary, Disney is launching a 10-week countdown celebration with collaborations across the company. From Disney Parks and consumer products to music and community outreach, the Frozen fun is crystalizing in new and exciting ways.

Over the next 10 weeks, fans of the film will enjoy surprise and delight announcements, content, and more. Kicking off the celebration, Disney has shared a special “thank you” message to the fans who keep the magic and joy of Frozen raging on. The “Frozen 10th Anniversary” spot features scenes from the beloved film, which is streaming on Disney+, as well as cherished moments from audiences around the world.

[jules-has-notes]

Aca Top 10: Disney Heroes — VoicePlay music video

Disney animated movies are probably best known for their music, and almost all of them have a showstopping tune for their main characters. Singing or listening to those songs can feel empowering. So, sit back, relax, and spend a few minutes being inspired and entertained by these goofballs.

Details:

title: Aca Top 10 — Disney Heroes (feat. J.None)

original songs / performers: "Go the Distance" by Roger Bart as Hercules in Hercules (1997); [0:37] "When Will My Life Begin?" by Mandy Moore as Rapunzel in Tangled (2010); [0:55] "You'll Be In My Heart" by Glenn Close as Kala & Phil Collins as the narrator in Tarzan (1999); [1:24] "One Jump Ahead" by Brad Kane as Aladdin in Aladdin (1992); [1:44] "Colors of the Wind" by Judy Kuhn as Pocahontas in Pocahantas (1995); [2:06] "Reflection" by Lea Salonga as Fa Mulan in Mulan (1998); [2:33] "Part of Your World" by Jodi Benson as Ariel in The Little Mermaid (1989); [3:00] "How Far I'll Go" by Auliʻi Cravalho as Moana in Moana (2016); [3:23] "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" by Jason Weaver as Simba, Rowan Atkinson as Zazu, & Laura Williams as Nala in The Lion King (1994); [3:40] "Let It Go" by Idina Menzel as Elsa in Frozen (2013)

written by: "Go the Distance" by Alan Menken & David Zippel; "When Will My Life Begin?" by Alan Menken & Glenn Slater; "You'll Be In My Heart" by Phil Collins; "One Jump Ahead" by Alan Menken & Tim Rice; "Colors of the Wind" by Alan Menken & Stephen Schwartz; "Reflection" by Matthew Wilder & David Zippel; "Part of Your World" by Alan Menken & Howard Ashman; "How Far I'll Go" by Lin-Manuel Miranda; "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" by Elton John & Tim Rice; "Let It Go" by Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez

arranged by: Geoff Castellucci

release date: 21 September 2017

My favorite bits:

J.None's clear, hopeful tone on "Go the Distance"

the rhythm section being confused as to where they're supposed to be looking before their parts begin

Eli shrugging off his own muscles compared to Earl and J 💪

Layne's little finger wiggle from the beginning of "You'll Be In My Heart" being redirected at Geoff

the crunchy harmonies on the ♫ "Whoa-o-o-oa, number seven" ♫ transition

Layne's scampering percussion riff in "One Jump Ahead"

Geoff looking over at Layne while singing ♫ "why he grins" ♫, and Layne shrugging

J's flirty little wave to the camera during "Reflection"

Eli and J following the lyrics for ♫ "jumping, dancing" ♫

that lovely bell chord on ♫ "street street stree-ee-ee-eet" ♫

the back row dramatically looking left and right as they sing the words

everyone's befuddlement at Geoff taking the lead on the beginning of "Let It Go" ("That's not your song, bass man.")

Earl's adorable power pose at the end

Trivia:

○ VoicePlay had recorded and/or performed several of these songs previously:

"How Far I'll Go" was in their "Moana medley" video just one month before.

"I Just Can't Wait To Be King" was included in The King Returns medley on their 2012 album "Once Upon an Ever After". It was also part of the "aca-Disney" mashup they created for the Disney On Broadway 20th anniversary celebration.

"When Will My Life Begin" was in their condensed Tangled performance at the 2015 Disney Social Media Moms Celebration.

"Let It Go" was part of their "Wow! Vol. 1" medley during the 2015 Sing-Off tour. Layne also snuck it into one memorable rendition of "Road Trip".

○ A couple of these songs were revisited in later videos:

"Part of Your World" was, of course, included in their "Little Mermaid medley" with Rachel Potter in 2020.

They recorded a full version of "Go the Distance" with EJ Cardona in 2021.

○ Eli's incredible riff and declaration of "Xtina for life!" at the end of the "Reflection" excerpt are in reference to the pop version of the song that Christina Aguilera recorded for the movie's end credits.

○ The YouTube description includes a parody verse for "Reflection" — "Whooooooo is that Earl I see… / Staring straight at Eli? / When will my REFLECTION show / Jellied ham and RICE!!? / Yummmmmmmmm… "

○ The guys are all wearing graphic t-shirts featuring characters from the movies included in the countdown:

J.None — Hercules flexing his biceps, surrounded by a circle of text reading, "Don't act like you're not impressed"

Earl — Pua the pig from Moana with the inscription "I'm no bacon"

Eli — Ariel and Sebastian in a circular frame with "Little Mermaid" in jagged heavy metal style lettering across the top

Geoff — Genie from Aladdin with a microphone in hand and a blue neon sign reading "Applause" emerging from his shoulders

Layne — Mufasa's face from The Lion King with the word "king" in black letters across the top

○ This is the first in a mini-series within their "Aca Top 10" series, that was followed by countdowns for "Disney Sidekicks" and "Disney Villains" over the next year and a half.

[chucksrus84]

They say coincidences can be interpreted as clues to our destiny. Well, today, I'm counting down four amazing coincidences that would make you do a double-take. Let's start with Game of Thrones alums Jacob Anderson and Nathalie Emmanuel.

As Game of Thrones fans, we're all familiar with Grey Worm and Missandei's ill-fated love story, but did you know that the former co-stars went on to star in separate projects as vampires? Yes, you heard that right. Jacob Anderson, formerly known as Grey Worm, lassoed a lead role in AMC's series, Interview with the Vampire, as the complex, forlorn vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac; enticing audiences with his and his co-star's (Sam Reid) electrifying scenes. Similarly, Nathalie Emmanuel was featured in the gothic horror film The Invitation, as the descendent of an ancient vampire family. To say the least, it would seem coincidences have a way of leading these two actors to where they were supposed to be, but it doesn't end there.

Like rings circling Saturn, sometimes it takes years, if not decades to lead one person to the role they were meant to play. Take for example, Sam Reid. When Sam Reid snagged the role as Dido's love interest (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw) in the 2013 historical drama, Belle, he never imagined he'd be playing one of Anne Rice most iconic characters ten years later; turning a role played by several actors into the most memorable and awe-inspiring incarnation to date. To watch him as Lestat, you'd think he was absolutely possessed but I digress. The coincidences I noted doesn't end with Reid but actually begins with Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Black Mirror.

Earlier, I alluded to the fact that like the rings of Saturn, sometimes people are traveling towards a predetermined destination. In Gugu Mbatha-Raw's case, that's double true. In 2016, Gugu along with her co-star Mackenzie Davis starred in a Black Mirror episode called San Junipero. It was the fourth episode of the British syfy and it featured vivacious party girl Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) falling head over heels for shy, homebody Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis), in a 1987 virtual reality simulator. It was a fantastic…no, beautiful love story between two women with a happy ending and one of Black Mirror's most popular episodes.

But what struck me about the role that Gugu played was not only the affect it had on fans of the syfy show but also the affect it unknowingly had on propelling her former co-star (Sam Reid) to land a role in which the dynamics of his characters relationship with the lead who played opposite him (Jacob Anderson) as well as the dynamics of the relationship between the actors themselves, were strikingly similar if not the same. Watching Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid interact pulled me back to the days when San Junipero dropped on air and drew accolades from critics in television and film. There's something magical about it, as if Gugu and Mackenzie stepped through that door of possibility so that Sam and Jacob could fly. You know what I mean but I'm getting ahead of myself. That's not the only coincidence there is. The next and last one will absolutely blow your mind.

Last but not least, our fourth amazing coincidence has to do with co-stars Jacob Basil Anderson and Bailey Bass. Did anyone in the #iwtv fandom know that the stars that play Louis de Pointe du Lac and Claudia have the same birthdate. That's right, Jacob and Bailey were both born on June 18th, 13 years apart.

I don't know what it is, but these talented actors seem to be destined for something big. From my vantage point, the stars seem to be aligned in their favor and that's all for today, folks.

Thanks for reading.

[lavellenchanted]

Hi! Do you have any comforting book/movie recs? Maybe with a sweet love story or friendship?

ABSOLUTELY I do!!

Books

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn. This is a really charming romance about Meg, who does custom calligraphy, including wedding invitations, like the invites she did for Reid Sutherland a year ago. But now he's back, having spotted a hidden message she wove into his invitations warning him that his marriage was doomed. He wants to know how she knew, but Meg's got her own problems - but despite herself she feels a connection with Reid that's only growing deeper . . .

Everything Eva Ibbotson has ever written, especially her historical romances. My personal favourite is The Secret Countess, set in 1919, in which Anna, a Russian Countess, after fleeing from the Bolsheviks, takes a job as a maid in a young English Earl's household.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - told in letters and the inspiration for the film, it's quite different from the movie in some respects but is just warm, gentle and a really cosy read.

Crosstalk by Connie Willis - this is a romcom with a slight sci-fi vibe; in the not too distance future Briddey Flannigan gets an implant to allow telepathic communication with her boyfriend so they can have a more open relationship, but instead finds herself connected to someone else entirely . . .

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell - this is such a gentle romance, set in the 90s, Lincoln works for a paper in their IT department and has been assigned to check emails that get flagged by their new system. One particular coworker, Beth, keeps getting her emails flagged and as he reads them, he finds himself falling in love with her . . . the only problem is he's never actually met her.

Anne of Green Gables (and sequels) by L. M. Montgomery - a true classic, that is just so joyful to read, and the love story between Anne and Gilbert is one of my very favourites.

The Boy trilogy by Meg Cabot - these are three of Meg Cabot's adult books, all loosely connected but they can be read as standlones, and are just fun, easy reads with nice romances that are really feel good.

Movies

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - since I've plugged the book let's also plug the movie. It's gentle, it's warm, it's comforting, it's lovely and it's two hours of Michiel Huisman being charming.

The Shop Around the Corner - the original that inspired You've Got Mail, with James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. It's lower stakes that YGM but still fun, romantic and really feel good.

When In Rome - this film is ridiculous but I love it, a romcom with Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel where she takes coins out of a fountain in Rome causing four men to fall hopelessly in love with her.

The Longest Ride - this is based on a Nicholas Sparks novel and one of my comfort films. There's two love stories, one in the present day and one historical being told to the heroine by Alan Alda, and they're both really sweet.

Your Name - an anime film, I watched this a few years ago and it instantly became one of my all time favourites. It's so beautifully animated, and the romance in it is top tier.

When Fools Rush In - Matthew Perry and Salma Hayek have a one night stand in Las Vegas, but when she gets pregnant he proposes marriage on a whim and they try to build a life together. A stellar romcom and Matthew Perry said it was his favourite of all his films.

Belle (2013) - absolute peak period drama romance, and a truly underrated gem of a film.

Take the Lead - inspired by a true story, Antonia Banderas stars as a ballroom dancer who teaches a class of inner-city kids to dance. Beautiful, charming, romantic.

The Jane Austen Book Club - a group of women form a book club to read all the Jane Austen books, and find they help with their own problems. Lots of friendship and a bit of romance on the side.

And since it is December some special Christmas comfort movie plugs . . .

While You Were Sleeping - Sandra Bullock saves a man from an oncoming train, but gets mistaken by his family for his financee and then starts falling for his brother. A+++ rom com.

Christmas in Boston - two penpals finally agree to meet after writing for 13 years. The catch? They both sent each other pictures of their best friends and pretended it was them.

Dash & Lily - a series rather than a movie but super cute. Lily leaves a notebook with some challenges in a bookstore, Dash finds it and does them, and leaves her some of his own in return, and thus an unlikely friendship is born.

Midnight at the Magnolia - radio hosts and childhood friends Maggie and Jack fake being a couple to drive up the ratings on their show.

Miracle on 34th Street - both the original 1940s version and the 90s remark are great, in which a lawyer and a little girl have to prove that a man claiming to be Santa is the real thing when he's put on trial.

The 12 Dates of Christmas - woman set up on a blind date on Christmas Eve has to relive the night over and over until she gets it right.

I hope those will do you for a while and that you enjoy them!!! Shout if you need any more :)

[merionettes]

rubicon program references

due to the slow death of twitter i'm collecting my program links here. (almost) none of the rubicon skates are meant to be identical to real life programs, but some of the inspiration is pretty one-to-one… and some is a little less direct.

if you find yourself region blocked, try a free vpn - i recommend the veepn browser extension (firefox | chrome) or proton. 

if you only have so much time, i've starred the most important ones. if you want more… i have so many more.

chapter one

**tessa virtue/scott moir - mahler no. 5 (olympics 2010)

chapter two

tessa virtue/scott moir - carmen (worlds 2013)

kaitlyn weaver/andrew poje - the way you make me feel (canadian nationals 2017) | bonus worlds finish

chapter three

nadia bashynska/peter beaumont - romeo & juliet (gp espoo 2023)

maia shibutani/alex shibutani - smile (4cc 2011)

**michelle kwan - tosca (us nationals 2004) | music

chapter four

**meryl davis/charlie white - scheherazade (olympics 2014)

shizuka arakawa - turandot (olympics 2006)

**alexei yagudin - winter (olympics 2002)

chapter five

daisuke takahashi - blues for klook (worlds 2013)

mirai nagasu - pirates of the caribbean (olympics 2010)

chapter six

miki ando - the mission (4cc 2011)

meryl davis/charlie white - my fair lady (olympics 2014)

chapter seven

katarina witt - where have all the flowers gone (olympics 1994)

chapter eight

mao asada - bells of moscow (olympics 2010)

shoma uno - dancing on my own (internationaux de france 2019)

chapter nine & ten

mao asada - rachmaninov no. 2 (olympics 2014)

kazuki tomono - one more time (rostelecom cup 2018 gala)

tessa virtue/scott moir - what's love got to do with it (niagara ice show 2016)

yuna kim - les misérables (all that skate 2013)

ensemble - uptown funk (ice fantasia 2019)

chapter eleven

madison chock/evan bates - touch/contact (olympics 2022 team event)

chapter twelve

yuzuru hanyu - romeo and juliet (worlds 2012)

chapter thirteen

tatsuki machida - east of eden (worlds 2014)

johnny weir - the swan (olympics 2006)

kaitlin hawayek/jean-luc baker - feeling good (us nationals 2017)

tessa virtue/scott moir - prince medley (worlds 2017)

chapter fourteen

**jeremy abbott - lilies of the valley (olympics 2014)

nathan chen - le corsaire (us nationals 2017)

chapter fifteen

yuzuru hanyu - heaven and earth (olympics 2022)

denis ten - the artist (worlds 2013)

chapter sixteen & seventeen

ashley wagner - moulin rouge (us nationals 2015)

chapter eighteen

kaori sakamoto - elastic heart (worlds 2023)

shoma uno - dancing on my own (japan nationals 2019)

**adam rippon - arrival of the birds (olympics 2018)

chapter nineteen

michelle kwan - fields of gold (olympics 2002)

**tessa virtue/scott moir - moulin rouge (olympics 2018)

epilogue

tessa virtue/scott moir - long time running (olympics 2018 gala)

bonus 

the rippon lutz (quad edition)

stationary lift BASE?

f/f ice dance feat. madison hubbell and gabrielle papadakis

best of kpop in figure skating

fs dynamics 101

[spaceclefairy]

The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, Ch. 17

Pairing: Michael de Santa/ OFC; Trevor Philips/OFC; Michael de Santa/OFC/Trevor Philips; Michael de Santa/Trevor Philips

Summary: Los Santos is a hellscape, but if you’ve got brains and a little determination, it can be a real hell of a playground. Michael needs money, Trevor needs whatever Trevor wants, and Franklin’s moving up in Los Santos. Jen’s just along for the ride.

This is gonna be fun.

Author’s Note: I’ve been writing this beast of a thing since 2013. It’s been through a thousand different incarnations, but it’s been in my drafts for the last six years. I realize this fandom isn’t as popular as it used to be, but I might as well have a little fun and finally start posting it.

Also, not to be that bitch, but this is on Ao3. I would very much appreciate kudos/comments, if you’re so inclined!

Tagging: @verbo-volant for being an inspiration always

Part 1  ||   Part 2  ||  Part 3  ||  Part 4  ||  Part 5  ||  Part 6  ||  Part 7  ||  Part 8  ||  Part 9  ||  Part 10  ||  Part 11  ||  Part 12  ||  Part 13  ||  Part 14 || Part 15 || Part 16

--- --- ---

Senora Freeway, Three Years Ago

Michael’s flying down the Senora Freeway, Jen’s in the passenger's seat, Night Moves is playing gently in the background, and life is fucking good.

“So, what’s the plan for tonight?” Jen asks, leaning over to card her fingers through the back of his hair. “What's your curfew?”

“Haven't got one tonight,” Michael says, leaning into her hand. “Amanda's out of town for the weekend. We can do whatever you want, baby.”

“Really? Whatever I want, huh?” Jen teases, rubbing his neck. She can see one of his tattoos peeking just over the edge of his collar, and she runs her finger across it. “We could… go see a movie? There's a drive-in on the edge of the canyon right before the county line. We could grab some greasy takeout and not pay attention to whatever they're showing.”

“And what would we be doing instead of paying attention?” Michael shivers from the brush of her fingertips, a full-body shiver that runs from his shoulder to his toes. 

Jen laughs. “Fucking in the backseat, duh. That's what drive-ins are for.”

Michael chuckles to himself - that sounds like a good plan to him. “What if we get caught? Don't want you to lose your job or anything.”

“Please, we're so short-staffed, that old codger wouldn't fire me if I set the mayor's house on fire,” Jen says with a grin. She kicks off her shoes and crosses her legs up in the passenger's seat, relaxing against the door. “He’s gone senile anyway. We’re all just trying to stay afloat.”

“You should run against him, bring in some new blood.”

“Me? DA?” Jen snorted. “I'm not really much for leadership. Or politics.”

“I think you'd be good at it,” Michael replied. His hand settled on her thigh, squeezing her knee briefly. “You’re smart, you’re hard-working - you’ve got the Los Santos look. Good face for politics.”

“Maybe I'll think about it,” Jen shrugs. She’s never one to get sheepish, but she can't deny she's flattered. “Hey, turn here - let’s grab Cluckin’ Bell and head to the drive-in.”

--- --- ---

Present Day

Thanks to Michael, Jen had been in a bad mood all weekend.

Saturday had been little more than a nuisance - a formality of time enforced by the sheer ticking of a clock. Jen had given up calling or texting Michael not long after he'd bolted Friday night, leaving Saturday an open wound. She passed the irritable hours by sticking her nose in her laptop and coming up for air for coffee, and coffee alone.

Sunday was just another twenty-four hours of blind irritation stemming from hurt and confusion. Sunday was spent on the couch watching reruns of old mafia movies and nursing a bottle of wine.

Monday, well… Monday was not a good day to be this angry. It was a status hearing for Jen’s serial killer trial - the trial that would last at least a month. The hearing was a formality - little more than standing up to tell the judge that, yes, the State is ready for trial, and, yes, half the LSPD and FIB are witnesses on said trial, and, yes, it will take at least a month to try.

And, while Jen prided herself on etiquette and professionalism within the courtroom, that Monday was not her finest day. Jen was seething, and everyone could tell. Therefore, no one would talk to her, nothing was getting worked out, and nothing was getting done - at least, not for her cases.

When Jen’s case was called, she stood in her tall, tall heels, the spiky ones she wore specifically on days like today, and stood at the podium in front of the judge. "The State is ready to proceed with trial."

The judge, a curmudgeonly woman in her late sixties, similarly, and perhaps impossibly, was in a worse mood because a month-long trial wasn’t going to be enjoyable for anyone. The judges - especially this one in particular - did not like it when Jen announced that a trial would take place, as Jen's trials generally took a week or more.

The judge sighed. "How long do you expect this to take, Ms. Dixon?"

"Three weeks, maybe four. There's eight counts of murder in the first degree and nearly forty witnesses."

The judge, deadpan, asked, "Seriously?"

Jen nodded, tapping her pen against the podium. "Serious as a heart attack, Judge. This is the serial killer the FIB arrested last year."

The judge looked as if she'd like to retire immediately. "Alright, we'll set it down for trial. I'll send out the scheduling order this afternoon."

Jen stepped away from the podium, click-clacking back to the State's table. The other attorneys hastily made room for her, careful not to scoot too close. With the exception of MaryAnn, they all seemed to be mightily preoccupied with the files in their hands. MaryAnn, on the other hand, stared her down with every step.

Leave it to MaryAnn to be the only person unafraid to ask. She leaned over to whisper in Jen’s ear. "What crawled up your ass?"

Despite Jen’s irritation, she almost smiled. "Nothing."

MaryAnn rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on, I haven't seen you this angry at work since the morning after you went on that date with Haines."

That had been an exceptionally bad day, after an exceptionally bad date. They did not speak of that date. Nor the day that followed.

"We agreed never to talk about that." Jen crossed her arms and watched another lawyer stand up for his case. "Mike's being a dick."

"Did you have a fight?" MaryAnn asked. She watched the judge out of the corner of her eye, waiting for her next case to be called while she chatted with Jen.

"More like he fucked me seven ways to Sunday and ran out of my apartment before he'd even zipped up his pants. And didn’t bother to answer the phone."

"Ouch," MaryAnn winced. "Want me to cover for you so you can go home?"

Jen shook her head. "No, I've got too much to do, and we need to keep prepping for trial. I'll take care of it tonight."

"I feel sorry for him…"

"I wouldn't if I were you."

As Jen sat at the table monitoring the goings-on of the courtroom, her phone vibrated. She frowned down at it when Michael’s name flashed across the screen. 

Michael: dinner @ natalias @ 6

How eloquent. Michael wasn't known for his hip-and-happening texting skills. 

Jen: okay

She received no further reply, which wasn't unexpected even on a good day. Nevertheless, she spent a few too many seconds glaring down at the screen. Two of her employees (who had been watching carefully to make sure a blow-up wasn’t imminent) vacated their seats and scurried away, pretending to discuss a case they were working together. She rolled her eyes at their retreating backs, but she could admit it wasn’t their worst idea to go run and hide.

Jen chewed on her lip, deep in thought, until she tasted the rust of blood. Dinner could go one of several ways. Michael could ignore the problem - that was the most likely possibility. He could bring presents and buy her dinner and expect that to fix things. Or, equally possible, he could finally run the other way. That… also wouldn’t be entirely unexpected. Whatever method Michael decided to try, Jen had already determined a conversation needed to be had. 

Once court had adjourned, Jen grabbed MaryAnn and led her back to her office.

“We have to call Haines and Norton,” Jen said. “They worked the last of the murders before his arrest, so we need to start working on their testimony.”

“Are you sure you don’t just want to take your anger out on your favorite punching bags?” MaryAnn asked, curling up on her favorite chair in Jen’s office. She stared up at the whiteboard where Jen had drawn out their trial plan. “You’re not going to have one of them sit with us, are you?”

“I was planning on Haines sitting at the table with us. He has public appeal with that dumbass TV show,” Jen replied, tapping out a message on her phone. She usually tried to warn Haines before she called him. She dialed after she sent the message. “As much as I don’t want him there, he has good ratings - might help with the jury's perception of us.”

Both Jen and MaryAnn were well-known for being rather… contentious during trial.

“I hate it when you’re right… sometimes,” MaryAnn said. She quieted when Haines answered the phone on the third ring.

Haines’s voice rang loud and clear over the speaker. “How can I help you, Jenny?”

Jen’s eye twitched. “That serial killer you and Norton arrested last year is electing to exercise his constitutional right to a trial. Clear your schedule - you’re sitting at the table with us.”

“I guess you need a pretty face for when the camera’s come rolling in,” Haines commented loftily. “I don’t know… I’ll have to check my filming schedule.”

“Well, when I serve you your subpoena and you don’t show up,” Jen started as MaryAnn snickered quietly in her seat, “I can have you arrested on your own TV show. How's that for ratings?”

“Eh, I guess I could use some more screen time,” he corrected quickly. He wouldn’t put it past her to actually do it. “I’ll make sure to let my makeup artist know.”

“If you fuck up this testimony and this guy walks, don’t forget your home address is public…”

Haines scoffed quietly. “Calm down, Jenny. When have I ever fucked up testimony?”

Irritatingly, the answer was never. Haines, for all his flaws and despite his patriarchal athleisure wear, was actually fairly good on the stand. He was somehow able to charm a jury, despite the glaring surface flaws and deep-seated jackassery.

“Just be prepared. You’ll be on the stand for a couple of days,” Jen said, "And wear a fucking suit. I don't want you up there looking like you're going out for a round of golf."

“Yeah, fine.”

Jen hung up. MaryAnn was still snickering quietly in her chair.

“Well, if all goes poorly with your old man boyfriend, there’s always Steve Haines.”

“I would genuinely rather die, MaryAnn.”

--- --- ---

Michael was late. Of course, he was late. Even neutral ground for a conversation wouldn’t make that man deal with the consequences of his actions in a timely fashion.

Jen took a sip of her wine. It was good wine, she determined. She’d already asked the hostess (a woman she’d become incredibly friendly with over the years of being a steady and dedicated patron) to bag up an extra bottle to take home. She had a feeling she was going to need a tall, stiff drink when she got home. 

Jen already knew where this date was going just by virtue of Michael being late, and Michael was clearly having trouble getting himself together to do it.

She could tell him that it was okay, that she was expecting it. She could tell him she'd always known it would end like this - that they'd had a good ride together. She could be kind and make this easier for him, just get up and grab her bags and forget that he existed. And make him pay for the meal, obviously. 

But Jen certainly wasn’t known for being kind. If Michael was going to do this, she wasn't going to make it easy for him.

Michael finally arrived, dressed in his usual suit and tie. Judging by the pink flush on his cheeks, he’d had a couple of drinks before he’d walked in - a little liquid courage. Jen watched him idly as he sat down and adjusted his tie, though it didn’t need to be adjusted. He was looking anywhere but at Jen, though she’d fixed him with a cool, even stare. 

Finally, Jen spoke, tone flat. "Explain."

"I don't really know what to say…"

She cocked her head to the side. "Take your time."

"I- uh," Michael trailed off as though words had entirely escaped him. He paused, trying to hold himself firm against Jen's colder-than-death stare. "I'm- well, I'm- fuck - I'm sorry for runnin' out the other night-"

"I didn't ask for an apology, Mike. I said explain."

Michael knew his choices were limited. He could take what he determined was the chicken-shit way out: apologize and keep on doing this with Jen. Or, he could do what he figured was the right thing to do if he wanted Amanda back - break it off right here and now.

Begrudgingly, Michael admitted Trevor was right - he had to let one of them go. And he'd chosen Jen.

Time to pony up.

"Jen, I can't keep doing this," Michael said, his voice hollow. It's like he couldn't hear the words coming out of his mouth - like he was trapped in an icy bubble. "I mean, we had a good ride. It's been a good six years-"

"Seven years."

Michael coughed. Right. "Seven years. But we knew we'd have to move on from this eventually."

Jen crossed her arms. "Uh-huh."

"Look, you deserve someone who can give you a good life."

"I have a good life as it is, but keep talking if you’d like,” Jen said, raising an eyebrow. 

“I'm still married, Jen.”

That, despite Michael's attempt at a hushed whimper, caught the attention of the table next to them. Two blondes, one tall and statuesque even sitting, the other squat and muscular, ducked their heads together and traded sideways looks.

“Oh, I'm aware, but did it ever cross your mind that you’re married when you were getting your dick wet?” Jen asked, tone getting icier by the minute. “Or when you dragged me into your new bank-robbing 80's movie reboot?"

Michael struggled to keep his temper in check. If he raised his voice, which he knew he shouldn’t do, she’d lose her shit on him (which was not something he ever wanted to experience and would ultimately make things worse). And then he’d lose his shit on her (again, not something he'd ever done nor wanted to experience). He didn’t want to have a screaming match or some knock-down, drag-out fight in the middle of this restaurant. He’d wanted this to be as quick and painless as possible, but he had a short temper and a bad mouth.

"Yeah, I’m sure you really hated the money you got from those jobs. You're really gonna pull the morality card on me right now?" Michael snapped. “You knew I was married from the get-go. I never hid that from you.”

And with that, quick and painless fell out resolutely out of reach.

Jen sneered. “Morality got thrown out the window seven years ago when I fucked you on my couch. You don't give a shit about me or Amanda. You just want your idyllic little life back, with your white picket fence and wife and two-point-five kids and all that shit."

Jen had never spoken to him like this before - not this icy, toneless clip. Screaming was one thing, yelling and cussing another, but this emotionless, icicle tone was downright terrifying. Michael thought he might prefer yelling.

"We never agreed on anything more than strictly casual and you know it!” Michael snapped. He wanted to disengage, he really did, but he was notoriously terrible at backing down. 

The neighboring table was outright staring now, more out of the Los Santos love for drama than any real concern.

"Doesn't matter what we agreed to at this point, especially considering the past few months. This arrangement is no longer strictly casual, Michael,” Jen said. “Whose bed did you sleep in when Amanda left you, huh? Who’d you come running to?"

Michael leaned in, trying to keep his voice down, and failing. "Why are you making this harder than it has to be?"

Jen pointed at him, her long, tapered nail ending in a point. "Because you know how I feel, and you know how you feel, and you’re just blindly fucking ignoring it."

"I've got to take care of my family."

"I’m not telling you not to take care of your family,” Jen hissed, “I’m telling you not to go back to someone who made you miserable for twenty years, and who, I’m sure, you made equally as miserable.” 

Michael didn’t have an answer, because Jen wasn’t wrong.

"The fact of the matter is, you want this to be easy for you. This is not easy for me, and I am not going to make this easy for you, Michael," Jen snapped. This was an absolute promise. “You’ve always walked away from everything you’ve done scott-free - not this time."

"Well, don't worry, you'll get your wish. I gotta carry this with me every fucking day."

"And I hope you carry it with pride."

With that, Michael stopped and took a deep breath. He cared, he really did. And Michael, in his infinite capacity to make everything worse, went for the final blow. "Look, I care about you, Jen. I lov-"

"Don't." She uncrossed her arms and stood up. "Don’t say another fucking word - I don’t want to hear it. You are such an asshole."

"Jen, come on-"

Jen grabbed her bag and coat, retrieved her bottle of wine from the hostess station, and left, the restaurant door swinging shut behind her. Michael could pay for the fucking waters and the bottle of whiskey he was probably about to order - Jen was out of there. The valet, taking a quick look at the expression on her face, wasted no time retrieving her car.

Of course, Michael would pull that card. Jen wasn't stupid - and neither was Michael. Both emotionally stunted, stubborn fools - but not stupid. That had manifested years ago, but, of course, the end would be the moment Michael decided to pull it out.

Asshole. 

Jen revved her car and turned out into Los Santos traffic. God, it would be weeks before she’d be able to go back to Natalia’s after that blowout. She couldn’t stop herself from letting it get out of hand, and there was no way Michael wasn’t going to make a scene. How embarrassing. She’d have to leave an extra tip next time.

She didn't want to go home yet, not after that. She needed someplace to cool down, get a clear head. Some catharsis. 

Tequi-la-la’s would be a good place to cool down. Have a couple of drinks, grab some bar food since she’d never actually ordered at the restaurant. Find someone to take home with her. Yep, that was the best plan. Alcohol, food, and a quick fuck. Mends broken hearts, does the trick every time. Well, probably not this time, but self-destruction was the only option Jen would consider right now.

Yet, rather than taking the exit for Tequi-la-la’s, Jen found herself turning right onto the Strawberry exit. A short drive later, and the glow of the Vanilla Unicorn sign flooded the dark streets. She’d driven around aimlessly until she’d seen the giant neon sign and cut into the parking lot. 

Catharsis. She could get catharsis here, too. She cut the engine on her Jester and sat staring up at the flashing lights.

“Fuck.”

Jen slammed the Jester door behind her and locked the car. She was greeted at the door by the bouncers by name, asked if she wanted her usual table by the hostess. She declined and headed straight up to the bar.

Tiffany, blonde Tiffany - one of Jen's favorite girls at the Unicorn - was bartending tonight. Jen didn't prefer blondes, but Tiffany was undeniably gorgeous and surprisingly quite sweet. And she made a great cocktail. And gave great head. 

Jen leaned against the bar and waved Tiffany over. “You busy?”

“Kind of,” Tiffany snorted. She looked around and saw that she was not, in fact, all that busy, so she shook her head. “Actually, not really. Mondays are slow. Speaking of which, why are you here?”

“Bad day,” Jen responded. “Came in for a drink and… to say hi. Take a break?”

Tiffany raised an eyebrow and called over her shoulder. “Jill, I’m going on break. Be back… eventually.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Jen grinned. “Hey, have you seen Trevor tonight?”

“Uh, yeah, I think he’s in the office. Why?”

“Got a problem with using the office?”

“With him in it?”

“Maybe, if he’s lucky.”

Tiffany shook her head. “No problem at all.”

“Good girl,” Jen said with a wink. “Let’s go.”

Tiffany ducked out from behind the bar and led Jen back towards the office, pulling her by the hand past the private rooms where thudding music filled the dark hallway. Bouncers lined the wall, standing guard past the curtains in case customers got too rough with the girls. Judging by the soft sound of panting, some of the bouncers had been paid extra to look the other way.

Trevor's office was down at the end of the hall, but the girls didn't quite make it there before Jen pulled Tiffany into a heated kiss. One of the bouncers gave them a look, more out of curiosity than concern, then went back to monitoring the couple past the curtains. It wasn't like the bouncers didn't know what was going on - they'd all seen Jen with a girl or two before - but what happened at the Unicorn, stayed at the Unicorn.

Jen shoved a hand up Tiffany's cropped shirt, finding no bra to impede her in her goal, and busied herself playing with Tiffany's nipple. Tiffany wound her hand into Jen's hair and shoved her back against the wall.

“How do you want to do this?” Tiffany asked, panting in Jen's ear.

Jen tweaked her nipple until she moaned, thumb circling the nub relentlessly. “Whatever happens, happens. You okay with Trevor joining in?”

Tiffany nodded. “Fine with me. You give the word.”

“Safe word is pineapple if you get uncomfortable,” Jen said. “Now, come on, I want to stick my tongue in your pussy.”

They didn’t bother knocking on the door - it was unlocked anyway. Cue Trevor doing whatever it is that Trevor does in this vacant office (currently, snorting coke off the desk). ‘

He looked up and broke out into a grin. “Well, this is unexpected.”

“Shut up,” Jen said as she backed Tiffany up against the desk. “You can stay as long as you’re quiet.”

Trevor mimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key.

Jen nudged Tiffany onto her elbows on the desk and sank down to her knees in front of her. She hiked Tiffany's skirt up her thighs and peeled her underwear down before sealing her lips over her slit.

Tiffany's hand gripped the roots of her hair. “Ah - getting right to it, babe?”

“Mhm,” was as much of a response as Jen could give with her mouth full. She flicked her tongue along her slit, pausing to suck at her clit, before spreading her open with her fingers and sinking two digits in. She pumped her fingers in and out, tonguing the space in between with reverence, until her mouth was soaked and fingers were dripping.

Tiffany grabbed Jen’s shoulders and arched up into her mouth, thighs shaking. “Fuck, Jen - right there -”

Jen could just barely hear Trevor unzip his pants over the sound of Tiffany panting, but hear it she did. She stopped sucking Tiffany's clit and stood up, leaning over the girl on the desk so she could kiss her.

“Okay so far?” Jen asked softly, mumbling against Tiffany's mouth. Her black lipstick was smeared down her chin, and Jen could only imagine what her own face looked like.

The breathless yes made Jen smile.

“Do something for me?” Jen asked. “Go fuck Trevor. If he doesn’t finish you, I will.”

Tiffany nodded and stood shakily up from the desk. She crossed over to where Trevor sat and climbed into his lap. He moved to grab her ass, but stopped when Jen told him no.

“You don't touch. I touch, you be quiet and take what we give you. Understood?”

He stared over Tiffany’s shoulder at Jen and nodded. To his credit, he followed orders and didn’t speak, likely because he thought Jen would tell Tiffany to stop if he did. (She wouldn’t have, not this time. This was a night for catharsis, not discipline.) 

Jen stood behind Tiffany and held her hips steady as she slid down onto Trevor's fat cock. She reached up and tucked Tiffany’s hair away so she could trail kisses down her neck as Tiffany grinded down on Trevor’s lap.

“Feels good, doesn’t it, Trevor?” Jen said, reaching around to play with Tiffany’s nipples while Trevor watched. “Tiffany’s so fun to play with. Too bad you can’t touch.”

He leaned his head back against the top of the chair and groaned, eyes squeezed shut. His knuckles had turned white from the force of clutching the arms of his chair, the pulse point in his neck fluttering, tendons tight.

“Open your eyes and watch, Trevor,” Jen said, teasing one of Tiffany’s nipples before reaching down to play with her clit. “If you’re a good boy and make Tiffany come first, I’ll fuck you, too.”

Another groan, but it makes him buck up into Tiffany, matching her pace. Tiffany moaned in turn, one hand gripping Trevor's forearm, the other hand wrapped around Jen's hand while she played with her clit.

Jen grinned, spreading the slick over Tiffany's clit. She reached further, massaging the place where Trevor's cock plunged into her. “How’s that feel, Tiff?”

“Good - so good-”

“Gonna come for us?”

A high-pitched, breathy yeah. 

Jen grabbed Tiffany's chin and turned her head so she could kiss her. She felt the tremor wrack Tiffany's body as she came, the sharp moan spilling from her lips muffled by Jen's mouth. 

Beneath them, Trevor was absolutely wrecked, hips stuttering as he rode out Tiffany's orgasm without succumbing to the one threatening to slam through him. His bottom lip was caught between his wolfish teeth, eyes wild, knuckles so white from the strain that Jen could almost see the veins running through his hands. He still didn't speak, but he stared a hole through Jen's forehead, silently begging to come.

Jen held onto Tiffany's hips as she climbed off of Trevor's cock, keeping her steady. Trevor's hand immediately fisted around his shaft, pumping viciously to keep his high going.

Jen kissed Tiffany again, this time gently. “You okay, Tiff?”

“I'm great, sugar,” Tiffany replied. “Do you want me to stick around?”

“Yeah, I like when you watch,” Jen replied. “Besides, someone should watch Trevor get fucked like a good boy.”

Jen turned back towards Trevor, watching him beg silently as he fisted himself. “You can talk if you're good.”

Trevor nodded furiously, groaning. “I'll be good - I'll be so good, Jen, please -”

“I know you will, baby boy,” Jen said, lifting the hem of her dress out of the way as she straddled Trevor's lap. “You always do such a good job for your Princess Jen.”

His hands latched onto her thighs immediately, fingertips digging into her skin as she moved her underwear to the side and sank down on his cock. It was an easy slide, made easier by the mix of Tiffany's come coating his shaft and the precum dripping from his flushed tip. Her hand found his throat, thumbs teasing the prominent veins bulging under his skin, and forced his head against the back of the chair. 

Jen's name, at that moment, was the closest thing to a prayer to have ever come out of Trevor's mouth, followed closely by fuck and please. She gripped his shoulder with the hand not currently wrapped around his throat. When she moved in his lap, it was slow and torturous, not quite enough to push Trevor over the edge with the explosive force he'd started to feel with Tiffany. No, this was worse - this was a wave lapping at his skin, teasing him, pushing him closer and closer -

“You can come now, Trevor,” Jen said, permission like music to his ears. “Be a good boy and come on yourself.”

And he does. He bounced Jen up to the tip of his cock and slammed up into her before pulling her soundly off his cock and coming all over the bottom of his shirt. She kept his head pinned to the back of the chair, the edges of his vision starry and fuzzy, forcing him to keep eye contact until his cock softened against his stomach.

From the desk behind them, Tiffany made herself come again, the sound of her moans bubbling up underneath Trevor's. Jen climbed off of Trevor's lap to help Tiffany clean herself up before waving Tiffany out with another kiss. 

Jen sat on the edge of the desk and offered Trevor Tiffany's forgotten underwear to clean himself up. She watched idly as he stuffed the used underwear into his back pocket.

“Not that I'm complaining,” Trevor said, “but what was that?”

“What do you mean, what was that? You got fucked by two women. Don't think that needs an explanation.”

“But why?”

“Why not?”

Trevor, unfortunately, was a lot more perceptive than Jen gave him credit for sometimes. “What happened?”

Jen, wholly unwilling to relive the events of the night prior to her arrival at the Unicorn, climbed down off the desk and smoothed out her dress. “Why don't you call Michael? He'll explain.”

“Maybe I’ll just go pay him a visit,” Trevor replied, zipping up his pants with some finality. “It’s been a while since I said hello anyway.”

[kaythefloppa]

I just saw the recent post on the Frozen Kratts AU from 2013. Seeing you are another hardcore Wild Kratt fan like myself, I want to ask if you remember a fake episode that circulated the wiki. I don’t remember the title but the synopsis involved the team learning about aquarium fish and Aviva and Koki’s dads were involved for some reason.

Yes, I do remember that episode: I even remember a piece of fan-art. involving Martin and Aviva at an aquarium, which I theorize is what inspired someone to list a fake episode onto the wiki.

I can’t remember what that title was (I think Aquarium Escapade?) but yeah, it does ring a bell.

And this isn’t the only fake episode that I remember being listed on the wiki. There was A Macaw Wedding (with the Caviva wedding), there was Jurassic Kratts (a three parter that involves dinosaurs and continued the Time Trampoline arc from S3), there was Creatures of Egypt, and there was also a Halloween episode (before the actual Halloween special came out) that involved Fnaf-style animatronics made by the villains. It was wild.

[cayslongliving]

A visual story of my journey as a swiftie, starting with going to the Speak Now World Tour on November 22, 2011 where Selena was a surprise guest, they sang ‘Who Says’ and after seeing Taylor perform ‘Haunted’ and going under a giant ass bell after angrily hitting it in a badass red dress, 11 year old Caleigh was HOOKED.

Fast forward to one of my earliest posts on Instagram on Christmas 2012 after getting Taylor’s Wonderstruck perfume and then the Enchanted Wonderstruck (as shown above). Went to see Red Tour with neighbors a few months later in March 2013

Fast forward to 1989 Tour Philly night 1 (6/12/15) and Metlife night two (bottom) (7/11/15) in the MOST insane fit ever (peep the cat galaxy leggings in top right💀💀) and the insane amount of purple lights (Taylor’s HYGTG tour fit inspired ofc just purple)

Yup. It was magical. I screamed my lungs out.

Oh and Taylor looked at me, I died that day.

Fast forward AGAIN to Rep tour metlife night 2 (7/21/2018) & 3 (7/22/2018)

AMAZING rain show ( as you can see by our fits in top left), surprise song was fearless which also happened to be the first tattoo I ever got just months prior🫶🏼

Boom boom boom, fast forward AGAIN, covid hit, no loverfest :/ but got folklore and evermore!! Rerecordings! Midnights! (There’s a photo limit so I am saving my remaining pics for eras tour of course). 2022, I survived The Great War of Ticketmaster, somehow bagged Denver Night 1 Eras Tour Tickets (7/14/2023), Taylor LIKED MY TIKTOK in Fall of 2022 (still dead from it) anddddd

To the Eras Tour I went!!! RIGHT next to the stage, and the entire night I was convinced Taylor was trying to give me a heartattack with the EYE CONTACT SHE KEPT MAKING WITH ME

Like, MA’AM???? Now 23 years old and this woman still has my whole goddamn heart. Taylor, I will stay, we will stay, I love you to the moon and to saturn ALWAYS🫶🏼🫶🏼🤍

Words cannot explain how excited I am for The Tortured Poets Department. April 19 CANNOT come sooner enough, I will be prepared with plenty of wine, tissues, and maybe a cheese board because I am a sucker for a good charcuterie board😌

I love you @taylorswift ! I love you swifties, thank you for being the best fandom in the world, I love the friends I’ve made through being a swiftie and friends I know I will make in the future!

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Sorry, Tay Talk😤🫡

[denimbex1986]

'Dublin-native Andrew Scott is making headlines at the moment after starring in All of Us Strangers with Paul Mescal.

The film, which is inspired by the 1987 novel Strangers by Japanese author Taichi Yamada, explores the queer relationship between Andrew Scott’s character Adam and Paul Mescal’s character Harry.

As Adam and Harry’s relationship intensifies, the former visits his childhood home in Croydon and comes out to his parents, played by Claire Foy and Jamie Belle – the twist is his parents died 30 years earlier.

Speaking exclusively to PinkNews on the red carpet at a UK screening of All of Us Strangers ahead of its release on Friday (26 January), Andrew Scott reflected on the importance of seeing queer sex represented.

As there’s an appetite for all things Andrew Scott at the moment (and rightfully so), we thought it would be a good time to take a look at his LGBTQ+ story so far.

When did Andrew Scott come out?

Scott first commented on his sexuality in 2013 in an interview with The Independent while promoting a BBC Two drama titled Legacy.

“Mercifully, these days people don’t see being gay as a character flaw. But nor is it a virtue, like kindness. Or a talent, like playing the banjo. It’s just a fact. Of course, it’s part of my make-up, but I don’t want to trade on it,” he said.

He recently told GQ that he was “encouraged by people in the industry” to keep his sexuality a secret.

“I understand why they gave that advice but I’m also glad that I eventually ignored it,” Scott said.

Scott started out on stage

Scott was a stage actor in Dublin before moving on to the world of film and TV, making his debut in the Irish drama Korea, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

He had small roles in Saving Private Ryan, Nora, and Dead Bodies, plus a number of other movies.

Scott became a ‘gay icon’ after appearing as James Moriarty in BBC’s Sherlock, sparking countless memes and fanfiction about the potential queer relationship between his character and the titular character played Benedict Cumberbatch.

In 2014, Scott appeared in Pride, a movie honouring the LGBTQ+ activists that raised money to help families affected by the 1984 miner’s strike.

More recently, many will recognise Scott from appearing as the ‘Hot Priest’ in Fleabag as well as playing Colonel John Parry in His Dark Materials, a BBC adaptation of the popular Phillip Pullman book series.

Scott relied on his own pain when filming All of Us Strangers

Homosexuality was illegal in Ireland until Scott turned 16 and he had to grapple with his sexuality and the fear he had in coming out. Scott’s complicated feelings about being gay was something he brought to set every day when filming All of Us Strangers.

He told GQ that he would walk around director Andrew Haigh’s childhood home, the set for Adam’s parents home in the film, and look at all the magazines that he himself had grown up with. Haigh told GQ that he could see Scott revisiting his past: “It’s so interesting watching someone react to something because you can see on their face they’ve been dragged back. It’s like time travel.”

Scott added: “I think that’s maybe why this feels so gratifying and cathartic. Because I did have to bring so much of my own pain into it.”

Scott and Mescal previously told Pink News that an uptick in the number of queer sex scenes in film and TV, including in All of Us Strangers, is “wonderful”.

Scott said: “What’s going to help bring the world forward is just to have representation in that sense. I always say [that] as a queer person, seeing straight relationships constantly and almost exclusively, it hasn’t made me disgusted to look at them. I just go, ‘there you go’.”

Though Mescal is straight, the two actors have great chemistry according to Haigh.

“It was clear to me that [Scott and Mescal] liked each other liked each other a lot as actors, as people. The characters are falling in love, so the actors know how to generate chemistry.”

“They clearly have amazing chemistry, and they’re really good friends now, and they care and love for each other. So, something magical happened. I’m very grateful for that,” Haigh told Sky News.

What will Scott be seen in next?

Scott will soon be starring in new Netflix thriller Ripley, an eight-part series based on Patricia Highsmith’s best-selling Tom Ripley novels.

The story follows a con artist who is hired by a wealthy man to get the man’s son to return home from Italy, when everything goes wrong and descends into fraud and murder.

Scott plays the titular character Tom Ripley, alongside Johnny Flynn and Dakota Fanning. The series premieres on Netflix on April 4, 2024.

He is also expected to appear in an upcoming action comedy film with Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz titled Back in Action. There is no release date for the film at the time of writing.

Andrew Scott husband?

Many people (probably people who are quite hopeful that Andrew Scott is still on the market) have been Googling whether the Fleabag star has a husband or partner.

While Andrew Scott keeps his personal life very private, according to Hello Magazine– it’s thought that he is currently single after splitting from his long-term partner, writer Stephen Beresford, in 2019.

He’s previously appeared on the How to Fail podcast speaking about relationships in January 2020, and said: “You learn from people. It’s not about the length of time you spend with somebody. My life is different now. I feel like my attitude towards relationships and my attitude towards myself and sexuality and all that stuff has changed, and that came about from having the courage to be on my own for a bit, quite a scary thing to do.'

[the-rewatch-rewind]

New episode! Script below the break.

Hello and welcome back to the Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most rewatched movies. Today I will be discussing #36 on my list: Disney’s 2013 animated musical Frozen, directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, written by Jennifer Lee, from a story by Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, and Shane Morris inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”, and featuring the voice talents of Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, and Santino Fontana.

Frozen is the story of two royal sisters. The older, Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel), has ice powers that she doesn’t know how to control. As a child, she accidentally injured her younger sister, Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell), who was healed by trolls but has no memory of Elsa’s powers. On Elsa’s coronation day, the palace gates are opened for the first time in years, and Anna meets Prince Hans of the Southern Isles (Santino Fontana) and is immediately smitten. But asking for Elsa’s blessing of their marriage leads to a fight that causes Elsa to unintentionally unleash her powers. Terrified, Elsa runs away, leaving the whole kingdom frozen. Anna goes after her and teams up with mountain man Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), his reindeer Sven, and a magical snowman created by Elsa named Olaf (Josh Gad) to bring back summer, and her sister.

I remember seeing teasers for this movie that made it look like it was about a snowman and a reindeer chasing each other around an ice rink, which seemed very boring. But my sister and I decided to give it a chance and see it in theaters. It had only been out for a couple of days, so we had vaguely heard that people seemed to be liking it, but we still didn’t really know what it was about, let alone how popular it would become. And I know I’m about 10 years too late with this advice, but I highly recommend experiencing Frozen for the first time in a crowded theater, before the hype, with no expectations, next to your sister with whom you have a close relationship. Truly one of my top 5 best cinematic experiences ever. I think I probably would still love this movie even if I’d been introduced to it in a less powerful way, but that first viewing has certainly impacted the way I feel about the movie to this day.

I still remember exactly how I felt when I heard and saw Let It Go for the first time. The song started and it was like, yes, good, an Idina Menzel number, I love Wicked, I’m here for this. And then that first “The cold never bothered me anyway” when she throws off her cloak gave me chills. My brain went, “Oh wow. This isn’t just a song, it’s a FEELING.” And it just. kept. escalating. as Elsa’s confidence grew and she could finally be herself for the very first time. By the end of the number, I was either in tears or too overwhelmed with emotion to even cry, I can’t remember which. Some kid a few rows behind us murmured, “Wow, she’s…way prettier than I thought.” And maybe I was just projecting the way I felt, but to me it sounded like the kid was really saying, “Something needs to be said here, but I can’t find the words.” It’s not that I’d never been moved by a musical number before, but this took it to the next level. And all of this is almost embarrassing for me to admit now, because Let It Go then became one of the most overplayed songs of all time and everyone got sick of it, but listen. It was overplayed for a reason. It’s an epic song, and Idina Menzel frickin kills it. I still stand by this.

Looking back on my other thoughts as I watched Frozen unfold for the first time shows me just how much amatonormativity – the idea that everyone wants and needs a long-term monogamous romantic partner – had affected me. I still thought I was straight, although my standard justification of “I’m not into dating yet but I’m sure I will be when I’m older” was feeling less and less valid, as I was then 23 years old. Anyway, I distinctly remember, during Love Is an Open Door, which is the song that Hans and Anna sing to each other soon after they meet, that my sister and I turned to each other and whispered, “I ship it.” And then Kristoff got thrown into the story, and I was conflicted, because I really liked Anna with him, too. I started thinking maybe Elsa would end up with Hans. And then Elsa wounded Anna’s heart with her ice, which only an act of true love could heal, and it did not even occur to me that that could be anything other than a romantic kiss. I thought Kristoff would bring her back to Hans, she would kiss him but it wouldn’t do anything, and that’s when she’d realize her true love was actually Kristoff. But while I was expecting things to not work out between Anna and Hans, I was NOT expecting Hans to be cruel, so his “Oh Anna, if only there was someone out there who loved you” was shocking and devastating. I thought the scene when Olaf rescues her and explains that “some people are worth melting for” was beautiful – the snowman was far less obnoxious than I’d been anticipating – but even then it never occurred to me that Anna would be cured by anything other than kissing Kristoff. And then. Fighting the blizzard and the ice spreading through her body, almost reunited with her romantic true love, Anna sees Hans draw a sword against Elsa. I’m sure if I’d been able to think clearly in that moment, I would have finally figured out what was coming, but all I could do was gape at the screen as Anna changed course and saved her sister instead. And with hindsight, duh, that was the act of true love, but for a second or two I legitimately thought she was now permanently frozen. And, like, here’s the thing. I’ve loved Disney movies as long as I can remember, so I’m not trying to insult them. But the studio that made Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and Enchanted had so thoroughly convinced me that when you need love to break a spell, it must be romantic and almost always involves a kiss, that I couldn’t even imagine that a Disney film would ever treat saving a family member’s life as powerful enough for that. But Frozen did. Frozen went there. While I was sitting next to my wonderful sister, one of the most important people to me, this movie showed me that it’s okay for sisterly love to be the most powerful thing in your life. So at that point I definitely cried.

As far back as I can remember, the overemphasis on romance in movies has bothered me, but until then I thought I just had to accept it. Falling in romantic love was a universal human experience, so everyone said; naturally people wanted to tell stories about it. Obviously I’d seen movies, even Disney movies like Mary Poppins and Emperor’s New Groove, that didn’t have love stories before. But a Disney PRINCESS movie, that HAD romantic love, but showed a character actively CHOOSING a non-romantic loved one over a romantic one, and saving herself in the process??? That was mind-blowing. Even though I didn’t know I was aroace at the time, I knew I loved that message. So as my sister and I left the theater, we could not praise this movie enough, and for weeks and months afterward, I couldn’t get this story out of my head, and I didn’t want to. I saw it two more times in theaters, for a total of 3 views in 2013, and then bought the DVD as soon as it was released. The following Halloween I dressed as Elsa, along with thousands of girls 15 to 20 years younger than me. I ended up watching Frozen eight times in 2014. But then…I stopped watching it for a while.

Part of that was just because watching a movie 11 times in a little over a year is a lot, even for me, so I needed a break. But another part of it was people started really hating on this movie, and it got to me. Some of the criticism was legitimate – like, no, we really didn’t need another animated musical about white royalty, and yes, there are several plot holes – but a lot of it boiled down to: this thing is overwhelmingly popular and therefore it’s cool and edgy to say it’s bad. But I bought it. I felt embarrassed by my initial enthusiasm. I was way too old to be obsessing over a movie like this the way I had done in my early teens. Normally I don’t have much trouble loving the movies I love unapologetically, but normally the movies I love are old or obscure enough that the internet isn’t filled with hot takes about why it’s bad to love them. I still enjoyed listening to the songs, and I still defended it when I heard it disparaged in person, but after my 8 viewings in 2014 I didn’t watch Frozen again until 2019. And I only watched it then because Frozen II was coming out and I wanted to refresh myself on the first one before I saw the sequel. I was kind of expecting that viewing to convince me once and for all that I had gotten over it, but I had the complete opposite experience. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of that rewatch. I was reminded that I really do genuinely love and enjoy this movie, and I wished I hadn’t let the haters convince me otherwise. So I watched it once each in 2020, 2021, and 2022, which was partly because of the Disney watching project I did with my brother – we watched through all the animated Disney movies in order in 2020, and then we re-watched the ones we’d ranked in the top 10 in 2022 – yes, we decided Frozen is a top 10 Disney animated film, and no I will not apologize for that.

I think a big reason why I let myself get temporarily talked out of loving Frozen is because I couldn’t articulate what I really loved about it at the time, so I thought that meant I didn’t actually love it. But now that I know I’m aroace, it makes perfect sense. As I mentioned before, even at the time, I knew that seeing a character choose familial love over romantic love in a matter of life and death meant a lot to me, though I didn’t know the extent of it. And I related to Elsa and Let It Go spoke to me, but it took me a long time to recognize the extent of that too. As someone who has struggled with depression, I initially saw Elsa’s self-imposed isolation to try to protect people that ended up hurting them as an allegory for that disease, which I still think it is to a certain extent. Depression dulls all emotions and tricks one’s brain into thinking others would be better off without them, and that describes some of what Elsa is going through. But there’s also the aspect of hiding a part of herself that she knew she wouldn’t be accepted for, and finally breaking away from that to live as her true self, that a lot of LGBTQIA+ people relate to, which I didn’t recognize in myself at the time – and now I wonder if another reason I stepped away from the movie for a while was a subconscious fear of facing my own queerness. I know a lot of people see Elsa as a lesbian, which seemed to be confirmed by a couple of brief moments in Frozen II. While I would argue that it’s not quite canon yet, I wouldn’t mind if Frozen III makes it so – provided the story of Frozen III actually makes sense, unlike whatever the heck Frozen II is supposed to be about. What I’m trying to say is I don’t want to dismiss the Elsa is a lesbian theory, but to me she feels very aroace. She doesn’t seem at all interested in finding a partner, she just wants to hang out in her mountain ice palace by herself, which sounds pretty awesome even though I still don’t understand how she was going to be able to feed herself up there. Also, at the end of the first movie, she seems very surprised to learn that she has the capacity to thaw what she’s frozen by allowing herself to feel love. Elsa has been suppressing all of her emotions because she knows that her ice powers are harder to control when she feels things, which is again similar to depression. But seeing this through an aroace lens of constantly feeling like you’re incapable of the “correct” kind of love, I could see an aroace Elsa being aware of love as a thawing force, but thinking it had to be romantic love and that she was therefore doomed. So seeing Anna using their sisterly love to heal her frozen heart showed Elsa that the type of love she could feel was powerful enough, and that was all she needed to bring back summer. Like most of my aroace headcanons, I’m pretty sure this wasn’t quite what the filmmakers actually intended, but it works and it’s beautiful.

 Whether Elsa is intentional queer representation or not, even the straight romantic relationship in Frozen is unusual for a Disney movie. Anna and Kristoff’s rocky start leading to eventual feelings is nothing new, of course, but the way they leave it (at least at the end of the first movie, which I like to pretend is the end of the story because, again, the sequel makes no sense) is very sweet. They’re not officially dating, let alone engaged or married, but Anna presents Kristoff with a new sled, and he’s so excited that he exclaims, “I could kiss you!” And then he backs off and asks her permission and they only kiss after they both agree that they want to. This may not seem like much, but in a culture that tends to romanticize spontaneity and persistent pursuit at the expense of consent, especially in fairytales, it’s so wonderful to see asking for consent encouraged in such an adorable way here.

I think a big part of what makes Frozen work is that it’s all about subverting expectations. Before the movie came out, they set expectations that the snowman and the reindeer would be annoying, and then Olaf and Sven both turned out to be sweet and genuinely funny. Then at the beginning it makes you think it’s going to be a typical fairytale romance, but it turns out the prince is the actual villain. Plot twist villains are pretty common in this Disney era, and I’m not sure even I would consider Hans the best instance of that trope, but I do love the way the Duke of Weselton is established as a decoy villain, and that he’s voiced by Alan Tudyk, who had just voiced the plot twist villain in Wreck-It Ralph. At first I felt like the Hans reveal was a little too out of nowhere, but there are a few delightfully subtle clues that I completely missed initially, like how he sings about “finding his own place” when he’s pretending to be singing about Anna, or how he’s clearly calculating a way to incapacitate Elsa while making it look like he’s saving her. I would have liked a few more clues, but I also think it’s good to portray that red flags can be hard to spot. And then on top of that there’s the unexpected challenge to the amatonormative idea that romance is the most important and powerful form of love. It was all so completely different from what I was expecting, in the best possible way.

Clearly this movie appeals to people who are not aroace, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the most popular children’s movie of the decade is so focused on platonic love. A lot more kids can relate to familial love than to romantic love. And Frozen proves that you don’t have to eliminate romance from a story entirely to emphasize other types of love. When Anna falls in love with Kristoff, that doesn’t make her relationship with him the only one that matters, or even the one that matters the most, and that’s a message that we don’t get from nearly enough stories. A big fear that many aromantic people share is that all of our friends will eventually abandon us for romantic partners, due to the prevalence of the message that one’s romantic partner should be one’s number one focus at all times. Personally I’ve been fortunate enough to find people who value friendship as much as I do, and therefore want to maintain close platonic relationships whether they’re in romantic relationships or not, and I’m very grateful for all of them. But I know not all aros are as fortunate in that respect. So that’s why I keep emphasizing how awesome it is that in Frozen not only is one of the main characters potentially aroace, but the other main character who is not still chooses to save herself with platonic love instead of romantic love. Encouraging people to cultivate non-romantic relationships benefits everyone, not just aros, because putting too much pressure on one relationship to fulfill all or even most of one’s social needs is unsustainable, and often dangerous. When Hans meets Anna, he correctly observes that she’s lonely and desperate for love, and he hopes to manipulate her by filling that entire void himself. But he ultimately fails because, while Anna does desire romance, she wants to reconnect with her sister even more. Even though Elsa has shut her out for years, as soon as she reveals her powers Anna understands that her sister has been in just as much pain as she has. Instead of festering resentment, Anna is filled with empathy and compassion, which allows her to save herself, her sister, and the kingdom. We need more heroes like Anna. And while it may be overrated, overhyped, and a little underdeveloped, in terms of emphasizing the power of non-romantic love, we need more stories like Frozen.

Thank you for listening to me attempt to express my love for this movie. I still don’t feel like I’ve done it justice, which I suspect will become more and more of a problem as I continue to work my way up this list. If you want to hear about more movies that I love enthusiastically, remember to follow or subscribe on your podcast platform of choice, and leave a rating or review if you feel like it. This episode is coming out during Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week, so I hope any of you out there who are or think you might be on the aromantic spectrum are feeling particularly appreciated and accepted. And if you’re not aro-spec yourself, maybe reach out to any aromantic friends you have and tell them you value them. And if you don’t know of any aros in your life, just reach out to any friend and tell them you care about them. Let’s spread lots of good non-romantic feelings this week! And the next time you get the urge to tell a single friend they need a romantic partner: don’t.

Next week I’ll be talking about another movie musical that I’ve watched 15 times, although that one is not animated and is decidedly not geared toward children. As always, I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “And then he ran into my knife. He ran into my knife ten times.”

[heavenboy09]

10 YEARS AGO TODAY

ON NOVEMBER 27TH, 2013

DISNEY INVITES YOU ALL

TO WITNESS

THE SINGLE MOST SPECTACULAR ANIMATED FILM OF 2013 & THE BIGGEST ANIMATED FILM OF DISNEY'S CINEMA 🎥

SINCE THE DEBUT OF THE LION KING 🦁 🤴 IN 1994

BASED ON THE INSPIRATION OF THE HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN'S FAIRY 🧚‍♀️ TALE " THE SNOW ❄ QUEEN 👸

IN A FAR AWAY LAND

IN A ENCHANTED COUNTRY IN EUROPE 🇪🇺

LIES A KINGDOM 🏰

A PEACEFUL KINGDOM OF TRANQUILITY & HEART ❤

& THE SNOW ❄ THERE IS LIKE MAGIC ✨

THAT KINGDOM 🏰 IS KNOWN AS

THE KINGDOM OF ARENDELLE 🏰❄🇳🇴

THERE THE CITIZENS OF IT'S JOYOUS & GRACIOUS HOSTS

THE KING 🤴 & QUEEN 👸 OF ARENDELLE

& THEIR LOVELY 2 DAUGHTERS WHO ONE DAY, ONE OF THEM WILL BE THE FUTURE QUEEN 👸 OF THEIR BEAUTIFUL KINGDOM

WATCH OVER THE PEOPLE & RULE WITH KINDNESS & MERCY FOR ALL THOSE LIVE IN THE LAND

PRINCESS ELSA👸🏼  OF ARENDELLE POSSESSES MAGICAL POWERS ❄    ALLOWING HER TO CONTROL ICE 🧊AND SNOW❄, OFTEN USING THEM TO PLAY WITH HER YOUNGER SISTER  ANNA  IN THEIR CHILDHOOD.

AFTER ELSA ACCIDENTALLY INJURES ANNA WITH HER MAGIC, THEIR PARENTS

THE KING 🤴AND QUEEN 👸

TAKE THEM TO A COLONY OF STONE🗿 TROLLS LED BY PEBBLE, WHO HEALS ANNA BUT ERASES HER MEMORIES OF ELLA'S MAGIC ✨. 

PABBBIE WARNS ELSA THAT SHE MUST LEARN TO CONTROL HER POWERS,

AND THAT FEAR WILL BE HER ENEMY.

THE SISTERS ARE ISOLATED WITHIN THE CASTLE🏰, THE GATES OF WHICH ARE NOW CLOSED OFF TO THE PUBLIC. OUT OF FEAR OF HER INCREASINGLY UNPREDICTABLE POWERS, ELSA CEASES ALL CONTACT WITH ANNA, CAUSING THEM TO BECOME EMOTIONALLY DISTANT.

WHEN THE SISTERS ARE TEENAGERS, THE KING 🤴 AND QUEEN 👸 ARE LOST AT SEA AND PRESUMED DEAD.

UPON REACHING ADULTHOOD, ELSA IS DUE TO BE CROWNED QUEEN 👸🏼 BUT FEARS THAT HER SUBJECTS WILL DISCOVER HER MAGIC✨ AND FEAR HER.

THE CASTLE GATES ARE OPENED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN YEARS TO THE PUBLIC AND VISITING DIGNITARIES, INCLUDING THE SCHEMING DUKE OF WESELTON AND  PRINCE 🤴 HANS OF THE SOUTHERN ISLES. 

WHEN THEIR KINGDOM 🏰 BECOMES TRAPPED IN PERPETUAL WINTER ❄, FEARLESS ANNA👸  JOINS FORCES WITH MOUNTAINEER KRISTOFF🤴 AND HIS REINDEER🦌 SIDEKICK TO FIND ANNA'S SISTER, SNOW QUEEN ELSA

AND BREAK HER ICY SPELL🧊. ALTHOUGH THEIR EPIC JOURNEY LEADS THEM TO ENCOUNTERS WITH MYSTICAL TROLLS🗿, A COMEDIC SNOWMAN ⛄ HARSH CONDITIONS, AND MAGIC ✨AT EVERY TURN.

ANNA AND KRISTOFF BRAVELY PUSH ONWARD IN A RACE TO SAVE THEIR KINGDOM FROM WINTER'S COLD GRIP 🥶.

DISNEY & WALT DISNEY ANIMATION STUDIOS PRESENTS

THE 1# DISNEY FILM OF 2013

& THE GLOBAL SENSATIONAL FILM THAT TOOK LITTLE GIRLS 👧 EVERYWHERE TO A MAGICAL PLACE WHERE YOU COULD LET IT ALL GO. 

KRISTEN BELL 🔔

IDINA MENZEL ❄

JONATHAN GROFF 🦌

& JOSH GAD ⛄

IN

DISNEY'S

FROZEN ❄👸👸🏼🤴🏰⛄🦌

HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY TO DISNEY'S FROZEN ❄👸👸🏼🤴🏰⛄🦌

IT'S TIME ONCE AGAIN.  TO LET IT GO ❄😉 #Frozen #Disney #PrincessElsa #PrincessAnna #Kristoff #Sven #Olaf #KristenBell #IdinaMenzel #JonathanGroff #JoshGad #LetItGo