#like it's a general depressing song already but he's a special case. like it's almost on the nose with him. the chorus especially | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

regrettablewritings · 4 years

Text

Preferences: Guilty Pleasures

Characters: Okoye, Lucifer Morningstar, Dewey Finn, Peter B. Parker, Ahkmenrah

Okoye

Okoye is straightforward and stony upon first impressions. And, admittedly, even afterward. The only real difference is that, if one gets to know her better, they might find shock in the fact that in spite of her appearance, she Dora leader actually likes sweets. However, it’s not sweet things in general that Okoye feels guilty for enjoying: It’s Starbucks.

Starbucks is the antithesis of everything Okoye is associated with: Supremely un-Wakandan, a chain establishment, and overall just not worth the absurd cost. Not to mention superbly unhealthy when compared to the rest of a fighter’s typical diet. But yet you can bet that every time she needs to go out of the country or off-continent, there’s an invasive shout for joy at the possibility that she might be able to get her hands on a Frappucino (followed by an internal scolding).

She can’t even explain exactly why she likes it; there are plenty of good, even healthier sweet things back in Wakanda -- heck, back anywhere else!

But it’s a bit like when someone craves the cheap taste of school pizza over a legit pie cooked in a stone hearth: She just loves the sugary sweetness, the application of whipped cream to an already tooth-rottingly saccharine icy drink, the addition of chocolate. But Bast, she also hates it. But ever since T’Challa practically shoved a grande cup of caramel frappucino into her hands, she hasn’t felt entirely the same.

Against her better judgement, she’s more or less unintentionally tried 45% of the menu drink-wise. She doesn’t particularly care much for the food part of the establishment, though if she should ever find herself in one during the fall, she might indulge in a chunky slice of pumpkin bread under the conviction that it’s healthy enough for being gourd-related. Never mind that it’s just a cinnamon mixture with more sugar than actual pumpkin-derived anything.

Really, of all those mentioned on this list, Okoye is the one who probably feels the most disappointed in herself whenever she indulges in her guilty pleasure: It’s a betrayal to her patriotism, to her dignity, and to her attempts to eat healthy. But damn, if this type of betrayal doesn’t taste so addicting . . .

Lucifer Morningstar

The thing about Lucifer is that it’s actually a bit hard for him to feel any regrets over liking anything; he’s the Devil, after all, so his whole thing is about embracing the things that make you feel good. And even besides that, he’s mostly managed to skate by in his time on Earth by categorizing things as Stuff He Likes, Stuff He Tolerates, Stuff He Doesn’t Bother With, and Stuff Humans Seem to Enjoy But He Doesn’t Quite Get. It’s a tad restricted of a system but you can’t argue with results.

However, just because something is difficult doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. The Devil can, in fact, recognize absurdity in liking certain things. Hence why, to a point, he’s fallen prey to his own bizarre pleasures: The Devil has guilty pleasures, and it’s in stupid YouTube videos, Vine, and TikTok.

After he finally drank the Kool-Aid and got himself a smart phone, it was only a matter of time before Lucifer fell down the rabbit hole that is YouTube prank videos and strange uploads about nonsense and animal humor. It was also only a matter of time before he found himself stumbling into Vine compilations. The Celestial is terrifically mystified by the creative power of humans, managing to tell entire stories and peak comedy in only a span of seven seconds. But he’s also quite loathe to have realized it’s been long defunct by the time he’s discovered it.

He’s even more loathe to find himself making references in his daily life: He has actually quietly blurted out, “I sure hope it does” in response to seeing a Road Work Ahead sign, causing Chloe some confusion (and Lucifer lots of embarrassment). He has referred to a culprit as “Jared, Age 19″. Since discovering Vine, there has been at least one night wherein he and a bed mate were sitting there with barbecue sauce on his tiddies, but that was by sheer coincidence.

But eventually the Vine compilation well dried up, and the inevitable transfer over to TikTok happened. And Luci honestly doesn’t know what to make of TikTok. He would describe it as Vine’s Molly-addicted cousin based on its obsession with dancing, but the dances are so stationary that even that doesn’t seem quite right. The videos on the platform are also much more . . . bizarre. And some of them admittedly trigger a fight-or-flight response in him, to which he always chooses the third option of freezing if only so he can keep watching the train wreck unfold before his eyes.

The trouble with TikTok, he’ll admit to himself, is that it’s not as easy to find iconic content the same way he could with Vine. However, this isn’t to say that he hasn’t found anything worth watching over and over and over again . . .

(Let’s just say the “Wolf Pack Compilation” lives in his head rent-free, and he’s both too amused by it and too overwhelmed by its vibe to try and evict it.)

Dewey Finn

Dewey is . . . a special case. Given that he associates messy living and indulging in one’s pleasure a part of the rocker lifestyle, he’s generally quick to embrace whatever makes him happy. He’s very upfront about his interests and is arguably almost incapable of feeling shame. But it’s in there: Deep down. No, not in himself -- in his Spotify. Specifically, a Spotify account made on an email he never uses because it was made specifically to create this separate, uber secret playlist.

One marked “Actual Musical Bops.”

Dewey hates musicals: They’re cheesy, uninspired, gaudy, ridiculous, totally aimed at chicks with weird fantasies that he could never aspire to, and the music is just overall unimpressive. And yet, somehow, against his music elitist nature, a handful have managed to slip through the cracks. At the very least, a handful of numbers have clawed their way past his defenses and into his ear, where they now live rent-free.

In spite of his best efforts, the problems are that he’s a New Yorker, so it’s inevitable that he hears a song or two; and also that, as an instructor (to wealthy New York tweens whose families can afford frequent tripes to the Great White Way, no less), he’s definitely going to wind up hearing about some shows and their stand-out numbers: Against his will, he knows the lyrics to “My Shot”; he has cried in the secrecy of his apartment to “When I Grow Up”; in the never-necessary reason he needs to remember how many minutes there are in a year, he sings it inside his head; hell, he’s even found himself trying to figure out the electric guitar riff from “The Phantom of the Opera” during his down time.

What’s all the more embarrassing is that, given how he presents himself as a music elitist, there’s just no way he can come back from this if anyone were to know. He has to catch himself when he finds himself humming “Johanna” in the teacher’s lounge. He scowls at himself when he can’t sleep and gives in and starts playing “No One is Alone.” He wants to kick his thick ass every time he realizes he’s excited to have stumbled across a “slime tutorial” on YouTube, this one with better quality than the last. The reason he actually put a password on his phone wasn’t out of privacy like a sensible person would, but out of a need to make sure that no one ever found out that he had downloaded the entire Beetlejuice soundtrack, including jankily-recorded songs that never made it to the official cast recording for whatever reason!

And should anyone ever find out about any of this, Dewey has a plan: “Oh, I’m doing research. I’m studying these songs so I can give the kids a lesson on what not to do as actually competent musicians.”

But the lesson would never actually come. Mainly because he keeps prolonging his “research” . . .

He’s also developed a bit of a soft spot for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic due to some students gushing about it, but he would rather sooner die than ever be associated with the term “brony.”

Peter B. Parker

Peter is at a point where he’s too tired to really care about the idea of guilty pleasures. The way he sees it, there are bigger priorities at stake than worrying about someone finding out about your love of some hokey activity or food or form of entertainment.

Besides, he’s a New Yorker: There’s way weirder stuff for people to just not pay any real attention to. Hence why he thinks nothing of his bizarre eating habits. And no, this isn’t referring to his disastrous appetite: This is about his tendency to eat food with his hands. Foods that, well, he really should probably utilize eating utensils for.

To be fair, this habit has always existed in him in some form or another, especially since, as Spider-Man, he often needs to eat food on the go. But during the time he spent living the life of a depressed bachelor, it came out in full force. On the rare occasion he wasn’t eating a food that deserved to be eaten by hand, he often found himself loathing the idea of doing the dishes afterward. There would be days he’d feel only slightly less depressed; enough to make a box of Kraft Mac n Cheese in the pot, but not enough to avoid cutting out the middle man.

He’s thankful the craptastic apartment wasn’t also see-through because if it were, he’s positive his neighbors would’ve thought they were bearing witness to a man’s breakdown as he wept into a pot of macaroni and cheese, his hand full of the stuff, while wearing a Spider-Man costume. (And, to be fair, they actually would be.)

In addition to this, there were also those nights where he would be prepared to actually tuck in to a plate of spaghetti, only for some crime going on elsewhere in the city to drag him away. By the time he’d return, the plate would’ve been cold and his energy too depleted to want to even dream about cleaning more than he already had to.

The great news is that he’s thankfully done a 180, now able and willing (if begrudgingly) to clean up after himself. But bad news is that this feral man will still eat a fully-loaded baked potato like an apple. In a park. In front of women and children. He’s just too tired to care anymore. He’s aware of the guilt in this as a concept, but he’s also aware that he needs to take whatever happiness he can get out of whatever he does. And if that means eating everything by hand, then so be it!

Ahkmenrah

Funnily enough, Ahkmenrah doesn’t seem to experience much of any shame for enjoying the things most might feel the need to hide: He’s constantly curious and has missed out on a lot over the centuries, so why should he feel bad for wanting to indulge in them? Celebrity gossip is just a more fun version of the palace gossip he’d grown up hearing as a boy; reality TV is like watching a play, but with much more fights, less deaths, and more faulty romances; and sloppy meatball subs are like a feast for a man of his time!

Besides, he’s a king: Kings shouldn’t have to feel embarrassment over what the common folk might think.

And yet . . . It took some time, but eventually Ahkmenrah did experience it: Guilt in his pleasures.

He couldn’t even recall where it had all started. Maybe he was searching for more content to swallow after the most recent season of his new favorite show had ended? Whatever the case, he wound up biting off more than he could chew when he stumbled upon . . . fanfiction.

The adorable yet sad thing is that he didn’t even think anything of it at first. It wasn’t until he brought up a ship he’d invested his last few nights awake exploring on the computer: Nobody knew what the crap he was talking about, so of course he felt the need to explain it. But the more he talked, the more perplexed his friends looked. And the more he could feel his cheeks and ears burn.

Oh, he thought. Is this . . . embarrassment? Is that what this feels like? Oh, this is just foul.

Thankfully, nobody pressured him to keep talking about it, but the poor king sure as heck didn’t feel much of a desire to talk any further about it. But he needed to talk to somebody about his newly acquired “feels” as those online were calling them.

Joining fanfiction-oriented sites was the next obvious step, of course, but he’s experienced mixed feelings about it: On one hand, it’s nice to talk with people who share similar views and excitement about a fictional couple. But on the other, the digital wars that have broken out both disturb him and bring out the worst in him.

Like, of course there are bigger things to deal with than whether or not So-So is better off with Him-Ham, but if you truly think that Blah-Blah and Himhaw are a healthy relationship, then you can go do a service and bury yourself in the desert sands to provide substance to the hungry beetles with your flesh --

Suffice to say, a lot of the guilt in this pleasure seems to come from the fact that Ahk can get a little too emotionally invested if the work is really good. He tries to limit his interactions to commenting and praising certain works, and encouraging content creators. However, he’s also contemplated contributing his own pieces of fiction to the fandom . . .

#okoye #lucifer morningstar imagines #dewey finn #peter b parker imagines #ahkmenrah #okoye imagines #lucifer imagines #dewey finn imagines #ahkmenrah imagines #regrettablewritings #spiderman into the spiderverse imagines #spiderman itsv imagines #spiderman imagines #i tried posting this on my phone and it literally fucking deleted EVERYTHING #anyway @staff: the fuck is up? fix that shit because now i literally cannot post SHIT on my phone from my laptop #preference #preferences

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greycappedjester · 3 years

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"If ATFO isn’t up by the end of the month, feel free to ask me for an already written scene from one-shot from that universe." is the offer still open?

Gotcha! Sorry this is late 😬

Here is young Jason's POV. It's from right after Year 4 so before Tim and right after Jason was formally adopted (still in training to be Robin)

Here's the first eight pages

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Year 4.5: The Vacation

Alright, so here’s the thing.

Jason is a city boy. He grew up in a city. It was Gotham so it was a shit city and the part that he lived in even shittier; but, it was, without question, a city. And one where he had lived the entire fourteen years of his somewhat depressing life. Jason was familiar with said city.

So, Jason is decidedly not familiar with the so-called “great” outdoors. Fuck, he’s pretty sure the closest he’s come to nature is fights with Poison Ivy.

All of which is just too fricking bad because Jason also happens to be the recently adopted brother of Dick Grayson, who has for some unimaginable reason decided camping is the best way to spend a vacation.

And Jason is coming along.

Why? Because apparently Dick’s first thought had been this was a great time for brotherly bonding. Okay, actually his first was that it was perfect for Jason’s birthday but Jason had flat out refused and Dick moved it to the week after.

So, now, the newly fourteen year old is watching as Dick somehow crams a tent, sleeping bags, and camping gear into one of the Wayne’s very fancy and very compact sports cars.

Jason looks back wistfully to the manor door.

It’s probably not too late to back out.

But, as lame as it most definitely sounds, this camping trip actually seems really important to Dick. Like important enough to give Donna his Titans duties for a few days and ask Roy to be back up for Barbara in Gotham if she needed it. Plus, more terrifying, getting Barbara to agree to that.

And, as much as he refused to say it aloud, Jason could privately admit that Dick Grayson may have a very large part in why his recently somewhat depressing life is a now a lot less depressing.

Whatever. So, Jason might not actually think it’s too terrible to spend a few days with his older brother. Even with the camping.

That still doesn’t explain the other part.

“Why can’t we bring our uniforms again,” Jason complains, crossing his arms.

Dick doesn’t stop in his work to get the trunk shut. “Because that would mean we’re working and I’ve been informed by both Raquel and Zatanna that working vacations don’t actually count as vacations.” The trunk pops back open and Dick’s head disappears inside. “Besides, we won’t need them where we’re going.”

“Yeah, cause that doesn’t sound ominous,” Jason mutters under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing!”

Dick emerges and the trunk finally closes with only a slight creak of protest. “Ha, there! What did I tell you? Circus performers always know the best packing tips.”

Jason is reluctantly somewhat impressed.

“Come on, get in! We’ve gotta get to the grounds while there’s still light to set up the tent.”

Jason slumps into the passenger seat. “Are you sure this isn’t like you stealthily training me in advanced wilderness survival or something?”

“It’s a vacation, Jason,” Dick insists, starting the car and backing down the drive way. “Believe me, if it was training, I’d pick a lot trickier place than twenty minutes out of Gotham city limits.”

Crap, if it was training, Jason would at least know it sucked for a reason. Doing it for fun makes it even worse.

“You know you’re an heir to like billions of dollars, right?”

“We’re the heirs,” Dick corrects because of course, he does.

Jason rolls his eyes. “I’m just saying if you wanted nature, we could go to like the Bahamas or the Galapagos or even just buy an island if that’s what you really wanted.”

“We don’t need an island.”

“Sure, we do. We could even use it as a secret prison for supervillains when we’re done. It would be great!”

Dick’s grinning, checking briefly before pulling into Gotham traffic. “Secret island prison bases definitely fall a bit too far into the supervillian category, Jay. They'll sue us for trademark infringement.”

“Still beats camping.”

“Camping’s fun!” Dick laughs. “Trust me. Millions of people do it every year. They can’t all be wrong.”

Per usual, Jason is far less trusting of the populace’s intelligence than Dick is.

As if to spite his skepticism, the hour or so drive out to the woods doesn’t go so bad. Jason commandeers the radio so they’re listening to a good classic rock station instead of being subjected to the weird mix of folk songs and pop music that Dick likes. The dark buildings and usual smog of Gotham starts to fade out around the forty minute mark, somewhere between one of Dick’s Titans stories and Jason complaining about a plot thread in the last book he read.

The drive is nice. Peaceful, even.

You know like most horror movies start.

“We’re here!”

Jason eyes the stretch of trees for any kind of sign or even a distinguishing feature. There’s nothing.

“Dick, this is definitely not a campsite.”

“It’s a few miles off,” Dick explains, dropping a bag in Jason’s arms. “I wanted to avoid the usual campgrounds in case the tabloid reporters found us. Don’t worry, I checked with the owner. No one’s used this stretch in years.”

Jason thinks there’s probably a reason for that since there’s not one hint of a trail in sight.

“Where are we even going to set up a tent?”

“Not sure,” Dick says way too cheerfully. “Finding a spot’s part of the fun!”

Jason gives him a look.

Dick rolls his eyes. “Relax, Jay. The owner told me there’s a stream about half a mile in. We’ll set up camp there.”

Jason still gives a token grumble just because.

By the time night rolls around, they do manage to find a camping spot, set up the tent, and Dick even starts up a small fire right in the middle of the campsite.

If pushed, Jason would admit the entire thing is a bit picturesque.

He bites down on his hot dog as Dick digs through the rest of their stuff.

“Oh! I almost forgot to tell you!” Dick pulls something out of the bag. “Look, I brought stuff to make s'mores!”

“Cool, hand them over” Jason grabs for the bag of marshmallows only for Dick to pull them away.

“Not yet, they’re for our last day. Gotta ration out the food.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “You’re ridiculous. Why not bring enough for every night?”

“Cause then it’s less special,” Dick answers sagely. “Think about it like a prize for surviving camping.”

Because Jason is the generous sort, he doesn’t even make a crack about “surviving”.

“So, okay, let’s say I buy that camping is a vacation,” he says instead between bites.

“It is a vacation.”

“Yeah, fine, sure. Real question though, why are we taking a vacation?” He waves a hand. “What ever happened to ‘crime never sleeps’ and everything?”

“I’ve never said that!”

“You said it to Babs last week!”

“That was so she’d help me run the Poison Ivy samples! That doesn’t count! She didn’t even believe me!”

“Definitely counts!”

Dick rolls his eyes. “You know most kids don’t need a reason to go on vacation before school starts.”

“So, that’s what this is,” Jason accuses. “This is for you! You wanted a vacation before college!”

Dick turns his face down to poke at the fire. “I’m not going to college...not this year anyway.”

Jason frowns. “I thought you got accepted to Gotham U. Shit, I know you did. Alfred still has the letter hanging on the fridge.”

Dick shrugs. “I’m going to turn it down. There’s too much going on right now. Gotham. The Titans. I’ve gotta start sitting in at the Wayne Enterprise meetings soon, too. I don’t have time for classes.”

“Pretty sure, the classes would help with the Wayne Enterprise crap,” Jason says. “And you know Roy and Donna can help with the Titans and Babs and I can cover more in Gotham if--”

“Jay, it’s fine,” Dick cuts him off. “I need to choose what to focus on and it just can’t be college right now. It’s okay.”

Jason wants to argue more but then Dick’s continuing

“And, hey, I know camping’s not exactly your thing; but, I’m glad you decided to come anyway.” Dick gives him a blinding grin. “You deserve to do some normal summer stuff after all the Robin training. And I’m glad I get to spend some time with my favorite little brother.

Jason glares, ignoring the way his cheeks have gone warm. “Shut up, I’m your only brother. And you know I hate it when you say stuff like that.”

“No, you don’t,” Dick says, shit eating grin in place.

Jason flings the bag of hot dog buns at him.

He catches it, still grinning. The asshole.

-----

Something that’s always jarring but becomes really fucking obvious once he thinks about it is the fact that Dick gets nightmares.

Of course, he does. How could he not? Jason’s doesn’t know why he never expects it.

It’s not even loud nightmares with like screaming and flailing arms and shit. It’s just these short, sharp little gasps as his body goes entirely too stiff and face twists in pain. Sometimes, Jason thinks that’s worse than screaming.

Jason shifts in his sleeping bag, turning to face the top of the tent. He briefly contemplates waking Dick up; but, he knows from experience, it won’t help much. Better to let him get some rest until the nightmare goes away on its own.

Only problem is that Jason still can’t fall asleep. It’s kind of funny. He’s never really thought of himself as a picky sleeper before. Fuck knows he’s slept on way too many of Gotham’s mold infested roofs back when his dad was on parole. But, there’s something about the cold feeling of hard dirt that he swears he can feel even under the layers of sleeping bag and tent.

Camping sucks.

Screw it. Jason’s not just going to lay here all night. Least he can do is get up and explore around the campsite so he can have a better idea of whatever “fun” activities he’s sure Dick has planned for tomorrow.

He slips out of the tent without waking up Dick--which actually does serve as a fairly good challenge for his new Robin training--and heads into the woods, careful to keep note of how far away he goes from camp. He feels ridiculously like he should have bread crumbs or some other kind of fairy tale stuff to track his way through the forest.

He swears if he survived living in Crime Alley, Black Mask, and a freaking explosion just to get lost and die in the woods, he’s going to haunt Dick forever. Jason the Unfriendly Ghost.

He gets to the stream that he and Dick found earlier so at least he’s not that lost.

SNAP!

Jason’s head whips around in the direction of the noise.

Nothing.

He lets out a long breath. Dumb, of course, it’s nothing. It’s the forest. Forests make weird noises. It’s reason #357 why they’re terrible.

SNAP!

Okay...that definitely sounded like something big….but, maybe it’s something normal like a tree branch snapping or--

Snap!...Snap!...Snap!

That’s footsteps.

Jason moves back into the tree line, crouching down until he’s covered in the darkness of the bushes. His hands run over the ground, trying to find anything even remotely useful other than a slightly pointy stick.

Snap!...Snap!

Shit, he really is going to die here, isn’t he? In this stupid forest before he even gets to go out as Robin. Of all the dumb fucking--

Snap!...snap!...snap...snap.

The footsteps are getting further away. Echoing deeper and deeper into the forest on the other side of the stream.

snap...snap...snap…

Jason listens, in slight amazement, as the sounds slowly fade off into the distance until they finally disappear. Slowly, Jason counts in his mind to sixty, then a hundred and twenty, then two hundred.

On three hundred, he bolts--tearing through the forest in the direction of the camp until he finally catches sight of the obnoxiously bright yellow of the tent Dick bought, shining in front of him like a heavenly beacon.

He tears through the opening, breathing heavily, just a half a second before there’s an arm jammed hard against his neck.

“Jay?”

The pressure disappears and then Dick’s looking down at him with wide eyes and a slight blush. “Sorry about that. Was surprised. What’s wrong?”

Jason’s heart rate’s finally slowing down. And here in the safety of the tent, in the face of Dick’s patented concerned face, admitting to getting freaked out by noises in the woods seems beyond stupid.

“Nothing,” he mutters. “Just thought I heard something?”

“Heard something?”

“Yeah, like footsteps.”

Dick frowns. “We’re on private camp land. There shouldn’t be anyone around here. You sure?”

Jason shakes his head, face feeling hot, as he sits back down on his sleeping bag. “No. Don’t worry about it. Like I said, it was probably nothing. Maybe it’s just a mountain lion that’s gonna eat us in our sleep.”

Dick pats his shoulder. “Mountain lions don’t really live in this region, Jay.”

Jason rolls his eyes before turning over pointedly to try to get some more sleep.

“It’s bears you need to worry about.”

#atfo

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spicykoreantatertots · 4 years

Text

Suga’s Interlude

Pairing: Yoongi x Female Reader

Word Count: 953

Rating: PG

Genres: SFW, Idol AU, Little Angsty, Little Fluffy

Summary: Sequel to The Last. Yoongi is ready to quit, but you encourage him to sleep on it.

Warnings: Themes of depression.

A/N: This is part of my new drabble series that I’m doing for ficswithluv’s Bulletproof Bingo! 24 drabbles in 12 days so I can get that blackout before the deadline. See my challenge post here and the master list here! Message or send an ask to be on the taglist!

This has not been beta read, please be kind! 💜

~~~~~~~

Collaborating with Min Yoongi is so much better than you expected. His studio, Genius Lab, is incredible. He’s got all the mixing and producing equipment that you’ve dreamed of playing with. Yoongi’s schedule is very packed with photoshoots, meetings, and an upcoming music video shoot. He’s busy a lot, but he gave you the code for his studio and you’ve been spending a lot of time in it.

Walking down the hall to the studio, venti starbucks cup in hand, you see Kim Namjoon, RM, walking the opposite direction. You pause in front of Genius Lab and fiddle with your phone, trying to find the code in your notes.

“Hi, can I help you?” Namjoon asks, closing the distance between you. Kim Namjoon is speaking to you. You knew high profile artists work in this building, but you didn’t expect to run into one so quickly.

“Oh, no I’m just trying to get in here.” You say a little too loudly, nerves kicking in. But you manage to type the code in.

“Oh... So you’re the indie artist that Suga’s collabing with.” Namjoon states when the door clicks open.

“That’s me.” You nod. Namjoon turns to walk away, but he pauses.

“He doesn’t give that code to just anyone.” He smiles, revealing his dimples, and then continues walking down the hall.

The thought of having super special secret access to Yoongi’s studio makes your heart flutter. If you’re being honest, things have felt really comfortable between the two of you. Namjoon just confirmed what you’ve been thinking. There’s something more happening between you.

You’re not a total expert on flirting, but Yoongi has been smiling a lot, listening intently to your ideas, and you’re pretty sure you’ve caught him giving you the look a few times. But you can’t get too far ahead of yourself. The collab is the most important thing right now.

Sitting on the small couch at the back of the studio, you sip your coffee and write down some lyrics ideas. The two of you had been stuck on lyrics for a while. You can hear someone stomping down the hallway. They stop in front of the door and you can hear them typing the code. Your heart stops.

“Oh thank god you’re here.” It’s Yoongi. You feel a moment of relief before you get a good look at his face. He looks upset, he’s wearing the same clothes as yesterday.

“What’s wrong? Yoongi did you get any sleep last night?” You ask and he shakes his head. He collapses on the couch next to you.

“I think I just quit.” Yoongi hangs his head.

“What do you mean quit? Quit what?” You say, eyes wide.

“I think I quit everything. We were in a meeting about my next album and I just couldn’t take it anymore. The thought of having to go through another album cycle made me sick. I just don’t enjoy this anymore.” Yoongi blurts out so many things at once, and all you can think to do is reach for his hand. You hold his hand in both of yours.

“It’s okay, Yoongi. You don’t owe anyone anything. You’ve already poured so much of yourself into the world.” You give his hand a little squeeze and he looks up at you.

“I think the only reason I’ve been enjoying writing this song with you is because it’s given me an excuse to spend time with you.” The two of you share a silent moment, looking into each other’s eyes.

“Yoongi, why don’t you come to my house for the weekend?” He looks carefully at you, trying to interpret your question. “J-just to get away from all this, get out of your head for a little while.” You add on awkwardly.

“That could be nice.”

~~~~~~~

“So the bedrooms are down the hall. Mine is to the left, yours to the right. Bathroom is at the very end of the hall.” You’re showing Yoongi around your modest apartment. It’s not very decorated, but you spend so much time at the studio, there’s not much point.

“We can watch a movie or something if you’d like. The pizza is on it’s way.” You smile, trying to be the best hostess you can be.

“Thank you. A movie would be great.” Yoongi sits down and you awkwardly sit on the other side of the couch. He chuckles to himself, then leans his head on one of the decorative pillows. He doesn’t look very comfortable.

You put on a generic action movie that you assume Yoongi will enjoy. Time passes and you try to get into the movie but you can’t get past the fact the Min Yoongi is laying on your couch. The doorbell interrupts your thoughts.

Hopping up from the couch, you pause the movie and run over to the door. The hot cheesy goodness smells amazing and you can’t wait to dig in.

“Yoongi? Do you want me to bring you a slice?” You ask, but he doesn’t answer. “Yoongi?” You tiptoe around the couch to see his face. He’s fast asleep.

Maybe he really did just need a break. You grab a spare blanket from the linen closet and gently lay it over him. After grabbing a couple slices, you put the pizza away and head to your bedroom. It’s too early for you to sleep, but you can hang out here and let him sleep.

The next morning, you go into the kitchen to make coffee around 10am. And Yoongi is still fast asleep. He’s moved around a bit and at some point he kicked his shoes off. But this is over twelve hours of sleep now. You decide to step out for coffee instead of making noise in the kitchen.

You: I’m running to starbucks, let me know if you want anything. Be back soon. [10:13am]

When you return to your apartment with your usual and an iced americano for Yoongi, you’re surprised to see that hei is not on the couch. But his shoes are still there.

“Yoongi?” No response. You quietly walk down the hall and the guest bedroom door is cracked. Yoongi is asleep under the covers. It’s almost comical.

The day passes slowly because you feel like you can’t make too much noise. Going out isn’t really an option, you don’t want to leave Yoongi alone in case he wakes up. Around dinner time, you decide to say fuck it and cook dinner, not worrying about how loud you’re being. He’s been asleep for almost 24 full hours.

A little after 11pm, you knock on his door, but he remains silent. If he doesn’t wake up in the morning you’ll have to go in and pour some water on him or something, this is getting weird.

~~~~~~~

You’re ripped out of your dream around 3am by some sounds in the kitchen. You hope it’s Yoongi, but you can’t be too sure at this point. You grab the pepper spray from your purse and sneak down the hallway.

It’s a relief to see Yoongi sitting at your dining room table scribbling away in his notebook. He found the coffee you left for him in the fridge and there’s a couple pieces of pizza on a plate next to him.

“I think I’ve got some good lyrics to finish our song.” Yoongi says, pulling his eyes up from the notebook. He’s smiling and for the first time since you met him, he doesn’t look completely worn out. “Thank you for letting me stay here.”

“Anytime, Yoongi.” You join him at the table as he begins excitedly showing you what he’s written.

~~~~~~~

A/N: Thank you so much for reading. Check out my masterlist here and the series masterlist here. I’m always looking for betas, people to beta for, and friends so send me a message! :)

#ficswithluv #fwlbingo #magicshopnet #bangtanhq #min yoongi #yoongi x reader #yoongi fan fic #bts fan fic #yoongi fan fiction #bts fan fiction #yoongi idol au

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gra-sonas · 5 years

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Down to Earth With Tyler Blackburn

I‘ve never met Tyler Blackburn before—except that I have. Maybe it would be more accurate to say I’ve met versions of Tyler Blackburn. I’ve spent time with the actor on multiple occasions while covering his TV series Pretty Little Liars, the soapy teen-centered murder mystery that regularly generated more than a million tweets throughout its seven-season run. Just two weeks ago I reconnected with him in a lush meadow of flowering mustard outside Angeles National Forest, the site of his PLAYBOY photo shoot. But the Tyler Blackburn I’m meeting today at his home in the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles is in many ways an entirely different man.

When he greets me at the front door, Blackburn is relaxed, barefoot and still wearing what appears to be bed head. His disposition is unmistakably freer—lighter—than it’s been during our previous encounters. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised by this. Six days earlier the 32-year-old actor came out publicly as bisexual in an online interview with The Advocate.

The announcement is clearly at the forefront of his mind as we sit down at his dining room table.

Almost immediately he starts to gush about the positive, and at times overwhelming, feedback he has received over the past few days. Within minutes he’s in tears. He tries to lighten the mood with a self-effacing quip, but now I’m in tears too. Then he tells me he can’t remember my question.

I haven’t even asked one yet, I reply.

“It just makes me feel, Wow, the world’s a little bit safer than I thought it was,” Blackburn says.

The most affecting response he’s received thus far has been from his father, whom Blackburn didn’t meet until he was five years old. Although he avoids offering any more details about that early chapter, he says, “Feeling like I’m a little bit different always made me wonder if he likes me, approves of me, loves me. He called, and it was just every single thing you would want to hear from your dad: ‘That was a bold move. I’m so proud of you.’ It was wild.”

Blackburn can’t pinpoint the exact moment he knew he was bisexual but says he was curious from the age of 16. It wasn’t until two years ago, though, that he decided to approach his publicity team about coming out publicly. At that point, Pretty Little Liars had wrapped, and the actor was without a job. So Blackburn and his team agreed they needed to hold off on making an announcement until his career was stable again. The lack of resolution weighed on him. “A year ago I was in a very bad place,” he says, adding that he has struggled with depression and anxiety. “I didn’t know what my career was going to be or where it was going. My personal life—my relationship with myself—was in a really bad place.” His casting on the CW’s Roswell, New Mexico, adapted from the same Melinda Metz book series as the WB’s 1999 cult favorite Roswell, seems to have come at the right time. Blackburn portrays Alex, a gay Army veteran whose relationship with Michael, a bisexual alien, has attracted legions of “Malex” devotees since the show’s January debut. Roswell, New Mexico has already been renewed for a second season—a feat for any series in this era of streaming, let alone one involving gay exophilia. Playing a character whose queerness has been so widely embraced by fans no doubt nudged Blackburn closer to revealing his truth for the first time since becoming an actor 15 years ago. (As he told The Advocate, “I’m so tired of caring so much. I just want to…feel okay with experiencing love and experiencing self-love.”) Still, he was somewhat reluctant. His hesitation was rooted in the fact that he wouldn’t be able to control what came next: the social pressures that often come with being one of the first—in his case, one of the first openly bisexual male actors to lead a prime-time television series. “If you stand for this thing, and you say it publicly, there’s suddenly the expectation of ‘Now your job is this,’ ” he says. “Even if someone’s like, ‘Now you’re going to go be the spokesperson’—well, no. If I don’t want to, I don’t want to. And that doesn’t mean I’m a half-assed queer.” Full disclosure: I previously wrote for a Pretty Little Liars fan site. In 2012 I published a listicle that ranked the show’s hottest male characters. Blackburn cracks up when I tell him this and wants to know whether he bested Ian Harding, his former co-star. After I inform him that his character (hacker with a heart of gold Caleb Rivers) finished second behind Harding’s (Ezra Fitz, a student-dating teacher) I promise to organize a recount. The always-modest Blackburn concedes that Harding is the rightful winner. (If anyone ever compiles a BuzzFeed article titled “Most Embarrassing Moments for Former Bloggers,” I’ll be offended if I’m not in the mix.)

Blackburn makes it clear that he has not always been comfortable with his status as a teen heartthrob. Knowing he was queer made it “hard to embrace it and enjoy it.” Growing up, he was bullied for being perceived as effeminate and was frequently subjected to slurs and homophobic jokes. He describes himself as a late bloomer who took longer than usual to shed his baby fat. He didn’t have many friends, nor did he date much in high school. A lifelong fan of musical theater and the performing arts, Blackburn signed with a Hollywood management company at the age of 17. His team at the time warned him that projecting femininity would hinder his success. An especially painful moment came after he’d auditioned for a role as a soldier and the producers wrote back that Blackburn had seemed “a little gay.” “Those two managers were so twisted in their advice to me,” Blackburn says. “They just said, ‘We don’t care if you are, but no one can know. You can’t walk into these rooms and seem gay. It’s not gonna work.’ I remember the shame, because I’ve been dealing with the feeling that I’m not a normal boy for my entire life.” After landing a recurring role on Days of Our Lives in 2010, Blackburn scored his big break when he appeared midway through the first season of Pretty Little Liars. “I was in Tyler’s first scene, so I got to be one of the first to work with him,” Shay Mitchell, who starred opposite Blackburn, tells PLAYBOY. “Right away, I knew he was special. Since the day I met him, Tyler always struck me as very authentic and very true to himself.” Fans instantly adored his on-screen love affair with Hanna Marin, played by Ashley Benson. The pair became known as “Haleb,” and Blackburn went on to win three Teen Choice Awards—surfboard trophies that solidify one’s status as a teen idol—in categories including Choice TV: Chemistry.

According to Blackburn, during the show’s seven years on the air, he and Benson bonded over their mutual distaste for the tabloid stardom that comes with headlining a TV phenomenon lapped up by teens. Today he fondly reflects on their on-camera chemistry. “It felt good,” he says. “It felt real.” Of course, rumors swirled that the pair’s romance was actually quite real. “We never officially dated,” he tells me. “In navigating our relationship—as co-workers but also as friends—sometimes the lines blurred a little. We had periods when we felt more for each other, but ultimately we’re good buds. For the most part, those rumors made us laugh. But then sometimes we’d be like, ‘Did someone see us hugging the other night?’ She was a huge part of a huge change in my life, so I’ll always hold her dear.” Blackburn also shares a unique connection with Mitchell outside their friendship. Similar to what Blackburn is now experiencing with Roswell, Mitchell was embraced by the LGBTQ community for playing a lesbian character, Emily Fields, whose same-sex romances on Pretty Little Liars were among the first on ABC Family (the former name of the Freeform network). Over the years, Blackburn had come out to select members of the Pretty Little Liars cast and crew, including creator I. Marlene King. But as the show approached its swan song, he started to recognize how hiding a part of himself was negatively affecting his life. He entered his first serious relationship with a man while filming the show’s final season. Not knowing how to tell co-workers—or whether to, say, invite his boyfriend to an afterparty—caused him to “go into a little bit of a shell” on the set.

“My boyfriend was hanging out with me at a Pretty Little Liars convention, and some of the fans were like, ‘Are you Tyler’s brother?’ ” Blackburn says. “He was very patient, but then afterward he was like, ‘That kind of hurt me.’ It was a big part of why we didn’t work out, just because he was at a different place than I was. Unfortunately, we don’t really talk anymore, but if he reads this, I hope he knows that he helped me so much in so many ways.” At that, Blackburn tearfully excuses himself and takes a private moment to regain his composure. “I never remember a time when I didn’t enjoy being with him,” says Harding, Blackburn’s former co-star. He says he saw the actor “start to become the person he is now when we worked together” but believes Blackburn needed to first come to terms with the idea that he could become “the face” of bisexuality. “Tyler’s discovering a way to bring real meaning with his presence in the world,” Harding says, “as an actor and as a whole human.”

Once the teenage Blackburn realized he was attracted to guys, he began “experimenting” with men while taking care not to become too emotionally attached. “I just didn’t feel I had the inner strength or the certainty that it was okay,” he says. It wasn’t until a decade later, at the age of 26, that he began to “actively embrace my bisexuality and start dating men, or at least open myself up to the idea.” He says he’s been in love with two women and had great relationships with both, but he “just knew that wasn’t the whole story.”

He was able to enjoy being single in his 20s in part because he wasn’t confident enough in his identity to commit to any one person in a relationship. “I had to really be patient with myself—and more so with men,” he says. “Certain things are much easier with women, just anatomically, and there’s a freedom in that.” He came out of that period with an appreciation for romance and intimacy. Sex without an emotional component, he discovered, didn’t have much appeal. “As I got older, I realized good sex is when you really have something between the two of you,” says Blackburn, who’s now dating an “amazing” guy. “It’s not just a body. The more I’ve realized that, the more able I am to be settled in my sexuality. I’m freer in my sexuality now. I’m very sexual; it’s a beautiful aspect of life.” Blackburn has, however, felt resistance from the LGBTQ community, particularly when bisexual women have questioned his orientation. “Once I decided to date men, I was like, Please just let me be gay and be okay with that, because it would be a lot fucking easier. At times, bisexuality feels like a big gray zone,” he says. (For example, Blackburn knows his sexuality may complicate how he becomes a father.) “I’ve had to check myself and say, I know how I felt when I was in love with women and when I slept with women. That was true and real. Don’t discredit that, because you’re feeding into what other people think about bisexuality.” He clearly isn't the first rising star who's had to deal with outside opinions of how to handle his Hollywood coming-out. I spoke to Brianna Hildebrand just before the release of 2018's smash hit Deadpool 2, and she explained that she had previously met with publicists who had offered to keep her sexuality under wraps, even though the actress herself had never suggested this. Meanwhile, ahead of the launch of last fall's Fantastic Beasts sequel, Ezra Miller told me that he's "been in audition situations where sexuality was totally being leveraged."

Fortunately for Blackburn, his recent experiences with colleagues have largely been supportive ones. He came out to Roswell, New Mexico showrunner Carina Adly Mackenzie when he first arrived in N.M. to shoot the pilot but after he had earned the role of Alex, which for him was the ideal sequence. "I think he takes the responsibility of being queer in the public eye very seriously, and waiting to come out was just about waiting until he was ready to share a private matter—not about being dishonest to his fans," Mackenzie tells PLAYBOY. "I have always known how important Alex is to Tyler, and I know that Tyler trusts me to do right by him, ultimately, and that’s really special." Blackburn finds it funny that he’s known for young-skewing TV shows; the question is, What might define him next? He’s grateful for his career, but he grew up wanting to make edgy dramas like the young Leonardo DiCaprio. He also cites an admiration for Miller, the queer actor who plays the Flash. “I most definitely want to be a fucking superhero one day,” Blackburn says a bit wistfully. His path to cape wearing does look more tenable. The day before his Advocate interview was posted, he booked a lead role in a fact-based disaster-survival film opposite Josh Duhamel. Blackburn jokes that his movie career was previously nonexistent, though his résumé features such thoughtful indie fare as 2017’s vignette-driven Hello Again. There, he plays a love interest to T.R. Knight, who tells PLAYBOY that Blackburn “embraces the challenge to stretch and not choose the easy path.” For now, Blackburn’s path appears to be just where he needs it to be. “I may never want to be a spokesperson in a huge way, but honestly, being truthful and authentic sets a great example,” he says. “To continue on a path of fulfillment and happiness is going to make people feel like they too can have that and it doesn’t need to be some spectacle.” As it turns out, he may already be a superhero.

- Playboy

#tyler blackburn #playboy 2019 #tjb interviews #rnm cast #roswell new mexico #happy pride 🌈#god i love him

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blapisblogs · 5 years

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Corey Taylor (yes, he’s still here) has so little to do in this “review”- er, is so bored of this “review”- uh, I mean, is so bored with watching The Wall that he starts drifting off. Doug somehow knows this, stares at him through the TV, and says “Is there anybody who cares”, leading into the next song parody. Part-way into the song Tamara Chambers comes back in as the maid, Malcolm Ray as a body guard (still dressed as one of the “kids” only now he’s wearing glasses), and... Brad Jones (aka The Cinema Snob) as the manager (I guess), all of whom try to wake up Corey Taylor by overacting like hell.

For those who don’t know, most people ended up leaving Channel Awesome with three exceptions: Doug Walker (of course), Larry Bundy Junior (who only stayed for laughs), and Brad Jones, so I’m not that surprised the latter has turned up here. I’m ashamed to say that I used to watch some of Brad’s content, but since the whole Not So Awesome document incident happened, he’s said some pretty terrible things about the whole situation (he’s the one who infamously said “Logan Paul filmed a dead body and he still has a career” during an interview talking about the Change the Channel movement), so I’ve since stopped watching him as well. That said, at least he’s slightly better than Doug is at imitating the film counterpart he’s standing in for (in this case Pink’s manager, played by the late Bob Hoskins), but that’s hardly saying much when Doug’s not even trying.

While the first line spoofs “Is There Anybody Out There?”, the actual song that gets parodied next is “Comfortably Numb”, a song where Pink is being medicated by a doctor in order to perform for his next show. I don’t have much else to say about what happens during this parody, it’s really uninteresting, which is exactly what Doug is saying about these parts of the film. The thing is, those “slow, mopey” songs serve a purpose to the plot: they’re about how Pink feels as he’s gradually isolating himself from everyone else. This parody? It’s a whole song calling the other ones slow and boring, and takes yet another jab at Roger Waters. This is, what, the third or fourth parody song in a row where he’s insulted him now? We got it the first time, Doug. There are so many other things in this album and film that could be discussed here: how the gradual abuse affects Pink’s psyche and causes him to further spiral into depression, the dangers of what Pink is doing to himself (and unintentionally others), the directions they took for this film that differ from the album, anything. Yes, Waters’s ego might be hard to ignore while knowing the backstory, but you could at least try to talk about literally anything else regarding the film. Or, if you wanna talk about Roger Waters’s ego behind this project so badly, Doug, then actually talk about it. Talk about the spitting incident that led to this, talk about how Waters had the most creative control on this project while the other three members had almost no say in it, talk about the disagreements he had with director Alan Parker while making this film, talk about how this led to Waters leaving the band and later tried to sue them for still calling themselves Pink Floyd afterwards (which he of course lost). Doug does literally none of this, which makes it feel like he either assumes everyone knows this already or he himself doesn’t know all of it due to not doing any research into it (and let’s just say that I wouldn’t be surprised if the latter turned out to be true). I’m sorry I keep bringing up this one thing, but that’s because that’s what Doug keeps doing in this “review”; he’s a broken record.

The song eventually ends when Brad Jones tells Corey Taylor to “sober up or have an existential conflict”. I didn’t even know he was supposed to be drunk in this “review”, but I guess that would explain a lot. Also, I guess this means that Doug Walker doesn’t find Pink’s internal conflict (which is, you know, the whole point of the album and film) to be interesting, which at this point is unsurprising but still frustratingly disappointing. It’s also sad considering that Doug is a critic who can’t be bothered to consider internal conflict as valid as existential conflict or think that Pink’s internal conflict is causing some of his existential conflict. For someone who goes on about character depth and development in other things, Doug sure avoids talking about any of that for this in favor of continually shitting on it for the sake of poorly-thought-out jokes.

Anyway, it then goes to the in-video commercial break. I’m not even half-way through yet.

Fuck.

[Lyrics (and snark) below the cut]

Is there anybody who cares?

Wake up (wake up, wake up) Are you still awake in that chair? Just keep listening to me I know you’re kinda bored

[Five lines and every single one leaves good openings for jokes at its expense. At least the parodies before this weren’t this easy to make jokes about, this is just... It’s too much to not use it as an excuse to make fun of it, yet also too easy. Fuck you?]

Yeah sure (yeah sure, yeah sure) It’s a lot of slow songs now It’s hard to keep on track With mellow songs back-to-back

[Again, this means that you somehow consider “What Shall We Do Now” (warning: this one has NSFW and unsettling imagery depicting sex, violence, blood, drugs, Nazis, death, and other things, and also gets really loud), “Young Lust”, “One of my Turns”, and “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 3)” to be “mellow”, which they aren’t really, at least not compared to the others. I can’t even think of how you could say that about “Young Lust”, unless... Doug, please don’t tell me that you think “Empty Spaces” and “Young Lust” are the same song, because I cannot comprehend how you could know that “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” and “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” are separate songs but not know that those two are not one and the same.]

(Sorry, I can’t tell what these next couple of lines are saying because this is the part where Brad, Tamara and Malcolm come in and the former starts talking over the song. Given how crappy these lyrics are, maybe that’s for the best.)

You need to watch this movie first Just a half-hour more Come on, you’ve gotten through worse

[I’ve been telling myself that since roughly the ten minute mark of this video, and yet every time I come back here to type more about it I keep feeling the urge to close the tab for it.]

You can’t be bored while we are singing

[Wait, “we”? Are you making fun of all of the members of Pink Floyd now instead of just Roger Waters? What did David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright do to you, asshole? I thought you were taking these potshots at Waters because of the effect this album ended up having on the other band members even after he left, now it sounds like you’ve got some personal beef with Pink Floyd in general, which gets really screwy given something you end up saying later.]

Unless you don’t wanna be seen as deep

[Doug, you can’t be bothered to even analyze or even properly talk about the surface-level symbolism that’s right there in front of you in this film; you don’t get to lecture me on what’s deep or not.]

Your attention constantly may fade Your eyes move, but do you care what we’re saying?

[You might as well have called this “Tempting Fate: The Song” with all these lyrics ripe to make fun of.]

When I was a child I remember being invested Like hearing “The Dark Side of the Moon”

[You can barely comprehend the things that are going on in “The Wall”, don’t drag “Dark Side of the Moon” into this.]

Now I’ve grown, this section starts to drag Like a long neck, I just don’t understand Is this now how I am? I have become comfortably dumb

[As many others have already pointed out, that is literally the easiest joke you could’ve gone with for that line. It’s like turning “Kingdom Hearts” into “Kingdom Farts”; a literal child could’ve come up with that joke.]

Okay (okay, okay) Just get through the damn flick You want to seem cool But this ain’t getting your kicks Can you listen? (Listen, listen) Later there will be a quiz

[You are the last person who should be giving quizzes about this film or album, Doug.]

Somebody has to feel the same When I become so lame

[“Lame”? I could be wrong, but last I checked Waters is doing just fine. Or are you talking about the other members of Pink Floyd? Because from what I’ve heard Gilmour isn’t currently doing so well mentally, and if you’re making fun of that, then... wow, fuck you.]

There is only so long I can go With hearing a millionaire say that things blow It’s like I’ve been asleep for days The film plays, but I can’t take the complaining

[You know, you keep saying that, but at least people can relate to some of the things that were brought up in the songs here. Losing a loved one in a tragic and violent way at a young age? Having an overbearing, emotionally abusive parent? An oppressive and unfair school system? An unfaithful partner? As unfortunate as it is, those are all things some people out there can relate to. At least they’re all not petty, shallow insults about things Waters doesn’t personally like, Doug.]

Like telling a child “It’s just how everything is” Just fighting to open my eyes The epic feels I had are gone I don’t know what is going on

[Neither do the people who watched this and know nothing about the film or album, from what I could tell: you’ve done nothing to help them understand what’s actually happening given how much context you’ve left out. All you’ve done is go “Roger Waters has a big ego, Roger Waters has a big ego, people who complain about school are special snowflakes, something something World War 2, animation, slow mopey songs, did I mention Roger Waters has a big ego?”]

Now the child is gone And I’ve moved on I wish those days weren’t just a phase

[Since you said there was a quiz later, Doug, I’m gonna have to retaliate and ask you to submit an essay to me explaining why you thought it was necessary to put this song into your already lengthy “review”. No, you are not allowed to use the phrase “Fuck Roger Waters and his ego” or words to that effect; that alone is not a decent argument.]

#Blapis tears down NC's The Wall #abuse mention //#drug mention //#long post #bold text warning

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malexfan10 · 5 years

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I absolutely love Tyler Blackburn

New article today

He is such a gem ❤

So genuine. Deserves all the love and support!

You can tell how much Alex means to him.

Please don't destroy this amazing character or this wonderful ship Carina!

It's a long read but well worth it

https://www.playboy.com/read/down-to-earth

❤

Down to Earth With Tyler Blackburn

The star of the CW's 'Roswell' reboot isn't a poster child of anything but his own path

Written by Ryan Gajewski

Photography by Graham Dunn

Published onJune 11, 2019

I’ve never met Tyler Blackburn before—except that I have. Maybe it would be more accurate to say I’ve met versions of Tyler Blackburn. I’ve spent time with the actor on multiple occasions while covering his TV series Pretty Little Liars, the soapy teen-centered murder mystery that regularly generated more than a million tweets throughout its seven-season run. Just two weeks ago I reconnected with him in a lush meadow of flowering mustard outside Angeles National Forest, the site of his PLAYBOY photo shoot. But the Tyler Blackburn I’m meeting today at his home in the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles is in many ways an entirely different man.

I haven’t even asked one yet, I reply.

“It just makes me feel, Wow, the world’s a little bit safer than I thought it was,” Blackburn says.

“A year ago I was in a very bad place,” he says, adding that he has struggled with depression and anxiety. “I didn’t know what my career was going to be or where it was going. My personal life—my relationship with myself—was in a really bad place.”

His casting on the CW’s Roswell, New Mexico, adapted from the same Melinda Metz book series as the WB’s 1999 cult favorite Roswell, seems to have come at the right time. Blackburn portrays Alex, a gay Army veteran whose relationship with Michael, a bisexual alien, has attracted legions of “Malex” devotees since the show’s January debut. Roswell, New Mexico has already been renewed for a second season—a feat for any series in this era of streaming, let alone one involving gay exophilia.

Playing a character whose queerness has been so widely embraced by fans no doubt nudged Blackburn closer to revealing his truth for the first time since becoming an actor 15 years ago. (As he told The Advocate, “I’m so tired of caring so much. I just want to…feel okay with experiencing love and experiencing self-love.”) Still, he was somewhat reluctant. His hesitation was rooted in the fact that he wouldn’t be able to control what came next: the social pressures that often come with being one of the first—in his case, one of the first openly bisexual male actors to lead a prime-time television series.

“If you stand for this thing, and you say it publicly, there’s suddenly the expectation of ‘Now your job is this,’ ” he says. “Even if someone’s like, ‘Now you’re going to go be the spokesperson’—well, no. If I don’t want to, I don’t want to. And that doesn’t mean I’m a half-assed queer.”

Full disclosure: I previously wrote for a Pretty Little Liars fan site. In 2012 I published a listicle that ranked the show’s hottest male characters. Blackburn cracks up when I tell him this and wants to know whether he bested Ian Harding, his former co-star. After I inform him that his character (hacker with a heart of gold Caleb Rivers) finished second behind Harding’s (Ezra Fitz, a student-dating teacher) I promise to organize a recount. The always-modest Blackburn concedes that Harding is the rightful winner. (If anyone ever compiles a BuzzFeed article titled “Most Embarrassing Moments for Former Bloggers,” I’ll be offended if I’m not in the mix.)

A lifelong fan of musical theater and the performing arts, Blackburn signed with a Hollywood management company at the age of 17. His team at the time warned him that projecting femininity would hinder his success. An especially painful moment came after he’d auditioned for a role as a soldier and the producers wrote back that Blackburn had seemed “a little gay.”

“Those two managers were so twisted in their advice to me,” Blackburn says. “They just said, ‘We don’t care if you are, but no one can know. You can’t walk into these rooms and seem gay. It’s not gonna work.’ I remember the shame, because I’ve been dealing with the feeling that I’m not a normal boy for my entire life.”

After landing a recurring role on Days of Our Lives in 2010, Blackburn scored his big break when he appeared midway through the first season of Pretty Little Liars. “I was in Tyler’s first scene, so I got to be one of the first to work with him,” Shay Mitchell, who starred opposite Blackburn, tells PLAYBOY. “Right away, I knew he was special. Since the day I met him, Tyler always struck me as very authentic and very true to himself.”

Fans instantly adored his on-screen love affair with Hanna Marin, played by Ashley Benson. The pair became known as “Haleb,” and Blackburn went on to win three Teen Choice Awards—surfboard trophies that solidify one’s status as a teen idol—in categories including Choice TV: Chemistry.

Of course, rumors swirled that the pair’s romance was actually quite real. “We never officially dated,” he tells me. “In navigating our relationship—as co-workers but also as friends—sometimes the lines blurred a little. We had periods when we felt more for each other, but ultimately we’re good buds. For the most part, those rumors made us laugh. But then sometimes we’d be like, ‘Did someone see us hugging the other night?’ She was a huge part of a huge change in my life, so I’ll always hold her dear.”

Blackburn also shares a unique connection with Mitchell outside their friendship. Similar to what Blackburn is now experiencing with Roswell, Mitchell was embraced by the LGBTQ community for playing a lesbian character, Emily Fields, whose same-sex romances on Pretty Little Liars were among the first on ABC Family (the former name of the Freeform network).

Over the years, Blackburn had come out to select members of the Pretty Little Liars cast and crew, including creator I. Marlene King. But as the show approached its swan song, he started to recognize how hiding a part of himself was negatively affecting his life. He entered his first serious relationship with a man while filming the show’s final season. Not knowing how to tell co-workers—or whether to, say, invite his boyfriend to an afterparty—caused him to “go into a little bit of a shell” on the set.

“I never remember a time when I didn’t enjoy being with him,” says Harding, Blackburn’s former co-star. He says he saw the actor “start to become the person he is now when we worked together” but believes Blackburn needed to first come to terms with the idea that he could become “the face” of bisexuality. “Tyler’s discovering a way to bring real meaning with his presence in the world,” Harding says, “as an actor and as a whole human.”

“As I got older, I realized good sex is when you really have something between the two of you,” says Blackburn, who’s now dating an “amazing” guy. “It’s not just a body. The more I’ve realized that, the more able I am to be settled in my sexuality. I’m freer in my sexuality now. I’m very sexual; it’s a beautiful aspect of life.”

Blackburn has, however, felt resistance from the LGBTQ community, particularly when bisexual women have questioned his orientation. “Once I decided to date men, I was like, Please just let me be gay and be okay with that, because it would be a lot fucking easier. At times, bisexuality feels like a big gray zone,” he says. (For example, Blackburn knows his sexuality may complicate how he becomes a father.) “I’ve had to check myself and say, I know how I felt when I was in love with women and when I slept with women. That was true and real. Don’t discredit that, because you’re feeding into what other people think about bisexuality.”

He clearly isn't the first rising star who's had to deal with outside opinions of how to handle his Hollywood coming-out. I spoke to Brianna Hildebrand just before the release of 2018's smash hit Deadpool 2, and she explained that she had previously met with publicists who had offered to keep her sexuality under wraps, even though the actress herself had never suggested this. Meanwhile, ahead of the launch of last fall's Fantastic Beasts sequel, Ezra Miller told methat he's "been in audition situations where sexuality was totally being leveraged."

Blackburn finds it funny that he’s known for young-skewing TV shows; the question is, What might define him next? He’s grateful for his career, but he grew up wanting to make edgy dramas like the young Leonardo DiCaprio. He also cites an admiration for Miller, the queer actor who plays the Flash. “I most definitely want to be a fucking superhero one day,” Blackburn says a bit wistfully.

His path to cape wearing does look more tenable. The day before his Advocateinterview was posted, he booked a lead role in a fact-based disaster-survival film opposite Josh Duhamel. Blackburn jokes that his movie career was previously nonexistent, though his résumé features such thoughtful indie fare as 2017’s vignette-driven Hello Again. There, he plays a love interest to T.R. Knight, who tells PLAYBOY that Blackburn “embraces the challenge to stretch and not choose the easy path.”

For now, Blackburn’s path appears to be just where he needs it to be. “I may never want to be a spokesperson in a huge way, but honestly, being truthful and authentic sets a great example,” he says. “To continue on a path of fulfillment and happiness is going to make people feel like they too can have that and it doesn’t need to be some spectacle.” As it turns out, he may already be a superhero.

#tyler blackburn #roswell cast #roswell nm #alex manes #roswell new mexico #malex #roswell alex and michael

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angelcatsiel · 5 years

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ok no one wants to ask me any questions from the posts I reblogged recently but I’m going to fucking talk about rubbish anyway and no one can stop me. I love the sound of my own voice too much. Ok a brief summary of my decade by year (a lil depressing, slight trigger warning in the middle and some vague nsfw/kink mentions)

2010: ok so I started this decade 13 years old, somehow a hell of a lot smarter than I am now, in high school (jesus christ that feels like a lifetime ago), with a Bright Future ahead of me, apparently, due to my good grades and perfect behaviour. Was that even real?

2011: Started my final year at high school. I was very scared. I actually loved school, I did well at most of it, absolutely loved tests and exams (I know, what a nerd) and loved my friends.

2012: Left school and cried a lot. Had my first panic attack. I have vivid memories of standing on the school field just after completing our final exam, listening to a happy song on my old MP3 player (I’m not saying which song you guys will laugh), and crying because I didn’t want to go. I started college and the downhill spiral began. Didn’t make any real friends. It was harder to go in every day. I’d always been shy but this was different.

2013: Self harmed for the first time ever in January. Parents found out in April. Started seeing a therapist. College kept getting worse. First suicide attempt. Most of the year is a bit of a blur. Started watching supernatural in the summer.

2014: More self harming and suicide attempts. Had to go to hospital once for stitches. It was a rough year. Had to drop most of my college course but still managed to somehow complete it, without the extended part of my qualification I’d originally signed up for. Went to my first ever convention, asylum 13, and met Richard Speight Jr! Also got my first job, working at a riding school.

2015: The WORST year, though there were good things. Met Misha for the first time, and also met Jared and Jensen! Went to Wolf’s Bane 3. Left with the worst case of post-con blues I’d ever had that just didn’t go away. Went to Asylum 15 several months later feeling absolutely no better. Even at my happiest, having a great time at A15, it wasn’t worth the pain. Things got bad. Did some bad things. Was totally 100% convinced that I was already dead. Not sure how I survived.

2016: Most of it was rough. Held on only for PurCon in Germany. Misha Collins saved my life. Felt like he paid special attention to me even though I didn’t tell him any of my story (told him I’d had a tough year at his autograph but I had this feeling before that). He even stopped me after my photo op and pulled me back just to smile at me and say ‘goodbye’ so earnestly. Felt like some sort of sign. I stayed alive. Met one of my best friends in Germany too for the first time, and had my first (actually wanted) kiss with her! FINALLY stopped getting the numb, dead inside feeling I’d had since wolf’s bane last year, right towards the end. I’d almost forgotten what emotions felt like. I still felt like shit but I could breathe again. Also ended the year by getting on a plane on my own, a huge achievement, and got a job at a cinema!

2017: THE SEX YEAR. Lost my virginity early in the year. Discovered my love for kink. Had a temporary sort of Dom/sub relationship for a few months. Went to HVFF in London and met my current boyfriend for the first time, in the queue for John Barrowman. Had LOADS of kinky sex. Went from self harming every single day to every couple of months. Started gaining some self confidence. Had a BIG fallout with my dad (he found out about the sex lmao) which was tough. Got in my first ever proper relationship.

2018: Probably the first year I found myself genuinely glad I had survived the last several. Self harm reduced even more. Spent most of my time flying back and forth seeing my boyfriend. Moved to Ireland in the summer, that was HUGE. I was moving away from my family. It was amazing and terrifying. Learned to cook. Relationship with parents (particularly my dad) improved massively.

2019: Moved into an actual house. Got a cat. Really focused on my mental health. Self harmed maybe 2 or 3 times in the entire year? Physical health decided to go massively downhill though, bc life is a bitch. Got a therapist in Ireland, had many hospital appointments, had to buy a walking stick since the weak shaking episodes that have happened occasionally over the last few years have gotten a lot worse. Doctors can’t find any cause for my constant anaemia and I’m pretty much always in pain. Got diagnosed with GERD. Looking into the other stuff. Still a hell of a lot happier than I used to be though. These difficulties are nothing compared to the mental pain of a few years ago. Very proud of how far I’ve come and in general I’m super happy. Never thought it was possible.

Current plans for next decade: Investigating health issues further, being kinder to myself. Disney World this year, possibly Canada and my first and most likely only Creation con next year. Possibly/probably marriage at some point (whaaaaaat). Hopefully travelling to some other places, definitely planning on Germany again!

In conclusion, decade started great, went to shit, then went back uphill again and ended on a pretty good note (though the state of the world is a biiiiiiiiit of a worry). As long as we overthrow all the billionaires in the next decade and fix our shitty system, I’ll be happy.

Start of decade (earliest I could find, 2011, alongside my baby sister):

End of decade, 2019:

#personal #suicide tw #self harm tw #kind of crazy looking back on all this #also includes a pic of baby me aged 14!

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ajokeformur-ray · 5 years

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(my matchup info)) i'm bi, a londoner and i have loong dark brown hair, bright blue eyes and pale-ish kinda skin with light brown freckles on my cheeks and nose. i like playing sims 4, playing w my cats and binge watching Netflix. i love!! music and have a pretty good voice, my favourite artist is Lana Del Rey but i also like Lady Gaga, die antwoord, and 00s pop girl music e.g Britney Spears (don't shame me lolol). im quite smart but peaked a few years ago which is quite depressing lol. p1

pt. 2 speaking of I have depression and anxiety and take meds for both. im sarcastic, quiet, easily annoyed, funny and am a top tier shitposter. fr my feed is constantly full of memes. I’m almost always on some form of social media. im drawn to darker people and villainous characters despite being the opposite lmao. i put on a confident, independent front but inwardly im v insecure and easily manipulated if u can get past my front. i use humour/disinterest as a defence and hate looking weak. thank u!

Fandoms asked for (over two combined requests): Game of Thrones, Once Upon a Time, Yuri!!! On Ice, American Horror Story, Twilight, Death Note, The Vampire Diaries.

Death Note: Mello (Mihael Keehl)

Mello games and you play Sims 4 so sitting next to each other on your individual consoles would be how the two of you spend lazy days and quiet evenings together. You have a varied taste in music which is actually quite dark (Lana Del Ray) and inspiring/iconic (Lady Gaga) whereas Mello just likes heavy music which, when played at peak volume, thrums through your rib cage and echoes in your heartbeat. Between Mello’s explosive temper and your depression and anxiety, things can be tense. He snaps at you sometimes without thinking and you may retreat from him all together as a result. Show him your latest memes, though, and he’ll huff a reluctant laugh through his nose, breaking the ice. He’s not big on apologies even when he’s wrong but even so he’ll silently apologise in only one way: he’ll give (not just share) you one of his most expensive, preferred chocolate bars. Overall, he’d be one of your biggest comforts and vice versa. Just knowing that he’s watching the CCTV live of you walking down a dark or isolated street to make sure that you get home okay makes you feel a little warmer. Even when he’s pissed as hell at you or something else, he won’t let you go to bed feeling alone in a bad way. It’d be an explosive kinda love ;) [inappropriate death joke lmao not sorry]

American Horror Story (AHS): Violet Harmon

Violet would adore you. There would be some tensions because she’s quite abrasive (and rightly so, in some cases) but also because you both have depression, though you also have anxiety and you both put up fronts to hide yourselves. That’s likely how you bond - with Violet confessing to you one hot summer’s day that she “hates everything” and the whole situation with her parents. She can rant for hours when you leave her to it, just listening. Sometimes you share a part of yourself. You’re quite a talkative couple, but only in private. If there are people around, it’s obvious you’re together but there’s no set reason that they can see. Vivien and Ben have, generally, never seen their daughter so animated; you only bring good to Violet’s life. You’re both sarcastic and easily annoyed so any arguments are basically just really accurate roasting sessions until one of you hits a nerve (and then it stops because Violet just leaves to go somewhere - you never know where) or you’re both laughing. In this way, there are moments in your relationship that are hard to stomach. Watching mindless TV shows on Netflix and cuddling is a good way to break any ice that lays between you; Violet would make acerbic comments about something the lead has done and you’d listen, always able to tell if something more is under the surface. The similarities between the two of you creates your relationship; you see yourselves in each other and only want to help as best as you can.

The Vampire Diaries (TVD): Damon Salvatore

Damon would be very protective of you. You don’t like appearing weak but even when you’re down and sobbing on your knees, your body unable to hold you up anymore, Damon’s never thought you looked stronger. It takes strength to show weakness, even when you’re alone. If you ever forgot to take your meds, Damon would stand over you in with a glass of water in one hand and your meds in the other, that passive-aggressive look on his face. He’d watch you take them, arms folded, and then he’d give you a steamy kiss that leaves your toes curling for the rest of the day. Damon pretends to have no feelings because it’s easier and you put up a front. However, because Damon can’t shut off his humanity without forgetting his love for you, so he has to face his humanity which means he begins to feel guilt and everything that’s already there if he wants to feel it, which he doesn’t but… He does eventually. Because of you. You are the good in his life.You have similar defence mechanisms so it’s not unusual for one of you to walk into a room, see the other and immediately say “stop doing that” or “don’t do that” - no one else can tell that Damon is pretending, except you and Stefan. Similarly, it’ll be the brothers who can tell that you’re pretending. The contrast of your long dark hair and your bright blue eyes would be what drew Damon to you and I feel like he’d call you his “little siren” because of that. As such, he comes to understand that it wasn’t Katherine he’s been looking for all this time…

… It was you.

Twilight: Edward Cullen

You caught Edward’s attention by singing one day. He was just passing by, skipping Biology (blood work) and he heard you singing. He hadn’t meant to tune in to your radio station but sometimes he couldn’t help it. And you did have a lovely voice. He would likely buy some of the same albums that you own so that he could get to know you through music. Over time, he would learn to just intuitively tune in to your radio station and he’d hear your thoughts - this is a promise he would make to himself to not do once you’re friends and then dating and he’d definitely stick to it. He’s conveniently free on sunny days so you’d spend those days watching Netflix with a blanket around your body to protect you from his ice cold one (it’d be really hard to explain away catching a cold during a heatwave) and he’d press kisses into your hair, your kitty purring away just above your shoulders. Though Edward would do his best to not listen to your thoughts, on your worst days some of them drift through his mind and he’d take your hand tightly and say “Don’t” or “That’s not true.” He’d try so hard to help you; I think, pre-Bella, he also has depression so he’d do his best to help you because he knows what it’s like, and not just because he can hear you.

Yuri!!! On Ice: Victor Nikiforov

Victor would have such a loving relationship with you. Ohh, he’d try so hard to make you smile each and every day. When he’s not on the ice competing or eating way more food than he should be able to consume in one sitting (seriously, where does it go? Does his stomach start in his toes?), he’s curled up with you on the sofa watching something you want to watch on Netflix, Hulu or whatever else you use. He doesn’t mind what you watch, so long as you do it together. You love to shitpost and you love memes, and Victor loves taking pictures of the most obscure things so between the two of you, your followers are well fed! You’re always texting each other memes, jokes and sending pictures to each other with cryptic captions or song lyrics attached, making the other person burst out laughing in strange places like the ice rink or a classroom. You have more of a jokey relationship than a serious one, though that’s in abundance when either of you have depression or anxiety flare up. In any case, bed time is always met with gentle touches, soft smiles and careful reassurances. Even, and most especially, when you’re angry at each other. Love is never so important as it is during the bad times.

Once Upon A Time (OUAT): Regina Mills

It would be really touch and go to date Regina for a while. It would be very challenging and many people, including her and in your darkest times, yourself, would tell you that she’s not worth it. That you’re not worth it. But you’re all wrong. She is so, so worth it. Once she splits from the Evil Queen, once she grows into herself and grows into the Charming family, once she overcomes her abusive childhood and comes to love herself, she is a ray of sunshine and she glows. I’ve always loved and been so proud of Regina, and you would be too. You both put on fronts to protect yourself and you’re both very convincing so a lot of the time, the two of you have to mentally step back and see what the other is really thinking. Luckily, you know each other very well so it’s not hard to see when either of you are feeling especially insecure or unwell. Regina would literally rip her heart in half if it meant saving you, and at times she’s risked her life for you. She lives for your cuddles, especially when her many duties as a mum, a mayor etc. get on top of her and she just needs a break. You bring her back to herself time and again, and she will always do her utmost to return the favour to you. You have a strong, loving relationship underneath it all. It just takes patience and a special bond to be able to see it from the outside.

Game Of Thrones (GOT): Joffrey Baratheon

Joffrey is the most villainous person on this matchup. I was very hesitant to match you with him, I really was, but some of the others on this list are almost as bad. So. I think your personality would have a more positive effect on him. Cersei got her claws as far into him as she could, but even once she tried to reason with him and keep him reined in, he was too far gone for her to be able to help. But you... Mm. I think you’d have a similar impact on him to Margaery. You put on a front to protect yourself and this would be what Joffrey would listen to... to begin with. Once you’re properly courting and Joffrey is able to see what you don’t say; he would soften. He would still kill and be an utterly evil piece of work, but he would exercise more mercy. He would still wrongfully torment Tyrion, but he would draw a line when you start anxiously tugging on his sleeve. He doesn’t cuddle, mocking the action all together, but then one day he walks in on you curled up in bed reading a book and he just can’t resist curling around you, an arm slung over your shoulders to possessively keep you beside him. It would be a tumultuous, dangerous relationship but then... it’s Westeros, what do you expect?

There!!!! I hope you enjoyed!

#psychedelic-dolly #matchup #game of thrones #got #once upon a time #ouat #yoi #yuri!!! on ice #american horror story #ahs #twilight #death note imagines #the vampire diaries #tvd #combined all requests bc easier

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renaroo · 6 years

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SO... about that Titans Trailer...

Okay, so I wasn’t. Planning on giving this a review but then I watched it and you gave me an excuse. So. Here we are.

I hate teen drama shows but I live with my younger sister this summer so I’m constantly hearing them in the background and I know that I’ve not heard this weird song before but I also know that they allllllllllllll sound like this so there’s already. That creeping sense of

Oh fuck it’s Riverdale isn’t it

Like. Costume design for superhero shit isn’t easy, you’ve got classic superhero looks that are purposefully garish and meant to stand out while celebrated costumes in visual mass media are toned down and realistic, fitting the style of setting. You can honor both traditions at the same time, what it requires is picking a color temperature for your set’s lights that are less noir mood piece and more lit like a musical. I actually think Moulin Rouge! is a movie where the cinematography deserves more credit for getting that mood balance because it’s definitely what I think of when I’m thinking of ideal lighting and color palettes for superhero live action.

Marvel’s gotten a little better at figuring this out in the post-Iron Man 3 movies but they went a little too flat and bright in the first Avengers and too drab and dull in movies like the first Thor and the first Captain America.

The whole reason I’m thinking of this is because DC has never once figured this out save for Wonder Woman which had its coloring saved by choosing a sepia-esque lighting that wasn’t Sn*der-saturated so that Wondy’s costume and Themyscira in general popped while the warfront was still diferentiated but earth tones. I would actually point to DCEU movies being the pennacle of trying too hard for realism to the point of being visually embarrassed by their motifs. Which is also why the CGI rendering is always horrible in their movies. Suicide Squad was a little better but almost bipolar in how it snapped abck and forth between color saturation.

Anyway, this is a TV show and you would think that because TV shows are lower budget and more closed sets generally that this would actually be an advantage for the iconically colorful Titans teams because they’re likely to have warmer and flatter lighting choices. Except teen dramas lately haven’t been about that. They’re much darker and “more serious” and they mostly demonstrate that by darkening the lights and having everything go to dark blues with light temperature. That might work well in some places but it’s not good if you have multiple characters you want to show off with different color schemes that are wildly different from each other let alone from the blues. You can do it, but usually that involves introducing additional light sources to combat the darker lights, which is why in our Riverdale case study you have neons show up a lot, especially at Pop’s restaurant. Those neons introduce a “natural” secondary color and lighting source that helps make different hues exist more naturally in the environment without being garish and misplaced.

I can tell that at no time is this show going to put an iota of thought into any of this sort of detail because in this BLUE ASS SHOT of this trailer they have Raven’s purple hair look like it’s been photoshopped in by me -- they managed to make an already cool color like purple look unnatural in a scene that has cool temperature lighting. This is going to be shot like complete shit isn’t it.

What time am I at--

FIFTEEN SECONDS???

Dick’s a police officer so that’s a positive. I like the actor’s smile too, he looks just. Very Dick Grayson-- hahahahahahahahahhaahahahahahahahahahahahaha

oh my god

oh my god. Was that supposed to be Robin jumping over rooftops in the background. Is that what that was. IT WAS AN UNMOVING BLUR. IT JUST KINDA WAS DRAGGED ACROSS THE SCREEN I CAN’T--

Oh jesus. Did Dick Grayson just step on someone’s neck and break-- FUCK BATMAN

FUCK BATMAN

HAHHAHAHA

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

I was wrong -- all that shit I started with? Obviously I was overthinking. This is a glorious comedy.

Okay all that aside we get rapid montage which is supposed to wow us with cameos for DC diehards and impress us with the quality of composition of shots and the special effects quality for people like my sister who don’t care about Comic Con because I’m playing trailers loudly on my laptop while she’s rewatching Pretty Little Life of the Secret American Teenage Drama Queen.

It does none of these things. It’s no longer a comedy, it’s depressing because all that shit I said about the colors and mood lighting and temperature increases rapidly when you have terrible CGI transformations Beast Boy and... fire spouting... Starfire. Hm. Someone took that name a little literally didn’t they.

Wait

Is that Dove. From Hawk and Dove? Killing people?

Um. I mean none of these characters save for Starfire and Raven are really all that down with killing under any circumstances in comics but Dove in particular... like why have Dove as part of the team if you’re not going to bother with the Avatar of Peace part and the eternal conflict ongoing of wanting to use tremendous powers while promoting nonviolence. I know this is something I tend to care more about than most people with superheroes, but that’s literally the only reason to have Dove in anything ever. A great example would be the single Justice League Unlimited episode involving Hawk and Dove which tackles that exactly.

Who makes these live action decisions for DC. Is it Joffrey Johns? I bet it’s him. It has to be on some level.

Oh my god this music is so bad. I listened to nothing but emo music for a solid 18 months of my life and my favorite band to this day is Nightwish and I find this unbearable.

what

Evil inside of me I kinda like it. I mean. I guess. That is... a conflict for Raven to have sure.... But it’s also way more boring and tedious than it was in the 80s? Like. There’s five million supernatural teenage dramas that have already done that exact conflict But With Vampires or But With Werewolves. I should know! My sister watches them in the background! I know all about Diaries of the Teen Dog Vampire.

I’m hip

Oh and that scream. Okay, so also in film there’s this thing called a sound board and there’s a lot of cheap, royalty free sound mixes and noises that if you pay attention to editing and sound design there’s some sounds that have been really overplayed in media lately because people are too cheap to have their foley artist record a sound for themselves.

That scream that Raven just did that you know you’ve heard before is one of those and there’s nothing wrong with it I guess it just. makes everything about this feel cheap. The writing’s cheap. The characterization’s cheap. The lightning’s cheap. The character design is cheap. This god awful song is cheap.

they broke the glass

THEY BROKE GLASS. IS THAT FOR ME? WAS THAT MEANT TO MAKE ME FEEL BETTER BECAUSE THEY BROKE GLASS IN THE TRAILER. alright fine two points to Gryffindor.

That puts them at -80 so everyone clap

Welp that was definitely a Thing I watched. Hope everyone enjoyed this educational review.

#long post #opinions opinions opinions #Rants of Unusual Size #Titans Right Back Atcha #theazureesper

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ryanmeft · 6 years

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Mary Poppins Returns Movie Review

Of all the words I thought I might end up using to describe the new Mary Poppins film, “cynical” was not one. Yet here we are. It is a very pretty thing, engaging the use of many very talented people, that nonetheless feels like it was assembled by a marketing department. What you do to get a movie like this is realize no one’s cashed in on a beloved property in quite some time, see dollar signs, snag some well-respected actors and a musician to give the thing the illusion you cared about it, then sit back and rely on the fact that you’re Disney and everyone is in goddamn love with you to avoid having it criticized. A quarry of sugar wouldn’t help here.

The plot barely needs mentioned. Michael (Ben Whishaw) and Jane (Emily Mortimer) Banks are all growed up, and Michael is having trouble making ends meet after the death of his unseen wife. He still lives in the same house, but has three children of his own, who with one exception feel they have had to grow up quickly in the absence of a mother. Michael very much needs to find proof he owns stock in the bank to prevent them foreclosing and wait just a damn minute here. Disney, we had this conversation, back when you decided to give the Mad Hatter depression: do not inject real-life problems into settings that depend entirely on being ridiculous to work. I do not care about the stocks, and neither does anyone else, especially when you utterly waste Colin Firth on the role of a villainous banker so entirely cliche he could have been lifted straight out of It’s a Wonderful Life. Then Mary Poppins shows up, played by Emily Blunt, and this is the point where the movie should finally wake up.

It does, for a bit, despite the insistence on saddling her with the most cliche plot device possible: Michael and Jane refuse to believe her childhood magic feats were real. I propose an instant punishable-with-lashings moratorium on this most tired of family film developments. But let me take a breath. The shoes of Poppins are switched from the feet of Julie Andrews to those of Emily Blunt, who is a more than satisfactory pick for the role. She wears an updated costume that is either meant to show off Blunt’s figure or does a good job of it entirely by coincidence, has a slightly sharper edge to her sarcasm and the hinted-at presence of such a human emotion as sadness, and in general has been upgraded just enough to capture the rapt attention of modern five-year-olds without sacrificing a bit of the old-school charm that has made the character a classic. She is just a little flirtatious, just a little prideful, and still as inexplicable; my personal theory is she’s some kind of pagan god, but that just opens up a wormhole we probably don’t need.

Speaking of entrances, she insists this time she will not go until “the door is open”. It’s an effective bit of mystery that occasionally hints at more plot than the movie needs, but is resolved in a sweet and touching way. She has the movie’s one truly attention-grabbing musical number, “A Cover is Not The Book”, in which all those strange feelings young you (admit it) had about the character as you approached teenagerdom are made as explicit as a family film can make them. It includes a verse about a tree and its roots that is so obvious to any adults in the audience I’m frankly shocked it made it past the censoring. It’s a raucous, Moulin Rouge-style number in which Poppins-Blunt dons a sensational purple outfit, lets down her practically perfect hair and goes full vaudeville, and the one point in the entire film where it effectively stamps out a distinct identity from the original (the animation it is accompanied by is delightfully throwbackish). Blunt was just about sculpted for this role in every way.

Indeed, perhaps in too many ways, because in nearly every scene where Poppins is not the center of attention, the film rolls over and dies. The original movie is well-known as one of Disney’s best musicals, leaving this one a lot to live up to. A wonderfully unreal song set in the ocean finds the right tone, with the perfect sort of unreality to the special effects that we’ve come to lose appreciation for in the age of computers, but sadly these are the only two memorable numbers. The rest, which include a soporific thing about London’s gas lights and a blatant-but-unsuccessful shot at recapturing that wonderful chimney sweeping routine, were in desperate need of the masterful touch of Lin-Manuel Miranda. The Hamilton mega-star is for some reason in the movie as a somewhat effective replacement for Dick Van Dyke’s Cockney working man, but didn’t get so much as a verse on the soundtrack. That’s incredibly puzzling, given Hamilton was such a sensation it actually got me into a non-movie theatre, and his work on Moana made it the only modern Disney musical with a soundtrack entirely worth having. I don’t see a lot of (read: any) Broadway, so I can’t say if Marc Shaiman and/or Scott Wittman are otherwise worthy as composers and lyricists.

I can say I’m thankful most of their numbers are merely forgettable, because then there’s the tragic case of “Turning Turtle”. This is clearly meant to fill the same hole as “I Love to Laugh”, but fails utterly, with a cringe-inducing cameo from Meryl Streep, doing a horrific Russian caricature that brings any momentum the movie had built to a thunderous halt. It’s a mystery why it, and Streep, are in the movie, especially considering Disney can’t appear to stop paying her despite her arrogant and unfounded rant a few years ago about their founder. That would be fine if she were doing good work, but even the Academy would have to stretch to justify nominating her for this, and that is saying something. Not-so-special appearances from Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury are equally groan-inducing, forced into the film in order to get bonus credit from long-time fans rather than because they actually work. In one respect and one respect only is the film a total success, and that’s visually. Depression-era London (it’s the Great Slump to them) is handled gorgeously, like a fine China vase with almost nothing in it.

The rest of the film, somewhere between unbearably dull and oh-so-brief flashes of brilliance, is a muddled stew of homage, preferring to wink and nod at the audience when a beloved scene is given tribute or an old character is seen (portrayed by a new actor); rather than invent a new ride for us to go on, it is content with slapping different branding on the old one. Most of the film isn’t outright offensive, just horribly dull, and if your standards are somewhere around “anything will do as long as the kids sit still for a few hours”, this is your movie. The trouble with holding onto the past is that, even if you do it well most of the time, the slightest misstep can capsize you. In a time when the Paddington movies have claimed the Mary Poppins magic for themselves, this is a relic already.

The ultimate question concerning this sequel, directed possibly under duress by Chicago helmsman Rob Marshall and written by David Magee (Finding Neverland, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day), is why? Why, if it is neither going to take the property anywhere new nor effectively pay homage to the original, does it need to exist? The obvious answer is money, which it is sure to have thrown at it in oceans. If you want a movie that’s worth the increasingly asinine price for a ticket, though, this, as Mary would say, will not do. No, it will not do at all.

Verdict: Not Recommended (1 and 1/2 out of 4 Stars)

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

You can follow Ryan's reviews on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/ryanmeftmovies/

Or his tweets here:

https://twitter.com/RyanmEft

All images are property of the people what own the movie.

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sibillascribbles08 · 6 years

Text

This is a crack fic I wrote the previous night under the influence of alcohol and also under the influence of my terrible friends who kept giving me awful suggestions. There was a rule that I could not delete anything apart from the word I was currently typing.

I am begging you not to take this seriously.

This is the third out of three.

It’s a Ma.rio/TBoL Au somehow

Mario is Manolo, Peach is María, Bower is Joaquín, Wario is Xibalba, Donkey Kong is La Muerte, Luigi is the Candlemaker, Toadworth is Posada, Waluigi is Carlos, Daisy is Carmen, Live Action Bowser is Chakal

SO FUCKIN once upon a time two gods of death? I think were hanging out in the graveyard their names were Wario and Donkey Kong. They’re in the graveyard and talking about a bet. And then they decide they’re gonn place their wager on some kids and who this girl is gonna marry even though she could potentioallly marry someone compeltely unrelated to whatever they’re wagering, whatever. SO anyway. Wario bets on Bowser to marry Peach. And Donkey Kong bets on Mario. Yay.

So um I think Peach lets out a bunch of YOSHIs into the streets and causes a fucking MESSS um Bowser and Mario both fight a big yoshi and manage to beat it yay. But then Peach is getting shipped off to spain because ?? manners.

Boys r sad.

SO GROWING UP montage I think with Mario learning to fight CHOMP CHOMPS and Bowser just learning to fight in general. There’s music.

ANYWYA we get to the first chomp chomp fight for Mario UM Peach ish ome again yes and Bowser for some reason gets to show off before the fight riding on a horse??? or uuuuuh idk what could replace a horse. So everyone’s swooning. The entire stadium is gay. So then Mario comes out with his cape he’s gonna fight the chomp chomp. Manages to write some romantic letter for Peach in there I guess?? however that works, animation cheats. So he doesn’t write Peach’s name in the sand he draws a peach emoji which kinda looks like a butt?

But then Peach swoons anwyay jsut cause. SO THEN Mario’s supposed to stab the fuckin chomp chomp but he doesn’t cause that’d be awful, KILLIN THE CHOMP CHOMPS IS WRONG. WAAAAAH Waluigi cries in despiration.

Crowd bows. Mario gets knocked out by guitar.

Wakes up and his dad, Waluigi is shaming him WAAAH, along with his grandmother, Rosalina. Rosalina calls him a bitch.

SO THEN he sings I’m a Creep by Radiohead and Peach is swooning even more, thinks that’s hat.

OKAY SO WE cut to a dinner at um Toadsworth’s house and um Bowswer is trying to flirt with Peach but he’s sound a little sexist. Peach tells him to piss off and she’s going to feed her ........ birdo cause she’s better company than this.

So Bowser knows he fucked up and Mario starts serenading Peach with a guitar song. AND IT”S REALLY HAT LIKE SUPER HAT OH M YGOOOOOD.

But she don’t kiss him cause meh it’s funnier ot push him like ten feet onto the ground and watch him get crushed by his bandmates. Mario loses a life.

SO then Peach goes downstairs and is going to give Mario his guitar back but Bowser has a sonic ring out CHAOS EMERALD IN IT, ITS” FANCY so then Peach is like oh fuck I don’t wanna fucking commit already I just got home. SO THEN mario stumbles in and he’s like ??? drunk or slightly concussed, and leans on Bowser it’s kinda gay.

Mario gets stabbed loses another life.

So then they argue about who’s better for Peach but BANDITS OH MY GOD IT”S THE GOOOMBITOS THEY’RE COMING. So they go out to fight them but then Bowser shows up out of nowher with some sick kick flips and beats their asses and has some medal of immortality. THE GOOMBAS NOTICE. They flees.

The towsns people think they’re saved and Bowser is a hero. And Peach goes to talk to him because uuuh marriage for the tower??? but also they used to be friends so you might as awell. Toadsworth wants the bowswer D.

So Mario’s moping cause he fucked up he didn’t win Peach over. He gets hit in a head with a pinapple. Rosalina chucks a pinapples at waluigi. CARLOS.

So Rosalina gives Mario the GOOD advice. Sad wah in the background

Bowser takes Peach home actually sincere for once and Peach thinks he’s cute. Mario calls Peach out to the fuckin uh fuck where?? MEET ME BY THE BRIDGE AT DAWN. Peach be like damn that freaky but okay.

Bandit cave scene.

So then Wario’s stressing out cause he’s gonna lose the bet so he sends his snake??? uh thing to kill Mario.

So then there’s a romantic scene on the island with candles and shit. But then the snake shows up and tires to bite Mario but ends up biting Peach instead. So she passes the fuck out. MMMM WATCHA SAY.

So Mario’s fucking devestated carries her comatose corpse DID ANYONE CHECK FOR A PULSE? Bowser is pissed about this I guess. Mario feels like shit even more.

So he wanders back to get his guitar but rain + depression + death god saying you can be reunited with your loved ones makes it sound pretty tempting. So he lets the snake bite him twice yay he fucking dies.

G AME OVER BITCH

OKAY SO he wakes up as a skeleton and gets taken through land of the remembered. I guess Daisy is his mom? So he meets his mom and talks about how he needs to find Peach who should be dead but you know she’s not.

SO they go to the castle which doesn’t look much like a castle but I can’t judge either way. And Mario’s like yo uh Donkey Kong can you help me find Peach but then it’s. . . WARIO!

WAAARIO

so then everyone’s like oh my gosh no and Wario reveals the bet that um Bowser was going to marry Peach so Peach isn’t actually dead shes’ fine uh Bowser smooched her forhead and she’s fine.

So Mario cusses Wario out and Wario flicks him acros sthe room. And the YEETS OUT through the roof.

So then Mario and his family who I didn’t establish just Daisy decide to go to the CAVE OF SOUUUUUUUUUULS so they can find Donkey Kong.

It’s some long journey they climb a statue uh idk what it looks like they get to the top and there’s MAZE with uh death balls YES and the moon from majora’s mask is chasing him. BUT he manages to best it and the skull face door is like YOU’RE HAT COME ON IN.

So they go into the cave of souls. SO LUIGI shows up talking to them and a puddle. And then they all go into the cave of souls full of candles is very pretty. And there’s the Book of Life TITLE DROP AHA and mentions that apparently Mario’s pages are blank case ?? special. fuck you he’s mario.

SO Luigi helps them get to the land of the forgotten.

MEANWHILE I FORGOT UH Peach agreed to marry Bowser to protect the town and uh Chakal is coming anyway fuck no Chakal um giant goomba. LYOU’RE FIGHT FUCK it’s live action bowswer I forgot.

SO in the land of the forgotten they find Donkey Kong who flips the FUCK out when he finds out his husband cheated he’s throwing barrels and shit.

Wario shows up with wine cause he thought htis was adate for HEYAH HE THOUGHT HE WAS GONNA FUCK HIS HUSBAND.

So they argue about this shit bet that was kinda wobbly from the start tbh?? And then Wario agrees to give Mario his life back if he passes a test cause Mario challenges him like a dumb shit.

SO THEN um we have to cut to live action bowser raiding the town and wait so Peach is in the church with Bowser they’re gonna get married but then BOOM I guess osomeone launched a bomb? kind of a warning if they’re gonna raid a town. Is that how Carlos died he just get blown up idk.

it’s a cold and it’s a borken waluigi.

OKAY ANYWAY so Mario’s fighting a bunch of bone chomps chomps ZOMBIE CHOMPS and um then um his dad Waluigi shows up and it’s like bruh you’re dead??????

So MARIO fights this giant bone chomp chomp. and then serenades it with uh despacito. CHOMP CHOMP I AM SORRY. This is sosad.

ANYway so um Mario passes the test and gets sent back to the land of the living while some fight is going on, uh Bowser’s getting his ass kicked by live action bowser. BOWSER FIGHT.

So yeah Mario shows up and smooches Peach YAY and then the rest of his family shows up they’re going to fight the goombas. FIGHT SCENE!!

Mario and Bowser almost kiss.

Peach is getting taken up the tower by live action bowser. So Mario’s gonna go after her and Bowser has to find the medal of immortality. So then they combat dancing they have combat dancing on the roof so then Mario punches live action bowser off the roof, and then UH SOME BOMB DROPED AND THE TOWER IS COLLAPSING. THE A BOMB they all died.

no.

SO Mario and Bowser pin live action poswer to the the wall under htis bell right??? okay so they do that and then MarioOOO pushes Bowswer SO LONG GAY BOWSWER

BOOM

Mario??? fuckin dead? bombomb went off. But Mario emerges alive covered in live action Bowswers bloody chunks.

But he’s alive yay

SO wedding scene some more music and everyone’s happy or some shit

the end

#crack fics #there's so many typos #it's a cold and it's a borken waluigi

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timeme-drake · 7 years

Text

TAG GAME - IMPULSE !

tagged by @memepulse

rules: answer these 85 statements about yourself, then tag 20 people.

last

1. drink - earl grey tea

2. phone call - Lucius Fox

3. text message - “jon where are you” to Jon Kent

4. song you listened to - it was probably “Battle Cry” by Imagine Dragons...

5. time you cried - do you really want to know that?

ever

6. dated someone twice? - i’m not sure what this means

7. kissed someone and regretted it - nope. lots of people regretted kissing me, though.

8. been cheated on - no

9. lost someone special - they all came back to life though so I don’t think it counts? apart from my dad...

10. been depressed - i joke about it a lot but it’s really actually not funny

11. gotten drunk and thrown up - once. Except it was a cocktail of fear toxin and something Ivy made. I think. actually when it comes down to that, multiple times. no alcohol for me. it tastes awful.

fave colours

12. green

13. blue?

14. gold

in the last year have you…

15. made new friends - yes

16. fallen out of love - no

17. laughed until you cried - yes

18. found out someone was talking about you - gotham gossip rags. Ignoring them is a way of life.

19. met someone who changed you - yes

20. found out who your friends are - yes. they have my back.

21. kissed someone on your facebook friends list - Maybe? Does Tam count? Though she added me after the fact...

general

22. how many of your facebook friends do you know irl - all of them. I don’t like friending people I don’t know. LinkedIn is another matter.

23. do you have any pets - no.

24. do you want to change your name - not really

25. what did you do for your last birthday - hung out with family. Ivy and the Birds of Prey handled my villains for the night, which I just realized I never actually thanked them properly for. @batmemegirl @poisonivmeme @memecatwoman @memecanary thank you so much!

26. what time did you wake up today - 7 a.m. Then I kept falling back asleep until almost noon.

27. what were you doing at midnight last night - texting clark

28. what is something you cant wait for - Black Panther on DVD! (Unless it’s already out on DVD, in which case, I’m sorry. Bane has been making trouble again.)

30. what are you listening to right now - lindsey stirling

31. have you ever talked to a person named tom - I don’t think so? I don’t remember the names of everyone from school.

32. something thats getting on your nerves - people making small unnecessary repetitive noises.

33. most visited website - nanowrimo and Tumblr

34. hair colour - black

35. long or short hair - long-ish

36. do you have a crush on someone - does steph count?

37. what do you like about yourself - I don’t hurt people deliberately.

38. want any piercings? - both my ears are pierced. The nose piercing closed up over time.

39. blood type - ab-

40. nicknames - "timmy,” “timbo,” “tommy dork” (thanks Bart), “rob,” “nerd lord,” “bread robin”

41. relationship status - I am dating the ghost.

42. zodiac - cancer.

43. pronouns - he/him

44. fave tv shows - Firefly, Doctor Who, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Stargate et al., Star Trek et al., Leverage, White Collar

45. tattoos - I have one of a phoenix on my right shoulder blade. (Dick and I got matching tattoos after I became Robin.)

46. right or left handed - left, but I’m functionally ambidextrous

47. ever had surgery - yep. I don’t have a spleen any more.

48. piercings - see above. I’m not planning on getting any more at the moment.

49. sport - Tennis.

50. vacation - Dad took me backpacking in the Adirondacks once. It was fun, if awkward that I could move much faster than him and keep going longer without tiring.

51. trainers - batman, nightwing, the Rahul Llama, Lady Shiva

more general

52. eating - an apple

53. drinking - water

54. i’m about to watch - star wars

55. waiting for - the internet to load. (seriously, again?!)

56. want - the entire Redwall series as audiobooks

57. get married - maybe one day

58. career - I’m in school to become an archaeologist, but right now I’m running Wayne Enterprises.

which is better

59. hugs or kisses - hugs

60. lips or eyes - eyes

61. shorter or taller - I refuse to answer this because it would become blackmail/teasing material

62. older or younger - people who are more mature. age doesn’t matter.

63. nice arms or stomach - ????

64. hookup or relationship - relationship

65. troublemaker or hesitant - ?

have you ever

66. kissed a stranger - no

67. drank hard liquor - no

68. lost glasses - yes. It sucks.

69. turned someone down - yeah

70. sex on first date - no. ew.

71. broken someones heart - I didn’t mean to, but I probably did.

72. had your heart broken - I’m not sure.

73. been arrested - no

74. cried when someone died - yes.

fallen for

75. a friend - yes

76. yourself - ?

77. a miracle - ?

78. love at first sight - i don’t know

79. santa clause - now I’m really confused

80. a kiss on a first date - maybe

81. angels - are you asking if I believe in them? Maybe. I’m not sure.

other

82. best friend’s name - Conner, Cass, Cassie, Bart, Dick, Duke, Steph (if you ask me to choose, you just don’t understand)

83. eye colour - blue and hazel. I have heterochromia iridium.

84. fave movie - The Last Starfighter and Back to the Future

85. fave actor - John Boyega and Hayley Atwell

@memepulse YOU DO TOO HAVE MUTUALS.

Tagging: @robimeme, @clonememeboy, @artememe-crock, @miss-meme-martian (unless they’ve done it already, in which case, they can still tag whoever.)

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heatherly84 · 7 years

Text

Ben’s Ultimate Movie Playlist

When he gave this to Zane and Xur, I have no idea. Maybe after they watched Star Wars, I dunno. But watching Star Wars was why. For him, it was actually really fun and exciting to be part of shaping how aliens see his planet. And also he just loves sharing the movies he likes generally.

It was those two goals that drove what ended up in this collection and what didn’t.

So. The list. Alphabetically:

Aladdin (1992)

This is actually Ben’s favorite Disney movie. That started for a typical seven-year-old reason (it was one of the only feature length animated Disney films that wasn’t about a girl), but frequent rewatching and the passage of time has just turned it into pure, unadulterated nostalgia.

And The Band Played On (1993)

(Author’s note: Did not realize that alphabetizing the list would put the biggest downer on it so close to the top. Whoops. /o\)

This movie made the list, even though Ben has almost no other serious ones on it, because trying to explain the whole gay thing to Ziz and Zia was a nightmare for them as a family (obviously more Nat and Zach, but- Ben cared) and he thought of this movie as the ultimate one that shows what human society has historically thought about it. And maybe that’s something Zane might want to talk to the kids about, with some context to put it in. Essentially: this is Ben trying to help Zane parent. ...that the movie he chose is so depressing says something about how Ben feels about the idea of parenting.

Clue (1985)

Ben doesn’t watch a whole lot of mysteries, but when he was told that Xur liked them, he really tried to squeeze one he really loved out of his memory. This was the first result he got. Sure, it’s not exactly a mystery in the classical sense, but it has one and it’s also really funny. He especially loves that it has three endings (his favorite is the one where Miss Scarlet did it).

Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

Secretly, Ben likes musicals. He blames Disney on general principle. This one is one of his favorites, even though it does edge too close to more serious than he’d like, because he kinda identifies with Tevye. He’s a dreamer and a joker who resolves an incredibly serious issue at one point by just making up bullshit. Yeah, Ben relates.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

This one ended up on it because of the tendency people have to refer to Zane as Space Hitler. Yeah, Ben thought he’d give him a movie about plotting to kill Hitler when people call him Space Hitler and that seemed totally appropriate. Because Zane’s trying not to be Space Hitler anymore, and that goal is one Ben really wants him to succeed at. So he’s trying to show Zane the lens through which other people see him. He knows it’s something Zane already knows, but he wants it to be something Zane feels. Part of the magic of movies is that they can give people feelings in a way that history lessons and witness statements cannot. (Though he is genuinely anxious that when Zane watches the legendary scene of Hans Landa intimidating a dude into giving up the Jews he’s hiding in the floor, Zane’s going to relate more to Landa than to Shoshanna, the girl in the floor.)

Juno (2007)

The “find him a movie about it” school of teaching people things is an ideal that Ben comes by honestly because it’s how he was raised. If Squirrel didn’t know how to explain something to him, she’d find a movie, a TV show, or a book that did. This was part of a series on sexual responsibility that his mother put him through. She chose it because it got across very nicely “sometimes people get pregnant, and giving the baby up for adoption is a choice available to them- but that can be very hard, even if you’re very sure.”

For Ben, this is a formative movie that he has a lot of feelings about because of that, but also? It’s funny. And sweet. And has a romance that gave him a lot of feelings as a kid who was bad at socializing, because Paulie Bleaker should not remotely have been able to get a girlfriend like Juno with how awkward he is, but that happens and in context, it even makes sense. Plus, the soundtrack is fucking rad.

Kill Bill - Vol. 1 (2003)

This is just straight-up a fun action movie, with awesome sword fights and insane karate. This edges out most other action movies for Ben because- well, he likes Quentin Tarantino. (He’s the only director represented on the list four times.) And on a somewhat tactless level, he hopes that Zane will identify with someone on a revenge quest for their child, and the twist that the child is actually alive, complete with happy ending. (I suspect that’s not going to be as cool for Zane as Ben is hoping.)

Kill Bill - Vol. 2 (2004)

Well, you can’t rec the first one without the second one! The second one is the one that has the happy ending!

Moana (2016)

The first movie to make it as part of Ben’s Intro To Human Religion series. Ben’s not a particularly religious person, but he recognizes how much of that informs human culture- and also that Zane’s kind of going through a crisis of faith right about now. So here’s a story about what humans think gods are like, what other gods are out there, and what kind of relationship some humans have with them. (Yeah, Moana and Maui have a relationship that’s between god and man. Weird to think of that way, huh? *g*)

Also, it’s just plain got a good story with cool characters and a good soundtrack. ...this is the second time that observation has been part of a movie’s selection for the list. It will not be the last.

Mulan (1998)

Ben’s second favorite Disney movie. (His feelings on Classic Disney, like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty is that yeah, they’re prettier, but he doesn’t like the stories or music as much.) This is very much his Weep A Lot Over My Daddy Issues movie, which is not really a secret. Mulan goes on the quest as part of her search for independent self-identity, sure (and he figures Zane can relate to that), but at the heart of it all, she did everything for her father.

Ben doesn’t know what it’s like to have a father, but he likes to imagine it involves loving and being loved that much.

Plus: LET’S! GET DOWN! TO BUSINESS!

Newsies (1992)

Part of Ben’s secret love for musicals. This is a favorite- although he’s seen this five hundred times and actually still can’t describe the plot to anybody beyond, “Um. Strike, strike, strike, strike! ...?” But he remembers the songs and the dances. Holy fuck, does he remember the songs and the dances. If he wasn’t tall enough now to hit his head on the ceiling, he would probably still sometimes jump on his bed singing “King of New York.”

Other than that, he’s also hoping to teach Zane to root for the underdog. Which is a pretty important component to human movies in general, actually.

Prince of Egypt (1998)

Another part of Intro to Human Religion. Ben finds the actual Bible very tedious, but discovered in films that a lot of the stories in it are fucking amazing. This is a good one for that because from the very beginning, the stakes feel tremendously high: it starts with Moses’ mother, a slave, trying to hide her baby from Pharaoh’s soldiers so that he isn’t killed. That is a strong as hell opening, and the movie is very good at keeping you on the edge and very invested in what’s going to happen.

As ways to introduce Zane to the most popular theology on Earth goes, he figures this movie is better than most.

Psycho (1960)

Another that made the list because Ben wanted to have more mysteries for Xur and this was the closest he could think of. This DVD case actually has the plot summary on the back removed with a note stuck in its place that says, “Report back. I wanna know when you cracked the twist.”

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Another Tarantino. This one was chosen because it has more pop culture jammed into its first fifteen minutes than most of the other movies on this list combined. If you wanted to condense everything you needed to know but were afraid to ask about late 20th/early 21st century humans into one movie, it would probably be this one.

Plus, how fucking legendary is Samuel L. Jackson doing that fake Bible verse?

Plus plus, also a great soundtrack!

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Ben realized at some point he had got this far without having even a single horror movie on the list. He’s not a huge fan of horror, but at the same time, he felt like he should make an effort to include one. Just for the sake of exposing them to the idea. ...also, this one’s scary as hell, even though there’s almost no violence and only one special effect in the whole damn thing. That’s actually a majorly impressive achievement.

It cemented its place when he realized that its plot is kind of also a mystery. (The next time he sees Xur, he is going to apologize for how many of his choices are only “sort of” a mystery or “also has a mystery,” nothing is straight-up procedural. He just doesn’t really watch them.)

Saved! (2004)

Continuing Intro To Human Religion, but also borrowing again from his mom’s series on sexual responsibility. (”Keeping the baby is a choice you can make, too.”) This one’s a comedy that’s also a great look at Evangelical Christianity (...it’s very critical of it). He thought it was probably a more helpful choice than Prince of Egypt was, since that one’s about the mythology that inspires people to believe, but this one is about how people who believe actually live.

He did tape a note to the cover to watch Prince of Egypt first, though. The scene where Mary tries to get G-d to smite her really only makes sense if you already have the context that G-d smites people occasionally.

Se7en (1995)

“Finally, a mystery that’s pretty unambiguously a mystery! Shows police work and research! Excitement! \o/

...okay, yeah, it’s also a gruesome horror movie with a horrifying twist ending, but I’m doing my best here, okay?”

Does not count as Intro to Human Religion, but Ben did consider that some of the movies that are will probably give helpful context to this one.

The Shining (1980)

Also part of his “crap, I should add some horror movies” selection, although like Rosemary’s Baby, it made the list because it’s good and it’s scary, even without a lot of violence or special effects, just something that builds tension and builds it and builds it and builds it until the protagonist snaps and it’s almost a relief that you’re not just waiting for when he’s finally gonna do that anymore.

As human movies go, it’s a fucking great one.

Sound of Music (1965)

This movie appeals to Ben on several levels. One, it’s a musical, and it’s probably one of the best ones, at that. Two, Ben had a desperate hunger as a child for brothers and sisters, and this movie is about seven of them. Just watching them all together was the kind of thing that could suck him into a movie for no other good reason as a kid. Three, they’re siblings in a band. Fuck. Yes.

Oh, and there’s some cool historical drama stuff unfolding.

But mostly that siblings in a band thing.

West Side Story (1961)

Just one more musical! Just one! This actually isn’t one of his favorites (did they not have Latinos in the sixties? Were we invented by a mad scientist in 1985?), but he recognizes that its influence on how musicals would be made afterwards is important and worth acknowledging. Also, they managed to make Romeo and Juliet without suicide, that’s pretty cool.

And who among us could ever resist singing “I Feel Pretty” in the shower after hearing it for the first time?

Yours, Mine, and Ours (1968)

This movie is basically sibling porn* for people who used to fervently wish they had siblings. Ben grew up enraptured by the relationship between Mike and Philip as they go from stepbrothers to brothers. He also still falls over laughing over the line, “My sister’s locked herself in the bathroom and she can’t get out and I can’t get in and it’s my turn!” “Which sister?” “I don’t know her name yet, but she’s stuck for sure!”

It’s also basically “being a military family” porn for people who might be into that. Like, for instance, Xur or Zane.

#Ben Howell.#Admiral Xur.#Zane Auzael.#This took so long.#*cries*

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sending-the-message · 7 years

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My Work Is Haunted by amcma10

For as long as I can remember I've always wanted to be a nurse. When I was a little girl I would transform my room into a make shift infirmary. All my dolls would be bandaged up and I would even construct IV poles complete with ziplock baggies full of water and straws connecting to my "patients".

Fast forward to present day. I now work in a long term care facility and contrary to popular belief they aren't all depressing places where families drop off once loved relatives and then forget about them. We have a terrific Activities Director who makes sure there is something special planned for our residents every day. I know this not because I actually get to witness it, but because the calendar of events is prominently displayed at the entrance and throughout the halls.

By the time I get to work, which is roughly 5 minutes before my 7p-7a shift most of the residents are finishing up with supper and after their meds are dispensed they retire to their rooms for the night.

What I have neglected to mention about my place of employment is that it actually consists of two buildings. The main building or A building is a large brick structure that sits right up against the main road and the back building aka B building is much smaller and is connected to the larger building by a long covered breezeway.

I work in the B building which is the newest part of our facility that was constructed during the late 80's. The main building is much older, originally constructed in 1952 and was once the only hospital in the small rural town where I live. It was run by Catholic nuns and saw it's fair share of tragedy and unimaginable heartache. Some of the "lifers", a term of endearment we give our long time employees who transitioned over to the LTC facility after the hospital shut down used to regale us with stories that were both hysterical and soul numbing. While those tales were often embellished I could reference some of the facts from our "death book".

I remember the first time I had to access this book, I had only been on the job for a week when one of our geriatric residents passed away. All deaths must be recorded with the following: name, date, age of deceased, time of death, next of kin, address, followed by our signature.

When the hospital was in operation the "manner of death" was also listed. So many young lives taken too soon by accidental drownings, gun shot wounds, stabbings, MVA. I hate that damn book and have been vocal about our need for a new one. Unfortunately this is the way things are done in my county and for now the death book stays.

If any of you have ever worked in LTC then you are well aware that if anything can go wrong it does go wrong after midnight. Confused residents fall out of the bed, scream out due to hallucinations, attempt to leave AMA etc. Anyone who thinks "night shift nurses" have it easy need to be throat punched.

In any case, when we have someone in need of a safety alarm such as a bed alarm or chair alarm there is only one place at my work that houses the spare equipment.

The old ER, or dungeon as we call it. It is in the basement portion of the main building that also houses the kitchen, custodial offices, employee break room, an old chapel and several conference rooms. I hate going down there and usually I enlist the help of one of the CNA's to accompany me. This was mainly just for safety reasons. Once, a drunk man was able to gain access to the back door where the time clock was located and was found passed out against a drink machine near the employee break room. He was completely oblivious to where he was when the cops showed up and took him off in handcuffs.

In order to get to where the spare equipment room is located you must go through the swinging metal doors leading to the old ER. Past the doors there are several round metal speaker systems that hang out from the top of the walls and an assortment of old signage directing patients to the front desk, bathrooms, exam rooms and the radiology department. It truly looks like you stepped into an old episode of the Twilight Zone. Trust me when I say that walking down these halls by yourself is extremely unsettling.

Any way, about the dungeon. One night last November I needed a bed alarm for one of our newer residents who had fallen out of bed twice within 3 hours. Its our policy after the 2nd documented fall then we institute soft restraint measures to prevent injury. Being short a CNA that particular night I was forced to retrieve the alarm myself since there had to always be one employee on the floor at all times and Grace, one of my "lifer's" was elbow deep in shit at that moment.

It was a little past midnight when I grabbed my coat exited out into the frigid night walking the breezeway leading into the main building. The door to the main building from the breezeway opened up to a dimly lit hallway where directly in front of the doors stood a single elevator. I observed that the elevator door leading upstairs to the main floors was open. Odd. Unless someone is entering the elevator or exiting it the door remain closed. As if reading my thoughts the elevator door slowly closed and I watched as the "up arrow" glowed brightly.

I'm one of those people who can generally get freaked out by the slightest thing so already I was dreading my trek down the hall to the equipment room. As I walked along the corridor leading to the swinging metal doors it felt like the heating system was on the brinks. I could almost see my breath that's how drastically the temperature change was. In that moment I remembered every horror/scary movie I had ever seen where a sudden drop in ambient temperature meant that ghosts were present. I tried humming the Pharrell Williams song "Happy" to keep my mind from going to those terrifying thoughts.

After pushing through the metal doors I thought I saw a glimpse of movement off to my right. Perhaps one of the other nurses or CNA's from the two upper floors were down here getting equipment as well and I chastised myself for being such a scaredy-cat.

I quickened my steps and made it to the door marked "Radiology" which was where all our extra equipment was stored. During the time the hospital was in operation this was where all the x-rays were performed and it still held some of the ancient machines. I could hear movement as if someone were pushing a wheelchair or stretcher out of the way and again relief washed over me.

I opened the door and was immediately struck with fear. There was no one else in the room! Despite its size I would have been able to see someone even if they were crouched down looking through one of the storage bins. The air again was even more frigid in the room, so cold in fact that I actually could see my breath in front of me.

It felt downright silly but I uttered a shrill "Hello?" as I took a few steps inside. The door slammed shut behind me. Panic was now reaching every cell of my body and I could hear and feel my heart as it bounded in my chest. My mind raced as I turned behind me and tried the door knob. It was locked! I was way past terrified at this point and started banging on the door shouting at the top of my lungs. My voice bounced off the sickening green cement blocks that made up the walls. "Help!" I continued to scream to no avail. Then it happened.

A voice, so soft and faint came from the other side of the door. "Is it time?"

I moved back from the door and detected movement from the other side however even with the dim fluorescent light fixtures in the hall there should have been a shadow.

I swallowed hard even though my mouth was dry and my throat burned from my screaming. I listened again, waiting and the voice a little louder asked "I'm ready to go, is it time?" After those words were again uttered the soft sniffles of a child crying echoed through the room I was in. I remained motionless, frozen by fear when I heard another voice, much older say "Come on Lily, this way." I could hear the sound of footsteps leading away from the door.

Not even a minute later the door opened behind me and I screamed when I heard my name. "Janie?" He looked bewildered. It was Steve, one of the new CNA's from the 2nd floor coming to get a wheelchair. I must have looked like a ghost myself as I'm sure all the color had drained from my face. "Jesus they need to get the heat fixed down here" he said as he moved past me to grab the chair.

"Could you wait, just a minute while I grab a chair alarm?" I asked. Steve looked at me funny before breaking into a grin. "Why? You scared?" he snickered. Asshole.

Nevertheless he waited while I grabbed the alarm and I hauled ass down the hall and then broke into a jog after exiting the building before punching the code to get into my own building.

I made it back to my nurse's station and handed the alarm to Grace, the older CNA who had been keeping a watch on the halls and told her to take it to room 301. When she rounded the hall I opened my desk drawer and pulled out the death book. I don't know why I was compelled to do so but after flipping through and skimming several names I saw what made my heart drop to my stomach. NAME: Lily Robertson DATE: October 5th 1958, AGE: 5 CAUSE OF DEATH: Blunt force trauma to the head. I now know without a doubt that my work is haunted and sadly it was not an isolated incident.

#reddit #nosleep #scary #story

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