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the-space-above-the-stars · 5 years

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he said, she said

lee jeno x reader

Summary: You like Jeno. Jeno likes you. You think Jeno likes your best friend Aisha. Jeno thinks you like Jaemin. Aisha and Jaemin think the both of you are idiots.

Warnings: none!

Word Count: 3K

Genre: pure, stupid fluff

Pairing: jeno x reader, friends to lovers!au

***

Ever since primary school, it seems like it had been the four of you. You and your best friend Aisha had met Jaemin and Jeno, another pair of best friends, and you all just kind of melded into this quartet, proving inseparable throughout high school.

And somewhere, at some undetectable point in your journey, you had decided to be a clown had caught feelings for Jeno. At first, you were certain that it was just a short crush, a brief infatuation with the smiley-eyed boy that would go away, but time passed, you hit double digits, you went off to high school, and even then, even now, your heart still somersaults anytime you think about him.

A few years ago, you had even thought about confessing, having a wild notion that there was a possibility that Jeno returned your feelings, but then you heard some schoolyard gossip that stopped you in your tracks.

“I heard Jeno likes Aisha! Yeah, I even saw him giving her his jacket yesterday!”

And that gossip worked as a catalyst, your fickle middle-school mind overworking the words in your mind and using them to overanalyze every interaction that Jeno and Aisha had from then, and you drew the conclusion that yeah, he did like her. After all, you were one of the people that knew him the best, and if you couldn’t trust your own gut...

So you backed off. You knew Aisha wasn’t interested in Jeno, but there was still no way in hell that you were going to confess when you knew you would be rejected, and possibly ruin your friendship.

***

Aisha sat in the cafeteria, uninterested in the food that was slowly growing cold in her tray. Her chin rested in her palm and she tapped her fingers against her cheek, squinting at the two people in the lunch line on the other side of the room. “Hey Aisha-” Jaemin greeted her, only to be met with a glare and a hush. “Who’re you watching?” He asked, his eyebrow raised as he sat next to her, sneaking fries off her tray.

“Jeno and Y/N,” she sighed, nodding to where the two were moving through the lunch line together. Jeno, first in the line, reached forward for the next food option, tater tots, and dropped some first into Y/N’s tray, and then some into his. “Look, he doesn’t even like the tater tots, but he always takes some so Y/N can take them off his tray.”

“Ah yes,” Jaemin sighed, french fries being forgotten as he understood his friend’s predicament. “The crippling saga of When Will Our Oblivious Best Friends Get Together continues.”

“It doesn’t make sense!” Aisha gestured wildly at the two. “There is literally nothing that should be stopping them from dating! Their families love each other, they’re good friends, they both like each other, so why the fuck can’t they just get together?”

“Who can’t get together?” You asked, smiling at Jeno as he used his foot to pull your chair out for you. Aisha glares at Jaemin once again.

“Uh- why Monica and Chandler can’t get together, on FRIENDS,” Jaemin stuttered.

Jeno raised an eyebrow, pulling his plastic fork from the packaging. “But- Monica and Chandler are together?”

“Dude! Spoiler alert! So anyway, you guys doing anything after school?” You and Jeno looked at him with confusion, then at Aisha, but she had on her impeccable poker face, so the two of you just looked at each other and shrugged.

“Uh, I’m tutoring Jeno for the chem test.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, can you wait for like 10 minutes in the library? Coach told us he needs to talk to us about captains after practice today.”

“Yeah sure, just meet me there. What about you two?” You smile as you nod at Aisha and Jaemin, using a fork to pick a tater tot off of Jeno’s tray.

“Nothing much,” Aisha shrugged. “We’ve just got a project we need to work on.”

“What pro-” Jaemin started, cutting himself off with a cough when Aisha pinched him from under the table. “Oh right, that project, I remember now.”

Jeno raised an eyebrow, eyes darting between the two, but shrugged and went back to eating, transferring the rest of his tater tots to your tray. Jaemin looked at Aisha, but she mouthed “After lunch” to him.

***

“Okay, so either I have amnesia and we got assigned a project, or you were lying in there,” Jaemin dropped his lunch tray off, following Aisha into the hall.

“Well, we technically do have a project. Just not for school. I’m initiating Project Get Our Dumbass Friends Together.”

“Oh thank god,” Jaemin sighed as the bell rang, the two of them continuing to talk as they headed to class. “I thought we actually had to do schoolwork. So what’s the first step, Captain?”

“Recon,” Aisha shrugged, the two of them slipping into their seats in Chemistry, lowering her voice to a whisper. “We talk to Jeno and Y/N separately and we figure out what’s stopping them from getting together, apart from the obvious.”

“What’s obvious?” Jaemin whispered, trying to not get in trouble with Miss Lin, who hated his guts.

“They’re both pussies.”

***

After the final bell rang, Jaemin set off for the library, his work set out for him. Aisha was gonna talk to Jeno when he got out of basketball practice, which left him with you. The librarian glared at him as he walked in, pointing her pen on the “no food or drink” sign. The old bat’s memory apparently hadn’t begun to fail her. Holding his hands up in defense, he walked past her to where you sat, earbuds in and head buried in some book. “What’s shaking?” You jumped as he tapped her shoulder, falling into the seat next to you.

“Jesus Christ Nana, give me some warning next time,” You sighed, rolling your eyes. “What’re you doing here, don’t you have to work with Aisha?”

“Oh yeah, we uh, we actually got most of it done in Study Hall. And so I was walking by the library and who do I see but my favorite person to bug, Y/N Y/L/N,”

“You’re such a pest.”

“A loveable pest.” He coughed, not sure how to transition into the topic. “So you like Jeno, huh?” Your eyes widened, and you turned to look at him so fast he’s sure that he gave you whiplash.

Well, that would work.

“W-What?” You stutter, face reddening as you look down at your book. “You’re crazy Na. Me? Like Jeno? As if.”

“Yes, I predicted that you’d react like this, so I’m just gonna get to it. Y/N/N, everyone can see the way you look at Jeno. Well, everyone but him, but that’s not the point. You guys practically do everything together, you’re tutoring him for Chemistry on a Friday night, for fucks sake and so help me if you don’t confess I’ll start singing right here, right now-” You cut him off by slapping a hand over his mouth, your face a furious shade of red. “So?” His voice came out muffled and you groaned, removing your hand.

“Okay, okay, I like Jeno, okay? You can’t tell ANYONE.”

“Why not! You guys would literally be the BEST couple-”

“He doesn’t like me, Jaemin.” That took him a bit by surprise. “I’m not gonna ruin everything on a whim that he might feel the same.”

“What the fuck do-” The librarian shushed him aggressively, and he continued in a whisper. “What do you mean he doesn’t like you?”

“He likes Aisha, Jaemin.”

***

Aisha tapped her foot to the beat of the song she was listening to through her earbuds, leaning against the wall outside the gym as she waited for Jeno. Her last class of the day was closer, so she had volunteered to interrogate him.

They were heading into their senior year of high school and it was frustrating to see that you and Jeno, two people that have had feelings for each other since forever, still hadn’t managed to put two and two together and start dating. She was doing this not just to get them together, but also she was curious to see what was stopping them.

The doors to the gym opened and the basketball team started filing out, changed back into their daily clothes with their gym bags over their shoulders. Jeno was near the back talking to Chenle. “Hey, Jeno!” She called out to him, waving him over. His head perked up and he smiled at her, saying bye to Chenle and walking over. “I need to talk to you.”

“Uh, I really need to get to the library, is this gonna be a long talk?”

“Actually, we can talk on the way.” Pulling him by the sleeve, she started walking to the library. “So you’ve liked Y/N since forever, and I know that-”

“Wait, wait wait-” Jeno looked around to make sure no one was around, looking at Aisha like she was crazy. “What do you mean I like Y/N?”

“You’ve liked her since she pulled the fire alarm to get you and Jaemin out of detention on your birthday so we could all go celebrate. Am I wrong?” Jeno opened and closed his mouth, but no noise came out. Aisha shrugged and kept walking. “Didn’t think so?”

“Wait- what, how’d you find out?”

“You’re not too subtle, you know? The only person who apparently doesn’t know you like Y/N is, well Y/N herself. So tell me, Troy Bolton, why aren’t you confessing?”

“I’m not gonna ruin our friendship just because of some stupid feelings,” Jeno huffed. “If keeping everything to myself means we can stay friends, then I’ll gladly never tell her.”

“You’re actually so stupid. You’ve known the girl for over a decade and you’re this oblivious about the way she feels? Do you think she’d do the shit she does for you for other people, Jeno? Staying after school on a FRIDAY NIGHT to tutor you, when you damn well know that you guys could do this over FaceTime? Pulling the fire alarm? Y/N likes you, dumbass!”

Jeno looked at Aisha like she was crazy. “No, she doesn’t. She likes Jaemin, Aisha.”

***

Jaemin met Aisha outside of the library after Jeno went inside. “So what’d you learn?” He asked as the two watched Jeno walk up to you. Smiling, he put his head on your shoulder and said something, making you jump. Scowling, you hit him with a book.

“Jeno thinks Y/N likes you.”

“Oh shit, that’s crazy. Y/N thinks Jeno likes you.”

“Dumbasses,” they sighed at the same time, looking at each other. “So what do we do know?” Jaemin questioned, following Aisha as she walked away from the library.

“I mean, I guess we can set them up in some sort of elaborate blind date,” Aisha suggested. “We tell them both we have someone we want to set them up with, and then we just leave them together. Something’s bound to happen.”

“Or we could do the simpler way and just lock them in a closet,” Jaemin suggested, shrugging as they walked out of the school.

“What is this?” Aisha wrinkled her nose at his suggestion. “A fanfiction? Knowing them, they’d just sit in silence until we let them out.” Jaemin opened his mouth to argue, then closed it and shrugged, nodding in agreement. “Come on, Nana, Step 2 of Project Get Our Dumbass Friends Together has begun.”

***

You hit Jeno with her book. “First, Jaemin scares me, then you? What is this, Terrorize Y/N Day?” Jeno fell into the chair next to her, trying to stifle his laughter, and her scowl faded away. She couldn’t stay mad at him, unfortunately.

“So um, why was Jaemin scaring you?” Jeno coughed as he stopped laughing, pausing as he reached for his textbook to ask.

You turned red, remembering Jaemin’s speculations and shook her head. “He sat me sitting alone and just stopped by to annoy me, is there any other reason for Jaemin?” Jeno just pursed his lips and nodded. You could tell something was bugging him, but you just couldn’t tell what. “So um, what were you having trouble with, exactly?”

“Uh, everything?” Jeno blushed, scratching the back of his head and you laughed, hiding your smile behind the sleeve of your sweater. Jeno smiled. He loved your smile.

As the evening wore on and you kept talking about polar bonds and balancing equations and Lewis Structures, you couldn’t help but notice that Jeno was staring at you. Not looking, which would have the rational explanation that he was dozing off and staring off at nothing, this was full-on staring. His eyes flickered from your own to the strands of hair curling behind your ear to your lips- “What is it?” You asked, taking him by surprise. “Is there something on my face?”

“No, there’s nothing!” He stuck his hands up in defense. “I’m just thinking of something Aisha told me on the way here.”

Ouch. You purse your lips, avoiding his eyes and looking back at the textbook. “You and Aisha walked here together?”

“Yeah, she had to talk to me about something, uh where were we?”

“Molar mass,” you mumbled, that tiny bit of hope continuing to crumble away. At the end of the evening, they packed up and Jeno offered to give you a ride. Most of it was spent in silence, which was rare between the two, but granted they did have a lot to think about. “So what did Aisha want to talk to you about?” you asked, turning your attention from your fraying jeans to your friend.

Jeno ribbed the back of his head, awkwardly avoiding your gaze. “Um, this is gonna sound crazy, but she was basically saying that you like me.”

Your heart started going so fast you were sure it would set a world record at the Olympics. “Huh,” is all you managed to say, glad that it was so dark out that Jeno couldn’t see how red you were.

“Yeah I told her that was crazy, I mean... you don’t like me, like that, right?” Jeno pulled the car to a stop on the curb in front of your house, looking at you intently.

“Uh, yeah, I mean of course not.” There was something funny in the look on his face. It was almost a look of disappointment. But that’s crazy. “Jaemin actually said something similar about you, and I told him he was mad, I mean, you like Aisha, everyone knows-“

“What?” Jeno was now looking at you like you were crazy. “What- I like Aisha?”

“Yeah, I mean, don’t you?”

Jeno groaned, resting his head on the steering wheel. “no, I don’t- I actually like...” He trailed off, turning red and stopping himself before he revealed anything more.

“Who? Who do you like?” You were dreading the answer and honestly didn’t know why you asked.

“I um- okay, please don’t hate me, I like you.” His fingers tapped furiously on the wheel, looking out the window at passing cars. “But I know you like Jaemin, so can we just pretend I never revealed-“

“Wait a damn minute-“ You clapped a hand over his mouth, mind struggling to understand everything that was just revealed in the past 2 minutes. “I don’t like Jaemin, who told you that?”

“I- I mean you guys are always- You don’t like him?”

“No.” Groaning, you rested your head in your hands, hair falling over your face. “I like you, idiot.”

“You- like- me?” He worded it out slowly, finally comprehending the meaning of the words. “Man, we’re both dumb, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” you laughed breathlessly, moving your hand from your face to pat his, which was still furiously clenched around the wheel. He slowly released his grip, turning his hand around to hold yours.

Making eye contact, you both flushed even redder than you were before, Jeno coughing and looking away. “So um, what now?”

“I- can I try something?” He nodded and removing your hand from his grip, you leaned in, cupping his face and pressing your lips against his. The initial shock wore away and he kissed you back, hands wrapping around your waist to pull you closer. Which was a bit difficult with the seatbelts, but you finally figured it out. Pulling away, you were both grinning like idiots, faces flushed and lips buzzing.

“Can I ask you something?” He tucked a strand of hair behind your ear and you nodded. “Will you be my girlfriend?”

***

Come Monday, Jaemin and Aisha we’re completely prepared for Step Two, which was probably a bit TOO detailed. “You got the roses?” Aisha asked, and Jaemin nodded.

“Yeah, you got the peanut butter-“

“Hey, guys!” You greeted as you walked into the room. They looked up, jaws dropping when they saw you.

There were a few things different. First of all, you were wearing Jeno’s jacket. To continue, Jeno’s arm was around you. In conclusion, you two did not look like two people who were JUST friends. “Hi,” Aisha managed to say, nudging Jaemin in the side. “What happened to you two?”

“Oh, we’re dating now, basically.” Jeno grinned, taking your hand in his. The bell rang to get to homeroom, and kids began to filter out of the halls. “I’ll see you in Chem?” You nodded and smiled as he leaned down and kissed your cheek, waving at Aisha and Jaemin as he walked off.

“I gotta get to class, I’ll see you guys later,” You waved at them, hands invisible in the sleeves of Jeno’s large sweater. and walked off.

Jaemin finally closed his mouth, looking at Aisha in shock. “That really happened?”

“Yeah,” she smiled, then groaned. “We have a lot of roses and peanut butter to get rid of, don’t we?”

“Yup.” They started walking to homeroom when Jaemin got an idea. “Do we still get to take credit for them?”

“Oh hell yeah.”

#nct #nct dream #lee jeno x reader #jeno x reader #friends to lovers!au #jeno #lee jeno #nct jeno #nct dream jeno #nct dream jaemin #na jaemin #nana

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bohemian-rhapsody-in-blue · 3 years

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Pass the happy! 💖 When you get this, reply with 5 things that make you happy and send this to the last 10 people in your notifications!

All righty, I will! Thank you for the ask, @wheredotheducksgo! I’ve actually gotten and answered a similar ask before—which you can read here—so this time, I’ll try to choose 5 different happy things. (Also, warning—this got L-O-N-G, for which I apologize!)

1.) Avatar: The Last Airbender!!! As best as I can figure, right now it’s nearly the one-year anniversary of the day I started watching it (May 28, 2020). I started it on a total and complete whim after it was added to Netflix, with no idea that my brain would decide to fixate on it (the way it fixated on The Great Gatsby before that, and Star Trek before that…) and it would become my obsession for the next year. I had no idea it had such a rich, complex world with such multilayered, three-dimensional characters that would capture my imagination so much, or that it served almost like a masterclass in TV writing. I had no idea it would almost singlehandedly get me through the long, lonely days spent in my house, doing virtual school and not being able to see my friends because of COVID—or that, because of this isolation, my participation in the fandom would be almost entirely online and I’d almost never speak a word of it, much less infodump about it, to any of my friends in person out loud, but that when I did, it would feel so good. I had no idea that, a year on, watching almost any of the episodes would make me smile so hard my face would practically crack in two, or that just seeing a really good picture of one of the characters would induce a squealing-trilling sound of epic proportions, just because I loved them so much. (Fun fact: a Google Image search for “zuko” was one of the few tabs that permanently occupied my browser for the entirety of this past school year. When I felt sad I’d just switch over to that tab, look at the pictures for a while, and instantly feel better.) And I had no idea about the amazing fanart, fic, and meta this fandom could produce—or that I would, on occasion, contribute to it myself! I’m sorry, that got long, but…I just can’t make a happiness list in May 2021 without mentioning ATLA.

2.) Any song/piece of music with 4 or more flats in its key signature. I have perfect pitch, so in most cases I can tell what key a song is in just by listening to it, and for some reason I find the songs in A-flat, D-flat, and F-sharp/G-flat major and F, B-flat, and E-flat minor ridiculously satisfying. I’m not sure why they tickle my happy brain spots so much. They just do.

3.) Apparently, the people who run the penguin exhibit at the National Aquarium of New Zealand have picked a “good penguin” and a “naughty penguin” of the month every month since June 2017. And if you read some of the entries—especially those of the naughty penguins—I guarantee you, your mood will be elevated instantly. I was reading some of them last night and I was laughing so hard. These penguins have drama—stealing one another’s girlfriends, being deadbeat penguin parents who lay their eggs in another penguin’s nest, pushing another penguin off a pier after it took him a whole hour to walk there, stealing others’ fish on several separate occasions (note: that’s all THE SAME PENGUIN, and he doesn’t even steal the fish to eat, just to drop in the sand! That is just pure pettiness!), learning bad habits from aforementioned fish-stealing penguin, being “overly dramatic,” standing up against bullies (feat. more fish stealing), or just being “outright obnoxious”. What makes it even better is that these aren’t the tallish, black-and-white penguins you’re probably picturing—they’re little blue penguins, the smallest species of penguin, which are less than a foot tall and barely weigh more than 2 1/2 pounds. These are teeny tiny penguins, all of them disabled and being rehabilitated at the aquarium, committing penguin crimes with so much spite in their hearts! I highly recommend that you all read the full soap opera-esque saga of these naughty penguins, if you can find them on the aquarium’s Facebook or Instagram page or just reposted to sites like Buzzfeed and Bored Panda. Reading about their tiny penguin crimes makes me so happy.

4.) Chocolate, in all its forms. Okay, I’ll admit that I don’t like chocolate caramel all that much, but everything else? Perfection. Pure heaven. I love chocolate chip cookies. I love Pocky sticks. I sometimes much on these mint dark chocolate bars while studying, and they are seriously the Platonic ideal of a food. Wait, no, that title goes to the ridiculously rich chocolate cake—with chocolate chips inside and whipped cream on the side—that my parents and I got for dessert at their anniversary dinner the other day. When it comes to chocolate, I seriously turn into that guy from SpongeBob. I just love it so much.

5.) Getting a happy, positive ask like this from one of you incredible followers!!! Okay, maybe that’s a cop-out and too similar to what I said for #5 the last time I answered an ask like this, but you know what? I don’t care. I love you all and I’m not afraid to say it! 💕

#ask #answered #wheredotheducksgo #happiness #pass the happy #long post #maya’s musings

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lovejustforaday · 4 years

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2020 year in review - honourable mentions

It’s year-end list season folks. I’m gonna be listing off my top 10 for this year with some tasty reviews, but I also wanted to make an appreciation post for a few albums that didn’t make the cut, so here’s a collection of mini reviews for five albums that almost made the top 10:

WEST OF EDEN - HMLTD

Main Genres: Art Punk, Glam Punk, Art Pop A decent sampling of: Dark Cabaret, Progressive Pop, Synth Punk, Post-Punk, Punk Blues

West of Eden is what I imagine what happens when a bunch of theatre kids become punk rockers. I had no idea who HMLTD were before I checked them out this year on a whim, and boy am I glad I did. This is very eclectic punk music with pop hooks and a lot of influence from cabaret and musical theatre. Definitely the kind of album where the artist throws everything at the wall to see what sticks, so it’s a mixed bag, but there’s a lot of pay off too. “The West Is Dead” is a wondrously flamboyant opener, and “Satan, Luella, and I” is a such a massive song, with a brilliant clash of aesthetics that is one part wild west, one part gothic, and one part broadway fanfare. Also I swear they’re sampling a vocaloid voice track on “Why?” so that’s something. Check this album out if you wanna get weird. 8/10

Highlights: “Satan, Luella, & I”, “The West Is Dead”, “Where’s Joanna?”, “To The Door”

FUTURE NOSTALGIA – DUA LIPA

Main Genres: Nu-Disco, Dance Pop A decent sampling of: Funktronica, Synth Pop

Ironically, 2020 has been a really big year for nu-disco even though we can’t go out to the clubs. Likewise, this somehow ended up only being my second favourite disco/pop crossover project this year, but this is still a great album and the singles are easily the best thing to dominate the charts this year. If Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure? is classy, sensual, and soulful, than Future Nostalgia is spunky and free-spirited, like the perfect soundtrack to a night out with the girls. Dua Lipa has really proven she’s a force to be reckoned with in the pop world, and I’m glad she’s starting to approach the level of stardom of artists like Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande who frankly I think she’s starting to really outperform musically. The last two tracks standout as easily being the weakest, although unlike some man-children I’m not mad at the lyrics of “Boys Will Be Boys”; it’s just a weak song musically, but not enough to make me forget how much the rest of this kicks ass. Honestly, it’s a crime that I can’t be drunk off my ass shouting the lyrics to “Hallucinate” in a gay bar right now as I’m writing this, but I digress. Very good album, proud of Dula Peep. 8/10 Highlights: “Hallucinate”, “Break My Heart”, “Don’t Start Now”, “Levitating”

SILVER LADDERS – MARY LATTIMORE

Main Genres: Ambient A decent sampling of: Post-Minimalism, New Age, Electroacoustic

I checked out this album because it was co-produced by Neil Halstead of Slowdive (my all-time favourite band), and I didn’t know what to expect from the process of a shoegaze giant producing an album of instrumental harp music. Thankfully, I’m happy to report that the end result is both unconventional and beautifully mesmerizing. Mary Lattimore’s Silver Ladders is a heavenly ambient album comprised mostly of just gently plucked harps, warm reverb, and the occasional addition of sparse bass and synths. Lattimore’s harp work is intricate but subtle, and the songs make a lot of good use of the space between notes, especially on the title track “Silver Ladders”, a haunting siren song that ends in a crescendo of shimmering echoes. I find the shorter ambient pieces on the album work a lot better than the two darker, longer pieces “Til A Mermaid Drags You Under” and “Don’t Look” which I find to be a tad bit dreary. Still, like all good ambient music, this entire project is a lot more than just ‘background music’ and it really captures the imagination of the listener. I want to get lost at sea listening to the cold air of Mary Lattimore’s harp, but I’ll gladly settle for listening to Silver Ladders on the bus ride home instead. 8/10

Highlights: “Silver Ladders“, “Sometimes He’s In My Dreams”, “Chop on the Climbout”

SHRINES – ARMAND HAMMER

Main Genres: Abstract Rap, Experimental Rap, East Coast Rap A decent sampling of: Conscious Rap, Hardcore Rap

Definitely my favourite album cover of the year, and it’s a completely real photo of an incident that actually happened so that’s pretty crazy. As for the music, Shrines is a hypnotic, cryptic hip hop album with hard leftist politics and very interesting production that sounds like the sonic manifestation of a head full of cynical thoughts. Billy Woods and Elucid spit rhymes with a lot of poetic frustration, expressing the feeling of utter disenfranchisement by the power systems of classism and racism that dominate their society. The first half of the album is mostly tracks that are energetic like the absolutely ferocious “Leopards”, while later tracks like “Flavor Flav” and “Ramesses II” are mostly mellow and bitter. The beats can be disorienting and confusing, and some of the tracks are kinda formless, so its definitely not an album to dance to, but Shrines is great for a more introspective listen on a late night walk. If I had to pick an album that captured the zeitgeist of 2020, this is probably it. Great music and important subject matter. 8/10

Highlights: “Leopards”, “Dead Cars”, “Flavor Flav”, “Pommelhorse”

ISLAND – OWEN PALLETT

Main Genres: Chamber Folk A decent sampling of: Art Pop, Modern Classical, Ambient

Owen Pallett is an indie folk artist who has had one foot in the sophisticated world of modern classical music for some time now. Likewise, Pallett’s 2020 concept album Island is grand and orchestral with distinct movements. Continuing the saga of his character Lewis from his 2010 LP Heartland, the new album is equally philosophical and complex, telling the story of Lewis being metaphorically stranded after killing his manipulator god at the end of the last album in the saga. The majority of this album is brilliantly nocturnal in a way that is neither creepy nor unsettling, instead conjuring the invigorating fantasy of a mysterious and enchanting night of a full moon. “Paragon of Order” is particularly enchanting, and while this album only sits at #11 on my year-end list, this one track in particular is probably in my top 3 of the year because it’s just so incredibly magical and captivating in a way that feels like it’s lifting me to a heightened sensory experience every time I listen to it. The last few tracks are a little confusing, especially “Lewis Gets Fucked into Space”, taking a somewhat abstract direction that deviates from the gorgeous imagery of the first half that I fell in love with. Nevertheless, Island is an album I’ll want to revisit on nights when I’m feeling excited or inspired. 8/10

Highlights: “Paragon of Order”, “--> (i)”, “Perseverance of The Saints”, “--> (iii)”, “--> (ii)”, “The Sound of The Engines”

#2020 #2020aoty #aoty #album of the year #best music #mary lattimore #owen pallett #armand hammer #dua lipa #hmltd #island #shrines #silver ladders #future nostalgia #west of eden #music review #album review #year-end list

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anakibunbun · 4 years

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A Letter for One-year Old Saga

Ayah:

It's only one hour left before the date changed and it's no longer your birthday.

Lately, it feels like time is moving so fast that I don't really have time to do things I thought I want to do, like writing this message for your birthday. Everytime when I arrived at home, fatigue kicked in, and my body asked me to go to sleep as soon as I found myself in bed.

But today is different. Time is running out, and I must write.

On this day one year ago, you were born. Our precious little boy, who are now growing up so healthy it makes us moved when we look back at how it started. We had difficulties to pull you out to see the world after 20 hours, so your mother make the most noble sacrifice by cutting her belly open to help you out. That didn't make her any less of a mother, moreso, the scar that remained was a reminder of how hard we fought that day.

The struggle didn't end there. Your mother and I have to adjust to the new cycle where you would woke us in the middle of the night with your cry. Our sleeping time lessened. Your mother had you near her almost all day long. I have to wake up earlier than usual just so I can wash your diapers before heading out to campus. The days were hard, but we were happy with you finally being by our side after 9 months.

Then some of the diseases kicked in. You got atopic dermatitis, which made a lot of red spots all over your skin. At that time we thought we were not doing our best at being your parents, seeing how your cute little face were ruined by the red spots. Then you had a tongue tie. We had to cut it, and your mother cannot bear seeing you cry as we did it more than once. The first month was really full of hardships.

After two months, you and your mother moved to Bandung, leaving me alone in Bekasi. We were separated most of time, and I had to make use of my holidays to go to Bandung back and forth. Sometimes your mother even brought you to Bekasi, although it's clearly harder than if I was just the one to go. I had my worries, and most of time your mother carried a greater burden where I can't be there to help her all the time.

Time goes by, and you're growing up more and more in a blink of eye.

We finally decided that we need to stick together at one place, so your mother resigned from her previous workplace to move to Bekasi with you. Just earlier before that, you had a cough that didn't seem to be cured even after a month. Three doctors told us that you were a suspect of TB, the same disease that has attacked your father in the past. We refused to believe it though, as the test was negative and you didn't show any sign of sickness other than occasional cough.

And we were right. The last doctor we came to examined you and found nothing's actually wrong with you. We were so glad that we didn't give you the 6 months medicine that might probably too much for your liver, and you're not even one year old.

Now, enough about the hardships, and let's talk about the joyful things we had.

Both your mother and I really loved everytime you learned something new. You let out a heartful and loud laugh at 3 months old. I tried to make you swim before you're 6 months old. You're a bit slow at crawling, but picking up on walking really quickly at 10 months. Once you ate a lot on one day, 4 portions of food with so many fruits and snacks in between, which made us really happy. You liked playing with your toys outside, and laughed when I made your cars went up on the slide. You enjoyed reading books, and we hope you still do once you can read them by yourselves. We went to a lot of places like beach on a whim, tried on MRT, walked at public park, and had a photo studio session.

And before we realized it, now we're here.

By the time I'm writing this, your mother and I spend most of our times going about 30 km to Jakarta everyday, and come back later in the afternoon. It's tough, but seeing your warm smile as we come home healed us, and you also wake us at 4AM everyday in the morning with the same smile, bright like a sun.

Sagara, thank you for being here with us.

Thank you for growing up so big in such a short time.

Thank you, for being our pride and joy.

Thank you, for being born into our family.

And lastly, happy birthday.

Let us do our best and keep moving forward, for many years to come.

May Allah grant us health and wealth to continue walking on together until the end of time.

#tulisanayah #memori2019 #saga #ulangtahun

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the-first-date · 5 years

Text

A conversation with Ashley Pecorelli [25/F/Brooklyn]

Madge Maril: So, first things first, tell us a bit about yourself — hobbies, job, dog.

Ashley Pecorelli: Well! I am a queer mental health counselor-in-training (and hope to make mental health resources accessible to LGBTQ adolescents)! Besides REAL hobbies which I definitely have (?) I enjoy watching Property Brothers with my lil dog, Mitski, thinking about the Twilight saga at all times, and using The Sims to cathart. It is way harder than I thought it would be to write something about myself wow.

MM: Real Tinder bio hours.

AP: So my Tinder bio was most recently (I guess still is) a transcript of the ticket girl video, specifically when she says that she called the police station to see if she could serve jail time instead of paying the ticket. It says all you need to know about me.

MM: I'm going to find this video and hyperlink it. Did tinder work for you? I guess "work" being that you are now in love, as I gather.

AP: https://youtu.be/EujUx_82Bxs one step ahead of you. So I guess Tinder did "work" for me! Although honestly I never felt that it was overtly working against me because when I started using it in earnest, I really wasn't looking for something in particular.

MM: Ooo, I've never thought about tinder working against us. Though I definitely think it has for me before.

AP: I started using it right after I got out of a long, damaging relationship, dated around a bit and had fun and didn't have fun and then found someone who is also With Her (Ticket Girl). How do you feel it worked against you?

MM: Oh no, you're turning the table!

AP: Oops.

MM: Honestly, I can readily admit that I download tinder A. way too fast after a breakup and B. to get compliments from men. I just swipe and swipe and swipe.

AP: True, it's honestly the ultimate game. Total sensory overload in one sense but in another sense also total sensory deprivation.

MM: Oo yeah. For me it's complete escapism, and I only really responded to people who were treating it the same way. So no good. But — what inspired you to first start looking for something in particular? I.e. what do you think inspired you to really pursue finding someone?

AP: Honestly, I truly did download it way too fast after a breakup, like the same day hahaha. But I guess for me the breakup was more a final escape and the first time I felt any sort of emotional (and sexual, sadly) agency, so once I got out I wanted to start exploring that as quickly as possible. I really didn't know what I wanted until I started seeing people and seeing things I did like and things I didn't — but the truly WILD thing was, even when a person and I truly just were not a good fit, I saw what healthy romance and sex is SUPPOSED to look like and understood that I had previously had no idea what the bare minimum level of being treated like a human is. Which is pretty sad and dark! But was also really exciting, to get crushes or feel NO spark or make out with a woman in a bar or have someone listen to the album you recommended them.

So all of that, the good and the bad and the platonic and not platonic, was great, in retrospect. But then I met my current partner (lol) and realized that it could be way more than just the bare minimum, and could be something I really didn't think existed. Not just love (because somehow I've never doubted love's existence) but true understanding.

MM: Damn. Thank you for sharing that. Let's talk about those interactions — the dates. The million dollar question: What do you wear on a first date?

AP: Hell yeah now the JUICY BITS. So on a first date, I typically try to look hot (obviously) but also somehow represent myself to the other person in almost an experimental way. Like I try to put on something I myself would feel really awesome in, and if for whatever reason that's not their idea of hot, fuck them! That's my whole mentality anyway.

My favorite first date outfit has been my black vintage T-shirt with two dragons dueling over a castle, knotted up to show a bit of not abs-abs, high-waisted black jersey peg pants (that feel like pajamas), chunky black platform boots, and whatever big weird earrings I bought on my most recent whim. If they don't like the dragon shirt, they ain't shit.

MM: Black jersey peg pants? What are peg pants?

AP: It's actually these very particular pants from ASOS.

MM: WOW these are the pants of dreams.

AP: SO comfortable, SO flattering — basically have the look of something Audrey Hepburn would wear but way more accessible and comfy.

MM: The pockets! The high rise! The cropped cut! I get it.

AP: SO GOOD right???

MM: Do you think you also factor in what the person you're going on a date with will find hot? Do you take into account their age, gender, all that?

AP: Oh, totally. Honestly most especially with other women, but people of all genders for sure. I think when I go to pick something out I kind of picture what I know about them (however little) and what their sensibility might be when it comes to style and aesthetics and ~hotness~. I also think the more I have felt unsure about someone or the way things are going, the harder I try to almost make up for it.

MM: Completely agree. Dating women ups the ante.

AP: It totally does! And then I think about her and wonder if she's doing the same thing.

MM: Do you wear perfume or makeup on a first date, too? (Also yes... I mean if we're all thinking it then SHE has to be thinking it, too. Right?)

AP: Yes! I wear whatever my signature scent is — I say this because I always have one, but it evolves every so often. My favorite one for over a year now has been from & Other Stories. Makeup wise, I just try to look like what I would look like on the hotter end of the everyday spectrum. Basically meaning... the addition of foundation and multiple shades of eyeshadow. It's taken me a long time to get to this point, but I've become kind of obstinate in that only I am allowed to be mean and critical to me. I can be as mean to myself as I want but either you like what you see or you don't! (Please like me.)

MM: And that's reflected in your makeup, you think? More so than the clothing? Drop the & Other Stories fragrance name!!

AP: Okay so it was Fig Fiction, which was such an amazing beautiful warm awesome scent! They discontinued it though (the last time I found it I bought three bottles). Now I use Sicilian Sunrise, which is pretty similar!

I think yes, more reflected in makeup. Simply because I am almost always going to dress in a way that makes me happy (if I've done laundry recently) but I'm not always going to put on makeup, so the makeup should just be closer to what you're gonna see all the time.

MM: Ok, so then the makeup is on. And the T-shirt and peg pants are on. Is it always the chunky black platform boots? Why? Because that's a constant power move IMO.

AP: The chunky black platform boots are truly ideal for many reasons: They're cute, they're sturdy, they subtly make me three inches taller (I need every inch), they'll hold up in rain or snow, and they'll allow me to do some damage to your face if you turn out to be a creep. And (drumroll) I got them on Poshmark for $10.

MM: No!! Do you know the brand?

AP: You're not gonna believe this but H&M. I do not shop at H&M for many reasons and would NEVER buy shoes from there but I took a shot on these because they were secondhand and they've held up impressively well. Almost everything I own was thrifted for financial and sustainability reasons, but these are truly a marvel.

MM: What does that word mean to you, specifically? Sustainability.

AP: Honestly I do not feel qualified to talk about sustainability at all! But to me, it's complicated. I grew up in a lower-class, financially insecure family while most of my friends were wealthy, so my family would either buy clothes secondhand or from a discount store. As a kid, this was really embarrassing to me to not have a closet full of Limited Too or Abercrombie, which obviously feels silly now. I'm still working class and financially insecure, so it's very difficult for me to buy from stores or brands that (at least claim) to ethically produce clothes because they're generally really, really expensive. That's the case for most of this country, including many people who are way worse off than I am. Thrifting is good for me because it allows me to get clothes when I need them at a low cost while also reducing environmental impact, but I don't think it's reasonable to make a judgement call on what any one person "should" be doing in the name of sustainability. Any one person can do whatever is comfortable to them, we can all try within our means! But at the end of the day, the real damage (and real opportunity for impact) is coming from big corporations and the government's actions. I don't think you can truly think about whatever sustainability means if you're getting mad at someone for shopping from a retail chain because it's all they can afford. Okay that was a lot and I have no idea where I was even going with that, sorry! I feel in many ways not educated enough to have feelings about this.

MM: Don't apologize! There's no set definition for the word, it's unique to all of us. And the Limited Too envy was real.

AP: Omg especially when they had the matching outfits for you and your Build-A-Bear... I wanted it so badly. BIG topic.

MM: I can't believe it's been an hour!! I'll wrap this up so you can get back to your sorbet.

AP: Omg it has, wow!!

MM: Final q: Did your last first date go well?

AP: My last first date ended with plans to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special together. This year we're going to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special together in our new apartment. I'd say it went okay!

MM: AWW. On that exceedingly wholesome note — thank you for chatting!

AP: Of course! My pleasure!

#the first date #style #fashion

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beatificallys · 4 years

Text

after the war

after the war, everything sort of settles into place. there’s a home for everyone, some unexpected. lucien moves out of the palace, having retired from kingship, into a small house only a 10 minute walk from the palace. without his body, the king is unrecognisable. legend retells the story of king lucien as a mighty warrior, a man of strength and swiftness, able to protect his people against the evil threat, but no one will be able to guess that the man from all the mythology is the one standing in front of her now, a foot shorter than her when they used to be level in height a few months ago.

he regards her, smiling, warmth in his gaze. “thank you, commander.”

he’s back to his usual self. she’s nearly forgotten how he used to look like, so used to the manufactured body he had once he emerged from the woods. he’s nothing like the kings she used to serve before him. he makes her think, perhaps, there’s more to this business than meets the eye. thomas will be suspicious when she tells him this. he’s never known any other way to deal with a problem than to point a gun at it, but now that he’s her second in command, maybe there’s a way to change the way he sees things. there’s something hopeful in the air. the aura of change simmers in the atmosphere.

she bows. and she means it this time. azus will be sorry to have lost him as king.

just as she’s about to leave, though, balthazar steps forward. “go in first, luce. i need to speak with zoya.”

lucien obliges, casting a wondering gaze between balthazar and her, but drops it. the door shuts behind him.

balthazar’s hair is combed and parted neatly, and he wears blue, the colour of myrr. his uniform is perfectly pressed, immaculate. zoya looks at him and sees perfect balance.

he clears his throat. i won’t be around here much, now that i’m the emissary. when i’m gone, i want security around the place doubled. check up on him regularly, make sure he’s okay, but don’t let him find out any of it. he doesn’t want the extra protection, doesn’t think he needs it, but extra security won’t hurt. do you understand me?

this is a man she cannot deal with. balthazar’s always been someone she can picture on the throne. with his cunning and intelligence, stealing the throne should be easy game, and sometimes, she wonders why he hasn’t done it yet. there’s great carefulness with every step he takes, an acute awareness of how things will play out. the repercussions of repercussions of repercussions. he’s bloodthirsty enough to do it as well. she’s seen him raze an entire field of fighters down unflinchingly. his eyes are eagle sharp, sometimes she thinks his foresight extends a month, a year, a decade into the future, but then she sees how they soften when he’s looking at lucien. how he’s always looking at lucien.

please keep him safe, he says. his eyes are steady.

zoya nods. of course.

i’ll be leaving for myrr in a week’s time. i trust you, he says. i don’t easily give that out.

i will make sure it is seen to, lord cortez.

he bristles. lord cortez. how funny. my father was called that.

we carry the weight of our fathers’ names.

not a very easy weight to bear. he turns away from her and his eyes survey the row of houses. zolnerowich, cortez, it’s all the same.

zoya narrows her eyes when she hears her father’s name.

how do you know?

it’s not a threat, balthazar says quietly. it’s just that when you’re in my position, you know some things. things that you didn’t even intend on finding out.

he gives her a smile and goes back into the house.

every word loaded with meaning. she might as well get used to it if he’s going to be the emissary. don’t trifle with balthazar cortez, or his best friend. she wishes she could let everyone know that to spare them unforgiving wrath.

zoya tugs on her beret and hoists herself up on the white stallion. she better start rounding up the best soldiers she knows. she whips the reins and the horse whinnies, click-clack-click, setting off toward the glowing, alabaster structure at the end of the road.

thomas squints at his cards. his pistol is slung across his waist, never too far out of reach. he’s got a shit hand, but it’s fine, carlisle doesn’t even know how to play the game well. he’s all confused and uninterested, dishing out the wrong cards and the wrong time. he’s even holding his cards badly. thomas can see his entire hand if he crooks his head a little bit to the side.

hey, it’s your turn. your time’s running up.

he sighs and drops his hand. thomas can see all his cards now. he lets out a groan. this game sucks.

lucien wipes a hand down his face: why are you putting me on house arrest again? not that i’m not enjoying this lovely game of… occus tabach?

tabachus. and they’re not my orders, thomas says, gathering the cards from lucien. ask my superior. you think i’d rather be cooped up at home with you than watch the races?

lucien rolls his eyes and gets up. lovely game and lovely company, how great.

he still walks with a limp. that’s a consequence from the war that he’s going to live with for the rest of his life. zoya told him he got it when a gigantic bannister fell from the ceiling as he was trying to save a group of soldiers. by all rights, it shoulda killed him. the impact of the fall woulda shattered his bones into a bajillion tiny pieces, if not for his body.

want some tea?

tea? thomas repeats with a grimace. you got any alcohol?

are you trying to get drunk on the job?

i was joking.

hmm.

nat woulda whooped my ass if i was serious.

lucien pours him the tea anyway. his true body’s real skinny, looking like it could break like a twig. he looks as delicate as bird bones. when zoya told thomas about the entire saga of family drama that spanned years and years, of the ass robert carlisle and his family, it was difficult trying to understand it. but as he’s spending more and more time with lucien, he’s beginning to. its in the way he moves. some people, they sit all loud n proud, like they wanna let u know they’ve got it. they’re in power. jeppity was a showboater, and thomas wonders how many girls have suffered at his whim, but this guy, no way. this guy stands curled into himself, withdrawing from the center of attention. there’s a peaceable smile etched on crookedly on his face as he lowers his head, letting his hair flop in front of his face. this, and all the stories of the extraordinary king who saved a country?

it’s difficult to reconcile. thomas doesn’t think he might ever understand. he grows quiet, takes a sip of tea.

lucien looks at him expectantly. how is it?

it’s leaves in hot water. how do you think it tastes?

it’s chamomile, lucien says archly, as if that’s supposed to mean something.

thomas shrugs. why’d you give up the title of king?

lucien startles like a mouse at the question. it’s not as great as it sounds, he says pensively. it requires a great deal of skill. it’s not a position that can just be passed down by virtue of bloodline. i’m not the man fit for the job. he pauses, sighs. too slow, too dumb, too tired. a year ago i couldn’t bear to say that it loud. i couldn’t accept that it’s just not the destiny for me, after all my father impressed upon me.

your father sounds like a downright villain.

lucien picks at his crooked finger. thomas wonders how he got it. not a villain, he says. he just did what the circumstance called for. how do you know zoya?

zoya? thomas laughs, his usual rattle. we were childhood friends, born and raised in kursick. i know her as nataliya. nat, before she became a new person.

and will you be staying here? in azus?

thomas takes another sip of the bland water. his scoundrel hands, bruised and chafed and knobbly, curl around the delicate china like a foreign thing.

i have no reason to. all my business is back in kursick.

are you sure? because something tells me zoya has saved a room for you here.

thomas’s lip curls in a grimace. yeah…

thomas, lucien says softly. he places a hand on thomas’s shoulder. his first instinct is to shove it off roughly and snap it him, tell him to fuck off, but the hand is feather light on him and there’s a great deal of gravity in the slight forward hunch of his posture. the hand keeps him rooted to the chair. i’ve learnt a lot in my term as king and i’ve had to make decisions i would never ever think of making. the most important thing i can offer to you, is how far a leap of faith can take you. be afraid, and yet push through the pain. there’s no use hiding behind the tried and tested, nothing will come out of that. be brave, even if you aren’t strong.

thomas sits in stunned silence. after a while, he opens his mouth to say something, but there are knocks on the door and lucien’s hand leaves his shoulder.

oh, they’re back, he says. you can finally watch the races now.

lucien opens the door to the emissary and nat. nat jerks her head behind her.

we’re off, thomas.

thomas stands, as if woken from a spell. he slides his pistol back in his belt slowly.

what’s up with him? she asks lucien, with a quizzical look on her face. cat got your tongue?

lucien smiles. he has to do some thinking. how are the races?

kukui is winning, the emissary replies. aven is down 1-0.

nataliya has warned thomas against this guy, for some reason, but thomas sees nothing dangerous in him. he looks plain and harmless, wearing a congenial smile. a blue broach is pinned at his chest.

snap, thomas says, tossing his head back in a carefree sort of way. i was betting all my money on them. now johnson’s gonna laugh so hard at me.

nataliya looks at him curiously, dark eyes searching, but he shoots her a wide grin that curls from ear to ear to banish her worries. it’s the same grin that he flashes behind a secret hand of cards, or in the seconds before a fight, or just before the moment his restless hands find something to pocket. needless to say, it has the opposite effect: there’s a new divot between her brows, but this time, he knows she doesn’t truly have to worry.

he’s finding his way. hopefully.

off we go. she jerks her head behind her. turning to lucien and lord cortez, she bows and allows herself to be dismissed. thomas doesn’t wanna look back at lucien, catch his gaze and feel the earnestness reflected in his pale eyes. he doesn’t feel like proving him right. so he follows nat out wordlessly, and without a backward glance, shuts the door behind him.

she’s readjusting the reins on the palace-issued stallion, top of its breed, making sure that everything is all ready and good to go. back in kursick, he never rode on anything that fancy. it was horses, rented cheaply out of the nearest stable, and they were dirty and ran out of breath quickly. this new one can go for miles without winding down.

hey.

nataliya turns, shooting him a questioning look. she’s thinking about the look he shot her back in the house. she hasn’t forgotten.

she’s expecting an answer, but thomas says nothing, just wordlessly catches her jaw between his fingers and presses a rough kiss to her lips. they’re nearly the same height, it’s just that thomas is a tiny bit shorter than her, so there’s a slight upward tilt of his jaw. she pulls back, startled, wiping the saliva off with her shirtsleeves.

what was that for?

he grins. nothing. just missed you too much, that’s all.

she stares at him assessingly for a while, before turning away and sighing in a what do i do with you kind of way. she hoists herself up on the stallion. take the cart, thomas. i’ll ride.

second in command jumps into the cart and slouches in a corner. he kicks his boots up in the seat opposite him. the horse takes off, his head bumping against the headboard, and thomas looks at the sky and smiles.

once the two of them leave, they turn into awkward strangers, thoughts of will he won’t he thrumming in the air like they’re seventeen again.

balthazar takes the first step closer. lucien’s fingers are in a wrangled knot behind his back. it’s been half a year since he’s seen him, and half a year has done a lot to him. he’s tanner, of course due to the perpetual summer of myrr, and as a result, his hair’s lightened up and taken more brownish hue. it’s combed neatly behind his ears, so different from the when they first departed, when it was rough and tousled. lucien supposes there’s a certain decorum that needs to be maintained when one is the emissary of a kingdom. he supposes it must be an immense responsibility, trying to maintain political relations frequently drawn fraught from the continuous battle for food, water, land, resources. this must be why balthazar looks so clean cut and immaculate, not quite different, but just, unfamiliar.

lucien offers a nervous smile. long time no see.

balthazar laughs too. yes. how have you been?

just fine. i’ve been having such fun with thomas.

awkward pause. lucien clears his throat. his heart’s beating quite fast, for inexplicable reasons.

tea? he cuts in.

sure.

have a seat, it’ll only take a while.

lucien rushes into the kitchen, takes up the pot only to put it on the stove, and waits for it to boil. his hand clenches into a fist on the countertop. he can hardly find the right words to say to him after months of thinking about him and wishing he were beside him, collecting all of his thoughts so that he may pour them out to him on the day he finally returned, only to find that everything that has been pent up in his mind has funnelled down to an absolute speechlessness. he looks different. he looks… beautiful. golden brown and sharp-silhouetted, slender figured, brown eyes that weren’t extraordinary — they were an ordinary brown — except in the way that they seemed sharp and intelligent, unclouded and thrumming with a vitality. he hears footsteps behind him, and suppresses the immediate jolt of nervousness in his chest.

what brew is it? comes the voice.

chamomile, lucien replies.

oh. that’s nice. i love chamomile.

lucien doesn’t see him. he’s facing forward steadfastly, eyes trained on the pot, but his voice is calm and steady at his ear.

how was your time in myrr?

oh, it was, fine, balthazar says off-handedly, but it sounds like underlying his words is a stressful saga of power play and manipulation. lucien can only wonder. i met my mother again.

esmerelda.

balthazar makes a noise of assent. you know, for all that has happened, she’s an ordinary mother. she keeps pressurising me to find a girl, get married, continue the bloodline. she’s even been arranging blind dates for me, too. that’s one thing about mothers that doesn’t differ, whether you’re royal or not. incessant nagging.

a lump has evolved in lucien’s throat. met any girls you like?

no. not at all. they were nice, for sure, but well…

well?

not any ones i really liked enough.

relief floods lucien, though he’s still unsteady at the thought of balthazar, handsome and sharp and quick-witted, together with throngs of girls, fawning over him.

i’ve been speaking to thomas and zoya a lot now. they’re sort of my only company now that i can’t really travel out of the house while i’m recovering.

thomas, the voice says, considering. the new one. the second in command. he looks like trouble.

lucien shakes his head. he’s nice, i can tell, though he tries to put up a front.

silence, for a little while. the tea bubbles and broils.

how’s your recovery?

me? oh, it’s just fine. it’s not painful to walk, anymore.

and your hand?

lucien feels a warm hand on the small of his back, drawing reassuring circles with his thumb. his eyes squeeze shut.

oh, it’s getting better…

that’s good to hear… i’ve been worried about you.

balthazar’s hand comes up to curl around his stomach. lucien can feel him draw nearer, the warmth of his breath ghosting the shell of his ear, and the smell of citrus fills his nose. one hand rests on his navel, the other splayed across his chest as if sensing the nervous rhythm of lucien’s heart as it thumps lopsided against his delicate bones. balthazar sticks his nose in the crook of lucien’s neck and inhales.

luce. i’ve missed you.

lucien shudders. this what he’s been dreaming about, the unflappable and solid presence of balthazar pressed against him. warmth envelops him and his knees threaten to give way. his fingers are white-knuckled on the counter.

lucien’s entire body is coiled so tightly he can feel himself trembling. he doesn’t dare look up. he doesn’t want balthazar to see the look on his face and know, immediately, what lucien has been thinking about these past few months. his voice is scratchy.

i have too.

they stand around like that for a minute or two, soaking up each other’s presence, revelling in the fact that how, for this one moment, they aren’t faced with insurmountable obstacles or the threat of death, or how there isn’t an entire ocean separating them anymore. it’s just the two of them in the small kitchen, curled together in the shape of a single parenthesis. balthazar is warm, infinitely warm. he seems to radiate warmth. maybe his sun-soaked time in his home country has altered his body temperature.

balthazar’s lips drift over lucien’s ear, temple, cheek. the motion is languorous, a slow biding of time. lucien tilts his head back slightly so that balthazar’s lips land on his and they kiss, slow and deep, every moment feeling like everything come to fruition, all the loss and pain and sacrifice bearable, if only that this one thing might come out of it. balthazar’s mouth moves expertly, but lucien is too caught in a daze to consider this thought at a deeper level. his mind hones in on the point of contact where balthazar’s hand has slipped beneath the rough cotton of his shirt and is now tracing the planes on his stomach, fingers moving with such painful elegance lucien loses his mind for a little bit. he makes a noise which balthazar catches with his mouth and proceeds to suck on lucien’s bottom lip.

the hand roves deeper, following the faint trail of hair leading down to his navel and slipping beneath the hemline of his pants. lucien sucks in a sharp breath. balthazar works deftly, fingers long and elegant, knowing exactly where to touch to have lucien crying out only mere seconds later. he loses his balance and lands heavily back on balthazar. balthazar catches him. lucien’s cheeks burn.

i’m sorry, that was too fast —

balthazar kisses him quiet. it’s nothing.

let me do you, lucien insists.

it’s the inexperience. lucien doesn’t quite know what he’s doing, baz being the first one he’s ever done this sort of thing with before. his hand goes down balthazar’s pants, heart hammering against his chest, as he grabs on to him, warm and wet.

it’s okay if you don’t want to, balthazar says. lucien ignores him.

he repeats what balthazar did to him, although much clumsier and inexperienced than him, but with a determination to get it right. it takes a bit longer to get balthazar going, until there’s two spots of red burning on his cheekbones and he lets out a long-drawn sigh, body completely tense. his breaths grow shorter, and just before he comes, he puts a hand under lucien’s chin and tilts his face up. balthazar’s eyes are shining and his mouth parts, just so. his gaze is trained right on lucien. lucien’s breath hitches. he wishes he could suspend this moment in time, preserve it in amber, but then a second passes and warm wetness fills his hand.

the look on balthazar’s face knocks all the breath out of him. his face is rosy and glowing, eyes curled into crescents.

i love you, he whispers. tufts of brown hair come out of his carefully styled hairdo and flop down in front of his face. tentatively, lucien tucks one of them behind his ear. this is a different baz, not the calm, cool exterior he puts up in front of strangers. this one’s reserved just for him: quiet contentment, manifesting itself in the subdued glow of his eyes. learning balthazar cortez isn’t like trying to decipher the meaning of a painting, what with its loud expressions. it’s not about reading the splashes and tones of colour or the lines and shading. it’s quite like shutting your eyes and straining to hear something in the pin drop silence. it’s not something immediately evident, but its something that comes with practice and time.

eventually, between the both of them, there isn’t much center of gravity to go around anymore and both of them flop to the floor. by now, the kettle is shrieking bloody murder. lucien rests his head on baz’s chest.

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torentialtribute · 5 years

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Christian Benteke backs Wilfried Zaha to shine for Crystal Palace after staying at Selhurst Park

& # 39; I think this chapter of his transfer is over & # 39 ;: Christian Benteke supports Wilfried Zaha to shine for Crystal Palace after winger does not secure the relocation of Selhurst Park

Wilfried Zaha did not leave Crystal Palace during the transfer window

Winger was to stay in Selhurst Park and Christian Benteke supported him to shine

Zaha cam off the bench for the Eagles in opening day draw against Everton

By Pa Sport Staff

Published : 17:12 BST, August 11, 2019 | Updated: 17:40 BST, August 11, 2019

Christian Benteke thinks of wantaway Crystal Palace Wilfried teammate Zaha can return to its best this season.

Zaha was associated with a summer displacement away from Selhurst Park with Everton in the last days of the attempted to land Ivory Coast. ] transfer window

In a whim of the list of games, the Toffees faced Palace in the south London on the opening day of the season, with the sides a 0-0 draw and Zaha comes off the couch for the last 25 minutes.

Wilfried Zaha remains a Crystal Palace player this season not securing a move

Despite submitting a transfer request and being relieved on the day of the training deadline, the Crystal Palace fans cheered Zaha & # 39; s introduction after chanting his name during a forgettable contest. men in the final phase when Morgan Schneiderlin received a second yellow card, created the best chances, but both sides had to settle for part of the loot.

It remains to be seen whether Zaha will be in Roy Hodgson from XI for the trip to Sheffield United next weekend, but Benteke believes the 26-year-old will take his head down.

& # 39; I know how great he has been for this team and this club, & # 39; told the striker against the official Palace website.

& I think this chapter of his transfer is behind him; he is a professional, he has not argued at all.

& # 39; He has shown what he can do and hopefully he will be at his best again. & # 39;

Christian Benteke believes that his teammate will put the saga behind him to thrive

Benteke was satisfied with the display of the Eagles against Everton and wants the display in the second half to become the benchmark that goes forward.

& # 39; I think the first half had a few big chances, but we came back in the game in the second half; we played a little higher and at least we missed a goal, & he added.

& # 39; We played against a great side, the top six side. If we look at our second half, we have to take it away next weekend and we must go on, we have been sharper and stronger in the second half. & # 39;

Everton stop Jordan Pickford believes the Toffees can be happy with signs in Palace

While Everton was arguably the closest thing to taking all three points, they had to thank Jordan Pickford for not admitting.

The England goalkeeper kept Jordan Ayew and Max Meyer out and thought that the visitors, given the Schneiderlin's red card, should be satisfied with a point.

& # 39; It is a difficult place to come, the circumstances were not the best, the re was windy conditions to go for both parties, but we were not defeated and we built momentum for next week & # 39 ;, Pickford said.

& # 39; We have to pick up as many points as we can and we always think in games that we can win, but we went to 10 and still played well.

& # 39; When we went to 10 men, we knew Crystal Palace would get a second wind, but we will treat that very well as a defensive unit from top to bottom and we have not given in. & # 39;

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s0022795a2film · 7 years

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Creative Investigation R - Collated Quotes

GENERAL / COUNTER

2: “Most of the Poe films I made in America were written by Dick [Richard] Matheson. I have to give credit to him- some of the ideas were mine, but many of them were his.”

2: “I can’t say that I was influenced by Hammer or Mario Bava when I started making Poe films because I hadn’t then seen any of their films. However early in the Poe cycle I saw a Mario Bava film- I think it was Black Sunday- which was very good. It was because of that we hired Barbara Steele for Pit and The Pendulum (1961).”

4: “They were kids, and kids are cheap… This quickie, no-frills approach… helped launch the directing careers of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme and James Cameron, and the acting ones of Jack Nicholson, Sylvester Stallone, David Carradine and Sandra Bullock.”

5: “Or, as articulated by Paul Bartel, who directed the cult hit Death Race 2000 for Corman in 1975, “Roger’s operation is an exploitation operation on almost every level: He exploits directors, he exploits writers, he exploits people in the crafts who are trying to get established. But we are also exploiting Roger.””

5: “It’s difficult to imagine The Little Shop of Horrors finding cult success��or even coming to be—without Griffith’s multitasking involvement. (He reportedly received $800 for the screenplay.) By most accounts, the slapstick of Little Shop and A Bucket of Blood hews much closer to Griffith’s goofball sensibility than to Corman’s serious, engineering approach.”

5: “I believe in [auteur theory] 75 percent,” Corman responds, weighing his words with typical precision. “I do not believe, as the true auteur theorist believes, that the director is the sole maker of the film. I think film is a collaborative process and I would put together the writer, the director, and the producer all joining as a joint auteur of which the most important probably is the director.”

6: “One sequence [for Little Shop] that greatly helped turn the film into a cult favorite featured an utterly inspired bit of black humour by an actor I would behind using more regularly- Jack Nicholson.”

6: “It was an ensemble of Corman ‘regulars’ that kept the mood informal and spirited. I simply called people I knew and cast actors I had used before and could rely on. They all came through. Nobody took it, or themselves, too seriously, and they gave sharp, animated performances.”

7: “When I asked [Corman] how he would best like to be remembered- as a writer, a director or a producer, he told me: ‘I would say that I would like to be remembered as a filmmaker, that I simply have made motion pictures.’”

7: “His former protégé Martin Scorsese put it perfectly when he said: ‘Roger Corman is not only a great mentor. He’s an artist, the best kind of artist, able to nurture and inspire talent in a generous way.”

10: “Corman’s career may be the closest thing there is to a through-line of the past sixty years in Hollywood. He revolutionized independent cinema, he was the first person to recognize a previously untapped teen audience and then exploit the hell out of it, and he brought a Barnumesque huckster’s flair for showmanship to the marketing of his movies, hyping them with eye-popping posters and rat-a-tat trailers.”

10: “He also distributed art house imports by foreign auteurs like Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, and Ingmar Bergman when no one else dared to, helping to broaden the palate of American moviegoers.”

11: “…Corman can boast of extraordinary merits both as a director or a producer. In 1964, he became the youngest American director to be given a film retrospective at the prestigious Cinématèque Française in Paris. In 2008, one of his directorial efforts - House of Usher - was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.”

12: “By mistake, he sometimes made a good picture every once in a while.” [Jack Nicholson]

12: “Nobody knows what the plot of The Terror is.”

12: “These films would be made on your street corner in a way. They weren’t encumbered with having to deal with art… they’re art in another way.” [Martin Scorsese]

GENRE

1: “Most of his nearly 200 movies were shot in a matter of days, almost hours, on skintight budgets, and they had outlandishly lurid titles like A Bucket of Blood, Attack of the Crab Monsters and Stakeout on Drug Street. They tended to pander to drive-in double bills and rarely reached the screens of first-run metropolitan theaters.”

1: “Over the past 27 years he has used his keen commercial instincts not merely to follow trends but to explore entire genres of movies—sci-fi, psychedelic, plus, of course, biker, gangster and horror. Or perhaps exploit them. But in the process, he has single-handedly nurtured more future artists of film than probably the whole television industry.”

2: “When I work with young directors I tell them that you always have to have a theory about your film. It helps if the theory is right, but it’s almost as good if it’s wrong.”

3: “The human brain cannot tolerate a steady diet of high-class entertainment. This is a proven scientific fact, and it is the reason that Roger Corman is still around after 40 years of cranking out low-budget shockers like “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “Not of This Earth,” “A Bucket of Blood” and “She Gods of Shark Reef.””

4: “Though Corman, now 90, made lots of horror films, he didn’t just make horror films. For one very good reason. “Horror films always do well,” he says. “But in cycles. One horror film will do well, and people will make lots of horror films, saturate the market until there are too many horror films and people will slow down making horror films. And then it’ll start up again.””

4: “Corman’s films define the crucial distinction between trash – quirky, low-budget films shot to make a few bucks and have some fun – and garbage: the mass-produced slop that comes out of Hollywood. Trashy films are ironic, sophomoric, nutty and exhilarating, with inspired names such as The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent; garbage films serve as halfway houses for connected comics now furloughed from Saturday Night Live.”

5: “Roger Corman invented the horror-comedy. Or, if he didn’t, he’s still willing to take credit for the hybridized genre that includes his features…”

5: “For the record, he claims he never saw Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), a potential early candidate for the horror-comedy marriage…”

5: “According to Corman, the idea for the blending of horror and laughs—dark comedy—emerged in a screening for one of his earlier horror films.”

6: “My work in low-budget exploitation films would eventually earn me some notoriety as ‘The King of the B’s’, which is ironic, since, to my way of thinking, I never made a ‘B’ movie in my life.”

7: “Corman then capitalised on the success of the blend of horror and gallows humour that had given Not of this Earth an entertaining impact over and above its genre parameters by making the three out-and-out black comedies that marked a major change in his output and helped made him ‘respectable’ in the eyes of critics…”

6: “It’s been suggested that Creature from the Haunted Sea is my most personal film… it’s got my favourite ending of all- a last scene I invented on a whim and literally phoned to Chuck Griffith from Puerto Rico… ‘We have always killed off out monsters with fire, electricity, floods, whatever,’ I told Chuck. ‘This time, the monster winds. The final shot in this picture,’ I insisted, ‘is the monster sitting on the chest of gold at the bottom of the ocean floor. The skeletons of all the people in the picture are scattered around him and he’s picking his teeth. That’s it. The monster wins.’”

8: “I don’t know who came up with the idea for a black comedy. I might have, it might have been an original idea of mine, but I’m sure somebody had done it before.” [Roger Corman]

8: “I then kind of worked out some vague psychological theory, which I still believe in to a certain extent, that horror and humour... are very similar. In each case, you build up the tension, you build it up and up and up, and then you break it. If you build it the right way and you break it the right way, you get a scream from horror, you get a laugh from humour…” [Roger Corman]

8: “Roger likes a movie to be about something, he likes it to literally have a meaning, not just ‘oh, this would be fun to do a monster movie’, but what kind of monster movie and if you like, what does the monster symbolise? What is this monster really about?” [Francis Doel]

9: “Genre to me is very important… You’re not working with a star. On a big picture with a star, you’re free to do many things that you wouldn’t do on a low-budget picture because the star sells the picture.”

10: “[Roger Corman on audience] AIP realised they were in the B-movie business from the beginning. Over time, it became clear that our audience was the youth audience and we began tailoring our films to that. What was normally done was that we took something out of the headlines and grafted it onto a science fiction/monster movie premise. So right from the beginning we were either ahead of the curve or right on the curve of what teenagers were interested in.”

11: “While many giant monster movies… aim at a mere thrill-and-chill spectacle of mayhem and devastation, Attack of the Crab Monsters also tries to convey a deeper meaning to the audience. “As far as this being an end of the world picture, I would say that the philosophical and psychological considerations were there,” claims Corman.”

11: “…it is an allegory of nuclear folly, a microcosm of what might occur on a larger scale if humanity does not reign in its violent nature. It is at bottom a cautionary tale.”

11: “Ridiculous as [Attack of the Crab Monsters] may seem at first glance, its message matches the anti-militaristic trend in the 1950s science fiction.”

11: “It Conquered the World can easily be interpreted as an anti-Communist film… However, Corman himself does not clarify whether It Conquered the World is an anti-Communist film or not, focusing on the ambivalence of science when commenting on the film…”

STYLE

1: “Ron (Happy Days) Howard, whom Corman initiated into directing with Grand Theft Auto in 1977, remembers the time he asked for just one extra half day to reshoot a scene: “Roger told me, ‘Ron, you can come back if you want, but nobody else will be there.’ ”

1: “More characteristic of the Corman modus operandi is The Raven, a horror satire he shot because an appropriately moody old set was still standing and he hated to see it go to waste. On a Sunday too rainy for tennis, he sat down, scribbled a screen treatment and nabbed Vincent Price and Boris Karloff, who were just finishing up another picture for him, for two days’ work. At lunchtime the next day, he threw in Nicholson. Coppola, then an assistant to Roger, shot some scenes; Nicholson ended up directing a few more; and the picture was finally completed on yet another discarded set.”1: “He is not, however, recanting his view that today’s damn-the-expense, $30 million films are positively sinful. ‘With that money,’ he says, ‘you could reconstruct the slums of a major city. It’s morally offensive.’”

2: “I believe Poe was working with the unconscious mind, which is not aware of external reality… So for the Poe films I thought I should stay away from reality and shoot everything inside a studio, where I could create my own effects, my own unreality.”

3: “Make no mistake, Mr. Corman has not abandoned his roots and gone upscale. The 13 films have budgets of about $1.5 million each, compared with an average of about $32 million for a Hollywood studio film. The whole package was shot in less than six months.”

4: “The original idea [for Death Race 2050] came from a short story by Ib Melchior,” says Corman. “I felt that the idea was good but that it had to be developed. So I added the political element.”

5: “Both [A Bucket of Blood and Little Shop of Horrors] were written by frequent Corman collaborator Charles B. Griffith and shared numerous key crew members and actors; both productions were shot at Chaplin Studios (later A&M Records, now Henson Recording Studios) on La Brea Avenue near Sunset Boulevard.”

5: “A multiple-camera setup was a hallmark of the rapidly produced television sitcom, and Corman applied the thrifty approach to feature filmmaking with obvious success.”

6: “On a distant location you can’t afford to fly actors from Hollywood for every small part, so members of the crew and I often played the bit roles.”

6: “I ended up with a ‘trilogy’ of black comedies: A Bucket of Blood, then Little Shop and finally Creature from the Haunted Sea… With these pictures I put together some of the most definitive elements of my style: quirky plots built on somewhat gruesome premises; fast cutting and fluid camera moves; composition in depth; unconventional, well-sketched characters; and solid performances from the ensemble of ‘Corman players’.”

6: [about A Bucket of Blood] “Everyone was coming up with ideas as we went and we just tossed them in.”

6: “And the shoots themselves- three films done in a total span of two weeks- demanded an unprecedented kind of sprinting intensity from the director that provided its own loose, crazy highs just to keep it all flowing together.”

7: “Producer Corman would have been wiser merely to suggest the creature, rather than construct the awesome-looking and mechanically clumsy rubberized horror. It inspired more titters than terror.” [Variety on It Conquered the World]

8: “Roger had a real style… he liked to move the camera a lot, which was impressive, and even though sometimes the camera would merely tip over and he wouldn’t do another take, it was still a lot more fun than watching some of the big budget stuff that was coming out…” [Joe Dante]

8: “One of the things about working for Roger is that you learnt to function under great adversity, like this dog that’s barking now? You know, in a Roger Corman movie, you just find a cutaway of a dog somewhere, you’d stick it in so you could use the sound.” [Joe Dante]

9: “As an engineer, I work differently. I took as if I were above the set. I would draw the set, then I would draw the movement of the people, so it was more like an engineering plan, and from that I could visualise where I would be.”

8: “I can remember being on a Roger set. Everything was fast and furious, as they say, yes, he moved, moved, moved, and would only retake a shot if something really went wrong.” [Bob Burns]

8: “Sometimes when you’re limited your imagination takes you farther in order to conquer the problem.” [Roger Corman]

9: [On filmmakers he admired] “Of the American directors, probably John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Alfred Hitchcock of course was English then became American. And the director I admired most was the old silent film director from Russia Eisenstein. His picture Battleship Potemkin I believe is one of the most significant films ever made…. He was the first to utilise every technique or bag of tricks that directors have today. Griffiths gets credit for the closeup, but in my mind, Eisenstein gets credit for putting it all together.”

10: “Corman wasn’t much of a stylist at first. He was working too quickly for that to even be a consideration.”

11: “He was a maverick director forced to operate outside mainstream Hollywood, hence the theme of exclusion. In the 1960s. his political views started turning left and so did his films.”

11: “There seems to be no clear-cut pattern which would explain why some of his films are stylistically admirable whereas others are not. The outcome seems to be independent of the budget, the schedule, the genre, or the crewmembers Corman worked with. The problem might therefore lie in the director himself… one thing is certain: once Corman reached a higher artistic level, he was unable to maintain it.”

REPRESENTATION OF FEMALES

1: “His corporate family now totals 150, many of them women whose careers Roger has encouraged, including his executive VP, Barbara Boyle, his story editor, Frances Kimbrough, and director Stephanie Rothman. As Talia Shire puts it: ‘The beauty of working for Roger is that you start out answering the telephone and two weeks later you’re reading scripts and scouting for locations. It beats the hell out of going to Yale Drama School.”’’

3: “Moral statement? It’s highly unlikely that viewers will be tuning into “The Alien Within,” “Bram Stoker’s Burial of the Rats” or “Piranha” for uplift. The Corman message tends to be practical rather than moral.”

6: “Several of those films had strong, assertive women leads. I do believe in the feminist movement, but I can only take partial credit for the themes here.”

10: “The first time I met Roger Corman… it was 1971 and I was trying to convince Mr Corman to finance a film I’d just written, an extremely low-budget parody or extremely low-budget ape-man movies… He was complimentary about my screenplay, but felt it was too short and would benefit from several added scenes where the Missing Link character would encounter bare-breasted women. At first I thought he was kidding, but soon I understood he was not. [John Landis]”

11: ‘A real tribute to gender role reversal and female strength is paid by Corman in... The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent… the females put a rescue mission to the vote… it establishes the women as skilled and strong warriors and their society as open and democratic. Having decided in favour of the rescue operation, the females build a longship from scratch, proving they are equally proficient at typically male activities.”

11: “Though he did exploit popular topics, their role was usually limited to the following: they either constituted an attractive element vaguely relevant to the film’s plot… or served as a framework or context for stories about exclusion or female empowerment… This does not mean Corman cynically used these topics to lure audiences to the cinemas and make his films profitable.”

COMBINATION

9: “I’ve been very strong on the Liberal side, but I made a point after The Intruder… I felt that I had to approach this differently. I could not make an overtly liberal or left picture. What I should do is make a picture that is entertainment, and underneath subtextually, is a little bit of thought on my part. It might be political, it might be psychological, it might be personal…”

11: “Drawing considerable aesthetic inspiration from classic expressionist horror films, classic Universal horror films, and classic literary horror stories, Corman creates a gothic horror series which is almost perfect visually, in which every shot or sequence conveys a feeling of nearly palpable menace.” [Genre and style]

12: “Roger really realised that young people at that time really liked films where teenagers were in trouble with the authorities. He had found an audience that you didn’t have to go through the studio system to reach.”

12: “I’ve always been anti-establishment. I spent two years in the Navy, those were the worst two years of my life. I came very close to setting the record for the most demerits, because I felt if they set up a rule, I really must break that rule.” [Roger Corman]

12: “Roger understood the need for audiences to identify with rebellion, beating the system. That’s cathartic. Defining yourself by your own terms… He was talking to a young audience.” [Ron Howard]

#creative investigation

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