#the director for instance

[trannydean-moved]

michigan and arizona (my rvb oc) would bully the SHIT outta each other constantly

I can believe it! Mich loves to mess with anyone and everyone. It's pretty much her full-time job to be a nuisance 👍

[numbuh424]

Light's wardrobe in the 1st half of the jdrama (ep 1 - 5) vs his wardrobe in the 2nd half (ep 6 - 11).

[spiceupyourfcknife]

So assuming that the only true thing in Armands story was the fact that mutiny was building among the coven, did he just release Louis bc it was convenient?

Like if Armand directed the play, made Lestat come and act in it, and wasn’t the one who save Louis, - did he actually save Louis bc he could hear him screaming from starvation… despite Louis saying he did not have the energy to scream…. Or did he just want to kill the coven who after centuries of being led by him turned on him after he’d burnt his own escape route.

[coldshrugs]

landmark

pairing: io laithe / estinien varlineau word count: 4.6k summary: [modern au] estinien meets io in a support group for grieving youths. set five years before this.

Estinien is early—the first one in the room, as usual, even before Counselor Miounne arrives. It’s part of the ritual.

Hit the lights and dim them to three-quarters. Turn on the fancy instant coffeemaker, make sure there are enough of those little fucking pods for everyone. Sugar and powdered creamer too. Music on, some unobtrusive classical harp thing he doesn’t care for. Then he arranges nine chairs in a loose circle and, selfishly, puts the least squeaky one in his spot across from the window.

It helps, to do these tasks before their sessions. The work allows him to mentally prepare for this, because when is it easy to circle death’s drain for two hours?

With the space set up, he slings his backpack over his claimed chair and waits.

They stroll into the meeting in ones and twos. They make their coffee, ask about their weeks (in the casual way, where you’re supposed to answer “fine” even if it wasn’t; the real answers will come later). Eventually, Miounne enters and everyone finds a seat.

He isn’t great with names, but he knows a few by now. Lyse, the one with the sister and dad, and one of the youngest members. Leofard, the one with the mom. He knows all the faces though, and the one hovering by the door is new.

She’s tall, but slouching a little, crossing her arms like she’s scared to take up space or trying not to be seen. Inky blue hair is piled into a loose bun on top of her head, with long wavy strands hanging around her freckled face. Her eyes are bloodshot, almost too focused. She must be new.

As he watches her, her gaze cuts over to him—

“Estinien,” Miounne calls. His attention snaps from the girl at the door to his counselor. “Another chair, please?”

“Yeah, sure.” He quickly grabs one from the nearest stack, looking for a decent place to put it. Two kids slide their chairs apart so he can fit this one between them. Right in front of the window.

He sits again and Miounne claps softly, still standing in the center of the circle.

“Hi friends,” she says, more gently than usual. “It’s been a while since we’ve welcomed a new face, hasn’t it? I know we’re all capable of extending warmth and patience to those who need it, so let’s be mindful of that as we welcome Io to our group, okay?”

She gestures to the door, beckoning the new girl in. Io. He’ll try to remember that. He wonders who she lost and when, and tries not to wonder how. The how never matters anyway. Gone is gone.

“Welcome to Haven: Youth Grief Counseling, Io. Take a seat, just there, sweetie.”

Io sits down and Estinien regrets this seating arrangement; he’s lost the window view. She glances around the circle, her polite smile is a tight line. Her eyes flick to him once more, then back to the floor.

Miounne sits too. She claps one more time and they begin.

Next week starts the same. His chin is in his hand, elbow propped on his bouncing knee as they arrive. Lyse. Leofard. New girl.

Leo takes his seat next to Estinien and leans over. Oh god.

“Estinien,” he whispers loud enough for almost everyone to hear. His eyes flash to the new girl making coffee by herself. “I found out what her deal is.”

“Happy for you,” Estinien says. That’s not his business. But he stupidly glances at Leo anyway.

“She’s like you. Total wipeout—we’re talking mom, dad, two younger siblings—about a year ago. Just now going back to school, apparently.” He looks at her again, taking a bold head-to-toe survey, and Estinien follows. She’s tall, willowy, and there’s something disciplined about her posture; the set of her shoulders feels intentional even in her depression slump. Her ears tilt, and he turns back around. Leofard is still staring. “Wonder what else she’s ready to get back into…” He winks at Estinien.

“Probably best to leave her alone. She’s not here to find a date,” he says.

Leo huffs in fake offense. “Well, neither am I but if it happens, it happens.”

A month passes, one week bleeding into the next, and Estinien is always early to Haven. But someone is earlier today, of all days. The door is open, the light is on, and the chairs are in their circle.

Io is waiting.

He remembers her name now. It’s easy to remember the girl who hasn’t said anything in five sessions. It’s unusual, but understandable; they’re all strangers to her, and if what Leofard said is true, he’s impressed she’s showing up at all.

Estinien recalls what his loss was like a fresh wound—the anger throbbing in his chest, sobbing his voice raw for days, not eating or sleeping. He wouldn’t speak to Alberic at first, either. It feels so childish to him now. But looking at her… those feelings echo in his chest, and he is sharply reminded that grief doesn’t shrink.

He shoots her a courtesy smile as he starts the coffeemaker and CD player.

“Sorry about the shitty music,” he says as the sound of softly plucked strings fills the space. When he looks over, she’s staring at the floor again, eyes wide—that awkward “what the fuck” face—and his stomach flips. He said something wrong.

Cool.

He takes his seat across from her, trying to bury the urge to wait on the bench just outside the room when his chair squeaks. Great. He takes a deep breath and rolls his eyes. To deal or not to deal? He is, unfortunately, too big for the noise to keep from happening and he can’t be annoyed for the next two hours. What does he care if she thinks he looks crazy?

He stands up and jostles the next chair, which is better but not great. He tries the next. Even worse.

“What are you doing?”

The rasp of her voice is so quiet that he doesn’t fully catch the words.

He looks up from the red plastic in his hand. “What?”

She looks like she wishes she’d not asked at all, rubbing a hand anxiously over her arm. She sighs. “With the chairs. What are you doing with the chairs?”

“Trying to find one that doesn’t squeak. I usually—”

“I took that one.” She glances up at him, grimacing, but there’s a light in her eyes. It’s the least miserable he’s seen her so far. She thinks this is funny. “Sorry. You can have it back.”

He puts a hand up when she stands. He’s not taking the chair from the sad girl. “Uh… no. No, you can take it. There’s probably another one that isn’t annoying as fuck, I’ll find it.”

“Then let me help you. It’s only fair, since I disturbed your whole—” she gestures slowly around the meeting room— “process.” God, her voice is in shreds.

He can’t say no when this is the first sign of life she’s shown in over a month, at least here. He nods. “Sure, if you want.”

They go through the chairs in the circle, then the others neatly stacked in the corner. They don’t really talk, besides simple directions: “I tried that one already,” and “will you pass me another,” and “holy shit, that’s the worst one yet.” Estinien is keenly aware of her shifting around him, slowly at first, and then with less hesitation. Finally, they find a chair that doesn’t creak when he sits or moves. It goes in his spot and they clean up the rest.

“Hey,” Io says, and the word is conspiratorial. She catches his gaze, and something about hers makes him feel like glass, like they almost know each other. Like he’s seen her before, a blurry smile littering the backgrounds of photos in the album he managed to salvage, only viewed in profile or half out of frame, obscured by the barely remembered vacation or birthday party in the foreground. He swallows as she reaches into her bag and pulls out a black marker. “Should we make sure we never lose these again?”

“Vandalism? In our therapy group?” He squints, shoving down the fondness she’s conjured in just a few minutes. “Do you even need to ask?”

She laughs, or tries to. It comes out weak and cracked as she crosses to his side of the circle and kneels beside him. She pops the cap off the marker. “It’s Estinien, right?”

He nods, “Yeah.”

“I’m Io. The other total wipeout”—she air quotes Leo’s label—“but you already knew that.” She scribbles a small “E” on the side of the chair then heads back over to her own, where she writes an “I.”

It’s almost time for group to start.

“Are you gonna talk about it today?” Estinien asks. It’s just them sitting directly across from one another, surrounded by empty chairs.

Io shrugs, and her body seems to fold in on itself. Making herself small again. “I don’t know. It’s hard to talk about it at all. I’ll try?”

“You don’t have to. But it does help, in a weird way.”

The others drift in at the usual leisurely pace, Miounne claps, and they begin.

First question: “How are you feeling today?”

They go in a circle starting at Miounne’s left. Some answers are simple, like Leo’s.

“Pretty good. I started planning a trip for fall break, somewhere I think Mom would’ve liked to see. I’m looking forward to telling you guys about the trouble I got into when I’m back.”

Sometimes there’s a follow-up, sometimes Miounne will let it hang. Estinien has no idea how she gauges that, but it feels right.

He’s third to answer.

How does he feel today? He picks at the frayed edge of a hole in his jeans.

“I’m kind of anxious today. I declared my major this year so everything feels… more real, I guess. I’m trying to study for a couple of tests next week but I read the page and it may as well be blank. Nothing sticks. I keep worrying I might…” He pauses. This is normally when he’d look out the window; when something heavy rises to the surface, it’s easier to look outside, but for five weeks, Io has been sitting in front of him. The broken habit means he shares less. But how can he encourage her if he can’t bend a little himself?

He looks up, and there she is—dark, curious, and strangely calming, her eyes burn a hole right through him. Behind her, the trees in the courtyard are starting to take on shades of autumn, gold and bronze intensified by the sunlight filtering through the leaves. It’s a view he can deal with. Io gives him an almost imperceptible nod.

“I worry I might let them down. It feels stupid to say out loud,” he laughs with a short snorted breath. “It’s always in the back of my mind though: what would they think of me now? What does this action mean to them? I guess it doesn’t mean anything and I should just study for the damn test so I can actually be someone they’d be proud of. Anyway… yeah, I’m anxious today.”

Miounne reclines a little in her seat. “Have you tried anything to help you study, to shift that focus on what your family would think towards something more current?”

He nods, looking from Io to Miounne. “Yeah, uh, I’ve asked a friend to join me. We’re going to try that today. He’s been pretty supportive since learning about all of this, and his grades are better than mine anyway. And I try to think about Alberic, my former guardian, I guess. I think he’d be proud of me no matter how I end up, so that helps.”

“Excellent,” she says, looking around at the others before spelling out the lesson. “Leaning on others is a great way to remind ourselves how loved and valued we are, especially when lower moods may make you want to isolate. Re-establishing bonds of friendship, or building new ones, helps bring your focus to just how strong your current support system is, or where it’s lacking. I think you’re doing that beautifully, Estinien. Thank you.”

He exhales, shying away from the praise and returning his focus to his frayed hem. Maybe that’s enough sharing for this week.

They keep going. Io is second to last, and though everyone expects silence by now, Miounne asks anyway.

“How are you feeling today, Io? Anything you want to share?”

He looks up again—will she actually say something today?—and she’s focused on him now. The room is empty again, except for the two of them in the empty circle. Fresh sharpie smell rising from their initials on the chairs.

“Hey,” she says, raising her hand in a little wave. “Sorry for being weird. I’m trying.”

“No such thing as weird in this room,” Miounne offers.

Io doesn’t look away from Estinien. She brushes a stray lock of hair from her eyes, and the tiniest hint of a smile pulls at the corners of her lips.

“I’m feeling okay today. As okay as I think I can feel right now, anyway. I cleaned my apartment this morning. And I’ve been working really hard on a piece for my school’s symphony showcase before fall break. I even invited some friends I haven’t talked to in… too long.”

“That’s wonderful, Io!” Miounne leans forward, elbows on her knees. “I read you major in music at RSU? What do you play?”

Her eyes fall to her lap. “Pedal harp. Mostly classical, but sometimes I make arrangements of new music, for fun.”

Shit.

“Thank you for sharing today, Io. We appreciate the opportunity to get to know you.” Miounne moves on, and so does everyone else.

But Estinien is stuck on this one thing. His stomach ties itself in a knot. Without knowing, he insulted her, and then she helped him with the stupid chairs… And it doesn’t even matter, because she doesn’t know him. They don’t go to the same university, and the only things they have in common are their dead families and the two hours a week they spend in this room. He has no notions of being friends with her, and definitely nothing like what Leofard has in mind. Still, he can’t stop it gnawing at him.

The session wraps and he approaches Io before she leaves.

“Io?”

She turns to him, for once standing at her full height, and they’re almost eye to eye. The almost-smile is back, and that gnaws at him too. “Hey, thanks for the nudge earlier. You were right.”

“Yeah, well,” He fidgets with his keys. “I’m sorry for calling the music shitty. I didn’t know harp was, like, a thing for you.”

Her laugh is stronger than before. “Wait, are you serious? You had no way to know that, and I’m not the music police. You don’t have to like it.”

He shrugs. “Still not a cool thing to say. I mean, I only really know it from this place anyway.”

“Would you… want to come to my concert?” She asks slowly, then shakes her head. “That might be dumb. That’s all the way across town and we basically just met. I—”

A strand of hair falls into her eyes and his fingers twitch as she tucks it in with the rest. She’s still rambling when the words rush out of him before he considers them.

“Yeah, I’ll come.”

“—Oh.” Wide, surprised eyes blink up at him. “Okay, great! You can bring a friend, or a date, or whatever. I’ll bring tickets for you next week?”

Estinien pockets his keys. “Sure. I’ll see you then.” Despite his clumsy apology to someone who may as well be a stranger, as Io leaves, he feels the same wave of nostalgia from earlier. Some things are true no matter how you fight them.

Estinien enters his dorm with two tickets in hand. Keys in the bowl by the door, backpack under his desk, shoes in the closet. He falls onto his bed with a little bounce, holding the shiny slips of paper up to the light.

“What took you so long?” Aymeric asks from his bed on the other side of the room. He’s reclined on a few pillows, and it looks like he’s alternating between two books. “I’m starving.”

Estinien shrugs. “Got caught up talking to someone after the session. She invited me to her concert in a couple of weeks. Wanna go?” He holds the tickets out for Aymeric’s inspection.

He looks them over, brows raising in slight surprise. “You actually want to go to this?”

“I don’t know, but I said I would.” Estinien sits up. “It can’t be that bad, can it?”

“Is she cute, whoever she is?” Aymeric lazily passes the tickets across the canyon between their beds. “Can’t see why you’d want to go otherwise. I mean, I definitely want to go, it sounds kind of fancy, but you… Hmm.”

“Shut up,” he laughs. There are other reasons, but the most important is making amends for being a dick, even by accident. “Her name is Io. She’s nice, seems cool now that she talks. She’s new to the group.”

“We can go, but you didn’t answer the question.”

“Look, it’s nothing like that. She even said I could bring a date.” Estinien places the tickets in his nightstand drawer, regretting the decision to ask for company.

Aymeric shakes his head and returns to his reading. “You poor, sad muppet. Order a pizza already.”

They stand outside the theater in their untucked button-downs over jeans. Estinien hasn’t been on this campus before, but Aymeric has; thanks to an on-again-off-again thing with some miqo’te guy who goes here, they were able to find the place quickly.

“Are we meeting her before the show?” Ayms asks, scanning the crowd. He’s been eager to learn more about Io in the days leading up to this.

“Nah, she’s backstage, but said I could text her after. It’ll be quick. She has other friends coming, so I’ll just say hi.” It sounds simple enough, but anxiety prickles across his chest.

Inside, they find their seats in the front row of the balcony—a surprisingly nice view.

“Not bad,” Aymeric admires the architecture, comparing things to this venue to the one on their campus, but Estinien hasn’t been in that one either. He only catches half of what’s said, eyes focused on the stage. Aymeric nudges him with an elbow. “She’s the harpist, right?”

He nods. “Yeah, she has a solo at some point.” He rubs his hands on his jeans, sitting forward in the seat a little as the lights go down and the musicians file onto the stage.

“Relax,” Aymeric whispers. “You might enjoy it if you chill out. Look, there she is.”

He points through the dark as she approaches the harp in the back center, almost directly in front of him, and he’s reminded of how they sit during Haven. She’s wearing long black boots and a short dress of the same color, with loose sleeves he can see through. Her hair is down tonight, but pulled back from her face. She’s pretty, even from here.

“Whoa.” Aymeric sits forward too. “You couldn’t just say she’s cute, could you?”

“I told you, it’s not like that. She just lost her fami—”

“SHH!”

Aymeric’s smile is infuriating, cradling his chin in his hand. Estinien shoots him a dark look, then passes a hand over his face as anxiety twists into hot embarrassment, thankful for the darkness as the music starts.

And it’s the music he can’t look away from. There’s more movement in it than he expected, a rawness the CDs or digital streams just don’t portray. Everyone is working to build part of a whole, and each of them can be heard in the larger sound.

Then there is Io.

Admittedly, his experience is limited, but he’s never seen her like this. Every motion is fluid, yet deliberate, even while supporting such a heavy-looking instrument. She is focused, on her hands, on the sheet music in front of her, on the others playing around her. And she looks… serene. Happy.

The tempo slows during the fourth song and a godlight falls on her, a little spot of brightness that eclipses all else. Her solo. Estinien holds his breath.

She builds suspense with sound, then her hands move faster than he can make sense of. Sometimes she places a hand flat against the strings to still them, and that is what hollows out his chest. The elegant control in what he thought was so simple. This is nothing like the CD in their support group. He could listen to this forever.

The rest of the orchestra gradually rises around her until the lights on them lift once more. He might be disappointed if the whole thing didn’t work so well. They bring the song to a close, then stand to take their bows while the audience applauds.

Estinien pulls out his phone. He’s supposed to text her, but how does he follow that? Aymeric hovers over his shoulder, watching him type and delete the same sentence three times.

“What do I say?”

Aymeric rests his chin on Estinien’s shoulder, loudly um-ing and ah-ing, and he almost regrets asking. “How about this: ‘Loved the show. I’m still around if you want to meet up.’ Simple, right? And contextually open-ended, in the unlikely case you get a grip.”

He rolls his eyes but types and sends it while she’s still on stage. It’s several minutes after the musicians exit the stage that he gets a reply: “I’m so glad you came! Take the exit to the left and the door immediately to the right, and tell the attendant you’re with me, see you soon!”

They follow the instructions to a cramped backstage area. People are carrying flowers. Should he have brought flowers? Too late now.

They wander the crowd aimlessly, and his anxiety creeps in with each passing second. There’s a touch at his elbow, light but guiding.

“Estinien,” Io’s voice. Her quiet rasp is familiar to him now, and she sounds far more healthy than when she first spoke to him. He turns to her, and she beams. “Thank you for coming!”

He isn’t sure what to do, and he has no token of congratulations to give her. “Thanks for inviting me. Inviting us, I guess.”

“Us?” Io looks over his shoulder, where Aymeric is practically buzzing as he waits to be introduced.

Ayms extends a hand, “Io, it’s wonderful to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you—”

“He asked constantly. I didn’t want to tell him anything—”

“—and it’s nice being able to put a beautiful face to a beautiful name.”

Estinien covers his face with his hands. “A merciful god would’ve killed me by now.”

Io accepts the handshake, “And you are?”

“Aymeric. Estinien’s roommate and, because he won’t say it out loud, his best friend.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Aymeric. I’m glad you guys came; I know it’s a big ask and it’s not everyone’s taste but—”

“It was amazing,” Estinien’s mouth moves before his mind catches up, something that seems to be common in her presence. Io and Aymeric stare at him, brows lifting in unison. Her neck has flushed red. “I just… didn’t know what to expect, but it was impressive.”

Io’s half-smile, the one he’s learning she wears when she’s nervous, lifts the corner of her lips. “Thank you. I wasn’t trying to change your life or anything. I just thought it’d be cool to show you what I do, and maybe get to know you better too. You know, the “bonds” Miounne is always talking about.”

“Io!” A group of people call out from several feet behind them, waving her over.

She waves to them, then turns to him with an apologetic smile. “Sorry, those are my friends. I’ll be right back.” He watches as she walks away and they sweep her into a noisy group hug.

“Dude,” Aymeric whispers, “Should I go? Do you want me to go?”

“Go where?”

“Go! Home!”

Estinien glances back at Io, and her friends are definitely looking over at them. “And leave me with them?”

Ayms grimaces, balling his hands into fists. “With her!”

Estinien shakes his head. “No, just give me a second and we can both go.” Aymeric silently fakes a scream.

Io returns, wringing her hands as she says, “We’re going to grab some dinner from a place nearby; you guys are welcome to join us.”

He hesitates. Maybe Aymeric is right and he should stay, or maybe assuming someone working through her grief wants anything more than a friendship with him is not in either of their best interests. “We should probably get back. We’ve both got to pack before break starts.”

Io’s expression dampens. “Oh, okay. Well, thanks again for coming out. I’ll see you at Haven in a couple of weeks?”

“Yeah.” He nods. “See you there.”

Estinien turns on the light and adjusts the dimmer. It’s been a while since he’s been first, but Io shows up right after him.

“Hey,” she says quietly, heading to the CD player while he starts the coffee maker. The ritual is no longer just his.

“Hi.” He’s rummaging through the cabinet beneath the coffee station, gathering the supplies, when she starts the music. It’s not their usual instrumental album… “This is from your concert?”

She starts on the chairs. “I hope it’s okay. I emailed Miounne when I got the recording to ask if I could bring it in, to show everyone what I’ve been working on and that I’m kind of normal outside of all this. But I can switch it back, if you’d rather keep the routine.”

His eyes fall closed and he is back in the theater, watching her play in a beam of light, arms unfurling around the strings like flightless wings and he doesn’t think “normal” is a good description of her at all.

“Estinien?”

He opens his eyes.

“No, this is fine.” He stands and arranges the little coffee bar. “I meant it. I thought it was great.”

“That’s a relief,” she laughs a little. “I mean, I believed you, but…”

He frees the rest of the chairs from their neat stack. Their initials are on the last two. He passes her the “I.”

“But what?”

Io crosses her arms behind her chair, bites her lip. The early evening sun illuminates the courtyard, and as it streams through the window little specks of its light catch in her hair. “I don’t know, I always feel nervous trying to make friends.”

Ah.

It’s like he thought. He can tell Aymeric once and for all there’s nothing else going on here. Which is fine, of course. It’s fine. He wants to learn more about her, and let her get to know him too. He doesn’t have a ton, but he thinks he’s a decent friend. He could be a good friend to Io.

“Yeah,” he says, ignoring the heavy, unnameable thing settling in his stomach. “Me too. But it kind of feels like we’re already friends, right? So don’t worry about it too much.”

Io’s smile pokes through her bitten lip as she takes her seat across from him, the sun at her back. “Yeah, I guess we are.”

She is still smiling when everyone joins them, when the session begins, when Miounne asks how she’s feeling today, and when she bids him goodbye with the promise to text him this week. He knows because he can’t help but look at her.

Some things are true no matter how you fight them.

[finexbright]

for fuck's sake the reason harry isn't doing much promo for my policeman isn't because he's a queerbaiter or whatever but because the one time he did speak about the movie he said something so profoundly gay and hashtag relatable about hiding your identity and sexuality and the yearning that comes along with it that everyone was confused how this 'straight' man knew so much about being gay

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

Uh… sorry about your boyfriend. He was bitten by a spider… yeah, we had to amputate his leg… But we also taught him how to swim and fight to the death; he’s a pro at it!

[formalmess]

here we are, yet again! we’ve got some familiar and brand new faces this chapter. what shenanigans will luigi get himself into this time? read and find out... mwahaha... >:3c

[nostalgia-tblr]

Fandom's weaponising of "-coded" to mean "my interpretation (headcanon) is factual and correct and anyone who disagrees with it is [something]ist" is deeply annoying and also... yeah it probably is a bit problematic that we've so muddied the waters on what is and isn't intentional in media works and on whether an interpretation is automatically correct because it appears to tick whatever boxes are currently popular.

[childofsquidward]

that group scene was the first thing that's made me smile all episode, this friend group dynamic is really growing on me, like, everyone's reaction to Jon and Candace was literally ME

[marnz]

ballet au lol 🩰

YES THANK YOU ANON WOW

Derek is a dancer coming back from rehabbing a horrible injury (lower back?? fucked up his knee??) and has a chip on his shoulder because a) he totally has stage fright! b) has a reputation for being surly and overly intense. Pre-injury he was a rising star in the ballet company and had a lot more confidence but now he is a man humbled, quiet, relieved not to be in charge, but he also feels like he has a ton to prove! Especially since his mom and his older sister are famous dancers.

The ballet troupe is smallish and Stiles is in charge of logistics and MARKETING! Because he is a noted uncoordinated klutz. He's all about strategy and reviewing data and making things happen, and he is the absolutely bane of Derek's existence. He wants Derek in photoshoots, he sometimes coordinates with the artistic director (Lydia) on people's roles, Derek finds the way he talks about engaging customers manipulative, and tbh Stiles can be abrasive and annoying! So smart but so mean!

Derek has a recognizable everything face so once he has returned Stiles wants him to do an ad photoshoot so they can slap his picture on the side of a bus and this just makes Derek feels even more pressure. Resents Stiles for this and also because it's compromising Derek's anonymity. His only respite is teaching children's ballet classes, which is something he started doing while rehabbing his injury and also because the pay to be a ballet dancer isn't great at this small troupe!

Derek thinks once his career is over he would like to teach

But sometimes, when Derek is teaching these first graders, who do not care if he is weird and quiet, he notices Stiles watching. He thinks at first Stiles is going to want to use this for marketing but Stiles never says anything about it, just stays to watch Derek and the kids.

Then at some sort of holiday dance event Derek runs into his horrible ex, Kate Argent, who is a principal at a much larger and more prestigious company, and panics...only for Stiles to appear, wrap an arm around Derek like they're dating, and say "hey babe, who's this?"

[pynkhues]

Hi, for the movie asks 🍿 21 22 23 🙂

Hi! Thank you!

21. A director you think is underrated

Oh, man, so many, but I've been working my way through Peter Weir's filmography again, and I can't believe his oeuvre isn't talked about more in its entirety. Like, yeah, people will talk about Dead Poet's Society and The Truman Show, but to look at the 15 feature films he made and his evolution from formative Australian cinema like Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gallipoli and The Cars that Ate Paris through to his American work like the movies I listed above plus Witness, Green Card and Master and Commander is truly pretty spectacular. There was no genre that he couldn't do, and I think he was a master of tone and atmosphere and it's a shame people will talk about his iconic films really as one offs instead of seeing them as parts of a body of work of probably one of the most influential directors in modern cinema.

22. A director you think is overrated

Also a lot, haha, but I'd say especially Christopher Nolan right now. I enjoyed Oppenheimer a lot, but I think overall his films have a lot of issues and are generally a lot shallower than people acknowledge. He also can't write or direct women at all and that always makes me a bit insane.

23. An animated movie you like

I adore animation, so I could rec so many! I watched Satoshi Kon's Millennium Actress for the first time recently though, and that's just been such a standout. It's kind of a fictionalised, fantasy bio pic in some ways of the life and career of Setsuko Hara (incredible actress! Tokyo Story should be essential viewing!) but really uses her story as an entry point to create a love song to Japanese cinema and the relationship between art and escapism. It's just magic.

Ask me about movies

[ct-hardcase]

so with practically every fandom I found myself in for the last 5 years having some gross element behind it, does the dash want to do a book club so we can all collectively find new media

[hellotailor]

armand’s costumes are such an interesting data point re: his nebulous sense of identity.

when analyzing any costume, there are always many factors to consider: the setting, the character’s personal taste and economic constraints, storytelling concerns like tone and genre, etc. with armand, we also need to remember that he’s 500 years old and violently disconnected from his human origins. everything he wears has an element of disguise, selected to blend into a new environment.

armand was enslaved as a child in 16th century delhi, and barely remembers his mortal life. unlike louis - who can return to new orleans after 80 years and reconnect with his past - armand has no home to return to. his whole backstory, even his name, is rife with traumatic subtext, leaving him with an obsessive need for structure and control. this adds an extra layer of meaning to costuming choices that initially seem like straightforward menswear. 

armand’s 1940s wardrobe is very put-together - primarily three-piece suits and coats that make him look wealthier and more formal than louis, who is purposefully dressing down. most of these outfits are tailored to bulk up armand's frame, leaning into the "maitre" persona. and like his business-casual dubai wardrobe, he always leaves his collar open. when i interviewed costume designer carol cutshall, she described this as a symbolic power move, signalling that he's an apex predator who doesn't need to protect his throat.

my personal interpretation is that while armand clearly likes to look good, he has a complicated relationship with attractiveness. he doesn't always want to draw attention. his color palette is shadowy (black, grey, brown, olive green), and he’s much less flashy than the other Théâtre vamps. however when he’s feeling confident and flirty, he becomes more of a power-dresser - for instance his hunting outfit with the big coat and sunglasses, or his habit of wearing kohl.

interestingly, most of armand's 1940s costumes set him apart from the coven. the Théâtre vampires dress like cabaret performers, embracing a lot of period-specific styles. by contrast armand is more timeless and neutral. in fact, due to the relatively minor changes in men's suits over the past 100 years, there's a lot of overlap between his wardrobe in the 1940s, '70s and 2020s:

the rest of the Théâtre squad share an unofficial uniform of boldly clashing monochrome patterns with pops of bright color. meanwhile armand has a very plain wardrobe, emphasizing the image of him as a businesslike authority figure surrounded by zany artistes. he only wears subtle stripes on a few occasions in the '40s, reflecting the recurring prison motif we see in lestat's trial suit and (most famously) the dubai penthouse bedroom:

if we ask the question, "what does this person like to wear?" there are easy answers for lestat, louis and claudia. we understand their tastes, and the motives behind them. but armand is more enigmatic. we can recognize through-lines in his wardrobe, but his "taste" is dominated by whatever role he's currently decided to embody, whether that's a parisian theater director or a real estate mogul in dubai.

the times when he appears to have the most fun with clothing are when he steals a pair of sunglasses from his human dinner (!) and when he's pretending to be rashid. in other words, when he's explicitly performing for an audience. "real armand" is still a mystery.

(i may write more about armand's dubai wardrobe later, but for now, you can find all of my iwtv costumes posts on this tag!)

[reasonsforhope]

Camera-trapping data revealed in a new study show a steady recovery of tigers in Thailand’s Western Forest Complex over the past two decades.

The tiger recovery has been mirrored by a simultaneous increase in the numbers of the tigers’ prey animals, such as sambar deer and types of wild cattle.

The authors attribute the recovery of the tigers and their prey to long-term efforts to strengthen systematic ranger patrols to control poaching as well as efforts to restore key habitats and water sources.

Experts say the lessons learnt can be applied to support tiger recovery in other parts of Thailand and underscore the importance of the core WEFCOM population as a vital source of tigers repopulating adjacent landscapes.

The tiger population density in a series of protected areas in western Thailand has more than doubled over the past two decades, according to new survey data.

Thailand is the final stronghold of the Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), the subspecies having been extirpated from neighboring Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam over the past decade due to poaching, habitat loss and indiscriminate snaring...

Fewer than 200 tigers are thought to remain in Thailand’s national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, only a handful of which are sufficiently undisturbed and well-protected to preserve breeding tigers. 

The most important of these protected areas for tigers is the Huai Kha Khaeng Thung Yai (HKK-TY) UNESCO World Heritage Site, which comprises three distinct reserves out of the 17 that make up Thailand’s Western Forest Complex (WEFCOM). Together, these three reserves — Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, Thungyai Naresuan West and Thungyai Naresuan East — account for more than a third of the entire WEFCOM landscape.

Now, a new study published in Global Ecology and Conservation documents a steady recovery of tigers within the HKK-TY reserves since camera trap surveys began in 2007. The most recent year of surveys, which concluded in November 2023, photographed 94 individual tigers, up from 75 individuals in the previous year, and from fewer than 40 in 2007.

Healthy tiger families  

The study findings reveal that the tiger population grew on average 4% per year in Hua Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, the largest and longest-protected of the reserves, corresponding to an increase in tiger density from 1.3 tigers per 100 square kilometers, to 2.9 tigers/100 km2. 

“Tiger recoveries in Southeast Asia are few, and examples such as these highlight that recoveries can be supported outside of South Asia, where most of the good news [about tigers] appears to come from,” said Abishek Harihar, tiger program director for Panthera, the global wildcat conservation organization, who was not involved in the study.

Among the camera trap footage gathered in HKK-TY over the years were encouraging scenes of healthy tiger families, including one instance of a mother tiger and her three grownup cubs lapping water and lounging in a jacuzzi-sized watering hole. The tiger family stayed by the water source for five days during the height of the dry season.

The team of researchers from Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, the Wildlife Conservation Society, Kasetsart University, and India’s Center for Wildlife Studies deployed camera traps at more than 270 separate locations throughout the HKK-TY reserves, amassing 98,305 days’ worth of camera-trap data over the 19-year study period.

Using software that identifies individual tigers by their unique stripe patterns, they built a reference database of all known tigers frequenting the three reserves. A total of 291 individual tigers older than 1 year were recorded, as well as 67 cubs younger than 1 year [over the course of the study].

Ten of the tigers were photographed in more than one of the reserves, indicating their territories straddled the reserve boundaries. The authors conclude that each of the three reserves has a solid breeding tiger population and that, taken together, the HKK-TY landscape is a vital source of tigers that could potentially repopulate surrounding areas where they’ve been lost. This is supported by cases of known HKK-TY tigers dispersing into neighboring parts of WEFCOM and even across the border into Myanmar.

Conservation efforts pay off

Anak Pattanavibool, study co-author and Thailand country director at the Wildlife Conservation Society, told Mongabay that population models that take into account the full extent of suitable habitat available to tigers within the reserves and the likelihood that some tigers inevitably go undetected by camera surveys indicate there could be up to 140 tigers within the HKK-YT landscape.

Anak told Mongabay the tiger recovery is a clear indication that conservation efforts are starting to pay off. In particular, long-term action to strengthen systematic ranger patrols to control poaching as well as efforts to boost the tigers’ prey populations seem to be working, he said.

“Conservation success takes time. At the beginning we didn’t have much confidence that it would be possible [to recover tiger numbers], but we’ve been patient,” Anak said. For him, the turning point came in 2012, when authorities arrested and — with the aid of tiger stripe recognition software — prosecuted several tiger-poaching gangs operating in Huai Kha Khaeng. “These cases sent a strong message to poaching gangs and they stopped coming to these forests,” he said."

...ranger teams have detected no tiger poaching in the HKK-TY part of WEFCOM since 2013.

-via Mongabay News, July 17, 2024

[determinate-negation]

Today, I submitted my resignation as director of the Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) at Florida Atlantic University (FAU). Although it might at first appear that this choice was driven by the ever-intensifying political attacks against gender studies in Florida, these attacks are precisely why I would have wanted to remain as director. As a genderqueer scholar, I have been deeply committed to defending the center and advocating for the value of our research and teaching. However, I am also an anti-Zionist Jewish scholar, and since October 7, I have experienced unrelenting pressure from the university to disavow my religious practice, my religious community and my ethical commitments.

On January 16, FAU administrators made it explicitly clear to me that to be a leader at the university, I must support Israel. I have chosen to resign from the directorship in order to speak out about what I have experienced, and to add my experience to the hundreds of stories of academics and cultural workers who are being targeted in order to silence criticism of the state of Israel amid its genocidal campaign in Gaza.

one of many many instances of pro palestine voices on college campuses being harassed, doxxed and pressured to take certain political positions by zionist faculty and students, and jewish anti zionists being purposefully targeted and pushed out of their own communities and academic spaces meant for jewish students/faculty

[mariacallous]

Goldie Finkelstein was just 13 when she was sent to Wiener Graben, a work camp that later became a concentration camp. The youngster lost her entire family in the war, and among the things she never learned from them was how to cook. She had no family recipes and, according to her son, when she married Sol Finkelstein, also a Holocaust survivor, she didn’t know how to boil water or cook an egg.

Eventually, other survivors taught Goldie the necessary skills, and she was a quick learner. She soon became known for the copious amounts of baked goods she would provide for any occasion. Her recipes, some of which are included in the “Honey Cake and Latkes: Recipes from the Old World by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Survivors” cookbook, include cake mixes and other ingredients that wouldn’t have been used in pre-Holocaust Eastern Europe. Her whiskey cake, for example, calls for both yellow cake mix and vanilla pudding mix.

Goldie’s experience illustrates the ways in which recipes, including those we think of as quintessentially Ashkenazi Jewish, have changed over the years. Survivors lost the ancestors who passed along oral recipes. Families’ personal artifacts, such as handwritten recipes, were abandoned when Jews were forced to flee. 

Most significantly, perhaps, after the war, survivors had access to different ingredients in their new homes. Sometimes that was due to seasonality, such as was the case for those who moved from Eastern Europe to Israel and had access to more fruits and vegetables year-round, including dates and pomegranates. Other times, it reflected changing tastes or newfound wealth  — liver soup, pates with liver and offal were classic Eastern European dishes in the early 1900s, when there was an intention to use every part of the animal, but became increasingly uncommon. In other cases, like Goldie’s, packaged goods replaced homemade. Another survivor whose recipes appear in “Honey Cake and Latkes,”Lea Roth, detailed making noodles for Passover from the starch leftover at the bottom of a bowl after grating potatoes before the war. After the war, most people added “noodles” to the grocery list.

“Some of these recipes changed because of New World versus Old World,” explains Jeffrey Yoskowitz, author of “The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods.” Yoskowitz and his co-author Liz Alpern work not to replicate pre-war Ashkenazi Jewish recipes, but to reclaim and modernize them. To do that, they’ve had to examine the ways in which recipes have changed.

In the Old World, for instance, almost every recipe called for breadcrumbs. At Passover, the leftover crumbs from the matzah were used to make matzah balls, leaving nothing to waste. But when immigrants in the U.S. could use Manischewitz pre-made matzah meal, then recipes started calling for it to make matzah balls.Today’s recipes for kugels with cream cheese, cottage cheese and sour cream would not have been made in the Old World, where dairy products were expensive. Again, ubiquitous cows in the New World made that “celebration of dairy” possible, Yoskowitz says.

At first, recipes may not seem like the most essential thing to recover from Holocaust survivors, but they paint a picture of what life was like before the war. It is essential to see the Jewish experience as one that is not solely as victims, and learning what people ate and cooked is part of that.

“Bringing back recipes can help bring people back to life,” says Edna Friedberg, a historian and senior curator with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “In particular, it was women who were in the kitchen in this period, and so this is a way to make the lives of women very vivid and real for people.”

The idea is not to romanticize Eastern Europe, says Maria Zalewska, executive director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation, which published “Honey Cake and Latkes,” but to see the memories connected to togetherness, like picking fruit toward the end of the summer and using that fruit in a recipe, such as cold cherry soup with egg-white dumplings. 

In addition, examining recipes gives us a sense of what role cooking and food played in trauma processing, Zalewska says. “Remembering the foods and the food traditions of their lives before imprisonment were some of the ways that survivors coped with starvation,” Zalewska adds. These are things that survivors say they are not often asked about, but when asked they report remembering dreaming about food during incarceration. 

“We have quite a number of testimonies, where survivors talk about being in situations of starvation, and food deprivation and ghettos and camps and in hiding, and that dreaming about and remembering food from before gave them emotional sustenance,” explains Friedberg.

Exploring such memories have been meaningful for those survivors who were young when they lost their families.

New Orleans’ Chef Alon Shaya has been working for several years to recreate recipes from a book belonging to the family of Steven Fenves, a survivor and a volunteer for the museum. The book was rescued by the family cook, Maris, when the family was forced to flee their home on the Yugoslavia-Hungary border in 1944. The recipes are largely written without measurements, times or temperatures, and many of the ingredients are different from those used today. (Like the Fenves family, Goldie’s son, Joseph Finkelstein, says his mother wasn’t big on using measurements as we think of them in recipes today. She knew the quantity of an ingredient, for example, if it would fit in her palm.) Unlike Yoskowitz, who is looking to update recipes, Shaya has been working to replicate them as closely as possible  — and has come across a few surprises.

Many of the desserts use a lot of walnuts, for example, which, of course, are also used in contemporary baking. But Shaya is using what he says are “copious amounts of walnuts” in various ways, such as grilled walnuts and toasted walnuts. The Fenves family walnut cream cake, which includes both walnuts ground in the batter and in a cream in-between the cake layers, has featured on the menu at one of Shaya’s restaurants, Safta, in Denver.

For all the recreation, and Shaya’s goal to bring the tastes of his youth back to Fenves, he says “it is impossible that a recipe in New Orleans would be the same as one in Bulgaria. The seasons are different, what animals are butchered are different, and the spices taste different.”

Indeed, place matters, Yoskowitz says. Ashkenazi food has a reputation of being terrible, he says. Take mushroom soup, for example. “There is no good mushroom soup in a deli. It is made with mushrooms that don’t have much flavor. But if you have it somewhere made with mushrooms grown in the forest, then that is going to be good soup.”

Many Holocaust survivors settled in new lands with new ingredients, and little memory of how things were made before the war. They knew they used to eat mushroom soup but didn’t specifically remember the forest-grown and harvested fungi. So, dishes morphed depending on what survivors had in their new home. In Eastern Europe, veal was plentiful, but in the U.S. and Israel, schnitzel began being made with chicken instead (a process Yoskowitz calls the “chickentization” of cuisine). And the beloved Jewish pastrami on rye? The pastrami would have traditionally been made with kosher goose or lamb. It wasn’t until Jews came to the U.S. that beef was easily accessible. 

The same is true of what is likely the most iconic Jewish American dish. “Bagel and lox are what we think of as the most Jewish food. But the only thing that came over was the cured and smoked fish,” Yoskowitz says. “Cream cheese was a New York state invention. Capers were Italians. It was a completely new creation, and it became a taste associated with Jewish people.”

One of the most poignant recipes in the “Honey Cake and Latkes” book is a chocolate sandwich, a basic concoction of black bread, butter and shaved dark chocolate. Survivor Eugene Ginter remembers his mother making it for him in Germany after the war, to fatten him up after years of starvation.

Adds Shaya: “We have to continue to adapt, and I think that that is part of the beauty of it.”