#like where Mindy makes the decision to leave Danny

[dxcinhx]

so in brasil we have a tradition at birthday parties that the first slice of the cake goes to the birthday person's favorite person/the one they love the most, and i have sam and tara brainrot so let's connect these two things

sam, being the oldest, understood the tradition first and would always give the first slice of cake to tara :) i'm imagining the first year where tara's old enough to understand the tradition. sam asks her who the first slice is going to and tara holds out the little plate to sam without saying a word

as they get older and celebrate with tara's friends, i feel like mindy and chad would always hold out hope even as a joke that MAYBE tara would give the first slice to them, but of course she never does. they always groan and grumble about how they never get picked

what if even before mr. carpenter leaves, sam and tara's parents check out of their parenting duties? they don't even bother to get birthday cakes for either of them, or worse, they don't even bother to remember their birthdays at all. sam definitely made sure that tara was none the wiser and was responsible for ordering cake for tara's birthday each year. (she only got herself a cake after mr. carpenter leaves because tara would be upset if sam didn't celebrate.)

but what happens after sam leaves?

tara doesn't even want to acknowledge her birthday the first time it comes around after sam leaves. (she spends sam's first birthday without her in bed with the door locked and her phone off.) after a couple years, her friends take the initiative and get her a cake, maybe host a party at their place. when it comes time to eat, tara just has everyone cut their own slices to avoid the decision at all.

(her friends give her the cake leftovers to take home. an instinctual part of her wants to save a piece for sam. she sits in front of an empty chair and wonders if her sister's still out there. if she thinks of tara as much as tara thinks of her.)

i'm making myself sad. let's talk about when sam comes back!

let's say tara's birthday comes around first. even though their relationship is a bit fragile as they're starting to come back to each other, sam gets her a cake and presents and everything. anything for her baby sister. tara holds out the first piece of cake that she cuts to sam. there's a moment where sam pauses, looking at her sister, feeling the weight of the moment sit on her chest. all she can do is take the plate and pull tara into her arms.

they start celebrating with the twins again and eventually danny too! danny would simply never expect sam to give him the first slice of her cake but he might get a little teary eyed when sam gives him the second slice :') meanwhile the twins are screaming in indignation in the back

[krikeymate]

How do you think the apartment scene would’ve gone if Chad had dragged Mindy out of the door instead? I wonder how Sam would’ve reacted differently had Tara been the one in danger, maybe even Tara getting stabbed like Anika was…..

Oh now that is interesting to think about.

Is Sam the one who pulls Tara back as she starts towards Tara's door? Does Chad pull Mindy out the door, abandoning Anika?

Actually, you know what, this could work SO well building up to that reveal in act 3 where Sam suspects Mindy for a moment, because in this sequence of events, Mindy is angry with Chad for leaving her girlfriend behind to get killed, and she's angry with Sam, because the two sisters come away safe and sound while her girlfriend lies dead on the ground.

So Chad drags Mindy away, and Quinn still gets thrown on top of Anika. Tara tries to help her up, but she freezes for a moment at the sight of Ghostface in her safe space. How did this happen? Then before she can react, it's moving forward and slices at her arm. Anika grabs at Ghostface's robe from her place on the floor, and Ghostface slams the knife down into her stomach. Sam doesn't bother looking for a weapon, she just straight up punches Ghostface in the back of the head. The force has Ghostface flying to the floor, but they don't let go of the knife, causing further damage to Anika as it's ripped from her stomach.

As Ghostface recovers and gets up from the floor (shutting the door as well, of course), the other 3 make the same escape into Quinn's bedroom. Tara takes Mindy's place in blocking the door.

Sam makes Tara go over the ladder first, Danny assures her it will hold, and takes her place holding back the door. She tries to get Anika to go next, but the girl is terrified and bleeding and in so much pain. Sam's eyes meet her sister's across the ladder, and she makes her decision. She crosses. It plays out as it does.

Mindy spends the rest of the movie angrier, especially at Ethan who she suspects, and is slightly less into the family speech thing at Gale's, but does still include herself. Ethan makes a comment to Mindy as she's being loaded into an ambulance after being stabbed, that it must have been the same Ghostface, because she's been stabbed in the same place as Anika, which sets alarm bells ringing in her head, because how could he know that?

[kevinsreviewcatalogue]

Review: Scream VI (2023)

Scream VI (2023)

Rated R for strong bloody violence and language throughout, and brief drug use

Score: 3 out of 5

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2023/03/review-scream-vi-2023.html>

We've got a moderate Democrat in the White House, Y2K aesthetics are coming back into fashion, and everybody's hyped up for a new Scream sequel. Buckle up, folks, it's 1997 again. Scream VI (the number returning, this time as a Roman numeral) is a film that takes heavily after the second film in this franchise, the protagonists now in college and dealing with the legacy of the events of the fifth movie that preceded it. As far as Scream sequels go, it's pretty middle-of-the-road in a franchise that's always had a high bar for quality, ranking below the second and fifth films but ahead of the fourth. Outside its heavily advertised New York setting, it doesn't really do much new with the franchise, instead existing as a vehicle for fanservice in the form of both returning characters and references to the older movies, and there were a lot of moments when I thought it could've afforded to be a lot more daring, in terms of both killing off established characters and making full use of the fact that it's set in the Big Apple. That said, the Carpenter sisters have grown on me as the series' new protagonists, the kills and the buildup to them were highlights, and the moments where it did step outside its comfort zone, especially the opening sequence, sent me for a loop. Overall, it was a film that had a lot of missed opportunities and felt like the series was coasting in franchise mode, such that I'm not really comfortable giving it more than a 3 out of 5, but it was an entertaining, crowd-pleasing slasher that showed that the last movie wasn't a fluke -- Ghostface is back as a horror icon.

This film takes place a year after the events of the last one, with Tara Carpenter and the Meeks-Martin siblings Mindy and Chad having moved to New York City to attend Blackmore University, and Tara's older sister Sam following them and sharing an apartment with her sister. Tara is eager to move on from what happened to her in Woodsboro, but for Sam, it's not so easy, not only because she seemed to have enjoyed killing the last movie's killer but also because, since then, conspiracy theories have proliferated online accusing her of being the real Ghostface murderer and framing the people who were actually responsible. What's more, a new string of brutal murders by a killer wearing a Ghostface costume has struck New York, and the killer seems intent on connecting Sam to them, leaving her old driver's license at the scene of the first murder. Together, the "Core Four", as the four Woodsboro survivors call themselves, team up with a group of friends both new and returning -- Sam and Tara's roommate Quinn, Quinn's NYPD detective father Wayne Bailey, Sam's boyfriend Danny, Mindy's girlfriend Anika, Chad's roommate Ethan, the older Woodsboro survivor Kirby Reed from the fourth movie (now an FBI agent drawn in by her investigation of the opening victim), and Gale Weathers, who went back on her decision at the end of the last movie to not write another true crime book about what happened, much to Sam and Tara's fury -- to hunt down the new Ghostface, who, as it so often is in this series, may very well be somebody in their midst.

The opening scene, which starts with the requisite big-name star (in this case, Samara Weaving) getting brutally murdered, threw me for a loop and started the film on the right foot by immediately revealing Ghostface's identity (Jason, working with an accomplice named Greg) and motive (he thinks Sam is a murderer and that he's avenging "her" victims). This is an idea that I've always thought it would be neat for a Scream movie to explore, telling the story in a Hitchcockian fashion by following both the heroes and the villains with full knowledge of what both sides were up to, the tension coming not in trying to figure out the killer but in wondering if the heroes would figure out what's really going on before it's too late. It almost felt like a cheat to then have the real Ghostface step in and kill this impostor, especially since Tony Revolori's brief performance was a highlight in crafting an utterly cold-blooded sociopath who doesn't think his victims are human. This was, unfortunately, about as inventive as the movie got, and the fact that they backed off from that idea of making a Scream movie where we knew who Ghostface was right off the bat kind of foreshadowed that the rest of the movie would be quite derivative of the ones that came before it, the second film most of all. It's got Roger L. Jackson's Ghostface voice being creepy as ever, the requisite self-referential humor about horror movies courtesy of Mindy (in this case long-running franchises), and more, but in a lot of ways, the New York setting was really the only thing new about this movie.

Fortunately, when you're working with "a very simple formula!" like the Scream movies, themselves loving homages to '80s slasher tradition, it's the production values that really count, and this movie looked and felt amazing. There were a ton of great slasher moments and sequences, from a battle between Gale and Ghostface in her penthouse apartment to the scene in the bodega (heavily featured in the trailers) where Ghostface decides to finally grab a gun to a scene involving a ladder that is easily one of the most intense moments I've seen in not only the series but the slasher genre in general. Not only were there some killer chase sequences, the kills themselves were properly bloody, with stabbings, eviscerations, eye gougings, and knives getting shoved down victims' throats all depicted in graphic detail that earns this movie its R rating. If I had one real complaint about this movie on a technical level, it's that they could've made better use of the New York setting. Yes, seeing Ghostface kill people in alleyways, brownstones, bodegas, penthouses, and (of course) the New York City Subway was great fun, but if I were to really go all-in on sending up the gimmicky setting of Jason Takes Manhattan that was clearly on the filmmakers' mind, this time with an actual budget so that they don't have to spend two-thirds of the movie on a cruise ship, I would've gotten a bit more inventive. In the penthouse scene, use the location hundreds of feet up as a hazard for the protagonists to work around and Ghostface to exploit -- which would've made a great homage to a standout kill from the second film, while you're at it. I get the reference to the second film's climax of having the finale take place in an abandoned theater, but instead of a fairly generic location like that, have it at a Broadway theater during a show or a TV network (perhaps even the one Gale works for) during their nightly newscast, which would've had the added bonus of having the killer's plot blow up in their face by way of an inadvertent public confession.

The cast, both returning and new, was solid, especially the "Core Four" of the new generation of Woodsboro survivors. The MVPs were probably Mason Gooding and Melissa Barrera, the former getting a lot more to do as Chad than simply hang around in the background (especially with his romantic subplot with Jenna Ortega's Tara) and the latter having improved considerably since the last movie, growing into her role as Sam and finding a lot to work with in regards to her troubled relationship with her past and those around her. The film seemed to be setting up an arc for Sam not unlike what the fifth Friday the 13th movie set up for Tommy Jarvis, or the fourth Halloween movie set up for Jamie Lloyd, and unlike those series, I can see the next Scream movie actually following through on the darker directions they take her character rather than chickening out. Seeing Hayden Panettiere back as Kirby was also a treat, especially once the movie started throwing some curveballs with regards to her character. The killers, however, were a weak spot. While the film did do one new thing from a technical perspective, and I liked how the lead killer's identity was foreshadowed over the course of the movie, their motive was recycled from the second film, and only the lead killer really left much of an impression, their accomplice feeling like an afterthought who was there just because Ghostface in these movies always has somebody to do their dirty work. There were also plot holes as to how the investigative reporter Gale and the FBI agent Kirby would not have figured out who they were, and their connection to previous Ghostfaces, from act one. While the acting for the killers saved them, overall I felt that they were the second-worst Ghostface team in the entire film series, ahead of only the killer from the third movie and the hot garbage that the TV show served up. The character of Sam's boyfriend Danny also felt completely pointless, existing only to provide some hunky sex appeal and accompany the rest of the cast on their adventure without really having much of a character of his own. He felt like a waste, there only to pad the suspect list.

The Bottom Line

This was a flawed movie that felt like it was cranked out to cash in on the success of the last one, but the Radio Silence team knows how to get the job done, and overall, it's a solid, perfectly fine installment in a series that is, at this point, five-for-six in terms of quality. If you're a Scream fan, you don't need me to tell you to check it out, but even if you're not, it's still a worthwhile watch.

[myoddramblings]

It has its issues but the Mindy project kills

[mylifeiskara]

I made this thread on Twitter kind of comparing how The Mindy Project and The 100 seem to be handling their cast shake-ups, which might seem rather silly of me because they are different genres, but I’ve been rewatching The Mindy Project recently, and I remember how upset the writing and stuff made me while I was watching TMP, even though I knew that it was because Chris Messina had asked to be on the show less to pursue other projects. He was in like a million movies in 2016! But as I go back and rewatch, I’m realizing they actually handled it very well, and I thought I’d elaborate a little more on my thread where there is no character limit. So spoilers for TMP and what we’ve seen of season 7 of The 100 probably.

Tl;dr: I still think Bellarke is happening, and I don’t think what we’re seeing on screen would be that much different, even if Bob hadn’t asked for time off.

So season 3 of The Mindy Project ends with Mindy and Danny (played by Chris Messina) together and expecting a baby, though Danny has said he’s not sure he wants to get married again. He even travels all the way to India to visit Mindy’s parents and explain to them that he is in love with Mindy, but isn’t sure he wants to marry her. This is where the first episode of season 4 picks up, and at the end of this episode, after Danny talks to Mindy’s parents and comes to the realization that he wants to work past his hang-ups on marriage, he proposes to Mindy.

Now somewhere in between season 3 and the writing of season 4 Chris Messina asked to be on the show less because he was interested in pursuing other projects. So the writers had to navigate how to tell a story where Mindy’s fiance and the father of her child was not on the show as much. They first did this by setting up the conflict of Mindy realizing that she does not actually want to be a stay-at-home mom, like she initially agreed. She wants to still be a doctor and continue to grow her fertility practice. She has a hard time telling this to Danny, because since his mother was a single mom and always working, he felt alone during childhood, and he doesn’t want his kid to feel alone or unloved, though Mindy argues that just because they both work doesn’t mean that Leo will feel unloved. This argument and conflict gets put on pause when Danny’s father has a heart attack, and he goes to California to take care of him. While he’s gone, Mindy goes back to work and realizes for sure that she doesn’t want to stop working. When Danny returns this conflict continues, because Danny wants another kid soon, and Mindy realizes she’s not sure she wants another kid, because she’s committed to growing her fertility practice, especially now that her new business partner Jody is involved. They can’t work past this, and end up breaking up, which is told through an extremely well done montage if you’d like to watch season 4 ep. 14.

The next two seasons show Mindy as she handles being a working single mom, co-parenting with her ex, and even some of her dating adventures. She even ends up marrying someone else for a while, and Danny gets engaged again. So even though Chris Messina is no longer a series regular, he is very much still part of the story. Season 6 shows how Mindy and Danny grow back together in a way, as they realize that they’ve both grown and that they still love each other and want to work through their issues and be with each other again.

I then think about what TMP would have looked like had Chris Messina not asked to be on the show less, and I honestly think it makes sense for them to still have done something similar. Danny was always Mindy’s main love interest, and seasons 1 and 2 saw Mindy through many boyfriends, Danny and Mindy’s “will they, won’t they”, and their eventual decision to be together. Season 3 was them being together, and also navigating long distance for a period of time as Mindy went to do a fellowship at Stanford. Yeah, this is a rom-com, but I think it would have been pretty boring for seasons 4-6 to only be about the “happily ever after.” Even if Chris hadn’t asked for time off, I think conflicts still would have arisen between Mindy and Danny, because they are very different as people and they both had some growing to do, even if they do have to stay on somewhat decent terms because of their son. The whole point is that they never stopped loving each other through all of this.

So what, might you ask, does this have to do with The 100? Well I’m assuming a similar sit-down happened between season 6 and the writing of season 7 where Bob asked to take some time off. Obviously the situation is different, but Bob and Chris are both the second leads, so it’s definitely something the writers have to sit and think about in terms of how they’re going to handle it.

If your second lead asks to take time off in the last season of the show, it makes sense to write him missing for most of the beginning half of the season. So that when things wrap up at the end, Bellamy will be there as the story comes to a close. Now that we’ve seen six episodes, I’m assuming that we’re about to start wrapping up some of the side stories so that when Bellamy is back for real, the focus will then turn back to Bellamy and Clarke. People have been saying that Bellamy is the key and Clarke is the key to whatever this story unfolding is. Their stories are connected, and you can’t fully tell one without the other. I think it’s safe to say that later on we’ll see them reunited and learn more about what this means. But for now, we’re focusing on other characters, and I’m okay with that.

Since the story is coming to a close, I’ve been thinking a lot about the overarching journey. We’ve seen Bellamy and Clarke go from adversaries to reluctant leaders, to best friends, and I’d still say we are most definitely on track for a Bellarke ending. I’m one of those people that actually loves when Bellamy and Clarke are separated, because I find their reunions to be incredibly meaningful. And I think the reunion that we’re being set up for is going to be great, though I don’t have much of an idea on how it’s going to happen. I’m just waiting to watch all the pieces fall into place.

I know a lot of us talk about what would have happened if Clarke made it up to the Ring in season 4 because it was pretty obvious there was such unspoken tension and love between the two of them, but honestly? I don’t think there would have been much reason to continue the show. They would have gotten together on the Ring, and then what? It’s always been about Clarke and Bellamy, and them being together leaves little story to tell, if we think about it. The whole conflict of season 5 was that they had spent so much time apart that Bellamy had to start thinking with his head (per Clarke’s advice) and they had grown without each other, so they had to take the time to recognize that and be on the same page again. Season 6, they are on the same page, but then Clarke “dies” and Bellamy’s entire story becomes how to get her back. And now in season 7 though it’s not just Bellamy missing, Clarke seems very focused on getting back Bellamy in particular. Sure there’s a lot going on at the same time, but Clarke’s main focus currently is getting back to Bellamy, especially after Bellamy did so much to save her last season (which was like a mere few days ago Sanctum time).

Had Bob not asked to take time off, I think the story would still play out similarly. Maybe we’d see Bellamy a bit more, the way that we saw Danny every now and again in season 4 of TMP and through voiceover text messages to Mindy. But I think this was always going to be what the story looked like. We also have to remember that storytelling on TV and storytelling in other forms are fairly different, since you can’t necessarily have a bunch of long scenes where people just sit and talk about their feelings. That’s boring to watch. I think that’s why we got that Princess Mechanic scene in 7x06 when Raven and Clarke were stuck in the body of that organism and Raven broke down, or the scene in 6x11 where Octavia and Bellamy had a heart-to-heart. Neither of those scenes were very long, but the characters were working towards another goal while also talking through some issues that they were having. There’s different time constraints and factors to consider when writing a scene for TV that you could handle differently in a novel or a fanfic.

None of this is to say that I’ve never taken issue with how the story is told, because that’s not true. I just think that the overarching narrative is about reuniting Bellamy and Clarke, similar to how The Mindy Project’s overarching narrative is about Danny and Mindy growing so that they can be together again. Unlike when I watched season 4 of The Mindy Project, I’m taking the time to watch how the story plays out here, because I spent a lot of time back in 2016 being needlessly angry over something that in retrospect was actually fairly well done given the circumstances. I’m watching what’s presented to me on screen, because that is the story that we’re working with. And I’ll see how I feel about the whole thing once it’s all over. I’m hoping I’ll be satisfied with the ending, but if not, there’s a whole lot of very talented content creators who I know are already geared up to write some fix-it fanfics.

[tabloidtoc]

OK, June 1

Cover: Jennifer Aniston Finally Talks -- her fresh start at 51 

Page 1: Big Pic -- Shia LaBeouf took a spin around his Pasadena neighborhood with his adorable pooch in tow 

Page 2: Contents 

Page 3: Contents 

Page 4: Royal Shake-Up -- a shocking report leads to whispers that Queen Elizabeth may soon be stepping away from her duties for good -- thankfully the Queen has Prince William and Duchess Kate Middleton to lean on and they call her every day and are always offering to step in and take any stressful duties off her hands and the queen doesn’t know what she’d do without them 

Page 6: From the outside Reese Witherspoon seems to have a picture-perfect life but the multifaceted star admits her days are a balancing act and anything but easy 

Page 7: It seems as if Kristin Cavallari has been on a smear campaign against estranged husband Jay Cutler as their messy divorce plays out -- she’s consumed by rage and resentment toward him mainly out of fear that he’ll come across as looking like the good guy while she’s painted as power- and money-hungry, after years of estrangement the coronavirus pandemic has pushed Bella Cruise to reach out to mom Nicole Kidman -- Nicole knows Bella will never leave Scientology and she’d never ask her to and they’ve been making up for lost time and speak most days and Bella’s agreed to travel to Tennessee and stay at Nicole’s sprawling country estate once it’s safe to travel, Scott Disick is turning to Kris Jenner as he figures out his next move after he fled rehab after the news leaked -- Scott feels more vulnerable than ever and he’s at a crucial stage in his life and he respects Kris enormously not only as a business partner but as a makeshift therapist and mother figure 

Page 8: Jamie Lynn Spears is begging older sis Britney Spears to move back to Louisiana and Jamie Lynn would love for her daughters to spend more time with their aunt and wants them together as one big happy family in Kentwood where it all began, Chris Pratt and pregnant Katherine Schwarzenegger are feeling a bit overwhelmed by her parents as they await their baby’s arrival -- Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger are excited at their first grandchild but they’ve become very pushy -- Maria’s insisting on planning a huge baby shower and decorating the nursery and Arnold is trying to install a new sound system so they can play lullabies in every corner of the house and it’s enough to make Chris and Katherine wince, Tom Cruise is making it his mission to reclaim his title as the King of Hollywood -- he’s bided his time for years now because he wanted to take the pressure of himself until he found just the right moment to go for it and now he’s ready to catapult himself onto the scene with Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 and the sequel to Top Gun and he’s working with NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX to shoot the first ever movie in outer space 

Page 10: Red Hot on the Red Carpet -- peach gowns -- Zoe Kravitz, Karolina Kurkova, Adrienne Houghton 

Page 11: Betty Gilpin, Lizzy Caplan, Joey King 

Page 12: Who Wore It Better? Becca Tilley vs. Brooke Burke (it’s a tie), Cheryl Burke vs. Jennifer Lahmers

Page 14: News in Photos -- Hailey Bieber in the sauna 

Page 15: Michael C. Hall in glitter face paint, Kate Upton works out with daughter Genevieve, Olivia Munn with two pups, Christie Brinkley in the fickle weather in the Hamptons 

Page 16: Hilary Duff on Mother’s Day, Anna Kendrick all dressed up for a virtual press conference, Kevin Hart and wife Eniko revealed they are having a daughter in a pic with kids Kenzo and Heaven and Hendrix, Naomi Watts on TikTok with Liev Schreiber and their kids Sasha and Kai 

Page 17: Mindy Kaling doing laundry, Cardi B shows off her Mother’s Day gifts from husband Offset 

Page 18: Reese Witherspoon with son Tennessee climbing a tree, Nicole Kidman studying Italian while stuck at home, Gabrielle Union and daughter Kaavia 

Page 19: Jason Momoa encouraged fans to support local small businesses as he picked up dinner from the Old Place in Cornell, Paris Jackson inked a tattoo on her own pinky toe, Suki Waterhouse showed off her perfectly coiffed locks 

Page 20: Tobey Maguire and girlfriend Tatiana Dieteman take a stroll, Ariel Winter was spotted with a cast on her thumb after slicing the tip off in a cooking accident, Emilia Clarke and dog Ted

Page 21: Ryan Phillippe on a run, Katy Perry and her dog Nugget dress up as Dumbo

Page 22: Brody Jenner on a bike ride, Tallulah Willis and mom Demi Moore on Mother’s Day, Julianne Hough as Mary Poppins 

Page 23: Taylor Swift drinking white wine while isolating at home, Ali Larter on a run 

Page 24: Inside My Home -- the Hadid’s flourishing farm -- where Yolanda Hadid is isolating with kids Bella Hadid, pregnant Gigi Hadid and Anwar Hadid in Hope, Pennsylvania 

Page 26: Kim Kardashian and Kanye West marriage in crisis -- after months in quarantine Kim and Kanye are on the verge of a lockdown throwdown because when it comes to their four kids North and Saint and Chicago and Psalm most of the parenting and homeschooling has fallen on Kim’s shoulders while Kanye has been spending a ton of time at his office rather than at home 

Page 27: Natalie Portman and Benjamin Millepied are planning to renew their vows this winter when December will mark a decade since their engagement, when Cara Delevingne and Ashley Benson called it quits after two years of dating it seemed drama-free but now members of their social circle are being dragged into the pair’s personal problems -- now that they’re not together they’re drawing clear boundaries and demanding their friends like Kaia Gerber and Margaret Qualley take sides using the line it’s her or me, Courteney Cox has been quarantining in L.A. while boyfriend Johnny McDaid has been in England and once they’re able to reunite Courteney is adamant that they tie the knot right away because this has been a lesson learned and she’s kicking herself for not marrying Johnny sooner

Page 28: Joshua Jackson and wife Jodie Turner-Smith are walking on air as they settle into their new roles as parents to a baby girl, just eight months into their romance Jonathan Scott believes he’s found the one in Zooey Deschanel but his friends are urging him to pump the brakes because Zooey is twice-divorced and basically walked out of her second marriage and right into Jonathan’s life plus she also has two children so Jonathan would be taking on an awful lot so soon, Love Bites -- Ben Platt and Noah Galvin new couple, America Ferrera and Ryan Piers Williams welcomed a daughter, Mary-Kate Olsen and Olivier Sarkozy split 

Page 29: On Justin and Hailey Bieber’s Facebook Watch show he stated that he and wife Hailey are in the best place they’ve ever been but he’s the first to admit that becoming a husband forced him to take a hard look at himself, Ben Affleck is sparing no expense when it comes to showering girlfriend Ana de Armas with affection

Page 30: Cover Story -- Jennifer Aniston comes clean -- from the state of her dating life to the truth about her famous exes Jen plans to answer everything in a new tell-all interview 

Page 33: How Jennifer Aniston is helping Matthew Perry get through his recent troubles 

Page 34: Baby Bump Brigade -- Ashlee Simpson, Katy Perry 

Page 35: Gigi Hadid, Katherine Schwarzenegger, Lea Michele 

Page 36: How Julia Roberts saved her marriage -- inside her decision to step away from the spotlight and fix her relationship with Danny Moder 

Page 38: Beverly Hills 90210 secrets and scandals 

Page 40: Candace Cameron Bure Family Matters -- the actress gets candid about her kids, her marriage and her decades long career 

Page 46: Style Week -- Bebe Rexha latest collaboration with the popular drugstore nail polish line Sinful Colors 

Page 48: Style -- beaded bags -- Bailee Madison 

Page 50: Espadrilles -- Selena Gomez 

Page 54: Entertainment 

Page 58: Stars are getting creative with their hair while stuck at home -- Julianne Hough, Pink, Kristen Stewart 

Page 59: Blake Shelton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Tallulah Willis, Lauren Burnham and Arie Luyendyk, Armie Hammer, Dua Lipa 

Page 60: Sound Bites -- Miley Cyrus on interviewing Elizabeth Warren, Ashton Kutcher on Mila Kunis, Laura Dern on trying new things, Anna Kendrick on switching up her exercise routine, John Mellencamp texting daughter Teddi Mellencamp while watching her on RHOBH 

Page 61: Hollywood Heat Meter -- Hilary Duff is set to reprise her Younger character in a spinoff, Lily Allen and David Harbour engaged, Alison Roman apologized to Chrissy Teigen, Hannah Brown should have listened to her gut about Jed Wyatt, Vera Wang shows off her killer abs, the bombshells Vanderpump Rules editor Bri Dellinger just unleashed about the reality show 

Page 62: Horoscope -- Gemini Lenny Kravitz 

Page 64: By the Numbers -- Trevor Noah 

[thefudge]

Oh my god, I saw that you reflagged the Salty Ask List and I LOVE reading your rants and your general thoughts on books / television, so of course I needed to send you some of these. 1,22, 7 and 10. Pick whatever fandom you feel like ranting about haha.

haha thank u my lovely

1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?

- predictably, i find d*lena a piece of nonsense. and the most mind-boggling thing is that the show, not the fandom, sabotaged this ship. julie & caroline dries supposedly support it but they spent the whoooole of season 5 making damon and elena run circles around each other and yell that they’re toxic and hate what they’ve become (there’s a scene where elena ties him up and stabs him and wishes she could hate him #WHY), it was weird. and it wasn’t like fun, messy weird. if you wanted to convince me of their potential why put them thru this? for drama and ratings?? there are ways to keep romantic interest going without self-destruction. but i’d be remiss if i didn’t mention that their dynamic just leaves me cold, mainly because they’re rarely fun, and they only seem to operate on high drama. like all their “firsts”, from kiss to sex to domestic stuff has been in defiance of others, hurting them for no reason. like, it wasn’t my decision to have domestic!d*elena happen while stefan was repeatedly dying in a safe at the bottom of a lake, so i ask these showrunners why do this if you want to make this your main ship. why. oh i know why, they hate women in general and elena should always be punished for wanting to have sex and be with a dude. 

- i don’t get j*aime/c*ersei. i like my incest just fine, but as a book reader on top of show watcher, i find this ship really dour and depressing. they don’t embody the whole “ride and die” dynamic, cuz cersei is mostly out there for herself and maybe one or two of her kids. if jaime isn’t her faithful copy, she rejects him. idk it bums me out. i don’t see it as compelling stuff.

- s*tucky has to be another huge mystery to me. the story, on its own, is interesting, but the way marvel is framing it should please NO ONE.  the movies DO SO LITTLE WITH IT. the fandom survives on crumbs and calls them a king’s feast, basically letting marvel know it’s all cool. the queerbait is so embarrassing, it strips this ship of all potential. 

- j*ohnlock in the bbc sherlock fandom. turned to shizz.

- c*lace is the dullest thing on shadowhunters. i mean u got incest drama and longing looks and aaangst and it still comes out lifeless and prefabricated. this may be the case where the actors dont have chemistry imo. 

-  zilpha/james. i don’t get at this point why ppl are still interested. incest dynamics aside, this ship is dull as hell. i stanned it HARD. but when half of your otp is literal dead weight, wtff?? zilpha was written for shits and giggles. some talented folks are writing AU for it, but honestly, james aint worthy. 

- harley/joker in suicide squad. bleeeeh. and lame. and so, so tame.

- k*laroline. the fucking tamest. 

- h*inny. the boringest harry potter ship, unless it’s mixed in with some conflicted tom riddle feelings in between.

- fanny/edmund from mansfield park. WHY. i don’t mind that they’re cousins, yall know me, BUT THEY ARE LIKE TWO WOODEN BLOCKS CLACKING TOGETHER SADLY. free fanny price. free her. 

- mindy/danny on TMP. THE WORST. he is the fucking worst. i mean i empathize with his upbringing and i get that becoming a better dude is a constant process, but HE DOESNT EVEN WANT TO TRY. FUCK HIM.

- motherfucking chair from gossip girl. they can choke. bring back dair.

- shoshanna/ray from girls. i’m so glad they didn’t resurrect that. 

- i have more but i’m running a blank at the moment. 

7. Is there anything you used to like but can’t stand now?

- i used to like taboo, i used to like sherlock bbc, i used to dig tvd in its heyday.  hmmm i used to like daenerys, until i read the books and the show put the final nail in that coffin. i used to like gabriel garcia marquez until i kinda tried to reread some of his stuff and maaan, that shit doesn’t age that well, actually

10. Most disliked arc? Why?

- that bullshit slave narrative on taboo. bonnie bennett’s arc in seasons 4-5. sansa’s butchered storyline on the show. matter of fact, ALL Got characters’ arcs. that storyline in gilmore girls where rory gets drunk and sleeps on the bathroom floor cuz logan didn’t call her. eeesh. i like that ship now but its beginnings were tumultuous at best. 

22. Popular character you hate?

barry fucking allen. yall heard me. john watson in the bbc version cuz he’s a fucking cunt. that downer girl from sense8, riley something. look i get it man, tragedy. you lost your daughter. but you’re suuuuch a downer. that asshole girl from 13 reasons why. haven’t even watched it and i know i’ll hate her. ha.