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sleepykittypaws · 3 years

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Celebrate the Olympic Spirit

Sure, the Olympics aren’t a holiday, per se, but the every-four-year, or two if you count both Summer and Winter editions separately, massive international sporting events sure seems like a reason to celebrate, especially given their recent, unprecedented delay. And what better way to get into the Games mood, than by watching a sports movie?

Here are my favorite motivating, inspirational, and aspirational tales of athletic derring do…

Favorite Sports Movies

The Cutting Edge (1992) - This figure skating romance was released around the 1992 Olympics, and actually name-checks that year's winter host city, Albertville, more than once. It's not good in the traditional sense of great storytelling or athletic veracity, but I loved it so very much I saw it three times in the theater as a teen. Watching it at some point during every Winter Games is a tradition for me so, yeah, I can’t help it, I love this silly sports movie/romance, which also features a bit of holiday feels.

Wimbledon (2004) - It's a rom-com. It's a sports movie. It's a rom-com sports movie that really should be better known. Notting Hill but set at tennis' best-known event. Paul Bettany and Kristen Dunst have surprisingly great chemistry, and there's more sports-related tension than you'd think.

Friday Night Lights (2004) - A football movie for people who don't really like football. a.k.a. 🙋‍♀️. The TV series it spawned is also brilliant (”Clear Eyes, Full Hearts,” indeed), and well worth a watch, but the original movie, starring Billy Bob Thornton, is, honestly, a masterpiece. Definitely Peter Berg's best work and the original book, written by Berg's cousin, Buzz Bissinger, is a great read.

Muriel's Wedding (1994) - You mean you forgot this Australian export, which made Toni Collette a star, was a sports movie? Yep, one of my all-time favorite movies, of any genre, this absolutely brilliant, ABBA-soaked comedy is not only a girls-night go-to, but also a stealth Olympic sport classic.

Remember the Titans (2000) - OK, football isn't in the Olympics, but it sure does make for a good sports movie setting. Even if this early 1970s-set story is most definitely Disney-fied, Denzel Washington, Will Patton, Ryan Gosling and a baby Hayden Panettiere really sell this sort-of true story.

Invictus (2009)-Rugby isn't an Olympic sport, or even one most Americans know much about, but this Matt Damon-led, Clint Eastwood-directed, based-on-a-true-story tale made me care about a sport I'd only tangentially knew even existed before watching.

Hoosiers (1986)-I grew up in Indiana so, by law, I have to include this basketball classic on any "best of" sports movie lists. Also, it actually is really very good.

Rudy (1993)-Ditto the above. But, again, it's hard not to root for Sean Astin (and Jon Favreau!) in this love letter to the Fighting Irish. Plus, there’s no better scavenger hunt task or TikTok challenge than going into a bar and convincing a patron to allow you to put them on your shoulders and march around chanting, 'Rudy, Rudy, Rudy.'

Miracle (2004) - Given how much more popular the Summer Olympics are, it's weird that the Winter Games seem to get all the good movies made about them, but this Kurt Russell-led true tale is another Disney sports movie classic.

McFarland, USA (2015) - Disney, and Kevin Costner, just really know how to make a sports movie, damn it! This movie made me care about cross country for which it, too, could have carried the title Miracle.

A League of Their Own (1992)-The best baseball movie ever. Yeah, I said what I said. Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Lori Petty—even Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell are making it work. 1992 was a weirdly great year for sports movies.

Moneyball (2011) - A movie about baseball, and math, and yet it's also great, I swear. In addition to all of the above, it's also a stealth Christmas movie and maybe Chris Pratt's best non-Marvel, movie role.

Creed (2015) - This surprisingly effective Rocky reboot starring Michael B Jordan as Apollo Creed's illegitimate son has spawned its own movie series which, in many ways, exceeds the original Rocky franchise.

Rocky Balboa (2006) - Maybe it's because I was a toddler when the original Rocky came out, so only saw the ever-worse sequels as a kid, but this mid-aughts return to the character for Sylvester Stallone, as both writer and actor, is a triumph.

Eddie the Eagle (2016) - That Hugh Jackman features in as many movies (spoiler alert) on this list as Kevin Costner surprised me, too. This story of the English ski jumper who became infamous for being, well, less than golden, is one of those non-Olympic triumph stories that really works. If you're going to watch one underdog-at-the-Games movie, I definitely prefer this this to the more ubiquitous Cool Runnings.

Love & Basketball (2000) - Only because I'm an anglophile is this great, chemistry-filled Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps college basketball romance not my favorite sports-movie-meets-rom-com.

I, Tonya (2017) - Margot Robbie and a nearly unrecognizable Sebastian Stan are perfectly cast in this sarcastic, highly stylized look at the Tonya Harding scandal.

Pride (2007) - Apparently I like this swimming movie, which I think almost no one saw, better than critics, but I found this 1970s-set, Terrence Howard-Bernie Mac-starring story of inner city kids excelling in the pool emotional and entertaining.

Field of Dreams (1989) - This Kevin Costner magical realism baseball classic is often goofy and imminently tease-worthy and yet…It also works. Maybe it's no surprise that someone who loves cheesy Christmas movies as much as I do would have a soft spot for Field of Dreams.

42 (2013) - Chadwick Boseman is absolutely fantastic as legend Jackie Robinson. One of those movies that's ostensibly about baseball, but is really about so much more, except not in a pretentious way.

Race (2016) - Before Jason Sudeikis was Ted Lasso, he was famed track coach Larry Synder in this Jesse Owens biopic that is far from perfect, but still important. Plus, I honestly don't think Stephan James got enough credit for his relatively nuanced portrayal of Owens.

Goon (2011) - This overlooked gem starring Sean William Scott as a semi-pro hockey player whose main skill is his ability to take, and dole out, a beating, is surprisingly great.

Real Steel (2011) - This is a robot-boxing movie starring Hugh Jackman that is basically Rocky meets Over the Top—and yet it's actually really good. Yeah, I was surprised, too.

Forget Paris (1995) - OK, so maybe Billy Crystal playing an NBA referee doesn't really make this a sports movie, but it does begin and end (spoiler alert) at real NBA games, and I will die on the hill that this rom-com co-starring Debra Winger is wildly under-rated.

Bend it like Beckham (2002) - This girl-power sports movie has some highly questionable romantic dynamics (the coach is their love interest???) but this Parminder Nagra-Keira Knightley movie is also a heckuva sports movie and an inspiring immigrant story.

Bonus Pick: The Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso is one of the best things I watched in 2020, and I'm sure of that, because I watched it twice since, just to be sure. Jason Sudekis is absolutely perfect as an American college football coach taking over a UK Premier League team. This sweet show with a heart of gold is smart, funny, and absolutely impossible not to love—even for a cynic such as myself.

More Sports Movies Worth Watching

For someone not very into sports, I am, apparently, into watching movies about sports, so while not a comprehensive listing of the entire, vast genre, here are a few more suggestions I personally think are worth watching.

The Miracle Season (2018) - This movie about high school volleyball champs whose star player dies suddenly stars Helen Hunt and is a lot better than you'd think based on its tiny budget and, honestly, fairly small story. Just missed making my Top 25.

The Way Back (2020) - This Ben Affleck as a drunken high school basketball coach movie is a lot better than expected. Released just as the pandemic kicked into high gear, it was overlooked last year, but worth seeking out.

Fighting with My Family (2019) - Does it count if it's a show, not a sport? Either way (but that's why this isn't in my Top 25), this stealth Christmas movie/love letter to the WWE is a lot better than it ever needed to be thanks to some really great performances from Florence Pugh, Lena Headey and directer Stephen Merchant. Even The Rock reins it in.

Warrior (2011) - You couldn't pay me to watch an actual UFC bout, but this Tom Hardy story of (literally) battling brothers is incredibly compelling and well done.

Win Win (2011) - This movie isn't really enough about wrestling, even though its ostensibly centered around the sport, to make it into my Top 25, but it's still really good, and Amy Ryan gives an outstanding performance.

Fever Pitch (2005) - Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon star in this remake of a UK film whose ending they had to shift when the Red Sox unexpectedly won the World Series.

Fever Pitch (1997) - This Colin Firth-starring, Arsenal-centered original is much smaller, more realistic and arguably better than the big budget Barrymore-Fallon redux.

We are Marshall (2006) - A real-life sports tragedy made into a sports-movie tearjerker starring Matthew McConaughy. And my tears were very much jerked by the end.

Coach Carter (2005) - Samuel L Jackson plays real-life basketball coach Ken Carter and, because it's a Disney movie, doesn't use the F-word even once. Now that's a feat worthy of its own sports movie.

Invincible (2006) - Yes, it's Mark Wahlberg, and another based-on-a-true-story, Disney sports movie that hits all the cliches, but dang it, that works on me. It just does.

Glory Road (2006) - If you're sensing a theme with me and Disney sports movies…Well, you're not wrong. This look at the first all-Black starting lineup at the 1966 NCAA Final Four does, unfortunately, center white coach Don Haskins, played by Josh Lucas (though I always mis-remember it as Josh Charles), making the important story it tells less than what it should be, but it still mostly works.

Million Dollar Arm (2014) - Admittedly one of the lesser Disney sports movie entries, and another that centers a white guy in a film mostly about people of color (not a great look), this Jon Hamm movie about a scout seeking an Indian cricket star who can make it in the Major Leagues still mostly worked for me.

The Mighty Ducks (1992) - One of the few movies on this list aimed directly at kids, this beloved peewee hockey saga actually is cute, and mostly does hold up.

Cool Runnings (1993) - Kind of shocked this movie that is part White Savior-movie and part-wacky kids movie essentially making fun of a real group of athletes of color came out in 1993 and not 1973, but the earnest charm of John Candy and a general Disney gloss keep this from being totally unwatchable and mostly just mildly, rather than extremely, offensive. Not really recommending, but feels like it belongs on an Olympic movie list.

Nadia (1984) - This made-for-TV, mostly true biopic, starring Talia Balsam as Nadia Comaneci, was a Disney Channel staple in that network’s early days.

Munich (2005) - It's a movie with the Olympics very much at its heart—namely the 1972 Israeli athlete hostage tragedy—that isn't really about the Olympics at all, but this Steven Spielberg-directed movie about national revenge is compelling, if problematic if you think about it for too long.

American Anthem (1986) - Is this Mitch Gaylord-Mrs. Wayne Gretzky (a.k.a Janet Jones) starring movie good, realistic and/or well-written? No, no and none of the above. But did I still watch it 8,000 times as a kid on HBO? Yes. Yes, I did.

Men with Brooms (2002) - Once, on a business trip to Canada, my husband was stuck in a hotel that only got three channels, and one of them always seemed to be showing curling, which actually got him weirdly into this obscure sport. This movie wasn't quite as fun as I hoped, but it's still a mostly charming, if slight, Canadian classic.

Unbroken (2014) - The harrowing and incredible real-life story of Louis Zamperini deserved better than this Angelina Jolie-directed movie delivered, but it's still a serviceable version of a worthy tale.

Chariots of Fire (1981) - I remember being bored out of my mind by this movie trying to watch this movie on cable as a kid, but no denying that, if nothing else, the score is iconic and indelibly linked to sports-movie magic.

Without Limits (1998) - Jared Leto’s Prefontaine beat this one to the theaters, but this Billy Crudup-starring film is the better of the two movies about the life of running pioneer Steve Prefontaine. There’s also a 1995 documentary, Fire on the Track: The Steve Prefontaine Story.

Personal Best (1982) - Mariel Hemingway’s story of ambition at odds with love, is a sports and LGTBQ+ classic.

Olympic Dreams (2019) - The story of how this small, meandering movie was made during the 2018 Winter Games is, unfortunately, more interesting than the movie itself, but there is some charm in watching Nick Kroll as an Olympic dentist making his way through the real Village, while interacting with real athletes.

Foxcatcher (2015) - This excellently-acted story is more true crime than sports inspiration, but if you're seeking a look at the dark side of the Games—and don’t want to turn on a doc like Athlete A—this is very dark tale indeed.

Seabiscuit (2003) - Every great athlete deserves to have their story told.

Any Given Sunday (1999) - Oliver Stone and Al Pacino take on pro Football. 'Nuff said.

The Replacements (2000) - I mean, the movie isn't amazing, but Keanu Reeves is super charming and Gene Hackman is always worth a watch.

The Program (1993) - Another bit of a dark-side-of-football take, worth it if only for the fantastic cast: James Caan, Halle Berry, Omar Eps, Joey Lauren Adams.

Everbody’s All-American (1988) - Not a movie I particularly love, but this Dennis Quaid-Jessica Lange football story that spans decades has always stuck in my memory.

Bull Durham (1988) - Just let Kevin Costner play actual baseball already.

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maxbegone · 4 years

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SAPPY ESSAY INCOMING!

With NYCC getting (expectedly and rightfully) canceled this year due to the ongoing pandemic, I wanted to talk a little bit about what it’s meant to me to go over the last three, almost four, years.

In my senior year of high school, early on in that October of 2016, I was in Manhattan for the day checking out a school (which I ultimately turned my nose-up at, having received a cold shoulder and a weird air to it all). My dad and I were walking through Penn, I was on the edge of nerdom loving anything involving video games, DND, and voice acting. At the time I was watching very minimal anime, but I recognized a few characters, if not by name then just by face and costume.

In Penn, while weaving through a crowd, I passed an ordinary-looking teen in khaki green/brown pants, a white Henley, and boots. He was carrying a backpack, and as I said he looked ordinary. However, had it not been for the ring on a rope hanging around his neck, I would have continued to think so.

No, this kid was dressed up as Nathan Drake (circa Drake’s Deception) and I immediately jumped with excitement and smacked my dad’s arm to tell him. My dad, whose nerdom starts and ends with The Peanuts.

We headed to the tour for this school, I felt inadequate, it was...fine at best. Afterward we went down toward Hudson Yards where my uncle was working for the day roughly five or six blocks from Javits. There were waves upon waves of people decked out in cosplay, tees depicting their favorite characters, shows, groups, etcetera. I was, for lack of a better term, in awe.

The following year, my freshman year of college, I attended NYCC for the first time. I only went for a day, two passes gifted from my family, and I took a friend. The Javits Center, if you have never been, is big, cacophonous, and overwhelming. I had already been there’s twice; once for the Cotiê Buying Show earlier that month for one of my classes, and the college fair (more overwhelming than anything else) the year prior.

Now the real reason I was going? To meet Troy Baker.

I remember the adrenaline upon walking in. I was anxious, jittery, everything was exciting and beautiful. The floors were jam-packed with people of all genders, ages, demographics and interests. This was the same year I met @softpedropascal for the first time, and if I can just take a moment to say how genuinely kind Cass is. I recognized her in line to meet Troy and she was just so so sweet.

I chased down a group dressed up as the characters from the comic, Saga, and got a picture with them later on.

Anyway, NYCC 2017 was an incredible experience and one I wouldn’t forget. My friend and roommate at the time still makes fun of me for falling asleep in my jeans, full face of makeup, and my contacts. I woke up at seven the next morning completely disoriented.

2018 was bigger and better. The cast of Critical Role was attending, their first campaign having ended the October or November a year beforehand. Now that was a fantastic year. Not only did I go three days instead of one, I stayed with a friend at a hotel a few blocks away (my lovely @buttercupcumbersnatcher ).

This is also the year I met @kaytikazoo and @allurakimas and a few others when we bolted through the concourse halls to make it to the Talks Machina Live panel (where Travis Willingham was subsequently roasted). Later that same day, at the meet and greets, I met @bisexualpluto who became my unofficial hype man (there’s a joke here that they get, believe me).

We all got to meet most of, if not all of, the CR cast but my favorite moment from that weekend was meeting Brian Foster. I say this constantly, it’s probably exhausting at this point, but Brian is an incredible writer. I walked up to his table, shyly set the book down and he genuinely looked surprised.

We spent a few minutes talking about writing, the ins and outs and graces of doing so, how writing what you know is, through and through, important as well as tough. The note he wrote on the inside cover still makes me a little emotional now two years later, but when I tell you he is kind, you better believe it. I went back the next day to get a photo with him, having been too excited to speak to him to even fathom doing so, and again, just very kind.

And for those of you wondering, yes, Laura Bailey is as magnificent and stunning in person as she is on screen and in gaming.

2019 was another wonderful year, running into old friends and for the first time actively going to panels. I don’t have Disney+, I won’t be getting it, but I got to see the pilot for Marvel’s Heros Project a month before it aired. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room, it was incredible.

Two panels later and out walks Troy Baker, dressed to the nines in his own “John Wick” cosplay (shout out once again to Cass for saving me a seat).

That same day I got an autograph from Lorraine Newman for my dad, a huge SNL fan from the early years. @buttercupcumbersnatcher made me watch Booksmart for the first time over wine, then delved into the best episodes of Bob’s Burgers, and bought overpriced coffee the following morning.

Needless to say, I love NYCC. I love New York especially, I always will, and I’m going to miss this year’s convention. I’m going to miss the friends I’ve made. But I get it. I understand, and they made the only call there is.

I’ll be wearing my mask, nerd-inspired or not, and rooting for it next year or the following.

To anyone I’ve met through this convention, I am so grateful. We’ll all be there again soon.

#nycc #nycc 2020 #reedpop #my post #long post

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atruththatyoudeny · 5 years

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Favourite Fics of 2019

I read 305 fics this year, reaching a word count of around 7.5 million (yes, I’m notorius like that and keep track) - all thanks to the amazing authors who continuously share their work with us. You are the heart and soul of this fandom! A million thanks to all of you who appear in this list and also to everyone I forgot or whose fics I didn’t manage to read yet ♥ Here are 28 fics posted in 2019 that I loved and that stayed with me; in no particular order: ....................................................................

✧ I Think You’re Already Home by jaerie

Seeing Louis Tomlinson today, it would be hard to guess that he was ever once a member of the world’s most famous boyband. These days he doesn’t even the leave his own house. The truth is he can’t leave his own house. He can’t even remember the last time just standing at an open door didn’t send him into a debilitating panic attack. But, against his friend’s advice, Louis is ready to add meaning to his life again. He’s ready to start a family. So what if he doesn’t have an omega? There are plenty of surrogacy services just waiting to help the rich and famous become parents. He just has to find the right one for the job.

✧ An Aurora Grove Christmas by dandelionfairies

Harry gets lost on his way to St. Louis. The roads are horrid because of the snow and he ends up spinning into a ditch. Lucky for him, he finds a cabin nearby, as well as a cute blue-eyed man who immediately helps him. Unfortunately, his car is stuck for the night, but at least he has a place to stay with Louis. With the snow continuing to fall and another storm front coming through, will he ever make it out of Aurora Grove? Does he even want to?

✧ Godless, Graceless, and Young by kiddle

Seattle, Washington, 1991 It takes a special breed to have a slacker persona and still be a millionaire rockstar. Harry is about halfway there. He’s the guitarist in a Seattle grunge band that could finally be headed somewhere, but he’s also been sleeping on his bassist’s sofa for the last three months and has been fired from every day-job he’s had. Money doesn’t equal success, but it does pay the bills. When a job offer and a new lead singer stumble into Harry’s life, he might be getting a lot more than he bargained for. Like a couple of extra gigs and a boy who can teach him more than just how to mix a few drinks, and it’s gonna take a few band brawls and a whole lot of heart-searching to get there. He’s gotta have one somewhere…

✧ So…how’s parenting going? (series) by thealmightyavocado

vol. i: the case of the imaginary friend Harry and Louis’ three-year-old son has an imaginary friend that is making their life a living, breathing hell. vol. ii: the case of the missing wedding guest Three-year-old Rory just doesn’t understand why he wasn’t invited to his parents’ wedding.

✧ Ferricadooza! by suspendrs

Harry can’t even fathom the idea of surrendering; he’d fight ‘til he died, if he had to, anything to keep from surrendering. Or, the year is 1963, homosexuality is illegal in the UK, Louis owns a gay bar, and Harry’s an underground boxing champion with an unfortunate enemy.

✧ The Little Dog Whisperer by lovelarry10

Louis lives alone with his dog Clifford. When he spots a sign in the neighbourhood advertising dog walking services, along come Harry and his son Alfie into his life…

✧ Pretty Please (With Sugar On Top) by angelichl

Harry is a sugar baby omega who cons rich alphas for a living. Louis is a rich alpha with too much self-control.

✧ Ain’t We Proud by yeehawharry

Louis Tomlinson returned to Manchester in 1945 with survivor’s guilt, no job prospects, and a promise to check on the brother of his wartime best friend who didn’t make it home from the front. Things began looking up when he heard a radio advert for the Tribute to the Troops Song Competition and decided to put together a band of fellow vets, combine their talent and experience, and hopefully rocket to stardom. A Bandstand AU.

✧ ‘Sup by MediaWhore

Gemma really wants her little brother to sign up for a dating app and get back in the game after a messy divorce. Harry thinks he’s way too old to swipe. They compromise to devastatingly embarrassing results. Meanwhile, all Louis wants is to finish the play he’s been commissioned to write, but one of the regulars at his local coffee shop keeps distracting him. ft. older larry, pushy gemma, harry being a disaster gay and silver fox louis.

✧ Waiting for the tides to meet by nauticalleeds (metamorphosis)

Soulmate AU. Everyone is born with heterochromia — one eye is their own eye colour, while the other is the colour of their soulmate’s. It’s only when they meet their soulmate for the first time that their own eyes match properly. After a hazy night at a frat party, Louis wakes up to blue eyes and the shocking realization that he had met his soulmate, without any sober recollection. Seven years pass where Louis comes to terms with the fact that he’ll never know who his soulmate is. Then one fated summer, a beautiful green-eyed photographer arrives at Louis’ workplace, with promises of endless laughter and a familiar feeling in Louis’ heart. Featuring a lovely cup of OT5, a road trip down the coast, and a scene where Harry eats a whole head of lettuce. Don’t ask why.

✧ In Your Black Heart (Is Where You’ll Find Me) by graceling_in_a_suit

Louis Tomlinson has been lying for five years. His crew sees him as a pirate, a Captain, and an alpha; only two of those are the truth. He was content to let the illusion go on forever, but an omega named Harry Styles just had to join his crew and get his warm-vanilla stink all over Louis’ best laid plans. Or: the story of The Captain and The Carpenter.

✧ The sanctity of patience by scrunchyharry

When young Lord Harry was chosen by King Louis of Bavaria to become his husband and prince consort, Harry thought all of his dreams had come through. His illusions came crashing down when he understood it meant living in isolation in the alpine castle of Neuschwanstein with a husband who turned out to be far from what he had hoped for. His illusions vanished, Harry will have learn to appreciate what has and even, perhaps, fall in love with his imperfect husband and his castle.

✧ Play Me A Memory by jacaranda_bloom

Louis lives with his nine-year-old son Jake in a peaceful beachside community on the east coast of Australia, working as an entertainment coordinator at the local five-star resort. Harry is a recluse who lives on millionaires row and writes musical scores for blockbuster movies. When the roots of a wayward willow tree create havoc at his home, Harry is forced to stay at the resort while repairs are carried out. Cue matchmaking storms, muffin preferences, laughter, love, and a whole lotta music.

✧ Shine On (You Crazy Diamond) by larrymaybe22

The year is 1974 and Britain’s glam rock scene is in full swing. Enter Louis, a broke and dejected student who finds himself on a tour bus of all places, working as a roadie for the enigmatic “womanizer” Harry Styles. Along the way, Louis discovers the cruelty of fame and that maybe there is more than meets the eye beyond the curls, cocaine, and crazy suits.

✧ Meet Me in Montauk by make_this_feel_like_home

The one where Harry has amnesia, Louis can’t handle the pain and Lacuna Inc provides a unique service: the ability to erase a person from your memories.

✧ Tired Tired Sea by MediaWhore

As a B&B owner on the most remote of all the British Isles, Louis Tomlinson is used to spending the coldest half of the year in complete isolation, with his dog and the sea as sole companions. Until, one day, a mysterious stranger on a quest to rebuild himself rents a room for the winter.

✧ Sisterwives by jaerie

This was it, the moment Louis had been waiting for his entire life. Giddy excitement bubbled up as he held hands and stared up at his soon-to-be alpha and husband and grinned. The ceremony was small and simple, but Louis didn’t mind. Fresh flowers pinned into his hair and a brand new outfit was all he needed to feel special in front of their few witnesses. It was just some members of his family and a few of the church elders in attendance as was customary for any marriage beyond the first wife within the faith. First wives were the ones to have elaborate weddings with the whole community involved. An alpha’s first wedding was a celebration of an their coming of age, his first steps into fulfilling God’s prophecy. There were many glories for an omega that came with being a first wife but also many responsibilities. Louis had never aspired to be a first wife or even a second. He wasn’t experienced enough to be the leader of an alpha’s many wives and children and he didn’t think he’d be up to the task. Louis was just fine in the position he was stepping into as the seventh. Or Louis thinks he’s getting everything he’s ever dreamed of. Harry helps him find what makes him truly happy.

✧ Si Pudiera Volar by messofgorgeouschaos

When Harry’s fiancé leaves him for his cousin, he looks the other way for the sake of his happiness. He’ll do anything to forget about him, including joining a monastery. It isn’t until his cousin’s former lover, a pirate, appears that he realizes everything is not as it appears, and an honest pirate might be the only person worthy of his heart. Or, a fic loosely based on Corazon Salvaje.

✧ Tied to Fate by littlelouishiccups

After his estranged father’s death, Harry inherits a castle in England that has belonged to his family for generations and he knows nothing about. When he breaks up with his boyfriend, Harry decides England is the perfect place for a small vacation. He isn’t prepared to meet Louis Tomlinson, a ghost who once lived in the castle and has haunted it for over five hundred years. He’s even more unprepared to fall in love with him.

✧ His and Mine by glitteredcurls

Harry legally isn’t supposed to meet his soulmate– he’s rendered physically unable to recognize him even if he did– but yet, of course, he does.

✧ Consequences by allwaswell16

Two years ago Harry let his powerful family come between him and the love of his life, something he deeply regrets. Louis has tried to move on from their devastating break up. Sometimes, he even thinks he has. It only takes one moment to freeze them back in time.

✧ And That’s The Tea by 2tiedships2

The one where Louis loses his soulmate before even getting the chance to meet them, and he is in no way prepared for the kind of distraction his new friend Harry proves to be.

✧ Harry Poppins by jacaranda_bloom

When Louis’ best friends pass away he finds himself with an instant family. Maddie and Thomas are wonderful children but take an immediate dislike to every nanny that sets foot inside their house. After nanny number six is summarily dismissed Louis is at his wit’s end, that is until an unusual man arrives on their doorstep. Harry Styles is like nothing any of them have ever encountered before, and perhaps, exactly what they’ve been looking for all along.

✧ That’s What I’m Here For by taggiecb

Louis Tomlinson is a dairy farmer on a tiny farm in eastern Canada. His wife of nearly thirty years has left him and his children are all grown up and out of the house. Louis needs help running his business but has no idea where to even start looking. Luckily for him his children know just the man for the job.

✧ An Unbalanced Force by FullOnLarrie

Harry has the rest of his life planned. Marriage. Career. Kids. Happily ever after. But sometimes plans don’t work out. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

✧ Fondre ton absence by scrunchyharry

Harry had never really given much thought to the future. He preferred to let life steer him forward and to follow in the footsteps of Louis, his best friend from as far as his memory went, his lover, his everything. Louis knew better than he did what was good for him. It changed drastically when Louis was ripped away from him, drafted and sent to the front to fight in a war that Harry had always been sure would never reach him. Too young and too sickly to follow, Harry was left on his own for the first time in his life. When he thought things could not possibly get worse, Louis went missing at the Somme and was declared dead. While everyone buried and mourned him, Harry never moved on. If Louis were dead, he was sure that he would know it. Their lives were too entwined, he would know if half of his heart had died. Determined to find Louis, Harry did everything he could in his quest to be reunited with him, except prepare for the state Louis might be in. He did not prepare for the harsh truth he would have to face: was love possible without memories?

✧ All we can do is keep breathing by thealmightyavocado

A fated story of two broken and battered boys who barely survived the unimaginable and how the love of one little brave girl defies all the odds and somehow puts them back together.

✧ Fool For You by flowercrownfemme & starpoweredradio

In which Harry is a brooding prince who’s scarcely smiled since the death of his mother and Louis is the dashing jester hired to change that.

#fic rec #2019 faves #my reads #larry fics #my fic rec

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o-a-crutchfeild · 5 years

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Of Lions and Eagles

Circus AU for the Caprive Prince Reverse Bang 2019

@capri-bigbang2k19

This fic is based on the lovely @silverdraeconis‘ Cirque du Vere piece!

Available on AO3

When Damen woke, he was locked in a cage with a lion, and his head was killing him.

He was on his feet in less than three seconds, trying to put as much distance between himself and the creature as possible. He took a deep breath, and assessed the situation… the lion was chained to the opposite wall, and didn’t seem all that interested in him. It didn’t have the range of motion to reach him, and even if it could, it probably knew that food was coming soon, and Damen wouldn’t be the easiest meal it could get. For the moment, he wasn’t in acute danger from the lion.

Despite this, he was definitely in acute danger from someone, but for the life of him he couldn’t recall how he’d ended up in this cage. The last thing he remembered was going out for the night, and following Jokaste into a tavern that she swore would make all his worries disappear. He’d chosen a golden drink that he remembered tasted like honey and good rum, and after that… the night was blurred.

Well, his worries certainly had vanished, but they seemed to have been replaced with a whole new set of far more pressing concerns, such as what he was going to do to get out of this cage, who put him here in the first place, and where, geographically, he was.

He wouldn’t have to wonder for long on all three accounts, however, as the door of the cage swung open to reveal an aging man with a broad-shouldered physique and a nearly black beard. The man crossed to stand near the lion, stroking its mane in a manner that did not show any kind of warmth or affection. “What are you worth, do you think?” the man asked, glancing at Damen with a cool judgement in his eyes. “Tall, quite strong obviously, mildly attractive… what price could you fetch?”

Damen did not answer. The man looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place him, and considering that this was clearly his captor, the last thing he wanted was to play into his games. Showing a hand never ended well, especially before you knew the rules of the table or even what your cards meant.

“Of course, your father will most likely pay the most for you,” the old man said with what sounded like it could have been a laugh if it wasn’t so false. “That’s very good news for you. It means that this little encounter shouldn’t change your living situation for all that long, and you’ll get away scot free.”

Damen leaned against the bars of the cage, waiting for the old man to come out and say what he meant. All these implications and provocations were getting tiresome very quickly. He couldn’t understand what the point of it was- who was the villainous monologue even for? Was his kidnapper actually expecting to impress him, hoping for a positive review on his kidnapping skills later? Was it meant to be entertainment?

The old man seemed to be frustrated by his silence, because he growled, yes, outright growled like the animal he had ceased petting, and almost moved closer to Damen, before seeming to think better of getting out of range of his little pet, and scoffing. “Well, and here I thought when they said you were a big dumb lump, they were talking about your intellect. Are you actually incapable of speech?”

“No. I just haven’t heard much worth a response.”

The look on the old man’s face was quite amusing. Damen wasn’t certain what had been expected. This old guy really expected him to be intimidated? Damen couldn’t fathom how, even drunk, this man could have gotten the jump on him, but he was far more interested in how he’d get out of the situation than how he’d gotten into it, and somehow he was pretty sure that any questions about that particular topic would go unanswered.

Unfortunately, Damen had forgotten one crucial thing that really should have made him a bit more nervous, and that one crucial thing was called a lion. He remembered that one crucial lion just as the old man walked towards the place where the chain was affixed to the bars of the cage, with a large silver key. He paused, just before unlocking the beast, to look at Damen, seeming quite self-satisfied. “You’ll find,” the old man said, “that I am impatient, and so is this lovely creature.” He stood up, pocketing the key and meeting Damen’s eyes, a cool threat hanging in them. “Tonight, you and he will go into the arena. You’ll be given a whip, and a costume. Whether you succeed or fail… The audience of the Cirque di Vere has been promised a show, and a show they shall have.”

In an instant, everything clicked, and Damen felt a sinking in his stomach. He knew at once where he’d recognized the man from.

It was Auguste’s uncle.

…

Two years ago, Damen had made a terrible, horrible mistake and decided to take his girl of the week, a petite blonde whose name he couldn’t for the life of him recall, to the circus. It was all well and good that he couldn’t remember her, because halfway through the date she’d gotten quite annoyed with him- specifically, when the silk dancers came out, and one of them, a tall, confident looking man with an infectious smile and what seemed like an infallible charm landed just in front of their seats. Damen had nearly forgotten that he was on a date at all, as he bended to kiss the extended hand. The girl had left, claiming that she felt a bit ill. At the door to the tent, Damen had been handed a slip of paper, inviting him backstage.

It was just going to be a fling, he’d thought, and for a few hours, it was… until they’d both had a few drinks in them, and Damen had ended up with Auguste on top of the trapeze platforms, doing something that trapeze platforms were not meant for. Then, he’d asked to see some of the tricks in private, and Auguste had agreed, if Damen promised to catch him.

He’d missed.

The crunch of bones snapping was sobering to say the least, and it had been a nightmare when they’d tried to sue him. Auguste couldn’t perform anymore- his leg had been shattered, and while his father’s lawyers had avoided any charges going through, and Damen had tried to forget the whole awful incident, it was clear now that he’d escaped nothing.

He sighed heavily, glancing at the lion. Even with a weapon, he wasn’t sure that his was getting out of this alive. He stepped closer to the lion, and heard a voice coming from behind him. “I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

Damen took a deep breath, and turned around. “And why is that?” he asked, looking at the man sitting in the wheelchair with a kind of wariness that he wasn’t used to having around anyone.

“Because if you come at a lion like that it’ll take your hand off,” Auguste said dryly. “Look. I may hate you, but I don’t actually want you to die. I’d rather just get that nice ransom check for the amount that we tried to sue you for in the first place and be done with it. My brother is good with the animals. He’ll be in here to coach you for a bit, make sure you know enough to not get eaten, and in return, you’ll never mention our names again. Deal?”

Damen looked at Auguste, and then at the lion. Well, this wasn’t going to be fun, was it? But it might be a little less horrible if he had some semblance of knowledge of how to not die tonight, so… “Deal. Honestly though, I have to ask, why do I have to fight a lion in the first place?”

“Because my uncle knows that a lot of people really dislike your family and will pay a lot for the chance to witness you being eaten alive.” August offered a quick smile, the kind that made Damen feel like there was a joke he wasn’t in on, most likely at his expense. “Best of luck.”

As he wheeled out, Damen had to wonder just what his family had ever done to make anyone hate him that much.

…

Damen’s first impression of Laurent was- who the fuck lets this kid near lions?

“I was all for letting you get eaten,” he declared, stepping into the cage haughtily and shooting Damen and ice-cold glare. “But Auguste says that if you die, he’ll know I didn’t train you properly and he’ll be quite disappointed, so you’d better listen carefully and do as I say or else.”

Damen’s second impression of Laurent was, oh, that’s why they let that kid near lions.

Laurent stepped up to the lion, holding a whip in his pale, thin hands, before twisting around to meet Damen’s. Damen knew, in that moment, that he was very glad that he was expensive. “Do you know how to crack it?” Laurent asked, raising an eyebrow.

Damen glanced at the whip, considering. “In theory, but I’m better with a sword.”

Laurent rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s convenient. It’d be easier to do this with more space,” he muttered. “Alright, you can’t actually crack the whip inside the cage, obviously, so we’re just going to make sure you have a really solid base in theoreticals.” He moved closer, and demonstrated his grip, his feet solid beneath his shoulders, as he held the whip firmly. “You see how I’m holding it? I want you to copy my pose and grip.”

Damen chuckled. “Kid, I’m pretty sure I know how to hold it.”

Laurent crossed his arms. “Do you want to learn or do you want to get eaten by a lion?”

Damen mirrored Laurent’s earlier pose. “Alright. So how does this keep me from being eaten?”

“He’s trained,” Laurent said, a bit of pride in his voice. “Mostly. He’ll recognize if you can control the whip, and he knows what a lashing feels like. If you can get one or two good hits on his hide, he won’t mess with you much until you put the weapon down… so you just have to not put the weapon down until you’re out of the ring. Think you can manage it?”

“Yeah, seems simple enough.”

“Simple enough while he’s chained up.”

Damen nodded. “So I just… swing it, right? Not much to it?”

Laurent rolled his eyes again. It seemed to be a favorite expression of his. “Not quite,” he said. “At least, not unless you don’t care about getting caught on it. As fun as it would be to see you take a lashing, it’d be inefficient in keeping you alive for you to trip over your own whip.” Laurent stepped back, letting the whip fall behind him, and to the side. “When you bring it up, you don’t want it to hit you.”

Damen nodded. “Can I try?”

Laurent looked up at him, blue eyes tense. “You want me to hand you a weapon, while I’m alone with you in a cage?”

“How else am I supposed to figure out how to use it?” Damen asked.

Laurent scowled, and moved within range of the lion, holding the whip out to Damen. “Fine. If you don’t give it back, I’m unlocking him. You don’t know how to use it properly yet, so don’t get any clever plans.”

“Can’t be too clever if they wouldn’t work,” Damen pointed out.

Laurent nearly smiled. Nearly. Damen was almost entirely sure.

Damen looked down, lying the whip to his right, behind him. “Is that how I should hold it?” he asked. “Is it accurate?”

Laurent nodded. “Looks about right to me. Now, hand it back. We can’t do any cracking in here, like I said, so there’s no reason for you to keep holding onto it.”

Damen passed the weapon back. “So, now what?”

“Do you know how looping works?” Laurent asked.

Damen shrugged. “More or less.”

“Show me.”

Damen swung his arm up smoothly, before bringing it down fast. Laurent stepped back quickly. “Was that correct?” Damen asked.

“Yes. Yes, that was… that was fine,” Laurent nodded. “That should work for a forward crack. Do you want to learn other variations?”

“Think it will help?”

Laurent nodded. “It could.”

“Then yes, of course.”

Laurent moved, placing his left foot forward, and pulling back his arm. “It’s like throwing a ball for the overhand crack,” he explained, demonstrating the movement. He paused for a moment, looking Damen over. “Well, are you going to try it or not? I’d prefer not to be wasting my time here if all you’re going to do is gawk and then-”

“Why doesn’t it bite you?” Damen cut him off. “You or the old man. You’re not holding a weapon, so how come I can’t put mine down once I’ve trained it?”

Laurent looked amused, and shook his head. “I can go near him- not it- because I was there when he was born, and helped raise him from a cub. Lions are very hierarchical, and this one knows I’m part of his pride, so he won’t let any harm come to me. Same goes for the rest of the troupe, with a few exceptions.”

“What exceptions?”

“The ones who beat him, obviously,” Laurent chuckled. “If you hit a dog, it’ll stay loyal. If you hit a cat, it’ll hold a grudge. Alas, this is one cat you’ll have to hit, because you’re not part of his pride, and he’ll eat you if you don’t.”

Damen frowned. “So you’re alright with your pet being whipped?”

“I don’t have a choice in the matter, do I? People pay to see it more than most acts, so it’s not as though my uncle’s going to close that ring’s centerpiece.”

Damen frowned. That didn’t quite seem right… but he wasn’t exactly his business. “Well, what’s his name, anyway?”

Laurent gave Damen an unamused look. “What’s it matter to you? Now, there’s one last lash I’m going to teach you, and then tonight, hopefully for all of us, the ransom will arrive, and you will be gone from our lives forever. Thing you can manage that?”

Damen grinned. “Shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I’m not the one who decided to be here.”

…

That night, Damen was thrown an outfit with more buttons than he could honestly say he knew what to do with, and brought in chains to the tents. His heart was pounding, and he hoped desperately that the theory would be enough in practice. He passed Auguste, and tensed instantly… but the dark blue eyes seemed much less sharp than before, almost playful. Damen wasn’t sure if that was because Auguste was looking forward to seeing him murdered by a lion, or something else entirely, but it was almost comforting to see. He nodded, and Auguste gave him a tiny salute, just as Damen was unchained, and shoved into the ring. The crowd began screaming, clearly ready for the slaughter. There was something special about bloodlust cries that made them quite different from normal excitement, Damen thought. He’d been to plenty of sporting events, but none of them had ever had this kind of dissonance in the air, like the crowd was cheering in a minor chord.

Damen took a deep breath, and stepped into the ring, taking the whip from the wall, and remembering the theory, placed it on the ground to his right, behind him, before swinging it up smoothly, and cracking it down. If the sound of the crack hadn’t alerted him, Damen would have been able to tell he’d gotten it right purely based on the reaction of the crowd around him, which nearly doubled in volume. Damen looked up for the first time, and for a moment, he was sure there had to be some hideous joke being played upon him, because up above was a blond acrobat on the silks, performing that same routine that Damen had watched, years earlier.

For a moment, Damen thought that perhaps the entire incident had been a scam, and Auguste’s legs had never been harmed. Maybe this was his brother’s idea of a great practical joke? Kastor had never really known what was appropriate… but then, Damen saw the face of the acrobat, dancing artfully above him, and recognized his short-tempered teacher from just hours before.

He was just as entranced by the show as he’d been two years ago, which was a problem, considering that the lion had just been released.

Damen brought the whip up quickly, cracking it in the air just as the lion leapt through, and… stopped. Damen took a step back, as the lion stared him down, eyes shining with what seemed like sheer glee. The crowd was dead silent, uncertain what to expect. Two pure exhibits of peak physical form, Damen and the lion, eye to eye, neither one moving an inch. Damen glanced up, and saw that Laurent had paused his routine, perched on the trapeze and looking down on the scene with an intense, calculative gaze. When Damen caught his gaze, Laurent tilted his head, almost accusingly.

Slowly, Damen brought his hand up, and ran it down the lion’s forehead. The lion closed his eyes, and made a low, rumbling noise that, if Damen wasn’t very, very mistaken, was a purr. Damen felt a grin split his face, and he stroked the lion again.

The crowd’s reaction was… less than positive. Damen had been right about the bloodlust- if not a man eaten, the crowd had at least been promised a lion beaten into submission, and a fantastic battle, not some brat whose father most of them hated getting to pet an exotic cat. The booing was louder than even the cheering had been, and Damen found quickly that the real task of the night would be to dodge circus food, flung from disappointed guests’ baskets and laps. He hadn’t known people actually did that kind of thing.

It was at this moment that Laurent decided to land in the ring. For some reason that Damen would be more than a little hard pressed to guess at, the younger man seemed to be interested in taking a more hands-on role in the show.

“I don’t know what you did,” he growled in Damen’s ear, “but this is going to be a show. If you’re not going to fight a lion, you better believe you’ll be riding him.”

“Riding?” Damen demanded, perhaps a bit loudly, because the crowd seemed to suddenly develop a far greater interest in the events that were transpiring in the ring.

“Yes. Riding. You’ve got such an affinity, after all, don’t you? Why not take it a step further?”

Damen hesitated. He’d ridden bareback before, yes, but that was horses, that was entirely different. He reached out, and stroked the lion’s mane again. “Think he’ll let me?”

“I think that if we have a failed show, my uncle will be extremely unhappy. Climb on, and leave some room for me.”

“What?” Damen demanded, but Laurent was already moving across the arena. Damen bit his lip, uncertainly staring down the lion’s back… there was not truly a lot that could be done about it, was there? He took a deep breath, and then, in under three seconds, he’d jumped onto the lion’s back, and was gripping his sides with his legs as tight as he could, holding on for dear life. The crowd was, once more, delighted by this turn of events. They really were quite fickle, Damen thought, glancing at the half eaten cotton candy on the ground before him, that the lion quickly stepped over.

It was then that Damen felt something landing behind him, and heard the crowd’s cheering yet again. It wasn’t cruel cheering this time, however. It was the kind of amazed applause that he’d recalled from the last circus. Damen turned his head to see, behind him, Laurent, standing on one foot on the lion’s rump, his other foot held high over his head, and his back arched beautifully. Damen nearly fell off the lion at the sight. It really was, he had to admit, a fantastic circus, kidnapping aside.

Damen considered for a moment, before tapping the lion in the side, a small nudge meant to say, go faster. It was as though a gunshot had been released. A half hysterical, half delighted laugh ripped unbidden from Damen’s throat as the beast raced around the circle, and he felt himself leaning forward, truly enjoying the ride. If this was what it meant to be kidnapped and tortured, he’d have to try it more often. He laughed, and looked up at the crowd, raising one hand and waving.

It was almost too short a time in the ring before the act was over, and the curtains came down around the ring. Laurent jumped down, scowling and stretching himself out. “You had to make him go faster, didn’t you?” Laurent groaned. “Do you have any idea how difficult it was to hold that pose when he was racing around at fifty miles an hour?”

“I doubt more difficult than what your uncle had planned for me,” Damen retorted. “What happened, anyway? Why didn’t he attack?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. You’re lucky I was there to save the act, though, because if you’d impacted ticket sales, or heaven forbid caused a refund, you’d have definitely ended up on his bad side.”

Damen nodded slowly. “Why did you help me, anyway? Don’t you want me dead? I’d think that you would hope for me to be on his bad side.”

Laurent glanced at Damen, scowling. “I want the ransom money, not your neck. And in any case, Auguste wants you to survive, so… I suppose I do as well.”

Damen shrugged it off. That made a good deal of sense- loyalty and greed were great motivators for many an unlikely ally, and in this… literal freakshow… Damen could use every ally he could get. He glanced at the lion, uncertainly. He’d curled up on the ground, and seemed to have fallen back asleep. Maybe it was a vegetarian lion or something along those lines.

As Damen walked over, the lion opened one eye, and then closed it again. Damen knelt down, and was about to stroke his mane, when the beast let out an unmistakable growl. Clearly, whatever had happened in the ring must have been some kind of insane fluke.

…

Damen was brought back to the cage, with little more than a dirty look from the old man. That night, when he heard the door opening, Damen was half expecting to be shouted at in some ridiculous fashion, but instead, light footsteps came up to the cage, and Laurent slipped in, a plate of food in one hand. He held it out, looking annoyed. “Well? Are you going to eat, or not?”

Damen hesitated, before taking the plate. “Is it poisoned?” he asked. “Since the lion didn’t actually end up killing me?”

Laurent scoffed, looking annoyed as he sat down across from Damen, crossing his arms and legs at once. “Don’t be an idiot. We can’t get money for your safe return if you’re dead.”

Damen raised a brow. Was this kid actually planning to sit with him while he was eating? “Well, maybe it’s just poisoned to make me ill, without any of the lethal effects.”

“Why would we want you to get sick in a cage we have to clean? The lion’s filth is enough without adding yours to it,” Laurent said.

Damen nodded, taking a bite. “So, was that all you came for?” It wasn’t terrible, he had to admit. Some bread, seemed like it was fresh, and a thick beef stew that wasn’t half bad at all. “I mean, I’m glad I won’t have to starve while I’m waiting for the ransom money to come through, so thanks.”

Laurent rolled his eyes. Yep, that was definitely his favorite thing to do in response to just about anything Damen had to say. “Actually,” he said, his tone a bit clipped, “the first half of the money was just wired to a foreign account. We’ll get the other half in cash when we go to swap you tomorrow.”

“That was fast,” Damen grinned. “I was worried I’d be stuck here for months on end.”

Laurent shrugged. “You’re a liability, and I think my uncle’s a bit afraid of you now that he knows he can’t rely on the lion eating you if you get too close to him. I doubt you’ll be seeing him again while you’re here.”

Damen nodded slowly. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked. “Why didn’t you just give me the food and leave?”

“I need to bring the plate back when you’re done with it,” Laurent said promptly, before hesitating, and continuing. “Also… Auguste and I had a conversation. A few, actually. And he said, from what he can remember, that everything that happened was… not something you would have meant to do.”

“Honestly,” Damen said quietly, “I’m sorry for what happened. I don’t think it was alright to kidnap me, or throw me in a ring with a lion, but all things considered… you deserved compensation. At least, Auguste did. I never meant to hurt him.”

Laurent nodded, and for a moment, in the halflight of the cage, Damen could see something almost vulnerable about him. Damen took another bite of the food, before setting it aside, and looking at Laurent, trying to pick out details about him. Laurent looked up, and his eyes were sharp again. “If you’re even thinking about giving a description to the police-”

“How did I end up here?” Damen asked, cutting him off.

Laurent shifted uncomfortably. “A girl,” he said, finally. “I didn’t get her name, but my uncle paid her a lot to deliver you. He’s already made ten times that in profit, and he’s only got half the ransom, but still…” He shrugged. “If I were you, I’d choose who I sleep with a lot more carefully, you seem to have the absolute worst ability to stay out of dangerous, sex-related situations of anyone I’ve ever met.”

Damen wasn’t sure how to deny it, or even if denying it was an option at this point. “Was she blonde? Pale skinned, with blue eyes?”

“You certainly have a type, don’t you?” Laurent smirked. “Yes, she was, though I’m not sure how far that will narrow things down for you.”

For a moment, they were quiet in the cage. It was a comfortable silence. Damen wondered how long it took most people to develop Stockholm Syndrome. It was typically more than one day, right?

“If you ever need someone to ride a lion again…” Damen started, before trailing off, realizing that it was probably not the smartest thing to offer.

Laurent’s head jerked up, his eyes wide with astonishment. “You’re joking. You have to be joking.”

Damen shrugged. Not the smartest thing to offer, maybe, but perhaps one of the more interesting ways to spend a weekend. “You know how to get in touch, considering that you have to have stalked me a fair bit to manage to pull off this kidnapping thing. Just… give me a call next time. No need to hold me for ransom, alright?”

Laurent blinked, and though he carefully composed his expression, Damen was pretty sure he’d succeeded in baffling that particular acrobat. It wasn’t a bad experience, overall… though it seemed that it would be a very expensive one.

…

The next morning, Damen was brought into a van with three strongmen, and the old man at the wheel. He was brought to a forest in the middle of nowhere, and once a backpack filled with cash had been handed off, the van was unlocked, and he was escorted out, and told, along with his parents, that if they didn’t want any more trouble, they’d remain there for the next fifteen minutes. It was a rather awkward fifteen minutes, before Damen was brought into his father’s car, seated next to Kastor, who made jokes about Damen running off to join the circus for the next several minutes until their father, Theomedes, snapped at him that he’d said quite enough.

The next week seemed to be more or less ordinary, though Damen made a point of not asking out Jokaste again. He didn’t have any proof that it had been her who sold him out, but there was definitely something false about her relief when he came home. Damen hadn’t really stopped thinking about the experience eleven days later- who would?- but he had lost any slight expectation of contact from the circus when his phone rang.

It was a blocked number, and Damen answered, expecting a robotic voice to tell him that unfortunately, his social security number had been cancelled, and he needed to register his credit card with said robot to reopen it. Instead, a sharp, tense voice on the other end asked, “Did you mean it as a joke?”

Damen knew at once who it was on the other end, of course. “Well,” he said, leaning back in his bed. “That would depend on what, exactly, you’re referring to.”

“Eagle hasn’t been letting anyone on his back since you,” Laurent snapped. “The audience wants to see the act, and it’s not available, and we’ll pay you to show up and do it.” Then, muttered under his breath, “Stupid cat…”

“Eagle?” Damen asked, half laughing. “Is that his name?”

“Will you be there or not?”

Damen considered for a moment. It would definitely be among his worse ideas to go back into a ring with a lion, among people who had recently kidnapped him, and then try to recreate what had obviously been some kind of fluke that he’d been lucky enough to survive. “Tell me where I’m going.”

#capri rb 2019 #captive prince #capri #captive prince reverse bang 2019 #captive prince reverse bang #capri rb

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dailyskyferreira · 6 years

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Sky Ferreira Returns With an uncompromising vision and the studio hours to back it up, the enigmatic singer is back with a new single—and a promise that her first album in six years will be worth the wait.

So, what’s Sky Ferreira been doing all this time? Well, for the last 35 minutes or so, she’s been in the bathroom.

“I’m so sorry,” she says when she finally emerges, eyes wet, arms full of winter layers. It’s a late-February afternoon at New York City’s Russian Tea Room, the fabled blini-and-caviar haunt of candy-red banquettes and eternal Christmas ornaments where Madonna once worked the coat check. About a half hour ago, the 26-year-old singer turned up for our afternoon-tea reservation only to disappear in an immediate whorl, as if a czarist vortex sucked her into the basement. What she had thought was an asthmatic flare-up, she now explains, was actually a pretty severe anxiety attack. A panicked twinge remains in her expression, like the distant memory of tasting a lemon. In town from Los Angeles for three days, she tells me, “I’ve been anxious to the point that I haven’t slept at all.”

It’s a nerve-wracking moment for Sky, a pop artist, actor, and model who’s lately been keeping a low profile. This is partly because she seems to find the social contract of the PR exchange stressful, but also because she doesn’t want to suck up all the air before she gets a chance to breathe. “You really can get sick of someone’s face,” she says, as only someone who has loaned their own to Jimmy Choo and Calvin Klein could. “I don’t see the point of doing a bunch of photoshoots or press when I don’t have anything out.”

The fact that she hasn’t had anything out might be the biggest stress of all. Signed to Capitol Records at 15, Sky spent years in teen-pop A&R purgatory—groomed as a naughty-girl-next-door type with mall-Shakira hair and prefabricated singles with names like “Haters Anonymous” and “Sex Rules” (“We are animals/No matter what we deny/Our bodies strong, like magnets” are actual words she sang)—only to have her minders decide she wasn’t worth the trouble and shelve her long-promised full-length debut. Rather than give up, she used money she’d earned modeling and finished the album without their help.

Released in October 2013, Night Time, My Time was a rare major-label triumph of craft over product, a purposeful barrage of seething recriminations coated with ’90s-grunge textures and ’80-pop incandescence. It sounded like “My So-Called Life”’s Angela Chase mainlining John Hughes films and channeling her existential anguish into a record—except Night Time was the vision of a 2010s 21-year-old, and the truths were all hers.

The right people loved it. In the spring of 2015, Sky announced her second record’s name was Masochism and promised its first single that summer. The summer came and went, then the fall, and some winter too. On that New Year’s Eve, she addressed the delay obliquely on Instagram (“I refuse to put out something that isn’t honest”) and promised “in 2016 you will hear it.” In 2016, you did not, and now it’s 2019, and, still, no album. At this point, she can’t post online without some commenters popping up to heckle, “where’s the album sky” or “MASOCHISM!!?” or “still waiting,” like they’re hungry people rage-texting Seamless.

These impatient fans aren’t alone in their enthusiasm. “She’s one of those beautiful, rare people who can probably do anything,” says Debbie Harry, who’s had Sky open for Blondie. “If there’s anybody I would ever be jealous of, it would be her.”

Naturally, all of this—the anticipation, the unfulfilled promises, the time lapsed since her last release—is adding to the pressure she puts on herself. She feels like she has to explain. “It wasn’t by choice.” It wasn’t creative paralysis, nor was it a creative hiatus. “I wasn’t just taking time for myself the last five years.” During that time, she landed a half dozen movie roles, but she says she didn’t decide to focus on acting instead. “I never stepped away from music.” She alludes to vague external hindrances: “I’ve been at the mercy of people the last few years”; “gatekeepers”; “the rug pulled out under me”; a “someone at my label” who undid the generous arrangement she had to work with Kanye West musical director Mike Dean; and the very real issue of a young woman telling men what she wants and not settling for less. Then the labyrinthine nature of her production process is, as you’ll see, akin to playing charades blind-folded while riding a dog, and everyone else guesses with kazoos. Plus, she’s a perfectionist. Obsessive. She’ll do 800 takes. She’ll consider every option—and then she’ll consider it again.

But the primary reason it’s taken so long: Sky doesn’t just want her new songs done, she wants them to be good. By good, she means, executed the way she intended, no matter how long she waited to find the right violinist. Properly mixed so they don’t accidentally sound like pop-punk in the car, because “someone puts some shit on my voice” and she forgot to play them in an Uber. (Sky never learned to drive.) Songs that know their place in the broader pop continuum, not what’s hot on streaming. “I’m not looking for ‘a moment,’” she says. “I’m looking for a career—and real careers, you build them.”

She’s deemed two songs good enough to share with me. The first single, “Downhill Lullaby,” is a five-and-a-half-minute, goth-noir, chamber-pop piece—with strings!—that could have easily closed an episode of the revived “Twin Peaks.” (The association may be deliberate: Sky appeared in the show’s 2017 return, deeply admires its director, David Lynch, and the series’ music supervisor, Dean Hurley, produced the song alongside her.) Another forthcoming track, tentatively titled “Don’t Forget,” is a new wave time warp, a lovely bit of nostalgia therapy for people who were never there—even if it is, according to Sky, “about burning down houses.”

By now we’re settled into a booth, one Sky has selected in the empty part of the restaurant, far away from her manager and publicist, who’ve come along to chaperone. Her natural espresso roots have outrun her hair’s blonde highlights, and her dark T-shirt reads “CHICAGO METAL MANIA.” We’ve managed to order tea by asking the waiter to bring what he likes (a nice, orangey, spicy chai) and then momentarily horrify him when Sky asks if, instead of sending the teeny triangular sandwiches with mayonnaise back to the kitchen (she hasn’t touched them, and mayo makes her gag), we can give them to someone who’s homeless. “I’ll get you the ones without mayonnaise,” the waiter says, taking them away.

“I don’t have a back-up plan,” Sky says. “I never have. I don’t have an education. I don’t know how to, like, play music in the [traditional] sense. I’m socially awkward and stuff—I couldn’t really do a lot of other jobs either,” she says. “Literally, there’s no other option for me. So this has to work.”

There are many Sky Ferreiras. There’s Sky the model, a Hedi Slimane muse who’s walked the runway for Marc Jacobs and perfected a glare so haunted the Bates Motel must be jealous. There’s Sky the actor, who played a key supporting role in director Edgar Wright’s big-studio heist flick Baby Driver, but doesn’t have an agent. There’s Sky the live performer, who battles stage fright, but who also opened a 2014 Miley Cyrus arena tour, fell down an elevator shaft on night three, and still took the stage the next day.

There’s also the Sky here at the Russian Tea Room, whose left dimple comes as a surprise because, come to think of it, you’ve rarely seen photos of her smiling. The Sky who shouldn’t eat gluten because of an autoimmune condition, but doesn’t really tell people about it because it sounds like bullshit. The Sky who’s watched enough “Game of Thrones” to see her pets’ personalities reflected in the show’s characters. (For the record, her cat Egg would be a Lannister, while his brother Squirrel would be from the North.)

This Sky speaks in em dashes. It’s less that she loses her train of thought, and more that her thought train is screeching onto a new track. Sometimes you’re right there with her, but other times you’re watching the conversation from a distance like a detached caboose that just kept going straight. “I know I keep going in circles,” she says, “but my mind kind of always does that—spins.”

You don’t interview this Sky as much as steer her, but first you listen. “I’ve always been really shy,” she says, six minutes in. “I was actually mute for years when I was a kid.”

Little Sky Tonia Ferreira hummed along to the radio before she could talk. Raised around Los Angeles, mostly Venice Beach, her young parents split when she was a baby. Her dad tended bar, sometimes with her in tow, and when his roommates got cable, she devoured MTV. “I always hung out with a lot of adults,” she says. “I was, like, one of those kids.”

Being one of those kids meant she didn’t know how to talk to the kids who knew how to talk with each other. She was bullied constantly. She also had trouble with numbers and spelling—she suspects she’s dyslexic, but never got tested—and for a while, was so unhappy, she stopped talking altogether. “I had really long hair, didn’t speak, and had dark circles around my eyes,” she says, describing herself as a child. “I looked kinda feral.”

As the story goes, Sky’s first-grade classmates didn’t know she could talk until she sang “Over the Rainbow” in school. “As long as I can remember, I’ve felt the most like myself when I was singing,” she says. (Roughly 18 years later, she covered the Wizard of Oz ballad at David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption, and the director still raves about her version, telling me, “It was incredible. So beautiful.”)

She lived with her grandmother, who worked as a hairdresser. One time when Sky was around 7, she sang for one of her grandmother’s clients. Impressed, the man suggested she join a gospel choir. The man was Michael Jackson. So she did. Jackson also gave a 9-year-old Sky some grown-up advice that’s shaped her approach to art and music ever since: “He was like, ‘Don’t focus on things that are just around you—you need to look back to the history of music.’ And that’s what I did.”

Yes, Sky went to the Neverland Ranch—“a lot.” She also went to Jackson’s other houses. No, she didn’t witness anything untoward. “It wasn’t just because I was a girl,” she tells me, a few days before the controversial HBO documentary Leaving Neverland aired. “I was around a lot of kids.”

Yes, she’s grown hesitant to talk about her grandmother’s larger-than-life client—for all the reasons you’d expect, along with a few you might not. Like, that it’s difficult for people to wrap their minds around the fact that the King of Pop could be a formative elder acquaintance in the casually anodyne way of, say, a dancing-school teacher or a little-league coach—someone whose small encouragements could be so big. “I was really quiet, but when someone sees something in you...” she says of Jackson, before abandoning the thought. “I had a connection to him, but I’m not, like, his family.”

Sky has also routinely been asked to account for the bad behavior of men in her orbit. A dominant narrative surrounding Night Time, My Time’s 2013 release was her relationship with indie rock band DIIV’s frontman, Zachary Cole Smith—an ex-boyfriend with whom she was arrested that September. He was the driver of the vehicle in which heroin, ecstasy, and a stolen license plate were found (and someone who’s since publicly acknowledged his struggles with addiction). Throughout that album cycle, the arrest became a more delicious red herring than anything Sky had actually done.

“The thing that’s still so fucked up about that: I didn’t have a drug problem, I dated someone who had a drug problem, I was in a car with someone who had a drug problem,” she says. “No one wants to talk about how my charge got dropped.” And the whole Kurt and Courtney star-crossed mythos that dramatized the headlines around the arrest? Spare her. “I was really young; I wasn’t even 21 yet for most of it. That wasn’t my great love story of my life,” she says, adding, “The people that have treated me so much better—they’re the ones who deserve the attention, not that guy.” (Presumably, one of those people is her current partner, Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, frontman of the Danish punk band Iceage.)

Those who have followed Sky’s personal life could easily read “Downhill Lullaby” as an extended metaphor about a tumultuous relationship: “I can see that you want me/Going downhill too/Going downhill into a lullaby.” But she’s adamant about distancing her songwriting from the egos of her ex-boyfriends. “That’s the one rule I made,” she says. “The one thing that I’ve always had is my music. If someone treated me badly, they don’t get to have that. I don’t want to drag the weight of what they did around forever.”

For Sky Ferreira, time is not a flat circle, but rather a sticky mass of saltwater taffy. She tends to run late, but once she’s present and engaged, she can summon an Iron Man endurance. At the Russian Tea Room, two hours of conversation easily floats into six-and-a-half, and eventually we’re the last diners to leave. Somewhere in this elasticity, she talks about her refusal to give up on the work. “I’ve literally been using my life savings to do this record.” She is not motivated by money—to her, time isn’t money, but money is a thing to buy more time.

This springy relationship with time can make Sky seem almost anachronistic. In conversation, her offhanded pop-cultural mentions span director Todd Solondz’s 1995 cult indie Welcome to the Dollhouse, Courtney Love, the 1980 Loretta Lynn biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter, the 2018 iteration of A Star Is Born, and the cheerful ’60s sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show” (which she concedes, “No one my age knows”). Sky’s reference points, like Michael Jackson once advised, exist within a totality, not a blip.

One of her artistic lodestars glows brighter than the others: When Sky was 13, she discovered David Lynch. “He’s the first person who ever saw the world the way I saw it,” she says. “It was the first time anything made sense.” You can see Lynchian dream logic throughout her work. In fact, the staggering, airy title dirge from Night Time, My Time came to her in a dream. “I wrote it in the middle of the night, half-asleep,” she remembers about the album closer, which was built around a line spoken by the doomed girl at the center of the “Twin Peaks” saga. “Then I woke up the next day and I finished it in an hour. I still have the notes; the handwriting’s all fucked up. ” When she finished the song, she knew the album was finally done.

So Sky’s cameo in “Twin Peaks: The Return” had the meta-ness of astral projection. She played Ella, an enigmatic bar patron who talked about a penguin and flaunted a “wicked” armpit rash. “She played that scene so perfectly,” Lynch tells me. “She inhabited that character and made it real from a deep place. When she scratched that rash, you could really feel the itching!”

“Downhill Lullaby” summons the creeping orchestral gloom of “Night Time, My Time.” A sweeping arrangement in five parts, Masochism’s first single begins with a sashay of strings and an interpolation of the unmistakable squee of the Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” followed by a murmuring, angered bass. Sky exhales a numb indictment—“You leave me open/When you hit me”—and amid the layers of kettle-drum thunder and keening violins, there’s seduction and revenge, confusion and queasiness, silkiness and elegance. It sounds like the last thing Daniel Day Lewis’ Reynolds Woodcock hears before the poison takes hold in Phantom Thread.

This habit of visualizing music—Sky does it too. Except for her, it’s the first step of many in the song creation process: “I see it like it’s projected in a movie theater.” “Downhill Lullaby,” in particular, began with a vision of water in darkness. “Lakes kind of terrify me,” she explains, recalling a childhood memory of feeling lost in a Maryland forest that packs a similar unease. “In a lake, by yourself, you look at the bottom and it’s murky and still and you can’t really see anything or feel anything—and if you do, it’s fucking terrifying. It always feels like something will grab you and pull you under.” The eeriness became the foundation for the song.

She likens the ordeal of making “Downhill Lullaby” to Mickey Mouse’s Fantasia turn as the sorcerer’s apprentice. “You know how all the brooms are making a gigantic mess and the water starts rising and rising and rising and rising?” she says. “It was sort of like that: Magical, but at the same time, ‘What is going on?’ And then cleaning it all up.”

Her technique is more like a collagist—one who both scavenges her raw materials and oversees the fabrication—than a traditional songwriter. Conceptually, she works backwards, starting a song with an imagined outline of the final arrangement, isolating each sound element, and then embarking on the oft-laborious task of identifying studio musicians with the time and patience and willingness to conjure each sound individually, so that once she’s gathered all the pieces, she can begin the meticulous process of putting them all back together.

This unorthodox approach to songwriting has led to recurring logistical difficulties for Masochism. Namely, figuring out how to articulate what she hears so that someone who’s not in her brain can actualize it. “Nobody really understood what I was trying to say or wanted to do on paper,” she says. “It was a really long process.”

Sky never learned how to read music and she’s too self-conscious to use instruments that aren’t her voice in front of others. So if there’s an obvious reference point—like a certain note in a ’90s-radio staple she wants imitated—she’ll play that for her collaborator. But when there’s not, she’s often like a conductor asking to summon a mood.

In the case of Danish violinist Nils Gröndahl, who recorded all the strings on “Downhill Lullaby,” she recalls telling him: “‘Play it as if you’re one of the birds in Snow White, singing underwater, while slowly being suffocated by plastic.’” And you know what? In the end result, it’s easy to hear all that.

Additionally, Sky is even more particular about her final mixes. She will only be satisfied after she’s evaluated her song in seven different listening contexts: a car stereo; a smartphone with “regular” headphones; a smartphone with Apple earbuds; a smartphone’s built-in speaker; on a laptop; through “really bad, bad computer speakers—like the ones that came with Dells back in the early 2000s”; and the lush splendor of the studio, which is a personal luxury because, as she notes, “most people aren’t gonna listen that way.”

And she goes through this convoluted course of action for every song. It’s no wonder Masochism has taken so long. Says Sky, “I’ve accepted this is how I work and stopped feeling bad about it.”

Two Fridays after her insomniac New York trip, Sky is on the line, self-confidence restored, completing a high percentage of her sentences. Earlier in the week, she received the “Downhill Lullaby” master, immediately dropped her phone and shattered its screen, so now she’s on speaker. “I was like, I hope this isn’t a metaphor?” At least she’s laughing.

As for Masochism. She tells me she produced most of it herself, wrote with Los Angeles-based dream-pop artist Tamaryn, and worked with Ariel Pink collaborator Jorge Elbrecht. The proper album is coming, Sky swears, almost positively in 2019. Granted, she said the same thing last year—and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that—but this time, she has finally loosened her grip on some songs.

“Downhill Lullaby” may sound like dying Disney birds and “Don’t Forget” may be electro-pop arson, but Sky promises “more poppy” songs on Masochism too, as well as more “abstract,” orchestral stuff. “It’s very big, but also very violent,” she says, half-chuckling. “But not all the songs are super-dark.” Beyond that—the number of songs, tracklist, other credited collaborators—who can say? Sky can’t yet. She has some songs in mind she’d still like to write.

#sky ferreira #2019

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moistwithgender · 5 years

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Monthly Media Roundup (April 2019)

April was a bit of a disaster month for me, and as such I didn’t get much of anything finished. Old wounds got reopened, I was sick all month, I had an unavoidably bad birthday, and a lifelong pet died. I didn’t engage with a lot of things, and mostly slept. I did play a lot of Breath of the Wild, but seeing as I didn’t finish that, I’m not including it yet. Here’s the things I did finish:

Games:

Blaster Master Zero (Switch): I actually first bought and finished this two years ago, and since the sequel has come out I decided to replay it with the Shovel Knight DLC character. While I genuinely like this game (I 100%’d it both times), I was not really in a good spot to enjoy this playthrough, and just kinda mindlessly pushed through it for nine consecutive hours, beating it in that single sitting. Playing as a DLC character removes the story, which is fine since they’re intended for replays, though I wonder if it added to my emotional disconnect. SK doesn’t receive fall damage, and so the precariousness of navigating the world outside of the highly-mobile tank doesn’t exist nearly as much, though the trade-off is that SK’s combat abilities in dungeons are hindered by an overall lack of range. The game is still rather easy, though, so I can’t say any particular level cadences or combat scenarios carved their way into my memory.

To the game’s credit, though, the things that are good about it are still good. If you have an attachment to the original NES game, or an interest in retro properties, or just want a nice, breezy platformer, it’s very good. It’s interesting in how it repurposes the altered plot of the US version of the original game (where it was its most popular), including even the plot of the little novelization that came out because Gotta Get Those Video Game Kids to Read Something. It has a fake out ending, and if you 100% the maps it unlocks a final map that is genuinely surreal enough to be the highlight of the game. Despite my sighing, it is a genuinely good time, and I’m very curious to play the new game, somewhat hilariously titled Blaster Master Zero 2.

Anime:

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: I chewed through the last four episodes of this so that I could say I finally finished the season. I didn’t watch the post-season recap episode. TenSura (the abbreviation of the Japanese title, which I will use to refer to it because satisfyingly abbreviating the english title is impossible) is not a very good show, but for about half the length of the 24-episode first season, it fascinates due to how it functions at all. TenSura is an isekai show, much like the other isekai shows, where a person dissatisfied with their life is brutally murdered (usually by a truck. USUALLY by a truck) and is reborn in a fantasy world that coincidentally gives them an absurd advantage over other people, allowing them to live out all the decadence they felt they deserved in the real world. If this sounds like the most boring kind of wish fulfillment possible to you, that’s because it is. It’s also extremely popular with consumers. Which is interesting! I think the isekai boom is indicative of how late-stage capitalism everyday people the world over, that we envision or escape to worlds where your efforts actually return appropriate reward. A bonkers concept, to be sure.

In TenSura, the formula doesn’t stray much. The main character is a man in his 30s (?) who has never fucked and gets knifed to death while HEROICALLY saving a coworker from a plot-irrelevant stabber dude who was running down the sidewalk with his knife out for no reason besides Main Character Needs an Inciting Incident Now. It’s actually pretty weirdly violent for the start to a show that is almost entirely light-hearted. Dude dies, his coworker dumps his hard drive in the bath out of respect (lol), and he wakes up in a fantasy world that works on videogame logic, including loot, skill trees, and class upgrades. He is reborn as an adorable slime a la Dragon Quest, but the personality traits he had in his previous life (and I guess his choice of dying words) scan to obscenely convenient passive abilities that ensure he’s not only invincible, but will never stop experiencing exponential power growth. Also he immediately makes friends with a final boss-level dragon and then eats him. That’s how he makes friends in this sometimes.

I’m being very cynical here, but the core narrative loop (and it IS a loop) of the series kept my interest for longer than I expected. Rimuru (the name of the reborn protagonist) goes somewhere he hasn’t been, astonishes the nearby (sometimes violent) inhabitants with his overpowered abilities, makes friends with them, and then improves their lives with community. Goblins, direwolves, orcs, demon lords. It stacks and builds upon itself to absurd degrees but it’s interesting that in a genre loaded with very problematic stories of disenchanted dudes finally getting the underage harem they’ve always wanted (aaaaAAAAAAAAA) that the main concept of this series is improving the lives of others and giving them closure for the ways life has hurt them. Even if. Sometimes that hurt was the main character’s doing? Like Rimuru absolutely decapitates a direwolf leader and then adopts the pack who from then on absolutely LOVE the dude. Also one of Rimuru’s abilities is that if he gives a monster a name, it class upgrades, which is generally and reasonably seen as a life improvement. Though, these class upgrades are almost always decidedly “less-tribal” or outright human, which smacks of some imperialist thinking. It’s also something I’m sure I never questioned in old videogames growing up. Meanwhile, there’s also a bit with a woman who came from Japan during that one really bad war, you know the one, and the closure she’s given as she’s dying is handled with actual delicacy. It’s a weird series! It’s only a shame to me that after most of the first season, there was less to talk about. Sometime after the halfway mark, you realize the show is never going to maintain tension for more than half an episode, that all problems are solvable (yes, even terminally ill children), and that the show isn’t going anywhere you can’t predict. It’s a checklist show, and the plot points are a list of achievements being checked off one episode at a time.

I don’t think I would actually recommend the show to most people, despite how popular it is. It’s not a great show, but it does weird enough things for a while that it generates conversations. Which is honestly pretty okay. It’s a pretty okay show. Also, Rimuru is effectively nonbinary (with he pronouns), and that’s… somethin’! (24 episodes, finished 4/17/19, Crunchyroll (Funimation also now has the dub I think? Clips I saw were pretty weird, Rimuru seemed to be characterized differently.))

Manga:

Nejimaki Kagyu Vol 1: You would think a manga that immediately starts with a reference to Phantom Blood would be, well, at least interesting.

Okay maybe invoking a beloved work doesn’t actually mean anything. I just wanted to share this blatant callback. Nejimaki Kagyu is a seinen manga about a highschool teacher whose tragically cursed to, uh, have all teenage girls fall in love with him. And the highschool-age childhood friend of his who has spent her whole life obsessed with him and learning super martial arts to defend his chastity. Her supers make her clothes explode.

…

I take no joy in this travesty.

Anyway, uh. The biggest tragedy here is that the art is actually really good, though the paneling is regularly squished around to hilarious degree. Let’s look at some pages and then forget this manga exists forever.

That horror face is how I feel the entire series should be portraying itself. The manga has a distinct lack of self-awareness.

The fan translation for this series appears to have dropped off halfway through and hasn’t been picked up for years, and based on reviews I saw on MAL talking about the directionlessness of the later volumes, I wonder if the translator got fed up with the series. Oh well!

Kyou no Asuka Show Vol 1: Oh god damn it I just got done with talking about a series about ogling the youth.

BLEASE STOP

Okay so. Kyou no Asuka Show, or “Today’s Asuka Show” is an older slice of life manga by the same author I mentioned previously who is doing an edutainment series about people working in a condom factory. Innocently-minded women in comedically lewdish situations appears to be his whole bag. I think Asuka is pretty charming, but I also know she’s designed to appeal to my monkey male gaze. Obliviously sexy is very much a mood, and in a more adult context I would be all for it. There have been a few chapters where I find myself at odds with the wisdom the author is attempting to impart, sometimes through Asuka’s father, who works as an adult photographer, and doesn’t want his daughter involved in anything that could cause her to be ogled. Like, that’s already something that requires a lot of unpacking in the modern day. Aforementioned wisdom sometimes takes the form of Asuka doing something stupid and innocent and ripe for objectifying, like wearing a school swimsuit in a rainstorm. Or she’ll work a job as a cute girl courier and inadvertently turn a shut-ins life around. Situations where, if it were in real life, I’d think “wow that’s weird and charming,” but by being a work of intentional authorship, it inherently loses some of that innocence, and becomes something well-meaning but problematic. Is that the second time I’ve used the word “problematic” in this post? Is this 2014?

I may continue reading this, but I really can’t recommend it to most people I know in 2019 without several disclaimers and also without probably getting some side eye. I think it’s worth a couple chapters to feel out what its doing before you decide whether you can siphon the charm from it, or would rather move on to something else.

Me enjoying myself when this manga tries to suddenly get up to some shit.

Blue Period Vol 1: This is the last thing on my list, because I don’t want to expand this list beyond the three mediums I’ve already assigned to it. Also, I actually finished this May 1st, but I wanted to talk about it now.

If I had the power to actually get people to engage with a specific work once per month, Blue Period would easily be the one I pick. That doesn’t mean as much when all the other things I finished this month were conflicted experiences, but I really think everyone would benefit from this series. Or at least anyone with even a passing interest in visual arts.

Blue Period (named for Picasso’s Blue Period) is about a highschool delinquent who has a knack for studying, a safe social life, and no interests in pretty much anything. He’s on the road to do fine in his life, and he doesn’t question it much, but that’s it, until he discovers art and realizes it’s the only way he’s ever been able to truly communicate his feelings. It changes everything about him, for more emotionally satisfying reasons, but also riskier ones. He only has one year of highschool to go to decide what he’s doing with his life, and Japan has a very strict education system. You’re not really allowed to just “get around” to things.

Apologies in advance if you’re tired of me spamming full pages but I really do wanna show this off. This is another series with an educational angle to it, though the emphasis is definitely more rooted in a personal narrative of growth. The explanations of art practice and the functionality of exercises and tools are both very informative and relevant to the characters, never feeling like the story is taking a backseat to explain. The characters are, hilariously, everyone I’ve ever met in an art class. There’s the kid who would rather exclusively draw the things they like, there’s the kid who likes art as a hobby but haaaates being given a project, etc etc. There are students who have an innate grasp on how to draw but haven’t internalized the Why of the exercises, and students who are receptive to the lessons but don’t have the ability to match. The narrative is extremely even-handed towards all of these different levels of skills, and places a lot more importance on why, emotionally, you should totally care about drawing apples and water pitchers for five hours at a time. It’s GREAT and I want to force it on every creative I’ve ever known.

Another thing I appreciate about this series so far is that while there has been something resembling sexual/romantic tension, it’s kind of not like that at all? In the first volume I haven’t been able to pinpoint where a potential relationship subplot would go, if at all. Two possibilities are this girl:

...who is a very likable character but surprisingly doesn’t fit into that box of “standard love interest”. The protag’s interactions with her have been exclusively respectful and admiring, which doesn’t even necessarily imply a romantic subplot, but would be pretty cool if it did? And the other girl:

...who is featured in decidedly more sexual tension-y contexts, is actually TRANS. The manga actually portrays them so uncompromisingly feminine that I didn’t realize they were crossdressing (the term used in the text) until the author’s notes at the end of the volume. I will partially blame this on me being out of it this month, since I just went back to their introduction and yep, they got misgendered and contested it. Given how the character is regularly framed (confident, attractive, skilled, nonstereotypical), I’m… pretty okay with this! If a romance blooms between a delinquent boy and a trans girl, that’s amazing.

I hope y’all understand where I’m coming from in expecting a shoehorned romantic subplot. I’m not hoping for one, I just know the product by now. And if it happens, the options are considerably more interesting than usual.

These are pretty good kids.

Manga licensing is a lot better nowadays than it ever was before, with lots of obscure series being picked up, old series getting re-localized, and translations being better than ever. I really really want this series to get licensed so someone can be compensated for it, and so more people might read it. Until then, I think you should look up the fan work.

---

So that’s all for April. If these posts included live-action movies, I’d have talked about Endgame, but I also don’t want to go spoiling anything for someone who still wants to go see that (it’s probably one of my favorite MCU movies, though). I read most of 1970-71 in Marvel comics, or at least most of the issues on my reading list, but I semi-liveblog about those, so you can just search my “curry reads comics” tag for that. Here’s hoping I have more interesting, more positive things to say about May in a month. I expect to finish Breath of the Wild by then, so I’ll finally talk about that. Thanks for reading, if you made it this far! Go check out Blue Period.

#curry reads manga #curry watches anime #curry plays games

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sole-cuore-amore-e-droga · 5 years

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Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Montenegro to Eurovision with 6 young souls

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(this is a pre-vamp review so take this whole thing as “something I wanted to publish but my schedule was withholding until it was specifically time for them to be reviewed”, therefore, this is a bit of a retrospective review. Will tackle on its revamp later!)

Montevizija, which finally has an official Twitter account (we all should forget the times some dude named Vasilije pretended to having made one), offered us another batch of 5 songs for another year, actually revealing all of them beforehand this time and not just the snippets! Joy to the world I guess.

You gotta love Montevizija for it being the most underrated ex-Yugoslavian national final btw. Granted, it only lasted for 2 editions as of now, and it will take years to grow bigger as a thing, but so far, for us the NFs that are ingrained to our brains more are Dora, EMA and Beovizija (and even Skopje Fest when THAT was used to pick an act and not just served as a festival like it originally was meant to be), therefore Montevizija seems more shunned. But what do you expect when the lineup of 5 for two years in a row is not exactly as stellar as hoped for? Well, there are gems here and there, but they haven’t really won on either years (or at least not on the 2nd year if you call Vanja’s song a gem too), and yet somehow they find someone who call them great. But for me this Montenegrin entry is not. :L

And who is up there to be colossally blamed for its existence? None other than this group of 6 refering to themselves as D mol (with “mol” decapitalized for whatever reason... they used to have hyphen separating the ‘D’ and ‘mol’, but now they scrapped it altogether, an anime death I’ll never forget). Worth noting that I, as a 19 year old, have this particularly ugly feeling I must get rid of, and that’s the one of “feeling old”, already at my age. And this is how I felt seeing that the band whose song I am not fond of today is made up by members that are of 16-17 to 21-ish years old!!! So my heart insists that I shouldn’t go too hard on these poor younglings, even if this is just me, currently tackling the brethren of my age. Prepare as I’ll go to shred their composition they’re going to Tel Aviv with, “Heaven”, to bits.

Although, what I call “shredding to bits” is merely just nitpicking the reasons the original version (keep bearing in mind that I haven’t heard the revamp yet) sucks imo, and idk, the new “Heaven” miiiiiiight just grow on me, but I heavily doubt about it because I never cared for it in the first place (youhouuu, they were my last in Montevizija ‘19 for a reason), and I’m rather looking forward for the new faves from the 8 songs I haven’t listened to yet rather than those that were already chosen. And even the Eurofans were not quite fond on the revamp, as some think the additional ethno sounds made it sound worse (and of course there are some that kinda like it or think of the song as their guilty pleasure). So why shouldn’t I? :O

Anyway, old “Heaven”. The first sounds on here to grace my ears on this song consist of one light piano note being tapped to an exact rhythm and a confused baby girl stuttering. And I’d’ve maybe enjoyed this more ironically at some point if it weren’t for the latter sound effect being re(ab)used later in the song!! Ugh I hate it. The lyrics are fine I guess... though isn’t it ironic the only English song in Montevizija’s lineup this year won?? It’s like the Montenegrin people were openly cringing when being the only ones to understand Vanja comparing his life to cat’s and mouse’s and calling his heart “the most expensive toy” in his song and then they were like “you know what? Let’s let the WHOLE Europe understand how terrible our lyrics are! ^_^” (no but for real, who still uses “I’m in heaven, falling straight into your heart” as a pick-up line? Did they travel through time from 1998 to 2019 or something???)

Speaking of the 90s, the whole song smells like a dated cliché of that period. You know, the kind of “the high school prom song from that 90s teen sitcom’s who you’re forced to watch when your elderly aunt is in the house with you and there’s nothing else on TV” dated. Dated even more than “Chain of Lights”. Seriously though! It includes the pathetic “wah wah” bassline, mid-tempo beats, the boy/girl-group harmonies... catch me puking sugar-coated cheese to this, no thanks. Oh and if you already read my “Zero Gravity” review (which you probably never even bothered to after seeing how much text would you have to read), I definitely mentioned that I’m not a fan of those “two verses-two choruses” songs, and especially those kind of ones that aren’t sounding like something suited for radio (e.g.: Poland 2018, “Light Me Up”)... this obviously sounds like something from the radio of the times the at-the-time senior highschoolers are currently over 30 or slightly over 40, and that should be 4 and a half minutes long. These verses could just not be more ridiculously dragged out for the choruses to prevail and get stuck in our brains... fucking welp [sic] me already.

Well, if there are any brownie points I could give this, it’s pleasant, it’s harmless if I don’t take into account the cheese vibes this emits, and all this bunch are made up by up-and-coming talented singers that clearly deserved a better song...

And the staging concept in their NF was cool tho (illustrating their power of D mol), and I applaud the couple chemistry I guess

Oh and this below is one of the most underappreciated memes this Euroseason:

*stares into your soul in Montenegrin*

So yeah. Oh and the Rizo(tto) guy who is self-aware of his hotness and the hotness of the much older Eurovision guys this year, but he’s not doing it for me so that I could be in heaven falling, so he’s getting a hard pass.

All in all - a nostalgia cash-in made to appease the housewives from Podgorica to Skopje, from Novi Sad to Štúrovo, and nothing quite else, sung by a cool bunch of people that if anything are deemed this year’s "great people with an unfortunately too dated song and a shitty draw” by me. I don’t know much of their personalities but I do believe that even if they like what they’re singing, they’d be much better off doing a better sounding throwback, at least. So that even the disappointed-by-”Heaven” Eurofans could at least call it “so dated but a BOP!”. And hey, I’m aware of those fans that will likely be pissed at me for not bopping along to this, but I said what I said about it and yet again, if revamp changes my mind, I will change my opinion, but right now I’d not prefer to. Grumpy Adio.

Approval factor: Hell with the no. I would like Vanja back instead. At least he made himself a somebody to be cared about even if the Eurofans didn’t quite adapt to his song in return.

Follow-up factor: somehow, both “Inje” and “Heaven” were/are seen by the masses as instant NQs, so it somehow doesn’t sound like Montenegro is following a great path so far. And after this year anything that audience favours and wins can be seen as a way better follow up after something meh coming after something wrose.

Qualification factor: For the n-th time, I’m yet to check the revamp out to state where this will actually go, but being put 2nd in the draw is a massive stab in the knee, as demonstrated by even the national finals this year (Electric Fields in Australia Decides, Aly Ryan in Unser Lied für Israel, Lisa Ajax in Melodifestivalen final... the only glaring exception is ZENA in Eurofest but is it me or these producers did this just so they could be all like “heeeey we put a winning song on 2nd just to show that a NF song can win from ANY draw! ANY DRAW!!!” lol nope), and from it only a few lucky souls have crawled out victorious (Nathan Trent for example, the draw might have pushed him down in the semi but he got up again!). D mol, for as young and developing in talent as they are, don’t seem to be such. You can be young and pitied for your personality, but you always can at the same time have a song that completely crushes your chances to do well and sweeps up the last shards of hope right in front of your eyes despite being an angel worthy of protection (Ari Ólafsson, anyone?). Unless the D molians work all their magic and the random ethnic vibes into their favour for some reason, but for now it ain’t gonna work.

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

And even then, what was so interesting about Montevizija 2019?? Let’s see...

• First off, let’s address one meme of the beginning of 2019 that Facebook may or may have not used purposefully to upgrade their automatic “facial recognition” skills - the 10 years challenge. Our first one of this season is the sassy maneater who spent her ESC stint by trying to unlove a guy so hard that he just couldn’t oblige - Andrea Demirović. Her decade-later A-game happened to be this one song she sang in her mother-tongue: “Ja sam ti san” (I am your dream). Now, I wasn’t particularly into it - I enjoy some electro tracks out there (like hello, “Igranka” is one of my favourite Montenegrin entries, and 2013 entries overall as well) but this one just ended up being the right amount of cool AND overbearingly unsettling for me to not really fancy it. Kinda like “Red” by HyunA - I can only bop to this if I don’t care about the fact I actually hate it, oops. (Or maybe it is just because Andrea once again used a composition done by one of those “rent-a-NF-songwriter” people. Which is at least better than collabing Ralph Siegel who’s stopped being relevant ever since starting to work with San Marino, or even since the hilarious attempt of a peace song sung by the original common framework, six4One. But since Michael James Down has co-contributed to one of the better Montevizija songs last year, I will not allow myself to think it’s thanks to those kind of songwriters.) Nevertheless, the Eurofans actualy kind of loved this song, but sadly, Montenegrins and the international jury did quite not, and she didn’t land on to the superfinal 2 (as opposed to a superfinal 3 last year, to which she could have easily qualified if it still were a 3). Here’s her song to y’all anyways (and the performance too, which just needed to include some random monster dudes dancing around... why? Because Eurovision! ^^):

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• Speaking of Andrea, during the results part there was this one shot of hers where she was pictured just casually chilling on her phone, not giving a damn that she’s being underrated on the scoreboard. Not only she was badly rated, but this moment was such an universal #mood!

• In between the finally final results announcement (which I didn’t really know when exactly was it taking place because the winner wasn’t really said out loud before the event I will describe next was taking place??) there was this lottery going on of who would be the lucky two audience observers that’d win tickets to Tel Aviv... hilariously enough though, it somehow malfunctioned and there were some sort of errors regarding the announcement of the RIGHT winner <3 but the winners happened and I hope they’re getting to go to Tel Aviv at some point during the Eurovision events! Hope they don’t feel startled by the lack of taken seats this year.

• Unlike Eesti Laul, Montevizija this year took up the job of showcasing tweets of Eurofans, and somehow this fellow fella ended up seen by a handful of Montenegrins AND international viewers. Take a wild guess which of them know what a daddy Serhat is.

• And who could not forget the magic flying envelope for to announce the winner of the NF:

there must have been some Harry Potter magic in there :O

As for what touches the other songs, well there’s the last year’s fan fave Nina Petković with another song, but it’s no “Dišem”, so don’t even bother. Or bother, but imo it’s just okay-sounding, nothing that groundbreaking or pleasant enough to be competitive. The other few songs were also nice but I’d like not to make this longer as my other write-ups, to be fair. Sucked to be Mr. Kállay-Saunders who, as the international juror chosen for this national final, had to rank its songs... as that NF happened right on the same day his second A Dal 2019 performance was taking off. Not that the international jurors were supposed to be present in Montenegro on the day of this NF, anyways...

Anyway, despite all this goddamn criticism (that could’ve flown more smooth had my computer not restarted in the middle of me doing paragraphs for this review), I’m fare welling the D mol-ians and would like to wish them a heavenly Eurovision experience. ^_^

#eurovision 2019 #tel aviv 2019 reviews #montenegro 2019 #d mol #heaven #montenegro

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woodworkingpastor · 3 years

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Covid-19 and our faith in ourselves: a question of mental health -- Psalm 88 -- Sunday, September 26, 2021

A gymnast’s courage

At the 2019 U.S. Gymnastics Championships, Simone Biles accomplished something that no one else in the history of the universe has ever done: the “triple-double.” She sprinted across the mat, leaped into the air backwards to do two back flips while twisting three times before landing safely. It is a thing to behold—I suspect most of us would have to watch the video multiple times in slow motion to figure out how many flips and twists are there.

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You probably remember that her experience at this year’s Summer Olympics was difficult. After an early vault attempt went awry, Biles withdrew from nearly every other event because of something called the twisties: a condition where your brain and your body get disconnected, and skills that should be deeply stored in muscle memory suddenly become unfamiliar. During the vault in question, she said, “I lost track of where I was in the air.”

When asked why she thought the twisties emerged, Biles mentioned that there were some triggers: the extra year of intense training due to the one-year delay in the Olympic games; and the pressure of being the public face of the US Olympic team—including the expectations that came along with that. With her recent testimony before Congress about the sexual abuse she experienced by women’s gymnastics team trainer Larry Nassar, one has to think that was part of her struggles as well. As super-human as Simone Biles seems to be, it can be easy to forget that at the end of the day, she is simply a human being who is not immune to the difficulties and pressures of life.

One of the saddest commentaries on her experience came from those who criticized her for withdrawing from her events. No one would have criticized her if she would have landed awkwardly during an event and twisted an ankle. Because her injury wasn’t visible, some missed the courage of the choice she made.

Covid-19, one more time

This is the second of two sermons prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic. We’ve spent focused a lot of energy over the last 18 months on social distancing, because we want to “keep people safe.” But social distancing has created some problems as well. Isolation from other people and the absence of meaningful routines and rituals has presented real challenges for people’s mental health. For people who live alone, for people who live in urban apartment buildings without easy access to nature, to people with existing mental health diagnoses, to people with dementia and their caregivers, social distancing has added a difficult layer to already difficult times.

It has also been a difficult season for those who are carrying extra responsibilities in their jobs: teachers and medical professionals, to name two. Covid-19 and our response to it has added stress to our lives in many different ways.

Mental illness: the “non-casserole disease”

All of this leads me to talk this morning about mental health. Let me be very up front with one thing: I am not trained as a counselor or therapist, so I want to be careful to not speak beyond my knowledge. Within that, pastors are often the first person someone comes to when they’re struggling with something, and I am happy to meet with people and talk and pray about what they are facing. But it also important to emphasize the necessity of mental health treatment, to refer people to trained counselors and doctors who can provide that treatment.

As Simone Biles’ experience revealed, we often treat mental illness differently from physical illness. Some call mental illness the “non-casserole disease.” If someone has surgery, or experiences the death of a loved one, then we respond in particular ways. But how do we respond to someone living with long-term mental health diagnoses? How long after the death of the loved one do we keep taking the casserole, or sending the sympathy card, or checking in? And what if the mental health diagnosis doesn’t have such an obvious cause? What then?

Mental health is a common issue in our society. According to the World Health Organization, it is estimated that just under 4% of persons experience depression (about 5 in our congregation at any given time). That’s just one mental health diagnosis. We could also talk about bipolar disorder or schizophrenia and other psychoses. We might include the challenges presented by dementia—both to the individual and to the one caring for them. There are those who self-medicate with alcohol or other drugs. How many times do we write such persons off as “addicts” without understanding the suffering they experience?

Beyond that, there are plenty of reputable sources that chronicle mental health occurrences and give estimates of how prevalent they are.

As I noted, Simone Biles’ struggles with the twisties was more complicated than just a mental health issue because her story also includes the trauma of sexual abuse. None of us know how the various factors she named work together in her—she might not even know. We do know that the impact of traumatic experiences stick with us. Many of us have had very difficult things happen to us. When we are surrounded by people who love and care for and nurture us, then we can often function well—humans are resilient creatures. But when the trauma is inflicted by someone who was supposed to be taking care of us, it can become impossible to integrate that into our experience. Our minds and our bodies retain that experience, and it can become a source of struggle throughout our lives.

Adding insult to injury are the unhelpful ways we respond to persons dealing with mental illness. This includes the way people accused Simone Biles of cowardice instead of recognizing her courage; it might also look like someone saying the answer to your mental health struggle is that you “just need to pray more” or “there must be some hidden sin in your life that is causing these things.” Would we tell that to someone who had fallen and broken their wrist? Of course not. These responses reveal people taking mental illness less seriously than physical illness.

The blessing of a difficult Psalm

The Bible takes struggles like these very seriously. I am continually reminded of the importance of maintaining a regular connection with the Psalms, because when we move past our two or three favorite Psalms and consider the messages and experiences presented in all 150, we discover a Biblical vocabulary for prayer to meet all of life’s circumstances. Psalm 88 recognizes the deep struggles that come to someone who feels that their troubles have left them beyond any source of help in this life and the next.

There is no explicit indication that Psalm 88 describes mental illness—some commentators ponder a connection to Alzheimer’s disease; others wonder if these are the experiences of an abused woman. The cause of the suffering isn’t the issue; what matters is that someone is struggling with an extremely difficult situation and are met with silence from both God and everyone else. But even feeling abandoned by God has not made prayer impossible.

The presence of this Psalm in the Bible is permission to lament and protest. It is OK to bring these things to God in prayer; we need not suffer in silence.

And what a lament it is! The most anguished parts of the Psalm are found in verses 5 and 12. In verse 5, the Psalmist says they feel like those “forsaken among the dead,” of having lost the blessing of living a long life and being properly buried, instead having their body discarded along the road or unceremoniously dumped into a mass-grave to be forever nameless and forgotten.

In verse 12, these feelings of being cut off emerge again, wondering if God’s power is available to those who live “in the land of forgetfulness.” What a lonely sounding place.

The writer of this Psalm is deep in the despair of abandonment: there seems to be no help, there is no one cares, and God is silent. The Psalmist cries out to God, but God doesn’t answer. It might be that the Psalm’s most powerful moment is found in its unresolved ending: the Psalm ends abruptly in verse 18, leaving us wondering—like so many do—if the prayer made it to God’s ears, or if it simply bounced off the ceiling. Were the last verses of this Psalm lost? Or was it intentionally ended here to further communicate the cut-off feeling expressed by the one offering the prayer?

How do we pray when there is no resolution? Life’s issues aren’t normally resolved when we get to the end of the worship service, or devotional reading, or conversation, or even a session with a counselor. The struggle goes on. What this Psalm offers to us is that the recognition that suffering is part of our human experience and talking about it is sanctioned by God in the vocabular of prayer.

Our response: sitting in the silence

One response from the church is to not forget those who struggle in seeming silence and to be a companion for those whose experience seems shrouded in darkness. We can reach out and be present to those suffering in “the land of forgetfulness.”

Someone has written a helpful piece about the importance of supporting others in their mental health struggles, setting it in the world of Winnie the Pooh. Perhaps you’ve read it before:

It occurred to Pooh and Piglet that they hadn’t heard from Eeyore for several days, so they put on their hats and coats and trotted across the Hundred Acre Wood to Eeyore’s stick house. Inside the house was Eeyore.

“Hello Eeyore,” said Pooh.

“Hello Pooh. Hello Piglet,” said Eeyore, in a glum sounding voice.

“We just thought we’d check in on you,” said Piglet, “because we hadn’t heard from you, and so we wanted to know if you were okay.”

Eeyore was silent for a moment. “Am I okay?” he asked, eventually. “Well, I don’t know, to be honest. Are any of us really okay? That’s what I ask myself. All I can tell you, Pooh and Piglet, is that right now I feel really rather sad, and alone, and not much fun to be around at all. Which is why I haven’t bothered you. Because you wouldn’t want to waste your time hanging out with someone who is sad, and alone, and not much fun to be around at all, would you now.”

Pooh looked at Piglet, and Piglet looked at Pooh, and they both sat down, one on either side of Eeyore in his stick house.

Eeyore looked at them in surprise. “What are you doing?”

“We’re sitting here with you,” said Pooh, “because we are your friends. And true friends are there for you, even if you’re feeling sad, or alone, or not much fun to be around at all. And so here we are.”

“Oh,” said Eeyore. “Oh.” And the three of them sat there in silence, and while Pooh and Piglet said nothing at all; somehow, almost imperceptibly, Eeyore started to feel a very tiny little bit better.

Because Pooh and Piglet were there.

No more; no less.

#Youtube

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britesparc · 3 years

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Weekend Top Ten #495

Top Ten Non-MCU Post-Credit Scenes

Oh look, two MCU-related posts in a row! Delightful. Well, kinda. Because this week is a fake-out; it’s not really about the MCU! In fact, it’s almost anti-MCU! How wicked! Because ever since its inception, one of the quirks of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – something it’s become famous for, in fact – is its use of a post-credit scene. From the moment Nick Fury stepped out of the shadows to mention the “Avenger Initiative” after all the names had scrolled on by in Iron Man, the ongoing films were almost defined by their last-second teases and delights. You can tell, in the cinema, the fans and non-fans, as they get up and clear off, leaving the True Believers in their seats, wondering how these people could possibly vacate the theatre without really seeing the ending. In fact, as the franchise has gone on, the number of people staying put has – in my own rough reckoning – increased considerably, to now be about fifty percent of the audience. And why not? You’re really not getting the full picture! As these entangled narratives have unfurled before us, we like the connective tissue of the end-credit tease; the reveals of new characters or locations, the subtle hints at what’s to come. Loki has possessed Selvig! The Collector has the Aether! The ant’s playing the drums!

“To challenge them would be to court Death!”

Anyway, MCU films have post-credit scenes. But of course they’re not the only ones. Having a scene after the credits – or, sometimes, during the credits – is fairly common in the history of cinema. I think it’s become a lot more common this century, partly because of Marvel popularising it as a storytelling device or method of connecting disparate films in a franchise, but also (I believe) because CG animated films have often used it as a comedy trick. I’m not sure why or where this really began in earnest, but I think the old Pixar “out takes” was partly to blame, as was the whole “Shrek Dance Party” phenomenon. Anyway, as you will see, there are a few here that fit that bill.

Because that’s what this whole list is! It’s films that have great post-credit scenes, but aren’t Marvel! Or, at least, aren’t officially part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Some of them are classics of the form, thirty or forty years old; some are newer and fall into the categories I’ve mentioned above. Some follow a similar pattern to most MCU end-scenes – comedy skit or tease an upcoming movie, but stuck at the end of the credits – whereas some interfere with the credits throughout. I’ve been wary of scenes which aren’t really post-credit, but if we all the “mid-credit” scene in the MCU – or the multiple scenes from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – then we can allow some of the ones below.

So there we are! Nowt more to it. Let’s roll the credits...

Airplane! (1980): early in the film, our hero Ted Striker (Robert Hays) leaves his cab just as a fare gets in the back. Telling said fare to wait, Striker dashes after his girlfriend Elaine (Julie Hagarty), ends up on her plane, and, well, the rest of the delightfully silly and surreal plot unfolds. The film ends, the credits roll, and then we cut back to the abandoned cab, where the poor unfortubate fare is still sat in the back seat. “I’ll give him five more minutes,” he says, looking at his watch, “And that’s it.” I mean, it’s just sublime.

Deadpool (2016)/Deadpool 2 (2018): where to start? Whether it’s the first film’s Ferris Bueller-aping dressing gown skit (delightfully informing us that Cable will be in the next film) or the sequel’s multiple time-hopping gags – including undoing the film’s unfortunate fridging of Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) and killing Ryan Reynolds (“you’re welcome, Canada”) – this series really knows how to keep you engaged until the very last second. Can’t wait to see what he does when he’s part of the MCU.

Young Sherlock Holmes (1985): it’s funny, but looking back, I can probably trace any interest I have in Sherlock Holmes to this film and Basil the Great Mouse Detective. Anyway, this is a seminal film by any yardstick, featuring as it does one of (if not the) first example of a CGI character interacting in a real environment. But the end credit sting! The film’s Big Bad (Anthony Higgins), having somehow survived, checks himself into a hotel under the name of – you guessed it – Moriarty. This was, arguably, the first example of an end-credit scene teasing a future film! Setting up the Young Sherlock Holmes Extended Universe! Sadly it was a bit of a flop and they didn’t make any more.

Masters of the Universe (1987): Young Sherlock may have been interesting, but I’ll be honest, other people had to tell me who Moriarty was for me to understand the significance. The ending of Masters, however… well, it’s not quite as nuanced or revelatory, but the seemingly-dead Skeletor (Frank Langella) popping his head back up to yell at the camera “I’ll be back!” was a fantastic and exciting shock. We were guaranteed more He-Man! There’d be another film! There was not another film. Still cool, though.

A Bug’s Life (1998): I alluded to this earlier, and we’re only tenuously in “end-credit” land here (these scenes play over the credits, technically), but it still merits a mention. For A Bug’s Life was the film that began the (actually very short) Pixar tradition of showing us “outtakes” from the movie. And some of these first ones are among the best, with characters corpsing or forgetting their lines; subsequent films would lean more towards practical jokes and outright gaggery, whereas I personally prefer those that further the “it’s a movie being filmed” illusion. Anyway, the legend began here, not a sentence you can often say in relation to A Bug’s Life.

Frozen II (2019): in recent years Disney have made end-credit gags a tradition, and they’re pretty good at it. Moana’s fourth wall-breaking catchup with Tamatoa nearly made the list, but I’m giving the spot to Olaf. After recapping the plot of the first film earlier in the runtime, he’s now telling the story of the film you’ve just watched. The kicker? He’s telling the story to Marshmallow and the creepy little snow-brothers! From the first Frozen! And Frozen Fever! They’re at the ice palace, remember? It’s not only a funny bit, it’s also a nice nod to those kids (and their parents) who’ve mainlined anything Frozen-related for the past couple of years.

Winnie the Pooh (2011): a very underrated little gem, this; just so charming. One of the plot threads is the apparent disappearance of Christopher Robin, who leaves a note saying he’ll be “back soon”, but which is misread by stuffy know-it-all bird Owl, and leads to an amusing song of fright and alarm Pooh, Piglet and the gang all believe old Chrissie Rob has been abducted by a monster called a “Backson” (“They use their horns to put holes in your socks!”). Obviously this is a misunderstanding, it’s all resolved, happy endings all round. But then, at the end of the credits, who should rock up, but an actual Backson (who turns out to be very nice). What’s great about this, other than it just being a neat gag, is that it’s playing with the expectations of a young audience; it’s introducing them to a kind of comedic rug-pull. I can attest to the fact that nippers find it very entertaining.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2019): I’m a bit concerned about being too superheroic (I nearly had the Flash/Superman race from Justice League in here, actually, which I like because it’s one of the few moments in either version of that film where the characters act like the characters I know). I’m also wary of leaning into the whole “sequel tease” thing. But hey, this one’s fun; it feels like a sequel tease, another alternate version of Spider-Man voiced by a famous actor. Then it warps into the classic sixties Spider-Man, and references the whole “pointing” meme to boot. It has its cake and eats it, and it’s great.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990): the Gremlins films are great at breaking the fourth wall and poking fun at themselves, and this is no exception. The great Daffy Duck – who introduced the film, and whose anarchic style is a great precursor to the Gremlins themselves – pops up several times to comment on how long and boring the credits are, before finally asking the audience, “Don’t you people have homes?”. There should be more Daffy in movies.

Shrek 2 (2004): there were a few things I could have included in this list: Crank’s 16-bit game homage is quite fun; the Ferris Bueller bathrobe bit is iconic, although personally I find Ferris so unappealing as a character that I wouldn’t want to include it. So we have Shrek 2, one of the first of a whole raft of CG animated films to have a funny scene at the end. And the reason I’ve included it is because, well, it’s quite weird. Basically you find out that Donkey and Dragon have had babies that are, er, half donkey and half dragon (“Look at our little mutant babies!” says Donkey). I mean. There are connotations here that I’d rather not mull over.

So there we are. Now I didn’t want to include this as it’s not really a scene, and if I’m just doing “funny things in the credits” then we’re going to get onto stuff like the Naked Gun movies and all sorts of other weirdness, but I do want to shout out to An American Werewolf in London’s “any resemblance to persons living, dead, or undead” legal disclaimer at the end of the credits.

#top ten #movies #films #end credit #post credit #mcu

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erhiem · 3 years

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Feather muthaland, Bibimutha’s songs play as if she is rebuilding her confidence in real time.

Photo Illustration by Renee Klahr, Aamna Ijaz/NPR; Courtesy of Muthaboard

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Photo Illustration by Renee Klahr, Aamna Ijaz/NPR; Courtesy of Muthaboard

Feather muthaland, Bibimutha’s songs play as if she is rebuilding her confidence in real time.

Photo Illustration by Renee Klahr, Aamna Ijaz/NPR; Courtesy of Muthaboard

NPR Music Turning the Tables A project envisioned to challenge sexist and exclusionary conversations about musical greatness. So far we’ve focused on reversing traditional, patriarchal best-of-lists and popular music history. But this time, it’s personal. For 2021, we’re digging into our own relationships to record the records we love, asking: How do we know as listeners when a piece of music is important to us? How can we break free from institutional pressures on our tastes in keeping with the lessons of history? What exactly does it mean to create a personal canon? Essays in this series will explore our unique relationship with our favorite albums, from unmatched classics by major stars to sub-cultural gamechangers and personal revelations. Because the way some music holds a central place in our lives is not just a reflection of how we develop our tastes, but of how we approach the world.

In April, two days after my partner got his second COVID-19 vaccination dose, a friend sent us an invitation to celebrate his birthday at a bar. “I’m not sure,” I said, citing CDC guidelines to wait at least two weeks before socializing. But I had another idea. While some dreamed of nail salon appointments as a return to normalcy, and others fled to Airbnbs on the outskirts, I suggested making a noise on the phone once again with the crew, three Geminis and Taurus.

Our first time together was in 2019, which we regarded as a rite of passage, playing Kendrick Lamar good kid, maed city (an epic, if not prestige update for the specific soundtrack) as our visions began to blur. More than anything, I noticed how the psychedelic influences calmed the ticking urgency I felt on a daily basis in order to make productive use of my time. That kind of urgency became too much to bear last year: With the world still in a pandemic holding pattern, I was also eyeing my 35th birthday in June, and I needed to answer questions from family incessantly. Didn’t feel closer – to where my career was headed, or whether I would have children, and if so – than it was ten years ago. Naturally, I didn’t tell this to my friend.

While I certainly yearned for pre-pandemic normalcy, or perhaps a time where my age was not nearly as consequential, I was also inspired by muthaland, Chattanooga, Tenn., the first album of 2020 by rapper Bibimutha. muthaland Helping me take myself out of this pressure to live up to everyone’s expectations. The album begins by promising a good time; In the opening skit, a game show contestant swallows an acid tab to enter Bibimutha’s world. This realm of her imagination ends up as a tangle of feelings and thoughts, where not a single factor – not her career or single motherhood – completely defines who she is.

I first heard about Bibimutha in 2016. Not long before artists like art rocker Björk embraced her. Even in this crowded music landscape, it’s hard to forget an artist who names their debut EP after an iconic makeup palette, or whose moniker dates back to their mid-20s as having two sets of twins. The latter is considered a badge of honor. Early singles like “Rules” and “Rose” were the talk of a smoky-eyed relationship that could make women completely in agreement (“I’m not going to waste my waist, my thighs, my time, and all my energy/effort. Can *** * which just not for me”). The ambitious concepts he had in mind for his debut album also looked promising. his first thought, prosperity gospel, as a result of her love-hate relationship with televangelist pastor Joel Osteen (“He can sell any f****** thing and you’ll just spend your money,” she once said). Later, she stated that she planned to call the album Christine; It would be inspired by a relative who killed men who either betrayed her or abused her.

Yet I didn’t really connect with Bibimutha until we were both at the peak of our frustrations with our careers. In July 2020, Atlanta’s NPR affiliate WABE dropped under the map, a Southern hip-hop podcast that I co-host, just as overall podcast listenership began to return to pre-pandemic levels. and until muthaland Arriving last August, BbyMutha was completely disillusioned with the music industry. “After this album I’m never doing it again,” she said. This rap retirement announcement ended prematurely, although at the time, listeners mourned the lost potential. In muthalandLong after that tab swallowed one of the most indulgent rap fantasies of all time, BbyMutha is a next-gen LA chat with wordplay inspired by Gucci Mane, a rare woman who navigates traps and orders sex from across the gender spectrum. But Bibimutha also emphasizes in “Holographic” that the journey is a “rave with roaches” swirling around her house. At the height of her musical talent, she could still find a place where she falls short.

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As the oldest of my cousins, I spent most of my life in Maryland oriented around achievement and success, setting a good example. After graduating during the 2008 recession, the older I’ve gotten, the harder it felt to be, shortly thereafter separated from my first and only 9-to-5 to pursue a culture journalism career. moved to Atlanta for what seemed frivolous or self-indulgent before this “Essential workers” became part of our lexicon. (“My mom actually ran away from the Vietnam War when she was 16, so I could see” My Block: Atlanta For work, I’m not a s***,” i once joked.) I attributed my lack of hustle to this fear of failure which only intensified over the years. and before muthaland, I looked for music that helped me wrestle with or push through those feelings. open mike eagle dark comedy Soundtracked my uncomfortable entry into the gig economy after college. I still turn to trap jeezy songs Let’s get on this: Thug Inspiration 101 Or DouBoys Cashout’s “started out as an activist” for a momentary boost.

In the spring of 2019, I learned that this persistently worrying and ensuing fatigue had a name: generalized anxiety disorder. (I’ve kept it a secret from my family; my uncle once said that Asians “take too much pride in going to therapy,” as statistics following the Atlanta-area spa shooting would show.) As I tracked my sleep and panic attacks in one notebook after another, I learned that perfectionism—my once default answer to job interviews—is, “What’s your biggest weakness?” – not really to be seen in a positive light at all. Still, my mother’s way of asking “How are you?” Keeps “Are you busy?” and “Are you making money?” And I still answer “yes” every time. It has taken me almost all the time in the past two years to accept that self-awareness is still a work in progress.

Last December, my therapist gave me an exercise regimen that I still use today. In a moment of crisis, I write down the first negative thought that comes to mind (“I always make the wrong decisions,” “My career is coming back,” “Christmas is ruined”). Then I write through a reality check, as if interviewing myself: Are all these ideas true? Or is there evidence that this situation is not as dire as I had feared?

I recognize this train of thought muthaland. Songs like “Roaches Don’t Die” become anthemic because when Bibimutha brags and boasts, it’s like “You don’t f*** with who’s who with who’s government stamp and wic, huh?” Like what happens between songs. When she looks in the mirror and longs for the confident woman she once was (“I miss that b**** sometimes”) she descends on a personal statement in the face of “heavy metal”. “They see the truth when they see me / They see they aunt and they mom and grandma, gee,” she raps. “They look in a mirror, it ain’t clear / I’m afraid of everything being b*****.” At the end of “Scam Likely”, Bibimutha mocks the pseudo-awakening, drag race-savvy listeners who insist on having her as a role model (“And she makes me feel so empowered that ****** is empowered – and i up“). I get her reasoning: Role models seem impenetrable. Bibimutha’s songs sound like she’s rebuilding her confidence in real time.

During my last visit, my therapist told me to work on my definition and measures of success. I still don’t have concrete answers that translate into neat life goals, though maybe that’s an answer in itself. muthaland Teaching me to lower expectations that may read as plausible but ultimately prove untenable. Its themes confirm how I felt after my first 2019 visit, which is that scientists should revisit the psychological properties of hallucinations, even after decades of government-imposed stigma. Bibimutha’s lyrics demonstrate that motherhood, as it would be, cannot replace a sense of self. Neither would career ambitions, for that matter: muthalandThe most obvious nod to any kind of rap pantheon is “outro (skit 5).” Game show hosts thanks “sponsors” Boosie, Webby, and Diamond and Princess from Crime Mob — and then in 19 seconds, it’s over. muthaland otherwise completely untouched by discussion about Rap’s Mount RushmoreHow sales and clout factor into greatness. In how its soul-searching slowly unfolds during its hour-long runtime, the album is teaching me that position is not everything, but timing is.

In the flurry of excessive social activity between getting vaccinated and preparing myself for the Delta version, here’s what I’ll remember most:

The post-vaccination journey that finally took place on a Sunday in May. By 6 p.m. the effect was gone, though my partner reading the tarot gave to our friend, the second Gemini, didn’t wrap up until close to midnight.

The first time I heard BbyMutha’s “GoGo Yubari,” a harsh indictment against her baby daddy and the nature of how she became a baby mama: “Another violent story, another self-esteem destroyed.” BbyMutha released it in June, one of several loose and unreleased EPs from this year. muthaland. (Thank god she didn’t actually retire.)

Finally, a passing comment from a friend ahead of her 35th birthday this month. The keyword was “milestone”, with this weighted expectation we had already achieved, suggesting that all this was not enough. “I’m always here to talk about it,” I said, and I meant it. After the past year of working as a stand-in confidant of BbyMutha, I feel ashamed personally, or a shame at all.

christina lee is a music and culture writer living in Atlanta. She co-hosts the podcast under the map.

The post BbyMutha’s ‘Muthaland’ Is Teaching Me That Status Isn’t Everything : NPR appeared first on Spicy Celebrity News.

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blouisparadise · 7 years

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Upon request, here is a list of bottom Louis fics where the boys are in high school. We hope you enjoy this list. Happy reading!

Note: This rec list was updated in July 2019. New fics are marked with a 🍑.

1) We Should Get Jerseys | Mature | 12147 words

Harry is a hockey player, and Louis is his slightly melodramatic boyfriend.

2) Take My Breath And I Am Yours | Explicit | 4937 words

Louis has never gotten a hickey. Harry gives him one.

3) Just Want To Feel Your Lips Against My Skin | Explicit | 6615 words | 🍑

Note: This fic has a BH mention.

Where Harry is in love with his best friend and Louis just wants to be rimmed.

4) Read You For Some Kind Of Poem | Explicit | 11967 words | Sequel | 🍑

Louis is human, and Harry is lucky enough to be his vampire boyfriend.

5) No One Else Will Do | Mature | 13237 words

Harry visibly takes a deep breath. “I’ll do it. I’ll...help you through your heat.” He looks more determined now as he stands up straighter and his eyes look at Louis more intensely.

“Yeah?” Louis doesn’t mean to sound so surprised but he’s sort of in a state of shock. He’s never been with an alpha before, and the fact that his first time is going to be with Harry— his best friend— well, he couldn’t really ask for anyone better if he’s honest.

6) Never Understood What Love Was Really Like (But I Felt It For The First Time Looking In Your Eyes) | Not Rated | 18431 words

“So,” Harry continues, voice so thick it’s dripping into Louis’ veins, directing his blood all down to one place. Harry’s hand comes up to grip lightly at Louis’ neck, thumb digging into the spot where his bond mark will be someday. “No one has ever touched you?”

“No,” Louis feels the heat around them, nearly suffocating in the dense mixture of their pheromones. Louis realizes with a violent clench of his arse that Harry’s hard. He can smell it and from how Harry tenses, Harry can smell that Louis is starting to get wet. He feels Harry’s fingers dance along the waistline of jeans, eyes boring into Louis’. Subconsciously, Louis tilts his hips up in permission.

“Can I touch you?”

“Yes.” Louis hisses. He can’t believe that this is actually happening. The tender squeeze that Harry gives has Louis mewling. But, wait. “Wait,”

Immediately Harry’s hand is off of him. “What’s wrong?”

“This doesn’t mean anything right? Like no serious stuff. Because I’m like – I don’t want to bond.”

“No, nothing serious.” Harry’s response in instantaneous. “No strings attached.”

7) Monsters At Home | Explicit | 21566 words | 🍑

High School!AU. Everyone's eyes are on Harry, the beautiful, charming new student. Harry's only got eyes for the school golden boy: football captain Louis Tomlinson, whose homophobic father complicates matters a bit.

8) Supposed To Be | Explicit | 26611 words

The Geek Charming AU where Harry's a film geek, Louis' a popular jock, and they both need each other to get what they want.

9) To Be Loved (And To Be In Love) | Mature | 30227 words | 🍑

The one where Louis’s popular, Harry’s not and they bond by trying to get their friends together while accidentally matchmaking the entire school.

10) We're Like Bumper Cars | Explicit | 31716 words | 🍑

The AU where Louis and Harry are rivals of the century and Cross Country competitors before things get complicated and they play pretend.

11) Crazy, Stupid, You And Me | 32734 words | 🍑

Louis isn't allowed to date until he's 18, but then he meets Harry.

12) Nicotine | Explicit | 32345 words | Sequel | 🍑 (for the sequel)

"We're two different types of people, Liam. He likes sex and drugs, I like theater and tea. Trust me, we'd never date." Except they would, they do, and neither of them plans on letting go anytime soon.

13) What This World Is About | Explicit | 34472 words

An eighties American high school AU; there are first times, football games, and feelings.

Alternatively titled: the beginning.

14) Bloodsport | Explicit | 40283 words | 🍑

“You know how our next game is against the Cardinals, right? You remember how vicious those guys can get. I wanted us to come up with some plays, maybe work on a block from the left—”

Louis stops when he hears a chuckle.

He doesn’t think he’s said anything particularly funny, so he turns to Harry, waiting for an explanation.

“‘S funny, ‘s all.” Harry throws his finished bottle somewhere near the other discarded ones. “This is the first time you’re talking to me in eight months, and it’s still about football.”

15) I Found A Love For Me (Darling Just Dive Right In) | Explicit | 46652 words | Sequel | 🍑

Louis, an omega with very little control. Harry, an alpha with a lot of emotion. Neither of them have any idea what do to with this little thing called love, but they'll be damned if they don't put up a good fight.

16) Sweet Creature | Explicit | 66753 words | 🍑

It’s not that Harry expected high school to be easy. He heard all the stories from his sister and he knew that he was in for four years of hell. However, he didn’t exactly expect that hell to also be populated by Angels.

17) Here In The Afterglow | Explicit | 88649 words

1970’s AU. In a tiny town in Idaho, Louis’ life is changed forever by the arrival of a curious stranger.

18) For Reasons Wretched and Divine | Explicit | 94655 words | 🍑

Note: There are flashbacks to high school in this fic. This fic is also locked and can only read by AO3 users.

Ten years ago, Harry Styles was just a nerdy kid with one friend and a debilitating crush on the captain of his school’s football team. He thought the stars were smiling down on him the day he and Louis Tomlinson were paired for their end-of-term Literature project. But because Harry’s life is decidedly not a fairytale, the budding friendship quickly leads to the least happy ending of all time. Now, Harry Styles is a household name. Barely twenty-seven with two Grammy nominations to his name, the singer-songwriter is poised to take the music industry by storm with his highly anticipated third album. So, what happens when the best producer in the business is also the only person Harry’s vowed never to speak to again?

19) Baby Heaven's in your Eyes | Explicit | 120878 words | 🍑

They couldn’t be more different if they tried. Louis Tomlinson is 17 years old and in his last year of the most prestigious private school in Doncaster. If there’s one thing that completely annoys him, it’s that there is a poor community college right across the street.

Harry Styles is 19 years old, and (once again) in his last year of college. He goes to community college in Doncaster. He never shows up to classes and if he actually bothers to, he’s either high or drunk; sometimes both. His skin is littered with tattoos and if there’s one thing he absolutely hates, it’s the snobby students attending the private school right across from his.

20) Falling Into You | Mature | 143157 words | 🍑

In the grand scheme of adolescence and boyhood, Harry was still working himself out, so far with little luck. But four things he could say for certain: 1) he'd been at the top of his class all through primary and secondary school, 2) he was the shittiest alpha to ever walk the earth, 3) Liam Payne never let him forget it, and 4) he’d been in love with this boy, Louis Tomlinson, ever since he was fifteen years old.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

#blp #fic recs #blp fic recs #bottom louis #top harry #updated #july 2019

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chapulana · 6 years

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Jake Kyman: SoCal youngster’s already looking like a vet

You don’t want to sleep on SoCal prep hoops. Not with someone like Jake Kyman coming through the ranks of the high school-ball system.

“Kobe has always been my idol just because the way he treats the game. What he does on the court is incredible. The footwork he had. Just the impact he has on a game. He’s my favorite player of all time.”

Well, this next statement may sound bolder than anything you can think of, but Kyman’s idol and the youngster himself are bound to forge a career around the place they share and he’s determined to reach the highest of heights with his game, prove he’s as good or more than anyone stepping into his way and, hey, why not, surpass some of his muses as the kid from Italy did not that long ago.

“I try not to pay attention to the rankings. Honestly, they don’t mean anything. They are just fuel to my fire.”

Coming from Santa Margarita Catholic, Kyman’s name is not the only one that pops from the HS record books. Does Klay Thompson sound familiar? Probably if you’re engaged to basketball at least by a hair. The LA native attended the same school as Jake Kyman and went to Washington State to play ball there for three years before departing for the L where he was picked 11th overall by the raising Warriors. Kyman, even having just finished his Junior season at SMC, already has offers from programs as coveted as those of UCLA, USC or LSU. Talk about talent hunting. But honestly, that is for a reason and it is all about Jake’s game and its evolution –only going up– up to this point in time.

The first move of what looks like the right decision: “I played baseball and was actually really good too, but I quit in 7th grade and solely focused on basketball.” Jake opted to handle the big orange ball instead of the small white one, and it’s starting to pay off. Forget about doubts, possible alternative routes, or any other concern this double approach may lead you to think of: “[My] love [for the game] just came from within, I mean, I never really loved that game until I started getting good and it just became my outlet for everything and keeps me on track now.”

A big chunk of the whole “mixtape culture” is built on hype, dunks, disrespectful moves and young fellas jumping and bumping around the court smashing opponents at the rim. Already part of the Adidas AAU circuit, if not a veteran by now, Jake’s tape is not just about the flashy moves and the dunks and the highlight stuff. It is about the game. The whole, full, all-angles-covered game and the fundamentals. A cut, a quick pass, finding the open lane or the free spot to hit the dagger from long-range.

Jake does it all.

And you don’t see that from every baller at his age. In terms of his pro-comp, he knows whose game he’s trying to replicate. “I’d like to say my game [is] like Gordon Hayward’s because I can do many things with versatility. I can guard many positions, and I can also score at every level – from three, midrange, and at the basket. I have a very developed post game from playing center since I was young until 7th grade so I feel I’m extremely versatile, [which] also helps with being 6–foot–7.”

“I definitely want to go to the pros because the NBA has been a goal since [I was] a lil kid.”

Maybe now you start to understand the interest he’s been generating around Cali and the rest of the nation. “It feels amazing to get D1 offers. [It] lets me know my dreams have come to a reality [thanks to] working so hard to this point, and it is a validation factor as a player that the work you put in is paying off.”

Jake’s been breaking milestones and rankings since the first time I heard his name. He is already a four-star caliber prospect for ESPN (80 grade, #14 CA prospect) and Prep Hoops (#56-best 2019 prospect, no less). “I try not to pay attention to the rankings. Honestly, they don’t mean anything. They are just fuel to my fire because all that matters is if your team wins, but I like to look at them a little bit and if I play someone higher: I’m definitely gonna go at them and prove to people why I should be higher but I don’t really focus on that stuff a lot.” Young, yet clever.

With the season over and the spring and summer tourneys around the nation about to start, Kyman’s games with his Dream Vision Adidas AAU team are about to start rolling.

“This summer from AAU all I expect is to win and help my team win. I don’t care how many offers I get or how many points I score, even if I get two points [but] we win [then] I contributed to a W. All I want to do is win because that speaks for itself.”

And the same goes for his future HS plans at SMCHS for the last run next season:

“Colleges want winners and that goes for my senior season as well. Just put everything aside about who is who. All the politics. Just go out there and hoop and try to win the league and win CIF and try to win State and everything will fill itself out.”

At this point, you don’t know if you’re reading quotes from an under-18 or an already retired veteran. What you know is Jake’s got everything pretty clear in his mind and a great foundation to succeed. How does that future look in his mind then, you say?

“I definitely want to go to the pros because the NBA has been a goal since [I was] a little kid. Balling in front of thousands of people, there is no better feeling. I have no problem playing one year at college-level or four, just whatever makes me most successful in getting to the League.”

Clear as water.

The next time you check some prospect rankings you may not find Jake’s name in there. The following one, he’ll probably have popped in them. By the third, you’ll surely be looking at a SoCal prospect already committed to a D-I college with a high pedigree, though he’s not ready to make that decision yet. He’ll wait, and take the best option. Anyways, keep his name on hand, because you’ll probably read about him more than you do about your average up-and-coming ballers.

* * *

Read the full feature at Basketball Society.

#NBA #NCAA #High School #Writing #Jake Kyman #UCLA #BasketballSociety

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junker-town · 5 years

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The 4 kinds of prospects you’ll want to watch at the NFL Combine

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

From Tua Tagovailoa’s medical evaluation to must-see workouts, these are the player storylines to follow at the combine.

Here’s the thing about the NFL Scouting Combine: It is the single strangest event on the sports calendar. There is nothing normal about this job interview process. Still, it’s a major part of the lead up to the NFL Draft.

Players will be interviewed by the media and teams — you decide which is more laborious. They’ll be poked and prodded by medical staffs, and their medical information will get put online. They’ll take the Wonderlic test, and that too will find its way online. Finally, the players will work out in their underpants where anything can happen.

Mostly, though, it’s about the prospects themselves. Here are a few key things to watch for at the 2020 NFL Combine:

The players who have the most important medical tests

The combine started as a way for NFL teams to get medical information on the players they might draft. Here are a few players with injury pasts that will be worth watching — none more paramount than the first name on this list.

1. Tua Tagovailoa, QB, Alabama

Tagovailoa, who fractured his hip in November, said his doctors are expected to fully clear him by March 9. The greater issue, though, is the quarterback’s long-term health.

If teams are concerned that Tagovailoa can easily re-injure his hip, they will check him off their draft list. There’s also Tagovailoa’s ankles. He underwent a procedure called tightrope surgery on both ankles in different years following sprains. That is not normal. Tagovailoa’s health report will be fully scrutinized this week.

2. Netane Muti, OG, Fresno State

In 2017, Muti had the look of a future first-round player at a position that typically doesn’t get taken that highly. He manhandled defenders with ease. Then injuries set in. In 2018, he ruptured his left Achilles. In 2019, had Lisfranc foot surgery. But if he can move around in drills fairly well, he’s the type of player who will benefit from the combine.

3. Antoine Winfield Jr., S, Minnesota

There is a lot to like about Winfield. He was an All-American last season after finishing the year with seven interceptions and 83 tackles. He plays physically and will wallop the ball carrier from his safety position. Despite going pro after his redshirt sophomore season, Winfield was in college for four years after playing in just four games in both the 2017 and 2018 seasons. He he had a serious hamstring injury in 2017 and tore a ligament in his foot the next year.

4. Trey Adams, OT, Washington

Like Muti, Adams looked like a first-round pick early in his college career until injuries hit. A torn ACL cost Adams part of his 2017 season and back surgery shortened his 2018 season. Both are serious injuries, and teams might be wary of Adams because of his health.

5. Lucas Niang, OT, TCU

Niang has an outside chance of being taken in the top 64. The medical evaluation process will be critical for him. He tore his hip labrum as a junior and played through it. However, the injury caused him to end his senior season early for surgery. When he was healthy, Niang projected as a first-round player.

The players who could impress during workouts

With the combine workouts moving to primetime, the NFL has to be expecting some insane numbers. These are a few guys who could put on a show.

1. Henry Ruggs III, WR, Alabama

The 40-yard dash is the most popular combine event, and this year some players will get close to John Ross’ record of 4.22 seconds. Texas receiver Devin Duvernay should time well, but Ruggs probably has the best chance of breaking Ross’ mark. Ruggs ran a 4.26-second 40 at Alabama’s junior pro day last year, and has spent the run up to the combine working on his times.

2. K’Lavon Chaisson, Edge, LSU

While he won’t break any 40 records, Chaisson’s workout will be must-see television on Saturday night — and it should make people forget his pedestrian 6.5 sacks last season. He could come close to 4.5 flat in the 40-yard dash and should have one of the better vertical jumps in his position group. All of those things equal athleticism and explosiveness, something NFL teams covet in a pass rusher.

3. Neville Gallimore, DT, Oklahoma

The combine’s most impressive workout should belong to Gallimore. At 300 pounds, Gallimore is a crazy athlete, and there are some expectations he could get below 4.75 seconds in the 40. Gallimore was second on Bruce Feldman’s annual freaks list for good reason. As Feldman pointed out, Gallimore can bench press 500 pounds and squat 800 pounds.

4. Tristan Wirfs, OT, Iowa

Just ahead of Gallimore on the freaks list was Wirfs. The first true freshman offensive tackle to start for Kirk Ferentz was a star at Iowa. Wirfs, who is my top offensive tackle in the draft, has everything you want in a blocker. He’s a good athlete, has incredible strength, and stands 6’5 and 320 pounds. He could blow people away with his workout. He’s already penciled in as a top-10 pick. A big week in Indianapolis could make him him the consensus No. 1 at his position.

The players who could break out

Every year, there’s at least one prospect whose draft stock shoots through the roof. Who could it be this year?

1. Albert Okwuegbunam, TE, Missouri

This draft is begging for someone to step up in an otherwise dull tight end class. Notre Dame’s Cole Kmet is the top tight end in the draft, but he might not be the best athletic tester. That could open things up for a player like Okwuegbunam, whose name I had to look up the spelling on twice while writing this portion. Okwuegbunam had just 26 receptions for 306 yards and six touchdowns this past season, which is nothing special. But in 2017, he had 11 touchdowns and averaged 14.3 yards per catch. If he can test well, he should rise.

2. Colby Parkinson, TE, Stanford

Parkinson is another tight end who could make a big leap this week. At just over 6’7, he’s the tallest tight end at the combine this year. He’s not some lumbering buffoon, either. Parkinson glides around the field and stretches the seam. Stanford’s quarterback play has been suspect, so Parkinson could be a classic “better as a pro” type of prospect.

3. Jacob Eason, QB, Washington

How sold are you really on Utah State’s Jordan Love or Oregon’s Justin Herbert? After Joe Burrow and Tagovailoa, those two are considered by many to be the next two quarterbacks taken in the draft. But Eason could squeeze into the discussion. I had him going to the Patriots in a recent mock draft, and the next week ESPN’s Mel Kiper did too.

Eason’s college career was less than straightforward. He played his first two seasons at Georgia and lost his job to Jake Fromm his sophomore season when he sprained his knee. Eason then sat out 2018 as a transfer and played just one season at Washington. Eason’s 2019 stats (3,132 yards and 23 touchdowns) didn’t wow, but it’s hard to quit a massive 6’6 quarterback with an even more massive arm. It only takes one team to love Eason, and he could catch someone’s eye in his workout session.

The players who most need a good combine

Some prospects need a strong performance at the combine to show teams who they really are. Here are four such players this year:

1. Cam Akers, RB, Florida State

The Seminoles have just two players at the combine this year: Akers and cornerback Stanford Samuels, both juniors. That should tell you something about the state of the football program in Tallahassee. Akers was a blue-chip recruit for Florida State, but the team’s offensive line was so bad he never dominated as expected. That makes him somewhat hard to judge. He’s also not the best pass catcher, so teams will be watching how he catches the ball.

2. Raekwon Davis, DE, Alabama

Was Davis asked to not get after the quarterback, or was he just not that good at it? That’s what teams will be trying to find out at the combine. Despite playing in 12 games and finishing sixth on Alabama in tackles in 2019, Davis had just a half a sack on the season. Sure, sack totals can be misleading, but he just didn’t get into the backfield. Davis is good playing the run, and will be decent enough in three-man fronts. But he can help fix his draft stock with good timing numbers.

3. Jeff Thomas, WR, Miami

If you value high school football ratings, you probably expected big things out of Thomas. He was rated higher by 247 Sports than players like Ruggs and Jalen Reagor in the 2017 class. But his career at Miami didn’t go as planned. Thomas was suspended multiple times at Miami and had just 1,316 yards in three seasons. That includes only 379 in 2019. Still, he’s at the combine because teams are intrigued by his athleticism, even though they do have questions about his maturity.

4. Jauan Jennings, WR, Tennessee

Jennings is a complex case. On the surface, he’s the complete package at receiver. He has size, measuring in at 6’3 and 215 pounds, and had good stats in 2019 with 59 receptions for 969 yards and eight touchdowns. Most incredibly, on those 59 receptions, Pro Football Focus says he had 30 broken tackles. And he has a penchant for wild catches, like this one against Florida. The problem is that there are some character questions Jennings will have to answer. He was temporarily kicked off the team in 2017 and suspended for part of a bowl game after planting his foot into the face of a Vanderbilt player.

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