#these might be my top 15 but there are other good contenders too | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

the--art--of--reading · 1 year

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I posted 18 times in 2022

18 posts created (100%)

0 posts reblogged (0%)

I tagged 17 of my posts in 2022

Only 6% of my posts had no tags

#book review - 17 posts

#booklr - 16 posts

#books & libraries - 15 posts

#ya books - 12 posts

#books and reading - 10 posts

#reading - 9 posts

#books - 7 posts

#ya fiction - 7 posts

#diversity in ya - 6 posts

#historical fiction - 5 posts

Longest Tag: 50 characters

#asian american and pacific islander heritage month

My Top Posts in 2022:

book review | The Marvelous

Author: Claire Kann

Genre: YA Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Mystery

Rating: ⭐⭐

From the blurb: The Marvelous “follows six teens locked together in a mansion, contending for a life-changing cash prize in a competition run by a reclusive heiress.”

Sounds good, right? Well, it wasn’t (at least for me). I really, really wanted to like this book. The representation was great, the premise sounded fun, and I wanted to give Kann a second chance after I DNF’ed her other novel, Let’s Talk About Love. Unfortunately, it failed to meet the hype.

The execution was terrible. The book has only 3 POVs, but is still confusing and lacks any distinction in character voice. Luna, Stella, Nicole, and Jewel felt like the same person. I'd get through an entire section and feel like I'd somehow skipped over a few paragraphs. The mystery game aspect was interesting, but it’s hard for readers to try and solve the clues because of how the plot is set up. The worldbuilding was vague--I'm still not exactly sure what Golden Rule is. All of these aspects put together made for a book I struggled to get through and characters I couldn’t connect to.

One thing I liked: the cover--I love seeing hand drawn artwork on books. Liz Dresner and Rachelle Baker did a great job with the design and artwork respectively.

While reading Goodreads reviews, I saw The Inheritance Games mentioned a few times. I’m not familiar with it, but it might be worth checking out if you’re looking for a different book with a similar premise.

15 notes - Posted January 9, 2022

quick review | Vengeance Road

Author: Erin Bowman

Cover Illustration: Teagan White (this cover is everything)

Genre: YA Fiction, Historical Fiction, Western

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Revenge is worth its weight in gold. When her father is murdered for a journal revealing the location of a hidden gold mine, eighteen-year-old Kate Thompson disguises herself as a boy and takes to the gritty plains looking for answers—and justice. What she finds are untrustworthy strangers, endless dust and heat, and a surprising band of allies, among them a young Apache girl and a pair of stubborn brothers who refuse to quit riding in her shadow. But as Kate gets closer to the secrets about her family, a startling truth becomes clear: some men will stop at nothing to get their hands on gold, and Kate’s quest for revenge may prove fatal.

I have never read a Western before and this book made me realize how much I’ve been missing. This was one of the most entertaining books I’ve read in a while. There is a wonderful balance of description and action, a morally gray protagonist, and a plot twist that brought the plot down perfectly. If you’re looking to try something new, but want to stick with YA, this is a read to consider.

28 notes - Posted February 28, 2022

book review (ramble) | Shadow and Bone

Author: Leigh Bardugo

Jacket Design: Natalie C. Sousa and Ellen Duda

Genre: YA Fantasy, Fantasy

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Finally, finally got to read this. I’ve been a Six of Crows fan for some time, but I’ve danced around getting deeper into the GrishaVerse as I’ve heard mixed reviews. Fantasy is an iffy genre for me, but Shadow and Bone managed to draw me in with excellent worldbuilding, mysterious characters, and plenty of dark elements. I really enjoyed Alina Starkov’s voice and experiencing the world of the Grisha through her eyes. I won’t go into the plot too much, but I do like the choices the author made in terms of pacing. Bardugo has masterfully set up this series and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes (hopefully it won’t loose steam in the second novel as with other fantasy series). I can’t give any definite reviews yet, but if you liked Six of Crows (or any other magical/dark fantasy novels), Shadow and Bone is worth the read.

32 notes - Posted January 8, 2022

quick review | There There

Author: Tommy Orange

Cover Designer: Tyler Comrie

Genre: Adult Fiction

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Tommy Orange's wondrous and shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle's death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American--grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism. Hailed as an instant classic, There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.

A powerful book, an unforgettable book, an important book that adds so much to the understanding of what it means to be an urban Native American. This book is written from the perspectives of multiple characters which made the narration shifts and time jumps a little disorienting, but I eventually found my groove. Orange writes with such a confidence that forces the reader to pay attention to the realities he is conveying. This is a must add to your reading list.

174 notes - Posted March 1, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

quick review | American Betiya

Author: Anuradha D. Rajurkar

Cover Art: Saqiba Suleman

Cover Design: Angela Carlino

Genre: YA Fiction, Romance, Realistic Fiction

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This was a rollercoaster of a book. I thought the premise was interesting, but the first few chapters almost lost me. I struggled to connect with Rani and the decisions she made and the parts with Oliver were uncomfortable to read at times. In the end, I do appreciate this novel for the story it tells. Shedding light on the intersections between culture and identity and toxic relationships is not easy to do, but Rajurkar does it with wisdom and authenticity.. My favorite sections had to be Rani's time in India and the realization and healing that came with it. This book is hard to read at times, but worth it for the themes it holds.

469 notes - Posted February 5, 2022

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dailytomlinson · 4 years

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A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.

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The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”

#rolling stone #ROLLING STONE SAID ROCK BAN SO ITS A ROCK B AND PERIDOT #220720 #10years1d #one direction

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inevitably-johnlocked · 3 years

Note

Hey Steph!!

So I was just wondering what your absolute favourite fic is, because you have friggin AWESOME taste and I would love to read it!

Have an absolutely amazing day!! xx

Anonymous said to inevitably-johnlocked: Hi Steph! I hve the ultimate request. Can you recommend your favourite fic of All Time?

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OOOF you guys must’ve read each other’s minds, LOL. Ahhh, Octopus, this is very high praise, so thank you. I’m pleased that my fave reads are also becoming y’all’s faves!

AHHHH this is such a tough one, because I love so many fics. So to start off, here’s some lists you might enjoy:

Top 20 Fave 40K+ w. Fics (April 2017)

Ten Fave Short Johnlock Fics (Easy Reads April 2018)

25 Fave Johnlock One Shots (April 2018)

Top 10 Fave Fics (September 2018)

Top 20 Bookmarks of 2018 (March 2019)

Another Top 10 Fave Fics (June 2019)

Top 30 Read-Again Fics (March 2019)

Top 30 Read-Again Fics Pt. 2 (Sept. 2019)

Top 25 Fave Non-Ao3 Fics (Nov. 2019)

Top 25 Bookmarks of 2019 (Dec. 29/2019)

I’ve read many fics over the years, but even after all this time, I absolutely still have to say that this one is still currently my fave fic ever:

A Promise Made to Be Broken by PlantsAreNeat (E, 37,018 w., 7 Ch. || Fake Relationship, Pining, Slow Burn, RST, Eventual Relationship, POV Sherlock) – A young John makes an ‘if we’re still single at 40, we’ll get together’ pledge to a woman who ends up all wrong for him. She keeps reminding him of the promise, and won’t let go of it. John asks Sherlock to pose as his boyfriend at a family wedding, so as to dash her hopes permanently. Sherlock, who has at last acknowledged his feelings for John, reluctantly agrees despite knowing how painful it will be to ‘have’ John, but not keep him.

I’ve gone back to this fic so often I can pretty much read it on the back of my eyelids. I love the characterizations, and I love how each chapter starts as a flashback to John’s life. It’s so good. It’s fake relationship from Sherlock’s POV, which are rare already, and just the progression of their relationship feels so natural.

Plus, Sherlock has a John in his mind palace that he dresses up like a paper doll. I LOVE IT.

So yeah, please check out that fic. It’s one of my fave of all time. It’s silly and cute and JUST the right length, and I often go back to it if I’ve read a string of fics I just couldn’t get into. <3

I’d love to do a comic version of it, but my time management skills are garbage so I doubt it would ever happen, plus I don’t want to take away from the author so yeah. *shrugs*

Actually, another REALLY close contender, one that I’ve also read a tonne, is this one:

Iris by slashscribe (E, 11,948 w., 1 Ch. || Parentlock, Pining Sherlock, Post-S3) – Sherlock does his best to make John happy when John comes back to 221B with his new baby after the events of Season 3, but Sherlock has a track record of getting things wrong in this area. This story is an exploration of their gradual shift from friends to lovers, told from Sherlock's perspective, full of a lot of pining and lack of emotional awareness.

It was actually my fave BEFORE I read Promise, so yeah, two great fics if you’re looking for a couple shorter fics to read in a pinch.

Actually, let’s do the history, LOL. Here’s a couple of my fave long fics:

Midnight Blue Serenity by BeautifulFiction (E, 151,907 w., 19 Ch. || Friends to Lovers, Gay Bar / For a Case, Drugs, Pining, Case Fic, UST) – When Sherlock infiltrates a club in order to track down a serial killer, his altered appearance is enough to make John question his assumption that Sherlock is beyond his reach. However, is he the only one who appreciates his flatmate's charms, or is Sherlock at risk of becoming the next victim?

This one was my fave BEFORE Iris, but I also go back to it quite often if I want something longer to wrap comfortably around me. Also this one:

Shatter the Darkness (Let the Light In) by MojoFlower (E, 109,683 w., 23 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Genie/Djinn AU || Magical Realism, Kidnapping, Genie Sherlock, First Kiss / Time, Case Fic, H/C, Angst, Clubs, John Whump, Mild DubCon, Hand / Blow Jobs, Torture) – Fairy tales are for those who remember how to dream; not John Watson, broken and hiding from his bleak future in a beige bedsit. But then he discovers a lamp and finds himself in the dangerous riptide of an enigmatic man whose very existence is unbelievable, murder charges against his sister, and the growing pains of feeling alive once more.

The fave fic BEFORE MBS LOL.

AND finally, my VERY FIRST fave Sherlock fic:

The Green Blade by verityburns (T, 72,929 w., 15 Ch. || Casefic, Bromance) – As a serial killer hits the headlines, the police are out of their depth and the next victim is out of time. With faith in Sherlock Holmes at an all time low, this is a case which will push loyalties to the limit...

When I first got into fandom, I read this one IN BETWEEN EVERY FIC I READ. I love it so much. I actually first read it on FFNet. THAT’S how old this one is. I only recently was shown it’s on Ao3 and I was SO happy I was able to have an eBook version of it now! <3

So yeah, check out those fics, LOL. I’ve SO many new faves, honest to goodness, and new fave authors to add to my list, AND I’m CERTAIN that I’ve still to read more of my fics that will be my faves in my 90 pages of MFLs on Ao3 LOL. But yeah, these fics are like coming home to a hot cocoa and warm blankie on a cold night. Not just because of my love for them, but there’s something about a fic that you’ve already ready countless times, and not having to invest too much energy into getting into that world again, but instead just REALLY taking in your favourite parts of those fics and just smiling and feeling all squidgy all over again at your fave parts. <3

That all said, please, authors, never stop writing. I love reading your worlds <3

What’s your fave fics, Lovelies?

#steph replies #johnlock fic recs #my fic recs #fave fics #mindless-octopus

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stylesnews · 4 years

Link

“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk

The Best Face Masks For Running and CyclingHere’s how to stay covered up while on your bike, on a jog, or for your next workout outdoorsAd By Rolling Stone See More

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says

#rollingstone #july20 #10years1d

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obeyme-kaidii-writes · 3 years

Text

Bath

Leviathan x gn!MC

Words - 3713

Content Warnings - some angst, lots of anxiety, LOTS of comfort

Prompt/Inspiration - none

Summary - You and Levi decide to take your first trip together, and you’re excited about the possibility of finally getting to be intimate with your favorite demon.

AO3

This weekend was going to be amazing. You had planned everything down to the last detail, and there was absolutely nothing that was going to dampen your spirits.

A couple weeks ago, you and Levi had FINALLY started dating. Your confession had been the result of a really awkward text exchange, but it all worked out in the end. Levi was still his shy, introverted self - but he was slowly opening up to you more and more as your relationship became more intimate.

Your current excitement was due to the fact that he had suggested that the two of you go on a trip together - alone - for the first time. He had really shocked you by making such a suggestion, but his reasoning was that if you were alone, he’d be better able to relax since he wouldn’t need to worry about his brothers meddling (especially Mammon). And you agreed - it made a whole lot of sense.

After talking with Lucifer, you had also managed to get permission to turn this into a human realm trip as an extra layer of privacy. Lucifer understood all too well how determined his brothers could be at interfering, so it didn’t take much to convince him that leaving the Devildom was a necessity.

And now the day of your trip had finally arrived and you had just finished checking into your hotel.

Ever the dutiful partner, you had even gone so far as to arrange for your stay to be at a traditional Japanese hot spring inn. The cherry on top being that you managed to reserve a room with its own private open air bath too. You and Levi would get to enjoy the entire inn experience without a single worry in the world about your time together being interrupted. It was perfect.

“This is so amazing!” Levi said, as he bounced around the room, carefully examining all the details, “I never thought I’d actually get to go to Japan! And be here in person!”

You smiled as you watched how enthusiastic your boyfriend was. He was just beaming, and you loved seeing him like that. That smile alone made this entire trip worth it.

When Levi finally managed to pull himself away from his exploration of the room, he saw you had been staring at him and flushed in embarrassment. He knew he had let himself get carried away, but he was so incredibly happy right now he couldn’t help it. Not only was he finally getting some quality time with you, he was living out every otaku’s fantasy date.

The sight of Levi blushing just made you laugh, which of course, only made him blush more. You decided to show him some mercy and slipped your arms around his waist for a hug so he could hide his face if he wanted to. And he didn’t hesitate to either.

“Thank you, this is amazing. YOU’RE amazing,” he said as he pulled you closer and buried his face in your shoulder.

“That’s what I should be saying to you. It was your idea, you know. Thank you for asking me.”

Levi didn’t say anything in response, but instead tightened his grip on you as you did the same. It was such a sweet, quiet moment between the two of you, and you honestly didn’t want it to end.

“Well, I guess it’s time for the main event then, huh?” you teased.

“Th th the what?” Levi lifted his head to look at you, blushing even harder than before.

“The bath silly. You said you wanted to take a bath together,” you laughed.

“Oh. Ha. Right.” You felt Levi relax in your arms. Even though you wanted to tease him a little more about what he had been imagining, you decided to hold off for the time being.

Up until now, your physical relationship had consisted largely of cuddling, kissing, and some very heavy petting. But you had yet to go further than that since Levi seemed to need to take things slow. You were more than happy to accommodate him, of course. You knew how hard he was trying and how much he wanted to be closer to you - he just had a lot of insecurities and a lack of experience to contend with. Just knowing that he wanted to get there was enough to make your heart sing.

Tonight though, was going to be the first time the two of you were naked together. Levi had thought it might be easier since he’d be partially submerged in the water, so it wouldn’t be like you were looking directly at each other. Plus water itself relaxed him. Since you didn’t have any objections, you agreed.

You finally let Levi go and opened up your nearby suitcase, “Here. I’m super picky about towels so I packed my own. I brought robes too.”

You handed Levi a large, fluffy towel and a lightweight, oversized bathrobe, before picking up your own and heading to the bathroom to get changed. While you were gone, Levi quickly did the same.

It wasn’t until he started picking up his discarded clothing off the floor that the reality of the situation finally started to hit him. He was actually naked under that robe. And you were in the next room. Also naked. Maybe even more naked. You might not have even put your robe on yet.

Levi felt his pulse quicken, and his anxiety started to rise. He didn’t have long to think about things however, because you returned just then, bundled up in your robe, and shoved your clothes back into the suitcase.

“Alright, you ready?” you asked, trying hard to contain your excitement. You just couldn’t wait to be able to wrap your arms around Levi and rest your head on his shoulder. You had so much affection you were waiting to give, and now you were finally getting your chance.

Levi didn’t answer you right away, so you took a step closer and took hold of one of his hands, giving it a gentle squeeze, “Hey, why don’t I go ahead and go first? Then you can have a minute to relax, yeah?”

“Mmhmm,” Levi grunted as he nodded his head. Yeah that’s all he needed. Just a minute to take a few deep breaths and to clear his thoughts and then everything would be ok.

“Ok, great.”

You pressed a quick kiss to Levi’s cheek and made your way out of the room to the private bath area outside, leaving Levi alone.

But as soon as you left, his thoughts started to race. Was this really a good idea? Was he actually ready for this? You’d be so close to him. What was he even supposed to do? Hold your hand? Hug you? Could even touch you? Or would that be too creepy? Would you be grossed out if he tried to move closer? Where was he supposed to touch you anyways? Would an arm around your shoulder be too friendly? Would a hand on your thigh be too pervy?

And even if he could figure out what to do with his body, what about you? What were you going to think once you saw him? Would you be disgusted by him? What if he didn’t measure up to your expectations? Were you going to want to touch him too? Would you be fine if all he could manage was holding your hand? What if he disappointed you because he didn’t let you as close as you had hoped?

What was he going to do?

————

It had been 10 minutes since you had come out and removed your robe and climbed into the bath. But you had been prepared for that. You knew how anxious Levi could get, and you saw that he was starting to get a little worked up after changing clothes, which is why you decided to give him a bit of space to collect himself.

But as the minutes continued to tick by, you started growing concerned.

15 minutes had passed now. Maybe you should go check on him? You didn’t want to walk in on him when he could be naked (for his sake), but you were more than a little worried now. After weighing your options, you decided to chance it, and just keep your eyes down low while you walked as a precaution. So you climbed out of the bath, bundling yourself up again in your robe, and headed towards your room.

Once you were standing outside your door, you realized that it was still slightly ajar and hadn’t been slid shut yet. Through the crack you were able to hear what sounded like heavy breathing and the occasional choked back sob. Your stomach instantly fell: something was wrong with Levi.

“Levi?” you called to him, as you stepped inside the room. You didn’t notice him at first, but it didn’t take you long to finally find him with his back to the wall, just beside the doorway. His knees were drawn up to his chest. And he had his head buried in his arms, as he tried desperately to calm himself.

“Levi…” He hadn’t acknowledged your presence when you entered the room, so you weren’t even sure if he was aware of it. Seeing him like that made your heart ache, and you carefully sat down beside him, wrapping your arms around him as best you could.

You sat like that for awhile before Levi finally started talking.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I ruined everything…”

“Hey, Levi, that’s not true. That’s not true at all,” you said, sitting up a little so you could get a better look at him. You started to run your fingers through his hair, something you knew he liked and he found relaxing.

“Yes I do. I did. I am. I ruined this.”

“Why do you think it’s ruined, babe?”

“Look at me. I’m such a loser I can’t even get into a bath,” he said, his voice starting to waver again. He had just got himself to stop crying long enough so he could talk to you, and now he was about to start up again. Why did he ever think he could do this? Why did he think this was a good idea? Or that he could make you happy? He should have just stuck to 2D. He wasn’t cut out for 3D. He’d never be able to make you happy at this rate.

“Hey, we don’t have to do the bath. This was supposed to be fun for you. If you’re not having fun, we don’t have to do it,” you said, speaking softly and gently as you continued stroking his hair, “It’s ok Levi. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want.”

“How can you say it’s ok?! How is any of this ok?!” he snapped. He had never yelled at you before, and even he was surprised at the sharp edge to his voice. Just another thing he had messed up, he thought.

“Because it is. I promise you it is. I’m not upset with you,” you said.

You then pressed a kiss to the top of his head, resting your brow against him for a moment as you tried to figure out what else you could say to reassure him. When you felt him move slightly beneath you, you sat up, watching as Levi turned his head to the side to look at you from under his bangs.

“How can you be ok with this? This isn’t what we planned.”

“I planned on spending a weekend with you, Levi. That’s all.”

“...but the bath…”

“Was a nice perk. But not more important than you,” you replied. You rested your head on his shoulder and continued to comb your fingers through his hair, your arm draped along his back. He was still so tense, but at least his breathing had evened out some and he was no longer crying so hard.

“Would it help if we kept the robes on?” you suggested after a while.

“....could we?” If he was able to do that, it would eliminate a lot of the very things he was so stressed about. He still felt guilty that his own inadequacy was ruining all your plans, but at least he could do something with you this way.

“Yeah, of course we can.”

You stood up first, then offered Levi your hand to help him up off the ground too. He kept his head down, hiding behind his bangs, so you couldn’t see how awful his face looked. But you weren’t having any of that, and you stepped closer and brushed his hair out of his eyes, before giving him a soft smile.

“That’s better,” you said, cupping one of his cheeks with your hand before kissing the other, “I like seeing your face. You ready?”

Levi gave you a small nod before taking the hand you offered him. You led the way to the bath, careful not to walk too fast and to match Levi’s slow, nervous pace. He was still apprehensive about all this, and hadn’t figured out what he was supposed to do once he was IN the bath. But you would occasionally give his hand a light squeeze as you walked, and it reminded him that he was here with you and that was really the most important thing.

Once you reached the bath area, you carefully climbed in, taking a seat, and then waited for Levi to join you. Very cautiously he climbed in as well, being extra careful to make sure his robe didn’t float up as he got in, and then sat very stiffly a few feet away from you.

“Can I come over there?” you asked.

Levi nodded again so you scooched over until you were next to him. He flinched slightly when he felt you up against him, and then instantly felt ashamed of himself for doing so. But you either didn’t notice or just chose not to say anything about it, and instead raised your hand out of the water, palm up, and offered it to him.

“Can I hold your hand?”

He carefully took your hand in his, as you snuggled up next to him and laced your fingers together. The familiar feeling helped him relax just a tiny bit.

“I don’t know what to do,” he finally admitted, in a small voice scarcely above a whisper.

“That’s ok. You don’t need to,” you replied, resting your head on his shoulder, relaxing and leaning into his side.

Your response left him confused. What on earth was he supposed to do if he didn’t even know? But before he could even try to imagine you what you meant, you continued…

“All you have to do is ask. It’s not like you get bonus points for figuring it on your own,” you said with a laugh, “Just ask me what I’m ok with. Just like I asked you.”

Oh. That...made a surprising amount of sense. But even if that was true, it didn’t solve the problems he was having about wondering what was appropriate and what would creep you out. Was it worth the risk to ask about something when it might just upset you and make you want to never see him again?

“How are you feeling? Is this ok?”, you said, checking in with him. You could tell that he was still anxious with how his leg was gently bouncing next to yours, but at least he didn’t seem quite so freaked out at having you close, which was a win in your book.

“Yeah...I think so.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said, giving your hand a small squeeze and resting his head on yours.

“I’m sorry if I made you feel pressured.”

“It wasn’t you. It was me. I’m the weirdo that couldn’t even take a bath.”

“You’re not a weirdo because of that, Levi,” you said, lifting the hand you had been holding out of the water so you could press a soft kiss to the back of it, “You have a lot of other things that make you weird, but this is not one of them,” you teased.

Levi laughed softly to himself. Why were you so understanding? He gave your hand a soft squeeze, before finally relaxing and leaning into you. Sitting with you like this wasn’t so bad. Sure it wasn’t the fantasy date he had imagined, but it was still quiet and peaceful all the same. No one there to pop in and surprise you. Nothing around to distract him. Just you and him.

Feeling reassured, Levi decided to take your advice and ask you for something, “Do you...umm...can I hug you?”

“Of course. You can always hug me,” you said, releasing his hand and wrapping your arms around his waist in a sideways hug as he wrapped his arms around your shoulders, and pressed a kiss to the top of your head.

That was surprisingly easier than he thought it would be. He felt some more of his anxiety melt away as he held you there, just enjoying the feeling of having you in his arms.

It wasn’t long after that that Levi was finally relaxed enough to talk like normal. The two of you exchanged jokes and laughs. He was smiling again, and your heart warmed at the sight. You had been worried that maybe this entire thing had been a horrible idea after you found him too worked up to leave the room, but he was much more like his usual self now and that gave you hope. All you really wanted was for him to enjoy himself. It wasn’t often you managed to drag him out of the House of Lamentation and you wanted to make the most of it. And even if you may not have grown physically closer during this trip, you knew you had definitely gotten closer emotionally and that Levi trusted you just a little bit more.

After a while, you had started to grow drowsy so you knew it was time to get out and prepare for bed. You still had two more days left of your trip, so you really needed to rest now to make sure you had the energy for all the sightseeing Levi had wanted to do tomorrow.

As you snuggled into your futon, you felt Levi climbing in beside you. You rolled over on your side, tucking one arm under your head as you watched him with a smile on your face. Once he had settled he also turned to lay on his side facing you, and his hand soon found yours, twining your fingers together. Even though it was now dark in the room, Levi couldn’t bring himself to look at you from so close. You wiggled a little closer to him and curled your body towards him until your forehead rested against his, eyes closed.

Despite all the other anxieties he may have, cuddling up to you at night was not one of them. Something about the darkness and the warmth of the blankets made the whole thing so soothing. There wasn’t that fear of feeling like he was being watched either - so even if he was a little flustered it wasn’t as obvious, allowing him to pretend that he was a bit more confident and less of a nervous wreck than he actually was. He wondered if maybe next time he could try things like this...in the dark, next to you, under a blanket.

“...are you sure you’re ok with this?” Levi asked, finally having found his courage. He had been hesitant to ask you again, scared that you might have changed your mind, but he also really did want to know if you were happy right now.

“Yeah, I am,” you said as you lifted your joined hands and kissed his, “Very happy,” you continued, kissing his hand again.

“Even though this is all I could give you?”

That question made your chest tighten. Did he really think this was something you were settling for?

“Levi…” you gave his hand a gentle squeeze, before rubbing your thumb along the back of it, “Cuddling you isn’t some consolation prize,” you said, finding his legs under the covers and tangling them with your own. You couldn’t see it, but he was blushing now.

“I’m really happy I get to be here with you. We have time to figure out all the other stuff later. I’m not in a rush. I just want you. Just like this.” You shifted your body once more so that it was a little closer to his, and unconsciously he did the same, pulling you nearer with his legs, holding your hand just a little bit tighter.

“I know how hard you’re trying, you know. Don’t think I don’t notice it. I do. And that means more to me than anything.”

Levi pulled your arm to his chest, holding it there, feeling your warmth seep into him. You were so warm. As much as he wanted to be ready now, and wanted to impress you, he also truly enjoyed moments like this that made everything else seem so trivial. Why was he even worried so much earlier? You understood him. You didn’t pressure him. You were happy with him how he was. You never asked him to be something he wasn’t. He was safe with you.

“...I love you.”

“I love you too, Levi.”

As Levi started to drift off to sleep, he felt you give him a gentle kiss on the lips and he couldn’t help but smile. You were always so sweet and kind to him, even though he didn’t think he deserved it. He wished he didn’t doubt you, and himself, so much sometimes. And it wasn’t that he was scared of being intimate, he was just so concerned about making himself look foolish or worse, making you uncomfortable. He was still learning where that line was between “ok” and “not ok”, but the more moments like this he had with you the more confident he became. Soon, he was going to make this up to you and show you just how much he loved you, in a way that only he could.

#gn!mc #obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me levi #levi x mc #obey me fanfic #obey me comfort #obey me angst #levi angst #levi comfort

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lady-divine-writes · 3 years

Text

Ineffable Holiday 2020 - “Anathema’s Solid Right Arm” (Rated PG)

Summary: Anathema takes it upon herself to bring together two customers she knows have a crush on one another ... drastically, if necessary. (1694 words)

Notes: I had started writing this for @ineffablehusbandsweek prompt coffeeshop au, but I never got it done. So I have written it for the Ineffable Holiday 2020 Day 2 prompt 'hot cocoa/cider'. Human au. Mainly fluff.

Read on AO3.

“So, Mr. Crowley,” Anathema says, eagerly setting her cocoa and her apple cider muffin on the iron bistro table out front of her shop, right by the door where she can keep track of customers going in and out, “is he here yet?”

“Who?” her reluctant companion, who’d been there first, nursing his mug of coffee while he eyed the people walking by, asks.

“Don’t play dumb with me!”

“Pfft. Who says I’m playin’?”

“You know exactly who I’m talking about. The man in the cream-colored coat who comes here every day at 2 o’clock for a cup of Earl Grey and a blueberry scone. The one you’ve been mooning over for weeks and weeks but refuse to say two words to.”

Crowley spots a gentleman who fits that exact bill weeding through the crowd. But by the time he reaches the coffee shop, it’s obviously not him, and Crowley groans. “Don’t you have anything better to do than bother me?”

“This is my shop, and you're a customer here, so I think that gives me exclusive bothering rights.”

“I liked you better when all you did was read books behind the counter and ignore the rest of us.”

“Lucky for you, you’re much more interesting than a book.”

“Lucky me,” Crowley grumbles in a put-upon voice.

Crowley isn’t exactly a friend of hers, but he is one of her best customers. He shows up every afternoon without fail at precisely 1:30 and orders the same thing each time - black coffee and the muffin of the day (which he never eats). Anathema had thought he chose her spot over other, more commercial coffee enterprises because of her homey atmosphere and signature, in-house roasted Arabica blends. Many of her customers (an older set among the locals) do.

Turns out, he stopped by every day because of another daily customer of hers - a pleasant, older man with fluffy white-blond hair, and a positively glowing smile, the kind that can be described as lighting up a room. Anathema has watched the two of them religiously. To this day, Crowley has never once spoken to the man, and the man (Aziraphale is the name he gives when he orders) has made no move to speak to him either. And as it’s already nearing 2:15 with no sign of him, it seems today won’t be the day Crowley gets his chance.

Which explains his sour mood.

Anathema watches Crowley pull apart his muffin with one hand while he searches the stream of pedestrians, not paying an ounce of attention to the fact that he’s decimating it, crumbs falling through the scrollwork on the tabletop and attracting birds from all around.

Anathema feels for the man. She really does. She’s watched the evolution of him from the first day he walked into her shop: cocky, condescending, constantly criticizing everything from the smell of the place to the decor. But he’s softened considerably since Aziraphale, almost become a whole different person.

There are some things about him that have not budged. He still dresses like a wealthy undertaker, sporting a pair of dark sunglasses whether it’s dreary out or fine. Both style choices make him the yin to Aziraphale’s yang seeing as Aziraphale only dresses in tones of lightest cream and pale, sky blue.

Anathem has become invested in whether or not these two end up together. There's no better time than the present.

Christmas time.

Which Anathema considers the most romantic season of the year

(Stuff Valentine's!)

If Crowley isn’t brave enough to make the first move, and Aziraphale (whom she thought she caught more than once peeking surreptitiously Crowley’s way) won’t, then she needs to make this happen.

Starting today, if possible.

But what if he found a different coffee shop to go to?

What if he had been waiting for Crowley to say something and mistook his silence for disinterest?

How tragic would it be for these two to end up star-crossed!

Nope! Not on her watch!

She straightens up and peeks around at the customers enjoying their beverages on this blustery day, then beyond the dining patio to the holiday shoppers hopping from store to store. It’s easy to mistake many an older gentleman for the object of Crowley’s affections, but easier to spot him out the moment he arrives, threading through passersby like a salmon traveling upstream, offering everyone he meets a smile, a nod, and an, “Excuse me! I’m very sorry! I must get through!”

“Look!" Anathema cheers. "Mr. Crowley! There he is!”

“Yeah, whatever,” Crowley says, but she sees the slightest twitch of a smile playing at the corners of his lips as he waits for Aziraphale to blow by him into the shop for his daily fare.

Except, he doesn’t.

It doesn’t look like he’s stopping at all, hurrying through the crowd to continue down the street.

Crowley's twitchy smile withers. Anathema’s jaw drops as she stares at Aziraphale’s back while he walks on. In her peripheral, she sees Crowley’s head bow, his lips tightening into the thinnest of lines as he sinks slowly into his mug of freezing cold cider.

And that's that.

She has to do something! If she doesn’t, Crowley is going to be miserable for the remainder of the afternoon. Grumpy and alone, he'll stay out here well into supper and, in turn, will make her miserable.

She can’t have that.

But she doesn't know how to fix things. She can’t chase after the man. He has a considerable head start. Plus, with the crowd between them, she’s not sure she'll reach him before he gets away.

She doesn’t know what on Earth possesses her.

She grabs up the picked apart remains of Crowley’s muffin and, without another thought, hurls it with all her might. She thought she aimed low enough to tag Aziraphale’s shoulder, or brush his arm, but obviously not when she hits the poor man square on the cheek.

Anathema throws her hands over her mouth and gasps.

Crowley launches swiftly to his feet.

Aziraphale stops walking.

“What on Earth!?” Aziraphale mutters, pivoting quickly on his heel and looking over at them in surprise. But he doesn’t see Anathema at all. The second the muffin hits its mark, she says, "Good luck!" and bolts inside the shop, leaving her red-faced companion staring, mouth agape, at the man glaring back with a cheek covered in mascarpone cheese filling.

Aziraphale must recognize the culprit is Crowley because his demeanor changes. He smiles bashfully, feeling his pockets for a handkerchief, but his eyes never leave Crowley's face.

Silently, and from her hiding place just inside, Anathema cheers.

She knew it! She just knew it!

After a few awkward seconds of searching, Aziraphale still can't seem to find it, and Crowley, realizing that this is the chance he's been waiting for, hurries to the rescue.

On the brief saunter over, he debates the best opening line for this situation. Hello is first on the list. Hi sounds a bit too casual. Yo pops up to make a short appearance but is brutally beaten to death. What ends up coming out of Crowley's mouth, not even a contender, is, “Here,” as he thrusts a black handkerchief Aziraphale's way.

“Oh!" Aziraphale accepts it gratefully. "Thank you so much, my dear."

"Crowley," Crowley corrects, biting his tongue hard after because what did he have against this man calling him my dear? Not a single, Goddammed thing!

"Aziraphale," Aziraphale offers. "Uh … was that your muffin?”

“No! I mean, ngk … yes, it was. But someone tossed it … I suppose?” Crowley looks over at Anathema, who has the gall to spy on them through her front window, smiling like anything and making, what he can only describe as, encouraging hand motions.

“What kind was it?”

“The muffin of the day - apple cider, filled with …”

“Mascarpone cheese, yes," Aziraphale finishes with a frown. "Was it tasty, at least?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know. Didn’t get a nibble of it.”

“Pity.” Aziraphale side-eyes Crowley as he watches him wipe the remaining cheese off his cheek. “Thank you for this,” he says, gesturing with the handkerchief. “I’ll get it cleaned for you.”

“Keep it. This way you have an extra, just in case. You never know when some rogue baker might throw a muffin at you again. Or a doughnut.”

“True. A jam-filled would ruin this coat. It’s one of my favorites, too.”

“Is it?" Crowley steps back, gives the garment a casual once over as if he doesn't have the thing memorized - every line from shoulder to hem, the position of the pockets, the lay of the lapels. "It suits you.”

“Thank you," Aziraphale says, self-consciously tugging at the seams, smoothing out non-existent wrinkles.

The two men fall silent. Anathema, palms pressed against the glass, starts dramatically mouthing, "Do something! One of you! Do something!"

Neither of them sees her, but Aziraphale says, "Now I’m curious.”

“About what?”

“I’ve never had one of the specialty muffins. Creature of habit, I’m afraid. Always order the same thing.”

“I think she has one left if you’d like to give it a go.”

Aziraphale bites his lower lip, his cheeks turning a fetching shade of rose. “Do you think … would you mind splitting it with me? Then we can both satisfy our curiosities.”

That last part sounds like an invitation to more than sharing a muffin, and Crowley, admittedly dense to those sorts of flirtations, is determined not to let it pass him by.

“That sounds like a brilliant idea.”

Anathema beams when she sees Aziraphale and Crowley heading her way, flashing them a double thumbs-up that only Crowley catches. Crowley rolls his eyes. Aziraphale looks in time to see the top of her head drop below the sill, another unfortunate chair upturning behind her. “Is that the young lady who runs the shop?” he asks, pointing at Anathema's bun bobbing away from the window towards the counter.

“I believe it is,” Crowley says dismissively.

“Is she quite all right?”

“No.” Crowley sets the chairs right at the small table and offers one to Aziraphale. “Not in the slightest.”

#Ineffable Holiday 2020 #good omens #good omens fanfiction #ineffable husbands #ineffable lovers #crowley x aziraphale #aziraphale x crowley #aziraphale #Crowley

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weekendwarriorblog · 3 years

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The Weekend Warrior 10/1/21: VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE, THE ADDAMS FAMILY II, THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK, TITANE, MAYDAY, THE JESUS MUSIC

Yeah, so I haven’t had the time over the past couple weeks to write a column, and I kind of hate that fact, especially since I’m coming up on a pretty major milestone for me writing a weekly box office column and reviewing movies. In fact, that milestone comes next week! And once again, I’m struggling to get through the movies I was hoping to watch and write about this week, because I’ve been out of town and once again, very busy over the weekend. Let’s see how far I get...

Before we get to this week’s wide releases, I’m excited to say that my local arthouse movie theater, The Metrograph, is finally reopening for in-person screenings, and they’re kicking things off with a 4k restoration of Andrez Zulawski’s 1981 thriller, Possession, starring Sam Neill and Isabell Adjani, who won a Best Actress prize at Cannes for her performance in the film. I actually saw this at the Metrograph a few years back, and Metrograph Pictures, the distribution arm of the company is now distributing the 4k restoration. There’s a lot of exciting things ahead at Metrograph, including an upcoming four-film Clint Eastwood retrospective, including White Hunter, Black Heart (1990) and A Perfect World (1991) this Friday. Also, Lingua Franca director Isabel Sandoval will be showing her fantastic film from 2020 (a rare chance to see it in a theater and I’ll be there!) as well as program a number of other favorites of hers. Sunday will have screenings of Ingmar Berman’s Scenes from a Marriage (1973) in its full four plus hour glory, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) and John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness (1994).. In other words, the Metrograph is back!

Moving over to the weekend’s three wide releases, the first one up being Sony’s VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE (Sony Pictures) with Tom Hardy returning as Eddie Brock aka Venom, joined by Woody Harrelson as the psychotic symbiote, Carnage. Taking over the directing reins is Andy Serkis, who has only directed two other movies, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle and Breathe, but as an actor, he’s been heavily involved with the CG VFX (and performance capture) needed to bring the characters in this Marvel anti-hero movie to life.

Venom has been one of Spider-Man’s most popular villains and sometimes allies for quite a few decades now, starting out life as a cool black costume Spider-Man found on a strange planet during the first “Secret Wars,” which turned out to be an alien symbiote that had malicious intentions. Spider-Man got the costume off of him but it then linked up with Eddie Brock, a sad-sack journalist whose emotions drove the alien symbiote to become the Venom we known and (mostly) love, thanks to one Todd McFarlane. Venom continued to play a large part in the Spider-Man books before getting his own comics, and not before a super-villain was created for him in Cletus Kasady, a vicious serial killer whose infection by the symbiote turns him into Carnage. And that’s who Harrelson is playing.

Being a sequel, we do have some basis to go on, although the original Venom movie, released in early October 2018, also arrived at a time when it was only the second time the character of Venom was brought to the big screen -- the first time being Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, in which the character was received without much love as Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. And yet, Venom did great, opening with $80.2 million and grossing $213 million domestically, which is more than enough to greenlight a sequel. (It made over double that amount overseas, too.) For comparison, the Wolverine prequel opened with $85 million but at the beginning of summer, so it quickly tailed away with other movies coming out after it. Venom: Let There Be Carnage has to worry about the new James Bond opening a week later, so it very likely could be a one-and-done, opening decently but quickly dropping down as other big movies are released in October (basically one a week).

I’ve already seen the movie, and by the time you read this, reviews will already be up --including my own at Below the Line. Social media reactions seem to not be so bad though, so maybe it’ll get better reviews than its predecessor, which was trashed by critics, receiving only a 30% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But if you look at the fan ratings, they’re higher with 81%, although it’s hard not to be

I’m thinking that bearing COVID in mind and the law of depreciation since the previous movie, Venom: Let There Be Carnage will probably be good for around $50 million this weekend, maybe a little more, but however it’s received, I expect it to drop significantly next week, though a total domestic gross of $135 to 140 million seems reasonable.

Another strong sequel to kick off October is the animated THE ADDAMS FAMILY II (MGM), which is following up the 2019 hit for MGM/UA Releasing with most of the voice cast returning, including Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron, Chloe Grace Moretz, and Finn Wolfhard, as well as Nick Kroll, Snoop Dogg, Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, and Bette Midler voicing the popular characters from the New Yorker cartoons, a popular ‘60s TV series, and two Barry Sonnenfeld movies from the ‘90s.

The 2019 animated film was a pretty solid hit for the newly-launched UA Releasing, grossing $100 million domestic after a $30.3 million opening, making it one of MGM’s biggest hits since it was restructured under UA and became its own distributor again. Who knows what’s going to happen with Amazon’s plans on buying MGM and whether the latter will remain a distribution wing, but MGM still has a number of movies out this year that likely will be awards contenders. But that doesn’t mean much for The Addams Family II, which will try to get some of those people who paid to see the original movie in theaters back to see the sequel… and if they’re not going to theaters, MGM is once again offering the movie day-and-date on VOD much like they did with last year’s Bill and Ted Face the Music, which opened much earlier in the pandemic (late august, 2020), so it far fewer options to see it in theaters compared to this animated sequel.

It’s highly doubtful that The Addams Family II was going to open anywhere near to $30 million even if there wasn’t a pandemic, and it wasn’t on VOD just because MGM just doesn’t seem to be marketing the movie as well as its predecessor. You can blame COVID if you want, but it’s also the fact they’re distributing the company’s first James Bond movie in six years, No Time To Die, on their own vs. through another distributor, ala the last few Daniel Craig Bonds. But we’ll talk more about that next week, since that’s going to be an important movie to help cover MGM’s expenses for the rest of 2021. (I haven’t had a chance to see this yet, but it’s embargoed until Friday, so wouldn’t be able to get a review into the column regardless.)

We’ve seen quite a few family hits over the past few months even when the movies were already on streaming/VOD, but parents are probably being a bit more careful with kids back in school, many younger kids still not vaccinated, and the Delta variant still not quite under control. Because of those factors, I think The Addams Family II is more likely to do somewhere between $15 and 18 million its opening weekend, maybe more on the lower side.

Third up is THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK (New Line/WB), David Chase’s prequel to his hit HBO series, The Sopranos, which went off the air in 2004 but still finds fans on the new HBO Max streamer. Ironically, this prequel will air on the streamer at the same time as it's getting a theatrical release, which probably won't be a very tough choice for fans.

Chase has reunited with director Alan Taylor, who won a Primetime Emmy for his work on the show in 2007 before moving onto other popular shows like HBO's Game of Thrones. Taylor has had a bit of a rough career in film, though, having directed Marvel Studios’ sequel, Thor: The Dark World, a movie that wasn't received very well although there were rumors that Taylor butted heads with the producers and maybe didn't even finish the movie. He went on to direct Terminator Genesys, which honestly, I can't remember if it was the worst Terminator movie, but it was pretty bad.

What's interesting is that because this is a prequel set in the '70s and '80s, none of the actors from the show appear on it, but it does star Alessandro Nivola, a great actor in one of his meatiest roles for a studio movie. It also introduces Michael Gandolfini, son of the late James Gandolfini (who played Tony Soprano, if you didn't know), playing the teenage Tony, plus it has great roles for the likes of Jon Bernthal (as Tony's father), Vera Farmiga (playing Tony's mother), Corey Stoll (playing the younger "Junior” Soprano), and Lesile Odom Jr, as the Sopranos key adversary, even though he ends up coming across like the good guy of the movie. It also stars Billy Magnussen, who oddly, also has a key role in next week's No Time to Die.

I'm sure there's quite a bit of interest in seeing where Tony came from and to learn more about his family, many who were dead long before the events of the HBO show, but will that be enough to get them into theaters when they already have HBO? I already reviewed the movie for Below the Line, and reviews are generally positive, which might get people more interested in this prequel.

As with most of Warner Bros’ movies this year, Many Saints will also debut on HBO Max and unlike some of the studio’s other 2021 offerings, it will actually make more sense to watch this one on the streamer since that’s how most people watched The Sopranos. That seems like a killer for Many Saints, and it’s likely to keep it opening under $10 million, where it might have done better on a different weekend (like sometime over the last two weeks).

This is what I have this weekend’s top 10 looking like:

1. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Sony) - $50.4 million N/A

2. The Addams Family II (MGM/UA Releasing) - $16.5 million N/A

3. The Many Saints of Newark (New Line/WB) - $9 million N/A

4. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Marvel/Disney) - $7.5 million -44%

5. Dear Evan Hansen (Universal) - $4.1 million -45%

6. Free Guy (20th Century/Disney) - $3.3 million -30%

7. Jungle Cruise (Disney) - $1.1 million -35%

8. Candyman (Universal) - $1.3 million -48%

9. Cry Macho (Warner Bros.) - $1 million -52%

10. Malignant (Warner Bros.) - .7 million -53%

Opening in select cities is French filmmaker Julia (Raw) Ducournau’s TITANE (Neon), the genre thriller that won this year’s coveted Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It stars Agathe Rouselle as a young woman who has an interesting relationship with automobiles, but she also has psychotic tendencies that leaves a trail of bodies behind her. On the run, she decides to pretend she’s the missing son of a fireman (Vincent Lindon), who has been missing for 10 years, and things just get weirder from there.

I honestly wasen’t sure what to expect from this although I do remember walking out of Ducournau’s cannibal movie, Raw, just because it was so gross, even though so many of my colleagues and friends swear by the movie, and this one, for that matter. Sure, there’s a certain “prove it” factor to me watching a movie that wins the Palme D’Or, because it’s very rare that I like the movies that do win that benchmark cinema award.

After a flashback to Agathe’s character Alexia when she was an obstinate young girl kicking the back seat of her father as he’s driving. They crash and she’s forced to get surgery that puts an odd looking piece of metal in her head. Decades later, she seems to be a pseudo-stripper at weird punk rock car show -- I guess they do those things different in France -- and hooking up with a fellow “model” afterwards. Agathe is actually a very popular model/dancer but when one fan gets too grabby, she pulls a knitting needle out of her hair and stabs it through his ear, killing him. Oh, yeah, she then has sex with a car and seemingly gets pregnant, but that only happens later. First, she goes on a bit of a killing spree and then goes on a run and decides that by strapping up her breasts and breaking her nose, she can pass off this fire captain’s son… and it works!

So the second half deals with acting great Vincent Lindon’s absolutely bonkers steroid-addicted man who seems to be sexually attracted to his own son, and most of his fellow firefighters knows that he’s gay but in the closet, but I’m honestly not sure what that matters. He’s a pretty disgusting character whose 70-year-old ass we see way too much of, and even those who might find Rouselle to be quite fetching, there’s a certain point where her nudity is not alluring but quite horrifying.

Oh, and at this time, Alexia (or Adrien, as she’s now going) has also gotten significantly pregnant, but it’s not a normal pregnancy because what should be milk from her breasts seems to some sort of motor oil. That’s because she FUCKED A CAR earlier in the movie!!! What do you expect when you fuck a car and don’t use protection, girlie? The fact Alexia/Adrien is trying to hide the fact she’s a pregnant woman from a station full of men isn’t even particularly disturbing. The part that really got me was when she broke her own nose to pass off as this guy’s son -- I actually had to look away for that part.

Listen I’m no prude, and I think I can handle most things in terms of horror and gore, but Titane just annoyed me, because it felt like Ms Ducournau was doing a lot of what we see more for shock value than to actually drive the story forward. There just doesn’t seem to be much point to any of it, and once the movie gets to the firehouse, and we see her interaction (as a young man) with her “father” and his colleagues, it just gets more grueling.

It’s as if Ducournau had watched a lot of movies by the likes of Cronenberg or David Lynch, or more likely Nicolas Refn or Lars von Trier, and thought, “I could be just as strange and horrific as those men… let’s see what people think of this.” And way too many people fell for it, including the Cannes jury. While I normally would approve of any good body horror movie, especially one with cinematography, score and musical selections as good as this one, I doubt I’d ever want to watch this movie again. And therefore, I don’t think I can recommend this movie to anyone either, at least no one I want to remain my friend.

As far as the movie’s box office, NEON is opening the movie in 562 theaters to build on buzz from various film festivals, including the New York Film Festival earlier this week. I think it should be good for half a million this weekend, although maybe it'll surprise me like NEON's release of Parasite a few years back. I just don't see this getting into the top 10 but maybe just outside it.

And then we have a few more movies that I got screeners for but just couldn’t find the time to watch, but might do so once I finish this verdammt column.

The faith-based doc THE JESUS MUSIC (Lionsgate) by the Erwin Brothers (I Can Only Imagine, I Still Believe) takes a look at the rise of Christian Contemporary Music through artists like Amy Grant and Stryper and everything in between, featuring lots of interviews of the artists’ trials and triumphs. Even though there isn’t much CCM I ever listen to, I’m still kind of curious about this one, since I generally like music docs and this is guaranteed not to be the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll of most of them. I have no idea how wide Lionsgate intends to release this but it certainly can be fairly wide, because the Erwins have delivered at least one giant hit for Lionsgate, and I Still Believe may have been another one if not for the pandemic. It actually opened on March 13, just days before movie theaters shut down across the country, so it's little surprise it only made $7 million domestic. That said, the acts in this one have a lot of fans, and if Lionsgate does release The Jesus Music into 1,000 theaters or so (which is very doable), then I would expect it would make between $1 and 2 million, which would be enough to break into the Top 10.

I haven't seen any of the movies based on Anna Todd's YA romance novels but the third of them, AFTER WE FELL, will play in about 1,311 theaters on Thursday i.e. tonight through Fathom Events, and may or may not continue through the weekend. These movies just kind of show up, and again, having not seen any of them, I'm not sure what kind of audience they have, but this one stars Josephine Langford and Hero Fiennes, as well as Stephen Moyer, Mira Sorvino and Arielle Kebbel with Castille Landon directing.

Grace Van Patten (Under the Silver Lake) stars in Karen Cinorre’s action-fantasy film MAYDAY (Magnolia), playing Ana, a young woman who is transported to a “dreamlike and dangerous” coastline where she joins a female army in a never-ending war where women lure men to their deaths. It also stars Mia Goth, Havana Rose Liu, Soko, Théodore Pellerin and Juliette Lewis. It will be in theaters and On Demand this Friday.

The great Tim Blake Nelson stars in Potsy Ponciroli’s action-Western OLD HENRY (Shout! Studios/Hideout) about a widowed farmer and son who take in an injured man with a satchel full of cash only to have to fend off a posse who come after the man, claiming to be the law. Not sure who to trust, the farmer has to use his gun skills to defend his home and the stranger.

The romantic-comedy FALLING FOR FIGARO (IFC Films) is the new movie from Australian filmmaker Ben Lewin (The Sessions), who I’ve interviewed a few times, and he’s a really nice chap. This one stars Danielle Macdonald, Hugh Skinner, and Joanna Lumley, and it will be in theaters and On Demand this Friday. This rom-com is set in the world of opera singing competitions with Macdonald playing Millie, a brilliant young fund manager who decides to chase her dream of being an opera singer in the Scottish Highlands. She begins vocal training lessons with a former opera diva, played by Lumley, where she meets Max, a young man also training for that competition. Could love blossom? This actually sounds like my kind of movie, so I’ll definitely try to watch soon.

The second season of “Welcome to Blumhouse” the horror movie anthology kicks off on Amazon Prime Video on Friday with the first two movies, Maritte Lee Go’s Black as Night (which I’ve seen) and Gigi Saul Guerrero’s Bingo Night (which I haven’t), and actually I’ll have an interview with Ms. Go over at Below the Line possibly later this week. The former stars Ashja Cooper as a teen girl living in Louisiana who has a bad experience with homeless vampires, along with her best friend (Fabrizio Guido).

Also, Antoine Fuqua and Jake Gyllenhaal’s remake of the Danish film THE GUILTY will begin streaming on Netflix starting Friday after premiering at TIFF a few weeks back. I never got around to reviewing it, but it’s pretty good, maybe a little better than the original movie but essentially the same. I’d definitely recommend it if you like Jake, because he’s definitely terrific in it.

Also hitting Netflix this week is Juana Macias' SOUNDS LIKE LOVE (Netflix), a Spanish language romance movie that (guess) I haven't seen!

A few other movies I didn’t get to this week, include:

STOP AND GO (Decal) VAL (Dread) BLUSH (UA Releasing) RUNT (1091 Pictures)

Next week, it’s not time for James Bond, it’s time for James Bond to die… no, wait… there is NO TIME TO DIE! Also, a very, very special anniversary for the Weekend Warrior….

#The Weekend Warrior #Venom: Let There Be Carnage #Many Saints of Newark #Addams Family II #movies #review #box office #reviews #The Jesus Music #Titane

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dwtsfun · 3 years

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Dancing with the Stars Season 30 PREMIERE!!!

Hey everyone. Welcome back! We are here for the monumental 30th season of DWTS. Can you believe it? It's wild. Tyra is back as host and she was much better than she had ever been last season. Len and Derek are both at the judges' table with Bruno and Carrie Ann. And I actually liked what Tyra had on. I also thought everyone but one person did a good job. Okay, so now, let's move onto the recap/ranking thing.

As we know, when we have this many people, I tend to rank the couples instead of trying to format an entire recap. The same will be true for this season.

1. Kenya and Brandon- Okay so let me get this out of the way. I have been watching Kenya on RHOA for about a decade and I do not like her character on that show at all. I'm gonna try my best to separate her character on there from how she is on here (which I hear is how she is in real life). I just wanna get that out the way so I don't have to deal with any claims of bias. That being said, this dance really stuck with me more than any other dance from Monday night. I think watching just how natural she was, seeing how much musicality she has and Brandon's choreo really blew me away. I was not expecting her to be that good. Her lines were gorgeous and I felt her hold was actually mostly good. She is one of two women that I felt really gave enough to their performance without going overboard. I'm very excited for these two for the weeks to come.

2. Matt and Lindsay- Another shocker for me! I saw that viral clip of Matt dancing on The Bachelor last year and I got so much second hand embarrassment from it that I did not have any hopes for Matt and rhythm. But listen. Matt shocked me. Lindsay actually got something out of him. So much so that I maybe feel like he's actually got potential to be good. He's gotta loosen up his hips and get that footwork together, but I'm actually excited for these two as well. And I was not expecting that.

3. Amanda and Alan- I wasn't shocked to see what these two did on the dancefloor as Amanda is a dancer and Alan has worked with a big dance ringer before (Heather). So I knew that they were going to be good. And they delivered on that end for sure. I thought her attention to detail was great (almost too good cuz it caused her neck to get wonky). The thing that made me really fall for them is that they are really fun together. Amanda also dances through the floor and not on top of it. So I'm happy that we will have one major ringer that really brings it this season.

4. Mike "The Miz" and Witney- These top 4 are here because they all surprised me the most of everyone and they were the most enjoyable. I think Mike (or The Miz, not sure how I'm gonna refer to him just yet) was shockingly good. Like good to the point that he could be a legit contender if he just works a little more on his technique and reigning in the energy. He's very charismatic. He's got the right attitude. And Witney seems to be working well with him. Actually, I'm seeing little bits of her partnership with Chris Mazdzer coming through. I'm liking what I'm seeing from these two and I hope they improve like I think they will.

5. Jojo and Jenna- So I really liked Jojo a lot more than I thought I would. I thought I would roll my eyes every few seconds, but I wasn't. And she made me actually enjoy Jenna as well? Hell is freezing over right now lol. Anyway, I thought this was a great dance. I don't think it was the best of the night score wise, but it was up there. Once Jojo reigns in all that energy, she's going to be great. That was her biggest issue for me.

6. Suni and Sasha- I really wish I could've put these two higher. But I just couldn't justify it. Suni might be the best technician on the cast this season (like most gymnasts have been). Everything move was excellence. Her transitions between each move was also really nice as well. I don't notice that too often but I noticed it with her and I really appreciated that. My issue is that she's not really performing right now. She's in her head and I just want Sasha to figure that piece out sooner rather than later. I want her to stick around and that's gonna be her Achilles heel.

7. TIE Jimmie/Emma and Christine/Pasha- I feel bad for everyone that got a tango on Monday. It's a terrible week 1 dance. I also hate that these two both got pop songs from 2007 to dance to. Pop songs that should not be anywhere near a tango. It just made for two really weird routines. That being said, both were able to show some strengths that will bode well for them in the coming weeks. Jimmie has a really solid frame and good posture. Christine has a very flexible back. I'm a little more worried for Christine than I am for Jimmie as far as fan support is concerned, but I think she'll be good this week.

9. Mel C and Gleb- I hate having to put Mel all the way down at 9th place. I love her and while I think she had some of the best technique of the night, I wanted more from her and I felt like she had more to offer. I can only blame Gleb's choreo for that. While it was fine, it just didn't make a statement to me. It fell flat. He's gotta step it up because Mel has what it takes to make it to the end. And I actually would want to see her there. But in this season, where everyone is at least good (well everyone will be after our first elimination), you have to stand out with the choreography.

10. Iman and Daniella- First of all I want to say that this dance was underscored. Iman needs to work on his feet for sure. That being said, he's got great control of his limbs, he's got great musicality and he can just legit dance. I think this could've been 1 or 2 points higher. I hope he can be a basketball player that makes it far. Also, I want to say that the tall and long men this season have great control of their limbs and are not afraid to move true to their size. That's really nice to see.

11. Cody and Cheryl- I definitely expected these two to perform a lot better than they did on Monday. I'll chalk that up to first night nerves and having a difficult week 1 dance. When Cody let loose, you could tell that he is a really good dancer. Even some of the more technical things showed off his experience. I fully expect them to come back next week with guns blazing. The one pro whose knowledge of the show rivals Derek's, is Cheryl. I think she knows that they may not be in the safest spot right now and that that needs to change, stat.

12. Melora and Artem- I thought this dance was good, but forgettable amongst a sea of other good to great dances. There wasn't anything that Artem or Melora did wrong. It's just that type of season. Melora is definitely a performer. And she's got some of the basics down really nicely. She needs to find her balance though. She lost it quite a few times during that tango.

13. Brian and Sharna- Okay, this is low. But it is not indicative about how I feel about them as a (dance) couple or how I feel about his dancing. I thought he did a good job. I think they're great together. I just didn't care for this foxtrot. And that's okay. They are only going to go up from here and I can't imagine them leaving anytime soon.

14. Olivia and Val- Olivia was good as well. However, she is kinda stiff. I also didn't really like Val's choreo. I don't have much else to say here. She didn't really make too big of an impact imo. I also hated the outfit that production put her in. It was so unflattering and looked like they threw a pair of curtains on her body.

15. Martin and Britt- This was the one bad performance of the night. And it was bad. I had heard rumblings of him not rehearsing very much and that was so obvious in that paso. I think it was smart for Britt to throw that talking part in at the beginning to minimize any dancing he had to do. But yeah, it was bad. I hate that I have to say this because I love Britt, but these two should go next week. I just can't take anymore weeks of this dancing when everyone else is leaps and bounds better already.

So that's it. Sorry I'm so late. I was going to get this up yesterday but I had a terrible day and said "fuck it" to work, school and this blog. Let me know what you all thought about the show and I will talk to you all soon!

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hlupdate · 4 years

Link

The second takes place a few years later: Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Payne got up to use the bathroom, and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words …” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, “What if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?”

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio, with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, ‘What if [the next line was] “More than a feeling”? Well, that would actually be tight!’”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live-show staple. It’s a midtempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock & roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was redefining the contours of fandom.

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘NSync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of the history of boy bands. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties, when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted did it only once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatlesque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, poppy guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy-band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘NSync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

#harry styles #louis tomlinson #one direction #1d ten #220720

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indathreneblue · 3 years

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Fic Writer Review Thing!

tagged by @kryptamazon (thank you!)

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

7 total works - 4 written, 3 artworks.

One of those artworks is an illustrated version I did of my written fic, so its not entirely new but it is unique :)

2. What’s your total ao3 word count?

96134

3. How many fandoms have you written for?

3 so far

4. Top 5 fics by kudos?

Accidentally Until It's Not

Collar Me Surprised

quiet in the city with you (artwork, not a fic)

Handcuffs and Cherry Cordials

Accidentally Until It's Not [Illustrated Version]

5. Do you respond to comments? Why/why not?

Yes. I really like getting comments, and if someone takes the time to give me feedback, I feel like they’d enjoy/appreciate a response. And sometimes my responses help me become more aware of my reasons and thoughts for writing something a certain way, which helps me understand and improve my writing going forward.

6. A fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending

I don’t do angsty endings. Accidentally Until It’s Not has the most angst in it overall, but it gets resolved and things work out in the end :)

7. Do you write crossovers?

I haven’t yet. If an interesting concept came to mind, though, I think it’d be fun.

8. Ever received hate on a fic?

Sort of? Not really hate, just very vocal dislike. Although they contended that they still liked the story overall, despite their repeated dislike of that character’s actions…which was confusing and kind of hard to comprehend, but c’est la vie.

9. Do you write smut?

Yep. With lots of feelings :) Either the characters fighting their own burgeoning affections, or them finally accepting and expressing their love. Sometimes with a dash of humor in there, too. :)

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

11. Ever had a fic translated?

No.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Not yet. But I’ve collaborated on artwork before, and it’s been a lot of fun and resulted in some creations I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. Once I get through a backlog of fic ideas I’ve yet to write, I might pursue it more diligently. :)

13. All time fav ship?

Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor. I have other ships that I really like, but none are as versatile as Supercorp. With other ships, I’ll come up with a few ideas that I think would work for the characters (both individually and as a ship). But with Supercorp, the ideas don’t stop. AU settings, AU meetings, powers/no powers, different eras, different jobs, variations on their characters’ personalities or histories, they all just seem to work with them.

14. WIP you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I am an optimist and immortal, so I think I’ll finish them all eventually ;)

15. Writing strengths?

Getting into a character’s head and conveying their thoughts and motivations. Writing intimate scenes full of emotions/feelings, and making those scenes an important part of the story and character development.

16. Writing weaknesses?

My sentences can get wordy. I’m getting better at it, though, thanks to a beta with very good advice. :)

17. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic?

Only if I felt it really necessary to the story, and then I’d research, check, then double-check…because if you do it wrong and your reader catches it, it’ll take them out of the flow and possibly ruin the fic a little (or a lot) for them.

18. First fandom you wrote for?

The Last Ship. I’ve liked Bridget Regan since she was in Legend of the Seeker, and her character on The Last Ship is what drew me in to watching/writing.

19. What’s your fav fic you’ve written so far?

Accidentally Until It’s Not. I love the premise, and I’m really happy with the emotional arcs each character went through. It’s the longest fic I’ve written so far, and it made me a better writer along the way. Plus, it inspired me to create an illustrated version (wip), which is making me a better artist, too.

tagging @from-a-recklesswriter and @thornedrose44 to share your answers if interested :)

#fanfic writing #fanfic

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drowningindango · 3 years

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Fic Writer Review

I got tagged by @enquiringangel :3 Thanks! (putting the rest under a cut because it got kinda long)

1. How many fics on AO3?

Currently 18

2. Total AO3 wordcount?

77704 words

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Naruto, Borderlands, Undertale, Gloomverse, Teen Wolf… it’s a wide and wild spectrum. (not all of the works are published)

4. Top Five by Kudos?

Twice as Handsome

One Is The Loneliest Number

Just to Be by Your Side

Was it worth the wait?

For the rest of (y)our life

(I’m so proud a few of my naruto babies have managed to sneak up to the top :’3)

5. Do you respond to comments, why/why not?

YES. This is my favourite thing to do, I LOVE talking to people in the comments so much. I sometimes end up responding with more than the original comment, hahaha. Having conversations and hearing what people think gives me joy. I might sometimes not answer short comments when I can’t think of anything beyond “thanks” but I still silently appreciate them.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I mean, the strongest contender for this is a fic that’s not yet fully published but has its ending all planned out. “The Tragic Tale of Timothy Lawrence.” It’s my nastiest work overall too. Otherwise I like writing angst but not really angsty endings unless it’s poetic in some way.

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

Yeah, I do, and I can’t help it. It just happens. Although it’s mostly just putting characters from one franchise into another. Craziest…is a tough question. Depends how you define crazy, I always try to let it make sense. I guess my Borderlands x Edna’s Breakout fic qualifies here. A dead fandom crossed over with a small indie game whose fandom never really lived. xD

8. Have you received hate on a fic?

Nope. And please don’t jinx it.

9. Do you write smut?

Yes, unfortunately. (For all of you. xD) No idea if it’s good tho. I try my best.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I know.

11. Ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

12. Ever co-written a fic before?

Yes 🙌 Worked a couple of times with my favourite egg in the world. I also wrote privately with other friends on fics and stories. It’s really nice if the chemistry is just right and you can pick up where the other left off when their energy runs out. :3

13. All time favorite ship?

*broken computer noises*

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…….. I’ll just go with my current hyperfixation, if that’s okay. MadaObi

14. What’s a WIP you want to finish, but don’t think you ever will?

I have an unholy amount of open WIPs but I refuse to let any of them go.

The only one I have completely given up on is my old Undertale fic “What if…?” because I know for sure I will not touch that again. xD (…too much work, too much rewriting necessary)

There’s no such thing for me as a fic I “want” to finish but “never will”. If I actually want to finish something, then I will… one day. If not, then I never really wanted or cared enough to finish it. That’s how I’m wired. xD

15. What are your writing strengths?

Long internal monologues, emotions and descriptions. I like to think I make nice wordplays and sometimes may even be funny. xD

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

Coming up with more plot than I need. (No, seriously, this is a plague.)

Also, dialogue.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages?

You mean like including spoken dialogue that’s in another language than the overall work? It’s neat. I’m not sure how well it works for reading, it’s much more suited for movies (and comics), since you really experience it there and the reward for knowing and understanding the language is much higher.

In a written work, however, you are often looking from the eyes of a narrator, most commonly a certain character. So either they would understand what is said or not. If the character understands it, it would make much more sense if the dialogue is written in a way that it is marked as a different language but still so that every reader can understand it. If the character does not know the language, then they will often not even be able to make out the full words anyway and it would not make much sense to write it out fully. But then again, writing it out fully doesn’t do any harm either beyond giving the knowledgeable reader a nice little treat and giving people the opportunity to translate it later, so as I said before: I don’t mind either way. I’m neutral on that. Whatever works best for the story you want to tell.

If the question means specific words and phrases that are well-known and characteristic for the fandom from the source material, then just yes. The reader understands and it will simply fit in right, unless it’s done in a weird over the top way. I don’t see an issue here.

18. First fandom you wrote for?

I’ve probably written some stuff as a kid, but I don’t remember. (I know I created a giant fix-it story for Naruto but I never wrote any of that down lol. I was more into drawing.) So, my first “official” fanwork was for Undertale.

19. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

This is an evil question. Overall, probably “One Is The Loneliest Number” (despite being far from finished) because it’s gonna be bittersweet when I get to the good stuff. It’s the most planned out and detailed fic I have and I have a lot of feelings about it.

My favourite from my naruto fics (since this is still a naruto blog :’D): It is not a single fic and more a string of little snippets so far, but I really love my ObiMito time travel AU.

Tagging: @aly-uchiha913 @princeofuchiha and whoever else wants to be tagged.

#tag game

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overobsessedfanboy23 · 4 years

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Punch Out Wii Boxers Ranked

Thought I’d give my opinion on this since I’ve already expressed biases towards/against certain characters. I will be including Donkey Kong and Doc Louis but not Little Mac (because he is the objective best). The list will go from 15: the worst, to 1: the best. Before I start, I’d like to say that all of these characters are good, well-crafted characters, it really just comes down to personal bias who you prefer. And with that, let’s get started:

15. King Hippo

King Hippo is barely a character. Everything he “says” (there are apparently translations) just boils down to being hungry and he has no personality outside of that. I don’t hate him, but I don’t really care about him. His fight is also pretty boring all things considered. The contender fight is pitifully easy once you know what you’re doing and his title defense fight can go on for a long time and get very monotonous. At least his music’s kinda cool.

14. Super Macho Man

As someone who lives in America, I hate Macho Man with a burning passion. It’s not because I’m “patriotic,” it’s actually kind of the opposite. I’m not offended by his stereotype because it’s mean, I’m annoyed by his stereotype because it’s accurate. I deal with people like this on the daily: in the news. His catchphrases are obnoxious (except sometimes when they’re cut off. That’s kinda funny, admittedly) and he’s egotistical even compared to some of the others. He’s the type of person I actually want to punch in the face so I thank Punch Out for giving me that opportunity but I still hate the character. His match is fine. It’s a bit too easy in both contender and title defense compared to Soda and Bull but hey, at least they tried. His music’s alright.

13. Donkey Kong

Don’t get me wrong, I love Donkey Kong’s inclusion in this game. I think it’s amazing that Nintendo made a match for one of their most famous characters and the fight against him is very unique and challenging to win by KO. That being said, I never really played Donkey Kong so I don’t really have the connection to this character that others do. So yeah, great cameo, not one of my favourite fighters.

12. Bald Bull

Sorry, Bald Bull fans, but I’m not the biggest fan of this raging lunatic. In fact, he kinda creeps me out. People make jokes about Great Tiger being a furry (which he is), but Bald Bull straight up acts like a bull to the point of literally assaulting the poor referee. It’s kind of gross. To that same point, he is also completely shameless about his horrid anger issues which is personally not fun to watch. I get that he was driven mad by the paparazzi (or whatever that cutscene was trying to convey) but it’s still pretty over the top. I’m also not a big fan of his fights. It’s not too terribly difficult in contender mode (except the stupid bull charge) but it’s downright ridiculous in title defense. I firmly believe that his title defense match is the hardest in the entire game, yes even more difficult than TD Soda and TD Sandman. I cannot express with words how much I despise the star punch gimmick. Getting the star punches is frame perfect, making it feel like luck, and getting hit once makes you lose them all. And you need those stars to even knock him down. Seems a bit extreme for the middle fight in the world circuit, doesn’t it?! I was at this fight for hours and was over the moon when I finally managed to beat him. Also, his music kinda sucks. However, I put him over Macho Man because despite everything I just said, I don’t actually hate Bald Bull. I hate his fights but I don’t hate him personally like I do with obnoxious american.

11. Soda Popinski

Oh boy, Drunk Man. I don’t really see many reasons to like him but not any to hate him either, apart from his stupidly difficult fight, that is. I actually find it pretty easy in Contender. There’s a lot of strategies to knock him down really fast and his pattern is pretty basic. As for title defense, did they really need to make it that ridiculously hard? Yeah, there are tricks to make it easier and he has a set pattern but getting into the rhythm of that pattern is incredibly difficult and one slight mistake sets you back to two stun punches. It’s beyond frustrating. And yet the game deems him and Bald Bull to be easier than Macho Man. Why? As a character, Soda is just kinda there for me. It’s fun to make jokes about his steroid soda at least. Also, his music is for some reason one of my favourites tracks in the game. It’s just so epic.

10. Bear Hugger

Alright, now we’re onto the characters I actually like. Bear Hugger is a fun character. He’s one of the more exaggerated stereotypes though I can’t really say for sure whether this one is accurate or not but I’m guessing the maple syrup and hockey stuff at the very least is. I also love the squirrel. It’s implemented into the fight kind of oddly, but it makes his title defense fight pretty enjoyable. It’s a difficult fight but not one I’ve lost recently. The contender fight is fun too, it’s definitely one where I get to spam a ton of star punches. His music is good too. Not much to say on Bear Hugger, he’s fun but I like the other characters more.

9. Disco Kid

Kinda sad that the Wii version only introduced one new character to the roster but at least it was a fun character. Disco Kid’s matches are not a challenge. Contender mode, title defense, he’s one of the easiest fights in the game. He makes up for that by being incredibly over the top flamboyant and cocky, this time in a fun way. I like that he dances throughout his whole fight, I think it’s cool when every little aspect of someone’s match ties into who the character is. Disco Kid is a flamboyant dancer and that is perfectly shown through his mannerisms in the fights. I especially love how in Title Defense, he’s not really bitter or determined to beat Mac he’s just like, “Oh a dance club? This is cool, might as well work this stuff into my boxing routine.” It’s pretty excellent. I’m not a huge fan of disco, but his theme music is pretty good.

8. Aran Ryan

If there’s one thing I’ve seen since joining this site, it’s a lot of Aran Ryan. People on here really love this guy and even many of the YouTubers I’ve seen play this game say he is one of if not their favourite character in the game. Personally, I think he’s a little overrated. However, I do still like him and see why other people like him. He’s sort of a “love to hate” kind of character with him being a complete psycho that’s probably a sadist and a masochist considering how he seems to enjoy being punched and beating the hell out of everyone. It’s fun in a twisted way. His fights are also both pretty fun. Everyone really likes the cheating aspect and yeah, it’s pretty ridiculous that he can literally bring in a weapon and get away with it. However, it also makes his fight stand out from the others. He’s so horrible that he’s just fun to beat up. It’s also the only world circuit fight in title defense that I don’t hate with every fibre of my being. So yeah, fun character, with excellent music might I add.

7. Glass Joe

Here’s another favourite here on Tumblr. To be honest, the fact that people on here liked Aran Ryan didn’t surprise me at all. In fact, it seemed perfectly in character. However, it did surprise me to see how many people liked Glass Joe. I thought he was kind of underrated before but now I see that he’s getting the love he deserves. I love how even though Glass Joe is in every way a french stereotype, he also directly defies the stereotype of the french being quick to surrender. He lost one hundred times and still didn’t give up, becoming determined to defeat Little Mac after earning the headgear. It’s unironically really admirable. Glass Joe’s fights are never a challenge. Contender, title defense, champion’s mode, motion controls, he’s always kind of a joke. However, he is meant to be a tutorial fight for new players and this game gets much more challenging as it goes on, so it’s understandable. They did do a good job at making him more challenging in title defense, but it was still pretty easy at least in my opinion.

6. Von Kaiser

Von Kaiser’s a little underrated in this fandom. Maybe I’m speaking from bias, since I have so many headcanons about him but I really do think he’s a good character. He is just as much of a coward as Glass Joe and isn’t a much better fighter (his contender and title defense fights are both incredibly simple) yet Von Kaiser has a significantly better record than the rest of the minor circuit and even Bear Hugger, with 23 wins and 13 losses. He must’ve gotten those wins from somewhere and I doubt they were all from Glass Joe. That combined with the fact that Kaiser is the oldest boxer in the game (42) makes me think he was once a great boxer but has now passed his prime and refuses to give up, sort of like Glass Joe, but a little more tragic. Regardless, it’s fun to speculate. And I feel kinda bad for Von Kaiser, I mean the dude gets beat up by kids and basically goes mad after being beaten by a seventeen year old boxing newbie. Also, his music is pretty intense despite the fact that he’s treated like a joke by the game. Like Glass Joe, they did do a good job of making Kaiser more difficult in title defense by giving him a one hit KO and plenty of fake outs, though I don’t particularly struggle with either of those.

5. Sandman

Sandman is scary as hell. None of the other boxers really intimidate me, even the one with ridiculously difficult fights, but Sandman is a different story. Everyone else in the game has some kind of silly quirk even when they are serious but this guy is deadly serious about boxing. I mean, they introduce him by showing him beat the shit out of everyone you just faced before, some of which the player may have struggled with. It’s a great introduction for a final boss. His fight in contender is certainly the hardest in that mode and while I didn’t struggle with his title defense fight as much as TD Soda and TD Bull, it was still incredibly hard to beat. And unlike TD Soda and TD Bull, he actually has final boss vibes, so he does deserve his rank (unlike some other characters). Similar to Aran Ryan, his fight also requires the player to be more on offense, at least in my experience.

#4 Doc Louis

Doc Louis is severely underrated in this fandom and just in general. I love how encouraging he is to Little Mac even when he loses repeatedly, I love his silly tips that more often than not are cheesy dad jokes or puns. He’s just a good wholesome dad that loves his chocolate. I love him. Sadly, I have not played Doc Louis’s Punch Out so I don’t really have a perspective on how the fight is apart from videos online but it does look pretty fun, and it’s freaking Doc Louis. How can you not love him?

#3 Piston Hondo

This guy is also kind of underrated, maybe because he’s a bit vanilla? I don’t know, but apart from Sandman, he is undoubtedly the most serious about boxing. It’s actually a bit scary. I mean, this dude can catch a sword in his bare hands and outrun the bullet train, he could easily become champion after Little Mac retires. In fact, for me at least, his title defense fight is the most challenging fight in the major circuit for me. Yes, harder than Bear Hugger and Great Tiger. Those fake outs and speedy Hondo Rushes kept getting me. So yeah, very dedicated to boxing. He’s also just very respectable in general, keeping a calm demeanor throughout the fight and even bowing to show respect. He also doesn’t laugh at you when you get knocked down like literally everyone else does. (Apart from Don, but he still taunts you by asking if you want more.) Yeah, he gloats, but he’s a good sport. It’s nice to see someone who plays fair amongst a crowd of cheaters.

#2 Don Flamenco

Yet another character I’m surprised doesn’t get more attention in this fandom. I dunno, maybe my opinions are just weird. That being said, Don Flamenco was always going to be one of my favourites as he is the only foreign speaker in this entire game I can understand without subtitles. Though even if you don’t know spanish, Don’s character is still very clear and very amazing. Like, I’m sorry, but his contender intro is the best sequence in the entire game. You know immediately what he’s all about and it’s just so beautifully over the top to see this try hard dance his way into the ring with a rose. Actually, “beautifully over the top” is a great description for Don Flamenco in general. He hits every note of the “Spanish man” stereotype in the first few seconds you see him: being a bullfighter, getting all the girls, dancing the flamenco, and just being handsome in general. I don’t know if that last one is an actual stereotype but it’s undeniably true. And none of that is a bad thing. He is a positive figure, if a little cocky, and all of these things that the game could make fun of him for (the NES version certainly does), are actually shown in a positive light. I’m not too fond of bullfighting being shown in that light but it is very popular in Spain so… eh. Also, I do like that Don Flamenco fights like a bullfighter in the ring, baiting you into “charging” or attacking before countering. It’s a nice detail. However, it does make the fight a little too easy. In contender mode, even without doing the infinite, I barely have any trouble with him. He’s easy to get stars off of, his attacks are not that hard to dodge or counter, and if you do the infinite combo, you can destroy him in seconds. In title defense, he is more difficult for sure, but he’s the easiest fight title defense fight in the major circuit. That being said, holy cow is he amazing in title defense as well. He was already over the top in contender but in title defense, after one loss might I add, he acts like it’s the end of the world and becomes completely emo. This could’ve been completely obnoxious or stupid but in my opinion, it makes him very entertaining. He’s just so fun to watch in general, I love his epic music, and I love this angsty telenovela character. Amo al personaje Don Flamenco. El es tan entretenido y guapo. Necesita más amor. Because I mentioned that I know spanish earlier and the first first thing people always ask me is to speak some so there you go. Onto number one.

1. Great Tiger

If you’ve seen my other stuff here on Tumblr, you probably knew this was coming. My very first post on Tumblr, as well as the second, was about Great Tiger and I have tons of pictures of him in my likes. I guess I just have a thing for charming arrogant divas. Seriously, while he’s not as over the top as someone like Disco Kid or Don Flamenco, Great Tiger is a total diva and kind of a show off. He’s always using his clones to glorify himself or taunt you, which would normally be annoying but for some reason, it’s not in his case. And it’s not because I don’t know what he’s saying, the inflection in his voice makes it clear enough that he’s trash talking (and I’ve looked up translations). It’s because Great Tiger has a sort of cold determination, like he is ready to destroy you first, glorify himself after, probably the reason he doesn’t have a taunt, unlike nearly everyone else in the game. He is completely focused on the match and very cool-headed as well. He’s very respectable, even when he’s literally telling you to go drink your mother’s milk. On a side note, I looked up those translations as a kid and I still can’t get over the fact that that is something he actually says. Like, what on earth Nintendo? Still, it’s kinda funny to me. Anyways, I love Great Tiger’s fights. His contender form is fun and I love that intermission scene where he switches places with Doc, showing what a likeable douche he is but his title defense form is my favourite in the game. I really love the magical element, what can I say? The flashing jewel is like a game of Simon put to boxing, I love that he teleports all over the place, the Magic Rush is gorgeous bullshit, and the fight keeps me on my toes but not to the point of being impossibly hard. It’s also fun to experiment with certain elements of the fight, because it can be incredibly varied depending on what you do. just really fun. Whether I do the special knockout or play through the whole fight, I have a fun time fighting Great Tiger. It also helps that his music is spectacular, my favourite in the game. I dunno, those bongos just feel so good on the ears. Great Tiger is also just really interesting in general, and I feel like there’s a lot of unanswered questions about him. How does he have magic? (I know the NES version has an explanation for this but the Wii version does not and is substantially different.) What is the extent of his abilities? Is the jewel the source of his power? It seemed to be directly linked to his corporeal clones in title defense. Is he even of this world? I don’t know, but damn it’s fun to speculate on. I’d love a story just about his backstory, how he got his magic, how he became a boxer, I care about that stuff. So yeah, Great Tiger is the most interesting character in this game, and that’s why he’s my favourite. (I also low-key crush on him, but that’s subjective :)

Anyways, hope you enjoyed my list, it was kinda long, but I have a lot of opinions on this game and this is a good place to put it.

#punch out #punch out wii #glass joe #von kaiser #disco kid #king hippo #piston hondo #bear hugger #great tiger #don flamenco #aran ryan #soda popinski #bald bull #super macho man #mr.sandman #sandman #opinions #favorite characters

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nightwingshero · 3 years

Note

12-23 all your Far Cry OCs ! 🥰

Thank you, love!!! This may have gotten a bit long...I have a lot of OCs for Far Cry, don’t @ me.

12. What OCs would have a chugging competition?

That’s an excellent question, and I think a better one would be who wouldn’t. Rowan, Grayson, Wren, Jane, and Randy are definitely the top contenders for that. Ivy would be a bit taken aback by it, and then politely decline. Whitney and Quinn...Whit would silently judge while also wishing that was her. Quinn is...he’s on the fence, I think that depends. Because he likes rooting for it, watching it, and laughing at them making fools of themselves, but if challenged, he won’t hesitate, and I think Mel would be in the same boat, but she’s less likely to rise to the challenge...she’s too uh...laid back to really feel competitive. Now, as for the kids go, it would be between Emmett, Freya, and Harper. It would start as a back and forth between Emmett and Freya, which would just pull Harper in with it as Braxton and Ana watch warily and Emmie is laughing her ass off.

13. What OCs would arm wrestle? Who would win?

Randy, Wren, Rowan, Jane, and Quinn. Hands down (see what I did there?). Jane would only do it if provoked, in any other situation, she’s rolling her eyes in the corner and calling them idiots. Randy would obviously win, though it’s a good go with Quinn...and Quinn would honestly let Wren win. He’s trying to impress her, you know? Rowan won’t get off that easily, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. Girl can hold her own. If it’s the kids, Emmett and Freya, all day long. Freya is just like her mother, and she’s so damn quick to rise to a challenge, and Emmett is a cocky little shit.

14. Who would jump off the roof into a pool and who would video it?

Okay...this is probably something that’s going down at Whit’s house. And I’m telling you right now, Randy and Grayson are the first to go, quickly (and I mean quickly) followed by Jane, because she’s not going to be showed up by them at all (Grayson said something rile her up). Whitney is freaking the hell out, insisting someone is going to get hurt. Wren is videoing it because there’s no way in hell it’s not going on YouTube. Ro and Mel are actually scoring it. Ivy is trying really hard to ignore it, she got one day off and might have to play doctor anyway. It was Quinn’s idea...he just made it seem like Grayson’s and he’s enjoying the result of it while drinking an ice cold beer (he prefers vodka, but Whit didn’t have that...so she claims).

15.What OC nicknames everyone?

They all do, honestly. My Scooby Gang are a bunch of just...sarcastic assholes and sweethearts. Grayson and Ivy might be the only ones that don’t. Jane is called Viking Princess most of the time by Wren, and Randy is Lumberjack Steve. Quinn is Blondie from time to time, Wren will call him Hot Shot, too. Randy will call him “Cap” in reference to Captain America (Quinn’s favorite superhero) and with him being a Security Captain. Rowan is playfully dubbed Huntress or Bambi, depending on who you’re talking to. But Jane calls her Robin Hood or just asshole. Grayson is just...Gray. No one really has a nickname for him, except for Quinn, who calls him Speedy from his background (which Randy then tells them the story of Wren nearly driving them off a cliff). Whitney is either Mom (sarcastically, of course), Miss America, Goody Two Shoes, or just Whit. And Whitney just...calls everyone hun, darlin’, sweetheart, sweetie, dear, etc. If she’s feeling extra fiesty, she’ll give an actual sarcastic nickname (she calls Cooper cowboy and lone ranger though).

16. Who makes the plan, who follows the plan and who knows the plan is going to fail?

Making the plan consists of: Rowan, Quinn, and Randy. Ivy, Whit, and Wren are gonna follow it, and...well, Jane and Gray are gonna say “this is a stupid idea”. I honestly picuture it being that scene from Infinity War. Tony would be Rowan and Randy. Peter Quill would be Quinn. Draxx would be Grayson and Jane, Mantis is Whit and Mel. Wren is Peter Parker, and Ivy is Dr. Strange. Ivy was looking forward in time, watching every scenario in which she dies surrounded by idiots. I mean...this scene is literally just them in New Dawn.

17. Who brings a surplus amount of silly string to a party?

Wren and Mel. Mostly because it’s probably a prank to ruin Whit’s perfect hair. It takes her forever to get it out due to the hairspray, but it was worth it. Jane recorded it so she can relive the screams.

18. Who goes crazy over glow sticks?

Wren, Mel, and Randy! They love them. When they get wasted or high, they do this (its at 3:20, but seriously...watch it...because there isn’t a Brendon Urie vine that doesn’t embody one of my OCs...plus, he’s hilarious). But I could see them doing some sort of glow stick party.

19. What is your OCs favourite game to play together?

Monopoly (Jane and Quinn are scary good at it), Just Dance, Cards Against Humanity, and Heads Up. Most of them end up in hilarious fights and yelling/laughing together...because they drink when they play.

20. What OC has no directional compass yet still leads the group?

W H I T N E Y. Listen, I could literally hear the whole fucking group just collectively groan. She will swear she knows where she’s going and pretty much takes charge, even though she has no clue. But they follow anyway...so who’s really at fault here?

21. Who would pose beside a garbage can to take a picture to caption it ‘me’ later?

Wren, Grayson, and Randy. They would laugh while doing it, but Whitney would text back or show up at their house like “Sweetie, are you okay?” with cookies or some shit. Rowan is sure of herself and Mel is at peace with who she is. Quinn, Whit, Ivy, and Jane love themselves too much for that.

22. What poses do the squad like to do when taking a group photo?

Oh. My. GODDDDD. Listen, they’re always doing stupid shit, even if Whit is demanding something serious. Whit will smile with Ivy while the others are doing bunny ears, carrying each other, climbing on each other, or doing other stupid shit. Lots of kisses on the cheek, piggy back rides, “sexy” poses, and just...they never take it seriously. Whit has one (1) good photo.

23. What concert would your OCs all go to together and why that concert?

Arctic Monkeys, Queen, Lorde, or Taylor Swift, but it’ll most likely be Queen or Taylor Swift. Grayson has a huge crush on Adam Lambert, and who doesn’t love the music? And Randy knows all the words to Shake It Off and You Need to Calm Down is the group’s like....unspoken song...so...yeah, they’re going.

#oc: wren blake #oc: rowan palmer #oc: randy miller #oc: jane williams #oc: whitney seed #oc: ivy young #oc: melanie young #oc: grayson blake #oc: quinn langdon #my ocs #asks #far cry 5 #far cry new dawn #strafethesesinners

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burningdarkfire · 3 years

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tagged by @saturdaysky, thank you! always very happy to talk about writing 🤠

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

36 on ao3, with many others left in the past on livejournal or ffnet

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

162k. it’s kind of a shame it doesn’t have the majority of my pre-2011 output as i never ported over my top four or five longest fics. i would’ve loved to see some genuine lifetime totals!

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

9 on ao3 (critrole, nier, hetalia, overwatch, trc, voltron, no. 6, star wars, tiger & bunny). if you expand trc to include anything clamp and throw in code geass then that covers everything i’ve ever published, though homestuck is by far the fandom i have the most WIPs for despite never finishing a single one and deserves a shoutout

4) What are your top five fics by kudos?

take my hand / take my whole life too: critrole, 9k, how essek and caleb’s relationship evolves through touch

blue sky, warm sun: critrole, 3.5k, six mornings caleb wakes with essek

dark night, bright stars: critrole, 3k, six nights caleb spends with essek

kitty love: star wars, 1.5k, kylo ren forms a bond with hux’s cat millicent

the walls kept tumbling down: critrole, 2k, caleb spontaneously visits essek after a hard day

commentary and further answers are below the cut!

spots 1-3 on the list are gladly accepted, given that i also think they’re some of my best and most broadly-appealing shadowgast. kitty love gets its spot despite being pure, pointless crack because it’s for a huge fandom, which is fine and fun but i don’t have a lot of personal attachment to it

the walls kept tumbling down is a surprise! it was a self-indulgent “i want a fic exactly like this to fix my mood and instead of digging through the internet for one i’ll just make one up” that i only worked on for a couple of days. i’m glad it clicked for other people!

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

i always try to respond to comments, although sometimes a week or two pass by before i can find the energy to sit down and do it

admittedly comments have gone unanswered during months or years when i’m not writing fic and then it feels too awkward to a) go back and respond, and b) respond to any further comments on the fic even if they come in when i’m active. so instead those comments haunt my ao3 inbox forever (oops)

i do appreciate every single one though, and there are some comments that i go back to read if i need a pick-me-up just because they were so nice 😊

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

i’ll link my no. 6 fic forgive me because it still dominates my top fics in terms of hits despite being 387 words long. i wrote it in 2011 in less than half an hour, if i’m remembering correctly, and there are a few clever bits in it that i’m still quite proud of

7) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

i don’t usually write or read “pure” crossovers but i do like fusion AUs where characters from one work are imported into the setting of another work

but it’s fandom-dependent. critrole has been an outlier in that i can count on one hand the number of AU fics i’ve read and liked enough to remember. some of my favourite canon-adjacent fics veer off wildly, but they’ve still got their roots in the universe

i’ve published 17 critrole fics myself and they’re all canon-adjacent. i’m only now working on my first fusion-type AU 🤷‍♂️

8) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

i have one distinct memory of receiving criticism on a fic. in hindsight, it was constructive and pretty fair, but i was a young teen and so it still haunts me

9) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

i do!! and i’m excited about it because it’s fairly new to me!

i write to the characters, and what kind of relationship i think they’d have, but it’s probably true that my interests tend towards certain relationship dynamics

10) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i’m aware of!

11) Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes, actually! this was about about a decade ago so sadly the details have been lost in the haziness of memory and the inaccessibility of ffnet. i tried to dig it up last night but couldn’t find it again 😔

12) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

i don’t ... think so? my current roommate and i tried co-writing when we were teenagers but none of that got published. it’s possible i’m forgetting something from my livejournal/early tumblr days because i remember doing a lot of ask games and challenges with other writers and fandom friends

now i’m just an introvert who avoids invites to discords because i feel like i simply Do Not Have Time so 🤡 not sure it’s anywhere on the horizon

13) What’s your all time favourite ship?

i used to have shipping walls and pairing lists until 2015 or so but i have since accepted that i am changeable like the wind. my interests come and go!

i am a multi-shipper though as a general rule. i’ve never had such a loyalty to a pairing that it would bother me to pair one half with someone else, and i also don’t care at all whether or not a ship is canon. it’s just about what’s interesting!

14) What’s a WIP you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

i’ve had remarkably sequential focus for my critrole fics and finished nearly every idea i’ve had so far. however, this ACME AU is testing me lol and i’ve spent so much time on it that my list of other ideas to write is only getting longer and longer. nothing is abandoned yet, because not much else has even been started, but i am starting to sweat a little

15) What are your writing strengths?

i love my writing style! i value simplicity and clarity: no flowery descriptions, easy words, few similes, little variance in sentence structures, etc. it can vary, based on my mood or the characters i’m writing, but i like doing more with less

i’ve spent years working at my own style and it is so satisfying to read something i wrote in 2011 and feel how familiar it still is while being able to pick out what i would change

16) What are your writing weaknesses?

recently, it’s been plot. if it can’t be conveyed by 2-4 characters talking to each other then i don’t know how to do it anymore 😭 i’m most invested in emotional resolutions, but it’s probably a good idea to have things happen sometimes!

17) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

i really do not enjoy this when it’s used as a “character quirk”. this includes nicknames, common phrases even if they are spoken that way in canon, and .. everything, really, that’s in a different language

i’ve spent a lot of time in spaces where it seemed widely agreed that doing so was not welcome, and i’ve had considerable fandom “culture shock” reading critrole fics. there are plenty of reasons to have caleb speaking “zemnian” or to emphasize his accent, and those reasons don’t need to be lofty or deep, but i do think there should be a reason beyond “haha this guy says ja instead of yeah”

i promise, absolutely pinky swear, that i don’t judge anyone on an individual basis for doing this. it seems to be a deep-seated fandom trend in this case and i just wish it wasn’t

18) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

tsubasa reservoir chronicle (trc) all the way back in 2010. tsubasa, my beloved, how you changed my life 💕

19) What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

i like different ones for different reasons, but the top contender might be such is the endlessness for nier automata. it’s a vampire/werewolf enemies-to-lovers fusion AU where i put 2b and 9s in an original universe of mine that i wrote about a lot when i was a teenager

i feel like i did a spectacular job of adapting the universe for nier and i thought i conveyed a lot about the world in a relatively short number of words (the entire fic is just under 5k). i’ve considered more than once that i should use this version of the universe going forward because i enjoy it so much!

thanks again for the tag, sky, and i’ll leave this open to anyone else who wants to try as i think most of my mutuals have already been included. don’t be shy about tagging me in your answer if you take my open invite as i love reading these! 💖

#my posts #writing blogging #replies

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formula-one-thoughts · 4 years

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2020 Belgian Grand-Prix

Well I think we can safely say that 2020 was not a vintage year for the Belgian Grand Prix. One of the world’s greatest racetracks just didn’t deliver this time round (though I’m certainly not complaining – any racing is good racing in the time of Corona!). Not only were we looking forward to the track itself, but the promise of rain had given extra cause for excitement. Now, I’ve learnt not to be too optimistic when the possibility of a wet weather race is mentioned, and to secretly and silently wish for a downpour rather than voicing my hopes out loud for fear of jinxing it. But with the forecast stating a 100% CHANCE OF RAIN for Sunday, I foolishly allowed myself to believe that we may have a classic race akin to 1998, or at least a mix of tyre strategies necessitated by changing conditions across the track. Alas, it was not to be (though it did of course rain after the race!)

It’s not often that a team finishing 13th and 14th on pace is the major talking point following a grand prix. But when that team is the (once) mighty Ferrari, things are slightly different. How on earth did they go from easily the most dominant car around the circuit last year to one of the slowest? How were they the only car to be slower (1.317 secs to be precise) in FP2 this year than last year? Hmm, well it’s looking more and more like it might have something to do with the 2019 Scuderia engine not being 100% legal. The other Ferrari powered cars suffered too last weekend, yet Raikkonen managed to finish ahead of both of the works team cars, an achievement he was characteristically nonplussed about. But to fall so monumentally from grace to behind the Alfa suggests other issues also – their chassis is far from perfect and the fraught internal politics of the team at the moment can hardly be helping them out. Add to that a team of strategists seemingly incapable of making strategy calls and you have the perfect storm.

A team who have made considerable gains since last year are Renault. It seems like since they gave up protesting the pink Mercedes and started to focus on their own car they have really found their form! Ricciardo though has attributed their good fortunes to a set-up improvement; shall we just call it a combo of the two? In all seriousness though, it seems the team are experiencing the breakthrough they needed, not only with Danny Ric showing the skill and talent we all know he possesses, but also through Esteban Ocon really starting to show up at the last few races. Though we would have all loved to see a Max vs Daniel battle, and admittedly we did for about 15 seconds, Cyril Abiteboul will be very happy with the Australian’s second consecutive 4th place finish and extra point for fastest lap. With their haul of 23 points being the team’s greatest ever at a grand prix weekend, they will surely be feeling positive about their chances in the extremely tight midfield battle, where only 9 points separate McLaren in 3rd and Renault in 6th.

Whilst Ricciardo was a strong contender for driver of the day, that honour went deservedly to Pierre Gasly, whose performance so far this year has been consistently impressive, reminding everyone why he was promoted to Red Bull in the first place. Taking the risk to start the race from 12th on the hard tyres, he stormed through the field, passing cars left, right and centre who were on the speedier soft compound. A highlight of his charge, and a highlight of the race itself, was his sensational pass on Perez through Eau Rouge. Having been mightily squeezed by the Mexican he stuck to his guns and pulled off the overtake of the race. His strategy was sadly hampered by the safety car coming out on lap 11, but he still managed to fight his way through the pack after a late pit stop to finish a very respectable p8. It must have been an unbearably difficult weekend for Gasly at times, with the memory of the tragic accident that took the life of Anthoine Hubert, one of his best friends, still fresh. The Frenchman was honoured respectfully and with heart across the F2 and F1 paddocks, and it brought more than a few tears to my eyes to see Juan Manuel Correa return to Spa to remember his fellow racer. Gasly was driving with his dear friend in mind, putting on a performance that Anthoine would have loved and that was a wonderful tribute to an amazing talent and human being gone far too soon.

Come the chequered flag, the top three positions were occupied by… you guessed it! Hamilton, Bottas and Verstappen, the 1st and 3rd place drivers bemoaning the lack of excitement the race provided, both for themselves and the fans. This is shaping up to be Max’s best season yet. With a top three result in every race he’s finished this season he has hardly put a foot wrong, and though the gap between him and Valterri in the drivers championship is only 3 points (the Dutchman in 2nd, the Finn in 3rd), it’s increasingly looking like he’s the only driver Hamilton has cause to worry about. Elsewhere in the race, a heart stopping crash involving Giovinazzi and Russell fortunately resulted in no injuries. Russell was a sitting duck and there was nothing he could have done to avoid colliding with the wall as he swerved out of the way of Giovinazzi’s wheel. What could have been a very nasty incident indeed was yet another example of how impressive the sport’s safety measures have become (though we have seen a few too many wheels detaching from cars this season). Finally, I strongly recommend you check out the Racing Point social media channels. Whilst they might not have been as strong as they hoped on track in Belgium, they are killing it online, an absolute highlight being the adorable cartoon posters they have created for each race so far. The details on the Spa one were too good, ranging from Roscoe Hamilton at the wheel of his dad’s car, the bright yellow overalls of the two Jordan drivers standing out on the podium, and Sebastian and Daniel enjoying a game of ping-pong! 10/10.

What did you think of the 2020 Belgian Gran Prix? Who impressed you and who disappointed? And what are your predictions for this weekend’s first of three visits to Italy? Let me know!

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