#like do you ever read the first paragraph of an article and just say to your computer 'just shut up' dsfghfds

[non-un-topo]

Already sick to death of academic language lol

[pancakes4two]

sweet nothings

wc: 2.1k

preview: The rest of the world is so eager to view him like an object, assume that just because he spends his life in the public view, he’s somehow devoid of insecurities. But to you, he’s still the same Harry who cried backstage at Wembley after his voice cracked during a solo. The same shy, innocent boy who vomited backstage after his first show, terrified that he’d messed it all up.

An article criticizing Harry blows up on the internet, and it hits him harder than expected. Luckily, you’re there to help pick up the pieces.

MASTERLIST | READ MY LATEST SERIES

Industry disruptors and soul deconstructers, and smooth-talking hucksters out glad-handing each other

And the voices that implore, "You should be doing more," to you I can admit that I'm just too soft for all of it.

—Sweet Nothing, Taylor Swift

———

The article is released on a Friday afternoon. It's absolutely brutal—rips single every creative project Harry's ever done to shreds and leaves no endeavor unscathed. Every sentence is a biting remark, each paragraph swirled with vile accusations. It starts by criticizing his film roles, the creative direction he took in his third album, then accuses him of extorting his own fans. The author questions not only his artistry but his personhood, digs up unverified claims of rudeness and twists them into a narrative of Harry being an egotistical, ungrateful pop star. Within the hour, almost every major news station has picked the story up. It doesn’t matter how far-fetched it is. The internet takes to the author’s vitriol like wildfire, sharing it across social media platforms and online forums. Everyone wants to be the first to say they always knew something wasn’t quite right about him, that it’s about time someone knocked him off his pedestal.

It’s disgusting in every sense of the word. And it hurts even more because Harry is blissfully unaware. He’s asleep beside you now, the two of you having settled into bed to take a quick nap together three hours earlier, when the internet had yet to point their pitchforks towards him. You know he’s been overextending himself lately, still sleeping off the jet lag from tour but unwilling to slow down his life on account of tiredness. He’s always been like that, so dedicated to his music, because to him, putting less than two-hundred percent into the thing he loves most would be a waste. You can hardly remember the last time he’d slept earlier than two after coming home—even without touring commitments, he’s still found a way to keep himself busy—staying late in the studio and meeting with executives from his record label to review the marketing plan for his next album. He’s always thinking about the future, how he can reinvent himself and make sure he can stay doing what he loves for as long as possible.

It’s why he’d deserved this chance to unwind and relax in the quiet of your home. But now, he’s going to wake up to a rogue journalist completely assassinating his character, when all he’s ever wanted to do is sing and make others happy. The way you see it, it’s not the least bit fair.

You look at Harry and brush his curls away from his face gently so as to not wake him. Your phone is still turned on, the article glaring angrily against your palm as you watch him sleep. He looks so peaceful, his arm curled around your waist and his legs tangled with yours as if he can’t bear to be far away from you even in slumber. You wish everyone else could see him like this: soft and vulnerable, his lips upturned ever-so-slightly like he’s dreaming about something particularly pleasant.

The rest of the world is so eager to view him like an object, assume that just because he spends his life in the public view, he’s somehow devoid of insecurities. But to you, he’s still the same Harry who cried backstage at Wembley after his voice cracked during a solo. The same shy, innocent boy who vomited backstage after his first show, terrified that he’d messed it all up. Ten years down the road and he’s gained confidence, for sure. But when he’s not busy being this glittering, hip-wiggling rockstar who moves like he’s got the whole world in the palm of his hand, he’s just Harry. He still wrings his hands nervously before every performance, burns his tongue on hot tea that’s meant to preserve his voice. You remember what he said to you back in June before his first stadium show: I don’t think I’ll ever be able to be someone who doesn’t care about what others think of them. He cares more than the article’s author and the legions of people criticizing his every move online will ever know.

You shuffle forward, closing the gap between your bodies and press a soft kiss into Harry’s forehead. You don’t expect him to stir from it, but it seems he was just about to wake up naturally before you disturbed him, so his eyes slowly open and he smiles when his vision focuses on you. You try to school your expression into something relatively normal. Unfortunately, Harry knows you too well and can immediately tell that something’s off. In any other situation, you’d be impressed by how well he can read you. Even with his mind suspended between alertness and sleep, he knows you’re upset and reaches for your hand in concern.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Harry asks, rubbing circles into the back of your hand. He knows the repetitive motion grounds you when you’re anxious, so he continues to graze your skin with his thumb, willing you to relax.

“H—“ you start to say, but you’re cut off by the sound of Harry’s ringtone. He reaches over you to grab his phone from the nightstand, his other hand still clasped with yours. When he falls back into the mattress, you manage to get a glance at his phone screen. It’s displaying an incoming call from Jeff. Fuck.

Harry accepts the call, still ignorant to the situation. His gaze flickers over your face as the line connects—he's clearly still worried about you.

"Hey, H," Jeff says. You can hear him sigh through the phone, "have you been online recently?"

"Been asleep for the past," Harry pauses to check the time, "three hours, so that would be a no."

"Shit," Jeff says, sounding significantly less collected than he usually does. "Okay. Um, do me a favor and stay off of social media for now. I'll call you when it's all been resolved."

"What?" Harry sits up slightly at the sound of Jeff's voice, running a hand through his hair. "I'm confused. Is everything alright?"

"Listen, it's fine. I've got it all under control, just... don't go on Instagram, or Twitter, or anything."

"Jeff," Harry groans, "don't be cryptic. You're obviously dealing with something that's got to do with me, don't you think I have a right to know what's going on?"

There's silence over line for a bit, Jeff clearly ruminating over whether or not to tell Harry the truth. You chew on your lip worriedly, waiting for his voice to come through again.

"There's an article that’s been published online," Jeff starts, "and it's highly critical of you. It's circulating through social media right now, and we're trying to put a stop to it. I've got a meeting with your label's attorneys in a few minutes, but seriously H, for your own good please do not read it. We'll have it taken down by the end of the day."

"Oh," Harry blinks, clearly caught off-guard. You can't blame him for it. People don't normally wake up from naps and find out half the internet has turned against them. "Alright. That's fine. Um, call me if you need anything. Good luck."

"H, I'm serious, don't—" Jeff begins, but Harry hangs up before he can finish his sentence. He's already sat up fully in bed, back leaning against the headboard as he types away furiously on his phone. You don't try to stop him from Googling the article; he deserves to see what's been written. You just sit up next to him and silently run a hand down his arm, tracing where the fabric of his t-shirt ends and the familiar ink on his skin begins. You reach for him and let him know that he has you to lean on.

"You know what they've written isn't true," you whisper, "you know that." It’s all you can say for now.

Harry doesn't respond to that, his eyes too busy scanning through the article. He spends the next seven minutes reading every word silently, taking each criticism and judgement in. When he’s finished, Harry shuts his phone off with a click and sets it down silently on the bedside table. You avert your eyes from him, afraid that if you look up you might be able to see every morsel of hurt on his face.

In the end, Harry’s the first to break the silence.

“Who approved that?” Is what he says, his voice faltering almost imperceptibly at the end. It’s quiet enough that only someone who knows him as well as you do would be able to notice.

“H,” you respond, splaying your hand across his chest and letting his head fall gently onto your shoulder.

“None of that is real. It’s not a reflection of who you are.” You say that with conviction. He’s got the most beautiful soul, does everything with so much heart. He’s so full of love that at times you worry he might burst from it. It’s completely unfair what he’s been reduced to.

“You can only read shitty things about yourself for so long before you start to believe them,” Harry says brokenly, and his composure gives away then. He takes a trembling breath in and you feel a wetness start to form on the sleeve of your shirt. You don’t have to look at him to know he’s crying.

It’s in moments like these where his façade starts to crumble, and you see him transform back into the boy you once knew, before the whole world knew his name. Spending every day terrified that at any given moment, people wouldn’t want to listen to his voice anymore and the rug would be pulled from under his feet. Fearing that he might wake up one day and have to return to Holmes Chapel, even though he’s always been too big for the small town he grew up in.

“Love,” you say, pressing a hand to his cheek. His skin is flushed and you can see the ghost of a tear falling down the side of his face. “How is anyone meant to believe anything they’ve said is valid, when they don’t know you? I know exactly who you are, and the person they’re talking about in that article is not it.”

Harry sniffles at that, pulling himself closer to you. You see him glance at his phone, so you turn it over facedown and revert your full attention back to him.

“You’re so incredibly special,” you continue, carding your hands soothingly through his hair, “you’ve achieved an immense amount of success in the last ten years. You’ve impacted so many people, used your platform to do so much good. There’s always going to be people who want more from you, who criticize and tell you you’re not doing enough. But you are doing enough, H. Seriously. You’re only human, and it’s not your fault that others expect you to be more than that. And even so, I think you make a pretty exceptional human already. You know how many people walk up to me when I’m alone and ask me to tell you that you’ve changed their lives? There’s so many that I’d lost track of the number about seven years ago.”

Harry opens his mouth to say something in response, but you pat his face gently and give him a smile as if to say, I’m not finished yet.

“And beyond that, who cares about the industry, about what faceless people online have to say about you? At the end of the day, you’re enough. I’m not here for the Harry Styles who fills stadiums or commands attention at movie premieres. I’m here for the Harry who accidentally leaves the coffee pot on for too long because he’s too busy trying to get me to dance with him in the kitchen. For the Harry who keeps movie stubs and pebbles deep inside his pockets because he wants to keep a souvenir to remind him of every little thing we’ve done together. The Harry who’s a huge sentimental sap, who’s got the biggest heart in the world.”

You finish with a sigh, gazing at Harry earnestly and hoping that he can feel the gravity of your words.

“You’re right,” Harry smiles softly, clasping a hand around your wrist, voice slightly raspy still. “I shouldn’t let it get to my head. It’s just hard sometimes, you know? I feel like I might be a little too soft for all of it.”

“I love your softness and vulnerability,” you say, “And getting upset when people are dragging your name through the mud is perfectly normal. I can’t even begin to imagine how overwhelming it is for you. But you’ll always have me right here beside you. And trust me, I’d be going to war for you over Twitter right now if I knew Jeff wouldn’t kill me for doing so.”

Harry laughs at that, loud and open in the way that you love. “My Princess Charming,” he says, wrapping his arms around you in a crushing hug. “Forever prepared to defend my honor.”

True to his word, Jeff and Columbia’s legal team get the article taken down in record time. They say Harry’s allowed to post a response to it, if he wants, but he’s never been one to start fights over the internet so he settles on this instead.

A single picture, posted to his Instagram of your hands, your fingers intertwined like the two of you were built to be extensions of each other. The caption is simple. It reads:

I find myself running home to your sweet nothings

Outside, they’re push and shoving; you’re in the kitchen humming

All that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing.

He turns the comments off, not wanting to entertain any further commentary. It’s a picture meant for just the two of you, a reminder that all the noise coming from the outside means nothing when you have each other. It’s sweet. It’s nothing. And yet somehow, it’s everything you’ll ever need.

———

reblogs & feedback are highly welcomed and appreciated <3

TAGLIST: @crazygirlinthisworld​ @grapejuice-rry​ @b-reads-things​ @s8tellite @michellekstyles​ @vrittivsanghavi @alienorknight​ @flwrmuse 

[itsgodepi]

If I lose my mind | Ch. 5

Series summary: When life has given you more than enough lemons and you cannot figure out how to make a lemonade, the only way to make it work is to get rid of the whole basket. But was it neccesary to send you to a whole different dimension for that? A juicer would have done the job, really. Or, one day you go to sleep as a normal person and the next you wake up as a Formula One driver. You've never been a fan but isn't it like, one of the most exclusive sports? Pairing: CL16, LH44, CS55, DR3 x fem!reader Chapter: Previous | Next Word Count: 3k Also on AO3

Reading your own Wikipedia page is quite a strange experience. Paragraph after paragraph of your life written on the internet for everybody to see, from the day you were born all the way to this very moment. 

You do not know if the fact that none of it is true is for better or worse. 

Some parts are accurate, information about your hometown, date of birth, relatives' names and... that’s about it really. According to this biography, not only have you been the runner-up for a Formula 3 championship, but you are also a Formula 2 champion, which is good you guess, for someone that did not even know those kinds of competitions existed. As of two hours ago, Formula One was the only championship with those kinds of cars you had ever heard about, but there are so many. Too many actually. In a section of your page named ‘junior racing career’ —which is in itself a crazy sentence to read—, it even says something about karting’s championships and an academy thing, concepts you are not sure if you want to understand. 

Oh, and the most important part, you are a Formula 1 driver, a statement endlessly repeated throughout the text. They even claim this to be your second year on the motorsport, ‘not a rookie anymore’ they say, as if yesterday’s race was not the first one you have ever watched from start to finish. 

Still, if being pushed into a Formula One car and a whole Wikipedia page was not enough of a confirmation, you can find a million articles online that certify your participation in the sport. Webs filled with photos of you with the cars, dressed in full gear and with that stupid blue helmet, the situation getting worse and worse with every tap of your finger. 

How is any of this possible? 

The rabbit hole that seems to be your ‘life’ keeps you awake night after night, new information slapping you in the face every two minutes while you try to navigate what appears to be a Formula One driver’s normal schedule. Nick makes sure of that last part at least. 

The first step on that agenda had been to fly out of Austria, a place you cannot comprehend how you had arrived to when you were in Spain just yesterday. It is not like you were having the best time of your life there, finishing the third month of your external internship in a city you thought was already too far away from home, but this change looks a bit excessive. The possibility of being in a completely different country had seemed so absurd at first, when a list called Austrian GP came up as one of the top results in your research, and yet with a simple look to the navigation app, your worst nightmare had been confirmed. From your trip to the airport, to the arrival to another country, France, and to a new hotel, Nick walking you through every step of the process and only leaving you alone once you are back in the hotel room. 

The next few days follow a similar dynamic, mornings spent trailing behind Nick without a clue of what happens around you and long nights glued to the phone, the date for the next GP —or whatever they call it— getting closer and closer.  

You are not ready to repeat last Sunday’s events, an engine failure had saved you from the inevitable end, but you might not be so lucky next time. There is no way you are stepping into that car again, that is for sure, and even less so when you have not figured out what brought you here in the first place.  

Although you had drowned yourself in information about your supposed life the first nights in France, the need to discover what was happening to you had quickly managed to overpower that curiosity. From the moment Nick knocks on your door early on the morning to the hours you lay awake on bed looking for anything that could explain this madness, you spend every second of the day looking for an explanation.  

A kidnapping had been the most credible theory from day one, the way you had woken up to all those screams and the men surrounding you, how Nick had come into your hotel room that morning and pushed you to drive with no regard for your safety. It made sense. However, the articles posted all over the internet told a very different story. There is too much information about you, some posts even dating back to when you were a child, photos and videos that cannot be simply edited and uploaded to make you believe you have gone crazy. You have driven a Formula One car on an official race, for crying out loud, that is not something anybody can orchestrate. 

To be honest, the whole Formula One thing had knocked down quite a few of your guesses. What could someone gain from making you, a nobody, believe they are a motorsport driver?   

In fact, the only theory that could easily explain everything that had happened to you in the past few days is that: none of this is real. A dream. You can vividly remember dozing off on your bed, that sensation of falling down and then suddenly waking up in that unfamiliar place. It could be the reason why you had blacked out when the car exited the garage, why everyone knew you, and could also explain the existence of all those false stories on the internet.  

You had made all of this up. 

That had indeed been one of your first assumptions, or at least had been an easy way for your mind to let go of all the worries in such an unnerving situation. If this was not real, there was nothing to stress about, no danger in sight. Your alarm will go off any moment now and you will be one day closer to ending this internship and going back home. Tomorrow will be a new day. 

Despite this, as time goes by, it becomes harder and harder to hold onto this happy thought. 

Stepping foot into the new track is a breaking point. It is Friday, five days have gone by and nothing has changed, the countdown to the next race weighting down on your mind as you walk through what Nick had called the paddock. It is that strange street again, the one lined by those colorful buildings but in a completely different country —another clue that this was indeed not real, you were clearly lacking imagination to be recycling sceneries like this. 

They had brough you here yesterday as well, for a tour around the track that had set your nerves alight. Thankfully, you had done nothing but wander around the circuit for a while, be surrounded by a couple cameras, have a meeting with the engineers and go back to the hotel for another sleepless night.  

Maybe you should sleep more —which sounds quite contradictory when you are supposedly already dreaming— because, when the events of last Sunday start repeating themselves, you do not even have the strength to push back. Nick manages once again to lure you into the white building and prepare you for what he calls practice, but the reality is that just the sight of that Formula One car on the garage makes you heart drop to the pit of your stomach. 

“Don’t worry about times,” a man who has been following you all day says “Let’s see if everything feels good first and we’ll talk things over for FP2”.  

A lot of changes had been made to the car since Austria, that is what all the meetings had been about. You had silently sat down through all of them, nodding along to the engineers’ words as if you understood any of it. 

Now that you are seated in the car, blue helmet and jumpsuit on, you can only wish that whatever broke the car in Austria has not been fixed. That the engine won’t even start, and you will have to retire again. It is hard enough to listen to the rest of the cars exiting their own garages, their engines revving like they might explode.  

How they have managed to put you on the spot yet again, that you do not understand. And it is not only a one-time thing, but they easily make you jump in the car later the day for a second practice. 

When you are finally helped out of the car the second time, body uncontrollably trembling and a static sound filling your ears, you feel an unusual sense of calmness. The whole ride had felt like such a clear sign that none of this is real, it can’t be. Both practices had gone by in the blink of an eye, just like it had happened in Austria, a fade to black and you are back where you started. You do not even remember seeing other cars on the road or how you got back to the garage. Nothing. The only proof that you had driven around for hours being the fatigue consuming your body, something that backs the dreaming theory up so perfectly. 

They say you have done great though, so that is something.  

Nevertheless, it feels nice to be back on normal clothes, like there is less of a target on your back for the cameras and other strangers, but it is still difficult to keep a low profile when you are walking through the paddock with the team’s merchandising. Nick is guiding you out to the last meeting of the day, after you have fulfilled all the media duties and team reunions that have kept you on the track since your arrival this morning. He says this driver’s briefing thing should not last long, that it is quite late already, and they are probably thinking more about going back home than anything.  

The meeting is on another building, one you had not even noticed in your two days here, Nick leading you inside and up some stairs until you find the meeting room. When he opens the door, you realize there is already people seated inside, the sound of their mixed talks now filling the long corridor. You recognize some of them, not from the team meetings but from Austria, other drivers.  

The room is furnished as a classroom, a projector on the right wall and the rest of the space filled with rows of chairs. There are not many people in it yet, Nick had said it would be better to get there early before people start crowding the entrance and now you understood why. Your gaze instantly zeroes in on Lewis, a tiny smile pulling at your lips while Nick guides you to some seats, deciding to leave your things with him and go say hello. You have not seen him since Austria, after you had spent the entire pre-race ceremony talking to him, and now that you have kind of ruled out the possibility that he is a kidnapper, you have realized that maybe he was just being nice. 

Yet, before you can take more than two steps away from Nick, you feel someone pulling at your hand. You come to a sudden stop, looking back to see a man seated in the row in front of you and Nick’s seat regarding you with a huge grin on his lips. He has dark hair and big brown eyes that seem to be staring into your soul. 

“Oh c’mon, you’re not even going to say hello because I didn’t get you cookies last week?” the man chuckles, tilting his head as he looks up at you like he cannot believe what you were about to do “Isn’t that too much?” 

Even though his tone is light and jokey, you cannot help but frown at him. Why would you greet him when you don’t know him in the first place? And why is he holding your hand? 

Instead of letting go when you stand there in silence, too stunned to react to his words, he decides to pull you down into the seat next to his “Didn’t Charles get you some? You are being greedy at this point” he jokes once you are seated, not a word leaving your lips. 

Oh, Charles, you remember him from Austria as well. Actually, he was wearing the same exact red shirt as this man, a detail that the abrupt start of the conversation had left you blind to. The Ferrari logo in both his chest and cap are even more of a telltale of who he must be. Charles’ teammate. 

“They were nice...” you respond, crossing your legs and relaxing back on the chair now that you have gathered your bearings. It is true, you had been munching on those cookies throughout the race after your disqualification, Nick bringing them over to you as a treat to distract you. 

The man shakes his head in disbelief, smile widening as he assures you “I'll get you a full basket next time, don’t worry” 

The promise genuinely makes you smile, he seems nice. 

“How’s the car doing?” the man queries, crossing his arms over his chest as he looks around 

You can almost feel the media training kicking in, pre-made phrases hanging off the tip of your tongue, they have been putting a microphone in your face and asking you about it all morning. Nonetheless, you manage to push it all down, it finally feels like you are having a normal conversation after this stressful week, you are not about to parrot the engineers' words for the millionth time “Well, it hasn’t caught fire yet...”  

The man seems to like that answer, letting out a giggle and a “That’s an improvement” while he nods in understanding. There is a moment of silence that follows, his eyes set on your face as if he was waiting for something that does not come. Is he expecting a more in-depth response or something? Yet, before you can decide on what to do, he finally wills himself to say what he has been thinking ever since you entered the room “So... are you feeling better?”  

The question catches you off guard at first, the conversation taking a more serious turn than you had expected —or wanted. Should you say you are great, just to shut down the topic entirely? The room is filling up with people by the second and it is not like you are about to open your heart to a total stranger. Or are you supposed to give the same response Nick had made you repeat over and over again in front of the journalists? ‘I’m perfectly fine now, it was pure exhaustion’. 

“I’m-” you start saying, mind not really having decided on what lie to tell, when someone pats your head. 

You rise your head to look behind you, both to see who it is and to get away from their touch —what is with this people taking such liberties?—, the man by your side doing the same. Standing tall behind your row of chairs is none other than the man you have spent day and nights thinking about: Daniel. 

“Ready for the two hours briefing?” he sighs with a raised eyebrow, his hand traveling down to your shoulder when you turn your body around to talk to him. This is the first time you have seen the man out of that bright orange jumpsuit, now sporting a shirt of the same color instead, logos drawn all over it. He is still wearing that matching cap though. 

“So dramatic...” the man seated by your side snickers, the previous chat seemingly forgotten “We should do a twenty-four-hour briefing just for you” 

“Mate,” Daniel says with a half-smile, pointing at you with a tilt of his head “she wasn’t here last year” 

That must mean something you do not understand because it is all the man in red needs to groan out loud, his face falling in defeat at the prospect of having to sit through such a long meeting. On the other hand, you can only sit there with your eyebrows furrowed, Nick had assured you would be out of here in no time. And of course you were not here last year, or ever, you have not- but your inner monologue gets suddenly interrupted by the one phrase you have been telling yourself all day: none of this is real, you’re dreaming. 

“What? No, she was driving here last year” another voice joins the conversation, his statement sharp and direct. You lean your body forward to see who it is, he has taken a seat on the other side of the man in red and his body is blocking the stranger’s face, eyes widening when you recognize him. Charles. 

“It was still Mazepin in France, he almost crashed into Kimi remember?” Daniel corrects him with a side grin “She started after the break in... was it Silverstone?” 

Daniel looks at you for confirmation on this one, the other two men also lowering their gaze to yours, waiting. You are so overwhelmed though, it feels so strange, the fact that they are talking so categorically about things that have not ever happened. What is Mazepin? Kimi? And Silverstone? What break? The pressure of the situation getting to you in the worst possible moment. 

So you end up doing what you do best, nod along to whatever the other person says even though you do not understand anything. That is what you have done to the engineers, to the media, to Nick and now to these three men before the start of a briefing that you won’t understand a word of either.  

Afterall, none of this matter, this is only a dream, right? 

Next Chapter

___

Author's note: Thanks a lot for all the hearts, comments and everything! I'm so happy you're liking the fic

Taglist: @purplephantomwolf @raye2000 @yuiiimd @drezzerk33 @leclercdream @homie0sapien @minkyungseokie @carlossainzwho @rewmuslupin

[graychrissy]

🌊Digital Detox + Egyptians lucid dreaming method 🌊

Idk what to put on the title of this post so I wrote digital detox and I have copy pasted the main lines.

In the ancient Egypt the Egyptians use to have lucid dreaming alot and it was extremely easy for for them not just Egyptians but it was also mention ancient Indian scriptures.

You’re probably wondering ‘what’s the secret’? The real problem is often NOT your technique. It’s actually another issue that no amount of techniques, articles, reality checks, supplements or uncomfortable masks is going to fix. It’s your ‘inner game’. Specifically, your subconscious motivation and reward circuits, and ‘dopamine cycle’. Travel in your mind for a second, to ancient Egypt.

There were no smart phones, internet connections, computer animated action movies or virtual reality headsets.

Your brain back then would have produced a healthy amount of dopamine as a reward for pretty basic things like eating, working, exploring, and taking some time to relax or meditate

Now our average attention spans are literally less than 7 SECONDS. It’s probably a lot lower than that, and It’s declining every single year with the rise of new, highly addictive and stimulating social media apps and platforms. When was the last time you meditated for over 90 minutes? Have you ever? I’m not saying you have to do that to lucid dream, but this sort of practice was very common 5000 years ago. In fact, it was weird NOT to do that. And herein lies the main problem.

Your brain is ‘fried’ with an overly stimulated dopamine pathway. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that stimulates the feeling of WANTING to keep doing something. It’s the reason you keep scrolling through Instagram, or keep refreshing your Facebook feed to see if there are any new comments or notifications. But it’s also the SUBCONSCIOUS reason you aren’t able to lucid dream easily. In the last decade especially, there have been billions of dollars spent by big tech to essentially ‘addict you’ to their platforms. Why? Money. The more time and energy you spend on platforms like that, the more money they make. So the task has been given to artificial intelligence. The AIs often just get trained and told a few basic things: 1: Get people to spend more time on the platform 2: Get people to keep coming BACK to the platform as often as possible The ‘AI’ pays almost NO attention to what that would do to your mental health, attention span, motivation, emotions, or really anything else. Much LESS attention is paid to the effect it has on your ability to focus, or do things like, say, lucid dream. Now, the ‘dopamine cycle’ is one part of the problem, but it’s actually pretty easy to fix. There are several little pieces to what I call the ‘modern brain puzzle’. Things that just weren’t a problem 5000 years ago. You can see some of this playing out in children today. On average, children or people under the age of 15, find it MUCH easier to lucid dream than adults do. It’s because at that age, their dopamine system has not been damaged too much. This is of course changing now, as more and more children are having access to smartphones, but it’s an interesting point. In fact not only does the dopamine problem affect your ability to lucid dream, it also affects your ability to WANT to lucid dream (consciously and subconsciously). Specifically I’m talking about your motivation and focus. And you guessed it, there’s your number one cause of problems when trying to meditate, practice techniques like the WILD, or recall your dreams.

After reading this paragraph or stanza whatever,I noticed something,as a kid I had lucid dreams alot with just putting intentions.

My first lucid dream was at around 7-8 years old,and I was sinking when I realised I was dream and I tried controlling my dream and even succeeded,and I was probably there for about 10 minutes playing with underwater creatures and mermaids.

And till 7 grade I use to have alot of lucid dreams but after that I was allowed to use phone and so I was always invested in phone like all the time. By the way lucid dream was pretty normal for me and I pretty much forgot about it and never really paid attention to lucid dreaming. And then I rarely had any lucid dreams, probably 4 times ever since 8 grade and I've noticed every time I lucid dream it's always whenever I don't use any social media.

In 9 grade my phone was taken again because my mother noticed my social media addiction. And after few months I again start to lucid dream for fun easily and effortlessly but during COVID I was again allowed to have my phone and then a new laptop so now my life was revolving around social media again and for the past few year I only lucid dream whenever I don't get to use my phone more then 2 days.

Idk bout y'all but I wasn't allowed to use phones or laptop till 8th grade so the only thing I knew was TV which I only watched after coming home so like my mind was most of the te bored because I didn't had anything to keep it entertain which made it easy for me to observe around looking for things to do.

So how can you reverse the ‘dopamine problem’ and several of the other issues modern life has created? By the way: This is NOT about destroying your phone and going back to live in a cave. There are actually several powerful habits you can install, that will let you KEEP using your phone, laptop etc, but without these harmful effects. Here’s the simple solution to more lucid dreams: 1. Reverse engineer your life and remove distractions, manipulation, ‘dopamine hijacking’ and harmful blue light exposure from your daily routine (along with some other ‘problem patterns’) 2. Get inside your subconscious brain and rewire yourself to WANT to practice lucid dreaming, and to effortlessly do reality checks at the right time, without even trying 3. Learn powerful ‘all day awareness’ and ‘lucid living’ techniques that give your brain superpowers in the fight 4. On top of THAT foundation, learn the most effective techniques and concepts, use our tools to stay motivated, and experience lucid mastery within 14 days. Let’s dive a little bit deeper: First, you have to ‘reverse engineer’ the problem. This can be complicated if you don’t know what you’re doing, but we’ve laid everything out step by step for you. If dopamine addiction is part of the problem, we have to break that addiction first. Then comes your mindset, and your motivation pathways. You need to actually feel GOOD when you practice these things. I see so many people saying they’re struggling to remember to do reality checks, or they just don’t want to wake up at ‘weird times’ to practice. Don’t worry, you won’t have to. It will feel good, and you’ll ENJOY practicing these things. Next, your subconscious mind. It’s SO important to fix your internal beliefs about lucid dreaming, because the chances are you have ‘internal blocks’ about becoming lucid. They’re easy to pick up, but a bit harder to ‘unlearn’. The system shows you how to ‘unlearn’ them, and install new, powerful and self affirming beliefs into your mind. This gives your brain lots more motivation to keep trying. Now, one of the most common things I hear people say is that they can’t REMEMBER to keep doing reality checks. It’s linked to the dopamine problem we mentioned earlier, but it’s also connected to a few other psychological principles that we’ll get onto. We’ll give you a new framework to ENJOY reality checks, remember them without any annoying reminders, and actually get them to SHOW UP in your dreams, 9 out of 10 times. And then finally, we’ll build the most effective techniques, methods and concepts on top of that new, strong foundation. Of course, I’m simplifying this here, but that’s the outline.

Here are some videos that may help.

If you want to know more about it or get the steps to lucid dream you can buy the book or go through a long step to get it for free but the procedure is very long and probably only for Iphone user.

You find some good articles ways to do the 'reverse dopamine' thingy.(I donot trust my research on this topic cuz I got confuse)

You may use Adambja's tape to reprogram your subconscious and this hacking the matrix tape the comments under the video was so good and I found this tape on someone's success story. You can use this two tapes to reprogram your subconscious and of course psych-k.

This is pretty much all you need digital detox,observing your surroundings and subconscious reprogramming to change your belief or assumptions.

And this will make you even more motivated that you are working on your goals as many of us have the access of devices it's hard for us to keep up with all this method and it's not like we are always busy if we are we wouldn't be scrolling through Tumblr and Pinterest all the time. If you read the the copy pasted part you'll see what I mean.

Edit: I forgot to mention it 🥲 if we follow do this we CAN HAVE lucid dream everyday.

Egyptians lucid dreaming tea

This will be quick,so I went to my aunt's place with my mother and my aunt's ran out of tea powder/leaves so she used her daughter's blue lotus tea and after getting home I took a nap and I HAD A FOKING LUCID DREAM,so basically I didn't knew that it was the tea until I was doing some research on LD and found out that in ancient Egypt they use Blue Lotus tea and I found some review about it on YouTube and people had very vivid dreams aswell. This tea basically put you in REM which y'all probably know about.

But I don't like tea😐,so if anyone have interest you can try I honestly want to but my hate for tea is on top on the list of top 5 things I hate,you can find them online people even use Blue Lotus in vape😐not encourageling y'all to smoke but if anyone does you can.

[beyondthesefourwalls]

For Better or Worse

Summary: Getting the phone call that your husband was involved in a training accident was something you had never prepared yourself for, and something that you never wanted to experience again. You felt like your entire world crashed down around you and the only thing that would pick up the pieces would be Bradley opening his eyes. But then he does, and everything starts to turn out worse than you ever thought it could. 

Pairing: Bradley Bradshaw x Reader (no use of y/n)

Word Count: 5.2K

Warnings: ANGST. So much angst. Language. 

Notes: Based on this request. While this serves as a prequel to my full length series Remember You Even When I Don’t, it’s not necessary to read that in order to read this. Part of The Forgotten Moments.

To all the Forgetful Boy and Pumpkin fans - I’m sorry for the hurt, but I hope you enjoy the first installment that features the reader's perspective! 

__________

You felt like you had been staring at the same paragraph for hours, and that should have been your first indicator that something was wrong. 

Election season as a political journalist meant you were never short on things to cover, especially with the climate so fraught with tension. It was looking to be one of the most interesting Midterms ever and this article should have written itself by now, only you were struggling to find the words. You had felt off all day, but in the last hour or two, it had gotten exponentially worse. You were anxious, fidgety, and you weren’t sure about what. 

All you knew was that something felt wrong. 

Your eyes drifted from the blinking cursor on your computer screen to the solitary framed photo you kept on your desk. A small smile tugged at your lip as you looked at it. It was taken a little over a year ago when Bradley had just gotten back from a three month long deployment and was one of your favorites.

God, you loved that man. You wondered if he was still in the air. He normally texted you when he was done with a flight, but you hadn’t heard from him yet this afternoon. But you knew if anything could help snap you out of this funk, it was your husband. 

Right as you were picking up your phone to text him, though, it started vibrating against the desk. You smiled, thinking for a moment that maybe he had read your mind and was calling you, but it slipped from your face when you saw Jake’s name instead. There was no reason for him to be calling you in the middle of the day when the entire Dagger Squad was going through an exercise today. That pit of anxiety in your stomach grew as you brought the phone to your ear.

“Hey, J.” 

When he said your name, you knew that something was wrong. Jake had become one of your closest friends in the last few years and you had heard a lot of tones from him, but nothing like the way he sounded now. 

“What happened?” you asked. You wished you wouldn’t have. 

There had been an accident, and Bradley was injured during his ejection. They were airlifting him to the hospital on base. You needed to go. You felt all of the air leave your lungs as what he was saying processed through your head. 

You didn’t understand. Bradley had said the drill they were doing today was routine, something they had done multiple times before. He was one of the best pilots in the Navy; the 1% of the 1%. He couldn’t have been hurt. 

Jake called your name, and you think maybe it wasn’t the first time. “I need you to breathe for me, dollface.”

It’s not until you let out a loud gasp that you realized you had been holding your breath. 

“J, I - is he okay? Tell me that he’s okay. Please.”

Jake was quiet on the other end and you thought there were tears welling in your eyes at the silence and as what that means hit you. You’re out of your desk chair and running down the stairs without another word. 

———————

You spotted everyone easily as soon as you entered through the emergency room doors. Jake saw you first, standing immediately and stepping toward you. 

“Where is he?” you asked right away, not bothering with any pleasantries. 

“Doll-“

“Jake, where is Bradley?” you demanded, your voice overpowering him.

The blonde took a deep breath and you never wanted to see this look on his face looking back at you ever again, because you knew it was going to hurt you before any words even came out. 

“They just took him in for surgery.” 

You bit the inside of your cheek to keep from screaming. Surgery. He was hurt enough to need surgery. You tried to tell yourself it wasn’t bad. Any kind of injury could require surgery. It didn’t mean it was severe. You took a deep breath, trying to steel yourself despite the tears brewing in your eyes. 

“What happened?” you asked. Jake looked away from you, his jaw clenched. You noticed behind him how the rest of your friends exchanged wary looks with one another. No one wanted to be the one to tell you, and these were people you considered family who usually never had problems telling you anything. The sinking feeling was growing bigger and bigger. 

You met Pete’s eyes over Jake’s shoulder. Devastation was written all over his face and you pushed past Jake to get to Bradley’s godfather.

“Pete. What happened?”

“Sweetheart..” the older man trailed off, shaking his head. 

You gritted your teeth as frustration bubbled inside of you. You spun to face the rest of the waiting room. “Goddamnit, someone tell me what the hell is going on, right now.”

Pete laid a hand gently on your arm. “Let’s sit down, okay?”

“I don’t want to sit down,” you snapped, jerking your arm back from his touch. “I want to know what happened to my husband.”

“There was a malfunction with his engine.” His voice was pained, and you knew he was hurting, too. But you couldn’t focus on that right now. “His ejection got jammed at first. When he was finally able to, he got banged up. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.” 

Despite how badly you needed to know, part of you wished you wouldn’t have demanded the information. Because now that you had it you could see it so clearly in your head, what Pete was describing. Your sweet husband, fighting to eject from the jet that he loved so much. Floating to the ground and unable to guide his own fall. You couldn’t help but think of his father in this moment, knowing that the circumstances of his death were along the same lines. 

The universe couldn’t possibly be so cruel to have his son meet the same fate, could it? 

You listened as Pete continued to explain how he, Nat and Bob had been the ones in the air with him when it happened. Fanboy and Payback had been in the tower, but Jake and Javy were already out on the tarmac and had been quick to go with the air search and rescue. They found Bradley amongst the trees thirty miles from base. Absently, you were glad it wasn’t the ocean. 

You looked around the room as you tried to process what you were hearing. Everyone was looking at you, concern and their own worry etched across their faces. Your eyes stopped on Javy, your eyebrows furrowing together. 

He, like all the others, was still in his flight suit. The dark material was snug to his body, but you noticed something that hadn’t been there before. The Dagger Squad patch was flecked with red. The area surrounding it was darker than the rest, almost appearing wet, and when your eyes flickered down, you noticed the cuffs of his sleeves were stained, too.

“Is that blood?” you asked before you could stop yourself. He noticed where you were looking and glanced down at himself. His dark eyes widened when he saw what you were seeing. Panic flashed across his face as he looked back up at you, but you could only stare in a daze. Pete had said that Javy was one of the ones that went with search and rescue. “Is that…is that Bradley’s blood?” 

Your heart was beating so hard that you could hear it in your head, and you found yourself struggling to breathe again. You thought someone was saying something, but you couldn’t hear them over the ringing in your ears.  

“I think,” you said, your voice cracking as you tried to get the words out, “I think I need to sit down.” 

Your knees gave out right after you finished speaking, but Pete was there to catch you before you hit the ground. He held onto you tightly, not letting go until he was gently pushing you down into one of the hard, uncomfortable waiting room chairs. You did your best to suck in deep breaths, but it felt like there was a weight on your chest. He sat down beside you, an arm wrapped around your shoulder. You heard him telling you to breathe, in and out, in and out, but you couldn’t seem to listen. 

You almost didn’t feel like you were in your body anymore. All you could picture was Bradley, bleeding and alone as his friends fought to get to him. How badly injured was he? You remembered how off you felt all day, but how the anxiety had started for you nearly two hours before Jake called you. Is that how long he had been there before they found him? 

You couldn’t lose him. 

You couldn’t, you couldn’t, you couldn’t. 

You gasped for breath. Pete still had his arm around you, and you don’t know when they moved, but Nat was on your other side and Jake was on his knees on the ground in front of you, both of your hands held tightly in his. You think he may have pinched you, because there was a dull throb on the top of your hand. His voice sounded like static, but it slowly, slowly became clearer. 

“Listen to me. Right now. He would not want you falling apart like this. You know that. How do you think he’s going to feel when he wakes up and you’re not there beside him because you landed yourself in the hospital because you passed out instead, huh? You need to breathe. Please, dollface. Breathe.” 

The words were harsh, but they got through to you, which you knew was his intention. You sucked in a long and deep breath, letting it out slowly at his encouragement. Jake squeezed your hand as Nat rubbed your back. 

“That a girl,” he said, and you mimic his breathing at his request for a minute before you finally don’t feel like the room is closing in on you. You felt the tears streaming down your face for the first time and took one of your hands from his to wipe them away. Pete placed a paper cup of water into your hand and you shakily took a sip. 

“I’m okay,” you whispered.

But it was silly to think anyone would believe you. Unless you could see that Bradley was okay with your own eyes, you doubted you would ever be okay again. 

___________

It felt like hours passed without an update. You didn’t move from your seat, and the rest of the team stayed, too. Javy and Fanboy had left in the middle of your panic attack, only to return less than an hour later out of their flight suits and with a change of clothes for everyone else. Javy had hugged you tightly, whispering in your ear how sorry he was. 

It was nearing late evening when a doctor in surgical scrubs came out, a large plastic bag in one hand and a clipboard in the other. Your stomach twisted and you found yourself holding your breath again. 

“Lieutenant Commander Bradshaw?”

Everyone around you shot up instantly. You were slower to stand, your heart heavy in your chest and weighing you down. The doctor looked around with raised eyebrows, clearly not expecting the entourage. Your voice shook and cracked when you spoke.

“I’m his wife.”

You declined when he offered to speak in private, knowing you weren’t strong enough to repeat anything he may tell you. You listened as he explained all of Bradley’s injuries. Bruises and lacerations. A collapsed lung. More broken ribs than not. Severe internal bleeding, and a skull fracture that’s caused swelling in his brain. Each injury seemed worse than the last and you could feel the bile rising in your throat as he detailed what the surgery consisted of and how he would likely be unconscious for a few days. 

He was mid-sentence about stitches and blood clots when you interrupted him with the one question circulating in your head and pushing for dominance. “Is he…is he going to be okay?” 

The doctor gave you what you were sure was meant to be a reassuring smile, though it looked more like a grimace on his tired, drawn face. 

“We’ll be able to know more once he wakes up, Mrs. Bradshaw.” 

The words provided little comfort. There was a ball of anxiety in your throat that was threatening to choke you. You barely registered him saying a nurse would come out to get you as soon as they had Bradley moved out of recovery and into a room. The noise of the waiting area faded into a static buzz as you opened the bag of personal belongings he had handed you. Bradley’s flight suit was folded, his dog tags laying on top. You took a staggering step back and sunk into the chair behind you as you pulled them out. They were cool to the touch, his name, social security number and blood type imprinted perfectly into the silver. It felt wrong holding them in your hand without them dangling from his neck. Tears welled in your eyes as you quickly reached back into the bag. His flight suit was heavy. Your hands fumbled with the thick material, searching for the inside pocket below the name patch. You let out a breath of relief when your fingers grasped his wedding band; he didn’t wear it when he was flying, but he always kept it with him, right near his heart. 

Bradley loved his ring. He hated taking it off. You would keep it safe for him until you could slip it back on his finger. 

Your moment of relief was short lived, though, when you realized your fingers were damp and sticky. It was then that you noticed the rips in the suit he took so much pride in from where the medics and doctors had been so rushed to get to his body that they chose to cut it off of him instead of simply unzipping it. You raised one of your shaking hands up in front of you only to see it smeared red. It was almost in slow motion that you processed that what you were seeing was the blood that had seeped so deeply into the suit that it hadn’t dried in the hours it had been stuffed in this bag, still damp enough to transfer onto your skin. 

Bradley’s blood was on your hands, and you screamed.

__________

Bradley looked so small in the hospital bed. That was a word you had never associated with him before. Since the moment you sat down next to him at the wedding that brought you together, he had been larger than life. But now, he’s pale against the white sheets, even with the bruises marring his already scarred skin. There were wires hooked to him and machines beeping and you were scared to go too close, yet you couldn’t resist grasping his hand between both of yours as you sat in the chair by his bed. 

You had been allowed back in his room a few hours ago, but this is the first time you had been alone with him. Everyone had come back one at a time so that you never had to leave him, but the nurses had stretched the allowance for visiting hours for as long as they could before declaring that only one immediate family member was permitted to stay overnight. It was no question of you being here, and no one had been silly enough to suggest otherwise. 

“I’m right here, baby,” you assured him, “I’m right here.”

You almost expected him to respond - you had never wanted to hear his voice so badly. You moved the chair as close as it could get to the bed, laying your head on the mattress with both your hands grasping his, never looking away from his face.

___________

The next morning, Jake arrived with a duffle bag and a cup of coffee with your name on it that he held hostage until you forced down a bottle of water and half of the breakfast sandwich he handed you. 

“He’ll be pissed when he wakes up if we didn’t make sure you took care of yourself.” 

You knew he was right, so you drank the water he handed you and stomached the food that you could barely taste and then changed into some of the clothes Nat had packed and sent with him, because it’s what Bradley would want. 

Jake sat with you there beside the bed for a long time. You don’t speak much, but it’s nice, you suppose, not to be alone. A nurse came in at one point to check his vitals and when you looked at her with hopeful eyes, she gave you a sad look in return as she explained there hasn’t been any changes yet. The door clicked shut behind her and for a few minutes, the only sound was the steady beeping of Bradley’s heart monitor that reminded you he was still alive. 

You stared at the dark bruises and cuts on your husband’s face and gripped his hand tightly in yours. He was still so beautiful. You felt a lump growing in your throat as you let out a shaky breath.

“I won’t survive without him, J,” you said quietly. 

Jake was a lot of things, misunderstood in a lot of the ways that you happened to understand, and he would never lie to you. So when he firmly told you “you won’t have to,” you did your best to believe him. But then you remembered the feel of Bradley’s blood on your hands from his cut up flight suit and the doctor not giving you a straight answer on if he would be okay or not and it was so hard. 

You bit hard on the inside of your cheek as you traced your finger over the tan line on Bradley’s. His wedding ring hangs heavy on the chain with his dog tags around your neck, tucked into your sweatshirt. It wasn’t where it belonged and the ache grew in your chest. 

Jake spoke your name gently and you squeezed your eyes shut, shaking your head. You heard the scrape of his chair as he got up, moving to kneel beside the one you were in. You could feel the warmth of his hand through your clothes when he rested it on your back, and even the friendly gesture that had been done hundreds of times before felt so wrong. This was all just so wrong. All you wanted was the man laying in front of you. 

“Look at me,” Jake urged. He sighed when you refused, letting a moment pass before he spoke. “He was thinking about you when his plane was going down, you know.”  

Despite your initial hesitation, your head snapped to him. His face was open and honest, no hint of anything but sincerity. He didn’t even blink at the tears or the incredulous look on your broken face. 

“What?” you breathed out. “How do you know that?” 

“We could hear him on the coms from the ground. We heard the moment everything started going wrong, and when he realized things were going wrong, all he could think about was you. He said he was sorry, and that he loved you. In the scariest moment of his life, he was thinking about you. He loves you so much. More than I’ve ever seen anyone love someone else.” 

Your mind whirled at the information. Jake rubbed soft circles into your back as he continued on, his voice softer than the firm tone he had taken before. “You know as well as I do that your husband is a stubborn son of a bitch. He wouldn’t survive that accident just to make you sit in a hospital room and watch him die on you afterward.”

“You’re not a doctor, J. You don’t know that,” you argued, voice cracking with emotion. 

“But I do. And you do, too. Have faith in him, dollface. Don’t you give up on him, because he’d never give up on you. Do you understand?”

You knew Jake wasn’t telling you all of this to be malicious. Brutal honesty was a foundation to your friendship and he was just fulfilling his end of that. He knew that you were spirling and he was doing whatever he could to plant your feet back on the ground, but you felt something inside of you crack anyway. Your heart ached, thinking of Bradley in that moment - of the fear and the panic he must have felt. You could almost feel echoes of it in your chest now and it was an ugly, cruel feeling. 

But in what he probably thought was his last moments, he was still thinking of you. 

A sob escaped as, finally, you nodded. You hiccuped out that you understood and Jake pulled you into a hug as you cried. Your hand clutched at Bradley’s the entire time, longing for him to just squeeze it back. 

________

You aren’t sure how many strings had to be pulled to make it work, but over the next few days, someone was with you from the time visiting hours started to the time they got kicked out at night. They made sure you ate and drank, and while they never breached trying to get you to go home, they did insist on you taking a few minutes to shower in the bathroom attached to Bradley’s hospital room. When they were switching shifts with each other and an extra person was around to stay with him, they coaxed you to take a lap or two around the ward. You knew how worried they were; not just about him, but about you. In the back of your mind, you were thankful for the support system that was your found family. 

But each hour that went by without hearing Bradley’s voice, or seeing those dark eyes of his looking back at you, it got harder and harder to keep your composure. 

It was late on the third night. Visiting hours had ended hours ago, Nat having left you with a promise that someone would be there first thing in the morning with coffee and breakfast, just like that morning and the one before. She had held onto you a little tighter than she ever had when she left, and you knew she was hurting too; everyone was. 

You weren’t sure how long you had dozed off for, but when you startled awake, a nurse was in the room checking Bradley’s vitals. Her greeting to you was gentle and quiet before she focused back on what she was doing.  

“Apologies, dear. Didn’t mean to wake you.” 

You rubbed your tired eyes and rolled your neck to release some of the pain you felt there. “Any changes?” 

“Nothing yet. But no news is sometimes good news in these cases.”

You’d been doing your best to always be as kind as you could with the hospital staff, but you couldn’t muster up anything more than a grimace in an effort to smile in response this time. 

You picked at the blanket someone had thought to grab off your couch and bring to you as the nurse continued with her check in. She made a few more notes on the computer before she gave you a small smile, telling you that she’d be back again in a few hours before pulling the door shut on the way out.

Bradley laid still in his hospital bed and for a few minutes, you let the steady rise and fall of his chest mesmerize you. The room was silent aside from the heart monitor on the other side of the bed. 

The steady beeping felt like it was mocking you. 

He was alive, right here in front of you, his perfect heart still beating. But at the same time he seemed so far away. 

“You know,” you found yourself saying, “when you told me I should take some time off of work before my busy season really hits, you could have just taken me on a trip upstate or something. You didn’t have to go to such extremes.” 

You looked at him, willing him to open his eyes and respond. You laughed humorlessly and shook your head when you were met with nothing. “This has to be a joke,” you whispered to yourself. You sat up straighter in your chair, leaning closer to the bed. “This isn’t funny anymore, Bradley. It never was. You can wake up now.” 

You twisted the ring on your finger, glancing down for a moment at the diamond that you loved so much. You’ll never forget the moment he put it on for you for the first time, how amazing you felt; it was the complete opposite of the emotions of right now. When you looked back at him, his expression as unmoving as before, you couldn’t help the quiet scoff you let out. 

“I’m so pissed off right now, baby. I know that I have no right to be. I know that this is your job and that this wasn’t your fault. But I am so fucking angry.” 

You wanted to scream when your words continued to go unanswered. The noise you let out was as close to it as you could get without alerting any of the nurses. 

“We make decisions together,” you continued. You were practically vibrating as you seethed. “Well I didn’t have a say in this one. So you don’t get to leave me, Bradley Bradshaw. You aren’t allowed.” 

Tears gathered in your eyes but you didn’t bother to wipe them away. Bradley hated when you cried; maybe letting them fall would make him wake up so he could wipe them away. Deep down, you knew that wouldn't be the case. 

“You’re always talking about how strong I am but you know I can only take so much before I break, right? Do you know that?” your voice cracked on the last few words, almost like they were proving your point. The beeping from the machine echoed in the room, but suddenly, hearing that wasn’t enough. You threw the blanket off of you and stood from the chair that had been your home for the last three nights, moving to sit on the edge of his hospital bed instead. With a staggering breath, you gently laid your hand over his chest. 

Bradley’s heart thrummed under your palm, anchoring you. The anger you were feeling seeped out of you in waves, leaving you consumed with the grief and heartache you had been trying so hard not to drown in since you arrived at the hospital. Mindful of all the wires and his IV, you shifted so you could lay your head where your palm had been. You choked on a sob at the steady rhythm echoing back at you. 

“I can’t breathe without you, Bradley. You’re so ingrained in every single part of me and baby, I can’t breathe. Please. Please wake up.”

__________

Bob was with you the next day and had just left to go down to the cafeteria when you noticed the crinkle between Bradley’s eyebrows. 

The grimace would be subtle to anyone else, but you had his face and expressions memorized, and you had been doing nothing but staring at him for the last three days, waiting to see a change.

“Bradley?” you asked urgently. You felt the faintest of squeezes back to your hand and your heart raced in excitement. “Oh, Bradley. Can you open your eyes for me, honey?” 

You hadn’t considered the harshness of the fluorescent overhead lights, so when you saw him flinching, you jumped up from the chair to dim them. You rushed back to his side, slipping your hand back in his and squeezing again.

Slowly, oh so slowly, his eyelids fluttered open. He struggled for a moment to get his bearings and he groaned when he shifted on the bed. You were quick to try and soothe him. 

“Baby, baby, hey, don’t try and move, okay?” 

Despite your warning, or maybe because of it, Bradley slowly turned his head toward you. Your breath caught in your throat as you finally, finally, saw his eyes again. 

“Wow,” he rasped, “you’re beautiful.” 

His voice was thick from disuse and still, it was the best thing you had ever heard. You let out a surprised, delighted laugh, and you couldn’t stop the tears that came even if you tried. At the sight of them, Bradley willed you not to cry.

“I’m sorry, it’s just so good to hear your voice and see those eyes, baby,” you responded as you wiped some of the moisture away. “Let me call your doctor.”

You were standing to press the call button on his bed when he spoke again, voice rough and pain filled. His words stopped you in your tracks.

“Are you…not my doctor?” 

Your watery gaze widened and snapped to connect with his own, and for the first time, it registered that his eyes weren’t the warm, love filled whiskey ones you were used to. They lacked even a hint of familiarity as he looked at you.  

No. No, no, no. 

You jammed the call button over and over and over again, desperation starting to claw at you. When you sunk back into the chair, your hand unconsciously gripping his tighter than before, you tried to keep your voice as level as possible, but it sounded pleading and devastating even to your own ears. 

“Bradley…do you know who I am? Do you know my name?” 

His thick eyebrows knitted together, and oh, god, he was taking so long to answer, you thought you were going to throw up. When he slowly shook his head, you could feel the bile rising. 

“I can’t remember. I’m sorry. Should I?” 

You gasped, but before you could say anything, the room was filled with doctors and nurses alike. Your hand was ripped from his and you were pushed to the back of the room as they examined him. They asked him question after question and when he wrongly answered the year and his age, your horror grew.

“Lieutenant Commander-”

“It’s just Lieutenant,” Bradley incorrectly corrected. You gasped as the room quieted. The doctor cleared his throat and took a step back.

“According to your official Navy file, you were promoted to Lieutenant Commander two years ago. And unfortunately, Lieutenant Commander, it’s no longer 2018. It’s 2022, sir.”  

Your hands covered your mouth in shock. Bradley’s eyes met yours and you saw the moment they flickered to the sparkling ring on your left hand. You watched as they widened minutely. At the same moment he slipped into unconsciousness again, your knees gave out. You crashed to the ground with a pained cry, and even more than before, you felt like your world had been titled on its axis, never to right itself again. 

---------------

End Notes: My entire soul hurt writing this and I don't think I've ever agonized over a story so much. I really, really hope you enjoyed it, and would love to hear your feedback.

Special thanks to Mak and Em for everything, as always. I appreciate you suffering through this with me.

Masterlist

Tag List (please let me know if you’d like to be removed or added!) :  @roosterforme - @mak-32 - @hoyaharper - @wildxwidow - @gretagerwigsmuse - @bradshawburner - @iamaslytherin0 - @lilyevanswhore - @too-fangirl-to-fuction - @fav-fanficssss - @benhardysdrumstick - @fandomxpreferences - @acatwriteshere - @1234-angelika - @double-j - @cocoskween - @sunflowersteves - @teacupsandtopgun - @littlezee80 - @sometimesanalice - @je-suis-prest-rachel - @khaylin27 - @infamous-reindeer - @hotch-meeeeeuppppp - @sarahjoestewy-blog - @sunnysidesidra - @notroosterbradshaw - @yanna-banana - @inthestars-underthesun -@avengersfan25 - @wkndwlff - @zbeez-outlet - @lt-spork - @indynerdgirl - @loveforaugust - @mssleepy876b

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[tamelee]

I love the way you write, you're so articulate, I wish I could write like that 😭 I'm guessing you get good grades in school? Do you have advice on how to write articulately and clearly while also sounding professional? Like in essay writing?

Huuuu, that’s very kind of you 🥹;-; I’d never imagine anyone saying that to me… ever. 

Well, my grades are good, I have my last exams soon ^^

I do have a few tips! Or rather, there are things I’m still currently learning that may be helpful to you as well📝: 

(Sentence) Structure: I read a book called ‘elements of style’ by William Strunk (revised edition) recently and I learned that no matter how grammatically correct your sentences are, there are still ways to improve its structure. (I had to learn it all over again in English -.-) This is a big topic so I'll name a few specifics you can dive into.

Learn the difference between active and passive voice (passive isn’t bad and sometimes necessary, but active is almost always preferred). Don’t mind all this on your first draft though. It’ll only hinder you.

Study MRU (motivation-reaction units), often used in Fiction writing, but it helped me for essays as well. It is the logical pattern of cause and effect introduced by Dwight V. Swain and I read about it in 'techniques of the selling writer'. Here's an article on the topic as well.

Mind paragraphs. There are different rules for this depending on what you’re writing, but it helps its readability. For Essays especially it’s always good to keep topics separate and lead the reader to your conclusion in a way that makes sense. (It's sorta like holding their hand and going like "because of this... there is this... and therefore... and so.... that's why....") This may need some reorganizing of your premises/subjects at times. I especially need to organize my thoughts before I even start writing.  

Understand what it is that you need to write about and delete everything that isn’t relevant. If you’re like me and you get a ton of new ideas once you delve into a subject, then it’s good to keep a folder (or something similar) for these new ideas. Often these are entire topics on its own and including these into another will only make both unclear and your conclusion muddy. So, ask yourself whether it strengthens your point, or if it’ll make it more confusing. If it won’t make a difference then delete it anyway or save it in your folder for later.  

I always learned that objectivity is important in order to sound professional, though it depends on the kind of essay you’re writing. If you need to convince the reader of something then transparency about your own opinions can help your conclusion be more honest, but be careful of sounding preachy as well. I had to learn all these things when I still studied marketing/communication in entertainment, but it often makes me feel slimy because it’s all very manipulative. (Hence, I quit that path.) It's in fiction as well. Some authors let their own views bleed through their characters in such a way it becomes uncomfortable because it doesn’t argue for the story nor adds to the character— it attacks the reader’s personal morals which possibly gives them an ass-spanking while they’re at it which just really isn’t necessary. Emotional language is fine I think. Sometimes I got compliments from teachers especially because I didn't sound too professional, it requires a bit of knowledge when you can get away with it probably. Just make sure you can back up your arguments/statements and possibly add different views as well. In a way it's more about the confidence in which you present an idea than sounding professional and not being able to understand all the 'why's' I believe.

This one isn't that relevant for school-essays, but sometimes when writing one the question isn't clear. It helps both you and the reader to reformulate it in the beginning. Essays as well as stories are often nothing more than a problem you need to give an answer to. Even if there's no question, it helps to make one anyway so you don't wander off endlessly and drown in a sea of possible subjects you could write about.

Something that may help you as well— I created a roadmap for myself and the different types of things I have to write. That way I always know what to do first and it helps me structure both the essay and my process as I can get easily distracted otherwise. Making more decisions than necessary makes me freeze up, but with a roadmap I don’t have to do either.

Uuh, I've probably picked up on tons of helpful things lately, but I think these are great to start with. I hope they are helpful to you.

I always wanted to (story-)write, but gave up on it and decided to learn how to draw instead. Then, I sort of realized that I was being an idiot, because that desire never left and I had to write other things anyway— like this for example, and simply accepting the fact that no one can understand the load of incomprehensible rubbish I wrote, just wouldn’t do. You can check my older posts… it’s awful. If I ever intentionally want to give myself another headache, I’ll go and read those. 

It’s definitely not perfect now, but hopefully I improved though. I think so. Sometimes I still get scolded as I tend to ping-pong between thoughts suddenly and I can hardly tell the difference between BrE/AmE. (As I grew up I learned English mostly through a sort-of-aunt figure from Canada that always forced me to watch British tv with her.) But, the past few months I especially had to write many essays and (argumentative) case studies so I decided to learn and become better in writing. If that translated back to Tumblr then I'm happy and you’ve made my day >< 

[fibula-rasa]

How’d They Do That?

Special Effects & Stunts of Silent Cinema - Part 2

This is the second installment (here's the first) of an open-ended series where I try to highlight and illustrate the work of special effects and stunt artists of silent filmdom. Using articles from contemporary fan and trade magazines, I’ll make gifs or dig up images and/or video clips to accompany the descriptions of how the sequences were executed.

My notations will be bracketed and highlighted in a different color. Hope you all enjoy! Fair warning: this is a long read.

Risking Life and Limb for $25

[from Photoplay, November 1927]

By Dick Hylan

True tales of “stunt” men and women. You cannot afford to miss a single paragraph of these thrilling yarns. There’s one towards the end of the story that alone is worth the price of admission. Read—and don’t jump—this story

DUST—the crash of six-shooters—the thunder of horses’ hoofs on hard ground—the roar and rumble of an onrushing train—the shrill call of man to man—and out of the dust and roar ride thirty men to board the speeding train. Jesse James and his men are on the loose and heaven help the poor working girl!

The horses are alongside the train—and the dirty deed is done. No one seemed to notice that the train was going thirty miles an hour when the men “transferred” from horse to car and engine. No one seemed to care that underfoot the ground was dangerously uneven. No one seemed to worry about the wheels rolling over the steel rails. Nasty wheels that would cut, mangle and kill anything getting under them.

And closest to these wheels, riding the brake beams under the oldest and most dilapidated coach Fred Thomson could find for his latest feature, “Jesse James,” was one man. As Thomson climbed down out of the engineer's cab he saw him.

[Jesse James (1927) is unfortunately considered lost and I was not able to dig up any stills that depict a train-specific stunt. However, here are a few promotional images of Thomson and his amazing horse, Silver King from the film.

Thomson was a stunter turned star whose popularity at the time of this article rivaled Tom Mix. Like Jesse James, the majority of Thomson’s films are now presumed lost and only one film featuring Thomson in a cowboy role is extant: Thundering Hoofs (1924).]

“Mason! What the devil are you doing under there? That's one stunt I don’t remember the script calling for. What's the idea?” He really seemed put out about it. Those brake beams were old and rusted and liable to fall apart.

“Aw, Boss. don't get sore. I didn’t have anything to do on that scene and wanted to get a good look at you crawling into that cab from your horse.”

And so I first saw “Suicide” Buddy Mason, stunt man extraordinary. Like the mail-carrier who went walking on his day off Buddy liked to be in the middle of things. Later I talked to him.

[Buddy Mason was a stunting legend working as a stunt performer/double and stunt coordinator from the 1920s into the 1970s. That’s impressive longevity for the profession!]

“Who are stunt men,” I asked him. “And have you any standard by which stunt men are judged—by other stunt men?”

“Nope. It’s just—well, when you get so they call you by your first name when you come into the hospital, then you belong.”

READ on BELOW the JUMP!

Their creed might be Nietzsche's famous line, “Be hard. Live dangerously.”

It was Winnie Brown, most famous of feminine “stunt men,” who once defended a director like this: “Can't nobody run that man down to me. He treated me whiter than any director I ever worked for. You remember the time I was doing that stuff on a trestle in one of Mix’s pictures? Say, every time I made that jump he had an ambulance waiting right there on the bank for me. That’s the kind of a guy he is.”

Photo caption: Winnie Brown — stunt woman. Some directors are so kind to her that they have ambulances waiting for her after she takes a jump

[Winnie Brown appears to be one of those unsung heroes of the stunt world. There’s very little biographical information out there about her, and none of the films I could confirm her work in (as stunt rider, stunt double, or actor) are extant or accessible for gif making. That said, I’m planning an addendum to this post with a profile of Winnie from a 1922 issue of Photoplay, so stay tuned!]

AN author will have a nightmare and wake up with it still in his mind. He'll put it in his next script and think it’s fine. And it is because when the time comes to do it the casting director for Fox or First National or M-G-M will just take down the telephone and call Al Wilson.

“Hop over to the studio, kid. You’re due to take a dive out of a flaming aeroplane with a parachute which won't open for company.”

And Al will hop—and dive—and then the nurse will say, “Hello, Al. Back again?”

The golden age of the stunt men is passing. That is why it is well to write this brief saga now. To sing a little of the song of their amazing deeds, their mad courage, and their inevitable laughter. Nor is it well to forget that some of the greatest stunt men in the world are high salaried stars, such as Tom Mix and Douglas Fairbanks.

But the progress of photography is rapidly writing the epitaph of the stunt man. The magic double exposure of the Williams process and other inventions in trick photography and development of film are fast rendering it unnecessary to subject any man to the long chances of “stunts.”

[With the privilege of hindsight, we know that optical/photographic effects did not in fact put stunt workers out of a job. Although, the technological developments that progressed out of The Williams Process have made formerly dangerous stunts much safer and impossible stunts possible. To learn more about The Williams Process, you can check out the first part of this series: How They Do It]

So, before they pass, let’s chronicle a few tales by which to remember them.

The average life of the stunt man in motion pictures is under five years. He either gets killed or he gets a little sense and quits.

When you've talked to a few of them you'll realize that they are the kind you like to have around when a fight is brewing, but that they have more nerve and less sense than any other man you've ever met. Few quit.

The greatest stunt man who ever lived—he is dead now and the manner of his death, of which I will tell you, is a typical page in stunt history—was Gene Perkins. The fraternity itself, and such directors as specialize in stunt pictures, seem to agree on that. He was twenty-four when he was killed and had been in the game a little over four years.

THE secret of Perkins’ greatness lay in his amazing ability to figure out a stunt ahead of time, calculating it perfectly according to time and distance, and in the icy clear-headedness which enabled him to carry it out to the hairline the way he had planned it. His nerves—he had none.

Clarence Brown, the director who has just finished “The Trail of ‘98” and who has put on a heap of thrilling stunts in his day, told me a lot of things about “Perk,” particularly the day he asked him if he’d jump into the top of Nevada Falls in Yosemite National Park.

Now Nevada Falls is seven hundred feet high and the water in the stream just before it pours over the cliff, from which drop no man could possibly return alive, dashes and whirls along over jagged rocks at a perilous speed.

Brown and Perkins went to the river bank and shouted at each other above the roar of the falls.

“Can you make it, Perk?” Brown asked. “I want you to jump in here,” indicating a spot some forty feet from the edge of the falls, “and go as near to the edge as you think safe.”

“Just a minute and I'll tell you,” said Perk.

He broke the branch off a tree and threw it into the water at the spot the jump was to be made. His eyes narrowed as he watched it intently.

“Sure, I can do it,”’ he said. “When I get here,” he pointed to a spot only two feet from the brink, “throw me a rope and try not to miss me. That water looks cold.”

According to Brown he did the thing with the perfection of a machine.

“I'll never forget the first time Perk ever worked for me,” Brown went on. “When I saw him I thought he was the coolest looking person I’d ever seen. His self-control was astounding. His eyes were like ice, yet they were always smiling.

When the Doctors Call You by Your First Name, You’re a Real Stunt Man

“I wanted him to jump out of a fourth story window. It was a night shot. We stalled around most of the afternoon waiting for it to get dark enough to shoot and about dusk I decided we could do it. I went looking for Perk and found him shooting craps with some of the boys. ‘All ready, Perk?’ I said. He looked at his watch. ‘Excuse me a minute while I telephone,’ he said. I heard him behind me talking over the phone to his wife. ‘I’m sorry, honey,’ he said, ‘I’m going to be a little late for supper. I got to jump out of a fourth story window and then I’ll be right along home.’”

Yet Perkins was killed doing something Clarence Brown begged him not to do, warned him against.

“He had a hankering to play around with aeroplanes and used to ask me questions about them,” said Brown, who was himself an aviator during the war. “The advice I gave him was to stay out of them and he'd stay healthy.”

In telling me of Gene Perkins’ last stunt, Brown brought out clearly that greatest of all dangers to the stunt man—the other fellow. You've probably heard a hundred people say about automobile driving, “I don’t worry about myself. It’s what the other fellow is going to do that bothers me.”

[I wasn’t able to positively identify which films the Nevada-Falls or the fourth-story-window appear in. However, I believe that the Nevada Falls shoot may have been a film Clarence Brown was an assistant director on. Every performer in this article required quite a bit of research as stunt performers were practically never credited unless they also had a role in a film.

So, what I was able to unearth as Jean/Gene Perkins filmography includes:

Around the World in 18 Days (1923, serial, presumed lost)

Stunt double for Bill Desmond 

Perkins’ fatal accident occurred on this shoot in Riverside, CA (described below)

Citations: Camera, 20 December 1922; Motion Picture News, 6 January 1923; Exhibitors Herald, 13 January 1923;  Screenland, April 1923; Photoplay, August 1925; Cinelandia, February 1928 

The Vanishing Dagger (1920, serial, presumed lost) 

Production title was “The Fallen Idol”

Perkins also served as assistant camera

Citations: The Moving Picture Weekly, 31 May 1919; Exhibitors Herald, 7 June 1919 

Do or Die (1921, serial, presumed lost) 

Filmed on location in Havana, Cuba

Citations: The Moving Picture Weekly, 21 May 1921 & 18 June 1921; Canadian Moving Picture Digest, 15 June 1921

The Storm (1922, extant at UCLA and EYE Filmmuseum) 

Citations: Camera, 7 January 1922; Motion Picture News, 3 June 1922]

Noomis took the car up about a mile and brought it down hill so that he would crash the gate at a certain speed. Naturally, he couldn't see until he’d crashed through the gate, what was being done the other side of it. And the gate was just on the land side of the apron. When he did see it, it was too late to stop. The engineer of the ferry boat had made a mistake and was three automobile lengths away instead of one. The car and Leo shot into space, did a beautiful one and a half gainor, and came down in forty feet of black and dangerous water. Fortunately the centrifugal force of the thing threw the driver out of the car and they fished him out more dead than alive.

[Nomis is yet another legend of stunting. As mentioned above one of Nomis’ specialities was automobile stunts, but he was also one of the most skilled aviation stunt performers from the 1910s until his untimely death in the 1930s. It was in an accident during an aviation stunt for The Sky Bride (1932), due to unsafe working conditions created by the film’s director, Stephen Roberts. In a tragically ironic turn, at the time of filming Nomis was head of the newly-formed Associated Motion Picture Pilots (AMPP) union—the primary goal of which was to increase safety regulations. 

Unfortunately, as Nomis’ career was so expansive and he was uncredited for most of his work, I was unable to identify which film is associated with the Fort-Lee-Ferry mishap described here.]

The same sort of a mistake on the part of the “other fellow” cost Perkins his life.

“I TOLD him,” said Clarence Brown, “to stay on the ground. Told him he was all right as long as he did his stuff alone. His sense of timing and distance was so perfect and his body control was so fine that he had a pretty good chance to pull through most of his stunts. But he didn’t listen. They never do. One day he did a stunt from a rope ladder hanging from a plane. The pilot was supposed to swoop down and let Perk drop to the top of a freight train. He swooped too low. The ladder banged Perk against the side of a freight car at seventy-five miles an hour—and Mrs. Gene Perkins was a stunt window, that’s all.”

It’s a funny thing how a man wants to see his family carry on the tradition of his work. Gene Perkins had a kid brother whom he tried to break in as a stunt man. But after a few months the kid lost his nerve and went back to—a clothing store! He’s still alive.

As a stunt man Tom Mix has no superiors and few equals. The man doesn't know the word fear, is as inventive as the devil when it comes to figuring out safe ways of doing dangerous things, and has a positive genius coupled with extraordinary physical strength, for getting himself out of tight places. The thin vein of philosophy, which is the foundation of Tom’s character, colors even his viewpoint on stunts.

“If you do it,” he said, sitting on the edge of his beautiful tiled swimming pool in the reddest bathing suit I have ever seen, “it's easy. If you don’t, it’s a mistake—and you'll either not worry about it or have plenty of time to figure out what went wrong while in the hospital.

“FUNNY thing—the hard one is always easy and the easy one hard. That sort of sounds tail first, but looking back over some fifteen years of these things I know it’s true. The reason being that you get prepared for the hard ones. You get arranged a whole lot before you do ‘em. But some fool little easy one comes along and throws you clean out of the saddle. A horse that advertises he’s bad ain't near as hard to ride as one of these meek lookin’ cayuses who on limbers himself in a onlooked for manner.

“Sure, I’ve had a few funny experiences with stunts, and one or two the lady novelists might call hair-raisin’. Had to fall offa bridge into a river in Florida once and didn’t find out until I was shakin’ hands with ’em that the darn river was more full of alligators than water.

“Another that comes to my mind had to do with an aeroplane. Say, ain’t you the feller who plays football for Stanford?”

“Check. But what about the aeroplane?”

“You know I used to play a lot of football in—— ”

“Great. Come up for our Big Game and I'll get you a ticket if you wear your purple suit. Better wear a red one and root for us. What about the aeroplane?”

“That? It was kinda funny. We were workin’ up at Mt. Whitney, which as you probably know is the highest spot on North America. Well, there’s to be a rope hangin’ down from the aeroplane and I’m supposed to climb down it and do some triflin’ service for the hero-ine, the nature of which plumb escapes me for the minute, and climb back up.

“WELL, we dope it out careful. The rope has a series of knots in it as big around as your two fists, which makes climbin’ up and down it what appears to be a comparative simple proposition. I’m to do this on one plane and the cameras are in another. We arrange a set of signals whereby I can let the other plane know if anything untoward happens, and he can signal the pilot in my plane.

“And I remarks to my pilot, ‘And if you get the signal that I can’t get back up, you head right for the ocean and drop me off.’ The ocean ain’t but about an hour or so away, so I figure we’re all set. An ocean is a darn sight softer place to land than a mountain.

“Well, I don’t have any trouble gettin’ down. But when I start up things take on a different aspect. There’s considerable wind blowin’ up there, what with the speed we’re makin’ and the natural velocity in those parts. I get hold of the knot up higher and start to pull myself up and, by gosh, the wind just blows the rope out behind me like a tail and I haven’t got any knot to set down on like I figured.

“I stewed around quite a spell, tryin’ it out several times, but every time the wind coppers my bet. Oh yes, I’m forgettin’ to mention that I’ve got a loop at the end of the rope which I put my leg through, so I can set there pretty comfortable while we’re travellin’. But once I’d started up and the trouble began, I discover my arms are gettin’ pretty tired. So I finally figure out that the only thing is to pull myself up with one hand quick and reach under quicker with the other and hold that consarned rope down so I can set on it. I tried it and it worked. And that was all there was to that. I got up all right.

[Tom Mix was one of the biggest western stars of the era and, as he was a star as well as a stunter, his career is much better documented than others profiled in this article. However, a significant portion of Mix’s career was spent at Fox, so due to the Fox Vault Fire of 1937, most of his nearly 300-films are now presumed lost.

While I couldn’t track down the films he described above, Mix performed similar stunts in Sky High (1922):

In the wide shots, the leg loops on the rope that Mix described are visible.]

“ANOTHER time, somebody—may be it was me—gets the bright idea of havin’ me grab a rope ladder hangin’ down from the plane when I’m on horseback.. Don’t sound very dangerous, but the first time we try it out, it just naturally scares the poor hoss to death and he mighty near gets himself and me both beheaded.

“So we decide to hang a big cable between two cliffs—one of ’em about 500 feet high and the other about 300—and put the plane on the cable with pulleys. That does away with the noise of the engines and I think I can manage the hoss all right then. We allow enough sag, according to our mathematics, to get the plane just close enough to the ground for me to grab onto the ladder.

“Well, when I see the thing comin’ I figure out that maybe it’d be a good idea to get my leg through the first rung of that there ladder, so that when I arrive on the other side I'll be in a position to start grabbin’ something to hold onto.

“So when I make the jump, I do it that away. Which, as it turns out, is mighty close to a fatal and certainly a right uncomfortable error. Either our calculation is off about forty degrees or that cable develops more sag, because we're a heap closer to the ground than we expected to be. I can’t get my leg out and the darn thing just drags me right along the ground for quite a spell, before they can stop it.

“OF course it wasn't exactly dangerous, but it sure burned me plenty. That ground was so hot when I finally got up it had burned off everything but my boots, including considerable hide.”

[When I first read through this article, I thought that the set-up for this stunt would be distinctive enough for me to identify the film—but no! While I’m not the biggest Mix fan, the stunts in his extant films are always ambitious!]

He gave me one of his friendly irresistible grins.

“Had a funny one happen once with a train. It was up at Colorado Springs. The stunt was like this. I’m on top of the train when it comes to a low tunnel. You can see for yourself that’s no nice place to be. So just as it goes roarin’ in, I’m to grab the tell tales hangin’ outside and swing myself up a little and hold on. We had it fixed so that the engineer would just go inside the tunnel and then back right out and I could drop down again.

“It comes off accordin’ to schedule up to the time I grab the tell tales and start hangin’ on and the train goes into the tunnel. I’m fairly peaceful in my mind, bein’ as I expect him right back. But the engineer had ideas of his own, I guess. He stopped on the other side of the tunnel to fill up his pipe and give his engine a nice drink of water and wind his watch, and all the time I’m hangin’ on to that damn tell tale, thirty feet above a lot of railroad ties and little sharp rocks and steel tracks. Naturally I’m not hankerin’ a whole lot to fall onto that kind of a bed.

“IF I’d known he wasn’t comin’ back, I could have swung myself up onto a rope we had stretched across, but I'm a confidin’ son-of-a-gun and by the time I realize this engineerin’ gent is operatin’ on his own, my arms are too tired to make the pull. And just about that time I hear the train start back, my arms is beginnin’ to give out and it dawns on me that I’m goin’ to hit the middle of that track just about ten seconds previous to a large amount of train.

“Well, there wasn’t nothin’ for it but to jump then, so l’d have time to get out of the way, and I did. I reckon I must have missed that train all of six inches. And my legs was black and blue to the knees for weeks and I got a lot of blood vessels down there that haven’t resumed friendly relations with the rest of my carcass since.”

[Obviously the stunt gone wrong did not appear in The Great K & A Train Robbery (1926), but the shot of Mix running off the top of a moving train and grabbing the tell tales is very impressive and is followed by a cut to him climbing down.]

For thrills, no picture in years has caused so much comment as Paramount's great aviation spectacle, “Wings.”

And a lot of that stunt stuff was done by regulation United States Army air pilots. They did things any stunt man would be proud to call his own and merely remarked in passing that it was “all in the day’s work.”

The particular officer who qualified for admission to the inner circle was one Lieutenant Rod Rodgers. This young gentleman went up in an army plane filled with the sort of explosives which produce an effect of a plane bursting into flames. In his mouth he carried a quantity of the kind of stuff actors use to make it look like they’re bleeding to death. The idea was that when he got up to 6000 feet he was to turn on a mechanical camera which operated itself and which was located just in front of the pilot in the cockpit. He would then pretend to be hit by a bullet, allow the blood to gush from his mouth, let go the stick, and kick the plane into a tail spin with his foot. While the mechanical camera ground on and on, he would come down out of control.

The shot recorded by the camera is one that is picking audiences out of their seats and according to aviators is about the toughest stunt on record—to sit limp and useless while your plane tail spins toward the earth, knowing that at the last moment you must right it or see “Finis” written across your record.

IT isn’t in the picture, by the way, but the studio has the film and a few people have seen it—the moment when Lieutenant Rogers peeped over the side and saw that he was only 500 feet above ground. He came out of his trance, grabbed the stick and pulled it back against his waist and made one remark, which subtitle registered on the screen in amazing fashion and can be compared to those seen—not written—in “What Price Glory” and “The Big Parade.”

It was on “Wings” also that Dick Grace, for several years a famous air stunt man, had his neck broken. He wore during these “crash” sequences, a wide leather belt, reaching from the place where he sat down right up under his arms. Then he was encircled by a series of very strong steel springs, so that it was hoped when he crashed he would be protected.

Photo caption: Immediately after the crash in “Wings,” Dick Grace (center) was photographed with his aeroplane. Later, it was discovered that his neck was broken!

HE wasn't. In one shot, where he had to turn a plane completely over on its back, and land, the stunt apparently came off fine. Grace climbed out of the wreckage, had his picture taken, and only then collapsed. It was discovered at the hospital that his neck was broken.

But what's a little thing like a broken neck to a stunt man? He started right on over to Honolulu, with his neck still done up in all sorts of steel braces, to try and hop across the Pacific from Honolulu to San Francisco in advance of the Dole flyers. He crashed trying to get off the island, but he is still flying, and back in Hollywood ready for more work.

They’ve got some funny expressions in this stunt game. One of them that stopped me was when Buddy Mason first pulled the expression “yucca-nutty.” He remarked that a certain stunt man was yucca-nutty and I had to holler for help.

[Like Mason, Dick Grace was a prolific legend of stunting who survived his career. Pretty impressive considering Grace was an aerial specialist. Grace was a founding member of the AMPP and served as president in the 1930s.]

“Well, it’s like this,” Buddy said kindly. ‘‘All this furniture you see busted over guy’s heads in pictures is made of yucca, which is the lightest wood in the world. You know—yucca is a plant that grows in the California hills. Of course it don’t amount to much, but if you get beaned with enough yucca chairs, in time it begins to make a few dents in what you like to call your brain and then you get yucca-nutty. That's the explanation for a lot of things that happen in Hollywood.”

Another expression which Buddy applies to his pals in the great industry of stunting is “crash-goofy busters.” Which is self-explanatory and descriptive.

[I feel like I haven’t been living my life to the fullest because I have no reason to incorporate the phrases “yucca nutty” and “crash-goofy busters” into my regular vocabulary.]

Photo caption: Greta Garbo and Jack Gilbert after a smash-up in “Love.” Jack uses no doubles for this dangerous work

I asked Buddy what was the worst stunt he’d ever done and after some meditating he unbosomed himself about as follows:

“The amateur gets hurt the most, of course. A boob thinks it’s all easy, and that there’s no technic to the game. Thinks that nerve is required and that’s all and that it’s an easy way to make money. We've got a pretty good scale of prices now—a certain stunt is worth so much, some other one is worth so much more. If an outsider comes in and works for less, he gets told where to head in at. We haven’t the slightest objection to new men coming in. But it isn’t fair to cut prices.

“WELL, the worst smash I ever had was in one of the old serials. I was supposed to drive a motorcycle through the guardrail of a bridge and land on top of a freight train passing under the bridge. They had part of the roof of one of the freight cars cut out and covered with thin laths and cardboard. In the car, beneath the opening made in the roof, were mattresses for me to land on. Everything went fine except the engineer got the speed bug and went faster than he was supposed to and I didn’t quite hit the hole. I landed half in it and about half on the good strong roof of the car and drove the handlebars of the motorcycle up through my ribs. I bounced into the car after that, but I missed the mattresses. All I got was a broken shoulder, five broken ribs, and a dislocated hip. And they say football is a rough game.”

[What an awful accident! There isn’t enough context here for me to identify the serial, but if any of you remember seeing an outrageous stunt like this please shout it out!]

Buddy told me another one about a pal of his, named Bobby Dunn, who was working on a Keystone comedy. They wanted Bobby to dive out of an eighth story window of a fashionable apartment house on Wilshire boulevard. He was to land in a mortar box. The only difference between that particular mortar box and the common one seen in front of buildings when the walls are being plastered was that this one held milky water and was four feet deep instead of one foot. It had been sunk three feet deep into the lawn so that it looked like the regular ones.

BOBBY took one look at the layout and said it couldn’t be done. The box was too close to the wall of the building. From such a height it would be practically impossible to land that close. Somebody took him around to the back of the building and talked persuasively to him. During the course of the conversation several drinks changed hands—from the persuader to Bobby. Finally, Bobby went back and took another look. This time it didn’t look nearly so dangerous. Again they repaired to the back yard and discussed the matter over a bit of liquid refreshment. When they returned this time, Bobby said it was one of the simplest things he’d ever been asked to do and he could do it any time they were ready.

He did. The tank being so shallow, Bobby had to cut his dive very flat. He did that, too, cutting it so flat that he skipped right out of the tank and landed out in the middle of the street on his face. If you have ever thrown flat stones on a lake, you know how Bobby Dunn skipped out of that mortar-box diving tank.

[At the time of writing, I haven’t identified the film featuring this stunt, but since I’m a pretty avid silent comedy fan, I’ll update the post if/when I come across it!]

Which reminds me of one Anita Loos told. She always has a pet story based on fact for every imaginable situation. I had asked her what she knew about stunt men. She laughed. How that little brunette can say gentlemen prefer blondes I don’t know.

[Content warning for this section: Loos’ story here is a racist characterization of Native American actor and stunt performer Eagle Eye. Eagle Eye, while not as fete-d as his white colleagues, had an impressive resume and his career is slightly better documented since he was also an actor. His specialty as a stunter was big falls. Eagle Eye reportedly made a 200-foot drop for the film The Fatal Black Bean (1915, presumed lost). 

Photo of Eagle Eye (right) with Wallace Reid and Loretta Blake in At Dawn (1914) from Reel Life, 5 December 1914

If you want to skip the racist bit, the gifs of the falling stunts from Intolerance will be at the end of the anecdote.]

“YOU probably remember the battle scenes in ‘Intolerance’,” she said. “Well, during that sequence somebody had to take a particularly hard back dive off one of the high  battlements. Of course nets were spread to catch the diver, but who knows much about nets? They have been known to give way or to be some place else when most needed. The stunt man who was to do the trick was an Indian named Eagle Eye. Eagle Eye was a good stunt man, but he had to be full of firewater before he could perform. A minister had been after him for six months to give up drinking, and after a long life and with 364 other days in the year, Eagle Eye had to choose the day before this big stunt to get religion and sign the pledge. The pledge meant no firewater and no firewater meant no stunt.

“D. W. Griffith, who was directing, ran around wild-eyed to find another stunt man. He couldn’t find anybody who would tackle it, so he finally went to the minister and prevailed on him to get a special dispensation from Mencken or somebody so that Eagle Eye could imbibe just once more for the good of his art and do the stunt. And he did.”

MOST of Doug Fairbanks’ great stunts are simply feats of athletic prowess. There is no great element of danger in them. They take infinite skill, training, practice, but they either can be done or they can’t. They are what I should call legitimate stunts and require the skill of a great athlete and not the peculiar angle of the stunt man.

I caught him between a couple of them. He had just finished leaping from his horse which was going at full speed. And he came right back to ride into a mob of milling, long-horned cattle where a slip of the horse’s foot would have meant as nasty a death as anyone could conceive. But you didn’t feel any sense of danger in them at the moment because of the perfection of Doug’s work.

I stopped him just long enough between the two to ask one question.

“What's the most difficult thing you’ve ever done before a camera?” said I.

“Make love,” said Doug, and went on with his horses and cattle.

Up until recently Fred Thomson, whose fame and popularity as a western star are growing by leaps and bounds, did all his dangerous work. Fred, as you doubtless remember, was champion all-round athlete of the world several years and he figures he has a better chance than a less trained man. Regardless of Fred’s feelings in the matter, Paramount officials have recently forced him to use a double for the more dangerous stunts in order to protect the large amount of money invested in the picture. (I can’t help wondering what they call dangerous—those train wheels looked very mean to me.)

Thomson keeps this stunt man on a regular salary, whether he works or not. The reason Fred gives is that said stunt man will do anything at all times and the kid would go out between the Thomson pictures and get all busted up.

Photo captions: Above: Ralph Forbes about to be crowned with a Yucca chair. Below: Harry Carey plays a human torch. Both in “The Trail of ‘98”

One of the most dangerous stunts ever attempted was in “The Trail of ‘98” and was pulled by Harry Carey. After they had saturated Carey’s clothes with kerosene, the hero—Ralph Forbes—smashed a lighted kerosene lamp over his head. This immediately turned him into a living torch. He had to dash across the room, onto a balcony, and leap ten feet onto the floor of the dance hall below. You can see quite plainly in the picture that Carey did this thing himself. They had every foot of the route he had to cover manned with fire extinguishers and if the fire burned through his heavy underwear he was to holler and they would instantly put the fire out—if it didn’t put Carey out first.

[I don’t know if it’s true that Carey did these stunts himself but I’m amazed they let a movie star perform all that!]

AN odd commentary on the perverse nature of all things is the death of three men on his big Alaskan story. It was reported that they were killed in a stunt. As a matter of fact they were killed repairing a safety device.

A big cable had been extended across the river and these four men went out in a boat to repair the tell tales which were to furnish protection for the actors who had to come down the river in light boats. The man up on the cable fell when it broke under him, hit the side of the boat and tipped it over. Three of the men could swim and the fourth couldn’t. He hung onto the boat and was saved while the others tried to swim ashore and were drowned.

Joe Bonomo is a well known stunt man who broke into pictures with a heart-breaking experience. Joe was a circus man for years, an acrobat and diver and horseman. He heard a lot about the big money his brothers of the celluloid were making so he decided to have a crack at it himself.

He answered an advertisement, which is one of the first things young girls are warned against in a big city. The producer he encountered was Jewish and belonged on Poverty Row though this was in New York.

“It’s all very well, Mr. Bonomo,” he said, “you should sit there and say you are a stunt man. How should I know? If you are a stunt man, for me you should do some stunts.”

SO Joe, who is a trusting soul, complied. He went out and jumped off a skyscraper, dived off liners, changed wings on an aeroplane and did various other things on which he prided himself. All the time the camera was grinding. But Joe didn't think anything of that.

The producer told him he’d done very well and he would let him know later if he wanted him. He took Joe’s telephone number. And that was the last he heard of it until he saw himself and all his stunts in a two-reeler in a Broadway house.

He is still trying to collect.

[Joe Bonomo was a strongman turned stunt performer, who also acted. His film career petered out slowly after the advent of sound. Bonomo moved on to become a fitness instructor, publishing multiple books on the topic. At the time of this article, he likely would have been working as a stunt performer on The Trail of ‘98, discussed above.

Joe holding Louise Lorraine aloft in The Great Circus Mystery (1925, serial, presumed lost)]

Janet Ford, Universal’s stunt woman, has the same philosophy as Mix. She says, “Stunts? If you do them they are easy. I’ve been lucky so far and always done mine so I think they are easy. The only time I’ve ever been hurt was once down in San Diego. I had to swim about two hundred yards and then do a drowning act right under the camera. Guess I was too realistic about it because it scared an old man who was on the pier at the time. He thought I was going down, so jumped in after me and grabbed me around the middle to save me. For sixty-five years old that baby was strong, because in addition to crabbing the scene, he broke four ribs for me.

“YES, I like the game. We are hitting the high spots of life all the time. That is, nothing we do is commonplace, it is always at top speed. And I’ve noticed that it’s generally the cocksure amateur who gets panicky and takes a smash up. That’s especially so among the women ‘stunters.’”

[Janet Ford’s filmography is tough to pin down not just for the same reasons as other stunters, but because there was a contemporary actress with the same name. Ford performed stunts for over a decade starting in 1920, with a specialty in aquatic stunts. There isn’t enough context here for me to identify the film from this anecdote, but I do know that she doubled for Virginia Valli in The Storm (1922, extant at UCLA and EYE Filmmuseum) and for Virginia Brown Faire in Shadows of the North (1923, presumed lost) citation: Picture-Play Magazine, March 1925

Photo of Lord from Picture-Play Magazine, March 1925]

Yes, some of them talked sane enough—for a time. But talk to them long enough and you find that a wheel is missing somewhere.

That they do not look upon life as do the rest of us.

They seem to be divided into three classes: 1. Those in the game for the money; 2. Those who see in this a chance to “break into the movies”; and 3. Just the plain nut who does it.

And some of the tales you hear of them are pathetic. At least they would be if they weren’t comic.

Here’s just two short ones for a final fade out.

A stunt flyer was sent for not long ago and asked to take a bad crash for one of the larger studios. He was to nose dive into the ground from 4,000 feet. He said:

“Sure, I’ll do it—for three thousand dollars. It’s a hospital job and I have to take care of my wife while I'm laid up.”

They paid him the money, he gave it to his wife, took the crash, and went to the hospital for six months. When he got out his wife had run away with another stunt man and the three thousand!

Freddie “Speed” Osbourne raced a motorcycle off a cliff for a news reel. A parachute—but let J. B. Scott the camera man who took the pictures of the stunt tell it.

He saw it.

“OSBOURNE was to race his motorcycle up to the edge of the cliff and then he and the whole works were to go over the edge. He had a parachute attached to his back and was to open it when about thirty feet from the take-off. This would give it time to open and let him down safely.

“About the time ‘Speed’ should have pulled the parachute the motorcycle developed carburetor trouble. Instead of pulling the ’chute, the nut reached down and primed the carburetor.

“By the time he straightened up he was out in the air. He crashed and busted himself all up. I was the first one to him and his shin bones were sticking straight out through his boots. All he said was, ‘Cut those damn boots off, will you, Scotty?’

“He’s still in the hospital and spends his time figuring out how he can make that jump in a Ford coupe!”

[British Pathe’s youtube has the clip of Osbourne performing the stunt. It almost seems impossible he survived this!

The incident happened on 24 November 1926 and Osbourne had just finished filming airplane stunts for a film. Unfortunately his stunt career isn’t well documented, but Osborne/Osbourne was an aviation stunt specialist as well as a motorcycle stunter.]

I was properly impressed and still inquisitive.

“Scotty, you’ve talked to this bird a lot. Can you tell me for what under the sun he does things like that?”

“Sure,” said Scott. “For twenty-five dollars.”

[melis-writes]

Please, spill some tea on Al’s relationships. 😭 Someone on quora has said Diane is painting herself as the victim while we don’t know his perspective, that she is the one who never had a long term and stable relationship while her exes went on to have their own families. And I’m like… dude… Al Pacino has kids but he sure hasn’t had a stable relationship with anyone, lol.

AH HELL NO, NO BULLSHIT ABOUT DIANE LIKE THAT >:( Also incredibly mean and more than likely untrue lmao like we need to automatically take Al's side on what happened in their relationship? 👀 I mean really, it was a private relationship between two adults that started like ~50 years ago, so based on what's publicly out there, I know that...

Diane said on the Ellen show she had quite a few relationships that lasted "about 5 years". She also said no man she ever dated proposed to her, which is why she didn't end up married. I actually ended up finding out that Warren Beatty did in fact propose to Diane but she said no. I found on this article a reason why, which is Diane wanting to focus on her career, but I can't find the original source I read it on which didn't state a reason--just simply that Diane didn't want to marry him. I read that this happened during the filming of a movie they had together and as a result, Warren made Diane rehearse a scene (or something) again and again on purpose to take his frustration out on her. Again, don't know if this is true or not, just what I read!

Also, to assume that someone hasn't had stable relationships because they never married or have children is such utter bullshit.

Y'all wanna talk about unstable relationships? Let's talk about Al Pacino real quick. 😂

Al's first mentioned gf was Jill Clayburgh, an actress and I believe they got together around 1967. The broke up a short while after TFG released. Al talked about wanting to marry her and have kids in the future but what did he do? He told her he was in love with another woman and left her just like that.

We know how on and off Al was with Diane and how that one ended. What I still can't find any info on or make sense of is them breaking up in 1990, but no mentions of breakups in 1988 or 1989, but Al having a child in 1989 with someone else? Sheesh.

There was an interview Al and Marthe Keller did together around the Bobby Deerfield days. Marthe was almost describing what kind of wedding/wedding gown she would want to wear. She was saying no pressure on marriage/kids, and the interview described Al as being quiet, awkward and not saying anything. Marthe was head over heels, swooning a whole paragraph about how amazing Al was and he said nothing. All he did was smile awkwardly. They broke up later down the line of course, and Marthe I believe kept one of his mugs he drank out of.

I'd recommend reading "A Life on the Wire" for all the Al relationship tea, let me tell you that. Personally from what I've read in it, "unstable" doesn't even begin to cover it lmfao. Cut Diane some slack, y'all. 😭

[safety-pin-punk]

FYI: the author of that ""they deserve to die" is something you should never hear a leftist say. if you do, run" post is a Zionist. I guess that mindset doesn't apply to brown people, huh?

But also, you should consider that this is an extremely shallow view of leftism and violence as a tactic. What, you're a "punk" and you think any punk space got safe without a few nazis getting their teeth kicked in? They didn't. Sorry.

I hope you develop a punk mindset that's a little less about shitty bands and an aesthetic and a little more about having firmer political opinions and not agreeing with Zionists.

Your concern in the first paragraph was addressed in a previous post I’ll link to here.

Going off of that, I’m not sure what on my blog, besides the controversy surrounding this specific post (which again has already been addressed), would ever make you think that I would exclude anyone from the statement of ‘we shouldn't say anyone deserves to die’??? I simply. Do not think humans should be killing other humans. At all. Anywhere. On either side of any war. Like. One human should not be granted the power to decide the lifespan of another in my opinion

On that note, being anti-war is actually both a very punk stance AND a left-wing movement. Though I agree, it is a shallow view of leftism. Because leftism is SO much more than a single movement (like the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the LGBTQ+ movement, the environmentalism movement, anarchy, socialism, the labor movement, and GOD the list goes on). But also. It *does* include being anti-war and anti-'they deserve to die'.

As far as Punk being anti-war and taking non-violent approaches to the larger socio-political changes in the world, I'd recommend looking into Peace Punk. It was very popular in the 70's and early 80's with bands like Subhumans, Zounds, and The Mob. Here's a great beginner article on it!

As to your point about nazis. I promise you I'm not oblivious to the history behind the phrase 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off'. I also would have hoped that someone would be able to see nuance in a statement that say 'lets not say everyone deserves death' and not read it as 'we should let nazis do what they want'. Because that would be stupid. And if you've interacted with my blog for any real length of time, then you would know that I ALWAYS support punching nazis. But evidently that must have slipped your brain.

Now as far as this part of your ask: "I hope you develop a punk mindset that's a little less about shitty bands and an aesthetic and a little more about having firmer political opinions"

First of all buddy, I think I've already demonstrated that my political opinions are pretty firmly set (and that someone hoping on anon isn't going to change them). Personally, I don't feel the need to scream about my political stances every second of the day to make myself feel validated and like a good person. Because I have a life outside of the internet. But you do you I guess. I would however say that its kinda a dick move to just assume that others aren't well educated or have developed opinions when you've evidently only looked at a single post on my blog without actually looking at my blog. Otherwise you would have seen the EXTENSIVE amount of research and punk culture that I've written about or collected either on my own or in collaboration with others.

Really its either that you just didn't look, or because you didn't immediately agree with me, that you decided that my political views had a very shaky foundation. In which case, please do grow the fuck up and learn how to deal with people that have differing opinions than you without being a bitch and ranting about it on anon thanks.

Also. I like my 'shitty bands'. Get over it (Also like. Punk is inherently connected to music and shitty bands? Do you not know that? Do you understand where punk even comes from? I'm all for not needing to listen to punk music to be a punk as long as you align with other facets of the counter culture, but being told NOT to focus on music that is politically charged and full of punk values and history. Well that's a new one lol)

And lastly. Dude if you don't like me, you don't have to be here? You can leave? No one is forcing you to read anything on my blog??? Bye???

[stygianheart]

Koby’s Realization

Edit: Just gonna warn you now, it was two in the morning when I wrote this. It’s scattered all over the place but I decided “hey why not post it.” So here we go, yo.

——————————

Koby was staring out at the sea, feeling his heart hammer in his chest. A newspaper was gripped in his hand, hanging limply from his side. 

The sea smelled amazing, looked amazing, with the sunset mirroring on the crystal water, but that wasn’t why Koby was staring out and feeling like he was about to have a heart attack.

His head tilted down as he looked at the paper again, at the news: STRAW HAT LUFFY BEATS KAIDO. A NEW EMPEROR OF THE SEA? YOUNGEST IN HISTORY!

He was proud. Proud of Luffy, and in…

No, he couldn’t say in awe. It was much more than awe that caused his heart to beat like this.

He didn’t know when the awe had turned into more. Koby had always admired Luffy, from the second Luffy had stated he was going to be the king of the pirates. He had followed Luffy’s adventures while with the Marines, always asking Helmeppo if the paper came in, and, more importantly, if Luffy was mentioned.

Sometimes he regretted looking at the paper. Articles discussing how dangerous and notorious Luffy was, mentioning how he needed to be killed and executed before he achieved his dream. Or the part where he saw Ace’s face on the front, and despite being there for that war, felt his heart shatter. Luffy, was all he was able to think. Luffy, I’m sorry.

Of course, other times he was thrilled to see Luffy in the paper. Like a new bounty price— from 30 million to 300 million to 3 billion.

During the Reverie, he had been thrilled when he had seen Luffy on the front page, given to him by Princess Rebecca (who seemed so happy to find someone to talk about Lucy/Luffy with.) He may have shed some tears—or a lot, he couldn’t remember—but at some point, he wondered, had Luffy ever heard about him?

Koby was now, while not the post popular marine, well known. He had been called a war hero from time to time (which he would bashfully disagree with, saying he was just doing what he loved.)

But had Luffy heard about him? It was no secret that Koby always listened in to conversations, just for snippets of Luffy’s name (it always made him grin, made his heart flutter to realize how quickly Luffy was growing.) Some of his fellow Marines Would teasingly raise their voices when mentioning Luffy-san, especially Helmeppo.

But did Luffy do the same for Koby?

He doubted so. Luffy was busy, most likely. Undoubtedly, really. He defeated Warlord after Warlord, allied with some of the most dangerous pirates, got a fleet of over 5,600 pirates, obtained a new crew member (“Jinbei, the former Warlord? With the Straw hats? OUTRAGEOUS!” Koby’s superiors had said.) And definitely not least, he had beat down a Emperor. Koby was nowhere near that level of popularity, of fame, of recognition.

Still. Some nights, as he laid in his hammock, rocking to the movements of the boat against the gentle waves, he imagined Luffy being proud of him. Imagined Luffy hugging him, exclaiming “Koby’s doing so good! You’re a captain!!” He created fantasies where he secretly met up with Luffy, talking about all his adventures (yet knowing they were nothing compared to Luffy’s, never would be, but even so, the dark haired pirate would be proud.)

Like now, as Koby lifted the paper, reading the first paragraph as someone called the rubber man “the sun god,” Koby found himself crafting a conversation with Luffy in his mind.

“You’re a captain! I’m proud of Koby, you used to be a nobody!” Luffy would say bluntly. (Always so blunt, always spoke what he thought.)

Koby closed his eyes, smiling softly. Picturing Luffy’s too-big-for-his-face grin, the childish laughter…

And then his imagination took off on a different course than usual.

Luffy wrapping an arm around Koby’s waste, grinning at him.

And then… and then Luffy gently taking the side of Koby’s face in his hand, pulling his jaw close and…

Koby’s heart thumped loudly, his eyelids flinging open before he could imagine it.

But it was already there.

A kiss he so desperately wanted.

He gripped his rib cage, trying to catch his breath. “What the heck?” He whispered, feeling his face heat up. “No. No, that’s crazy. I don’t…”

His voice trailed off as footsteps echoed behind him. He turned around, expecting to see Helmeppo-

Luffy was there, wearing a black cape over an unbuttoned red shirt, his straw hat crown hanging off his neck. The X scar on his chest was left for the world to see, but what caught Koby’s attention was that bright D like smile, the shut eyes. “Shishishishi! Koby!” Luffy said, waving at him.

“Luffy-san?” Koby’s face burst into a bright red. He lifted his fists, rubbing his eyes before looking again.

No, not Luffy. He didn’t even look like Luffy. It was Helmeppo, like he had expected, eyebrows furrowed like he was looking at Koby curiously. He guessed he was, for when Koby lifted his hands to his face to hide the shame, his cheeks felt hot.

“No, not Luffy.” Helmeppo chuckled. “Guess you’ve been reading about him too much again?”

Koby managed a nod, turning away from his friend and staring at the sea. What was that??!

“They’re calling him a Sun God. Nika, I think?” Helmeppo leaned against the railing. “Others are saying he’s Joy Boy. I think the Admiral really wants to burn the press. When I walked by his office, he was practically steaming as he ripped the paper up.”

“I’d bet. Most Marine’s hate Luffy-san.” Koby commented.

“But not you.” 

It was stated simply. No undertones of teasing, no mocking drag of the syllables. Just put so simply, so obviously.

So why did Koby feel so embarrassed? Why did his face turn a slight pink?

“Oh.” Helmeppo patted Koby on the back. “I’m starting to feel bad for you, Koby. Marines and Pirates aren’t supposed to be friends.”

“I know.” Koby whispered, hands trembling. 

“Luffy’s counting on you.”

“I know.”

“Yet you like him.” Koby froze, feeling his heart come to a screeching stop. “Would you really arrest him if you ran into the Straw Hats?” 

Koby licked his lips, trying to figure out what to say. “P-pardon me?”

“Would you arrest him.”

“No, before that.”

“Ah.” Helmeppo grinned. “You like him.”

“I admire him.” Koby corrected. Half-heartedly. Something in him knew already, knew that this protesting was fruitless. It already knew how he truly felt.

“Which is almost worse. But no, Koby. You like like him.”

Helmeppo sounded like a teenage girl, gossiping about a cute town boy.

When Koby didn’t say anything, his friend continued. “It’s understandable. Luffy is certainly good looking, and his personality seems to attract everyone. I’m still surprised he was able to make an alliance with Trafalgar Law. And Boa Hancock, as we know, is completely obsessed with him as well.”

Koby felt a twinge of irritation at that.

Boa Hancock. Koby recently had to be rescued from her and Black Beard (thank the seas Garp came for him.) When he had mentioned her infatuation for Luffy, she had seemed to change entirely. While before she had been aggressive to him for being, well, a boy, the second he mentioned Luffy-san, she had became a monster.

“How do you know him?!”

“He rescued me.”

“And yet you threaten to capture and kill him? How dare you endanger my love!”

Koby knew well enough to tell a delusion from reality. Boa was definitely delusional, talking about Luffy being her husband, her love…

Koby couldn’t even imagine Luffy being married, let alone in love with someone.

But yet, he had felt a twinge of jealousy—burning like a fire, stinging like an open wound, at the way Boa Hancock knew more about Luffy than he did.

And that wasn’t saying much, because Boa seemed to have an entirely different version of Luffy in her mind.

How could Koby like Luffy when he knew barely anything about him?

“I don’t like him.” Koby stated plainly. “I just admire him for his stubbornness and ambition. Besides, he’s the reason i’m here in the first place. I owe him a lot.”

“Then why did you say ‘Luffy’ when I walked up?”

Koby held back a curse at that, and Helmeppo’s chuckle said it all: Bingo.

Koby didn’t say anything. Fear was starting to flood through his thoughts.

How could he balance this? What if Helmeppo was right?

He had a duty, a job, but he also had a friend.

Was there a way to balance these things out? To have both?

“You don’t have to answer.” Helmeppo replied after what felt like minutes of silence. “And I obviously won’t tell anyone. But realizing how you feel is important.” He clasped a hand on Koby’s back. “You’re on watch duty tonight, Captain.”

Koby nodded, listening to Helmeppo walk away before slumping against the rails.

He lifted his head, just barely, so he could see the new flyer for Luffy.

Beautiful.

Koby was wrong. It was awe that he felt. Admiration, too.

However, Helmeppo was right as well. Koby did like Luffy.

But he didn’t acknowledge it because…

What right did he have to feel this way about someone in a totally different world?

It sounded like something out of a fairytale. A Marine and a Pirate.

That made him think about Garp. Luffy’s grandfather… a pirates grandfather and the father of the Revolutionary Army’s leader, guardian of the son of Gol D. Roger.

How did he choose? If Luffy got captured, would he sit back and let his grandson be executed? Or would he try to help, speak up for his family?

The answer was partially there. Garp had stood in Luffy’s way during Ace’s public execution. He had made no attempts to help the boy he had been in charge of, as rumors said. Would that be any different for Luffy?

Koby felt torn. He felt like he owed Luffy for getting him this far, felt devoted to the pirate, and, of course, love for him.

But he also had a dream, a dream so important to him and so close he could practically reach out and grasp it.

When the time came, if he faced Luffy again, would he have the ability to arrest Luffy, the boy he liked? Or would he throw away his dream?

He had promised Luffy that one day, he would capture the pirate. He would be the one to arrest him.

If he failed to do this, if he ran into him and refused to do anything, would Luffy be dissapointed in him?

He gazed at the wanted poster and the news paper, heaving a sigh.

That was a choice for the future. In the meantime, he could just realize…

He could just realize how much Luffy really meant to him. He could dream about secret meetings, forbidden dates, soft touches and moonlight walks.

Even though he knew he stood no chance in the line of winning Luffy’s affection.

Last time he had seen Luffy, Zoro had been practically attached to him by the hip. Zoro, the one who had stayed with Luffy. Zoro, the one hopelessly devoted to the pirate.

Koby could have done that. He could have given up his dream to stay with Luffy.

He could imagine what Luffy would say to that. The slight, childish scowl as he said “Koby’s dream is more important. Don’t give up on it! If I really mean that much to you, then know that I’d rather you chase your dream!”

But you’re important too, Koby thought sadly. Yet I’m a Marine, and I promised I would be the one to catch you when you became King of the Pirates.

I will get stronger. Koby smiled. I will get stronger so I can catch you.

And maybe I can catch your heart in the process.

[possibleplatypus]

I just saw this article and I'm somehow even more disappointed.

But it turns out no one warned Captain America himself that a very personal piece of his history was about to be broadcast to the world. "I laughed my ass off," Ruffalo tells EW. "I'm like, 'Does someone need to talk to Captain America about this?' I haven't. I was afraid he was going to have it cut. Too late now, buddy. The cat's out of the bag."

Like... yes? He would have it cut because it's such bullshit? The fact that Chris who genuinely cares about Steve and who played that character for ten years wouldn't approve should've been an indicator.

Reducing Steve to jokes about his virginity is such a cheap shot. Avoiding that Sam is Captain America is too. I don't even know anymore.

My friend.... this is really funny, because I also just read this article today, and I was all geared up to write a rant about it when you popped into my inbox 😂

This is one of the most asinine articles I've ever read 🤣🤣🤣 and I've read quite a few in regards to certain characters in the MCU.

First to address your point about Chris Evans-- I do feel pretty bad for him. I think he genuinely connected to and cared about Steve Rogers as a character. From the interviews in which he talks about Steve, and particularly Steve's relationship with Bucky, I can tell he really put a lot of thought into Steve's heart and frame of mind, and I think he really made MCU Steve Rogers his. Certainly any new film incarnations of Steve will be measured up against Chris' interpretation, haha.

It's just... I don't think Chris would have wanted Steve to be disrespected like this. Ruffalo himself said he thought Chris would have put a stop to it. So it's distasteful that everyone would just go ahead and make obsessing over Steve's virginity a big part of Jennifer's character while laughing at it all the while. (I can't read Chris Evans' mind-- maybe he doesn't care, though I like to think he does.) As a big fan of Steve, Disney has not failed to disappoint me time after time, and this is just the icing on the cake.

And Sam, our new Captain America! Why does the MCU seem to forget that they have a new Captain America? Is it because they're spending all their energy marketing another Captain? 🤔 You'd think he would be of more note to a Manhattan lawyer's mind since he stopped freedom fighters antifa terrorists from killing the GRC members? Hell the Hollywood Reporter forgot and Chris had to remind them. I do feel bad for Anthony Mackie. 🤦 Silver lining-- at least She Hulk isn't obsessing over Sam's virginity??

And yes, I do agree that reducing Steve to jokes about his ass and virginity are a cheap shot. And it shows how puerile and insipid the MCU has become. They have nothing of note to say and they grab for anything that they think is funny, to the point of making jokes of their most beloved characters. I know they're aiming for the widest audience imaginable, including kids, but that doesn't mean they need to write like high schoolers (though tbh I know fanficcers in high school that write better than these guys). What mature adult honestly gives a such a huge crap about whether or not a (thought to be) deceased public figure and national hero had sex?

The first paragraph had me rolling my eyes already:

Jennifer Walters is the hero we all deserve, because in the very first episode of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, she finally gets to the bottom of one of Marvel's biggest mysteries: Did Captain America die a virgin?

And it just gets worse.

As She-Hulk continues, viewers can expect to see more hilarious, meta, and, yes, horny moments like this. "The horniness! That stuff is my favorite," Maslany says with a laugh. She loved how Jen is obsessed with Captain America's virginity because "it's the human side of him, the real side, the thing that she would [relate to]."

You're telling me that Jennifer Walters, a lawyer whose opening scene showed her practicing her closing argument for a case against powerful business interests that caused the deaths of innocent people-- that Jennifer Walters, who was standing up for the little guy-- that this strong, compassionate woman, is "obsessed" with Captain America's virginity of all things because it's the "human, real" side of him that she would relate to?? Not the side of him that stood up against bullies at great detriment to his own well-being, even before he had the serum? Not the side of him that curled over a grenade to protect his fellow soldiers? The side that went into a Nazi death camp solo to rescue his best friend (and hundreds of other POWs) when the army left them for dead? The side of him that leveled a Nazi-infested US intelligence agency? The side of him that did exactly what she was shown to be doing right at the beginning of her own show??

I think @luna-rainbow said it best-- "to reduce “the human side of Steve” (or anyone, for that matter) to whether or not they fucked…is seriously superficial, intrusive and just pathetic."

But the actress admits she had no idea this was something Marvel fans have been wondering for years, adding, "I love that that's how everybody's thinking. In that vein of that question, there's a lot more Easter eggs like that throughout the season. There's something later that's a really great moment with a cameo that I won't say what happens, but it's basically like a walk of shame that's really funny."

I shudder to imagine what horrors await us.

And if any fans are wondering how credible Bruce's intel is, the debate can be put to rest: This is officially the true story of how Captain America lost his virginity. "We didn't set out thinking that we were going to be able to answer it," Gao tells EW. "It used to just be a running joke, that it's going to be a lifelong obsession for Jen, that this is the one thing that keeps her awake at night. It actually used to be in the show a lot more, where in every episode there would be some little reminder, like you'd see that her search history was this, and she was always in asides talking to other characters where everybody's reaction was like, 'She's talking about this again.'"

You're kidding me right? Does nobody on this team see how creepy it is for a grown woman to be obsessed lifelong with a dead man's sex life? Compare it to a random male character obsessing every night over whether or not Natasha had been a virgin when she died. And for this to be the thing that keeps her awake at night? Out of all the things she's experienced??

But then Gao got the definitive answer — and permission to use it — from Marvel's mastermind. "It was actually Kevin Feige who said, 'I know the answer. I can tell you. We can do the answer,'" Gao recalls. "And I was like, 'You have the answer, and we can tell everyone?' And he was like, 'Yeah.' So this is Marvel canon. This is straight from Kevin Feige."

SO IT WAS YOU, KEVIN FEIGE!!! Honestly when I read this I almost felt relieved. If it's Feige's own fatuous headcanon, I can ignore it. Why does the status of Steve Rogers' virginity take up so much of his headspace that he feels the need to insert it into a show that has nothing to do with him? And they were going to have it in every episode? Why?! PLEASE tell me they aren't doing that anymore. I don't want anyone in the MCU to ever utter Steve's name again.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I haven't done one of the Chortle roundup posts in a while, mainly because I just haven't seen that many headlines on there that have particularly grabbed my attention. But when I opened the website yesterday, the two at the top seemed worth a screenshot.

What a combination. I have to admit I've dropped off from following The News Quiz lately, for the first time since I first got into it in about 2009, back in the Toksvig days. Followed it through the Miles Jupp days and into the Zaltzman days.

So you'd think I'd have gotten more obsessed with it as I became increasingly obsessed with Andy Zaltzman due to The Bugle, but it sort of had the opposite effect. The News Quiz feels like a somewhat watered down version of Andy Zaltzman, where I can hear him make a lot of the same jokes he makes on The Bugle that week (not that I blame him, he can't be expected to turn over two sets of material every week), but with certain parts cut, for time and/or BBC radio rules and/or format points. I'd rather hear him in the format where he's allowed to go on as much as he wants with fewer restrictions. And most News Quiz guests who are all that great get invited onto The Bugle anyway, so I hear them there.

In early 2023, I started skipping News Quiz episodes if they featured a TERF or a Tory. By mid-2023, I was noticing how often I skipped episodes, and realizing just how frequently they feature one of those was souring the program in my mind. It's worth noting that zero of the TERF or Tory guests have ever turned up on The Bugle, meaning it's not Andy's choice to have them on The News Quiz, I assume it's a BBC balance thing.

The final straw of a long loosening of that show's grip on me came when those quotes about Graham Linehan's book came out and we were all disappointed (but not, like, completely and utterly shocked) in Richard Ayoade, but Simon Evans had added a supportive quote as well. Simon Evans is one of the Tory comedians who turns up on The News Quiz fairly regularly, and I'd thought of him as someone who will make me skip an episode, but not that bad really, I disagree with him but he's not one of those really hardline right-wing horrible people. Is how I thought of him, until I read that he'd thrown his lot in with the absolute worst of them in the Linehan quote, and then I decided that his regular inclusion on The News Quiz is enough to make me not just skip his episodes, but not want much to do with the show anymore. Like I said, I don't blame Zaltzman at all (if Simon Evans turns up on The Bugle that's a different story, but I can't imagine that happening). It's a BBC thing.

Cancel culture, I know. Sorry, right wing. I'm personally canceling all of you by not wanting to take the horrible viewpoints I listen to every day in serious news and then hear them in my entertainment as well.

Anyway, that all makes that Chortle headline extra hilarious. Picking The News Quiz as their example of anti-right wing bias. I was about to write several paragraphs here about why that is bullshit, but actually it's 6 AM and I have to get up for work soon and I cannot be bothered. Everyone reading this already knows why that is bullshit, and I'm at a point in my life where if anyone doesn't know, I don't want to waste energy explaining it, I just want to not hang out with them. Cancel culture, I know. I'm a big fan of cancel culture these days.

Having said all that, that second headline is really worth a look. This is a bit of a ridiculous thing to say given the subjective nature of the genre, but that stand-up show - the tour that Nish Kumar's just announced (via his mailing list that the Chortle article pretty much just copy-pasted, everyone should get on his mailing list so you can get your comedy news from correctly spelled sources, usual disclaimer that I reserve the right to make fun of Chortle misspelling things even though my Tumblr blog misspells things because no one pays me for my Tumblr blog) - might be the best stand-up show. Like. Of all stand-up shows out there. It might be the best one. Nish might do his tour in late 2024 (following an Edinburgh run, that I desperately hope will include dates in the first week of the festival because I would love to see the finished show live) and then everyone might be able to just pack and up and say "Well, it's okay that the world's ending, because at least stand-up comedy has been done to perfection. We can all move on now." (I mean, except some people on some comedy message boards whom I'm pretty sure won't like him no matter what he does, and also I guess the Daily Mail won't like him no matter what he does for very different reasons, sorry he's not Fin Taylor and some people stand for something, also sorry for dedicating a sentence of my Tumblr post to responding to a message board post I saw last week for which no one on this website has context, I'd say about 5% of my posts these days are doing that.)

I realize this is a weird thing to say about a tour that hasn't started yet, and a show that hasn't been completed yet. But I've heard some of the WIP material, and if you put all that material together, and wrap it around some structure and stuff - which is what I assume Nish Kumar intends to do before touring it as a full hour - I'm pretty sure that's a recipe for the best stand-up comedy show I've ever heard. Absolutely everyone who has the ability to do so should check this show out. I think Nish Kumar's at his best ever right now, and that means a hell of a lot when you consider how much I've venerated his previous stuff. He keeps improving on perfection and I think everyone should just stop bothering making comedy after this one. After I get the chance to gaze upon the eighth wonder of the world in Edinburgh 2024, that is.

[thebestofoneshots]

Hi I would like for you to read some of the stuff to my book to see if you think I should make more and maybe give me some advice, I feel like my writnig is not the best bc English is not my first language.

You were sitting on your sofa in your house looking at some random shit on your phone. "Hi, I'm home!” says Paul as he opens the door to your house. you stand up and walk out to him “hi” He puts his hands on your waist and pulls you in for a kiss. “hi” he smiled down at you “how was the filming?” "awful Tyrese and I couldn't make one of the scenes we kept laughing” you stood on your tip toes and kissed his cheek. “Are you ready for the Italian Grand Prix in a few days?” “mhm, Charles is coming over to get me thursday, tomorrow so I won't be home. Also, do you want to come with me?” you ask him “I would love to come but am Im allowed to be there not many people know our thing.” “you will be if you walk in with me and Frédéric knows..” “Did you tell him?” “no, he saw you called me after a race. He could see your name with a heart on my phone.” “okay.. so I'm flying with you and Charles?” “yeah he will be okay with it, he had his gf with him once” “I will go up and pack then” he smiled at you as he took his shoes off.  He then stood up “did you have a good day?” “yes but it’s much better now that you're here” He chuckles and looks down at you, he then takes you up and puts you over his shoulder ”HEY!”   

I really like it myself but dont know if it is actually good..

Hey babe! I've taken some time to answer this one because I wanted to dedicate the proper time to it. I must say, your story is pretty interesting, and you should definitely write more. In fact, even if some asshole ever told you that you shouldn't, you should continue to write if it's what you enjoy doing.

Now, where I do think I could give you some advice is regarding the formatting. This one is crucial because different languages have different formatting for writing and English has a lot of tricky ones, and it takes a lot of attention to get them right but I think I can sum them up for you.

Now the lack of spacing might be because of the limited amount of space in asks, but just in case it isn't, it's important to remember that you must switch paragraphs every time:

A different character speaks

You change a scene, time or location

You start a new topic

Another interesting one that even I didn't know until way deep into writing fanfiction is the punctuation marks after your characters speak and before you add the quotation marks. Allow me to elaborate.

This is a super detailed article about it, but basically, a dialogue should look something like this.

"If your dialogue follows a dialogue tag, you must use a coma in the end," she said.

She said, "On the other hand, if it's at the beginning, then instead of a coma you would use a dot."

"If it's obvious who the speaker is and you don't want to add a dialogue tag, then you also use a dot."

"And it's the same if you're breaking a paragraph after your dialogue."

"You are also meant to use dots if the dialogue is followed by an action and not a dialogue tag." She moved to the other side of the room to continue explaining.

"And if you have either a question mark or an exclamation one, then you continue your without capitalizing, the same as if it were a coma!" she said.

"If you are breaking paragraph after it, you don't need to add a for though!"

So with proper formatting, the little excerpt you've sent would look somewhat like this:

You were sitting on the sofa in your house looking at some random shit on your phone. "Hi, I'm home!” said Paul as he opened the door to your house. You stood up and walked up to him (tense change) “Hi.” He put his hands on your waist and pulled you in for a kiss, (tense change) “Hi,” he smiled down at you. “How was the filming?” "Awful Tyrese and I couldn't make one of the scenes, we kept laughing.” You stood on your tip toes and kissed his cheek. “Are you ready for the Italian Grand Prix in a few days?” “Mhm, Charles is coming over to get me Thursday, so I won't be home. Want to come with me?” you asked him. “I would love to come but... Am I allowed to be there? Not many people know our thing.” “You will be if you walk in with me and... Frédéric knows–” "You told him?” (sounds a bit more natural) “No, he saw you called me after a race. He saw your name with a heart on my phone.” “Okay.. so I'm flying with you and Charles?” “Yeah he will be okay with it, he had his girlfriend with him once.” “I'll go up and pack then,” (also the contraction makes it a bit more natural) he smiled at you as he took his shoes off,  he then stood up. “Did you have a good day?” “Yes but it’s much better now that you're here.” He chuckled (tense change) and looked down at you, he then grabbed onto your waist and put you over his shoulder. ”HEY!”  you complained. 

Also, I'd also add that you must be careful with your tenses, you start in past and then you switch to present, while this can happen in English when you are in conversation, it's not very common when you're telling a story. If you'll be talking in present, stick to the present (It's not vert common on formal books but I've seen it often in fanfiction), if you'll be talking in past, stick to the past.

I hope you find this useful darling, I tried to be as concise as possible while explaining all these little grammar rules, and I hope I didn't come as harsh. Took me long to figure them out and I suppose someone detailing them to me would have been pretty useful. I think your writing is great and I reiterate the fact that you should definitely continue. Sending all the love in the world!

[tsuki-chibi]

Ladynoir July 2023 Day 7: My Boyfriend vs Your Girlfriend

Read all the entries on AO3

–

“Umm… what are they doing?”

The innocently phrased question made Rena Rouge heave a deep sigh. She propped her elbows on her knees and leaned her chin on her hands, wishing that she were anywhere else other than where she was. But since there was no miraculous that granted wishes (yet), her life did not change… and so she was forced to answer Paon’s question.

“Honestly, I’m not really sure,” Rena said honestly. “They’ve been yelling at each other for the past ten minutes.”

“Actually, it’s been eleven minutes,” Carapace said, looking as bored as Rena felt.

Paon looked somewhat baffled by this. “But… why?”

“You should know by now that Ladybug and Chat Noir are not nearly as cool as the rumors say they are,” Queen Bee said dryly. She was sitting on the low wall that Rena Rouge and Carapace were leaning against. Viperion was leaning against her legs and seemed completely amused by the whole situation.

“I mean, that was kind of obvious,” Paon said. He rubbed the back of his head. “But this is…”

“I’m telling you that my boyfriend better! He can jump higher than I ever could!” Ladybug’s voice rose into an indignant shriek.

“Well, my girlfriend is almost at the point where she can fly!” Chat yelled back.

“This is some peak ‘my boyfriend vs your girlfriend’ energy,” Rena murmured, wondering if she should snap a couple of pictures. But she didn’t think that the brimming sexual tension in the air would translate well to photographs, which meant she’d just end up with pictures of Ladybug and Chat Noir looking mad and yelling at each other. Not exactly great material for the Ladyblog.

Besides, she wasn’t sure how to accurately communicate the fight – if it could be called that – in a post.

It had started off with Viperion innocently bringing a copy of the paper with him. There was a new article about Ladybug and Chat Noir in it that he’d thought they would want to see. It was immediately obvious that the writer had a thing for Ladybug, as they’d gone for several cringe-inducing paragraphs about how amazing she was and how talented she was and how beautiful she was, etc…

Chat had been a bit jealous, but openly agreed with the article.

Ladybug had made a joke about ‘her boyfriend’ being way better.

Chat had protested that ‘his girlfriend’ was the epitome of amazing.

Ladybug had defended ‘her boyfriend’ and stood behind her statement.

Chat hadn’t stood for that, and had protested even more.

And now, eleven – no, make that twelve minutes later…

“Are they really standing there arguing over which of them better? But they’re both saying the other is better?” Paon wondered, tilting his head adorably.

“Um… yeah. That’s pretty much what they’re doing,” Rena said resignedly.

“By my guess, we have about nine minutes of this before they start making out and I am not down for that,” Queen Bee said, rolling her eyes and getting up.

Rena couldn’t exactly blame her for that. Watching Ladybug and Chat Noir be super mushy had been exciting for about five minutes the first time it ever happened. Now it was usually a sign to vacate the premises before clothing came off.

“Wanna go back to the hotel and do some making out of our own?” Viperion asked, batting his eyelashes up at Queen Bee. She colored, her cheeks turning pink, but nodded. Viperion grinned and stood up too. They said their goodbyes and then left, leaving Rena, Carapace, and Paon alone.

“I thought we were going to do some training tonight,” Paon said uncertainly. “Should I ask Ladybug about it?”

“She wouldn’t hear you even if you did,” Carapace said, and he was right. Ladybug and Chat Noir were now standing about a foot apart, yelling in each other’s faces. Rena mentally recalculated Queen Bee’s overly generous estimation to be more like two minutes.

“Come on, Paon,” she said, making an executive decision. “Carapace and I will train with you for a little while. We’ll leave these two to… uh, to do whatever.”

Paon brightened a little. “Really? Cool!”

His obvious enthusiasm was a boost to Rena’s confidence. She grinned at him and stood, then pulled Carapace up as well. The three of them vacated the rooftop just as Ladybug threw herself at Chat.

[thelostgirl21]

Alright, I might need your help / input on this one...

As some of you know, at some point over the summer, I'd noticed that:

a) Jaskier's LGBTQ+ wiki page was empty (a page had been made, but without any content yet),

b) that Radovid's page wasn't there,

c) that Radskier didn't have any page on the shipping wiki, either;

d) and that the Netflix versions of the characters of Radovid and Vespula were both missing from The Witcher's wiki, also.

Thus, I took the liberty to start filling those pages, doing my best to interpret and make sense of all the information I'd gathered throughout interviews, news articles, etc.

And, as I've explained here, I made one massive mistake of interpretation, that I then attempted to fix by rephrasing things in that manner:

I gave the moderator the explanation in yellow (i.e. the one at the bottom), and they reverted it back exactly to the way it was.

Therefore, I've now, at the very least, attempted to remove one paragraph, and given them the other explanation in yellow (the one at the top), hoping it would at the very least be kept off the wiki.

Because this is the huge mistake I made I was talking about, that was utterly and completely wrong:

Hopefully, they'll keep that paragraph off the page. It if comes back, just know that I no longer agree, at all, with what I'd previously written (yeah, I'll probably never let myself live that one down).

Where I need some input, is to see if you have some ideas on how Jaskier's sapiosexuality might have been supported by the show's narrative, to have it recognized as a valid sexual orientation for the character on the wiki?

Okay, first of all, I probably should say that the moderator appears to have a very strict "to be accepted on the LGBTQ+ wiki, a sexuality must both be shown on screen (through either text or queer subtext), and identified as such by someone working on the show," policy.

At least, that's how I've interpreted it, based on the answers they've given to other people's questions on their wall.

For example, an actor could not be officially claiming that a character is bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, or polysexual if there's been no evidence, in the show (or the movie, videogame, etc.) that they have the potential to have sex with more than a single gender.

Therefore, I was able to get pansexuality accepted as part of Jaskier's sexual identity in the table, because Vespula tells Jaskier: "I’ve cursed you for chasing tails of every kind. Men, women, dwarves, elves, polymorphous…  […] But never have I ever seen you have a crush,” and there was an article stating that Jaskier was a panromantic or pansexual character.

And they've accepted sapioromantism for similar reasons, likely because "crush" is a-spec slang for romantic attraction.

For your personal information, the main ones I personally know and remember are:

Romantic attraction = crush.

Platonic attraction = squish.

Alterous attraction = mesh.

Sensual attraction = lush.

Sexual attraction = smush.

Aesthetic attraction = swish.

So, the whole scene is layered with heavy aromantic subtext, making the claim from Joey Batey that they'd built something very special for their audience - a sapioromantic and sapiosexual connection - be something very tangible on the show.

As someone that watched season 3 having already read that article before, and being overexcited to discover how they'd handled showing the character as being a sapioromantic on screen, I felt like Batey and the writers fully delivered on their promise, and wrote the queer scenes with a queer audience in mind.

But the moderator has refused to accept "panromantic" under Jaskier's romantic identity.

And my guess is that, by having Vespula tell Jaskier that she's never ever seen him have a crush before, then the show only lists the different people that Jaskier has been with sexually.

Reading into the a-spec subtext, we are more or less told that what Jaskier is experiencing for Radovid is a crush (romantic attraction), seemingly based on the way that Jaskier appears to be fascinated by and connecting with Radovid's intelligence and insightfulness (sapio).

Jaskier insists that he doesn't have crushes (aro), thus implying that either it's never happened before, or he's never fully been aware of it happening before.

So, I'm guessing they are saying "Well, the show has failed to show us that he's been romantically involved with people regardless of gender, since they only explicitly identified a single crush that Jaskier has been experiencing on the show, and it's with Radovid (a man).

There's no suggestion, in the narrative itself, that Jaskier could find himself experiencing a crush regardless of a partner gender. We've only seen him crushing on a man."

Therefore the moderator only considers sapioromantic as being a romantic orientation that's been named and that is being backed by the show's narrative, but not panromantic.

At least, that's my theory as to why "panromantic" keeps being refused whenever I've tried putting it in the table, regardless of what Joey Batey himself said in interviews.

Did I ask them why they were refusing panromantic? Yes, I did. But they didn't answer. So, I am left with trying to understand why they've accepted sapioromantic and pansexual, but refused sapiosexual and panromantic, based on the answers that they've provided to other people that appeared to be facing similar issues I had.

Which bring us to the whole "sapiosexual" fiasco.

Sadly, I can't demonstrate that Jaskier is sapiosexual based on the show's narrative alone.

He's seen as being instantly interested in having sex with people's he's just met, and as constantly craving sexual contact to the point where it gets him into trouble.

Hence why even I managed to missed it. I've been so used to read into character behavior as proof of attraction that I totally fell headfirst into that trap!

To the point where, at some point, I was literally thinking that maybe the words that Joey Batey used were

"[We] ensured that these romances are told truthfully — and sensitively and carefully, without resorting to stereotypes… Hopefully we’ve created something that is special, a sapioromantic and sexual [connection] that is as flawed as any other relationship in this show.”

And it was reported as "sapioromantic" and "sapiosexual" by the person writing the article, rather than sapioromantic and sexual (because no official source had confirmed the pairing would be a same gender one back then, and therefore Joey wouldn't have been able to label any gendered aspect of the queer relationship with Radovid yet when the article came out).

But sexual activity can be enjoyed with people for reasons that have nothing to do with finding a partner sexually attractive, and it's not something that can easily be shown on screen, even through the use of asexual subtext.

Unless Jaskier suddenly launches into some kind of educational presentation on what asexuality is, the different types of physical attraction asexual typically experience (aesthetic, sensual...), the different types of asexuals (sex-favorable, sex-neutral, sex-repulsed...) and how each of them might choose to express their sexuality, "canon sapiosexuality" is virtually impossible to clearly represent on screen!

To have any hope of being represented by characters in the field of TV, movie, and videogame entertainment, some sexualities have little to no choice but to rely almost exclusively on what the actors and the writers (or other people involved in the creation of the narrative) of the show are saying their intention was for the character.

I understand the whole concept behind the "death of the author", I do.

I'm 100% fine with people claiming that Poe Dameron being romantically attracted towards Finn is canon based on the queer subtext the actor used in his acting and him saying that he was playing a romance despite the studios disagreeing with that interpretation.

Why? Because the performance was queer coded, the studio knew it, they still released it, and if you queer-bait your audience, you better believe they have every right to claim a character as theirs.

But in the context where we're talking about the intent of the writers and the actor of portraying such a little known and represented romantic and sexual orientation that is part of the aromantic and asexual spectrum, I'm extremely saddened at the thought of people going "Well, we'll just ignore that the character was ever intended to be sapioromantic or sapiosexual, and only give validity to what's explicitly shown on screen!"

Look Lucifer has been seen as being sexually involved with people of any gender identity on the show, but he's never once announced "I'm a bisexual devil!"

It's the actors and the writers that confirmed it.

On the show, we can only interpret his behavior as being compatible with the label bisexuality. But his sexuality was still only explicitly named off screen.

Same with Kaidan Alenko in the videogame Mass Effect, and I *think* Magnus Bane in Shadowhunters.

We interpret bisexual behavior as proof enough of bisexuality, and trust the writers and the actors' words.

But what is "sapioromantic behavior" or "sapiosexual behavior". How can one objectively differentiate it from alloromantic and allosexual behavior, by solely showing it.

If we don't require onscreen bisexual representation to use the label to trust that the people working on the show are using the right label...

...why is it so important to have people say "I'm sapioromantic" or "I'm sapiosexual" before it can be considered canon.

Jaskier was labelled as sharing a sapioromantic and sapiosexual relationship with Radovid off screen. And the show's narrative is 100% compatible with real life sapioromantic and sapiosexual behavior.

So, I personally find it extremely unfair for us to be expected to go one step further, by explicitly finding ways to prove that Jaskier can only be sexually attracted towards people that he establishes an intellectual connection with on screen through the show's narrative itself.

It also makes "allosexuality" the default sexuality, where everyone having sex with a partner can be assumed to be sexually attracted to them unless they find a way to explicitly prove otherwise.

And it requires that the representation of the characters on the asexual spectrum be explicit to the point of needing to name the label, when we virtually never require any gay, bisexual, or even pansexual (has Deadpool ever explicitly stated he was pansexual without breaking the fourth wall? I'd have to check!) to explicitly state their label, just be shown as having sex with more than a single gender identity.

i.e. Engaging in a behavior that is compatible with their sexual orientation.

Jaskier's behavior is compatible with a sapiosexual orientation.

So yes, the idea that you must both have people working on the show naming the character's sexuality, and that it must be explicitly shown on top of it in the show's narrative, rings a bit problematic to me in the context of harder to demonstrate sexualities.

When you're tackling representation for rarer and more specific sexualities, I believe you should trust the writers and actors reporting what the intended labels for the character are, and only require that the narrative doesn't contradict it, not explicitly proves it.

Any bisexual behavior seen on screen can be used as proof of either bisexuality, pansexuality, or omnisexuality (or in some case polysexuality) as soon as someone officially working on the show names the character's sexuality.

It's extremely easily identifiable and simple to show (and even there, some idiots will try to say that anything non-monosexual doesn't exist).

But there's no such thing as widely recognized and easily identifiable "asexual behavior" per say.

And the difference between a queerplatonic relationship and a romantic relationship, for example, can be so subtle that they will present on screen as being exactly the same.

So, asking for explicit representation, and having it 100% confirmed on screen, is a bit much.

Jaskier never explicitly told Vespula: "I am confused over my feelings for Radovid, because I don't think I've ever experienced that type of specific attraction before. This is different. The way I feel about Radovid is different."

And Vespula didn't then say to him: "That's because I think you are romantically attracted to him."

And Jaskier didn't then answer: "What?! But I don't get romantically attracted to people! I love them platonically or alterously! I desire them sexually! I have world ending, heart wrenching affairs! I do enjoy getting involved in romances for the excitement it provides, the love, and the kinship I share with all my partners, but I don't desire my lovers romantically! I have also finally found my chosen family - a family that I share with my very best friend in the whole wide world and the second most important person in my life (since Joey said the first was Ciri)! I thought I was 100% aromantic until today! Why would I suddenly experience romantic attraction NOW, when I finally have the family I've been looking for, and it turns out they are what pleases me?"

Vespula didn't then answer: "Well, you were specifically swooning over Radovid's intelligence and insightfulness, so maybe you're sapioromantic?"

Instead, we've got Jaskier swooning over how intelligent and insightful Radovid is, while saying "the problem is different, the solution must be different, and Radovid... is different", seemingly confused and intrigued by what he's going through emotionally.

Vespula saying "You like him."

Jaskier thinking that she's talking about his feelings for Geralt, and clarifying that they are of a platonic nature.

Followed by her specifying that she was referring to Radovid, and that, despite Jaskier having been sexually involved with a bunch of different people before, never has she ever seen him have a "crush" (aro/ace slang for "romantic attraction") on any of them.

Then, Jaskier's reaction being to deny that "crushes" (again aro/ace slang for "romantic attraction") are something that he experiences and has the known capacity for, while insisting that he only has world ending, heart-wrenching affairs!

It's aromantic subtext. And yes, I'm happy and feel we're lucky that the queer subtext has been recognized as being enough to back up Joey Batey's claims that the character was sapioromantic.

My problem, is that asexual subtext is even much, much harder to portray and describe.

I would not expect Vespula to tell Jaskier "I've seen you lush and swish over so many men, women, dwarves, etc., before; but I think it's the first time I've ever seen you smush after someone!"

Expecting queer people to pick on the differences between a crush and squish? Reasonable. If you tell them "look for the sapioromantic representation" while watching the show by telling them before hand in an article, they'll go in paying attention to it and they'll likely see it.

But trying to differentiate between someone wanting to have sex with a partner because they find them aesthetically and sensually attractive, and they can enjoy sex for the sex itself without being sexually attracted to them (for example)...

...and someone wanting to have sex with a partner because they are feeling specifically sexually attracted to them?

Good luck!

The only way I could *perhaps* see how the sapiosexual attraction between Jaskier and Radovid might have been shown by the writers and the actors on the show, would be by comparing the way that Jaskier seems usually quite playful, casual, and fully in control of his body's responses whenever he's talking about sex, interacting with others in a sexually charged context, and talking about how he might be into certain things sexually.

When he was saying that he wasn't not, not into it while looking at Senchai sharing his own appearance, it was said with an almost detached (if a bit freaked out) sense of fascination and curiosity, I think.

Otherwise, he's often seen enjoying himself and being appreciative of other people's beauty, and curious about all the things they could be sexually doing together. Sex with a wide variety of people is amazing, and he regrets nothing!

It's very loving, and affectionate, too.

But it's true that he's not necessarily intensely vibrating with need or desire for his partner in those moment.

And then, there's the way he's physically and emotionally responding to Radovid in this scene...

So that could, perhaps, subjectively show a difference between "enjoying sex with someone you love" and "being sexually attracted to a partner".

With what triggered Jaskier's sudden need to "pounce" on Radovid to kiss him and potentially initiate the sexual activity being the way Radovid's brain works, and how he chose to express his feelings for Jaskier by learning his song (sort of connecting with Jaskier using his own language).

But it's so, so, so, so extremely subjective... that I'm really not sure how I can build a case for it!

And besides, even when you do feel sexually attracted to a partner, you're not constantly sexually attracted or aroused by them. It comes and goes. Sometimes you are in that more playful and detached mood. At least, I think...

I mean, my allosexual partner is much easier to get in that very aroused, very sexually receptive mood than I am, if I'm being honest.

But if he's being a complete geek about something I'll eventually get there. At the most unpractical and inopportune moments, too.

So asexuality is very complex and there's no way to clearly show it, just basically state it.

So, if any of you have any clue on how I could make a solid case for it, and get it approved on the wiki (because I do believe that sapiosexual representation matters), I'm all ears!

And look, I'm not blaming the moderator, either. That's not the point of that post.

Am I frustrated? Yes.

But I understand the need for a clear system to accept or refuse submissions, and I'm guessing that, with the number of pages they must go through and analyze every day, at some point, some nuances get lost; and they, too, miss that maybe applying the same rules for every single sexual and romantic identities, without analyzing how it puts some identities at a clear disadvantage given the complexities of translating attraction into easily identifiable behavior, is asking a lot.

We're all doing the best we can with the knowledge and abilities that we have.

But yeah, what a mess still...

[makethosenarratorsfight]

UNRELIABLE NARRATORS; SIDE A

Lemony Snicket Propaganda:

(I would like to preface this by saying that Lemony Snicket is the author's pen name, not a real person, and he exists as a character in-universe as well as being the one in-universe who writes the books!) I'd say he's unreliable because he spent time collecting information about the Baudelaire kids and then... wrote books about it. He has no idea what any of their dialogue actually was, what they were thinking, or even the whole plot, he's just doing research into the incidents and then filling in the gaps to make it a story. What ACTUALLY happened to the Baudelaires? Nobody really knows for sure

While the Baudelaire siblings are in potentially life threatening danger, he will randomly start talking about his own life and just leave the siblings hanging. For example, once Count Olaf was threatening to kill Violet, and then Lemony randomly began talking about how he met the love of his life at a costume party. This man CANNOT stay on topic. Usually when a new character is introduced, Lemony tells us right at the start that they’re either going to die or that the Baudelaire siblings will never see them again. Foreshadowing is not subtle in these books. CONSTANTLY emphasizes how miserable he feels while writing these books. At one point he admits that he had to put his pencil down and go cry for a while because of how sad it made him. Once he filled an entire page with nothing but the word “ever” to emphasize how dangerous it is to put forks in electrical outlets. He also repeated a paragraph about deja vu later on in the book to give the reader deja vu.

Dr. James Sheppard Propaganda:

The story, centered on murders in an English village, is narrated by Poirot’s mild-mannered sidekick, Dr. James Sheppard. [SPOILERS} At the end, the killer turns out to be Dr. Sheppard himself, a shock despite the reader having been privy to his thoughts for several hundred pages. Christie does not allow her narrator to record a single falsehood; his slippery omissions and evasions are enough to conceal his guilt.

to quote the wikipedia article on this book: "The novel was well-received from its first publication,[4][5] and has been called Christie's masterpiece.[6] In 2013, the British Crime Writers' Association voted it the best crime novel ever.[7] It is one of Christie's best known[8][9] and most controversial novels,[10][11][12] its innovative twist ending having a significant impact on the genre. Howard Haycraft included it in his list of the most influential crime novels ever written.[13]"

Dr Sheppard’s telling the story by documenting Poirot’s investigation, starting by first telling us the events that led him to finding Roger Ackroyd’s body. He’d had dinner with Ackroyd that evening to talk about a woman’s recent suicide and her admission she’d poisoned her husband after struggling with a blackmailer. Ackroyd had a letter from her and when his body was found the letter was gone. He tells us opportunities the main suspect had to do things all while professing said subject would never do *that* when you go back and look at them again knowing what you do at the end you can see how these little things you can see how they relate to opportunities which could have led Sheppard to be exposed as the blackmailer and murderer. It’s brilliant how Christie set it up, especially if you’ve read other Poirots and are used to Hasting telling us the story. I always read it twice in a row, once just listening to the story and then going through and noting those little clues that change in context. I’m not sure I explained it that well but it’s really good how he lies to us by telling part of the truth.