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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 7 months

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I've been dreaming of the Hunter of Love.

Every decision made or not made branches off and creates new realities. There are a countless number of those realities.

Worlds of infinite choices—he will glimpse them all.

How does a moment last forever? How can a story never die?

Rook dances through the darkness, unburdened and dauntless. Not a single step produces a sound—though if it had, the sound would no doubt be absorbed into the abyss. He glides effortlessly, a swan upon still water.

There is no road for his feet to follow, only a plane of darkness. Heels strike it, eliciting a clear clack-clack-clack, as if the floor is marble.

The walls—if they can be called that; there's nothing solid when he sticks his arms out to test the environment—are laden with full-body mirrors. They're mounted up upon nothing, floating in place, their reflective faces clean, clear, and free of cracks.

He is drawn to them, tugged along as if compelled by the red string of fate.

In each, he is presented with a novelty.

Familiar places and people, refracted and twisted into something new. Something beautiful.

An ethereal art gallery for his own amusement.

He turns his head, taps fingers along the frames of each realm in turn.

A Night Raven College with as many as fourteen dorms. A Night Raven College set upon a stage, scripts in the hands of every student. A Night Raven College of young women, not young men.

Jade with his hair styled up in a mohawk, a plethora of piercings studding his face. Kalim with a monkey upon his shoulder, sharing a platter of fruit. Young Epel in a pair of glasses, mouthing the lines to a play. Idia, smaller than even his younger brother, in an oversized sweater, playing on a mobile gaming console.

Rook imagines a great tree, its roots ever-growing, expanding deep, deep, deep into the soil and continuing still. Endless choices, endless possibilities.

C'est la vie—such is life.

He stops.

His hand now hovers over the glass casing of a tragedy.

Rook stares at a version of himself, collapsed beside a bottle of apple juice. Its caustic contents ooze out onto the ground, bubbling as it eats away at the floor.

The common man would be repulsed. Chilled to the bone. Frightened.

But Rook Hunt is not the common man.

"Comme c'est magnifique," he marvels. “Willingly consuming poison, wishing so desperately to believe that his queen was free of sin… Here lies a foolish dreamer in the aftermath, still having faith in his dear friend's integrity.”

Rook lingers, drinking in the details of the morbid work of art.

He does not move, does not breathe. Ignoring the bottle, it is as though he had been laid into a peaceful sleep. Lips arranged in a soft smile, long lashes cast over his cheeks.

A beautiful queen weeps for him, tears colored black as the night. His clothes are tattered, his crown tarnished. He is a flower of evil, stripped of his petals.

The next mirror, the mirror after—all horrific ends, varying shades of gruesome. Visions twisting, distorting.

A king dressed in roses slaying their victims, peasants who dares to defy their rule. A hyena dissolving into sand. Students trapped in constrictive tentacles, stripped of their talents.

Mindless drones lumbering around a seized castle. A reality dyed in ink, ruled by blue flames and Phantoms. And… a tangle of briar knitting over the world.

To him, they are just as lovely as the rest.

Heartbreaking, but lovely.

As that thought strikes him, the area ahead brightens. He spots color dotting the darkness.

They start as scribbles, clumsy trails of crayon left by a child's hand. Further along, the crayon gains dimension, turning into yarn threads. Eventually, they weave together to form a coherent path marked by cobblestones made of newspaper clippings.

It leads to a thicket unlike any he has ever seen.

Every glade of grass, every leaf and stem, is painted in a glistening coat of silver. The flowers are crystal, the fruit, plump jewels. The sky, a watercolor masterpiece of brilliant blues, white clouds dabbled on with an artist's sponge.

A tower rises in the distance, fine and thin like a needle. Its pointed roof pierces the heavens, and there is but one solitary window embedded in the structure.

Rook gasps, and a thousand or more reflected Rooks gasp too.

The leaves tinkle, a melody of wind chimes and bells. He feels as though they are beckoning to him, drawing him deeper and deeper into the forest.

His feet have a mind of their own; they start moving, as if bewitched by the majesty of the enchanted wood, by the mystery of the tower. Beads of dew upon the grass are left untouched as he swiftly passes.

A call reaches out from a place far, far away. It's not quite speech, but vocalizations resembling speech--someone grasping for the right words, the right feeling.

There is a haunting hollowness to the siren song. A longing so immense it makes tears spring to his eyes.

It must be seeking its other half, Rook realizes. A harmony for its melody, to form a duet.

But the longer he tries to focus on the sound, the more he tries to parse out its parts, the more confused he becomes. The voice is contradictory: familiar and yet unfamiliar, happy and yet sad.

His pace quickens, as does his heartbeat. It's an anomaly for him, for whom calmness comes easily.

I must go to them, he thinks, unsure of why. I must.

Is there a yet-to-be-discovered wonder on the other side? His queen, whom he has sworn his undying loyalty to, in danger? Is it from the strange tower? A stranger requesting his aid?

Curiosity thrums through him.

Hurry.

The tower seems to drift farther and farther away with each step. The voice, fainter.

Hurry...!!

Rook runs.

The building accelerates. The trees expand as if to fill in the space where the tower had fled.

Wildlife carved of glass watch, some racing with him. A deerling on limber, elegant legs, a rabbit bouncing as high as it can. Even the fish skip atop the river that runs concurrent with the forest trail, and a flock of birds soar upon their crystalline wings.

They trill, they coo, they sing.

His run becomes a sprint, and the sprint becomes a gallop. The call to adventure, loud and clear in his ears.

He is one with nature, and nature is one with him.

I must see for myself what lies at the ends of this world--and beyond it.

His spirit brims, burning with determination.

Chasing something he doesn’t know the true nature, the true face, of. For that... is the thrill of the hunt.

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telekinetictrait · 1 year

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"I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world." (We Have Always Lived In The Castle – Shirley Jackson, 1962)

the 1960s were also known as the swingin' sixties, and that name could not be more appropriate. while some other decades had moved towards comfort, the 1960's truly embraced it. some of the youth simply threw on a tunic and stepped into some pants and walked out the door! the popularity of television broadcasted different styles and trends across the country and the world. new materials like acrylics and polyesters were cheap to produce and to buy, and made fashion more accessible than it ever had been. the swingin' sixties brought the youth miniskirts, striped sweaters, the boxy "mod" look, and the bright, fun makeup associated with famous artists like twiggy. some older women tended towards the skirt + suit jacket combination worn by first lady jackie kennedy, but the comfort of the youth was appealing to all ages. beatnik fashion was also popular, with trim black trousers and dark sweaters. in 1964, hairspray was the most popular beauty product on the market – and it showed in the elaborate updos of the era. as the decade drew to a close, the "hippie" style was a popular look among the youth, with loose fitting tops and baggy pants, as well as maxi skirts. many of the hippies incorporated crafts into their fashion, with patchwork and beadings becoming popular.

this is only a very brief summary – the trends and influences of the 1960s are vast and complex, just as the 1960s themselves were. the social revolutions mirrored the revolutions in fashion, and i could write essays about it. but i am tired and i moved in today.

1800’s / 1900-1909 / 1910-1919 / 1920-1929 / 1930-1939 / 1940-1949 / 1950-1959

cc links under the cut!!

see my resources page for genetics

rachel : birksche's pam hair / fuckyeahunbichobolita's valentines dress / laundry day socks / renorasims' not so flat flats

remington : cats and dogs hair / dissia's retro fur coat accessory (tsr download) / get famous outfit / discover university socks / linzlu's 1960's shoes (download here)

rhiannon : buzzardly28's linda hair / needleworkreve's 1960s eyeshadow / gilded-ghosts' simply sweet dress / blueraptorsden’s vintage stockings / paranormal shoes

river : jools-simming's deborah beret / simadelics' curtain call hair / cottage living sweater / linzlu's 1960's pants (download here) / base game stockings / get together loafers

rjúpa : historysims4's 1960's coiffure / needleworkreve's 1960s eyeshadow / nords' retro reboot 60's hoop earrings (tsr downloads) / dzifasims' daisy dress / base game stockings / linzlu's 1960's shoes (download here)

roxanne : simduction's karen hair (updated by cyclopfrog) / fukkiemon's star pin / georgiapeachsims' mod madness makeup / get together outfit / base game bracelets / renorasims' leather wedge boots

ruslana : ravensim's terri hair / needleworkreve's 1960s eyeshadow / cottage living earrings / happylifesims' short one piece with scarf / get famous socks / serenity-cc's back to the sixties shoes

r'veena : kismet-sims' rosemary hair / needleworkreve's 1960s eyeshadow / get famous earrings / mysteriousoo's bright pants + tunic set (tsr download) / jius-sims' flower mary jane pumps

ryan : simduction's twiggy hair (updated by cyclopfrog) / needleworkreve's 1960s eyeshadow / liliili-sims' earrings #19 / marsmerizing-sims' lesley sweater / linzlu's 1960's skirt (download here) / base game stockings / cottage living lace-up heels

rzenia : marsosims' hita hair / brianitesims' nicks sunglasses / paranormal top / huiernxoxo's roxy pants / jius-sims' retro flower boots

thank you to @birksche @fuckyeahunbichobolita @renorasims @dissiasims @linzlu @buzzardly28 @needleworkreve @gilded-ghosts @blueraptorsden @jools-simming @simadelics @historysims4 @nords-sims @dzifasims @simduction @fukkiemon @georgiapeachsims @ravensim @happylifesimsreblogs @serenity-cc @kismet-sims @jius-sims @marsmerizing-sims @marsosims and @huiernxoxo !!

#my sims #sims 4 lookbook #ts4 lookbook #ts4lookbook #sims 4 retro lookbook #ts4 retro lookbook #sims 4 1960s lookbook #ts4 1960s lookbook #223 years #historical #1960s

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hunterscabin · 1 year

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This Baby Will Have A Father Part I

Summary: Y/N is an actress on Supernatural. After becoming pregnant, her boyfriend leaves her, not wanting anything to do with the baby. Unsure of what the future holds, her male co-stars show her that she’s not alone.

Pairings: Reader x SPN Cast

Warnings: Unplanned pregnancy, nervous reader, fluff

Word Count: 1.3k

Author’s Note: I only have two parts of this story written, and unless it gets major traction, I’m not sure I’ll be writing more. I didn’t want to be a tease and leave y’all hanging, but those who’ve responded said they don’t care and would like to read anyway. Let me know if I should keep going!

Filming had only resumed one week ago, and you were already having difficulty hiding your pregnancy. Hiatus had come at the perfect time, right when you were really starting to show, but now that you were in your fifth month, loose sweaters and baggy shirts were no longer able to conceal your constantly expanding stomach. You had told wardrobe and the show’s producers, but the life growing inside of you was still a secret to most of the cast and crew.

It had been a hectic day on set, and you were beyond grateful when Bob called for lunch. You saw some of the guys head into Jensen’s trailer and figured now was as good a time as any to tell them you were expecting. Before you could lose the gumption, you marched up to the door, pausing only briefly before knocking.

“Hey, Y/N/N!” Jensen smiled as he opened the door and stepped aside for you to come in. A loud roar of laughter filled the air.

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“Not at all!” Jensen picked up his plate and pulled out the chair he had been using. “Have a seat.”

Along with the featured cast, many guest actors were in town to shoot a special episode. Jared and Misha were sitting at the kitchenette table with Rob while Alex and Rich enjoyed their lunch on the sofa.

“I think I’ll stand. Thanks, though, Jay.” The palpable apprehension coursing through you was in stark contrast to the lighthearted atmosphere in Jensen’s trailer, and your mood didn’t go unnoticed.

“Everything okay, Y/N?” Misha asked. Before the break, most of the cast had noticed and even discussed your unusually reserved and distant nature. Misha wondered if your current trepidation had anything to do with your pre-hiatus behavior.

“Yes.” You answered with uncertainty.

You had shared your pregnancy with some of the women in the cast earlier that week, and while their support and advice had been immensely heartening, it was emotionally exhausting going over your story again and again. You thought it’d be easier telling all the guys at once. Now, as your eyes scanned the room, you grew increasingly anxious seeing everyone’s attention on you. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all.

“I have some news to share.” you said hesitantly.

“Good news, I hope?” Rob cautioned, his voice full of anticipation.

“Great news, actually.” You took a deep breath, uncrossed your arms, and opened your sweatshirt. “I’m pregnant.”

You smiled tentatively, not knowing how everyone would take the news. After what felt like ages, Alex stood to place a gentle hand on your shoulder.

“Congratulations, Y/N/N!” He beamed, kissing you on the cheek.

Rob and Rich were close behind, both of them pulling you into a warm hug.

“How far along are you?” Rob smiled as he leaned out of the embrace. He held you at arm’s length, taking in the sight of your bump.

“I’m just over five months along.”

“You look great!” Rich exclaimed.

“You really do.” Rob affirmed, giving your shoulder an encouraging squeeze. “I’m amazed you were able to hide this from us for so long. Now that I know, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before!”

“The ladies in wardrobe were very helpful.” You smiled coyly.

You were relieved that Rob, Rich, and Alex seemed genuinely happy, but you couldn’t shake the deafening silence radiating from the table behind you.

Jared, Jensen, and Misha still hadn’t said anything, so you turned to face them. When your eyes met theirs you could see their shock. They were the big brothers you never had, and you told each other everything. The most painful part of keeping your pregnancy a secret was lying to the three of them, but you had to process your own feelings before telling everyone else. You never imagined you’d find yourself alone and pregnant. In an instant, you went from being a responsible twenty-something who made all of the right decisions to a statistic mothers tell their daughters to scare them into abstinence. It had taken you months to come to terms with your new future. You had no idea how the boys would react.

“Do you know who the father is?” Jared questioned, breaking through the nervous silence.

“Jare.” Jensen chastised, reaching over and smacking Jared upside the head.

“It’s okay.” You flashed them both a soft smile, trying to ease some of the tension. You knew Jared didn’t mean any harm; it was a legitimate question that came from a place of sincere curiosity and not of judgment or ridicule. You hadn’t mentioned to them that you’d been seeing someone for a few months prior to getting pregnant. Your male cast mates tended to be a little too overprotective in the boyfriend department, so you didn’t usually go out of your way to share stories about your dating life.

“I do.” you confirmed.

“Does he know?” Jared followed up.

“Now that deserves a hit.” you joked, raising your eyebrows and nodding your head toward Jared. As if rehearsed, Jensen brought his hand down across the back of Jared’s head, ruffling his hair in the process.

Everyone snickered, but their laughter quickly faded when they noticed your somber expression.

“He said he isn’t ready to be a father,” your hands instinctively moved to your stomach, “and he doesn’t want any part of this.”

“Y/N, I didn’t…”

“It’s okay, Jare.” you assured, cutting his apology short. Your heart fell at the sight of his sheepish face. The looks of pity you received when telling your story never got easier.

Jensen walked over and placed a hand on the small of your back. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to your temple. “Are you okay?” he asked, unsure of what else to say.

“I am.” Jensen looked at you suspiciously. “Really, I am.”

Your response was truthful. Life circumstances had taught to be strong and capable, and while you knew it would be the greatest challenge you ever faced, you felt prepared to handle life as a single mother. You were built for it.

After a moment of contemplation, you let out a deep sigh. “I just feel bad this little one won’t have a father.”

Your voice was almost a whisper, but everyone in the room heard your concern. A shadow of sadness cast over their faces, each of their hearts quietly breaking at the thought of you and your baby on your own.

“Y/N, you don’t have to do this alone.” Misha reached across the table and took your hand in his. “I will always be here for you.” His blue eyes were full of kindness.

“We will always be here for you.” Jared emphasized, standing to pull you into a hug.

Their sentiments were beyond touching, but you knew the inordinate amount of work that went into raising a baby, and it was a responsibility you had come to accept alone. You were never one to burden others with your needs, and all of these men had their own families. The last thing you wanted was to interject into their already busy lives.

Not wanting to fight their well intentions, you simply said “Thank you,” and leaned further into Jared’s comforting embrace.

The second you closed the trailer door behind you, everyone let out an audible sigh.

“That explains a lot.” Alex said.

“I’m really worried about her.” Rob confessed, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Me too,” Jensen agreed, “She has such a hard time asking for help, and she’s definitely going to need it.”

“We have to show her we’re serious about being there for her and being a part of this baby’s life.” Misha asserted.

A broad smile spread across Rich’s face, and he stood up from the sofa.

“I think I have an idea.”

Part II

Masterlist

#jensen ackles x reader #jenxen x reader #jared padalecki x reader #jared x reader #misha collins x reader #misha x reader #rob benedict x reader #richard speight x reader #alexander calvert x reader #alex calvert x reader #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural fanfic #supernatural fluff

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final-girl96 · 9 months

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STOLE HEARTS CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Author's Note: It has been forever since I updated this, and I apologize.

~♡~♡~♡~

A WEEK LATER

I sat in the kitchen at my dad's house. After what happened with Eddie I went home and packed as much shit I could get in my car and came straight to my dad's. He wasn't home though; he was on his tour with the rest of the band. So I was here alone. Drowning in my own thoughts; replaying every word Eddie had said to me. I would have stayed in our house but when I told him not to bother coming home it only produced more harsh words from him.

“Well, congratulations, Eddie, you're a free man now. You can go fuck whoever you want and get as drunk and high as you cold icy black heart can handle. I'm done. We're done.” I began to walk towards my car, but stopped and turned back around. “oh, and don't bother coming home. I'll pack your shit and you can go live your life the way you want since I'm such a bitch.”

“Technically, sweetheart, that house is mine. I bought it and it's in my name. So you should be the one to leave.” His words were slurred but still very clear at the same time. “Don't need you anyway. Not when I can have any girl I want. Only used to get where I am now! Stacy is hotter than you and has a better pussy!”

I couldn't stop the tears that fell down my cheeks. He was drunk and didn't mean it. That's what I tried to tell myself. But you know what they say, “drunk words are sober thoughts.” I got in my car, went back to the house, grabbed as much as I could fit in my car, and left. I came to my dad's and the flood of tears I've been holding back that I've been holding in since the hideout. I cried until I fell asleep and when I woke up a few hours later, my eyes were still sore, red, and puffy.

It's been like that on and off for a week. I would cry until I fell asleep, then I'd wake up and force myself to eat something. I haven't gone anywhere or done anything either, just been curled up on the couch or in my bed all day. I didn't bother getting dressed, favoring pajamas or sweatpants and an oversized sweater. I'd slowly make my way into the kitchen and make myself eat something at least once a day.

Today I wore a pair of black sweats and one of my dad's sweatshirts, with a pair of wool socks. I was making my way downstairs when the doorbell chimed through the house. I stopped halfway down the stairs, my heart stopped for a second before picking up and hammering against my ribcage. I haven't heard from Eddie at all since I left that night. I was kind of disappointed and sad he didn't try to reach out, but at the same time I was glad he didn't. I was frozen on the stairs not wanting to check and see who it was; afraid it might be him.

What would I do? What would I say? What would he say? Would he try to apologize? Or would he beg for me to forgive him and give him another chance. Say that he didn't mean everything he said? The doorbell rang again followed by someone pounding on the door. I slowly moved down the stairs and towards the door. The person on the other side pounded on the door again and I moved faster, coming up to the door, and peaking through the peephole. Who I saw was someone I never suspected to be at my doorstep. I unlocked the door and pulled it open.

“You look like shit.” The door was pushed open and they pushed their way into the house. “Excuse you! You can't just barge into my house like you own the fucking place!” I closed the door. “Hargrove!” I walked after him, finding him in the kitchen sitting the bags of food on the counter. “What are you doing here? What the fuck is that?” He started to go through the cabinets. “Hello?”

“It's chinese. Where’re the plates?” I pointed to the cabinet to the left of the stove. “Why are you here?” I asked. He grabbed a couple plates, turned, set them down, and began to pull everything out of the bags. “Thought you'd want company. Also figured you probably haven't been eating much of anything other than ice cream. You women are pathetic after a breakup or any little inconvenience.” I raised my brow at him. “Excuse you? I have eaten more than ice cream, not that it's any of your business and I don't need comp…”

“Honey chicken?” I looked at him confused and he raised his eyebrows at me along with an annoyed look. I nodded my head and he proceeded to put a little over everything on the plates. “Sit and eat.” I sat in one of the stools with a sigh. “I didn't need any company.” Billy stayed standing while he ate and scoffed. “Are you going to tell me that you haven't been curled up in your bed crying all day for a week?” I shoved rice into my mouth and rolled my eyes. “No. Sometimes I lay on the couch,” I said with a small smile forming on my face. Billy scoffed out a laugh. “Oh well, excuse me.”

Silence fell over us for a few minutes while we ate our food. “Why are you really here, Billy?” I asked after a while. He shrugged, “Guess I just thought I'd come check on you. I know you're here all alone and what happened between you and E…” I gave him a look that cut him short. I didn't even want to hear his name. “Look, I know you probably don't want to hear anything about him or what happened at the bar…what he said was fucking…I wanted to knock his ass out for it. But I don't know if what he said is true. And before you bit my fucking head off let me explain why.”

I stood up, going over to the fridge and yanking it open. I pulled a water and a beer out, placing the beer in front of Billy. “Well? Go on. Let's hear why you think he wasn't telling the truth? I mean brink words are sober thoughts, right? That's what they say. But before you do let me tell you something you don't know.” He nodded his head and let me continue. “She was there at his last concert. She was waiting outside. We came back here because things started to get really rocky between us. It was a party every night after a concert…after a while I decided to stop going with him. He continued partying and would be out all night long not getting until sometimes four in the morning.”

I took a sip of water and looked up at him. “I have no doubt that she has been around for a while now. He was just drinking, Billy, and he was also getting high. I know talking about smoking pot either. I'm talking about cocaine. He swore it wasn't all the time and that it wasn't enough for him to get addicted to. It went from just being in the green room with the boys and a few girls the other guys would pick out of the crowd of fans to going out to clubs and being out until four in the morning. Also, It wasn't the first time he said something like that to me.”

#eddie x reader #eddie munson #eddie munson rockstar au #rockstar au #rockstar!eddie munson #rockstar eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #rockstar!eddie x reader #stranger things #stranger things au #joseph quinn

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blair-s-world · 21 days

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Piledriver Waltz

Alex Turner x y/n

Angst, Fluff, Smut Slow burn & in parts

masterlist

You were the few last to be sitting in the room. Tapping your feet. Portfolio on lap. Biting the lower lip. Girls would go in a room under the name - AUDITIONS. What’s the audition for, you ask? The new Arctic Monkeys music video. Supposedly, it is about the feeling of longing. As your agent said, there’s a bit of erotica in there. You were more than okay as it paid fuckload. Enough to pay a few installments for your mortgage.

The prep note said : Wear black lingerie

So you did.

Beneath your jeans and striped sweater was a new cord set. You didn’t buy it, it was given for sponsorship and today is the day you are wearing it for the second time. “Miss Y/N? Be ready in 10.” said the girl w generic intern face. After receiving a nod from the same intern, you went inside and changed. You removed your clothings one by one and you shoved them in your bag. The temperature of the room was on the chiller side. Something you’d expect out of this place.

You went to the area outside and waited for your name to be called. “Miss Y/N? Go.” said the intern. “God she’s a robot, innit” you said to yourself. Chuckling you went to the room and smiled at 3 people sitting at the desk, all dressed very professional. You were not able to recognize anyone.

You met your trial model today. A short, lean body guy. He is the guy you have to move around and act sexy to grab this roll you registered. He gives you a smile. The coordinator asked you to give your basic details, and you did. You stood in front of the camera, all ready. Before the coordinator could speak, the side door flew open and entered a guy the same height and build as the trial model wearing a linen shirt and sunglasses. Your eyes moved as he did. You noticed his flared jeans and Rockstar boots and that’s when you realised it is him, he is going to be the main guy in the music video. He sat hurriedly, coughed a bit, cleared his throat, smiled at his partners and looked at you. “ Apologies. I went out for a smoke,” he said. You nodded absentmindedly. He smiled at you.

The coordinator asks you to begin the audition on her command.

First take : smile and laugh

Second take: trying to tie your hair in a bun and getting frustrated

Third: after sleep stretch and neck movements

Then came in the trial model. You were asked to do move around him. Give him a little kiss on the corner in his lips. Let him move his hands on your body. React to his movements.

This wasn’t an audition to see how good or sexy you were but how comfortable.

15 minutes into it you see the same man wave his wrist as a dismissal. The coordinator asks you to stop. Confused you frowned a bit. And went inside the changing rooms to get your clothes back on.

The moment you come out, you are asked to meet the producers again. “ Hi. You've been selected to be the main lead in the music video. We need you to be available for the next few days for practice runs, setting a few scenes, and getting things done. I’ll send the email to your agent,” said one of the women sitting. You nodded, smiled, and thanked them.

As you left the building, you walked towards your car. You notice the same guy who walked in later near a pole. " Uhm, hi? " you almost whispered. " Oh, hi, Miss Y/N. Heading home? " he asked as he lit a cigarette. " Yes. Yes. It is pretty late, you know? I live a bit far. The traffic's gonna be a state. " you said hurriedly. I did not realize that you referenced one of his songs. It left you dumbfounded. He chuckled. " Oh, where about you? " he asked, coming a bit near you. " ah, Quarryside," you responded. "It's far," he whispered. You nodded. You start to walk you mouth a bye to him. " Miss, you know... " he trailed off. " You are welcome to stay in my guest room. I have a rental home there," he said, squinting and pointing to a big building behind you. You do a 180 to see where he's telling, look at him, and nod. " let's see how the prep days go. " you say and leave.

You couldn't wait for the tomorrow to come.

#alex turner #arctic monkeys #the car tour #alex turner smut #alexander turner #alex turner fanfic #alex turner fluff #alex turner angst #alex turner imagine #alex turner fic #alex turner x reader #alex turner x you

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dustedmagazine · 4 months

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Dust Volume 10, Number 5

Arab Strap

It’s lovely out. The lilacs are in bloom. The weather is warm enough to make a sweater/sweatshirt/coat redundant, and the bugs are swarming happily all over the garden. And yet, here we are, inside, ear buds in place, music on high, because however nice the weather, what if we missed something? What if, you, our readers missed something? Well, fear not, because we’re back with another set of short, impassioned reviews. Scottish lifers obsessed with their phones, South African jazzmen nearly forgotten, mumbling rappers, untethered improvisers—it’s all here for you. What, you were going out? Too nice to stay inside? Well, okay, it’ll be here when you get back.

Contributors include Ian Mathers, Justin Cober-Lake, Ray Garraty, Bill Meyer, Bryon Hayes, Jonathan Shaw, Andrew Forell, Christian Carey, Alex Johnson and Jennifer Kelly.

Arab Strap — I'm totally fine with it 👍 don't give a fuck anymore 👍 (Rock Action)

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Even more surprising than this Scottish duo’s perversely triumphant return a few years ago is that in 2024 Aidan Moffat is writing more about the internet than about cheating and booze. (He’s still writing about those things too though, don’t worry.) Less shocking is that his laceratingly keen eye is no less effective when turned on his own relationship with his phone, or the way women are treated by the “fathers, husbands, sons and brothers” around them as soon as the deniability of a screen is in place, or the psychology of someone who turns to QAnon. And not just technology; with songs addressing those who’ve never recovered from the early-pandemic hit to their ability to go outside and those capitalism leaves to die in solitude, this might be the least relationship-y Arab Strap LP to date. Malcolm Middleton roughs up their sound again to match the bruised, heartfelt brutality of Moffat’s subject matter and the result is one of the most simultaneously empathetic and unsettling records from a band who’ve never been short on either quality.

Ian Mathers

Bad Nerves — Still Nervous (Suburban)

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For their second album Still Nervous, punk rockers Bad Nerves take their ready-made formula and just amp everything up. Everything's loud and fast; the band clearly descends from the Ramones, but they've gone more manic. They secretly mix in flourishes of power pop. Underneath all the ruckus, they have a knack for catchy melodies, guitar solos and even vocal harmonies. Then Bad Nerves rough up the pop elements to make sure their disaffection comes through with enough spite to keep everything properly punk. The record does little to vary mood or tempo, but it doesn't need to. The band does one thing, but they excel at it. The Strokes comparisons the band's received mostly work, but the lo-fi production keeps everything sounding as if it's in an actual garage. “Plastic Rebel” offers a youthful rampage, bubble gummy enough to touch on Cheap Trick, but continually plowing forward. The Essex quintet closes the album with “The Kids Will Never Have Their Say,” an evergreen sentiment for the young and irritable. The point doesn't break new ground, but it's beside the point. Bad Nerves tap into something long running and rush the tradition on with plenty of verve and a hint of bile.

Justin Cober-Lake

Conway the Machine — Slant Face Killah (Drumwork \ EMPIRE)

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If it wasn’t for Conway’s name on the copy to the album you’d think this was a long solo producer tapes with 40 guests on it, each mumbling about something nobody’s interested in except for the mumbler himself. It is not an exaggeration: it really lasts more than an hour, has close to 20 guests (depends on how you count) and even though Slant Face Killah is produced by a dozen of people the beats all sound the same. If it already sounds awful even for the diehard Conway fans, grip for the worst part of it. It ain’t even worth the trouble to skip all the tiring guest verses for the Conway verses because they are not good anyway. A total failure.

Ray Garraty

Alex Cunningham — Rivaled (Storm Cellar)

Remember October 2020? The time of still-subdued traffic, no shows and a looming election? Rivaled is an artifact of that moment. Nowadays, Alex Cunningham is an intensely active improviser, based in St. Louis but active all around the middle of the USA. Back then he was stuck at home and moved to make some noise. “Faith” and “Void” offer two paths to obliteration. The former is pretty plugged in, with electronic effects and appropriated radio noise turning Cunningham’s violin into a full-on electrical storm. The latter is unreliant upon electricity, but maybe even more dogged and savage. Originally released as an edition of 20 cassette, Rivaled is now a CD with a bonus remix that mashes both tracks together, both vertically and temporally, like a piggybacked highlights reel. Of noise relaxes you, you’ll want this close at hand when the next election rolls around.

Bill Meyer

Dun-Dun Band — Pita Parka Pt. 1: Xam Egdub (Ansible Editions)

Dun-Dun Band is an all-star cast of characters comprising some of Toronto’s most creative musicians and led by musical polymath Craig Dunsmuir. Dunsmuir is a shape shifter, trading guises and styles for decades: a guitar loop conjuror known as Guitarkestra, a purveyor of mutant disco vibes alongside Sandro Perri in Glissandro 70, a welder of minimalism, dub, and avant-garde weirdness as Kanada 70. His Dun-Dun Band collects members of Eucalyptus and Badge Époque Ensemble along with stalwarts Colin Fisher, Karen Ng, Josh Cole and Ted Crosby. Pita Parka is the group’s debut on vinyl and features three extended cosmic jazz jams that fuse multi-horn interplay to African-inspired polyrhythm. The music slyly winks at 1970s fusion but is more akin to that of modern ensembles such as Natural Information Society. The extended nature of the pieces allows the reedists to stretch their lungs and roam around, and for the rest of the ensemble to engage in creative interplay. Pita Parka is a stellar offering from some of Toronto’s finest players and one of the city’s most inquisitive and inventive minds.

Bryon Hayes

Roby Glod / Christian Ramond / Klaus Kugel—No ToXic (Nemu)

The three participants in this session are all veterans of middle European jazz that’s free in spirit, if not always in form. Bassist Christian Ramond and Klaus Kugel are from Germany, and soprano/alto saxophonist Roby Glod is from Luxembourg; their collective cv includes work with Kenny Wheeler, Ken Vandermark and Michael Formanek. Online evidence suggests that they’ve played together as a trio since 2015, which explains their easy rapport and nuanced interaction, but this is their first CD. Freedom for these folks means having the latitude to linger over a tune or to settle into nuanced timbral exchanges, but if you carded them, they’d all have jazz driver’s licenses. This music swings, often at speed, which is a very important aspect of their shared aesthetic; the excitement often comes from hearing Glod invent intricate, evolving lines that are lifted off by fast walking bass lines and kept in the air with light but insistent cymbal play. While the album is named No ToXic, the sheer pleasure of hearing these guys lock in could truthfully be labeled counter-toxic.

Bill Meyer

Göden — Veil of the Fallen (Svart)

Longtime listeners of death doom will recognize the name Stephen Flam, guitarist and co-founder of storied band Winter whose Into Darkness (1990) concretized the subgenre in the US; the record was great, and still is. For his recent work with Göden, Flam has dubbed himself “Spacewinds,” and his bandmates follow suit, with stage names that are equal parts risible and ridiculously gravid: vocalist Vas Kallas performs as “Nyxta (Goddess of Night)” (those parens seem to be her idea…) and keyboardist Tony Pinnisi appears as “The Prophet of Göden.” Okay. This reviewer’s inexhaustible appetite for Winter’s slim output disposes him to think kindly of Flam, and there’s nothing especially terrible about Veil of the Fallen — but that’s only because there’s nothing all that special about the record. The sound of the title track is appealingly austere, and the NyQuil-chugging riffs of “Death Magus” are sort of fun. But any listeners hoping for flashes of the inimitable, awesome awfulness of Winter would be well advised to recall the meaning of inimitable. Not even Flam, it seems, can provide a convincing replica of those energies and textures.

Jonathan Shaw

Mick Harvey — Five Ways to Say Goodbye (Mute)

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Former Birthday Party and Bad Seeds member Mick Harvey looks back at his life on his autumnal new album “Five Ways to Say Goodbye.” Although he contributes only four original songs, his skill as an arranger and interpreter reaches its zenith. Harvey imbues his own and others’ songs with intense emotion that never tips into melodrama or histrionics. Augmenting his acoustic guitar with evocative string arrangements which provide counterpoint and color to his lyrics “When We Were Young and Beautiful” may be the finest song he has written; poetic in structure, elegiac in feeling, Harvey faces his past with dispassionate empathy for lost friends and acceptance of where he is now. His version of David McComb’s “Setting You Free” locates a Faustian menace in the song, using the strings to carry the dynamic thrust and emphasize the turbulent ambivalence of the original. “Like A Hurricane” becomes an intimate, piano ballad. By changing the tense from present to past and stripping the song of its rock roots, Harvey creates an emotional impact missing from Neil Young’s original. On “Demolition” Harvey replaces Ed Kuepper’s funereal drums with an off-kilter drum machine that clatters like an old projector to evokes the disconnections inherent in the lyrics. Harvey’s treatment of songs from The Saints, Lee Hazelwood, Lo Carmen and Marlene Dietrich are beautifully rendered. A wonderful summation of Harvey’s often underrated talent and an album that deserves a wider audience.

Andrew Forell

I Like To Sleep — Bedmonster’s Groove (All Good Clean Records)

This combo from Trondheim, Norway started out bridging the sound worlds of Gary Burton and Sleep. That’s a canny move if you’re looking for relatively untrodden ground, and as it turns out, a successful one. On Bedmonster’s Groove, which is album number four, the trio has dialed back the heaviness; you won’t hear a power chord until the beginning of side two. Instead, they have taken a turn towards experimentation. The microscopic applications of filters and effects give confer a variable glitter to Amund Storløkken Åse’s vibraphone, squeezable padding to Nicolas Leirtrø’s six-string bass, and some texturable variety to Øyvind Leite’s drums, which are all shown to good effect by some lean grooves and uncluttered melodies. Åse has also added some instrumentation; synths flicker and swirl in the empty spaces, and a mellotron heads a deliberate charge towards prog territory.

Bill Meyer

Kriegshög—Love & Revenge (La Vida Es un Mus)

Throughout the long existence of Kriegshög, it’s been customary to identify the band as a d-beat act. Love & Revenge is Kriegshög’s first release since 2019 and only its second LP in their (at least) 16 years of playing in and around Tokyo. Prolific, they ain’t, but the music is always worth waiting for. On this new record, the band rolls back the pace a bit and amps up the crusty, metal textures. Less squall and rampant chaos, more muscle and riffs that roll up in well-worn biker leathers — but all those qualifiers are relative. There’s still a raw edge to the production (if that’s the term we want…); the bass is laced with so much fat crackle that you’ll want to fry it and eat it. Sort of fun that one of the most volatile tunes on Love & Revenge is titled “Serenity.” Make of that what you will, but don’t spend too much time thinking about it. You’ll miss the next couple songs.

Jonathan Shaw

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard and Quatuor Bozzini — Colliding Bubbles: Surface Tension and Release (Important)

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard is a composer based in Copenhagen. On his latest EP he joins forces with the premiere Canadian string quartet for new music, Quatuor Bozzini, to create a piece that deals with the perception of bubbles replicating the human experience. In addition to the harmonics played by the strings, the players are required to play harmonicas at the same time. At first blush, this might sound like a gimmick, but the conception of the piece as instability and friction emerging from continuous sound, like bubbles colliding in space and, concurrently, the often tense unpredictability of the human experience, makes these choices instead seem organic and well-considered. As the piece unfolds, the register of the pitch material makes a slow decline from the stratosphere to the ground floor with a simultaneous long decrescendo. The quartet are masterful musicians, unfazed by the challenge of playing long bowings and long-breathed harmonica chords simultaneously. The resulting sound world is shimmering, liquescent, and, surprising in its occasional metaphoric bubbles popping.

Christian Carey

The Ophelias — Ribbon EP (self-released)

Ribbon is stormy, scathing and often quite beautiful. “Soft and Tame,” the EP’s emotional center, is all three. It begins wistfully: easy acoustic guitar strums and Andrea Gutmann Fuentes’ layered violin, nostalgic and close to sweet. Vocalist Spencer Peppet also starts slow, talking us through the aimless sensory motions of missing someone – “the sun on my cheek/as I walk around/I pick up a pear/I put it down/the radio plays a song we loved.” It doesn’t take long, however, for the skies to darken and the scene to become bleaker. By the line “the hollow sound/my jugular makes as it rolls around,” Mic Adams’s foreboding drums and a percussive creep of electric guitar have stalked in. And by the time Peppet has shown us “an overturned bus on the highway,” heard a“tornado warning” and told her subject to “stay the fuck away” for the second time, the band has built to a blown-out, climactic frenzy, the violin finding operatic heights over mammoth cymbal crashes.

In her review of The Ophelias’ last album, Crocus, Jennifer Kelly described Peppet as sounding “like she’s tilting her chin up and squaring her shoulders.” Likewise on Ribbon, where the band seems resigned to but also quite prepared for a fight. If “Soft and Tame” is aimed to knock “love in southern Ohio” down for good, then “Rind,” the final song, may tell us why they’re in the ring at all. At a brief break in the dynamic, flowering arrangement — it could be a particularly bucolic Magnetic Fields instrumental, especially in Gutmann Fuentes’ spry riffs — Peppet bursts out, “There you go!/On tour with my hometown friends/fucking score/they must have all forgotten!/Look back at what I tolerated.” There’s more to the story, but Peppet pulls back from the fray, settling things ominously: “to name it/makes your life/a little complicated.” Whatever “it” is, The Ophelias seem to have landed their punch. I don’t think I’ve heard more cutting, triumphant “Oohs” than those that end the song and Ribbon’s multifaceted fury with it.

Alex Johnson

Paperniks — Oxygen Tank Flipper 7-inch (Market Square)

Jason Henn is a master of catchy psychedelic punk. Honey Radar, his highest profile outfit, has unfurled a constant stream of hook-laden gems for well over a decade. Paperniks is his newest guise, a solo home recording project that amplifies the Guided by Voices meets Syd Barrett vibe of Honey Radar and doses it with nuggets of guitar noise. This tiny slab of wax is the sophomore Paperniks outing, following a single-sided lathe cut that strayed toward the clamorous edge of the octopus’s garden. On display are a pair of tunes that bear a striking resemblance to Honey Radar. “Oxygen Tank Flipper” is a groovy dose of psych replete with a catchy riff and a roller coaster bassline. Handclaps up the catchiness factor, as does Henn’s honey sweet sigh. “Essex Poem Dial” is a punky, garage-inspired tune. Henn’s reverb-soaked vocal hides inside the propulsive guitar chime. A noise interlude leads to a mellow vignette that slowly fades away. Paperniks showcases Henn’s boisterous side, and the music is certainly engaging, so hopefully there are more songs on the way soon.

Bryon Hayes

Ribbon Stage — Hit with the Most (Perennial/K)

Ribbon Stages hits the giddy sweet spot between punk and pop, their raucous guitar-drums-bass racket pounding on sweet, wistful little songs. The mixture varies with some cuts veering into the snaggle-toothed dream pop of, say, the Jeanines, while others rage harder and more dissonantly. “Stone Heart Blue,” the single, pulls the drums way up in the mix and lets distorted guitars and murmured vocals do battle attention behind them. The result is an uncanny balance of urgency, angst and solace, which is exactly what you want from pop-leaning punk. “Hearst” pushes slashing tangling guitar racket up to the foreground, letting a billowing squall spill over crisp drums and shout-sung vocals, while “Sulfate” lets a sighing romantic croon loose over boiling lavas of rock mayhem. Nice.

Jennifer Kelly

Rio Da Yung OG — Rio Circa 2020 (Boyz Ent)

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This is exactly what the title says: a compilation of Rio songs stashed on the label’s HDD, no more, no less. No filler but no hits either. The tape has a “Circa 2020” feel to it, reminding us of when Rio did what he wanted with no shades of doom hanging over the songs. It’s unlike the music he wrote after the trial when he knew he had to do some time. There’s a little bit of everything in here: three songs with RMC Mike, two tracks featuring Louie Ray, a song on a Sav beat, a song on an Enrgy beat and a song on a Primo beat. Yet it’s hardly enough to last us until Rio is free.

Ray Garraty

Spirits Rejoice—S-T (Fredriksberg)

Spirits Rejoice! by Spirits Rejoice

A remastered reissue of a 1978 recording, Spirits Rejoice captures boundary-crossing South African jazz scene, which touches on fusion, rock, funk, soul, disco Latin and African sounds. The ensemble includes some of that time and place’s pre-eminent jazz musicians, Sipho Gumede of the fluid, loping bass lines, breezy, insouciant reeds-man Robbie Jansen, South African pioneering percussionist Gilbert Matthews, keyboardist Mervyn Africa and a very young Paul Peterson on electric guitar. The music is ebullient and clearly tilted towards pop accessibility, and the gleaming sheen of 1970s often dilutes its heat and fury. This is especially true on “Happy and in Love” which could double as a lost Earth Wind and Fire cut. Elsewhere, though, as in “Woza Uzo Kudanisa Nathi,” fervid polyrhythms, tight squalls of sax and an exhilarating call and response light up the groove, fusing African chants with a swaggering samba rhythm. And “Papa’s Funk,” is just what it sounds like—a slithery, stuttery, visceral bass-led swagger that bubbles and smolders and twitches in a universal funk.

Jennifer Kelly

Various Artists — GmBH: An Anthology of Music for Fashion Shows 2016 – 2023, Volume 1 (Studio LABOUR)

GmbH: An Anthology of Music for Fashion Shows 2016-2023 Vol. 1 by Various Artists

LABOUR is a multimedia project of Iranian musician Farahnaz Hatam and American percussionist/composer Colin Hacklander. Based in Berlin, the duo has collaborated widely and eclectically to produce soundtracks for sustainable, underground fashion house GmBH. This compilation collates 12 examples and showcases a variety of work from an international roster of artists including Iraqi-British oud player Khyam Allami, Turkish born DJ Nene H, Kuwaiti musician Fatimi Al Qadiri, American performance artist MJ Harper and Indonesian noise duo Gabber Modus Operandi. The thread that runs through all this is cross pollinations between genre, geography, and chronology. Allami’s oud plays against LABOUR’s electronic washes and synthetic percussion with each element emphasizing and interrogating differences in modality and structure. On “White Noise” LABOUR contrast a 16th century harpsichord piece with static and effects dissolving into a robotic club beat which ends up evoking a cyborg Hooked on Classics. Their collaboration with Harper on the spoken word “ablution” is a reflection on love, religion, and abnegation with elements of gospel, eastern and creeping doom ambience. The Anthology has much of interest but is essential for Belgian composer Billy Bultheel’s “YLEM” featuring German countertenor Steve Katona who soars incandescent from a backdrop of industrial grind. The contrast between earthly weight of the music and radiant purity of the voice is breathtaking.

Andrew Forell

Vertonen — taif’ shel (Oxidation)

taif' shel by Vertonen

Give the Oxidation label credit for radical truthfulness. One of the bummers of our time is the frequency with which folks on BandCamp and elsewhere will call a short-run, blue or green-faced disc a CD when they are selling you a CD-R. Oxidation, on the other hand, is named after the process that will eventually render its products unplayable. On to the sounds. Vertonen is Blake Edwards, who has been working around the edges of sound for over 30 years. On taif’ shel, he displays absolute mastery over the combination of collected, electronically generated and carefully edited sounds. His skill rests on three qualities; knowing where to place sounds, knowing how long to let them carry on and having some pretty good ideas about which ones to use in the first place. He can make a drone of infinite (but never unnecessary) complexity, or punctuate flipping film-ends with a precisely situated, never repeated sequence of chops and splices, to name just two examples found on this impermanent but thoroughly rewarding disc.

Bill Meyer

Villagers — That Golden Time (Domino)

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That Golden Time is Villagers’ sixth album. The Conor O’Brien led project presents its most eclectic outing to date. A number of the songs are afforded pop treatment, consisting of memorable tunes and gentle, polished arrangements. The double-tracked vocals on “First Responder” is a case in point, about a relationship fragmenting while the singing coalesces, an interesting tension. “No Drama,” initially pared down to piano and O’Brien’s laconic vocals, eventually adds a coterie of Irish traditional instruments. “Keepsake” veers closer to mid-tempo electronica, with overlaid synth repetitions and treated vocals. The title track employs sustained violin lines, played by Peter Broderick, and an intricate form with supple harmonic shifts. “Brother Hen,” on the other hand, recalls the folk influences present from Villagers’ beginning. The diversity is diverting, even though That Golden Time feels like a collection of singles instead of an album statement.

Christian Carey

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actualhumancryptid · 6 months

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Kate Winslet Pushes Her Characters, and Herself, to the Edge

(New York Times interview/photos with a big readmore and no screencaps because accessibility)

As a young star, she endured Hollywood’s brutal treatment of women. Now she’s putting her resilience and grit on full display.

By Susan Dominus

Published March 3, 2024 Updated March 8, 2024

Kate Winslet was standing in front of a microphone, breathing hard. Sometimes she did it fast; sometimes she slowed it down. Sometimes the breathing sounded anxious; other times, it was clearly the gasping of someone who was winded. Before beginning a new take, Winslet stood stock still, hands opening and closing at her sides; she looked like a gymnast about to bound into a floor routine. Every breath seemed high-stakes, even though she was well into a long day of recording in a dim, windowless studio in London.

Winslet was adding grace notes to scenes of herself in “The Regime,” a dark satire created by Will Tracy, a writer and producer on “Succession,” that began airing on Max in early March. Winslet plays Elena Vernham, a dictator ruling precariously over an imaginary Central European country, and she was in the studio rerecording (as is common practice) lines that needed improving, including snippets of Elena’s propaganda: “Even if the protests happening in Westgate were real, which they are not” and “He’s still out there, working with the global elite to destroy everything we’ve built.” Sometimes Winslet laughed out loud after delivering a line, and sometimes she fell completely silent, absorbed in watching a scene of herself with her new recording looped in. “God, she’s such an awful, awful cow,” she said at one point, sounding appalled but also a little awed.

The part of Elena, a despot on the verge of a nervous breakdown, is a departure for Winslet, who has chosen, over the course of her career, a wide range of characters who have in common an intrinsic power. Elena is erratic and grasping, with a facade of strength that covers up a sinkhole of oozing insecurity. Winslet gave a lot of thought to how Elena would sound: She chose a high, tight voice, the sound of someone disconnected from the feelings that reside deep in the body. Elena has the slightest of speech impediments, a strange move she makes with her mouth, a hand that flies to her cheek when she is under real stress — those tells are her answer to King Richard’s hump, the body politic deformed.

Onscreen, as Elena, Winslet is coifed and practically corseted into form-fitting skirt suits, with lacquered fake nails. The day she was recording, in early January, Winslet might have been any woman at the office: blond hair, a hint of roots starting to show, jeans of no particular timely style that she occasionally tugged up from the waist, a black V-neck sweater she occasionally pulled down at the hem. It’s only when you look directly at her, face to face, that you see the extraordinary — the dark blue eyes, the beauty marks (not one, but two), the elaborately curved mouth.

As Winslet recorded, Stephen Frears, one of the show’s two directors, guided Winslet with considerable understatement from his seat across the room: a half-nod here, a thumbs-up there. “Was that all right, Stephen?” Winslet called over after one take; she peered over in his direction, expectant, obedient, professional. Frears, who directed “The Queen” and “Dangerous Liaisons,” among others, was silent, with his eyes closed, his head back. Winslet and a few members of the production team waited for his approval. As the moment stretched on, it seemed that Frears was not deep in thought but deep in sleep. Winslet appeared to register a brief moment of surprise, then smiled and moved on — all right, no problem.

Winslet is not precious or easily rattled; on set, over the years, she has broken a toe, suffered hypothermia and fainted, but very little slows her down when she’s shooting. She’s not a fan of a lunch break. Her sturdiness works its way into her performances onscreen: Even in many a period drama, Winslet, for all her femininity, conveys the impression of someone who could hold her own in a street fight. On one occasion when she actually found herself in peril, during a house fire at Richard Branson’s home in the British Virgin Islands, Winslet, efficiently assisting the evacuation, picked up Branson’s nearly-90-year-old mother and carried her down several stairs. (Winslet is married to Branson’s nephew, Edward Abel Smith.)

Winslet’s practicality makes her eminently relatable, but it comes with a forceful energy. A friend commented to me that Winslet’s patent resilience makes watching her — even in a film about a shipwreck or the Holocaust — an experience in which the viewer’s stress level never interferes with an appreciation of the work. “I don’t worry about her,” she says. “She will turn up OK. Even if she has to eat acorns all winter.”

The day after her dubbing session in London, Winslet and I met near her home on the coast of England; she had decided we would visit a local beach. When I entered her car, I noticed on the floor of the back seat a bowl of half-eaten oatmeal that had clearly been there for some time, a sight that made my heart leap — I somehow felt immediately absolved of all my own car-food sins. “There’s just stuff rolling around the back of the car, clink, clink, all the time,” Winslet said. “Sometimes I look in the back, and I’ll see, like, three apples.” At least, she would console herself, the intention was that apples be eaten. The procurer of those apples would be her husband, who goes by Ned, and their would-be consumer the couple’s 10-year-old son, Bear. (Winslet has two other children: a 23-year-old daughter from her first marriage, to Jim Threapleton; and a 20-year-old son from her second marriage, to the director Sam Mendes.)

The sky was cloud-covered, the air wet and chilled. The temperature hovered around 38 degrees, so we loaded our arms with blankets and traipsed in the direction of a white weathered beach hut a short sprint away from the water. Winslet’s hut is just one of thousands along the shores of the United Kingdom — on many beaches, they go on for miles — some of which have been passed down within families for upward of a century. (This one once belonged to Ned’s grandmother.) Winslet pulled on a lock, and the door swung open to reveal a mostly empty, unheated room with a few beach chairs, a skim board hanging on the wall and a bench in back, which is where we would sit and talk for the next several hours, covered in blankets and eating pastries Winslet bought that morning. Winslet also had her bathing suit with her. “I might go in for a swim later,” she told me.

Winslet is a devotee of cold-water swimming, which she has enjoyed not just near her home but also in Alaska and Norway, where, she told me, the water was dotted with ice. Cold-water swimming is popular in Britain, but it seems especially well suited to Winslet, who prides herself on stamina: For the 2022 movie “Avatar: The Way of Water,” Winslet, after considerable training, managed to hold her breath underwater for an astonishing seven minutes and 15 seconds (some Navy Seals never break three minutes). On set, she has little interest in the creature comforts that some stars expect: During the filming of “Mare of Easttown,” an HBO limited series from 2021, Winslet’s only real ask of Mark Roybal, one of the show’s executive producers, was that he replace the extra-large trailer he had intended for her with one the same size as those of her colleagues. “I’ve seen her literally pulling cables, moving props,” Roybal says. “It’s crazy. She’s not far from who she was when she grew up. That’s who she is.”

Winslet was raised in Reading, an hour west of London, in a working-class neighborhood where, she has said, many of her friends were aspiring to be flight attendants and hairstylists. Unhappy at her local school, she enrolled at age 11 in a private performing-arts school, offsetting some of the cost with voice-over work and a role as a teenage sleuth on a television series. Her father, an aspiring but ultimately unsuccessful actor, worked for the postal service and sold Christmas trees; when Winslet’s performing-arts school ended for her at age 16, she took a job slicing deli meat until her former principal suggested that she audition for a part in a movie based on the true story of two young girls who colluded in murder. Why did the principal think of Winslet? “I looked like the girl,” she told me. Winslet was desperate to win the part. “I wrote letters to the character,” she said. “You chant. You pray.” It turned out that the resemblance was important to the director, Peter Jackson, who wanted an unknown in the role. “That’s the lucky-break moment,” Winslet said.

The movie, “Heavenly Creatures,” set her career in motion, but she was still a fledgling actor. When she was brought in to audition for a small part in the 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility,” Winslet pretended she thought she was there to read for the more significant role of Marianne, younger sister to Elinor, played by Emma Thompson. Thompson, who also wrote the screenplay, ultimately championed Winslet’s casting. “It was immediately apparent to me that Kate would absolutely capture the quintessence of Marianne,” Thompson says. “She came in — 19 years old, I think — and had all the passion and the wide gaze of a youthful and optimistic spirit, a soul that believed the best in people. I rushed past her in the corridor, needing a pee, and she said as I came rushing back, ‘I know I can do this,’ and I think I might have said, ‘I know you can.’” The two women grew so close that Winslet kept, for many years, a souvenir of the last day of shooting — the box of an apple strudel that they feasted on for consolation as they tearfully prepared to part ways. (When Thompson turned 40, Winslet gave her the box for her birthday.)

In late 1995, Winslet was passed a long treatment for a film called “Titanic,” the printout of which she recently found in storage, discovering that she had written on the front page, “I love this.” The part of Rose in “Titanic” catapulted her into the realm of the 20th century’s great cinematic heroines. More endearing than Scarlett O’Hara, less thorny than Erin Brockovich, Rose is a Juliet-like figure in love with love who subverts the plot, surviving tragedy instead of succumbing to it. Since then, Winslet’s best performances are of imperfect women who persevere, who are flawed enough to do real damage but still evoke from the viewer deep, sometimes uncomfortable sympathy. In her role as Hanna, a former Nazi prison guard in “The Reader,” for which she won an Oscar, Winslet employs a forceful physicality that the viewer eventually understands as the unyielding rigidity of a woman who can’t make sense of complexity. She pulls off a more exuberant high-wire act in her portrayal of Clementine in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” a character whose fervent soul spills all over the place. When she meets Joel, the halting figure played by Jim Carrey, Clementine is careering as fast as the train on which they’re talking; she veers dangerously close, emotionally, to going off the rails altogether, with just enough charm and smarts to pull herself to safety, to keep Joel, and viewers, more intrigued than alarmed.

Winslet seems to relish pushing her characters — and herself — to the edge. Todd Haynes, who directed Winslet in “Mildred Pierce,” an HBO limited series about a divorced mother during the Great Depression, recalled one scene she shot in an evening gown on a rainy, frigid night in Queens. After the first take, Winslet, drenched and chilled, screamed out, elated, “This is what we get to do with our lives!” Winslet’s response did not surprise Haynes, given the roles she’d chosen in the past. “I think the pain that she sometimes endures is part of the thrill and excitement that she fully embraces in her work,” he says. “Kate wants to be put in places she’s never been before and be fearless about it.”

Moments like that, Winslet said, do thrill her: “It is living at the absolute edges of the physical lengths to which one can go to feel the most exhilarated and alive,” she said. Women who take risks interest her. In an upcoming biopic, “Lee,” which Winslet produced, she embodies Lee Miller, a onetime model who emerged from a traumatized youth to become a significant World War II photographer. But Winslet also clearly sees the discomfort she experiences on set as an inevitable part of moviemaking, something she has chosen to embrace rather than bemoan. “Still never to this day would I say: ‘I’m cold. I have to stop,’” Winslet said.

I’m cold, I thought to myself. I have to stop. We’d been sitting in that unheated shack, the ocean waves growing louder as the tide rolled in, for almost three hours, as if Winslet, in this instance too, would never be the one to suggest a break. Every so often, labradoodles, cocker spaniels, retrievers, dachshunds and their owners trotted by the aperture of the shack’s open door. The number of people walking their dogs seemed to have picked up, even as the day got colder; Winslet theorized, without resentment, that maybe word had gotten out. Finally, we agreed it was time to go, but by then it was too late for Winslet, who had plans to visit a new godchild, to go swimming.

If only I’d brought a bathing suit, we could have both gone, I said as we left, meaning not a word of it. Winslet brightened at the thought: We’d go tomorrow, she assured me — she could lend me a bathing suit!

Some measure of Winslet’s fame is tied to her beauty, but she seems intent on deflating its importance, using her influence to convey the message that women have value beyond their looks. In “Mare of Easttown,” Winslet, who played Marianne (Mare) Sheehan, a small-town detective grieving a dead son, refused to let editors retouch so much as a wrinkle. A “global ambassador” for L’Oréal Paris, she appears in an ad in full hair and makeup, then pins up her blond strands and starts wiping her makeup off, all the while speaking to the viewer with the urgency and focus she would give to any climactic monologue. “To believe that you are worth it is something we can all help each other to do,” she says. “And perhaps as we all walk through the world, we can show up for each other without judgment.”

Winslet came of age in the era of waif-chic, which has made her all too expert in the subject of harsh objectification. After her role in “Titanic,” public scrutiny of her body was so chronic and exacting that it threatened to consume her. The British tabloids tracked her weight as if it were a matter of national security; Joan Rivers cracked wise about Winslet sinking the Titanic. In a 1998 Rolling Stone article, Winslet said that she was a heavyset teenager who “sensibly lost the weight doing Weight Watchers. End of story.” She now openly acknowledges that at one brief point in her life, she struggled with an eating disorder. “I never told anyone about it,” she said of that time. “Because guess what — people in the world around you go: ‘Hey, you look great! You lost weight!’” For that last bit, Winslet slipped into a pitch-perfect American accent — Los Angeles, maybe a film executive. “So even the compliment about looking good is connected to weight. And that is one thing I will not let people talk about. If they do, I pull them up straight away.” (For the sake of simplicity, I will direct the reader to assume that curses have been edited out of any Winslet quote on the subject of weight, celebrity or tabloids.)

In the hut, I had wondered aloud to Winslet about the impact of Ozempic on all this. “I actually don’t know what Ozempic is,” Winslet said. “All I know is that it’s some pill that people are taking or something like that.” I told her that Ozempic — which apparently has not yet saturated English culture as it has in the United States — was a very in-demand diabetes drug now commonly taken off-label for weight loss.

“But what is it?” Winslet said, her mouth full of pastry. I went on: It was a shot people took that dampened their interest in food. Winslet looked appalled — as if I’d just told her that millions of Americans were voluntarily injecting themselves with something that made them feel dead inside when they looked at a sunset. “Oh, my God,” she said. “This sounds terrible. Let’s eat some more things!” She made a show of eating more of her pastry, crumbs tumbling onto the blankets.

Together we watched a short video highlighting Winslet’s early career; at one moment, seeing red carpet shots of herself the year after she won the Oscar for “The Reader,” Winslet commented sharply, “Look how thin I was.” This was not Winslet yearning for that moment; it was Winslet feeling sadness for that former self, a young woman who was separating from her second husband and could barely eat from stress, watching her private life become the subject of entertainment-news headlines.

What Winslet accepted as the norm back then she now understands as small cruelties that she is relieved her younger counterparts no longer have to endure in quite the same way. Although a few actors of Winslet’s age have scoffed at what they perceive as the preciousness of intimacy coordinators, Winslet thought her entire experience as a young actor might have been different had they been available to her. “I would have benefited from an intimacy coordinator every single time I had to do a love scene or be partially naked or even a kissing scene,” she said. “It would have been nice to have had someone in my corner, because I always had to stand up for myself.” And often, she didn’t — she felt that whatever was being asked of her was simply part of the job. She has a litany of unspoken objections she wished she had felt empowered to make: “I don’t like that camera angle. I don’t want to stand here full-frontal nude. I don’t want this many people in the room. I want my dressing gown to be closer. Just little things like that. When you’re young, you’re so afraid of pissing people off or coming across as rude or pathetic because you might need those things. So learning to have a voice for oneself in those environments was very, very hard.”

On set, she rarely felt empowered to complain, even when the conditions were difficult. In a 1997 Los Angeles Times article, Winslet, still exhausted from the seven-month shoot of “Titanic,” described the experience as an “ordeal,” recalling two moments of filming in the water that sounded distressing in her telling (though she emphasized to me that she was never in danger). When I spoke to the film’s director, James Cameron, he said that although the set was extremely safe, he might have given Winslet more space to raise whatever subjective concerns about the work she was feeling at the time. “You have to sort of be given permission before the fact,” he said. “I can’t say, sitting here today, that I made that abundantly clear.” He described Winslet as “a force of nature,” adding that “when someone projects that kind of energy and that kind of power to the people around her, it’s difficult to see when they’re in trouble emotionally.”

Like many of her characters, Winslet considers herself a survivor: She survived two public divorces, and she survived the paparazzi, packs of men who chased her in cars or staked out her house. (When she was a new mother, she would put on a hat and sunglasses, hand her baby over a wall to the next-door neighbor, climb over the wall herself, then take the baby through the backyard gate and get on a city bus, where, she swears, no one ever recognized her.)

It’s clear that some of the strength Winslet projects — her nothing-stops-me attitude on set — is a defense she built up, by necessity, years ago. “I was already experiencing huge amounts of judgment, persecution, all this bullying,” she said. “People can call me fat. They can call me what they want. But they certainly cannot say that I complained and I behaved badly. Over my dead body.” To object, especially for young women, was to risk a ruined reputation. “I would not have known how to do that without people in power turning around and saying, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, you know, her again, that complainer,’” Winslet said. “I would rather suffer in silence than ever let that happen to me, even still today.”

To Winslet, as a mother, it’s a particular horror that the public body-shaming once reserved for celebrities is now a trial that any young woman with a phone might go through. For British television, she recently made an improvised film, “I Am Ruth,” with her daughter, Mia Threapleton, about a mother trying to understand the unraveling of her teenager; behind the closed door of her bedroom, amid the privacy of the world of her phone, Threapleton’s character is enduring bullying on social media in response to revealing images she has posted of herself. With “I Am Ruth,” Winslet became an Everymom, opening her up to interactions of a different kind. “I’ll go to the grocery store, I’ll go anywhere, like walking down the street, and people will stop me,” she said. A parking attendant put her hand on Winslet’s arm and started to weep; Winslet knew intuitively it was about “I Am Ruth.”

In her roles, and in her own life, Winslet has moved, sure-footed, from the role of ingénue to the role of the fierce protector. Roybal described Winslet as an advocate for the crew on “Mare of Easttown,” someone who would personally call the executives if she felt there was some inequity on their part. While shooting “Mare,” Winslet sat in the trunk of a car where the then-19-year-old Angourie Rice would be filming a kissing scene, so Winslet — a safe, big-sister figure — could personally pass on notes from the director coming in through a radio.

By the time she filmed “Mare,” Winslet had decades worth of emotional experiences she could readily access. “In the beginning,” she said, “I would rummage around my emotional toolbox and pull out something that had actually happened to me. But that stopped working for me at a certain point. I don’t know why. As you get older, you live more life; you have more real experiences that you add to the emotional toolbox without realizing that you’re doing it. And so sometimes, as you get older, quite honestly, emotions are easier to access because they just simmer below the surface all the time — because there’s just so damn many of them.” Winslet’s scripts are heavily covered in notes laying out the emotional marks she would need to hit.

The hazard of watching Winslet as Mare is that her acting is so nuanced that you suddenly see others’ elsewhere as telegraphed semaphore (the bitter wife, her arms folded across her chest; the disappointed teacher, mouth tugged downward). In a scene from “Mare” in which Winslet tries to tell her grandson’s pediatrician about her travails with her son, Kevin, who died by suicide, she is reflecting not any one thing but instead the several conversations her character seems to be having simultaneously: one with the pediatrician, one with her past self, as she drifts in and out of being present, and another with her current self, as she struggles to control the frustration she feels at how little the doctor can grasp of this painful history. Watching Winslet, we don’t see a protective mother; we see our own mothering, the depth of our own complicated feelings about the mistakes we’ve made, the gap between all that we feel and all that can’t be easily said.

Winslet seemed uncomfortable talking about her process, not so much because she feared it would sound pretentious, but because it was personal. Long after “Mare” was finished shooting, Winslet wept in interviews when talking about the character’s loss of a son; she couldn’t stop reverting to those emotions she so carefully internalized, any more than she could clear out all the lines of dialogue that have lodged themselves in her consciousness, no matter how much she would like to forget them.

“I finally realized I needed a bit of therapy” to move on from playing Mare, she said. “You actually change something in your brain chemistry about how you think — you know, it’s very, very strange.” She would be at the store buying jeans and realize that she was buying the jeans that Mare would wear — awful-looking jeans, in fact. Her children would sidle up next to her at the house, on days after filming that had left her depleted. “Kevin’s not real,” they would whisper, as if letting her in on a secret. “And neither is Mare. It’s just pretend.” Being an actor, of course, entails coming all too close to the knowledge that for someone in the world, that suffering, that pain, is real. Winslet’s empathy — a protective instinct that extends to her characters — is part of what makes her performances so powerful.

The day after our talk in the hut, Winslet and I headed back to the beach in her car. On our way over, Ned, already waiting there with Bear, called to check in. “The sun is shining,” he told his wife. “It’s really special. But I think everybody got the memo. So — quite a few people.” Ned’s subtext was clear: She would not have a lot of privacy. “Great!” Winslet said, then laughed, not quite a nervous laugh but a sendup of one.

At the beach, Bear was kicking around a soccer ball with his dad. Chatty, funny, smiley, he told a story about the time his dog peed on his favorite soccer ball — he cocked his leg just so, a bit of brilliant and spontaneous mimicry, which I observed again when he put on the voice of his older brother, urging him on in a bit of daredevilry.

I changed quickly into a suit that Winslet lent me and put on a long fleece-lined coat made just for this winter-swimming business, and then there was no more avoiding it: I joined Winslet at the shore. We hesitated briefly, and suddenly a pack of young men were walking by. “Oh, there really are a lot of people,” she said, and for a moment I thought I saw a look of real distress on her face. I remembered she told me that she left New York in 2010, after living there for many happy years, in part because the paparazzi seemed to be picking up their focus on her: She noticed herself looking over her shoulder too often and decided it was time to get away.

Winslet quickly whipped her head around and trained her eyes back toward the ocean. It would clearly be better to move forward than stand paralyzed and exposed on the shore, so in we went. A step, then another — she jog-walked her way into the water, and I had no choice but to follow.

“You have to commit, Susan!” she called out. I managed to pull my focus away from the daggers of cold and look up in the direction of her voice. Fifteen feet away, she was submerged up to her chin. Her eyes were closed. She was far enough out from the shore to be unrecognizable to the public. The water hid her. She breathed in and out slowly, meditatively. A minute passed, then a few more. And then she was up, cursing, cursing the water, cursing the whole idea, laughing, heading toward shore.

#kate winslet #new york times #kate winslet interview #longpost #long reads #the regime #sorry not sorry nyt but you paywall everything #I haven't seen this around here but maybe I missed it #so anyway decided to liberate it for everyone

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sincerelywhistler · 2 years

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CEBALRAI

In the most recent channel anniversary trivia livestream, Erik mentioned he once upon a time ago had plans for a soft Sadism boyfriend character. This is my OC of said boy, Cebalrai!

More under the cut:

Here’s a Pinterest board that captures his vibes :)

And a Spotify playlist as well

• Cebalrai (pronounced as “SEB-all-rye”) often goes by 'Ceb' (still pronounced like "Seb”). Beta Ophiuchi, also named Cebalrai, is a star in the equatorial constellation of Ophiuchus. Ophiuchus is the canonical name of Gavin’s steward and I will SOMEHOW absolutely be incorporating that into his story k thanks

• He works for the Department in the mental health field as a psychotherapist, most often with Seers in specific. As a Sadism demon, he’s able to feed from his empowered clients' troubled emotions while counseling them during their personal healing journeys.

• Coincide with that Department role, he is a thread-cutter (a demon who is responsible for cutting the magical threads of empowered humans to Aria). Our beloved Seer, Morgan, stated that, "there very serious mental and emotional repercussions to a decision like [getting threads cut]; it is not one to be made lightly," (Learning About Your Magical Abilities From a Seer). It is Ceb's job to reassuringly assist empowered persons of whether or not cutting their threads is the best decision, subsequently severing their ties to magic in a comfortable setting should they choose to proceed. He’s a soft and gentle presence, a great fit for the job.

• He and Morgan are work buddies :)

• Ceb has a soft spot for humanity, being obsessed with human traditions, culture, history, psychology, so on. The prospect of being mortal fascinates him more than anything. If there’s a non-magic way of doing a task, he’ll take that route.

• Green witchy boi hehe

• TALL MAN!! HUGE BOY BUILT FOR GIVING HUGS THAT SWALLOW YOU WHOLE!!

• Baker of any and all things sweet

• The star's name literally translates to "dog of the shepard”. Reflecting this, Ceb, like a sheepdog/cattle-dog, has a natural inclination to guide people towards their sense of safety and belonging. Task-oriented and loyal until the end of time.

• He loves gardening! Talking to the plants puts his mind at ease. And because he doesn't need to feed his physical body with physical foods, he often gifts his home-grown produce and herbs away to his struggling patients and the few kind coworkers he knows.

• Probably smells like rain tbh

• Cannot do math to save his life

• If he’s not wearing cozy sweaters, he’s in the most ethereal attire because he’s extra like that

• Avid reader! Romance is his absolute favorite genre. But as sweet as he is, bro won't hesitate to go on tirades about how toxic or poorly the relationships in some books are portrayed. Colleen Hoover may be his worst enemy.

• Favorite book is Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

• Hydrangea tattoos to symbolize grace and gratitude. Bein’ a Sadism Demon comes with a lot of baggage, man

• Main love languages are acts of service and quality time

• Lives a quiet life in a secluded, little cottage-like house out on the rural edge of town with his three corgis— LaVern, Maxine, and Patricia (aptly named after The Andrews Sisters, a female big-band & swing vocalist group popular in the 1930s-50s, aka my Ceb's favorite era of music).

• Will try to pet any animal. The opossums by his house know little peace.

• Rabid for cherry vanilla coca-cola he is an addict

I've got whole documents pertaining to this big dummy, and you’ll be seeing much more of him in the future <3

#redacted audio #redacted fandom #redacted oc #cebalrai #redactedverse #i love him so much #redacted art #he’s my bestest boy #original character #procreate #sincerelywhistler #Whistler’s OCs

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transbodydreams · 2 years

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Things transwomen should think about before they start transitioning - clothes edition!

Okay, I'm a month into committing to transitioning, and one of the first things I've had to deal with is building a brand new wardrobe. I had a handful of feminine items, but nothing that was practical and nowhere NEAR enough to actually have something to wear every day! It's been really hit or miss so far - I do now have enough cute, wearable clothes that I could wear something different every day for a week, but that included buying at least as much stuff that didn't fit, was poorly made, or turned out to look terrible on me. I've had to entirely relearn how to shop for clothes and wade through a ton of confusing, contradictory information about sizes, fabrics, styles, and all of the things that make women's clothing so much more fun (and infuriating) than men's. These are a few of the key lessons I've learned that I wanted to share - hopefully someone will see this and not make at least some of the mistakes I made? 😏

Trying to build an entirely new woman's wardrobe all at once is f*cking expensive! Women's clothes cost more than men's in general, and bigger sizes cost more than smaller sizes - sometimes a LOT more, since often the sale prices you see online only apply to the smallest sizes. As a man I could walk into Old Navy or someplace like it and pick up a couple pairs of pants, 2-3 shirts, and some underwear for less than $75, but the equivalent women's basics at a will cost you anywhere from $100 to $200, even if you're shopping at a discount chain like Marshall's. You'll find better deals online, but still expect everyday clothes to cost you at least 25% more for even the most simple items, and don't even get me started on the cost of a really nice dress!

Set a budget and plan your purchases based on what you need, not just what you want. You need to start with basic FUNCTIONAL items like practical, wearable underwear (hose, panties, bras. etc.), season appropriate tops, leggings, skirts, dresses, and if winter's coming, don't forget sweaters and outerwear!

You really do need to know ALL of your measurements before trying to buy clothes - don't guess, you'll get it wrong! There are lots of online resources that tell you what and how to measure. Get yourself a measuring tape and write it all down! Oh, and good luck trying to figure out what a listed "bust" measurement means for a top or dress - does it mean underbust or chest or overbust or bust, because those are all different names for two different measurements 😒

You're going to want to throw out all of your boy clothes, but remember that some female things are just not going to fit you yet, no matter how badly you want them too. Pants are a good example, especially fitted jeans. Unless you're really lucky or you plan on wearing a padded girdle all the time, you probably don't have the butt or hips yet to make most women's jeans work. If you already have some men's slim-fit stretch jeans, for example, very few people will notice the difference from women's low waisted jeans (other than the fly going the wrong way) and they'll look better on you. Plus, some men's items can be repurposed to be worn in a more feminine way, so resist the urge to burn them all!

If you're only wearing your fem clothes at home you can afford to be a little impractical, but if you intend to start wearing them in public remember that you'll need practical stuff that you can wear to do mundane things like grocery shopping or going to work. Don't be that girl in the bodycon mini-dress and 6" platform heels in the produce section!

If there's someplace you feel comfortable going in person, you really should start by trying some things on in a store to get a sense of how things fit and what will work on your body vs what you WISH would work on your body. Online ordering is private and safe and awesome, but there's no telling if what you buy will fit or work for you. If you take the time to try on a bunch of things on for real first, at least you'll have a basic idea of what might work and what definitely won't.

Think about what you want your personal style to be, and try to be realistic about it. Much more than men's clothes, women's clothes are really designed for very specific body types, and no matter how much you wish you could pull off a look, you need to figure out what actually works for your body now. Are you thin enough or young enough to carry off that super cute ultra-stylish street and clubwear, or is it just going to make you look old and fat? Do you really have the hips and butt to pull off those booty shorts? Think about all the times you saw someone dressing inappropriately for their age or body type and cringed, and don't be that person. If your goal is to look good in those styles then figure out what you need to do for it to work for you, but don't waste all of your money buying things that don't look good now and won't fit when you achieve the body you're working toward. Patience, woman! You'll get there!

All that said, if you really feel great wearing things that aren't necessarily "right" for your body, then f*ck anyone who tries to judge you for it. You be you, girl!

Just because it says it's a size 12 doesn't mean it actually IS a size 12. Women's sizes vary a LOT depending on what brand you're buying or where you're buying it from, especially if they only use small/medium/large etc instead of numerical sizes. Find a store or brand that fits you consistently and use that as your gold standard. that way if you buy something from a different brand or store you can get a sense of whether their items are going to trend bigger or smaller.

Finally, a word about wish.com. Someone suggested this site, which is basically the Chinese version of Amazon, as a place to get some stuff really inexpensively, but it is definitely a buyer beware situation. The prices are jaw droppingly low, it's true (seriously, you can find just about anything for under $5!), but it's REALLY hit or miss, like you should expect at least a third of what you buy to be unusable. The sizes are all over the map - some items don't list a size chart at all, and in general everything is a size or two smaller than you would expect it to be, except when it's not. Plus, a lot of the less expensive stuff they have is really poor quality, and their shipping times and costs are RIDICULOUS! I ordered a bunch of cute summery things and not only did the shipping cost more than the items, it's taken so long for them to get here that it's now too cold for me to wear them anywhere except around the apartment with the heat on full blast! I love the site and will probably keep using it (who could resist getting 3 dresses, two tops, two pairs of heels, 2 pairs of leggings, and a couple of cute bras and panties for under $100, even including the exorbitant shipping and the likelihood that at least 4 of those items will be unwearable?) but do your homework and at least read the product info and reviews before purchasing! And remember, it's really easy to get a refund on wish, and given that they only ask you to return items that cost more than $25, all that cheap stuff is basically free to try if you're willing to wait 4-8 weeks for it!

#mtf trans #trans #cute outfit #things I wish I'd known before I started transitioning #transgender #transitioning tips

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sweaterproducer · 7 months

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ilovewhiteroses · 2 years

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Moonlighting

Pairing: The Corinthian x Female Witch Reader Genre: Fluff, romance Warnings: Very little smut Rating: None (the smut is very minimal, so I don’t think it’s needed) Notes: - If you are curious about the ’Moonlighting’ theme song, you can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sECrATrDzY

You and Corinthian were chilling on a Saturday night like an ordinary couple. Little did you know that things would get serious between you and your boyfriend…in a good way 💕

Ever since you came home from New York, you've spent all your time with Corinthian, your boyfriend. You were in the Big Apple for a week to see the sets and meet the actors of the movie that will be made from your book You were the executive producer and fortunately, you were satisfied with everything.

Alongside Corinthian, you spent time with your friend Cole and your family. They were less interested in your trip to New York, but more so in your love life. They asked if you have someone and you only told them that you are dating a guy, but you don't say more because the relationship is still fresh. And then, you didn't feel like answering their million questions.

Your boyfriend told you everything that happened while you were away. He said that Sandman, aka Morpheus, was freed from his 100-year captivity and how vile the recently created Dream Agents were. You listened to him sometimes in amazement, sometimes in shock, but you were glad that he was not hurt.

It was Saturday night. You and Corinthian were like an ordinary couple: you were watching TV from your bed, while you and him were lying on your stomach, swinging your legs. You didn't feel like cooking, so you ordered hamburgers with cola and French fries. You nibbled the fries from a large plate while watching TV, and sometimes you fed each other. You were wearing Corinthian's sweater with the sleeves rolled up, and he was wearing grey sweatpants. His sunglasses were on the bedside table next to your bed. He didn't wear his sunglasses at home because he didn't feel the need to since he showed himself to you. It was strange to him at first. He thought he felt more vulnerable and naked without sunglasses than without clothes, but you were important to him, so he showed you his true self. It meant a lot to him that you accepted him like that, with unusual eyes.

You watched Moonlighting, one of your favourite series. You used to watch it a lot and since then, whenever you have time, you sometimes watched an episode on DVD. You loved the atmosphere of the ’80s and the legendary duo of Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd. Corinthian, on the other hand, only saw a few episodes, said he wasn't really hooked, and then he had other things to do.

"Bruce was hot when he was young." you said as you bit into your fries.

"Young Cybill wasn’t bad either. If they both looked like this today, I would definitely have a threesome with them." Corinthian teased you, you rolled your eyes while let out a big sigh. He was a real artist at making every conversation around the topic of sex, but that's exactly what you loved in him.

He continued

"Did you know they allegedly didn't get along on set?"

"Yes, and I'm a little sorry, because they were so beautiful together." you said regretfully, as if it were two of your acquaintances. "You know what I figured out?" you looked at Corinthian.

"What?" He asked with raised eyebrows and a French fry in his hand.

"You're like Bruce's character, David. You're both well-dressed, charming, attractive guys, only women have a crush on David, while every breathing living thing has a crush on you." you said with a chuckle and ran your fingers through Corinthian’s hair

“Hmm, I think there is some truth in what you say.” he giggled mischievously, "I say you're like Maddie, only hotter." he said with a wink. You leaned over and gave him a kiss on the lips.

The episode came to an end with the catchy theme song performed by Al Jarreau. This song was one of those that always cheered you up when you were sad. You started singing.

"I didn't know you had such a good voice." Corinthian said in surprise. You then sat up and continued singing with theatrical hand movements, He was lying on his side looking at you happily. He loved how funny and silly you were.

You stood up on the bed and continued the song, making sure that the rest of the fries didn't fall off the plate. Corinthian laughed hard, then got out of bed and reached for his phone and started filming you.

“Oh Y/N, this is some nice footage! If you were a celebrity, I could make a fortune out of this!”

You pointed at him while singing and then said.

"Corinthian, if you don't stop filming, I'm going to call my lawyer!" you tried to pretend you were serious, but then you laughed. You got off the bed and tried to take the phone out of his hand, but you didn't have much of a chance considering he was almost a head taller than you. I’ll show you, you thought to yourself and teleported the phone out of his hand and onto the bedside table.

"Shit, I forgot you're a witch." Corinthian slapped his forehead and pretended to be surprised at what he saw. You rarely used your supernatural abilities, because you would solve everything yourself. But sometimes you used your magic power just for fun. The theme song ended, you teleported your own phone into your hand and searched for the full version of the song. Corinthian started humming.

"Shall we dance?" he asked and held out his hand to you. You gave him yours and he pulled you close. He held one hand up next to his head, interlocking his fingers with yours, his other hand holding your back and you clinging to his shoulder. You started waltzing around the bedroom, while Corinthian sometimes spun you around, sometimes he even dipped you. You were as skilled as if you had been dancers in your real life, even though you were only improvising.

He suddenly picked you up and fell on the bed with you. You looked into his teeth eyes. The whole evening you felt like you were in a romantic movie. It occurred to you that Corinthian might never had the chance to be in such a loving atmosphere with someone, but with you, he could experience the nicer, more human side of life.

“Y/N.” He said your name with his Southern drawl, which you loved so much.

"Yes, Corinthian?" you asked and stroked his cheek. He took your hand and kissed your palm. He looked deep into your eyes.

"I love you." he said.

Your heart began to beat faster, your breath hitched. You were overcome with such a feeling of happiness that you wanted to cry. He had told you several times before that he loved this and that about you, but this was the first time he actually said it. He didn't need a string quartet to serenade you, he didn't need to write it on a big poster. It was just the two of you.

And it was perfect.

"I love you too." you told him and you kissed each other gently. Corinthian looked at you, his sweet smile was radiating warmth, then kissed you again. He moaned loudly and deepened the kiss, then took off your loose sweater. He started kissing your neck, then your breasts, while you ran your fingers through his hair. Then he wandered lower and pulled your panties off. You couldn't wait for him to satisfy you so you could show him how much you love him…

Tags: @placeinthemiddleofnowhere, @thecorilove86

#the corinthian #the corinthian fanfic #the corinthian & female reader #boyd holbrook #Sandman #fluff #romance #fanfiction

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