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zombiewhor3 · 2 years

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WE HAVE RULES!

daryl dixon x fem reader

WARNINGS: violence, mentions of gore, fighting, name calling, language, mentions of possible death (no actual death).

A/N: i know it's been forever i've honestly been so busy with school, after school stuff and lots of managing other accounts like my wattpad i was trying to upload stuff on there so my apologies surely i'll have more chapters and one shots out soon it just depends on my schedule and my motivation :)

she could hear the sound of the hammer hitting the nail into the wooden plank as she felt some sweat running on her forehead, she thanked Henry as she took a cup of water from him.

she patted his head ruffling through his blonde strands of sunshine blonde hair watching as he trotted along passing out water to some of the others who were working on the bridge.

she tucked away her hammer and rolled up the sleeves to her flannel as she took a gaze at the rushing water just below the project they were building, she could see men working and the sound of nails being hit was a constant source of noise around her.

she smiled softly looking at the progress they made so far, sure it was a lot more to be done but she never imagined it could go this far, she wasn't even sure the war with the Saviours could end.

She patted one of the hard working Saviours on the back softly before she made her way off of the bridge and into the clearing of the woods that laid out in front of them.

she followed the path built by Rick and the people from Oceanside, a path that connected all of the groups and all of the territories together, one where it was like a giant camp.

she grabbed a large bowl filled of fresh fruit that was placed out on the table, smiling at one of the curly haired girls who sat carving up a new piece of wood to create a stake as her weapon of choice.

young but fierce-full is how y/n would describe her because she looked no older than the age of ten, maybe even eleven if she had all of her gear on and held her large wooden stake.

y/n had her journey back to the bridge after all she was the one in charge while Daryl was out keeping things together at the Sanctuary and the city of Alexandria.

she held the wooden bowl of fruit in her hand, she stood up on a few slabs of wood and whistled out to call the boys attentions to which they set down their tools in their belts and lined up ready to get their share of the food for working.

she didn't have to give them anything, she didn't even have to make Henry go around with a water jug and give these pricks an ounce of the water they worked hard to collect and sanitize.

but she did it because she knew that truly not all of them were bad, she did it because she cared and well she did it because she wanted a future one where she could have a kid someday.

one that was fair and friendly and safe, not one filled with war and the anger of the Saviours around them because even though that's what some of the others wanted it wasn't what she wanted.

hell it wasn't what she believed in.

she stepped off the wood watching as the last man in line tried to grab two but she pulled his hand away, she grabbed one of the apples and handed it to the small blonde boy next to her.

"why does he need some? he's just a water boy!" Justin remarked pulling the apple out of Henry's hand watching as he remained silent and tried to slip his stick out but y/n pressed a hand out to stop him.

she snatched the apple back and placed it back into his hand, "because he's been working to, he's been scavenging the water for you guys, and he's been harvesting fruit" y/n spoke setting the now empty bowl down onto the wood behind her.

Justin reached out to Henry again only to feel y/n push him away, "why does this bitch decide how much we get for rations? you don't work as hard as us men on the bridge it's bullshit!"

he poked a harsh finger into her chest and she swallowed and looked him in his eyes, she licked over her lips silently and she could feel the slight feeling of him pushing her.

she pushed back but quite not as soft, she could watch him stumble softly and almost fall back on his ass causing a soft chuckle to erupt from one of the men pulling apart an orange.

"she almost knocked you over there bud"

the Saviour remarked taking a piece of the orange and popping it into his mouth she watched as he chewed down on it un-expectant to the fact Justin had thrown a full force swing at her.

she closed her eyes feeling her head slightly be thrown back as the punch was so hard she could feel her eye throbbing, she tried to throw a punch back or maybe even reach for her knife but before she knew it she had been tossed against the pile of wood with a loud thump erupting throughout the bridge.

she could feel another swing of his fist strike at her jaw making her bite down on her inner cheek so hard she could taste the fresh copper flavor of blood pooling a top of her taste buds.

she spat out her blood onto the ground her hand on her knife but Rick had stepped in the middle of it, he had been the one to pull him off of her, and he was the one to help up the dizzy y/n.

it felt like her head had hit the wood from how dizzy she was, the world seemed to be a blur and the sound of the commotion and the yelling of people trying to pull him off was almost a quite messy haze.

she could feel the soft feeling of her being lifted up onto the back of the horse, she could hear the muffled foot steps of the horses hooves clacking against the forest ground.

she hadn't remembered much besides the fight with Justin but she had woken up in a dim and dark tent, an apple and a bottle water by her side as she sat up placing a hand on her head and it seemed like she was having a bad hangover from the raging headache that was pushing through her.

she could hear a soft clatter outside the tent to which she pulled it open and slipped out of the tent to see Enid and Aaron who had been waiting for her to awake, they sat at a table and gave her a soft smile while Enid had yet another bottle of water for her.

"How long was i out for?" y/n asked as she adjusted the belt that was wrapped around her, slipping a hammer that rested on the table into one of the empty slots the belt held.

Aaron tried to pull it away from her but she simply took a step back and folded her arms, "how long was i out?" she repeated her question watching as it was Enid who finally spoke up.

"couple of hours i mean you hit your head y/n, you needed the rest especially after whatever happened on the bridge" Enid spoke watching as she took the bottle from her hands and took a sip before patting Enid on the back with a soft sigh.

"they need my help out there, i'm in charge of them" y/n spoke almost as if she had slowed them down, almost as if it was her fault she had been punched in the face.

"you don't need to work y/n, you need to go sit back down before you end up hurting yourself" and even with Aaron's words she wobbled slightly and reached out to grip the table for help.

"i'm fine" she bitterly lied, she knew she wasn't fine, she shouldn't even up and moving if she had a head wound but this was her job, this was how she was meant to live, its how she was meant to be.

"Rick is watching over the crew so rest we promise everything will go fine we'll make sure of that" Enid spoke watching y/n slam down the hammer back onto the table before slipping into her tent.

she laid against the pillow propped for her and tried to close her eyes but it seemed like she couldn't, it seemed like the world was spinning so fast and she just couldn't make it stop.

Daryl had slipped into the tent watching her sit up shocked at the commotion only to see that it was him, she let out a sigh of relief watching as he licked over his lips, his brows furrowing.

"what happened?" was all he said, he hadn't greeted her or anything unless you count the sudden grasp his hand had on hers.

"nothing just a small tussle" she spoke her eyes tracing down to the crossbow that was rested against the side of the tent, she knew that he wasn't buying her lie but it was worth a shot.

"y/n what happened? Who hit you?" he bit down on his tongue as he spoke looking over at his wife who had a slight guilty conscious on her face because she truly did hate lying to him.

"Daryl i'm fine, it was just a small fight no need to worry" she lied again, there was reason to worry, there was a reason to worry because these were the people they were working with, and she knew there could be a chance of this happening again.

he lifted her chin up forcing her to look at him, and even though she tried to hide away at the black and bruised eye she had it was no use because he was staring directly at it.

"who y/n?, just give me a name please" she took in a deep breath before managing to spill the name of the man who had left her knocked out with a bruised and blood shot eye.

"you think hitting a woman is alright?" Daryl spat at the man who stood against the tree forming a stood forming a cocky smile on his face.

“when she’s a mutt like yours I do, besides that bitch needed some common sense knocked into her anyways” his voice had confidence that he was surely gonna rile up a fight, that's all Justin ever wanted was to knock Daryl and y/n out of his way for good.

y/n froze at the words slipped so bitterly from the mans sour mouth as she watched her husbands hands ball up into a set of rock hard fists to which she had grabbed Aaron’s shoulder whispering for him to go get Rick who was still working on the bridge.

“Say it again I dare ya, call her a bitch again” Daryl spat back taking a step closer and before Justin could even push the sentence out the two men were tussling with each other, or well Daryl was starting to beat the living shit out of the Saviour who was pressed against the ground his hands gripping at the fabric of Daryl's vest.

she watched in a shock as he had used a metal pan to strike over his head causing a loud thump to erupt from the silence of the woods.

"Stop it both of you cut it out!"

she yelled at the boys, her hand resting on her husband's back as the others came out of their tents and stopped their jobs while watching in such disbelief at the two men going at it, one of them had their gun cocked and ready to shoot but y/n forced them to stand down.

she could see his fists covered in blood, Justin's face a bloody mess while Daryl couldn't seem to stop punching him over and over maybe until he was a slush of blood but whatever he had planned she knew she had to stop it somehow she needed to separate them somehow.

"stop! please Daryl stop!" no matter how much she cried and begged and tried to pull each of the men off one another it was no use because now it was a full fight.

a fight that caused such a commotion that some gasped at each strike each man had seemed to strike, they were both equally strong, she could physically see it on their faces.

as Daryl had blood from a cut on his face to the bruises Justin had caused lingering over his eye, but with one strike of the metal pan again Justin had almost given up from the way his head was thrown back.

Daryl had broken one of Justin's eye sockets, his nose, and maybe he had knocked out a few of Justin's teeth by the looks of the blood pooling out from his mouth.

it was quite obvious the men weren't struggling anymore or at least Daryl had the bigger advantage as he continued to punch him like a punching bag over and over until he himself was exhausted, but even then he hadn't stopped when his arm felt limp and his fists started to ache from the pain inflicted on them, it had taken Rick and y/n just to pull him off the man and it took Aaron to help hold Daryl back to make sure he hadn't lunged back at Justin again.

"what the hell are you thinking?!" Rick yelled as a hand on his back guided him into the medical tents where Siddiq had began to try and clean up the work Daryl left on him.

Rick had his gun ready, not that he was actually going to shoot Daryl but it was to get the damn point across so the angry man couldn't beat the Saviour to death even though it's what many of the others believed would be right.

both men sat on opposite sides Daryl could feel the cot shift slightly from the weight of his wife sitting next to him, she watched as Enid used a fresh alcohol wipe to clean over his cuts.

"i was thinking that he should know how to treat women, especially women like y/n" Daryl remarked seeing as Rick had gazed down at the nasty mark Justin imprinted against her eye.

"we have rules, and i want to know why you felt the urge to break them? so tell me what the hell happened on the bridge"

Rick remarked his hand slipping back his pistol into his holster watching Daryl's eyes trace against it, Enid had put a fresh bandage against one of the cuts and patted Daryl on the shoulder before she started to focus on the critical patient.

"he was irritated about the rations and tried to take Henry's so i stood up for myself and Henry and i ended up knocked out with a black eye and the next thing i knew i woke up in my tent"

she folded her arms as she looked down at the floor, she could hear Justin spit and she had watched it drop down by her feet to which she pressed a soft and gentle hand against Daryl's chest to prevent him from causing anymore unnecessary damage,

"Daryl you know you can't do this, you could've killed him and then we'd be short a worker you hear me?" Rick could tell that the man who committed the fair act of breaking the rules hadn't even had an ounce of sorrow or empathy for the man laying on the cot with his face broken and bashed into like he was a punching bag.

"what if he killed her? what if he continued punching her before you got there and he killed her? would you just let me work with him without any type of fair treatment, you wanna talk bout rules then talk bout the ones he broke, she has been nothing but kind to those bastards after they did what they did where's that justice!"

Daryl slammed his hand down out onto the empty metal side tray that made both girls in the tent jump softly, he ran his hand over the stubble of his beard and she could see his torn up knuckles.

she was silent, because she didn't know what to say to him, she knew he was right but she still kept her eyes on the ground and her lips sealed shut as a hand was placed on her thigh.

"you're right Daryl trust me i know but we need to set rules, we can't have this behavior from either of you besides after the bridge is done you can go your separate ways"

Rick concluded watching as Daryl still seemed to be left un-satisfied with his response, he slipped out of the tent leaving them be and leaving the two be in there own awkward silence.

"sorry i didn't say anything just wanted to let you two handle it" y/n murmured to him watching as he forced a soft smile on his face, the muscles of his lips turning upwards just so he could give off the appeal he wasn't still as angry as before.

"if he touches or even looks at you wrong i'll kill him you hear me y/n, if i see it or i hear it i won't hesitate and i mean it"

he whispered to her feeling her shiver softly before she rested her head against his shoulder soaking in his warmth.

"i hear you Daryl"

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njheresworld · 22 days

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If You Insist

Pairing: Steve Rogers x F! Reader

Genre: Romance, Drama

Warnings: Fluff, Tiny bit of angst, Kissing sesh, Hopeless romantic reader, Softy Steve

Chapter 1

Steve walked towards the railing and looked towards the ocean in front of him. It has been half an hour since the journey had begun. The force of the turbine left giant splashes and foams behind. He looked into the blue ocean. It reminded him of the blue pools he used to get lost in.

His phone rang and he picks it up to see the familiar face appear on screen.

“Enjoying the trip huh punk?”

Steve rolled his eyes at Bucky.

“Don’t ask.” Steve replied.

Bucky was his best friend. No. His family. A school bully brought them together and they had been inseperable since. Steve was over the moon when he was asked to be the best man for his wedding. Bucky still makes fun of his tear that was shed that day. Where did that Steve go?

“You know you need this. Its a pleasant distraction. Plus, how romantic would it be to meet up with the love of your life in a freaking boat? You are living the Titanic bro!”

“Ship.” Steve said.

“Yeah whatever. Hey, don’t do anything stupid while you are there.” Bucky raises his eyebrows.

“How can I…? You’ve taken all my stupid with you.” Steve mumbled.

“Atta boy!”

“Say hello to your wife.” Steve mentions.

“Hey Nat! Stevie says hello. Nathan wants to say hi.” Bucky flips the camera to show his one year old boy having tummy time. A small smile made its way to Steve’s face when he saw his godson.

Steve then hears Nat asking Bucky to change Nathan’s nappies.

“Gotta go punk. Duty calls.” Bucky waves at the camera and Steve nods.

The screen goes blank and he sighs. Maybe Bucky is right. He needs this.

“How the hell am I supposed to know?…..Ethan, I have told you not to call me to talk about work when I am on vaccation..hello….? Hello..?”

Steve frowns and turns around to see the person responsible for ruining his peace.

You stood at the top deck pressing your phone to your ears.

“Stupid network.” You grumbled and took off your glasses, accidentally letting it fall down to the main deck.

“Shoot..” You curse.

Steve just stood there and looked at you with confusion.

It’s the same woman I met at the line. Is she always this clumsy?

“Hey! Excuse me. Could you throw me the glasses?” You shout.

Steve looks up at you in annoyance.

“You cannot come pick it up yourself?” His current mood took over him as he shouted back at you.

“Woah! rude much?” You frown and turn on your heels, walk towards the stairs and start jogging down, you white pants and blue blouse making you look like a model as you try not to trip on your white pumps.

You find the glasses lying there and pick it up. Wiping it for assurance, you look up to see the man turned around, bending over the rail and looking down to the ocean.

Tiny gulp. It was the handsome man from today. Oh how you wished to meet him again. Something told you that he looked depressed.

“Hey. Sorry about that. I was on a call with my colleague and I didn’t realize….” You try to speak but the man refused to acknowledge you.

You feel bad. Not for him, but yourself. Why did you have to embarrass yourself? You sigh and turn around to go to the other side of the deck.

Steve slightly turns around and watches you leave. He felt guilty. If his ma had known how he acted with you, she would beat the hell out of him.

He did not recognize the person he was becoming. And this was needed for him to heal.

You go into the cafeteria lounge and sit by the glass windows with a mug of hot chocolate. The sunset looked beautiful, you couldn’t help but click a picture. Thats when the poster caught your eye.

Pool party

Tonight, 7pm

Free drinks and Snacks!

Hmm. Sounds like a great idea.

The evening arrived quite quickly. You were not planning to splash around in the pool, so you walk towards the venue wearing denim shorts and a yellow tank top.

The vibrations of the DJ made your chest thump. Girls screamed, a few diving into the pool. A total chaos. The waiter serving cocktail passes by and you grab a glass. Slowly vibing, you walk around.

Thats when you saw the familiar face, stood in the corner, silently watching the whole fiasco taking place.

What a mysterious man.

Suddenly, his eyes catches yours. You blink. He gives you a smile and you return it.

Steve was reminded that he had to apologize to you for his behaviour when he saw you. But after that eye contact, you disappeared. He scanned the crowd and did not find you. An hour was spent and Steve felt exhausted. He walked to his favourite spot in search of some peace.

By the deck, you stood with your back facing him.

Steve walked towards you and you turn around to the owner of the sound of footsteps.

“Hi.” Steve said. He was still wearing the orange shirt but paired with white shorts.

Your heart jumped.

This is dreamy. Starry night. Him and I. Oh what a-

“You okay?” Steve asks.

“Huh? Yeah. I’m good.” You say.

“Hey, about today. I’m sorry for acting like that.” He said shyly.

“Ah! Bad day huh?” You cringe as you ask that.

Steve chuckled.

This man could melt stones with that sound.

“Well, yeah kinda.” Steve looks at your face properly this time. Although shielded by the dark, he could not deny the fact that you looked beautiful. He shook the thought away.

“Seems like that was not your thing.” You lean on the railing and turn to the side where he now stood.

“That was too loud for me.”

“Then why attend?” You ask.

“The sponsor is my friend. You know, Sam Wilson.” Steve said.

You slowly nod in realizing. He was one of the sponsors for the company you worked.

“Trust me. This noise is not my thing either.”

“Then why attend?” Steve asks and you raise your eyebrows.

Somehow, that question struck you deep. What were you trying to do?

“I…..I think I was trying to fit in.” You stared at the polished floor. There had been a drastic change from when you started college to when you started working. You did notice. But they liked this version of you. They called you interesting now.

“There are no rules, y’know? Nobody is judging you. And even if they do, why should you care for people who never cared for you?” Steve said, facing the ocean.

You look at him. He was speaking his mind and you could not stop yourself from being curious.

“Yeah.” Smile forms in your face.

“Im Y/N.” You extend your hand.

Steve looked at your face in surprise and then to your hand.

“Steve…” he shakes your hand.

“Nice to meet you Steve.”

“Likewise.” Steve replied.

It was the first time in years that you had a wholesome chat with a stranger. Perhaps this marked a new beginning of a good friendship. Or is it?

#Spotify #chris evans #steve rogers #love #fluff #hopelessly in love #fem reader #cruise ship

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this-daydream-is-dangerous-13 · 11 months

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I don’t really know how to explain this without sounding rude again this TK dude but like… I always said I had basically the same taste in men as Taylor, like even YB with the limited info I had on him when they started dating I could see the appeal. She had a type very aligned to mine. So I have been completely shocked about her dating this NFL dude because there isn’t a universe where I could find him attractive, at all. He’s so not my type that I rather not see him, i don’t think he’s a bad guy but he kind of makes me think of one bc he looks like the stereotypical american dude that is a douche. And Like I get that’s maybe his appeal, the different type, but… wow. What a change in taste. Bc this guy is not only unattractive… personality wise? What i’ve seen so far seems very… attention grabbing but not in a good way. He seems to never shut up… and after years of not hearing anything about her rs this constant stream of news being like: TK said this, TK said that… is giving me whiplash. Like I get she doesn’t want to be again with a guy who won’t speak about her… but this completely the other extreme, and i doubted she wanted that either…

I just can’t get what she sees in him

Oh my goodness, Anon, YES. To virtually all of this.

I have never before had to work this hard to wrap my head around what Blondie sees in a partner. I can imagine it, sure. (Our views do not align. At all. But I can imagine what she sees.) But in the past? All the other times? I immediately understood. I didn’t always like the guys—JM creeped me out at one of his concerts I attended pre-Blondie, early on CH seemed unfaithful and kind of petty, and MH is a giant, privileged child—but it wasn’t hard for me to identify the reasons why she did.

Prior to this, these men seemed to be: handsome, lanky guys who were either kind and charismatic charmers (sometimes love bombers, which was a problem), were polite and articulate British men, or BOTH. The intersection of those two is my personal preference. Here are some of my celebrity crushes over the years (a few I discovered while watching things years after they debuted).

Charismatic charmers:

Articulate British men (some also charmers):

So her attraction to JJ or JG, or to Harry/TH/YB, and even her childhood crush on Justin T, who I loathe, made sense. (Was always a JC C girl myself, lol. And justice for Janet and Britney!)

This seems like whiplash; you are not alone in thinking that.

I am trying to view this as I do with my friends when they date partners I do not like: I am there for them. I love them (which does not shift even if I do not care for their partners). And yeah - my husband gets an earful. But I show up for them. I can do both things at once.

Hear that, Anons I have had to block? I am fine with this duality: being a Blondie fan while not being a fan of her partner. Both of these can be true.

But I haaaate that I am being forcefed TK content simply because I am a Blondie fan. I like HER. Don’t punish me by sending me content I am actively trying to avoid (men who look like him, and anything to do with the problematic NFL).

And Anon - thank you for this detailed ask.

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fanfic-lover-girl · 1 year

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A part of Harry Potter I like is that Walden Macnair, barely a character, is so disproportionately badass and it's like...Eh, not that note worthy. He seriously intends to behead Buckbeak with an axe small enough to carry around his belt and throttles/necklifts Harry with one hand, and negociates with giants as the executioner for the comitee of disposal of dangerous creatures. Like, how strong is this dude ? Also, I think it would be funny to have a somewhat morally sound Slytherin with very skewed priorities who's fully brainwashed and crazy, but his heart is in the right place, and somehow is by far the kindest character.

Hello! Thanks for liking my HP posts! It's nice to see someone who seemingly agrees with my strong opinions.

I never thought much about Macnair until I read a Tumblr post or something about him and I was like...I kind of like this dude! The guy just wants to kill things and I admire simple desires like this. I need to examine his reaction to Buckbeak's execution being thwarted again :)

Also, I think it would be funny to have a somewhat morally sound Slytherin with very skewed priorities who's fully brainwashed and crazy, but his heart is in the right place, and somehow is by far the kindest character.

Hmm, morally sound but brainwashed? Not sure if that's compatible really. Brainwashed how? With blood purity ideals or something else?

But for real, JKR dropped the ball with Slytherin characters. Harry needed a Slytherin friend desperately. With better setup, Draco MAYBE could have played that role if JKR gave a crap about his development. Despite Draco's pureblood beliefs, he was willing to talk with Harry before he knew he was speaking to the famous Harry Potter. It's actually very significant because Draco is the only kid in the wizarding world who treated Harry like a normal person when he first met him. It's a shame Harry immediately wrote him off as Dudley 2.0. What's actually frustrating too is that Draco's beef with them was not related to his bigotry either. He hates Harry because Harry rejected him, rudely at that. He sniped at Ron because Ron laughed at his name. And he went on his hate crusade on Hermione because she insulted his quidditch skills. I am depressed at the missed potential.

The issue with lacking Slytherin representation could have been solved too by making characters like Percy Slytherin. I think Percy being Slytherin would have made for some great drama but heaven knows poor Percy would have been even more abused by his family so maybe not.

Based on your character description, I am picturing a Slytherin who is just like any other nice boy/girl next door. They're nice enough but they are casually bigoted through ignorance or low expectations. Kind of like Slughorne. Something like:

"Hermione/Justin are nice and all but I don't think they are marriage material, you know..."

"This technology is so cool, but I thought muggles were dumb?..."

"Why is Hagrid even a teacher here? He dropped out of school in 3rd year right? And being part giant only makes him stupider."

I wish I could express myself better but something like this in what you were thinking? Someone who has a good heart but some problematic beliefs?

#macnair #draco malfoy #slytherin house #jkr critical #percy weasley #slytherin chracters #slytherin deserved better #anon ask #harry potter series

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uncloseted · 2 years

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You probably don’t even care, which is understandable, but do you think Hailey Bieber gives off high school mean girl energy? I personally do think she is pretty and successful, but i also just hate going on social media and see ppl take everything and blow it out of proportion to pit her against Selena Gomez and think whatever she says or does is out of jealousy over Selena and/or shading or bullying her (like what happened with the tiktok she made with Kendall Jenner using a certain tiktok sound, or even what recently happened with her and Kylie Jenner with the eyebrow thing) I do think they both do their own thing and want to move on, but somethings i see online seem either coincidental or non coincidental. Its social media, obvs. God knows what these celebs really do or think. These people don’t even care about us anyway so we shouldn’t play the blame game over this 😂 Overall, ppl shouldn’t encourange this for the sake of Selena’s mental health, the internet just wants Hailey to plummet and find closure that she *is* a mean person, but like I said I see things online that make me second guess that Hailey is just… off at certain times. I have so much to say about this but I cant articulate it all in one message, so Im just gonna leave it here 🥲 I dont blame Selena for taking a social media break, and i should do the same when I really feel like its best

That's so funny, I had actually just finished reading a deep-dive on the Hailey/Selena/Justin situation when you sent this. I do think Hailey gives off kind of "mean girl" energy, but I feel like people really blow it out of proportion. I think a lot of people would react the same way that she has if they were in her situation- she's constantly being compared to Selena and told that Selena was better for Justin or that he still really loves Selena, and Selena doesn't seem be able to let the relationship go even though Hailey and Justin have been married for over five years. I'm not saying Hailey couldn't deal with all of this better or that she's not being kind of mean, but I do think that a lot of the internet's hatred of Hailey comes down to the fact that she's a nepo baby with a famous husband as opposed to her actions. If the internet liked Hailey more as a person, I don't think they would be accusing her of being a mean girl.

And for Selena's part, I think she somehow gets way more hate and way less hate than she deserves? Her PR team is truly excellent- they've patched over a lot of stuff that would have sunk a different artist's career- but almost because of that, it seems like there's a group of people who are obsessed with making her out to be a giant villain? I think in general, Selena comes across as being much more sympathetic than Hailey because Selena has really worked for what she has, did "start from the bottom", and has struggled with her health very publicly, while Hailey has been given every advantage. But I think at this point, Selena should be able to let the whole thing go, and she's kind of keeping it alive while insisting that she's the victim and "being kind" and "sending love". She's also not really discouraging her fans from harassing Hailey, even though she's taking the stance of moral high ground.

Meanwhile, I think the real villain in this situation keeps getting totally ignored- straight up, this entire thing is Justin's fault. If he had been normal about his breakup with Selena and his relationship with Hailey, this wouldn't be happening. But because he very publicly ping-ponged between them from 2014 to when he eventually married Hailey in 2018 (only 7 months after having broken up with Selena, and only 3 months after having gotten back together with Hailey), it makes a lot of sense to me that both of them feel insecure and threatened by the other. Plus, Justin could have handled the media frenzy around his girlfriends differently- to this day, telling his fans, "I'm very much in love with my wife but I have a ton of respect for all the women I've dated in the past. Please don't harass them or act rudely towards them," would probably make a difference.

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zeessmallwormhole · 9 months

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On friday, I finished Total Drama Island - Total Drama All Stars, so, I want to express my opinion about evey gen 1 character! ((Alejandro, Sierra, and Blainely will be included!))

also includes spoilers and mentions of both nudity and threats

— 🏝️ —

Beth - Honestly, I didn’t care about her much on Island and Action, but I do respect her for standing up to Heather and calling Courtney out. Someone had to at the time and I’m happy that it was her

Bridgette - God..what CAN I say abt her?? Her obvious worst season was World Tour, she was one of my least favorites in that season, but apart from that, she was a pretty decent character in both island and action

Cody - I forgot he existed for the 3 seasons he’s in until the final 3 tbh- He was so forgettable to me, but I feel bad for him in world tour

Courtney - 3 words; I hated her. She’s my least favorite character. I did try to give her the benefit of the doubt by trying to find her "iconic" moments, however, it was just her being a bitch and threatening people not once, but TWICE to split the million or die. The absolute ONLY time where she seemed like a good person was island, and she was part of the problem in that HORRIBLE love triangle story, I just don’t see the appeal of her

DJ - Bro was a soft giant- he didn’t deserve any of the treatment he got, I at least wanted him to be eliminated fairly, but nah, in all the seasons he was featured in, he was eliminated so unfairly like cmon..

Duncan -Apart Duncan being a big ‘bad boy’ , he didn’t strike me that way- he’s more like an 2018 gacha bad boy that tries so hard to be cool, especially at all stars, it was cringe-

Katie & Sadie - I forgot they both existed since they technically only competed in one season, but I do think they could’ve been minor antagonists since they’re best friends and could’ve been manipulative together

Geoff - Easily one of my favorite boy characters in the entire show, he was a chill guy ((although very chaotic)) and was honestly robbed in island, I was rooting for him

Gwen - If there was overrated put into one character, it’s Gwen, she is decent, yea, but Island was her best season, and only that- Although, she was a close favorite to me in All Stars, she was caring, but did not have to be in that damn love triangle.

Justin - He was OK. Not good, but not that bad either, he had some funny lines but I do wish he used way more than his looks

LeShawna - I do understand why she has the love and fame that she does, she isn’t afraid to talk shit and throw hands while being compassionate and competitive, it was a really nice mix of personalities for her, even tho I don’t understand her sudden turn on Heather when it seemed like they were gonna be friends in action

Noah - I HATE how this man actually got some development in World Tour when he could’ve had more if he’d just play dodgeball in island.. it’s still so annoying to me. But, his humor was fucking great and i’ll forever make fun of him for his gay ass running LMFAO

Owen - I never really understood his humor, and I don’t think that he should’ve won island, it didn’t fit him in the long run, no matter how kind he was..plus the nudity on NATIONAL TELEVISION was disgusting, he didn’t made me laugh in the slightest

Eva - I wish she stayed longer in the merge, she seemed like a hard worker and she was growing on me a bit-

Harold - Half of the time, I didn’t know what he was saying, he was super confusing but he did have good tastes in crushes, even tho he did get turned down

Heather - I know I’m going to sound like a hypocrite with how my opinion was with Courtney, but Heather is my favorite character in the seasons she competed in, and at least she’s mean and doesn’t manage to make it annoying to listen to, I love how she didn’t play and automatically started making alliances and talked strategy. Her win was definitely the most deserved one out of the show, and probably the most well written out of the cast

Trent - His derailment was so sad to watch like..He obviously cared for Gwen, and was probably the most sane person in Island- ..I think that’s all I can say abt him

Lindsay - She was iconically stupid and smart, I loved her a lot, and she definitely deserved to win action, very robbed there

Tyler - I felt super bad for him, his fear being used after bring eliminated, to Lindsay forgetting about him after action..I’m just glad that he’s finally remembered by Lindsay ((and hopefully dating))

Ezekiel - I see why people don’t like him..That’s it.

Izzy ((I forgot to add her)) - The IT girl of the show along with Heather, I loved her, and even tho she always lost, she never failed to be entertaining on screen, 100% my favorite crazy girl

Alejandro - Definitely the right love interest for Heather, he’s manipulative, simpable, and caused many eliminations. He played the game, and I like him because of that

Sierra - Apart from Courtney, she is also my least favorite character. Why? She’s stalkerish, knows NO personal space apart from Cody going to the bathroom, and is just overall a bad character- It seemed like the only thing she was good for was carrying Cody throughout the entire season..

Blainely: We’ve met this girl for like 3 episodes so I can’t provide much on her, however, she had the most iconic elimination ever..and you’ve really gotta be hated if you have a whole ass song dissing you by the chillest guy ever-

#total drama island #total drama #opinions

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that-dinopunk-guy · 11 months

Text

In which a giant wasp interrupts a cookout

I've been working on revising my dinopunk novella The Beasts of Kulig County for re-publication online, so here is a scene in which a lesbian is terrified of an insect:

The crickets were already singing when Justin arrived at Gina’s house. As he pulled up to the curb he saw the old green and mustard yellow motor scooter parked alongside her jeep, and was about to go when he heard a shout from the roof. Oka was up there, her headdress gleaming in the slanting evening sun, and as she waved Gina turned to see him. Unable to leave now, he waved back and put the vehicle in Park. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Oka; in fact of all the men and women Gina had dated over the years she was probably his favorite, or close to it. But every time he came around while she was over he felt like he was intruding on something, no matter how much they insisted otherwise.

Gina was continuing whatever story she’d been telling as he walked around the back of Gina’s house and climbed the stairs leading up to her roof. “No, I’m serious,” she was saying, “it smelled so bad it woke me up. I was wondering if a sewer line had broken outside or something.”

Oka was laughing and shaking her head, her button nose crinkled in disgust. “I am finding it really hard to be attracted to you, right now.” Shaiyo Oka had the round face, narrow eyes, and bronze skin of the Hamur people, descended from immigrants who’d come to Samaraland from the Tamni Empire about eighty years ago. Though he’d never gotten the specifics Justin knew she’d left the city’s Hamur enclave to live in the Isani District due to her people’s customary taboo against homosexuality, but she was apparently still in touch with her heritage enough to still wear the traditional metal and bamboo headdress.

“Do I even want to know?” Justin asked as he stepped onto the roof.

“Nothing you’re not used to,” Gina said, though knowing her that didn’t exactly narrow things down.

“Hey man, what’s up,” Oka said with a nod. Her face was yellow with aqqa paste, but its fragrant scent was overpowered by the pungent smell of kanab smoke and the scent of the meat cooking on the little portable grill between them. “You may wanna sit upwind of me,” she warned, waving the joint she held between her thumb and forefinger.

He nodded acknowledgement and moved around the grill to sit on the other side of Gina, well away from Oka’s fumes.

“What’s the occasion?” she asked as he settled down.

He shrugged. “Just felt like hangin’ out,” he said. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

Gina shook her head and turned to reach for a brightly colored plastic cooler behind her, and Oka gave him a thumbs-up as she had a toke. “The more the merrier, dude,” she choked out around a mouthful of smoke.

“You’re lucky I got plenty of meat here,” Gina said as she unwrapped another strip of bloody flesh and set it on the grill, “or you’d have to just watch us eat.”

Justin nodded. “Lucky me,” he said. “Thanks, by the way.”

Gina waved it away and sucked the red juices from her fingers. “You better appreciate it, this is good mgonzi beef,” she said as she began liberally applying spices to the new piece of meat. One perk of being the daughter of a livestock vet was that her father’s clients were often gifting him with meat, and some of it inevitably found its way into her freezer. “You missed a flock of kasi in the field, by the way,” she added.

He made a disappointed sound, and meant it; he’d always liked kasi. They were about as smart as tree stumps, tended to attack their own reflections, and they could do quite a bit of damage to a car when they ran out into traffic and got themselves hit, but he liked their long, lanky proportions and their goofy behavior. Once in high school he’d told Gina she kind of reminded him of a kasi, and she’d threatened to slam her locker on his head. Nobody seemed to like kasi, except him.

“Oh hey, guess what else I saw the other day,” Gina said while Oka got out another paper plate.

“I don’t need to know what you two do in bed,” Justin said, and Gina rolled her eyes.

“That doesn’t even make sense in this context,” she said. “Anyway one of the ranchers my dad does vet work for called up while I was at work, found a dead twiga on his land. So we went out to have a look at it.”

“Okay yeah, I’m jealous,” Justin said. “I’ve never seen a twiga.”

“Me neither, until then,” Gina said as she turned the meat with a pair of tongs. “Even dead it was pretty cool.”

Oka shrieked then, and they turned to see her leaning back and scrambling away from a big wasp that buzzed lazily past her towards the grill, drawn by the smell of the meat.

“Oh, relax you big baby,” Gina said as the insect landed on the edge of the cooler. “It’s just a guardian wasp.”

“I do not like wasps,” Oka said with a nervous laugh, and Justin couldn’t help but sympathize. Even knowing that guardian wasps rarely stung unless deliberately provoked, it was difficult not to feel nervous around them. At three inches long with a glistening dark metallic green exoskeleton and dark striped wings they certainly looked intimidating, and their stings were legendarily painful.

“It’s okay, they’re chill,” Gina said as she reached into the cooler and pulled off a piece of meat. She set it in front of the wasp, and they watched as it investigated the morsel before picking it up in its jaws and buzzing away.

“I hate nature,” Oka said, “we should burn it all down.”

“Shut up, stoner,” Gina said before lifting a piece of meat off the grill and putting it onto a plate for her. “Oh, by the way,” she said, turning back to Justin. “You’re off tomorrow, right? You got any plans?”

“Why do you ask?” he asked a little warily.

“I was out walking along Romo Creek a couple days ago and found a dead mgonzi,” Gina said. “I was thinking of going back out there for the skull tomorrow.”

Justin thought about it a moment and nodded. “Yeah, alright.”

“Nice,” Gina said. “Trying to get Oka to go out there with me is like pulling teeth.”

“That just means I’m smart,” Oka said around a mouthful of mgonzi beef. “I’ve heard about what you get up to out there. Besides, I’m bad at climbing trees.”

“Oh relax,” Gina said. “Even if we did get attacked by a ratanga I could probably save most of you.”

“You’re lucky you look so good naked, girl,” Oka said, “that’s all I have to say.”

#gondolend #dinopunk #my writing #writing #fiction #work in progress #mgonzi are nasutoceratops by the way #and guardian wasps are called that because they often prey on a particularly venomous species of tarantula #i have posted about ratangas in the past #fun fact i wanted oka to call gina and justin a couple of vulture culture weirdos at the end of this scene #but since vultures don't exist in this setting then neither does that term #also twiga are giraffatitan

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the25thviolence · 2 years

Text

Its 5pm (Year in Review etc)

I’m tired from the pizza I ate. I just enjoyed watch my brother’s favorite football team win with him (they never win). And I’m double listening to a playlist I made to fight god with.

Now is the time I’ve decided to write my end of the year write up. This moment. Right now. I am about to start writing it.

Any.

Moment.

It’s.

About.

To.

Start.

One.

Second.

Right.

Now.

I’ll.

Start.

Writing.

I switched jobs 3 times. From retail (which I said I would never go back to after the retail job before that). A Plastics factory job thing . And now I cut giant sheets of metal with a laser (not as cool as it sounds, as heavy as it sounds though).

We’ve moved past the “mom has cancer” part of the storyline and now she’s just kind of hanging out. Past the delusions of failure and depression. We have moved onto the “I will grab life by its weak skinny neck and snap it in half if it dares to make the people I care about sad.” arc of the storyline.

I stopped pining away at night for someone to care about me and now do not care because I’m strong enough to care about myself and everyone else around me. If the world were to shatter I would simply wrap my hands around it and hold it in place. If the sun were to fall out of the sky I would simply catch and toss it back where it belongs. And if it all becomes too heavy for you I would simply pick up what you can’t carry and throw it on my back. You are worth loving because I love you. Is that not enough of a reason?

I thought this writing writeup thing of words etc was going to be a lot longer but this playlist is really solidifying my emotions and shaping them into raw muscles that can lift heavy rocks.

I made a long late night rant (ok I’ve made 100s of those but I mean the most recent one). It was about understanding the needs of other thru there own pov instead of your own It was very long and deep but I only wrote it because I thought my friends wanted me to stop playing overwatch and not that THEY wanted to stop playing overwatch. Because every time they brought up it I heard it thru a lens of me. I think people really thought it was something deep but it was just that my friends were super tilted and wanted to play minecraft instead of overwastch and I didn’t understand that because I was fine playing overwatch.

I guess like this is important or like life affirming. I finally got with a dentist to fix my team. 99% of my mouth is in ruin from the years, decades, of depression. like 22 fillings, 2 root canals, a cap, and a completely dead tooth or two. My advice is see a therapist before its too late and all the emotional pain you have physically ruins your body.

I stopped writing stories, poems, words in general because I started feeling better. I’ve always had this desperate need to escape myself when in deep painstaking trauma. Coping or therapeutic either way it helps me feel better. And for awhile now I haven’t felt the need to feel better. I still fall into a fit of depression every other weekend. But I’m doing the best I’ve been doing in over a year now.

The past is gone. The hill has been climbed. I’m standing on the top of it all now. Even still. Even after all this pain. I still grin while lifting my arms up. Daring the world to stop me from leaping off. Daring it to stop me from finding out if I can fly or not. One more time. One more try. The last hundred didn’t kill me. What’s one more fall from the mountain top to the ground below.

My current worries are christmas. I gotta spend at least $100 on friends. Probably around $75 for my brother and his 4 children that I live with. Than another $40 for my mom and brother. And who knows how much on my team nephews. Maybe $20 or $25 each. I just gotta find a way and do the math.

To the wind swept roads of tomorrow. The sad winner of the Justin lottery. Probably been waiting a few decades for this lost soul mate to appear. I’m sorry but I mite never show up. The world has had a firm grasp on my existence since I was a child. If you somehow find me in the deep overgrown underground that is my permanent living hell. I’ll be ripped and cut from the motion of it all. The great spinning and falling of this life. A torn tragedy. I’ll hate you with every breath I take. I’ll ignore you before I even begin to deny you. Its not a hill. Its not a mountain. Its a flat cliff face. You mite notice a shortcut permanently covered in fresh winter snow but I advise you ignore that. Making me care about you is a quick way to get me into your heart. But it does nothing for the locked gate on my heart. Frigid like concrete. Sadly not dramatic like a block of ice. I cannot be melted. Only warmed under the hot beating heart of the warm summer sun. And as soon as you leave, even if only a moment, the coldness will seep into my body freezing it again. I may be talking to a ghost but I would love a tree if it desired me so. If a tree loving me made its life happier than I would love a tree. Splinters and all.

Well this was far shorter than I expected. I know I have zero readers and mostly write for myself. Even if I’m the writer I can also be the reader and I am very grateful to have myself in my own life. Being alive is so fucking hard. And dying seems like a fairytale. But no one ever killed god and permanently smashed opened the waters of grace without first defeating life in a 1v1.

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wxniesrxse · 2 years

Text

When Your Drunk

@aalonerssimaginez on instagram

Pairing| Trainee A members x Fem reader

Synopsis| You’re in party where loud music is blasting on giants speakers. Whatever you’re celebrating with your friends, it made you so happy and got you into a good mood. Some goofball decided to bring alcohol to the party when it wasn’t permitted. Although you aren’t interested in alcohol and because of your happy good mood you took shots and shots with your friends, leaving you so drunk and making your best guy friend taking care of you.

Genre: fluff? Cute best friends! 💕

A/N: sorry for bad grammar! 🥲

🦋~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~🦋

𝐘𝐎𝐑𝐂𝐇🦋

•”Y/n? Are you for reals? You said you were going to drink 2 shots only…..liar….” He would mumbled.

• Tries picking you up by putting your arm around his shoulder and his arm holding your waist.

• He thinks it’s time for you to go home so he would give your drunk self a ride home.

• “ yeah haha….Y/n was having such a great time! It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile brightly“. He would try to be positive in front of your angry parents so you won’t get in trouble.

• “ yeah no worries! I protected her all night!” He grins nervously while fidgeting with his sleeves.

𝐋𝐄𝐎 🦁

•” ah this girl? She really is drunk?…hey….hey!….oh come on….now I gotta take her home…..but I don’t want to….” Leo complained as he watch you laid on the floor. “Leooooooo~ why do you look like a monkey “

• Leo got triggered by this comment “what?!….pfff….whatever let’s go home”.

• Drops you home with Sangwon helping him out to carry your heavy body to your house. Your father was waiting in front of the door.

•”Sir your daughter is a fugly-“ Leo got interrupted by the sweet and kind Sangwon.

•“ Sir here’s your beautiful daughter safe and sound….and a little drunk” he smiled at him.

•”a little?” Leo asked Sangwon.

•” dude are you still angry because she call you a monkey?” He ask Leo.

•“ N-no!” Leo starts walking fast towards the car.

𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐖𝐎𝐍 🥀

•” Y/n?! Can you get down from the table?…… you’re looking ridiculously haha…..” Sangwon laughs nervously while watching you dance

on the table all crazy.

•”Woniiiieee~!DanCE with mE!” You yelled.

•“No, please get down….” He got close to you to grab your hand but your stupid drunk self decided to jump on the poor boy.

•You probably broke his back.

•” Y/n…..I’ll call Yorch to take us home alright?”. Although you jumped on him like a Tarzan he forgave you and just had your head leaning against his shoulder while he on the phone.

•“Don’t worry! Your daughter did not do anything that would humiliate herself nor did she jump on me and almost broke my back! Good night Mr.L/N!” Sangwon bowed.

𝐖𝐎𝐎𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍 🐶

• “Neukkyeojyeo, nae meorin daze, daze, daze Jungdoge ppajyeo replay, play, play~” yes you were singing to drunk daze from your most favorite group called Enhypen.

•The song was playing on the party while you dance to it all drunk looking like a zombie on glittering dress.

•“Y/n?! Are you drunk?……you’re not allowed to drink alcohol!” He said worry while holding your shoulders.

•“ WOooOochAAAAn! I’m sOuur happy! I won the best artist award! Woooo!” You yelled.

•“That’s good but you didn’t have to drink alcohol to celebrate it….you’re lucky to have a friend like me to take care of you……then later make fun of you….anyway let me call Leo to drive us home!” He said proudly.

•“ Mrs. L/n, don’t ever….just don’t ever let your daughter go to a party! Good night!” He bowed and fixed his glasses.

𝐉𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒 😜

•” let’s go….Y/n?….Y/n come on let’s go!” You were playing a betting game with your friends, and while doing so you were taking shots.

•Meanwhile James and JJ were trying to get you out of the group so y’all can leave home.

•“Not even us are drunk….” JJ said while scrunching his nose at you.

•“Hey!Justin Jay! Don’t give her that face! Can’t you see she was winning on the games and gaining money? Of course she was happy! I would’ve gone drunk too!” James said proudly while defending you.

•“Yorch hyung! Take her home and I’ll take the money-“ he called Yorch on the phone.

•” hey you’re not going to steal it are you?” JJ asked.

•“Whuuuuuuat??” James exaggerated. “Pfff no! Haha you think im-yes imma steal it but it’s for my next prank on her! So don’t snitch!” James said while running away with the money and leaving JJ dumbfounded.

𝑱𝑱 🐻

• You two were enjoying dancing together, hitting every beat with y’all’s unique moves.

• “ Y/n! You’re so good at dancing! How come you didn’t told me before?” He yelled since the music was loud.

• “ that’s because I’m drunk!!” You yelled and immediately started twerking in the most horrible disgusting and ugly way ever done!

• JayJay widen his big eyes and gave you a nasty look. “Uhhh Yorch! Leo! Help!!” He yelled feeling scared of you.

• “Pffff I’m glad she left, she could’ve killed me if I kept watching her dance!” He said through a face time with Jihoon after Leo and Yorch took you home.

• “ I know my sister can be crazy” Jihoon laughed.

• “ IVE HEARD YOU TWO PIGS!” you yelled in the background.

𝐉𝐈𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐍 🐣

• “ So I told my dad, “look a male who dances to female choreography is not gay!! But he doesn’t understand me! He can be quiet…toxic?….Y/n!….Y/N?!” he shook your shoulder to wake you up from your sudden nap.

• “Ah! Yes! yes I agree with you! It’s the governments fault! It’s the governme-….what are we talking about again?” You said with your slow drunk voice.

• “ you drank didn’t you?” He sighed but chuckles after.

• “ hyung, pick up Y/n please….she’s….drunk” he laughed at you.

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elsascushion · 3 years

Text

Hollywood B!tch

Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Swearing, sexual implications no actual smut. Theres a man in this chapter

Throwing her luxury purse aside Bea hops into her Mercedes S class, throws her hair out of her face before starting the engine. The LEDs begin to light up around the car changing occasionally between the different shades of purple, “Ah the perks of being rich” Bea breaths out patting her steering wheel whilst her other hand taps the address into a GPS.

By now it was already quite late in the afternoon and probably not a good time to stalk- I mean kindly visit someone, but Bea doesn’t care because she is indeed a disgraceful simp. Simp aside she already freshened up so she might as well take the hour drive through the hells of New York. Now minutes later Bea has finally managed to make it out of her street and onto the highways, only to feel regret when a man in the next lane almost rammed into her car. “WATCH IT BITCH THIS IS A NEW CAR!” Bea screams then flips him off expecting him to hear and see on highway traffic. God she does not miss this part of New York, Poppy better make this trip worth it.

Long long after three near miss car accidents, Bea has finally arrived at the place. A giant mansion surrounded by a gate. “I guess their home hasn’t been sold to pay the bills yet” Bea thinks to her self then drives up to the gate to ring the intercom. At this point her heart is pounding out of her chest, probably from the anxiety… like what was she even meant to say to Poppy after a year, will she even still look the same?, will Poppy just murder her on the spot and bury her body in the yard?, or will Bea even still have those “feelings” that she once felt a year ago- well more like an hour ago. A million thoughts race around Bea’s brain, when all off a sudden a man’s voice could be heard over the Intercom. “Hello”. The man sounded like Piers Sinclair but dead inside.

“Um, I’m here to see Poppy Min-Sinclair?” Bea pitches her voice higher in hopes that if it was Piers he wouldn’t recognise her.

“I’ve told you before we are not interested in speaking to the press”

Yeah right like any press would even wanna speak to them considering the Sinclairs have been pretty much irrelevant these days.

“Actually I’m one of Poppy’s friends ya know”

“Alright” he sighs “I’ll send someone to get the door for you”.

“Damn they can could still hire people, Where do they do they get all this money from?” Bea has so many unanswered questions here it felt like they were going to take over her brain but little did she know they would all be answered soon.

What felt like hours later someone finally came to open the gates. Hooray Arendelle was free again. With that Bea drives up the drive way to park her car where the guy pointed too, then made her way up inside the house. She’s never seen or been here surprisingly, considering the amount of times she’s snuck into Poppy’s room or been in there for some scandalous fun. “Welcome I wasn’t aware Poppy was friends with Bea Hughes” the mysterious man said as Bea turned to face him.

He looked around Bea’s age, 6 foot , neat blonde hair, bright blue eyes and probably came from a family that exploits the poor.

“Haha yeah, she didn’t mention it..?” Bea laughs nervously looking around the interior, everything was pristine and definitely up to Poppy’s taste.

“Nope Never, but I think I know why considering you were rivals back in collage and almost ruined her life if it weren’t for me”

Bea stares him right in the eye trying not to throw hands, not that he was exactly wrong but who the fuck was he to judge without knowing her side of the story.

“Excuse me; who the hell are you first of all, and second of all I’m just here to see Poppy not exactly any of your business is it”

But all that did was make the douche laugh and here Bea was thinking she was going to be the murdered but now she might be the one doing the murdering.

“If you must know my name is Justin and I’m a family friend of the Sinclairs, me and Poppy grew up together” He smirks clearly trying to rub it in Bea’s face before continuing “My relationship with Poppy is none of your business though but I’m here helping them out, from my perspective you have no rights to even see her so please leave before I have someone escort you out”

The brunette is fuming inside upon hearing his words but she masked it perfectly being an actress and former bitch her self.

“Look Jacob I don’t care for your existence I just want to see Poppy, I’m jet lagged and drove an hour here so please don’t fuck with me right now”. She jabs a finger at his chest, in heels Bea seems to be almost the same height as him.

“My name is Justin first of all and I don’t care that-“ another voice is heard cutting him off thank god as they listen to the set of stilettos echoing down the stairs.

“Justin I told you we weren’t meant to have guests over so why-“ Poppy pauses as she takes in sight of Bea either in shock or awe or maybe a bit of both. Bea looks back at Poppy, her eyes wondering over places she shouldn’t be and her brain struggles to function also in shock.

“Well she still looks the same” Bea thinks whilst still staring at Poppy. It is probably the only decent thought in her brain right now.

The two women continue to stare at each other until an awkward amount of silence pass by. Justin notices the tension between them as he looks between the two.

“Hey Poppy don’t worry our guest was just-” he gets cut off again this time by a furious howl

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE HUGHES!”

If Bea wasn’t regretting her life choices up to this moment she definitely was now.

“Well Pops hello to you too”

#poppy x mc #queen poppy #queen b #poppy min sinclair #queen b choices #choices stories you play

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blackswaneuroparedux · 3 years

Text

Shakespeare on Screen: Orson Welle’s Macbeth

Ce décor de carton goudronné, ces Ecossais barbares, vêtus de peaux de bêtes et qui brandissent des sortes de lance-croix de bois noueux, ces lieux insolites ruisselants d’eau, dominés par des brumes qui ne laissent jamais deviner un ciel où l’on doute qu’il y ait des étoiles, forment littéralement un univers de préhistoire, non celle de nos ancêtres les Gaulois ou les Celtes, mais d’une préhistoire de la conscience à la naissance du temps et du péché, quand le ciel et la terre, l’eau et le feu, le bien et le mal ne sont point encore distinctement séparés.

- André Bazin, French film critic and theorist

I recently read the delightful second volume of Orson Welles’ biography by Simon Callow, Orson Welles, Vol 2: Hello Americans, one of or finest stage actors and theatre and opera directors, and also a dab hand at writing biographies of such artistic giants as Charles Laughton and Richard Wagner as well as anthologies on Shakespeare. His crowning literary achievement must be his stylish 3 volume tome on the life of one of the greatest and controversial film artists of the 20th Century, Orson Welles.

I finished this book over the Christmas vacation period when I also sat with a few of my more literary minded family members to watch back to back Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1966), Orson Welle’s Macbeth (1948), and Justin Kurzel’s more modern take with Macbeth (2015) with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. As a Shakespeare nut, I ‘m always curious looking out for how other artists in other genres translate his wondrous prose into their particilar medium. And I wasn’t disappointed in watching these three great movies back to back. It was the Welles’ version which lingered more on the mind and I had to set down some thoughts on paper - as I always do - to make try and make sense of what I had seen, especially after having just read Callow’s second volume on Welle’s life.

According to Orson Welles, his interviews were often unreliably transcribed, especially in Cahiers du cinema (the iconic French film magazine that was the seedbed for the French New Wave of directors like Truffaut and Godard), but there is every reason to believe in the accuracy, sincerity, and significance of what was recorded as his uncharacteristically straightforward response to a Cahiers’ interviewer’s leading question, “Wouldn’t you say that the greatest influence discernible in your work was Shakespeare?” “Yes,” Welles said simply, “without any doubt.”

Even a superficial acquaintance with Welles reveals that throughout his life he manifested what in an early essay “On Staging Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s Stage” he described as “that zealous and jealous love which most intelligent people, once exposed to him, must inevitably feel for Shakespeare.”

It’s fair to say the the shadow Shakespeare hung over Welles’ shoulder whispering ‘rosebud’ in his ear from the beginning from early childhood readings of and roles in various plays, and a haunting deathbed recital of lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream by his mother to the end (he was working on a film of King Lear when he died).

Orson Welles' expressionist, visually stunning version of Macbeth (1948) was the director's first attempt at a cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare. Shot quickly and cheaply, the film makes a virtue of its budget minimalism by setting the familiar play within a spartan, eerie wasteland of fog and bare rock. Welles surrounds this bleak, violent parable of power and ambition with swirling fog, twisted trees devoid of leaves, stark expanses of vague nothingness in which only the light-sculpted features of the play's protagonists stand out, as though they are declaiming into a void, spitting out their tormented speeches while already engulfed in the hell that awaits them for their vile deeds.

It is incredible to think that Orson Welles’ Macbeth (1948) was only the fourth Hollywood sound production to adapt Shakespeare - made after Welles failed to get Alexander Korda to fund a production of Othello - and that the film is such an achievement is difficult to fully comprehend without understanding its history.

To begin with, it was one of the first instances of a director boldly daring to edit Shakespeare: certainly not by modern cinema standards, but Welles’ theatrical and cinematic re-workings of the Bard were considered akin to heresy in his day. He was also going up against Olivier’s second Shakespeare adaptation, the masterful Hamlet (1948), with a meagre budget, leftover sets, and only a few weeks of shooting time. Needless to say, critics hated his film and he was driven to Europe to try to find funding for future projects.

But despite these obstacles, Macbeth is every bit as beautifully stylised and genre-infused as The Lady from Shanghai (1947), though instead of elaborate camera tricks and a nihilistic noir sensibility, Welles essentially turned Macbeth into an expressionist horror film. Though his sets enraged critics, they represent the same type of sensibility found in films like Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) or Häxan (1922). In Le Figaro, Robert Bresson said, “I love too much natural settings and natural light not to love also the fake light and cardboard settings of Macbeth.” And it is precisely Macbeth’s cheap artifice that Welles uses to his advantage, creating an eerie backdrop for a tale of witchcraft, murder, rebellion, and damnation.

It's visually that Welles really makes his mark on this material. The chintzy sets and shoddy theatrical props of this production were doubtless necessitated by budgetary limitations, but Welles uses his limited means with purpose. The castle through which Macbeth stalks looks more like a cave, the bare rock walls warped and full of holes in which all light disappears, the ceilings low and craggy overhead. The film's atmosphere would be well-suited to a horror movie, with fog draped around the dark, minimal set, reducing visibility to a small circle of empty space in which Macbeth paces like a trapped rat, his face often blown up in dramatic closeups that capture every bead of sweat dripping from his skin, every quiver of his lips and every wild, bulging expression in his eyes. The backgrounds are blurry and sketchy, a few warped trees sticking up out of a wasteland, crudely carved rock everywhere, while the faces of the actors are crisply delineated with bold, high-contrast lighting, their eyes often shining out of the darkness of their shadowed faces.

The frequent close framing of the actors places the larger-than-life emotions of Shakespeare's text front and centre. Even the minimal scenery, so gloomy and gothic, seems to reflect the warped inner psychology of Macbeth and his wife, their paranoia and evil writ large upon their surroundings. Welles poses Lady Macbeth as a seductress, a femme fatale, urging her husband on to his murderous, treacherous deeds. In the crucial scenes where she convinces him to kill the king, Welles frames Macbeth in the foreground with his wife slyly positioned to his side, whispering in his ear, casting charged glances his way. She's Eve and the serpent all rolled into one form, her last-act attacks of conscience notwithstanding, and at one point her face glides into the frame at the fringes, behind a towering closeup of Macbeth, like a sinister sprite perched on his shoulder, whispering evil in his ear.

The minimalist aesthetic at times seems to mock the protagonist. When Macbeth is crowned king, a silly-looking square crown, at once flimsy and bulky, is placed upon his brow, with his glowering face beneath it. He marches out before his assembled troops and subjects for the first time as their king, and the music too mocks him, accompanying what should be his grand entrance with a jaunty tune more suited to a court jester than a king. Later, at the climax of the film, as Macbeth's foes amass beneath his ramparts to unseat him, the king runs back and forth across the bare stone of his courtyard in a crown designed to resemble the Statue of Liberty's spiked headband, thus ironically juxtaposing the vicious tyrant with the symbol of American democracy.

Macbeth's famous final act soliloquy - “full of sound and fury/ signifying nothing" - is delivered against an abstract image of smoke roiling and spinning in slow motion, a foggy void that's set to devour the murderous king, to end his time of strutting upon life's stage. Welles' visual interpretation of this material is often subtly clever like this, expanding the text with a truly cinematic sensibility. Welles cuts from Macbeth looking at a twisted tree branch and musing about crows to the image of the two murderers who Macbeth has sent after Banquo, crouched on a tree limb, their shadowy forms looking very bird-like as they wait for their victim to pass by so they might descend on him.

The sound design is also exceptional, with Welles ascribing piercing, harrowing import to a few key sounds on the otherwise hollow, disembodied soundtrack: after the king's death, especially, the loud knocking of Macduff (Dan O'Herlihy) at the castle door reverberates impressively, a foreboding sound of doom, and there's a similar force to the screech of the owl that so frightens Lady Macbeth that she grasps at her chest as though she's been stabbed by the sound. Welles' Macbeth was not appreciated in its time, but in fact it's a stunning and visually inventive adaptation.

Welles is mostly faithful to the text of Shakespeare's play, shifting some words and characters around here and there, and somewhat emphasising the religious subtext of the story, but mostly remaining true to the language and the story. Macbeth (Welles) is moved to murder the king by a prophecy given to him by three witches, further encouraged in the deed by his scheming, ambitious wife (Jeanette Nolan). His crime gets him the crown, but he's overcome by paranoia and madness, growing ever more bloodthirsty and reckless as he desperately defends his ill-gotten title.

The story is a classical study of the corruption of power, and Welles revels in the blustery speeches and stormy psychological subtexts, all of it delivered with the familiar disembodied sound that often characterised Welles' approach to dialogue — he recorded all of the speech separately, so that the actors are simply mouthing their words, and the dubbed, echoing quality of the sound contributes to the film's strange, haunting feel.

But it also feels like a war film for the ages. Indeed much of its horror is concerned with the violent overthrow of a government by a totalitarian ruler motivated by greed, ambition, and a fundamental sense that he is entitled to lead; albeit one operating under the umbrella of Early Modern monarchy. Some of the film’s most effective sequences involve Macbeth’s betrayal of his closest confidant, Banquo (Edgar Barrier), and the attempts of the rebel forces (led by Dan O’Herlihy’s Macduff and a young Roddy McDowell’s Malcolm, the rightful heir to the throne) to put an end to his reign. Welles fully embraced the play’s themes of betrayal, death, madness, and grief, and it is his reliance on genre themes that resulted in such an exquisite, if grim final product.

Like several later adaptations of Macbeth - including Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957) and Polanski’s 1971 film - the emphasis here is on horror. Welles himself called it “a perfect cross between Wuthering Heights and Bride of Frankenstein” and his adaptation certainly borrows from Murnau’s Faust (1926) more than it does from a production of the day like Olivier’s Henry V (1944) or Hamlet - titles that effectively set the standard for cinematic adaptations of the Bard. Overwrought but undeniably eerie, the stark chiaroscuro play of light and shadow - frequently offset against matte paintings of a still yet artificially swirling sky - borrows heavily from German expressionism, and the insane camera angles include almost constant shots of actors, generally Welles himself, looking severely up at or down on the rest of the cast - or positioned enormously in the foreground - evoking both film noir and Gothic cinema.

Themes of death and violence pervade the dialogue - words like “knives,” “wounds,” and “darkness” are repeated frequently - and Macbeth’s monologues are given in voice over, adding a believable edge to his encroaching madness. The low budget set - which was filmed on a soundstage, apparently using leftover pieces from a Western film - is barren, hellish.

Macbeth’s soundscape matches its stark visuals and is likely an example of Welles working creatively against time and budgetary limits: though the sound has a hollowness to it, almost an echoing quality, it is somehow incredibly effective, and the limited soundtrack is made up of occasional drumming, booming door knocks, animal noises, thunder, and screams.

Additionally, Welles’ use of visual symbolism is far from subtle; for example, when Macbeth and his Lady (Mercury Theatre regular Jeanette Nolan) are first reunited, a rotting, hanged corpse lingers in the background. Heads on crosses, implausibly high up on pikes, litter the background of several shots, and much of Shakespeare’s offscreen violence is put in the forefront: Cawdor’s execution is front and centre, the scene of Duncan’s murder is captured by a beautiful and lengthy tracking shot, Macbeth is present for the murder of Macduff’s wife and children, and Lady Macbeth’s suicide is presented directly, even flagrantly, on screen.

Shakespeare himself was undoubtedly aware that many of the elements of Macbeth were within a literary and theatrical tradition that could be described in contemporary terms as belonging to the horror genre. Murderers, witches, and other disturbing and exciting phenomena were grouped by writers in a classification that suggested a dark, foreboding kind of mystery, threatening to man’s sense of security in his sinful state. Indeed, one of the age’s largest bodies of popular writing concerned ‘strange’ happenings. Many of these, like those on murder and witchcraft, are so germane to Macbeth that the suspicion is warranted that Shakespeare, for motives which were doubtless of the highest, seems to have knowingly drawn upon almost the entire repertory for his play.

The environment of the play in general reflects the encroaching world of darkness. Nature is warped by both witchcraft and rebellion. In his seminal Shakespearean Tragedy, A.C. Bradley wrote, “In Nature, again, something is felt to be at work, sympathetic with human guilt and supernatural malice”.

From the beginning of Macbeth, until Duncan’s murder is revealed at the end of act II, nature become steadily more vicious and loathsome. In I.i there is thunder and lightning, and “fog and filthy air.” In I.ii the Captain mentions “Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders,” and the battlefield is “another Golgotha.” I.iii opens in thunder, the Witches discuss a tempest one of them has caused, Macbeth describes the earth as “blasted,” and the Witches have become “breath into the wind.” Macbeth’s praise came “as thick as hail” and they “pour’d them down” before Duncan. The day is described as “rough” and the word “strange” is used by almost everyone in the scene. In I.iv Macbeth calls upon the night sky to blacken itself so that the stars may not be witness to his “black and deep desires.” Lady Macbeth evokes “thick Night” in I.v, and commands it to bring forth the “dunnest smoke of Hell.” Macbeth says, in I.vii, that the air will “blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind.”

Act II begins the real descent into evil, when Macbeth says that “nature seems dead,” and Fleance and Banquo cannot see the stars. Nature is here seen as spawning unnumbered evils, and notable among them is the first of the evils defined in the play, rebellion. Indeed, Macbeth’s speech evokes images of witches celebrating, and the wolf and Murther roaming the night, ghostlike. Lady Macbeth only hears the shriek of the owl, and the Porter becomes the “Porter of Hell Gate.”

In his insightful book, Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Gary Wills (who wrote a magisterial book on Augustine) stated that even the Porter’s speech imitates the Witches, that it is “a reverse conjuration” as the Porter draws three demons down to Hell, rather than the Witches calling their three familiars up forth. In this scene, II.iii, the other thanes report their strange nights.

Lennox says:

The night has been unruly: where we lay, Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say, Lamentings heard i’th’air; strange screams of death, And prophesying with accents terrible Of dire combustion, and confus’d events, New hatch’d to th’woeful time, the obscure bird Clamour’d the livelong night: some say, the earth Was feverous, and did shake (II.iii).

This passage appears right before Macduff discovers the murder of Duncan, and reflects both the Witches’ role, as well as the involvement of Macbeth and his wife. The wind that blows down their chimneys is connected to the many passages discussing the Witches’ connection with wind, and in Renaissance beliefs, they were supposed to have magical control over the weather. The “prophesying” also recalls their meeting with Macbeth. “The obscure bird” is surely Lady Macbeth’s raven, and the earth shook with fever, because of the terrible deed of regicide. As can be seen in Lennox’s language, Bradley connects the Witches to the larger images of darkness, evil, and malice that are repeated through out the very world of Macbeth.

One of the few ways that Welles altered Shakespeare’s play - which oddly serves to emphasise these images of darkness, evil, and malice - was to add a strange folk horror element in the form of a clash between pagan and Christian religions. An old man character is transformed into a Holy Man, who chants ominously as King Duncan arrives at the castle. The King asks his soldiers - all kneeling and holding candles - “Dost thou renounce Satan and all his works?” There is an uneasy ritualism at play and Welles seemed to determined to capture the Holy Man’s assertion that the characters are all bearing witness to “hours dreadful and things strange.”

It is indeed an intriguing aspect of the film’s interpretation to have this collision of pagan and Christian religions that pervades the cinematic atmosphere. Those close-ups of the gruesome clay voodoo doll are contrasted with Celtic crosses made with long, perilously thin sticks, so feeble that they all look as if they might snap under their own weight. Yet this is a spiritual battle among a people who seem to have no spirits at all. In this version of Macbeth, the appearance of Banquo’s ghost is almost a relief: even if it’s a figment of Macbeth’s fevered, guilty imagination, at least it suggests the possibility of an afterlife beyond this horrid, filthy and cutthroat mortal world.

And of course, as in Shakespeare’s text, the overriding visual is that of the Witches and it is a central feature of Welles’ film here.

Indeed the film opens with a shot of them - three grey-haired, cloaked women on a narrow precipice, shrouded in fog - working magic around a large cauldron, which is represented by contrasting images of fire, water, and what looks like bubbling mud, the very elements of the earth. They pull a misshapen lump of clay from a pot and begin jointly working it with their hands, sculpting it into a rough, man-like shape.

Their spell-casting and prophecies do not make up a significant portion of the film’s running time, but they become the overall unifying theme and the few shots of them are unforgettable. From the moment Macbeth - recently returned from battle to meet up with other commanders on a desolate, muddy field - enters the fog to find the Witches after they have made their prophecies about his future greatness, they begin to have a corrosive effect on the film, infecting everything from Shakespeare’s language to the visual world of Welles’ production. Many critics have followed Bradley’s suggestion that the Witches, and in particular their prophecies, symbolise “the evil slumbering in the hero’s soul” and “all those obscurer influences of the evil around him”. The Witches’ prophecies whisper to this insidious evil inside Macbeth and awaken it, like a latent virus, until he is consumed by his own diabolical ambition.

Shakespeare actually gave Welles (and other directors, whether cinematic or theatrical), quite a bit of flexibility when it came to portraying the witches themselves, as textually he reveals very little about them. Indeed Shakespeare leaves many unanswered questions about the witches: are they male or female, human or supernatural, real or imaged?

The opening of Macbeth is only a short, twelve-line scene that does little more than introduce the Witches and their intentions to meet Macbeth. Witchcraft was a subject of frightening spiritual concern. Shakespeare could be confident that his Witches would be viewed as more than spectacle. Though the Witches are not named directly as practitioners of witchcraft, there are several obvious indications. For example, the first two witches call upon “Graymalkin,” and then “Paddock,” while the third Witch calls to someone, or something, with “Anon!” In the Arden Shakespeare edition of Macbeth, it notes that Graymalkin is a “grey cat… a common witches’ familiar,” and Paddock refers to “a toad,” which is another animal associated with witches.

While connections have been made between Welles’ Macbeth and his earlier Federal Theatre Project outing, a 1936 stage production with an all-African American cast, known as “Voodoo” Macbeth, some of the seemingly voodoo-related elements he includes in the film can also be traced to Renaissance beliefs about magic. This type of magic would include the killing of a person by piercing a doll made in his image, inflicting sickness on a child by reciting a spell, bringing down hail on crops by burning enchanted substances, starting a fire by leaving a hexed sword in a room, and causing impotence in a bridegroom by tying knots in a piece of leather and leaving it in his proximity.These acts were usually referred to in Latin as maleficia and in English were sometimes called witchcrafts.

Willis calls Macbeth “one of the great male witches of drama,” and the character does take on a Faustian aspect for the second half of the play, one that connects the themes of supernatural evil and martial rebellion. Welles certainly played up this element: his frame moves ever closer to the camera in the second half of the film, as if he is claustrophobically asserting his dominance over the world itself, his jagged crown often appearing like horns, particularly when his face is cast in deep shadow. At about the halfway mark, Macbeth’s crown is placed upon his head while he’s looking into a warped mirror, which marks a dramatic turn in his personality as he begins to slip towards madness, an event that began in earnest with his murder of Duncan. Much like rebellion against the crown, murder itself is connected to witchcraft by several documents from Early Modern England and Europe. For example, in Nicholas Remy’s “The Persecution in Scotland” from 1591, he states that: “From the very beginning the Devil was a murderer, and never has he ceased to tempt the impious to commit slaughter and parricide. Therefore it is no wonder that, once he had caught men in his toils, his first care is to furnish them with the implements and instruct them in the practices of witchcraft.”

Macbeth’s “instruction” seems to begin immediately after he meets the Witches for the first time in I.iii, when they vanish “into the air and what seem’d corporal, Melted as breath into the wind” (I.iii.81-82). They do dissolve into the air, but, operating like Renaissance notions of the bubonic plague, transform into “filthy air” that infects Macbeth, whose moral and spiritual defenses are already weak, due to his treacherous thoughts. This evil infection spreads to everything that is associated with Macbeth: his wife, his castle, and even the natural environment that surrounds him.

The vocabulary of the Witches, depending upon whether we take these strange beings to be originators or merely responsive aspects of evil, either prompts or reflects the vocabulary or thought of the human actors.

It is likewise implied that they drive him to repeated acts of murder, generally symbolized by a dagger: whether a physical dagger, a hallucinated one, or repeated uses of the word in dialogue. In II.i, a hallucinatory dagger appears before him, showing him the way to murder. This sentiment is again echoed in III.ii, before the death of Banquo, when he invokes the night to “Cancel, and tear to pieces, that great bond/ Which keeps me pale!” These invocations of evil seem to grow exponentially as Macbeth becomes more dependent on the language of witchcraft.

Welles underlines this transition from war hero to warlock in typical Wellesian fashion: in a later scene, he shouts for his servant, Seyton, but his booming voice sounds a lot like he’s yelling “Satan”; moments later the man is revealed to have hanged himself, resulting in yet another body dangling by the neck from a rope in the background, all while Welles delivers the famous “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy. These seemingly diabolical intonations mark both an increasingly mad man, a defeated one (Welles seems in turns drunk and exhausted in the second half of the film), and one who has given himself over to the diabolical. The ending of the film is notably different from conventional stagings of the play: Macduff is shown to decapitate Macbeth outright, rather than cutting off his head after he’s dead; he then flings it off the castle ramparts, echoing Lady Macbeth’s earlier suicide — where Welles brazenly depicts her launching herself over the castle walls and plunging to her death. Welles ends the film with a final shot of the Witches, who declare “the charm’s wound up,” implying that though Macbeth has met his fate at the hands of Macduff, they are ready to begin again.

Tellingly in Witches and Jesuits: Shakespare’s Macbeth, Gary Wills calls Macbeth “one of the great male witches of drama,” and the character does take on a Faustian aspect for the second half of the play, one that connects the themes of supernatural evil and martial rebellion. Welles certainly played up this element: his frame moves ever closer to the camera in the second half of the film, as if he is claustrophobically asserting his dominance over the world itself, his jagged crown often appearing like horns, particularly when his face is cast in deep shadow. At about the halfway mark, Macbeth’s crown is placed upon his head while he’s looking into a warped mirror, which marks a dramatic turn in his personality as he begins to slip towards madness, an event that began in earnest with his murder of Duncan.

Macbeth’s “instruction” seems to begin immediately after he meets the Witches for the first time in I.iii, when they vanish “into the air and what seem’d corporal, Melted as breath into the wind” (I.iii.81-82). They do dissolve into the air, but, operating like Renaissance notions of the bubonic plague, transform into “filthy air” that infects Macbeth, whose moral and spiritual defences are already weak, due to his treacherous thoughts. This evil infection spreads to everything that is associated with Macbeth: his wife, his castle, and even the natural environment that surrounds him.

It is likewise implied that the Witches drive him to repeated acts of murder, generally symbolised by a dagger: whether a physical dagger, a hallucinated one, or repeated uses of the word in dialogue. In II.i, a hallucinatory dagger appears before him, showing him the way to murder. This sentiment is again echoed in III.ii, before the death of Banquo, when he invokes the night to “Cancel, and tear to pieces, that great bond/ Which keeps me pale!” These invocations of evil seem to grow exponentially as Macbeth becomes more dependent on the language of witchcraft.

So Welles seems to echo Wills in cinematically showing how Macbeth transitions from the war hero of trope to warlock. In a later scene, he shouts for his servant, Seyton, but his booming voice sounds a lot like he’s yelling “Satan”; moments later the man is revealed to have hanged himself, resulting in yet another body dangling by the neck from a rope in the background, all while Welles delivers the famous “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy. These seemingly diabolical intonations mark both an increasingly mad man, a defeated one (Welles seems in turns drunk and exhausted in the second half of the film), and one who has given himself over to the diabolical.

The ending of the film is notably different from conventional stagings of the play: Macduff is shown to decapitate Macbeth outright, rather than cutting off his head after he’s dead; he then flings it off the castle ramparts, echoing Lady Macbeth’s earlier suicide - where Welles brazenly depicts her launching herself over the castle walls and plunging to her death. Welles ends the film with a final shot of the Witches, who declare “the charm’s wound up,” implying that though Macbeth has met his fate at the hands of Macduff, they are ready to begin again.

It’s tempting to see this film as a story that briefly paralleled Welles’ own fate - at least in the sense that it’s about a man damned by his own monstrous ambition - as it would be his last Hollywood film for many years. Despite the fact that he got the film made in record time and with a pitiful budget, it was critically panned and its reputation wouldn’t be revalued for several decades.

Fortunately, Welles would go on to make other Shakespeare adaptations like Othello (1951) and Chimes at Midnight (1965) with European funding, though I tend to read Macbeth less as part of a Shakespearean trilogy and more as belonging to a WWII-influenced series with Journey into Fear (1943), The Stranger (1946), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), and even The Trial (1962): films about persecution, paranoia, madness, and betrayal.

All of this is to say that Welles' Macbeth, while not at first blush a terribly accessible film today, rewards scrutiny: the more one looks and listens, the more one sees and hears. In this way, Welles again proves in sync with his literary hero, for the unfolding text has riches deeper than its many famous lines. The shortest and most visual of Shakespeare's tragedies, Macbeth uniquely lends itself to cinematic adaptation: witches' brew, a prophecy of coronation, a phantom dagger, direful murder, blood that won't wash away, and the ghost who came to dinner. Welles lends the material his own distinctive visual style, marked here by stark high and low angles and prominently employed depth of field. Welles also intensifies the play's penetrating psychology by choosing close-ups as his default composition, makes strong use of montage for the witches' incantation at the film's outset, conversely (and masterfully) stages a then-unusual ten-minute-long take around the discovery of Duncan's murder, and gets an uncanny effect from slow motion during the march of Birnam Wood.

Macbeth may be among the Bard’s weakest popular plays (opinion is, of course, divided) but this is one of the better cinematic conversions. A wonderful thing about Shakespeare’s canon is that those plays can form the vehicles by which any director’s unique vision can emerge. Actors and directors before and since such as Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh have recognised this.

Of course, Welles' Macbeth has also been famously divisive, having been mockingly dismissed by most upon its premiere (only a week on from Olivier's celebrated, conventional Hamlet) for Welles' bold choice to have the entire cast perform the play in a setting-appropriate Scottish brogue, for the outré costume choices (basically, Macbeth's boxy, spiky crowns), and other "crimes" of mise en scène.

Despite favourable reviews in Variety magazine and the New York Times, the film was universally panned by critics. For instance, Life magazine devoted 3 pages ridiculing it. headlined, “MURDER! Orson Welles doth foully slaughter Shakespeare in dialect version of his Tragedy of Macbeth,” and remarked of one still, “The scene opposite is not, as you might think, from a musical comedy skit in an alcoholics’ ward…”

The timing of Macbeth’s 1948 premiere, in Boston - only a week after Laurence Olivier’s much slicker, highly revered, and distinctly middle-brow Hamlet (which had already garnered a celebratory eleven-page spread in Life) opened in the same city — couldn’t have been worse. By this time, Welles had already been persuaded to withdraw Macbeth from competition at the Venice film festival with the fear of Olivier’s Hamlet stealing its thunder there.

The American public reception confirmed Republic Pictures' worst fears. The U.S. reception was so poor that Republic, in panic mode, obliged Welles to cut up to half an hour from the film (including the ten minutes of overture and exit music), add an opening voiceover to paper over some of the gaps, and to redub much of what was left without the Scottish accents - although, to his credit, studio boss Herbert J. Yates allowed Welles to carry out this work himself. Welles was also forced to accept the re-recording of dialogue because Americans couldn’t understand it.

Welles had by this time relocated to Italy to star in Black Magic and start shooting Othello (his first independent production), and had to do the re-editing of Macbeth there, with associate producer Richard Wilson serving as stateside intermediary and Welles returning briefly to Republic only to supervise the redubbing.

Predictably in Europe, it was hailed as a classic.

The great French writer, Jean Cocteau, had seen the film in Venice and he wrote: “Orson Welles’s Macbeth has a kind of crude, irreverent power. Clad in animal skins like motorists at the turn of the century, horns and cardboard crowns on their heads, his actors haunt the corridors of some dreamlike subway, an abandoned coal mine, and ruined cellars oozing with water. Not a single shot is left to chance. The camera is always placed just where destiny itself would observe its victims. Sometimes we wonder in what period this nightmare is unfolding, and when, for the first time, we see Lady Macbeth, before the camera moves back to situate her, it is almost a woman in modern dress that we are seeing, reclining on a fur-covered divan beside the telephone.”

André Bazin, the influential and renowned French film critic and theorist who was to write a book on Orson Welles, thought in similar terms, “This tarred cardboard decor, these barbaric Scots, dressed in animal skins and brandishing some sort of gnarled wooden cross-thrower, these unusual places dripping with water, dominated by mists that never let you guess a sky where one doubts that there are stars, literally form a universe of prehistory, not that of our ancestors the Gauls or the Celts, but of a prehistory of consciousness at the birth of time and sin, when heaven and earth, water and fire, good and evil are not yet distinctly separated.”

Not all versions of Macbeth are successful. A 2015 adaptation (starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard) was inert. The sometimes-lauded 1971 Roman Polanski interpretation was bloody and at times cartoonish. But Orson Welles’ 1948 film remains a respected classic and arguably Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood may be the best Macbeth of all, despite not using a single line of Shakespeare’s dialogue (and changing the setting and names). It is intriguing to speculate whether Kurosawa ever saw Welles’ Macbeth as it would seem Throne of Blood owes a great debt to Welles’s film in terms of spooky imagery and powerful visual impressions.

Still, the caveat, which is often the case with direct adaptations of Shakespeare, is that The Tragedy of Macbeth requires some heavy lifting. The viewer has to engage with the movie because Shakespearean dialogue needs to be processed. This is a well-made, artistically effective motion picture but its appeal is limited to those who appreciate movies that are driven as much by the aesthetics as the narrative.

This is ironic because Welles was both an aristocrat and a populist whose taste was both highbrow and lowbrow - and thus diametrically opposed to the middle-brow, middle-class taste that ruled American culture at mid-century, especially when it came to William Shakespeare - Welles, born in 1915, was as much a child of the nineteenth century as he was a prophet of the twentieth, which meant that his view of Shakespeare harked back to the time when Shakespeare was a staple of American popular “low“ culture, not a prized exhibit in elitist and effete “high” culture.

Unlike Ken Branagh, who came the closest of any recent director in making a genuine attempt of ‘Shakespeare for the masses,’ Orson Welles had similar sincere ambitions in attempting to bring a vital and in some ways radical ‘Shakespeare from the Provinces’. Ultimately Welles’ film foundered in an era when mass media were increasingly redirected to more profit-generating and non-intellectual entertainment. Welles’ ended up with a more cultured audience watching his film.

But it doesn’t mean it’s all style and no substance. It’s both, and that is a great feat. In this heavily symbolist tragedy Macbeth, William Shakespeare consistently describes the interplay of darkness and light, of darkness as death, murder and other "dark" deeds, and of light as life, righteous justice, and truth, shining into the corners where evil lurks. The graphic intensity of Orson Welles' black-and-white 1948 film, then, isn't merely for show, but a carefully considered symbolist staging for screen, meant to complement the Bard's immortal poetry. Shadows and fog compete with fire and torches, in keeping with lines like Lady Macbeth's "Come thick night/And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,/That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,/Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,/To cry, 'Hold, hold!’

In the end Welles’ greatest achievement may well have been that he held his own cinematic power close to matching Shakespeare’s powerful prose and therefore cinematic language to higher level. In doing so he - along with Kurosawa’s Throne in Blood - could, like Shakespeare, amalgamate many different cultural influences, ranging from both “high” and “low” culture, in order to create a highly original, powerful, and – crucially – autonomous work of art.

By liberating his film from the constraints of Shakespeare’s language, and instead embracing the interplay of different filmic styles, Welles - like Kurosawa - enabled subsequent generations of directors such as Celestino Coronado, Derek Jarman and Peter Greenaway to pursue their own artistic vision of Shakespeare through a language of film, rather than of verse.

#welles #orson welles #macbeth #film #movie #cinema #shakespeare #play #culture #poetry #literature #arts

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ticiie · 2 years

Text

week 15: the joys of a pool party

prompt from the off-season winter sport challenge

characters: Mauro Caviezel, Justin Murisier, Gino Caviezel, Semyel Bissig, Marco Odermatt (mentioned)

length: 866 words

author's note: certainly not gonna win an award with this one due to the bumpy grammer, might do a revise some other time when the inspo hits a bit more

At first, Mauro couldn’t place the sound that had caused him to wake up. He had tried to ignore it but once it had died down and started again just half a minute later, he groaned in frustration and turned on the lamp on his bedside table. The figure next to him was just as displeased as Mauro himself.

“Turn that off”, Justin muttered in Mauro’s shoulder.

“I will if you let me go, my phone is laying on your side.” His voice wasn’t more than a rasp and Justin would be lying if he’d say he didn’t enjoy the sound. They changed positions and finally, Mauro got a hold on his phone. He didn’t even check the caller’s ID before answering it which could’ve been considered a mistake. He was greeted by the loud pounding of a bass-heavy song, mixed with the voices of what seemed like at least a hundred people.

“MAURO?” The person on the other end screamed into the speaker loud enough that Mauro had to move his phone away from his ear to not cause his hearing any permanent damage.

“What the hell? Gino, is that you?”

“Yes! Sorry, but can you-” A splashing sound interrupted his brother. There was someone laughing near Gino but Mauro didn’t recognise the voice. No doubt there was alcohol involved. Mauro waited, his patience already being a lot thinner than usual thanks to the ungodly hour. A few moments passed and Justin had dozed off again when Gino spoke anew: “Can you come pick us up? I can’t drive anymore and Marco and Semyel were dropped off, they don’t have a car here either.”

Mauro sighed. “Alright, where are you?” Gino told him the address and was already distracted again but Mauro didn’t miss to scold his brother before hanging up.

“You owe me one!”

The line died and Mauro let himself fall back onto the pillow. Justin was quick to wrap his arms around Mauro again. “What would it cost to make you go pick up my drunk ass brother and his drunk ass friends?”

Justin chuckled. “You can’t afford that. Also, they’re your friends too.”

“I’m reconsidering that at the moment.” There was no sense in complaining any more, Mauro knew. So, he got up and pulled over shirt and sweatpants. Before leaving, he hovered over Justin’s relaxed body and pressed a kiss to his cheek that left the younger man smiling happily into the pillow. “Essayez de ne pas l'étouffer”, he mumbled. Then Mauro was out the door and Justin back asleep.

The drive took him a little less than an hour, mainly thanks to the empty streets. Turn over turn guided him uphill towards a giant mansion which he knew belonged to some relative of Gabriel, tonight’s host of what had sounded like the party of the century. The sidewalk was crowded with parked cars and Mauro recognised one of them to be Ginos while searching for a spot himself. As he neared the house, the music grew louder. Mauro started to wonder what it had taken Gabriel to have the neighbours not call the police. Perhaps they were partying themselves. Or maybe Gabriel had organised them to leave their homes so the celebrations could go on all night. Either way, Mauro made his way through the front door that stood wide open, past a good dozen strangers, all in different states of drunkenness and none of them taking notice of Mauro’s sudden appearance. Someone tried forcing a beer on him and when he finally spotted a familiar face in Semyel, Mauro’s nerves were too tense yet again. At least Semyel seemed to be nothing less than delighted about seeing Mauro. He basically threw himself at Mauro and led him through the living room to the backyard where the actual party was going on. The ridiculous large pool separated them from the DJ station, there were people everywhere. Mauro tried asking Semyel if he knew where Gino was and if he wanted to head home as well, but Semyel was way more interested in showing Mauro around the place.

“You need to see this, this is going to blow your mind!”, he kept repeating, and Mauro figured it must be really important if even a drunk Semyel was excited about it. And oh lord, Mauro was not disappointed. Thanks to a dude jumping in the pool a few steps away from Mauro’s position, he got to catch a look at it contains and there he saw what Semyel had been talking about: Gino, Mauro’s annoying baby brother, was kissing a guy. Not just any guy. He was full on making out with Marco. There was no chance in telling their bodies apart, they were clutching on each other as if their lives were depending on it and neither of them seemed to give a single shit about who saw them. It took Mauro about a second to fully understand what he was seeing, then his hands acted on their own accord by snapping a picture. Of course, he would have to get a solid proof, otherwise Justin would never believe him and Mauro would lose the chance of winning their bet.

#osws fandom challenge #OSWS #rpf #fanfic #mauro caviezel #justin murisier #gino caviezel #marco odermatt #shoutout to wunderlichkind

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lady-of-the-lotus · 3 years

Text

Xuexiao Goes to the DMV

Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen go to the DMV (aka Where Hope Goes To Die) and share a kiss.

That’s it. That’s the fic.

Xuexiao - T (just for some cursing) - Read on AO3!

“If you hear about someone going berserk in a DMV on the news, that’ll be me,” the mechanical text-to-speech voice reads aloud, and Xiao Xingchen turns to Xue Yang questioningly.

Xue Yang reaches over and turns the volume down on Xingchen’s phone. “Meant to send that to A-Qing.”

“Are we going to be escorted out? Again?”

Xue Yang grins and looks around the room. They’ve already been at the DMV for over an hour. Dozens of people are draped limply over the hard orange seats, eyes glazed, going down for the third time in a sea of government bureaucracy.

“Ticket 4352, now being served at window thirty-three,” announces the robotic voice over the loudspeaker.

“It would take an alien invasion to wake these people up,” Xue Yang says as a man in overalls shuffles past. “You should see these people. This must be what a lobotomy post-op recovery room looks like.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Like the world’s most incompetent deli, filled with zombie customers waiting to eat the brains of whatever the opposite of employee of the month is. Well, ‘brains.’ They work at the DMV, after all.”

Xiao Xingchen adjusts his sunglasses. “Let's not be mean.”

“And we can all hear you,” adds a woman on his left. “Not that it made much sense.”

Xue Yang makes a face at her and turns back to Xingchen. “If they make me come back a third time, I’m going to go postal. You know, going postal should be called ‘going DMV.’ It’s catchier, for one thing, and I’ve never so much as stepped foot in a post office—”

“I’m keeping you far away from post offices. Those poor people have suffered enough.”

“How so?”

“Well, there must be a reason they go postal, right?”

Xue Yang rolls his eyes. “If the post office has the same taste in music as the DMV, I don’t blame them. Who picked this station? If it’s not Justin Bieber it’s whoever inflicted ‘Kiss Me Through the Phone’ on the world. I’d like to do something to them through the phone, and it won’t be a kiss, I can tell you that much.”

Xiao Xingchen takes a Snickers bar out of the fanny pack Xue Yang has vainly begged him not to wear. “According to the television commercials, this will improve your mood.”

“My mood?” Xue Yang takes a bite. “If I have to hear ‘Baby’ one more time—”

“Ticket 9753, now being served at window fourteen.”

“ ‘Served.’ Ha. As if.”

Xiao Xingchen feels around for another Snickers bar but comes up empty. He should have planned this better. He’d sensed Xue Yang’s mood coming on last night as Xue Yang went through his documents. He’d been cheerful enough until he found his birth certificate in the bundle of papers he’d been given after leaving his last group home.

Then he’d grown strangely quiet, and wandered aimlessly around their apartment for an hour, carrying his phone around with him and switching between a half-dozen different YouTube videos before deciding to bake brownies at 1am and burning them when he got distracted playing video games. He wasn’t paying much attention to the video game, either, going by his cursing as he got repeatedly blown up by what Xingchen suspects was a twelve-year old somewhere in Japan, and eventually gave that up to go take apart their toaster in the interest of “fixing” it.

Now he sits beside Xingchen, jiggling his leg. Xiao Xingchen wants to ask him about his birth certificate, but he hadn't dared to last night, and doesn’t dare now.

“Ticket 9755, now being served at Window 26.”

“Weren’t you 9754?” he asks Xue Yang.

“Oh, crap—” Xue Yang jumps to his feet and rushes to Window 26, brushing past a mohawked man holding a ticket marked 9755. “I’m 9754.”

The woman behind the glass may as well have been carved from wood. “You missed your number.”

“There was no announcement!”

“Or your number isn’t working. It’s not showing up on my computer.”

“What the hell does that mean? I’m on the screen! Look!” Xue Yang jabs a finger at the screen above the booth. At the bottom of the list it reads Ticket 9754 – Window 26. “9754! Window 26! All you need to do is take my picture—”

“Get back in line. Get a new ticket. Window 13.”

“Get back in line?” He looks over at the line for Window 13. It wraps around the entire room. “I already have a number! I’m on the screen!”

“Back. In. Line.”

“Just take the damn photo—”

Xingchen lays a hand on his arm. “Thank you, ma’am. We’ll get back in line.”

“Like hell we will! I’ve been here since 5 o’clock—I made an appointment! I even brought my own pen! You ever watch Monsters Inc.? You know Roz? Are you her evil older sister? Because you look exactly like—”

“Back of the line.”

“Younger sister, then. Happy?”

The woman doesn’t bother shrugging. “You’re blocking traffic.”

Xingchen begins to move, heading in the wrong direction. Xue Yang has no choice but to follow or else let him walk into a column plastered with posters emblazoned with, Make your visit easy - download the forms at dmv.gov! , Streamline your visit - make an appointment online today!, and We’re here to help!

“Let’s just go home,” says Xue Yang. “The gray, water stained walls are starting to close in. At any second I expect a giant ball to roll towards us. Well, wrong movie—whatever. I’m sick of this place. It’s cursed.”

“We’re just going to have to come back, and you’ll have wasted the hour we already spent here.”

Xue Yang groans and gets in line behind a woman with three small screaming children. “This whole thing is stupid. We can barely afford rent, let alone a car."

"We will, one day. Besides, it's good to have a license."

"We’ll just take trains and buses everywhere, or you can learn to drive. We'll fudge the vision test."

Xingchen laughs. Xue Yang relaxes slightly at the sound. After a moment, Xingchen slips his hand in his. He’s not one for public displays of affection, but there’s an edge in Xue Yang’s voice that has nothing to do with his return to Window 13.

Xue Yang’s hand tightens in his, and Xingchen rubs it reassuringly with his thumb.

“You again?” says the woman at Window 13 when they finally make it there, twenty minutes later.

“That power-mad dictator at Window 26 wouldn’t take my picture.”

The woman tilts her head at Xue Yang. “She wouldn’t?”

Xue Yang tilts his head back at her, as if to say, I know! Who wouldn’t want to photograph me ?

She smiles, a synthetic smile that reminds Xue Yang of his friend Lan Xichen’s dimpled little fiance. “Strange.”

“ ‘Strange’? I knew she could have just done it had she wanted to—”

The woman blinks at him, her smile growing faker by the minute. “I’m sure what she told you was accurate.”

“Sure, and there is no war in Ba-Sing-Se—”

Xiao Xingchen squeezes his hand, and Xue Yang stops talking and passes her his form. She stamps it a second time and hands him another ticket.

He and Xingchen return to the waiting area. Xue Yang puts his boots up on the seat next to him, resting his head on Xingchen’s shoulder.

“Describe the room to me again,” Xingchen says, trying to distract him from his brooding and, with any luck, keep him from taking out his Swiss army knife and carving his initials into the seat and get them kicked out again. Xue Yang has a talent for describing things, and Xingchen has been trying to encourage him to start writing.

Xue Yang begins to play with his long sleek ponytail. “Purgatory’s antechamber. Humanity’s lost-and-found. A void where time has no meaning. Pit of despair and industrial cleaner.”

Xingchen chuckles, making sure it’s loud enough for Xue Yang to hear.

“If their posters were honest, they’d all be in Comic Sans font, with things like, Where hope goes to die; This is your home now; Nothing escapes our pull, not even time; Human sacrifices while you wait—”

“Human sacrifices?”

"Yeah, I think so."

A crackle of static over the speaker as a new song comes on. “You know you love me, I know you care...Just shout whenever and I'll be there….”

Xue Yang starts up violently, but Xiao Xingchen gently pulls him back down beside him. “Some kind of cannibal conspiracy?” he asks, hoping Xue Yang’s knife has remained in his pocket and is not seconds away from being embedded in a blaring loudspeaker.

Xue Yang settles back against his shoulder. “I’m positive Overalls Guy never returned from Window 17. He’s probably in the office barbecue pit.”

“This must go all the way to the top. Shift supervisor too, I’d guess.”

“Baby, baby, baby oh….Like baby, baby, baby no….”

Xue Yang stops playing with his hair and starts picking at his black nail polish. He’s feeling a bit better, Xingchen’s shoulder warm and solid. “I swear that Roz lady put a curse on me. They all probably dance in a circle around a stack of burning Social Security cards every night, chanting.” He squirms, suddenly bored. “You got any more food? I’m starving.”

Xingchen rummages in his fanny pack. “Just a burned brownie.”

“I swear I set a timer!"

The timer had gone off while Xingchen was in the shower last night. Xue Yang had simply ignored it, too absorbed in trying to virtually blow up his twelve-year-old nemesis. He tends to ignore timers while cooking, usually followed by a mad rush to the kitchen to salvage dinner. “You know dinner is ready when the smoke detector goes off,” he likes to say.

Xue Yang sniffs the crumpled foil surrounding the charred black brownie chunk. “Is this the same foil I wrapped your tuna sandwich in yesterday?”

“We only have one earth!”

“Xingchen, I swear—” Xue Yang stops, rolling his eyes fondly. He’s never met anyone who can be so annoying and endearing at the same time.

Xingchen takes the brownie back. “I'll eat it. I like the burned bits.”

"It's all burned bits."

"Exactly. Perfect."

“She knows she's got me dazing, 'cause she was so amazin'....And now my heart is breakin', but I just keep on sayin'....”

“Who wrote this? I swear I won’t hurt them. I just want their address.”

Xingchen knows he shouldn’t laugh at that, but he can’t help it.

They sit there for another half hour, talking. Xue Yang has succeeded in denuding the nails of his left hand when his number is finally called. He gets his photo taken by a man with glazed eyes and no chin, and is shuffled off to the next waiting area.

“They refused to show me my photo,” he says as they settle back down. “I swear the camera stole my soul and is using it to power the fluorescent lights. I feel at peace now. Kind of floating.” He discovers a piece of gum in his jeans pocket and begins to loudly blow bubbles, making full eye contact with the annoyed Bluetooth Guy and irritated Woman With Facial Tattoo Of Bugs Bunny. “I am one with the DMV demigods, part of something larger than myself.”

“Like joining the army.”

“Or drowning in the ocean.” He lays down with his head in Xingchen’s lap, boots on the edge of Bluetooth Guy’s seat. “Why does your fanny pack smell like patchouli? Have you been burning weird hippie incense again? You promised you’d stop after you set fire to your curtains.”

Xingchen would rather Xue Yang didn’t semi-cuddle him in public, but Xue Yang’s energy is calmer when he’s touching Xingchen, and he lets him stay. “It’s that new candle you bought me, remember?”

“Right. Bought you.”

“What do you—”

“I thought it was peppermint.”

Xingchen bites his lip. Xue Yang is…well, he can read well enough to pass a driving test, but his education was…slipshod at best. Next on Xingchen’s list is encouraging Xue Yang to get his GED.

“You smell like a music festival,” says Xue Yang. “I must have grabbed the wrong one in the store. I sniffed all of them. My picture is probably hanging beside the register of every Bath & Body Works in town: ‘Beware the Candle Perv’—”

“At least someone was willing to take your picture.”

Xue Yang laughs. Xingchen rests a hand on his chest, heedless of the people around them. He likes how Xue Yang feels when he laughs, his whole body shaking, making no attempt to hide his feelings. Xue Yang makes him laugh so often, it’s a special joy for him to return the favor.

They’ve been there almost two and a half hours when Xue Yang’s number is finally called. As if the DMV curse is kicking in again, the loudspeakers creep up another few decibels.

“Like baby, baby, baby no, like baby, baby, baby oh, thought you'd always be mine, mine….”

“Xue Yang—” Xingchen starts before Xue Yang can say anything.

“I know, I know. This is penance for my putting that egg in Song Lan’s shoe last week. The DMV knows all. The DMV was here before us, and will be here after we are gone. The DMV—”

“—The DMV will make us wait in line again, if we don’t hurry.”

Together they go to Window 10, where a drab little man sifts through Xue Yang’s documents. “Fifties, balding, completely dead inside,” Xue Yang whispers to Xingchen.

“I’m thirty-nine,” says the man in a monotone, not looking up, “and you’re missing a birth certificate. And what’s this stain on your Social Security card?”

“Definitely not blood.”

The man stares at him with eyes that, had his life force not already been sucked out of Xue Yang by an afternoon at the DMV, would have done the job. “Current passport, or birth certificate.”

Xue Yang hesitates, then slips a folded piece of pink paper under the glass partition.

The man unfolds it with the sterling speed of a drugged snail and spreads it over the counter. He lines up Xue Yang’s Social Security card, bank statement, and birth certificate, and examines them line by line as if he’s a Bletchley Circle analyst and Xue Yang’s documents are intercepted enemy transmissions.

He looks up at Xue Yang. “Is this a valid birth certificate? There are no parent names listed, and the date of birth has an asterisk—”

“I know what it has!”

“What’s your date of birth?” The man slowly pushes his chair back. “I’m going to have to get a supervisor—”

Xue Yang slams the counter. Xingchen lays a hand on his arm. It’s a miracle Xue Yang’s knife isn’t out. “Don’t you fucking dare! This is what they do when—just Google it, okay? I don’t know what day I was born, they just put whatever date they thought was accurate—”

Xingchen swallows hard.

He had known Xue Yang had grown up in foster care, but had assumed he had been given up by his parents as a child when they could no longer take care of him.

Not—not abandoned as an infant—

“And change the fucking station!” Xue Yang adds. “If I have to hear that stupid fucking song one more time I will go fucking berserk —”

The man’s dead-eyed stare intensifies. “Sign here,” he says after a moment, pushing a slip of paper at Xue Yang.

“You want my love, you want my heart….And we will never, ever, ever be apart…”

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Xingchen asks as they step outside. The words sound hollow, and he wishes he had simply remained silent.

Xue Yang takes a deep breath. It’s almost cool out, a welcome change from the week’s heat. “Well, we escaped. Now we just have to get help for the others. Or do we abandon them to their fates? I vote we abandon them. You should have seen some of the looks I got. It’s like they never saw someone threaten a DMV employee before, something I’m willing to bet happens a dozen times an hour.”

Xingchen takes his arm as he begins to walk. It’s easier than using his stick in the crowded city. “Xue Yang…”

Xue Yang’s muscles tense beneath his arm. “What?”

“Nothing.” He bites his lip. He’ll have Xue Yang feeling better soon enough. “What street are we on? Turn in on 33rd.”

“What’s on 33rd?”

“Just let me know when we’re there. 33rd and 7th.”

“The train’s on 36th.”

“But the restaurant’s on 33rd.”

“The what?”

Xingchen wants to smile, but is afraid Xue Yang might take it the wrong way after what happened at the DMV. For someone who does his best to project an I-don’t-care attitude, Xue Yang is surprisingly sensitive.

“What’s today’s date?” He already knows the date, of course. It’s been on his mind for weeks now.

Xue Yang’s arm grows even stiffer. “Is this a ‘you-don’t-know-when-your-birthday-is-so-every-day-is-your-birthday’ thing? Because—”

“Not at all… Remember the day we met? You made fun of my shirt—”

Xue Yang frowns at this sudden change of subject, but goes along with it. Better than talking about that damn birth certificate. “It was white, and ruffled. You looked like an escapee from a high school production of Hamlet. What was I supposed to do?”

“You crashed a motorcycle not three feet from me. An unregistered motorcycle with stolen plates.”

"I bought you coffee to make up for it, didn’t I?”

“You had them put four sugars in my cappuccino. It was undrinkable.”

“One was a Splenda, and anyway I took you to dinner to make up for the coffee, didn’t I?”

“Pizza at one of those dollar-a-slice places you have to stand at a counter to eat. I paid for it.”

“And I paid for your kombucha, whatever the heck that is.”

“And I paid for the band-aids we had to go buy after you cut yourself after playing catch with your knife.”

“You were distracting me!”

“I was quietly eating my pizza.”

“The light reflecting off your shirt ruffles got in my eyes.”

“Four dollars for the band-aids. You insisted on Hello Kitty.”

“Spongebob was also on the table." He wrinkles his nose. "I've got about three-fifty in my pocket, if you want it. But what’s your point, exactly?'

Xingchen smiles. He enjoys winding up Xue Yang, and it’s by far the most effective way to distract him when he’s in a dark mood. “Just that you better not put extra sugar in the fondue.”

“The what?”

“A-Qing read me the dessert menu. Chocolate fondue with bananas, blueberries, pineapple, and cherries. Strawberries, too, I think, and marshmallows, maybe even non-charred brownies—”

Xue Yang stops walking. “Xingchen—”

Xingchen lets go of Xue Yang’s arm, takes his hand instead. Kisses him soundly, right there on Sixth Avenue.

“Forget your birthday," he says. "We have a new date to celebrate every year." He gives Xue Yang's hand a little squeeze and kisses him again. “Happy anniversary, Xue Yang.”

Liked it? AO3 👉👈

Ruffle shirt reference

Obviously, Xue Yang was simply distracted by how pretty Xingchen was.

#xue yang #xiao xingchen #xuexiao #mdzsnet #I finally write something not cursed that I can put in the tag!#uttterly plotless fluff #cql #the untamed #untameddaily

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jishyucks · 4 years

Text

Dollarstore Mistletoe ‣ ljn

‣ genre: fluff, friends-to-lovers, female reader

‣ wc: 2.7k

‣ summary: Jeno looked up at the mistletoe then at you, cheeks heating up from the situation. So that’s why Hyuck had mistletoe.

this was going to be a short blurb but sike... enjoy!

You sat at the corner of the room, eyes drawn nervously at Donghyuck who was holding a tied up bunch of mistletoe in his hand. Though he was tossing it to himself, you could already read his mind from across the room. He had a sly smirk on his face as he glanced between you and Jeno who chose to sit between Jisung and Chenle.

Donghyuck, I fucking swear. You texted him, eyes growing wide in a subtle warning once he looked back up at you.

He laughed out loud before texting you back, I’m not doing anything.

Not rn but ur going to.

He loved going over to your place just to tease you about your (apparent) undying love for Jeno, constantly pushing you to make a move because Jeno was a ‘giant wuss’ and ‘would not grow balls to do so himself’ while you ‘had potential’. And honestly, you weren’t sure what to believe when it came to Donghyuck. He was a trickster. Who knew if he was lying this time or not.

You could easily recall maybe a week back when you were hanging out with this pest of a boy. He had been spontaneously mustering up a plan to get you and Jeno to kiss underneath some fake mistletoe he could find at the dollar store, which could then lead to confessing.

“Please don’t. We’re not living in some rom-com, Hyuck,” you glared at him, hoping that his ridiculous plan would be thrown out the window, “It’s not going to happen.” There was not a single bone in your body confident enough to kiss the boy you’ve held the longest crush on. Donghyuck was wrong when he said you had potential, meaning he could be wrong when it came to this plan he barely put effort into arranging.

“I know,” he replied simply, “But shit like this is inevitable. Plus you’re forgetting that I have the brain of a mastermind.” You ignored the way he wiggled his eyebrows in an attempt to persuade you, obviously failing. He knew he had to do everything himself, whether you liked it or not. Besides, he knew things you didn’t. He knew these plans were going to work.

So now, here he sat at Jeno’s house, waiting for the perfect time to dangle the plant above you both. He already knows you had the capability to run if you saw him move even an inch towards you. You were probably as alert as those animals being preyed on on National Geographic, ears perked and everything. Your fight or flight response was already activated just because of him.

As for Jeno, he was probably the complete opposite of you. He was leaning back on the couch with a delicate looking smile sitting on his face. Donghyuck was glad that he didn’t have a single clue about what was going on. But also... did he ever know what was going on?

A Christmas movie was playing on the TV even though barely anyone was paying any attention to it. Jaemin and Renjun were in the kitchen baking gingerbread cookies, following a recipe they found tiktok, while Jisung and Chenle were playing the nth game of PubG on their phones. Mark and Jeno were probably the only ones paying attention to the film, occasionally letting out a snort or giggle at a cheesy joke being delivered. Then there was you and Donghyuck, the only two aware of the plan that you didn’t even want to take part in.

“Why are you holding weed?” Jisung finally lifts his head from his phone’s screen, brows furrowed at the mistletoe in Donghyuck’s hands. He pointed slightly towards them, arm falling to his side soon after.

The older boy gave Jisung an unreadable look, “It’s not weed. It’s mistletoe.” Again, he tossed it up, barely grazing the popcorn ceiling before catching it.

“Ohh~ like that Justin Bieber song!” Jisung pointed out. His attention was soon directed back to his phone, probably beginning another game alongside Chenle. Jeno glanced at the younger boy and just shook his head in adoration and slight genuine confusion. It seemed like he literally had no idea, no clue, why Donghyuck was holding mistletoe. This, again, was good news to Donghyuck.

“Cookies!” Jaemin barged into the living room dressed in a holiday apron and oven mitts. He had flour sprinkled along his chest and collar bone, probably thrown on there by Renjun, who followed closely behind him.

Like young kids, attention spans were cut off and brought towards the gingerbread cookies, its aroma soon flooding the room. Through the pride that Jaemin gave off while standing there, you already knew the cookies were good. Especially with the help of Renjun.

Ditching your tense position, you had completely forgotten of your silent duel with Donghyuck, hopping up from the couch and skipping over to Jaemin. The others followed you shortly, Jeno being the second there.

Donghyuck pushed himself off the couch last, still playing with the mistletoe between his fingertips. Once spotting you standing directly next to Jeno, he stopped himself from audibly gasping and darted towards you both, holding up his arm above the space between the two of you, “Ah! Mistletoe~”

Your heart dropped, hand physically letting go of the cookie. It plopped back onto the tray as you spun around to face Donghyuck and then to an equally thrown off Jeno. You wanted to beat yourself up for letting your guard down for cookies.

Jeno looked up at the mistletoe then at you, cheeks heating up from the situation. So that’s why Hyuck had mistletoe. The math was mathing.

Jeno took in what was happening. Even if it was so sudden, Jeno didn’t feel like resisting. Instead he stood there and tried to read the non-verbal cues you were showing, trying to figure out whether or not you would want to carry out this unexplained tradition. Your face seemed to express no emotion, though he figured you were deep in thought, trying to process what was happening. And that was exactly what you were doing.

“I told you not to,” you mumbled towards Donghyuck’s direction. The looks you were sending Donghyuck could be used as weapons in some other dimension, but in this one the most you could do was intimidate the boy. In a brief state of panic, assuming Jeno found this situation weird, you tried to leave the situation, avoiding Jeno’s gaze as you did.

“It’s tradition!” Donghyuck attempted to pull you back. He was trying to be Christmas Cupid, knowing that feelings were being exchanged without the other’s knowledge. He thought he’d be helping.

Jeno shook his head, “N-no, Hyuck, it’s fine… if Y/N doesn’t want to do it, we can’t force her.” He felt himself gulp, mostly from the subtle rejection he’d received, before quickly reaching for a cookie and fleeing the scene.

Donghyuck turns to you, arm dropping to his side and mouth wide open, “He was going to kiss you!”

For a second, you doubted Donghyuck, shaking your head. But then at the realization that Jeno had left the room in a rather disappointed state, you probably were wrong and for once, Donghyuck was right. But there was no way you were admitting that in his presence.

It would’ve been completely silent if it wasn’t for the movie playing in the background. Everyone was still trying to process what had just happened, while you were still staring Donghyuck down.

“Are you blaming me?” You gestured to yourself. Sure it could have actually been your fault but that really wasn’t good for your degrading self-esteem right now.

“Yes,” Donghyuck threw the fake mistletoe onto the three seater couch, “It looked like you didn’t want to kiss the boy. You basically stomped on his heart.” Sure Donghyuck was over exaggerating but knowing how much Jeno liked you, you probably did.

“No I didn’t,” you try to deny everything, not wanting your hopes to be crushed by false information and beliefs.

“You did,” Mark butted in, “He looked like a kicked puppy.” You shifted your gaze from Donghyuck to Mark, someone who you could trust a bit more, and felt your frown deepen. Feeling yourself stumble back in the slightest bit, you glance at the stairs where Jeno had gone, probably to his room. Should you talk to him?

“Just go talk to him,” Jaemin pushed on, as if he could read what you were thinking, “But take an extra cookie with you.” He held the tray of baked goods in front of you and you complied, slithering past Mark, Renjun, and Chenle before going up the stairs.

You had no idea what you were going to tell Jeno. That you wanted to kiss him? That would come off as weird.

The pair of cookies in your hands could be your conversation starter.

Upon reaching his door, you raise a fist to knock.

If it was possible, Jeno would slap himself so many times just so he could knock some sense into himself. He was sitting at the edge of his bed with his palm to his forehead, feeling like an entire circus. Why the hell didn’t he even act like he was weirded out by Donghyuck and that fucking mistletoe? Why did he act like he was waiting for a long time for that opportunity to kiss you?

Maybe because he was. But he should’ve at least pretended like he wasn’t.

Jeno threw himself back into his bed, blinking at the ceiling while he mentally attacked himself for being so foolish. How would he recover from this? He shouldn’t have ran out of the room like that. It made him so obvious. It gave away the feelings he hoped he had been hiding well the entire time.

Jeno you’re so fucking stupid, he thought, teeth gritting.

He clenched his fist and started to hit the middle of his forehead lightly with his knuckles, startled when he heard a loud knocking sound.

Was that my forehead or was that the door?

Sitting up, he pivoted his head so that he was facing the door, brows furrowed as he waited for another indication that the sound was (hopefully) the door and not his skull.

“Jeno, it’s me.” Your voice was muffled and your shadow could be seen through the bottom.

For a second, Jeno hesitated, unsure if he was ready to face you at that moment, but he soon decided against it, standing up and towards his bedroom door in order to let you in. Opening it just a crack, he peeked out, seeing your shorter figure staring up at him, eyes slightly unreadable, “I brought cookies.”

Jeno couldn’t help but feel his chest warm up at the sight of you. He held back a smile to keep himself grounded. Pulling the door to create a wider opening, he let you in.

“Are you okay?” You knew he wasn’t okay. Just by the look in Jeno’s eyes, you could tell he had a lot going on in his head. You didn’t want to start the conversation off with ‘I actually wanted to kiss you too’ because in all honesty, anyone faced with that statement would be scared in one way or another, regardless of their feelings for the other.

“I guess you can say that,” Jeno hummed and sat at the foot of his bed. You handed him one of the cookies and bit into the second one you brought. Jeno couldn’t even make eye contact with you. He was a smidge too embarrassed to do so.

You sat next to him, the heat of your bodies bouncing off of each other from how close you were, “What do you mean?” You were drawing the conversation out while you still tried to run through what you were gonna say as your version of a confession.

He shrugged, taking a small bite, almost a nibble, from the cookie, “I know you’re not stupid, Y/N… Donghyuck was painfully obvious and so was I.” Feeling his heart pick up its pace scared him. This only meant he could either lose total control of his words, or just not speak at all. He focused on keeping them tame, “I’m sorry you had to witness that. Just forget it happened, okay? Sometimes, Donghyuck doesn’t know he’s going overboard.”

Jeno spoke softly, head dipping down and bangs falling over his eyes. The glasses he wore slipped down his nose as he did, but he quickly caught them with the tip of his index finger.

“Donghyuck doesn’t normally pull shit like that unless he has to,” you say as a reply, “He somehow always knows things we don’t.” You hoped Jeno got the hint from what you were saying, but by the way he kept his attention at the cooling gingerbread cookie in his hand as he nodded, you knew that he was completely clueless. Were you being too subtle?

“Do you know why he decided to buy that plastic plant in the first place?” You took a bite from Jaemin’s cookie and swung your legs.

Jeno shrugged again, “Because he’s Donghyuck?”

You both let out brief chuckles but you regained your composure and sighed. From downstairs, you hear the others laughing at something, some background noise from the near silence in the room.

“Because he knows how I feel.”

Jeno’s ears perked up at this statement, still afraid to look at you. He shifted in place, “How you feel?”

You rolled your eyes at Jeno, hitting him playfully, “Lee Jeno!” Yeah, you did want to drag the conversation in the first place, but it was getting too long. You wanted to get to the point and Jeno wasn’t taking any of the hints you were throwing.

“What?” He whined, acting as if you hit him hard when everyone knows he’s got the muscle to resist that pain. This familiar feeling between the two of you, the wave of comfort he felt, caused him to turn towards you. Once he realized what he had done, he turned away quickly, feeling himself grow timid once again.

“I know you’re not that stupid either, Jeno. Can you please look at me?” To no surprise he doesn’t listen. He was getting all flustered. The shy, blushy type of flustered.

Lifting your hand up to his face, you grabbed it softly and turned it so that he was facing you. He complied, letting you turn his head, only, his eyes were shut tightly.

You huffed, “Jeno! Please open your eyes.” He shook his head while his face was still being held with your hand, “Please?”

Again, he refused, this giving you permission to attempt to pry his eyelids with your own fingers. Though you gave up quite quickly. You didn't want to force them open as any sort of mishap was bound to happen.

“Last chance to open your eyes,” you warned, only he didn’t know what you were warning him about. He still kept them closed, feeling comfortable in this position he was in now, “Fine, Jeno, if you don’t open your eyes, then I will…”

“You will what?” He smirked. Though you couldn’t see his eyes, you could see his emotion through his raised brow. Deep down he knew what you were about to do. But he wanted to sit back and wait for it to happen.

Without thinking, you leaned in and brought his lips down to yours. At first there wasn’t any response from Jeno, but once he had finally processed what was going on, his eyes shot open, and as if it was some sort of instinct, he kissed back.

You liked this feeling. Maybe you would’ve felt it sooner if you hadn’t refused to kiss him earlier. But also you liked it how it was right now, and Jeno felt the same. Private, without any of the others watching. And it wasn’t because you had to follow a tradition, it was because you both wanted to do it.

After a few more long seconds, you both pulled away, beaming shyly at each other. You finally let go of his face and sat yourself back.

“What was…?” Jeno was at a loss of words.

You laughed softly, almost coming out as a giggle, “That’s how I feel.”

Maybe Donghyuck was right when said you had that sort of potential.

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