#to be clear i find this very funny and i support casey in being a bit demented about valentino. who amongst us

[batsplat]

Casey Stoner, Pushing the Limits

GP11:

GP12:

x

[lyricfulloflight]

RWRB thoughts

My thoughts after 1.5 viewings (yes, 1.5. I have watched it once and then re-watched certain scenes, but haven't made my way through a full re-watch yet.)

What I loved/like/squealed about:

nervous Alex at the wedding

Nora being all speechless when led away by Bea

The whole cake incident - it did not happened as I was expecting (don't ask me what I was expecting, I have no earthly idea), but I loved the whole thing

Zahra hitting Alex with the pillow. Perfect character moment

the silly height arguments that pop up several times. I think these are extra fun for book readers as it acknowledges the difference between the book and the actors in the movie but keeps the general teasing about height in the movie

Actually, Zahra in general was just so perfectly done

Amy being badass and also a loving dog mom (that wink at the hospital? the 'do I need to clear the room'? Amy is the best)

I still don't know what an equerry is. But I'll take a Shaan any day

The closet scene was really well done. It really allowed for the development of the rest of their relationship.

The way they did the texts with the voice overs and then Henry appearing in Alex's bed - I may have swooned a bit

The New Years party looked like what I imagine a cool party would look like (people do not invite me to cool parties and they never will).

All the representation in the film. Female black PM of the UK? Check! Gender fluid party attendees? Check? Some girl on girl flirting? Check! Trans actor? Check!

Percy's pink hair

Nora's red outfit. Damn girl.

Henry's reaction when Alex grabs his hips at the New Year's party - absolute gold

All of Henry's pining during the New Year's party was just perfectly painfully wonderful

The 'woah' of the woman who walks in when Nora and Alex are talking about his hook ups with men

Alex being totally distracted by Henry arriving at the dinner and looking every inch the son of James Bond that he is

That kiss in the red room was... hmmm... quite.... intense

Also Henry pointing at books after they were interrupted n the red room might have been the most ridiculously funny moment of the whole movie for me

Commanding Henry in the bedroom

Shots of Henry's ass bouncing on a horse being played between shots of the tack room rendevous. I think we all understand why Alex was so, motivated shall we say

The tenderness and intimacy of that Paris scene. Love making indeed.

Henry singing karaoke. Nora bopping along like all of us would like to be doing as fans no doubt

The Casey McQuinston book cameo!

Henry trying to make his burdens clear to Alex but Alex not getting it until they have their blow out. Also drenched Alex in this scene with Henry in his fancy housecoat was very visually appealing

The V&A scene made me cry. Henry talking about the only place he can find peace and have dreams of a happy life he doesn't think he'll ever have. Alex playing the song right away and making his dreams come true. Tears. Happy Tears.

The EXCHANGE! the signet ring. the house key. just kill me now

Seeing Henry's reaction to the email leak and how desperate he was to talk to Alex, how terrified he was, how betrayed. Hats off to Nicholas Galitzine for his acting (for the whole movie, but that scene in particular was just excellent)

Shaan and Zahra reveal! Yes!

Alex'a speech. Amazing.

Baby.

Stephen Fry as the king. What a choice. If you don't know how ironic this is, well go use your goggle skills.

Henry sticking up for himself. The tears in his eyes when he sees the public support

The way they show Alex's passion for politics and helping people.

The way they show Henry's passion for literature, history, etc. And also his frustration at not being able to make an impact and help people they way he wants to and how much he admires Alex for what he is doing

Things I missed/didn't love:

Alex not being a child of divorce. Also how his parent's relationship seemed ambiguous for a long time in the movie (for me anyway. Maybe I was just hoping they weren't together? like in the book?)

Not enough moments of Nora being a stats geek. She said she analyzed data but we don't get a moment where she gives Alex the odds. Sad.

Alex not having his sexual realization. I can see how this trims things down for the film, but I missed it

Not using the Miguel character as well as they could have. Again I can see this being trimmed out for time. I thought this was a reasonable replacement for the Luna subplot. Would have liked more in terms of fall out - did he have insider knowledge? Did he help get the emails leaked?

I would have loved more time of the texts to build the foundation of their relationship

I would have loved even more to have had more email time. I know this is tricky to get on film, but I really missed the sheer romance and intimacy we get in from the emails in the book. It makes the leak so much more impactful

I wanted more David. I love dogs people. I needed more beagle content!

Not enough Pez! Also why was he not Pez? Percy? Percy who? I loved when we saw him and I wanted more.

Same can be said for Nora

Did this film get an R rating from, maybe 2 'fuck's and one gay sex scene where no dicks or asses were shown? (Yes, one ass was shown, but it a completely different scene) Is that all it takes? Boo to the rating people. BOOOOOO.

The transition from the fight between Henry and Alex in his apartments to them leaving from to the V&A didn't feel quite right to me. It was awkward. Each scene itself was wonderful, just one right after the other felt like something was missing.

I honestly, completely, wholeheartedly loved this film. I know I will be watching it over and over. It will have a permanent place in my comfort film rotation. I think all the actors in the film did an amazing job. Both Nicholas and Taylor bought a lot of depth to their roles and really brought them to life so, so well. Their chemistry was completely believable and I rooted for them every step of the way.

For me, the book will remain my main source material for these characters and this story. But this film is such a great complement to the book. A different, but parallel story. I agree with director Matthew Lopez saying this was a work of fanfiction in its own right. It is not the same, but the heart and soul of the book and the two main characters is all there. Not sure I could have asked for much more.

(except for any missing scenes/extended scenes. i'm asking for those. please)

[alexsfictionaddiction]

8 Ace Books Everyone Should Read This Pride Month

I often think that those on the ace spectrum are amongst the most misunderstood in the LGBTQ+ community. Asexuality is an absence of sexual attraction but that doesn’t necessarily mean an absence of romantic attraction. There are also people who identify as aromantic but who do experience sexual attraction. The ace spectrum has what is known as a ‘gray area’ which includes sub-identities such as demisexuality, a sexual attraction only to people with whom one has an emotional connection. I think that the ace spectrum is one of the clearest indicators that sexual and romantic orientations are completely different things and therefore they don’t actually have to match up within the same person. For a while now, I’ve been considering the fact that my own sexual and romantic orientations do not quite match. I’m pretty sure I’m actually heteromantic bisexual and I honestly only have the relatively recent dismantling and separation of sexual and romantic attraction, largely spearheaded by the exposure and discussion of the ace spectrum, to thank for the realisation of that possibility. Anyways, here are a few books with characters who fall somewhere under the ace umbrella. -Love, Alex x

1. Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann.

When Alice comes out as asexual, her girlfriend dumps her and she swears off dating for good but then handsome Takumi enters her life and she can’t seem to ignore the rom-com level of feels. It’s funny, cute and so thoroughly readable with a very relatable protagonist, making it a fantastic book for normalising asexuality.

2. Before I Let Go by Marieke Nijkamp.

When Corey’s best friend Kyra dies, she realises that their small Alaskan town is behaving very strangely and keeping secrets. I’ll admit that this book doesn’t have particularly high ratings on Goodreads and that’s probably because it promises to be more atmospheric and eerie than it is. However, Corey’s asexuality isn’t a driving factor of the plot -she simply is, which I find wonderfully refreshing. She is also questioning which I think will provide a window for people who are still figuring things out.

3. The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow.

Ellie and Morris live in a dystopian world, devoid of emotional and creative expression, but they both risk their lives for their love of the forbidden arts. This is a wonderfully unique sci-fi with both main characters displaying demisexuality. It’s definitely one for bookworms and pop culture nerds who would die to protect creativity and emotional freedom.

4. How To Be A Normal Person by T. J. Klune.

Gus is an eccentric soul and he’s fine with not fitting in until he meets asexual bohemian Casey and he vows to become as normal as possible. It’s funny, heartwarming and incredibly queer with an array of fantastic side characters. This is a great book for learning more about the ace spectrum and a lovely positive depiction of a loving, respectful ace relationship.

5. Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire.

When children return from other worlds, they are forever changed and Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children is there for them until they can fall back through their door. These whimsical novellas are brimming with diverse queer characters and this first instalment is narrated by asexual teen Nancy. The clear distinctions between asexuality and aromanticism are talked about but I love how identity and sexuality is never a plot point or defining characteristic in these stories. 

6. Upside Down by N. R. Walker.

When recently dumped Hennessey moves to a new town, he sets up a support and social group for LGBT+ people, which is where he meets socially awkward Jordan. There is a lot of asexual education without being too preachy and I learnt so much from this very sugary gay romance. If you like a bit of tension or drama, it’s probably not for you but if you’re looking for an easy, funny, cute read, pick it up!

7. Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman.

When her sister dies, Rumi is sent to live with her aunt in Hawaii where she makes some unlikely friends and eventually finds the courage to return to the music that she and her sister loved so dearly. Rumi is asexual and aromantic and she’s terrified that she’ll never find anyone who understands her like her sister did. As you might expect, this book is devastating but so beautiful.

8. Loveless by Alice Oseman.

When Georgia starts university, she’s sure that her love life will finally begin but she is about to learn what true love really entails. Loveless isn’t actually released until next month but it’s a HIGHLY anticipated book charting an asexual aromantic’s learning and self-acceptance as well as being a true celebration of platonic love. Pre-order it now!

[lokislittlesigyn]

// loki spoilers

This is basically a huge infodump on my thoughts about the first episode, because I doubt y’all want to sift through my trauma-ridden ramblings. I’ll make another post for the rest. This is just everything not related to the IW stuff/my reaction to that. It’s general thoughts, theories, musings.

1. When Loki gets first taken into the TVA. Is that Peggy Carter in the background? Others have suggested it might be. What would that mean??? Will we see the TVA fix the mess the Russos made with Steve/Peggy (not likely) or is it just a lookalike? Who knows..

2. A skrull at the main intake desk! Idk not super relevant just interesting!

3. I’m kind of glad they changed the... uncomfortable scene... with the robot burning his clothes off. He gets more time to react to seeing the machine itself, and he seems more shocked (”Now.. H-hang on just a minute.”) than angry (”Now hang on just a minute!”) i still feel.. horrible for him, i’m glad nobody Saw him and that the machine didn’t grab the clothes off, but still. Ehhh.. uncomfortable.

He is beautiful though, don’t get me wrong - I’d just prefer a shirtless Loki scene where he wants to be shirtless? let him do what he wants with his body?? he’s probably felt so out of control of his body, from being jotun to falling through space that any invasion of privacy like that hits extra deep...

That being said, I recognize the utility of the scene for the narrative - his lack of control, his literally being stripped of what he was before.

4. WHO IS THE MAN WITH THE CAT. What is his name. I love that he has a mug with his cat on it. But I want to know more. Who is he?

4.1 WHY DIDNT YOU LET LOKI PET THE CAT Please,,, I am begging you,,, let loki pet the cat and have something react kindly to him and purr all happily at his scratching behind their ears plea s e

5. The info sheet. Now this is just a little nitpicky tidbit, but in a previous promo they listed Loki’s height as 6′4 ft and weight as 525 lbs. This is taken directly from the comics if I’m not mistaken. However, in the actual show he’s listed as  6′2 (Tom’s height and Loki’s presumed height) but I don’t remember if his weight is the same. Is Loki 6′2? 6′4? please let me know i want to know how smol i am in comparison

6. His little aggressive shaking of the ticket at the guard makes me giggle each time.

7. The fact the turnstile hits so low on him reminds me,, I am short compared to him. Those things hit my stomach/waist. That one hit his legs. I am once again asking Loki to pick me up.

8. The cartoon with Miss Minutes introducing the TVA is wonderful, I love the art style especially. But it raises questions about Variants... I guess Variants can just, pop out of nowhere? Any action could be the wrong one? And then once you commit the wrong action you either get returned or pruned? Yikes??? And THIS ties into another thing later!

9. The trial scene. I have a hunch - a feeling, a suspicion. That one of three things may be true.

A. The Time-Keepers never actually existed. They’re fabricated, and now whoever runs the TVA is actually using the excuse of “The Time-Keepers decree it so!!!” to carry out whatever They think is right. The fact we haven’t seen the Time-Keepers makes me.. suspicious...

B. The Time-Keepers existed, but they have since passed on, however that may have happened. Now someone is doing the same as above, using the excuse of the Time-Keepers apparent dictations to run things.

C. The Time-Keepers do exist, and do run the timeline/TVA, but maybe they’re not infallible? Maybe the TVA info video is lying or incomplete in some way? Idk I just feel like, something about the TVA and how they run things has to be wrong. It has to? Something is off. Again, this will tie into another thought later...

I have no idea if any of these are actually true! But Loki’s questions of “Who’s in charge here? What do they do? What do you do?” punctuated by laughter leads me to believe he’s suspecting something too, or perhaps just trying to figure this mess out.

10. Seiðr/Magic. We see in this scene, Loki’s magic (”powers”) don’t work in the TVA. (and a quick side note, did he have to Flex like that? do you have to make me see Loki’s bare arms Flex like that? be still my heart. anyway please get that collar off of him and let him rest for five minutes) This makes me wonder.. Why isn’t Loki in his Jotun form? His pale skin and blue eyes are decided by magic, are they not? I suppose this is 2012, so perhaps Odin’s magic is keeping Loki looking like that. But if magic doesn’t work in the TVA, why would his spell reach so far? Clearly Loki’s magic isn’t what’s doing it. How is Loki not appearing as a Jotun? Is his Jotun form repressed - is pale skin his default now, rather than something hidden by magic? I need answers!

11. he sounds so scared about being “reset” please dont hurt him,,

12. cALLING LOKI A PUSSYCAT? (lokitty confirmed) I think Mobius was goading him (Mobius strikes me.. As extremely clever. He’s trying to push Loki’s buttons to see who he’s dealing with. At least, I hope so. Because if he really meant that “You were born to cause pain and suffering and death... All so that others can achieve the best versions of themselves.” and that line about killing Frigga??? No no no he is not guilty. He had no way of knowing what would happen. It wasn’t right to send Algrim up to Asgard (i think algrim wouldve found the way up anyway) but there was no intent to hurt Frigga. I really hope you’re trying to goad him, Mobius, because if you believe that I trust you much less. anyway i digress) but wow is he pushing Loki’s buttons a lot. I can’t... Blame him entirely, I understand he’s trying to make sure Loki’s on his side, maybe I’m just too soft for Loki idk. But some of that was very cruel to say. /:

12.1 AND ANOTHER THING ABOUT MOBIUS. That scene with the girl in the church?? Did that little girl kill the men? Is that young Sylvie? Or is she using an illusion to make herself look young and innocent? What’s going on!!!!

13. LOKI SNATCHING THE LITTLE TIME-TWISTER DEVICE AND STOWING IT IN HIS POCKET.... POCKET....... sorry sometimes i get so caught up about loki that i just say random words in between little noises and squeals,,, i am a silly thing

14. CASEY. CASEY??? That whole exchange is funny. Poor Loki, just trying to intimidate this guy so he can escape but - Casey doesn’t know what a fish is. to be fair.... thor doesn’t seem to know what a raccoon is... right?

15. That bit with the infinity stones is kind of funny until you realize

A. Natasha died for a paperweight

B. Tony died from paperweights

C. Loki was tortured for paperweights

D. Oh, and Gamora died for a paperweight too. And Vision. Need I go on?

Then it becomes less of exclusively “haha funny” and now it’s a mix of funny and pain and gosh, is that a good way to sum up being a Marvel/Loki fan sometimes...

16. Loki gazing at the timeline all “Is this the most powerful thing in the universe?” or something, i’m sorry i don’t remember exactly... made me think of a meme and i shall make it presently.

17. I love that Loki got to see examples of how his family loves him but the fact he’s all “I can’t go back.” really just breaks me. It’s like he can finally see they love him after all of this mess, and now he doesn’t have the chance. Please, please let him be happy. Give him some relief. This is the Loki that just came off finding out about being Jotun, falling from the Bifrost, encountering Thanos, attacking Earth, facing defeat, and now he’s being thrashed around in this wild place and has just found out he inadvertently caused Frigga’s death (he did not kill her: his actions, by mistake, lead to her murder, let me be very clear) AND Odin will die AND all the rest... And he wants to be with them.

18. Loki’s reaction to Thor suggesting the hug makes me soft. Please I want to hug this little mischief man so so so bad-

19. Skipping over the iw parts! That’s for another post because this one will be grossly long anyway.

20. “I don’t enjoy hurting people.” and “It's part of the illusion. It's the cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear. A desperate play for control.” was all so, so validating. I’ve been trying to argue on Loki’s behalf for almost a solid decade. Seeing the show recognize that Loki’s not all just violence and hurting for “fun”, that he’s not unhinged and bloodthirsty.. Is so nice. It’s just so, so comforting. and it gives me hope for future episodes that they won’t go the route of “oh haha loki bullied and mistreated and stabbed thor for years!!! :)” loki cries during basically every fight with Thor and you want me to believe he stabs Thor for fun? absolutely not.

21. Theory.. Just another hunch.. So we know a fugitive variant, aka Loki, is running amok. Refer back to 8 and 9.C. What if the Time-Keepers never actually fixed the timeline into a single timeline? What if there are other timelines, and these different Loki variants have hopped over to the current one? Or, maybe the Time-Keepers did fix the timeline into a single one, and these Lokis are remnants from that huge time-war at the beginning? Time runs differently in relative spaces, they may have Just Left that war from their perspective!

I say Lokis and not Loki because we’re pretty sure there’s Female/Lady Loki, Old Man/King Loki, and possibly Young/Kid Loki. That’s at least three. From the peeks of Asgard and NYC we’ve seen from the trailers, I think we’re also getting an Asgardian King!Loki and Midgardian King/Vote!Loki. (unless our dearest variant is hopping into timelines and situating into them, but I doubt Mobius would let that happen..?) That’s five.

To further support this, keep in mind, I believe recently six (i think 6 regular and 6 rare...) different funko pops were announced for the series? I’m not sure if they’re in addition to the Loki and Mobius already released. If they are, there’s enough room for each Loki and maybe a TVA agent. One of the pops is supposed to have a buddy/companion I think? Maybe they’re making the cat guy into one, or maybe there’s something else (Throg, anyone?).

22. That is totally Lady Loki/Sylvie at the end by the way. Has to be. But why does she want the reset devices? Why did she snatch that TVA Hunter? Again, WHAT’S GOING ON

ANYWAY this was a very long post if you made it this far, I commend you.

[turtleshorties]

TMNT x reader: One more dance

Author's note: I've had this idea for some time now, trying to write it for a while and I finally got it done! Thinking of making this some sort of a one shot series, we shall see how it goes. Hope you like my first writing of 2020! 💙❤️💜🧡

Disclaimer: I do not own TMNT and I do not own you, just my wild imagination.

Warnings: Sort of fluff, with a little tear drop mixed in. Kinda cute. :3 Not proofread!

YN = your name

TN = turtle name

-

"You look absolutely beautiful, April!" you admired the bride-to-be, your good friend April O'Neil. She stood before the tall mirror in her white wedding dress, hair and makeup done.

She blushed and smiled as she couldn't stop looking in the mirror. "I'm getting married today." she giggled and all her excitement seemed to glow out of her. Then she turned around, walked over to you and sat down next to you on the couch.

"YN, thank you so much for everything. Being my best friend, being by my side and always supporting me." April took your hand in hers. "And thank you for being my maid of honor."

"Of course, it's an honor to be at my best friend's wedding, and be her maid of honor." you remembered the day when April had announced the engagement to you almost one year ago. That day she also asked if you would like to be her maid of honor. "And just like you said, you are like a sister to me."

"You're gonna make me cry, YN." she gushed and her eyes glistening. She was filled with so much emotions as well as happiness.

"No, don't cry, darling." you reassured her as you embraced her in a hug. "Don't ruin your beautiful makeup because of me." you both laughed as you pulled away from the hug.

The room fell silent for a moment. A comforting silence. "Have you seen him yet?" April questioned after a few seconds of silence.

You knew who she was referring to. Him. TN, your ex boyfriend. It ended over one year ago. "No, I haven't seen him yet." you sighed.

"Are you sure you will be okay?" April asked once again. The question she have asked you several times, making sure you in fact are alright about seeing him and attending the same events as him. She knows your history with him, but as both you and him is family to her, she couldn't leave one of you out of such an important day of her life.

You knew he would be there and you had thought about this for a long time, trying to mentally prepare yourself for meeting him again. "I'm fine, April." you reassured her with a sweet smile, as she sent you a look as if asking again. "I promise, I really am fine. I'll be alright."

April offered a soft smile and a hug. "You mean a lot to me, and I want you to feel comfortable too." she whispered softly.

There were light knocking on the door, catching both of your interest. Rebecca Vincent carefully peaked through the lightly opened door.

"Oh my, how beautiful!" the chief of police entered with a smile, closing the door behind her. "Are you ladies ready?"

"Is it time to get in position?" April asked glowing of happiness.

"Yes, it's almost go time. I believe all guests has arrived, Casey is ready and so is the turtles." Rebecca explained.

The turtles. TN.

You have still yet to meet them.

-

"Guys, I would like to make a toast." Casey cleared his throat, as he poured some Whiskey in the glasses for him and his best men, the turtles. “Today is a big day for April and I.”

The wedding is located to be in the guarden of April’s old family farmhouse right outside New York City, a place that offers them and their guests all the privacy that they would like. 

“Yeah, today is the day you’ll grow into a real man.” Vern teased as he walked up to the group, standing in the bar inside the farmhouse, making the turtles snicker and smirk by the teasing comment. 

Casey shook his head, but his smile still big as ever. “Very funny, Vern.” he chuckled lightly, pouring another drink for his friend. “Here, let’s make a toast together.” 

“Better make it quick, it’s about to start.” Vern said as he accepted the drink.

The guys all raised their glasses, Leo of course taking the lead in the toast. “To April and Casey.” 

“To April and Casey!” The rest of the guys cheered as they drank the strong liquid, giving them a burning hot feeling down their throat.

After the toast, the group of men started to walk out of the farmhouse to the garden to their position. The guests, that included their family, friends and a lot of people from the NYPD that were close to them, had found their seats, chatting a little bit together as they waited for the big moment to start. 

TN walked next to Vern, stopping him right before getting in his position. “Is she here today?” he asked quietly, referring to you. He already knew you would be here, but he just had to confirm it to be sure.

“Yes, she’s with April right now.” he nodded, also knowing the history between the two of you. “Are you gonna talk to her?” 

“If she wants to...” TN whispered sadly, hoping to have the chance to talk to you, to explain himself and more importantly, to apologize.

Vern nodded, but before any of them could continue with the conversation the music started playing and they had to get in their rightful place quick as the wedding was about to start.

As you start to walk down the isle, you see him and he see you. Your eyes lock and it’s the most hypnotizing thing, like it’s just you and him against the world. All the good memories flowing through your mind, as if you fell in love all over again. You walk to the opposite side of the groom and his best men as April starts walking down the isle. 

-

The wedding ceremony went perfectly well, the dinner smoothly and now the party was getting lit. Music playing and people dancing, talking and laughing together. April and Casey really had planned one amazing wedding. You had mingled along the group of guests, talking and dancing. Now you sat down by the bar, with a drink in your hand, just enjoying every moment of the party. 

“YN?” a voice you knew all too well. The smooth and husky voice that belongs to him. 

You turned around to see TN standing there. A lot of feelings and emotions pumping in your mind and heart right now, not sure exactly how to react.

“Hi.” you smile softly as your eyes lock.

He rubbed the back of his head, trying so hard to find just the right words to say. “I was wondering if we could ta-” he was cut off.

“Ey, TN! Get over here!” Casey shouted from the photobooth. “You can talk to your lover later.” he teased with a smirk.

TN let out a sigh. “I’ll see you around.”

You nodded, trying to process what just happen, taking another sip of your fruity drink, probably needing another strong drink to be able to process this scenario. 

-

It’s several hours into the party and it’s starting to get late. Some people has left and some still wanting to hang around. You had decided to go out to get some fresh air. You had walked down to the river, standing on the bridge that crosses it. The soft breeze brushing over your skin, it was dark so the stars and the moon shined brightly. The sound of the river always had a calming effect on you. 

“You know the party is inside, right?” the voice you knew so well asked teasingly. The voice that belonged to him, the bara that once held your heart. 

His voice still had that very same effect on you as it used to, sending shivers down your spine and feeling his presence this close again made your heart go wild. Your lips turning into a soft smile, humming in response to his question.

As he stood by your side, you turned to face him. He held out a single rose to you, in the color of his bandana. "It's beautiful. Thank you." you smiled, taking it close to your nose so you could smell the scent.

"You're beautiful." he complimented as he watched you curiously with the rose in your hand, trying his best to not mess up this moment and find the right words to say. "I've missed you."

He studied you closely, nervously waiting for your reaction and response. A lot of thoughts went through your mind in this moment with him.

"If it worked for April and Casey, why couldn't it work for us?" your eyes slowly drifted from the rose and up to the big bara, locking with his eyes.

He let out a sigh, thinking of the time when Shredder and the Footclan attacked the city again, that time was much worse than their previous attacks. "Because the Footclan was starting to target the people that meant the most to us and before they got the chance to find out about you, I.. I..." he closed his eyes, feeling the pain he did when letting you go. "I just wanted to protect you, to keep you safe, I couldn't stand losing you."

You put a hand on his arm to reassure him, as he slowly looked back in your eyes. His eyes was watery and so was yours.

"I never meant to hurt you, I just couldn't risk your life for my own selfish needs and wishes." he explained as you two got closer. "I know I have no right to ask for another chance..."

"TN..." you whispered his name faintly, your hand resting on his cheek, then you pulled him in for a kiss.

It's a kiss of so much longing for each other. He didn't hesitate to kiss back, his lips moving in sync with your lips, his arms goes around your waist to hold you closer to him. Your mind was spinning and so was his, so many emotions and feelings, all pouring out in this moment, showing just how much you've missed each other.

Slowly you both pull away, already longing for more, you're both breathing heavy.

"I love you." you stated, your hands resting on his neck. "I love you, TN."

"I never stopped loving you." he smiled, kissing your temple, embracing his arms around you, hugging you close to him. He feared if he'd let go, you would be gone. "Oh shell, YN, I love you!" he planted many soft kisses on you.

After a long moment, you both let go from the hug, holding each others hands. The music was still playing at the party and could be heard ever so softly down to the river.

"YN? I... Would you like one more dance with me?" the big bara asked you, making your lips form into a big sweet smile.

"I'm all yours."

[aboutcaseyaffleck]

Casey Affleck Gets Philosophical About Life, Time & The Whole Damn Thing

“Time,” reflects Casey Affleck, “is something I have been thinking about lately. It is ironic how the older you get, the better you are at being patient. With less time left, people become better at waiting. But this year, I feel much older and a lot less patient. I guess you’ve got to accept that time is never wasted? That doing is no different than not doing? That you can’t kill time no matter what you do, and that no matter what you do you can’t prevent the opposite from happening either? I don’t know. It’s a double-edged sword.”

It’s a Wednesday afternoon in early January, and Affleck and I are doing the Zoom thing, ostensibly to discuss his two new movies, the recently released indie Our Friend and the upcoming 19th-century period drama The World to Come. Yet our virtual tête-à-tête has become far more interesting, jumping wildly from his love of trains and travel to weightier topics like family, the future and the search for something more, something meaningful.

“I like the idea that time is an illusion. That past, present and future are all happening at once. I like it even though I can’t totally get my head around it. But either way, the me in the mirror gets older every day.”

Like most of us, he’s not only had plenty of time on his hands in recent months, housebound in L.A., but he’s tried to use his downtime wisely. “I tried to use this year of quarantine constructively,” the 45-year-old Oscar winner says. “I tried to see it as a winter season for shutting down and restoring something inside, but I just couldn’t. I’m not that evolved, I guess. I didn’t take up a new hobby or learn an instrument or get better at ‘self-care.’ If anything, I let my better habits and routines fall off. It was all I could do to keep my head above water and help buoy my friends and children when I could.”

As a guy with two teenagers at home — Indiana, 16, and Atticus, 13 — it hasn’t been easy, but he’s doing his best. He tried taking his sons on their annual camping road trip over the summer, but it was short-lived. Instead, he’s been focusing on making a happy home. “My kids don’t get to see their friends a lot, so I’m doing a lot more stuff with them, coming up with activities for the three of us, which they mostly hate, and I mostly let drop. And then I try again with the same outcome 90 percent of the time.”

While trying to create innovative plans to sustain his boys, he came up with one he thought might do some good, too. In June, he launched Stories from Tomorrow, a social-media initiative focused on creative writing by kids.

“At the beginning of all this last March, the first thing that occurred to me was that the quarantine would have a big impact on young people’s emotional well-being — the disruption they’re going to feel is really going to affect their mental health more than anyone else,” he says. “When I would sit down to write creatively, I felt better. But I couldn’t get my sons to journal or do creative writing much. I didn’t want to twist their arms about it. So I was like, ‘I’ll make a social media platform that inspires young people to write creatively, because it is such a good way of working out difficult feelings. And the way I will do that is have well-known people read the kids’ writing publicly.’ I knew that hearing your own writing read was exciting. I thought it would be really inspiring, that creative writing would be a great outlet for kids stuck at home.”

He enlisted some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Robert Redford, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Jon Hamm, Matthew Broderick, Kyle Chandler and Danny Glover, as well as two current costars, Vanessa Kirby and Jason Segel, and arranged for donations made through the program to go to children’s hunger nonprofit Feeding America and Room to Read, which supports female education. He reached out to schools in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Haiti, hoping to create a global community.

Affleck was excited to make progress, to have done some good, but the initiative didn’t take off as planned. “In the end, an Instagram account for creative writing by tweens just couldn’t possibly compete with the quintillion bytes of daily data generated online. I don’t know. But I tried! And anyway, since then lots of other organizations started doing basically the same thing, and they are more organized than I am, and they have done a better job. So be it.”

Yet, adults have been disrupted, too, including Affleck himself, who is aware that, relatively speaking, he has gotten through mostly unscathed. “Am I happy? I mean, I’m relatively okay. It’s been a hard time to find balance and to keep it. I would say it’s been a hard time in my life, but I know that it’s been harder for other folks. So far we haven’t lost anyone, and we haven’t lost our house. And I rediscovered that when you’re feeling bad, there’s nothing better to do than to try to help other people. Being of service not only helps others but is a great way of getting outside of yourself. Also — and I really believe this — I think this time will be remembered as one when our country made leaps and bounds in the right direction; we are changing and growing and it’s uncomfortable, but we will be much, much better. I wish I could see the next couple hundred years. It’s going to be amazing.”

At the end of the day, it’s family that’s keeping him going. “Having my kids around and being able to spend so much time with them has been amazing. It is the brightest silver lining in all of this. They are what gives me the most joy. They are funny and smart and interesting and interested. They are just the best company ever,” he says. “Anytime I try to parent out some ‘teaching moment,’ I find they are two steps ahead. They help me make sense of stuff just as much I help them, if not more. I don’t have any answers, but batting the questions around, back and forth, is a good way of coping.”

CALEB CASEY MCGUIRE AFFLECK-BOLDT feels he is luckier than most. Although he and many of his peers have gone jobless for a full year, he spent 2019 working hard. He had not one but three films done and dusted prior to the start of the pandemic; the last one wrapped a week before mandatory quarantine. Two of these have back-to-back release dates: the tearjerker indie Our Friend came out in January, and sweeping period drama The World to Come will be released February 12. Thriller Every Breath You Take is slated for later this year. “I am so, so, so glad I spent 2019 working that much. It is what kept us afloat all through 2020,” he says.

The films themselves are radically different, but there are a few common threads. In both of his winter releases, Affleck plays a man who has lost a family member and whose marriage is in shambles. In both, he is a man in pain.

In the LGBTQ masterpiece The World to Come, which revolves around the love that blossoms between two married women on the mid-19th-century American frontier, his character, Dyer, says very little but manages to convey a wealth of emotion with his eyes alone. He may seem stoic, but he is suffering.

“The World to Come is a story about a couple who have lost a baby. They’re dealing with the grief in totally different ways and having a very hard time coming together again,” he explains. “My character wants to heal that by having another, but his wife [played by Katherine Waterson] is coping in a different way. She is severing all emotional attachment to him because it triggers more and more grief. She [only] seems to come alive when she is with their neighbor, a woman on the next farm [played by Vanessa Kirby]. He wants his wife happy, but he also would like her to love him. To me, this is the story of how couples can have their relationship shattered by a sudden loss. And it’s definitely a beautiful story about two women who feel that they have to hide their love and find the courage to love each other anyway.”

Affleck likes layers. He himself has many, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s drawn to roles written as fully formed characters, not caricatures. With Dyer, that’s abundantly clear. “Crisis is fun to play, [and Dyer] is in an interesting crisis,” he says. “I think he’s a really good person — a really decent, solid, loving person — which is what I loved so much about playing him and what I love so much about the writing. It’s more interesting when there’s no bad guy, just a conflict of circumstances and feelings that get so complicated that it drives two people apart.”

In Our Friend, a different set of circumstances drives the leads apart. Affleck and Dakota Johnson take on the true story of Matthew and Nicole Teague, whose imperfect marriage was strained by his long absences and her affair, neither of which seem at all important when she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“To me, Our Friend is really a story about how petty grievances between people can divide them and then be forgotten when a gigantic tragedy is dropped in their laps. [Matthew] was wronged, it’s true — his wife cheated on him. On the other hand, he wronged her in a bunch of ways; [they] were just more passive and not quite so salacious. He wasn’t around. Matt got to be a dad and he got to travel the world as a journalist. He left her to take care of the kids. She wanted to have a life too, she had dreams of her own — she wanted to be a singer, she wanted to work — but she didn’t get to do that. She just got to be a mom. She was left holding the bag, and it wasn’t fair.”

He spent a fair amount of time immersing himself in the journalist’s life while filming in Fairhope, Ala., in 2019. (The film’s title is taken from Teague’s award-winning Esquire essay, “The Friend: Love Is Not a Big Enough Word.” The friend in question — played by Jason Segel — is a man who puts his life on hold to help the family during their darkest days.) But he did not become Matt Teague, which is an important distinction. “[Director] Gabriella Cowperthwaite asked that we not portray the personality traits of the real people. No accents, no mannerisms. [But] I did steal his style, because I had never seen someone nail the dad look any better than Matt. I say that with affection.”

As for the dreams Nicole gave up for her family, Affleck says, “If you were to ask Matt, I’m sure he would acknowledge that he was neglecting his role. He was neglecting her dreams, and that is a part of marriage, supporting what the other person wants. Like all relationships, it was complicated.”

Like life itself, really. This is why he can identify with both sides. He understands Nicole’s pain about the deference of her dreams as well as Matt’s desire to escape through travel — especially now, when Affleck himself has been completely grounded. Since the age of 17 he’s taken 20 cross-country road trips. His love of driving is secondary only to his enthusiasm for trains: Amtrak is his jam. He even fantasizes about owning his own train car one day.

Immersing himself in each location — whether it’s the sleepy Alabama town of Fairhope or the more exotic locale of Romania, which served as a stand-in for the East Coast of the U.S. in The World to Come — is actually one of the most desirable parts of the acting life, he says. “One of the things I love about working as an actor is that you go to some brand-new place and the community invites you in in a way that they don’t usually if you’re a tourist,” he confides. “You get to see what it’s like to really be there and imagine yourself living there.”

And he has — over the past ten years he’s spent so much time in cities including his hometown of Boston; Vancouver, British Columbia, the location of Light of My Life; Atlanta, where he shot the 2016 action flick Triple 9; Argentina, where he made Gerry; Dallas, for A Ghost Story; Calgary, Alberta, where much of the epic western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was filmed; Our Friend’s Fairhope set; Cincinnati, for The Old Man and the Gun; and Braddock, Pa., where he filmed the 2013 drama Out of the Furnace. “I have loved moving in and settling down and living a character’s life and then moving on. But I feel most at home in places that are struggling to get by. It reminds me of the neighborhood I grew up in. I feel lighter in those places, more relaxed. I feel like myself. I fit in.”

For him, the where is almost as important as the who — immersing himself in the place is imperative to understanding his character. This is part of what makes him such an accomplished actor — he and most of the parts he plays merge. I draw a crappy analogy about how the characters are like a coat, which he very obligingly works with. “You have to build the coat from all of the scraps and pieces of yourself; all these characters are made up of little pieces of me,” he says, noting, “Obviously, sometimes they can’t be. Sometimes I have no connection whatsoever, and those are the jobs I look back on and I either feel nothing for, or worse. But sometimes you have to take the job that is available, like most people in the world. You know? I don’t think my dad wanted to be a janitor. But he did it.”

He’s won an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Critics’ Choice Award, a Golden Globe and an Independent Spirit Award, among others, and appeared in films that run the gamut from box-office juggernauts like the Ocean’s 11 franchise and Tower Heist to indie darlings like brother Ben’s directorial debut Gone Baby Gone and Manchester by the Sea. He has even written and directed, most recently 2019’s Light of My Life, a bizarrely prescient movie about raising children in a pandemic. At this point in his career, he should have his pick of parts. “Not really,” he says. “There are a lot of people out there who have done good work, who are driven, and who have something to share. I have never been someone studios embraced as a ‘movie star,’ never knighted. I have always had to fight for the parts I have gotten. And you know what? That’s fine. Let me fight. It’s how I cut my teeth, and it is how I will keep them sharp. You can’t ask for more than a chance to be in the ring. Also, movies and TV aren’t all I care about. Sometimes I think, ‘Well, jeez, I have to work, and there are two jobs available to me, and the one that isn’t as good is the one that is close to home and I can see the kids, so I guess I am doing that.’ I love movies and really try hard to make them good. I really bust my ass every day when I get the chance to make one. I care more about my family than any movie. It’s not [always] the job I love, but this is the reality of my life. But maybe life will be long enough for a few more chapters.

The forward momentum of his future is an interesting topic. At the moment, he isn’t so much planning for the future as he is exploring it, because Affleck is not someone who likes to live with regret.

“I guess [at the end of the day], regret should be reframed as a reminder to be different,” he observes. And so, with this in mind, he embarked on a personal journey several years ago and decided to go back to college (at the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia). He had completed two years at Columbia University, but he never graduated — his film career kept getting in the way.

“I went back to school because I hadn’t finished, and I wanted to think about new things in a way that school can help you do,” he says. “I couldn’t go in person, so I found a strong online school and got started. You know, I’m 45, and I just thought, ’This is halftime. This is where you hit the locker room and think about how you want the rest of the game to go.’ You know what I mean? Like, ‘Okay, we went out, we played our best, we didn’t know what the other team was going to be like, we made some mistakes, we are in the game, so let’s adjust like this.’ Also, I’m not sure I want to be an actor forever. I had made a small pivot from acting into directing, and into producing more. And I like to direct movies. The most satisfying creative experience I’ve had in a long time was being a director. But ultimately it wasn’t quite enough. So I wanted to go study some of the things I was interested in. I wanted to do more with my life.”

Although he needed general credits to graduate, he found an unexpected passion for juvenile justice along the way, with a particular focus on alternative accountability programs. “I don’t know where this will lead me, or why I am so interested in it, but finding and implementing better systems for addressing harm and conflict among kids, adults too, but mostly young people, is something I care about. And the work that I have done so far has been fascinating and deeply rewarding.”

When I ask if this stems from his own experiences as a troubled kid growing up in Cambridge, Mass., with Christine, a single mom — his parents divorced when he was 9; his father, Timothy, an alcoholic tradesman, checked into a rehab facility in Indio, Calif., when Affleck was just 14 — he muses thoughtfully, “I love my parents and think they both did the very best they could and cared a lot. Period. Did I get into some trouble as a teenager? I got into some trouble when I was a kid, and I struggled a lot through high school with depression and substances, yes. Much of it I didn’t even know wasn’t normal. I don’t know if I was ‘troubled.’ Either way, as an adult, I’ve come to see that, regardless of how I compare to anyone else, I want less conflict in my life. That might be part of the reason why I’ve been so interested in learning about better ways of resolving conflicts, both with children and with grown-ups. It isn’t something they teach in school for some reason. Man, there is a lot they don’t teach you in school, huh? A lot you’ve got to learn on your own.”

And on this journey, mistakes will be made. That’s par for the course, and Affleck is no exception. “I have made so many mistakes, but life is the time for mistakes. I do believe people should hold themselves accountable and repair harm they have caused. That is important to me, and I try hard to do that whenever it is called for: apologize for mistakes and repair them,” he admits.

This is when our conversation, as such conversations are wont to do, comes full circle. Before we say goodbye, Affleck remarks, “You know, I heard Bono talking on Howard Stern’s show, and he said something about Frank Sinatra that was interesting. He said that he heard two versions of Frank singing ‘My Way.’ One version was recorded when Frank was young, and the other version was recorded when Frank was old. Each had the exact same words, same arrangement, same everything. But when Frank was young the line ‘I did it my way’ sounded proud, and when Frank was old it sounded humble. Whatever else time does to a person, I think it also does that.”

[source]

[mustangshelby04]

Boston Boy - Chapter 4

A/N Things are starting to heat up between Kate and Chris. Just wait till the next chapter!!

“My mom knows about you now.” Chris said as they made their way to the landing for the whale watching trip.

“Does she?” Kate asked.

“She called me this morning and wanted to know if I was ok since I haven’t been around in a few days.  And Scott mentioned that I was keeping myself busy in a tone that implied something more.”

“So, you told her about me?  What did she say?  What did you say?”

“I told her pretty much everything.  How we met and what we’ve been doing since…. She found it pretty amazing and said you must be something special and she can’t wait to meet you.”

“Oh.”  

“How would you feel about going over to my mom’s house Friday afternoon and staying for dinner?”

“Oh, uh…. Are you sure?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure if you don’t go, she’ll come find you.”

They found a place near the back of the ship and leaned against the railings. “Did you tell her the part about next week?”

“Yeah.”

“What did she say?”

“That it’ll be good for me to go someplace new for fun and that she hopes I actually have fun.”

“Well, I can say that I agree with her on that point.”

“She also thinks you’re very pretty.” She cocked an eyebrow up at him. “I sent her a picture.  And for the record, I agree with her.”

She let out a laugh and shook her head. “I’m just going to say thank you.”

He turned to her. “You don’t think you are?”

“I think I’m nothing special.”

“Is that your father talking?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think so.  Maybe.  I just…. I don’t look in a mirror and go ‘yeah, you’re so hot’.  Even after I spend time on my hair and makeup.”

“You’re incredibly oblivious, then.  You’re beautiful.” He reached out and pushed a strand of hair that was floating in the wind behind her ear. “Trust me.”

She blushed and looked out at the water. “You’re crazy.”

He laughed. “That’s beside the point.”

The boat shifted under them and they were headed out onto the ocean.  The wind was cold and Chris moved behind her to block her from it.  She smiled to herself and watched the city get smaller as they moved out to the open ocean. 

“Why me?” She asked.

“Why you what?” Chris asked, his mouth not far from her ear, causing his beard to tickle the skin there.

“Let me rephrase.  What is it about me that makes you so at ease?  That made you want to take me out for dinner that night you knocked me down in dog shit?”

“I don’t know.  There was something in me that saw something in you and I asked you to dinner to see if I could figure out what it was.  I’m still trying to figure it out, which I love.  You’re like an adventure.  But I was sweating bullets before I asked you out, remember?”

“I didn’t even notice.  I was kind of trying not to freak out that this actor I’ve thought was amazing since I saw him in ‘Cellular’ was sitting in my hotel room and talking to me and then asking me to dinner.”

He laughed. “You saw ‘Cellular’, huh?”

“And liked it.  Personally, though, my favorite movie of yours is probably ‘Snowpiercer’.  Oh, or ‘Sunshine.’  I loved that one, too.” She looked up at him. “You were incredible in those.”

He blushed a bright red and she smiled. “Thank you.  That means a lot, actually.” His arms came around her and he held her against his chest.

“You’re welcome.” She snuggled back into him and looked out over the water. “So when are we going to see some whales?”

“We might have to join the crowd up front.”

“Oh.” They both leaned over together to look up the deck at the small crowd gathered on the bow.  Behind them, a little boy about ten years old tapped Chris on the hip.  Chris turned and looked down at him with a smile, letting Kate out of his embrace.

“Are you Captain America?” The little boy asked.

Chris knelt down to be eye level with him. “I sure am.”

“I saw, um…. The Avengers…. And it was really good.”

“That’s awesome, buddy.”

“You’re my favorite, though.  Don’t tell Iron Man, ok?”

Chris smiled. “You got it.  I won’t say a thing to him.  What’s your name?”

“Macon.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Macon.” Chris shook his little hand.

The little boy looked up at Kate. “Is she an Avenger, too?”

“No.  She’s a good friend of mine.  She’s a superhero, too, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.  Shh, don’t tell anyone, though.  She’s kind of shy about it.”

“Ok.” Macon looked up at her again. “I promise I won’t tell.  Even if a bad guy asks me, I won’t tell him.”

“Thank you.” She said sincerely. “What’s your name?”

“Uh…. Captain Princess.”

Macon laughed. “That’s funny.”

She chuckled. “Yeah.”

“You should join the Avengers if you’re a superhero, too.  They’re the good guys.”

“Cap, here, has been trying to get me to join for years.  But if you think I should, maybe I’ll talk to Iron Man.”

“Yeah!”

“Macon?” A woman’s voice called from somewhere on the deck.

“That’s my mom.  I gotta go.  Bye!  I promise I won’t tell anyone you’re here.” Macon ran off to find his mother and Chris stood back up.

He shot her an inquisitive look. “Captain Princess?”

She blushed and shook her head. “It’s my niece’s superhero name.  It was the first thing that popped in my head.”

“Your niece has a superhero name?”

“Yup.  She has a cape and a mask and she runs around with the bow and arrow set I got her for her 2nd birthday.  Well, Merida got it for her.” At his concerned look, she added, “It’s a kids toy.  The arrows have suction cups, but she’s got scary good accuracy.  I showed her how to shoot and in no time she was terrorizing their dog Abby with it.”

Chris laughed, throwing his head back. “You taught your two year old niece to shoot a bow and arrow?” His right hand went to his chest as he continued to laugh.

“I wasn’t going to give her a weapon without showing her how to use it.  That’s irresponsible even if it is just a toy.  And for the record, Merida showed her.”

“Oh, Kat, you’re ridiculous.” He said it in such a way that it was the most endearing thing she’d ever heard.  Then suddenly, his hands were cupping the sides of her face and his lips pressed to hers.  She stiffened in surprise, but only for a moment before relaxing into it and placing her hands on his hips.  When he pulled away a few seconds that felt like an hour later, they were both grinning. “Sorry.  I hope that wasn’t too forward.”

“No….” She cleared her throat. “No.  That…. I…. Oh jeepers.” She sagged back against the railing, leaning on it for support. “That was better than I imagined it.”

“So you’ve thought about it, too, huh?”

She laughed and looked up at him. “Probably more than you.”

There was a sudden commotion at the front of the boat and the boat slowed down to a stop.  Camera shutters could be heard going off at a rapid rate.  Chris and Kate exchanged looks and went up to see the whales.  She snapped some photos with her Canon DSLR that she’d brought along and even stealthily took some of Chris watching the whales with a look that reminded her of a kid at an amusement park.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

When they got back on dry land, they headed to a Mexican restaurant for lunch.  The two of them sat on the same side of the table.  The booth seats weren’t huge, so they were close together.  He wrapped an arm around her as she pulled out her camera to look at the pictures she’d taken.

“You’re really good at taking pictures.” Chris remarked, munching on chips and salsa.

“Thank you.”

“You’ve got an eye for it.”

“See this sequence of pictures?” She was referring to seven pictures she’d shot rapid fire of a humpback whale breeching. “I’ll probably make a panorama of it and get that framed.”

“I want a copy of that if you do.  That’ll be really cool.”

“I can’t say the idea is mine.  My sister in law did that for pictures she took of a whale from her cruise ship when she and my brother went to Alaska.  I will say, though, that my sequence of pictures is better than hers.”

“Oh shit!  Look at that one!” He pointed to one she’d managed to get of the inside of a whale’s mouth.  It had come up to feed on krill right next to where she’d been standing and she’d quickly snapped the picture.  It looked like that whale was smiling big for the camera. “That’s so cool!  I can’t wait to see that blown up!”

“Your enthusiasm for my pictures is adorable.”

“Do you have other pictures I can see?”

“They’re on my laptop at the hotel.” She looked up at him and he was giving her puppy dog eyes. “Yes, you can see them.  Though you’re not allowed to tell Casey you saw hers.  For some reason she’s really embarrassed by them.”

“Well, I won’t look at them if it embarrasses her.”

“Just don’t tell her because I’m quite proud of them.  They’re my first venture into actual portraits.”

“Have you ever thought about being a photographer?”

“Sometimes.  But Richmond is full of talented photographers.  It’s tough to break into the business.  I just take pictures for fun and for my friends.” She sighed. “I completely forgot that I’m taking pictures for my friend Jessica and her sister Sarah next week.”

“Oh, that’s ok.  I can be your assistant.  I think I’ve done enough shoots to know how to help you out.”

She laughed. “Probably.  I think I’m going to like watching you hold up my reflector and doing what I ask.”

He shot her a devilish look. “Sounds like fun, mistress.  I’m at your service.”

She ducked her head to hide the blush.  The food chose that moment to appear and Chris went over to the other side of the table to give themselves room to eat.  The conversation was steady about photoshoots.  The ones that she’d done and some of the ones he’s done over the years.

“Have you ever been in front of the camera?” Chris asked as they left the restaurant and headed back to the car.

“Uh, a few times, actually.”

“I’m not talking school pictures or 90s Glamour Shots.”

“I know.  And while I’ve done the Glamour Shots thing, the answer is still the same.”

“Can I see those, too?”

She grinned up at him. “You’re a very curious man.  Didn’t anyone ever warn you about what curiosity did to the cat?”

That made him laugh. “I’m not a cat person, so I don’t really care.”

“Good.  I’m not a cat person, either.  I’m allergic to them.”

He slipped his hand in hers. “So, do you still want to see the Constitution?”

“Of course!  History buff, here.  I’ll almost never turn down a chance to see something as cool as Old Ironsides.”

“Then to Old Ironsides we go.”

While they waited in line to go onto the ship, Kate looked up at Chris. “Can I cook for you tonight?”

He smiled down at her. “Only if we can stop and get your laptop.”

“I think we can arrange that.”

“Cool.  What will you be cooking tonight?”

“Well, I’m sure we’ll have to go to the grocery store, so I’ll figure it out then.”

“Nice.” His phone started ringing and he pulled it out of his pocket. “It’s Scott.  Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

“Hey.” Chris answered his phone. “Yeah, I’m with her now.  Oh, well she’s actually planning on cooking tonight.  Don’t know yet.  Hold on.” He looked down at her. “Scott wanted to know if we wanted to go out with him this evening.”

“Tell him to join us for dinner.  I’ll cook for him, too.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled and turned back to the phone. “She says come over to my place tonight and she’ll cook for us.  Great.  Ok, yeah.  We’ll see you later.” Chris hung up and stuck his phone back in his pocket. “He’s bringing a friend, if that’s ok.”

“Yeah.  I’ll just have to make sure to make enough food for everyone.”

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

After they finished their visit to the USS Constitution, they went back to the hotel and got her laptop before heading to the same Whole Foods that Chris had stopped at.  She decided to make Parmesan encrusted chicken, sautéed squash, and Ranch dinner bread.  Simple to make, yet still delicious.  Chris decided they needed dessert, so he picked up a fruit tart that looked almost too pretty to eat.

He was now sitting at the island watching her work.  Every now and then her tongue would peek out between her lips as she concentrated.  Whenever a strand of hair fell out of her ponytail into her face, she would blow it away and roll her eyes when it fell right back.  Her fingers were too covered in chicken goo to touch her hair, so Chris leaned over and brushed the strand behind her ear.

“Thank you.” She said.

“Anytime.”

“Sorry I’m not talking much.”

“It’s ok.  I like watching you.  You seem to really know your way around the kitchen.” “Well, I watched you yesterday, so I remembered where everything was.” She turned to the sink and started washing her hands.

“I meant the way you seem to know when everything needs to get done.” He got up and stood behind her. “It’s like a finely choreographed routine.  It’s like I’m watching you dance.” When she turned to dry her hands, he caught them in a hold position before twirling her out and pulling her back into a dip.  She laughed as he set her back up right and pulled her into a hold again.

“There’s no music.” She said.

“Who needs it?” He began to sway, leading her, until the oven beeped letting them know the preheat was done.  Before he let her go, he ducked his head down and kissed her.  Her head swam for a moment and she grinned like an idiot. “Your lips are very soft.”

“EOS lip balm.”

He laughed. “I may have to switch from chapstick, then.”

“Your lips aren’t rough.” She shoved the chicken breasts into the oven and shut the door.  Chris leaned back against the counter and watched her expertly chop the yellow and green squash into slices and set them in a bowl before moving on to the onion.

“How is that not making you cry?”

“I stuck it in the freezer as soon as we got here.  Cold onions don’t release the enzyme that makes you cry.  Or, they do, but not as badly.  The rest is taken care of by my contacts.  They block what little onion enzyme there is from getting to me and making my eyes produce tears.”

“That’s very…. Science-y.”

Kate shrugged as she continued to chop. “My mom taught me that.  She learned it when she was in Paris hanging out with this lady who taught her to make French onion soup.  One day, mom is going to teach me how to make it because I love French food.”

“Have you ever been to Paris?”

“I’ve never been out of the country.  And I’ve never made it past Lincoln, Nebraska.  That’s the farthest west I’ve gone.”

“What’s in Lincoln?”

“A university.  My school went on a field trip there once when I lived in Omaha.” She put the chopped onion with the sliced squash and pulled out a large pan from the cabinet.

“What was the field trip for?”

“I was in…. gosh…. Third or fourth grade at the time.  The school I went to was a magnet school for math and science.  Everything was super advanced there.  I once made a working robot out of Legos and controlled it on a computer.  They took us to show us the math and science department at the college and we spent the day learning college level science shit.  I’m fairly certain it was also a recruitment trip.”

“So you’re good at math and science?”

“Oh god no!” She pulled out the loaf of French bread that they’d gotten and started cutting it in slices, stopping before she cut all the way through. “I find it hilarious that I even went to that school.  Everything I enjoyed doing was art.  I learned to play the violin there.  And I was in Japanese class.  I loved to design things on the computer.  I’m great with computers.” She grabbed a stick of butter, cut it in sections, and stuck the sections in a small bowl before setting it in the microwave and turning it on.

“Why did you go to the school?”

“Uh, when we moved to Omaha, they made me take a test to see what level they should put me in and apparently I scored so high, they wanted to send me to the magnet school.  I got accepted to it and my mom was so excited about it that she didn’t think twice about sending me.  I did really good.  I still appreciate science.  Especially astronomy.  I love looking at the stars and my brother was almost an astronaut.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” She got the melted butter out and added a package of Ranch dressing mix to it. “It’s what he went to school for, but things kept getting in his way of becoming one.” Taking a basting brush, she brushed the butter and ranch mix in between the slices and all over the crust. “He trained for it a little bit.  He went up in the Vomit Comet three times.  He wanted to be on the first mission to Mars.”

“What kind of things got in his way?”

“His job, his mother killing herself, getting married, having a kid…. His wife Maura didn’t want to move either.  She wants to stay with her stupid family and hold my brother back from accomplishing his dreams.”

“Ooh, hostility.”

“A little.” She wrapped the bread up in tin foil and put it in the oven with the chicken. “I hate her family.  They’re ‘old Southern money’.  Pft!  Her mother decided that since Jan and I aren’t Killi’s biological sisters, we had no place in the family pictures when Killi and Maura got married.  So there’re no pictures of the three of us together when he got married.  And there’s only four pictures of him with our parents.”

“That’s fucked up.” “Oh yeah.  Maura’s mother is a stuck up bitch who constantly reminds my family that we’re trash compared to her family.  But I don’t see Maura’s sister dressing up as a Scottish Highland princess in Georgia in June just to make her niece happy.  Their version of that is throw some money at Hailey.  Buy her things.  Things fade and disappear.  Memories like the ones I made for Hailey will last a lifetime.  She tells her friends that Merida came to visit and shows them pictures of it.  One day she’ll be old enough to realize it was me and it will make it that much more special to her that her aunt loves her that much.” She tossed the squash into the pan on the stove. “And they’re not really ‘old Southern money’, either.  Maura’s grandfather is the one that invented that horrible electric fence for dogs.  They made their fortune torturing dogs.” She glanced at Chris and saw he was watching her with a weird expression on his face. “Sorry.  Hot button.”

“No.  It’s fine.”

“What’s that look for then?”

“I just…. I’m completely captivated by you.  You’re…. Passionate.”

“Vivacious.”

“No.  Vivacious isn’t always the nicest of endearments.  Passionate is the right word for you.  And it’s incredibly sexy.” 

He pulled on her hand and she was suddenly pressed completely against him.  One of his hands found the small of her back and the other hand snaked its way up her back, fingers trailing along her spine, until his forearm was pressed firmly against her and his hand gripped the back of her neck.  Her heart sped up as his lips met hers and made it clear that this wasn’t a chaste kiss like the last two.  

Her lips parted for him and he expertly teased her tongue with his.  His beard tickled her where it brushed her skin and electric currents ran from his skin into hers, curling around every single nerve where they touched.  Though it felt like the kiss went on for hours, it felt too soon when he pulled away.  Her lips tried to form words, but nothing came out.  Neither of them opened their eyes for a long moment.  They just savored the feel of the other against them.

“That was….” Her voice finally found itself, but words failed her still.

“Passionate.” He said, finally opening his eyes.  They were very, very blue as they peered into hers from centimeters away.  His voice was husky and low. “You’re good at that.”

She cleared her throat. “You’re better.  I’m really glad you’re holding me because I’m not sure my legs work anymore.”

He chuckled and she felt the vibrations of it against her. “I’m leaning against the counter for support.” After another moment, he released her slowly, making sure she had her feet solidly under her. “I don’t want you to burn the squash.”

“I hadn’t turned it on yet.”

“Good call.” He stood right behind her as she cut up half a stick of butter to put in with the squash.  When she moved to the stove with a small bowl of sugar and a wooden spoon, he wrapped his arms around her waist and laid his cheek against the side of her head to watch her cook.

That’s when the door opened and Scott burst into the room. “Something smells awesome!” He said.

Chris reluctantly let her go and turned to greet his brother. “That would be Kat’s cooking.”

“It’s nothing special.” Kate said, stirring the squash and adding a bit of sugar.

“Hey Nina.” Chris said. “I didn’t know you were in town.”

“I was in New York and decided to come up here for a couple of days.” Kate turned around to see Nina Dobrev releasing Chris from a hug.

Scott came over and hugged Kate before lifting her face to inspect her mouth. “How’s your tooth?”

“Uh, solid.  Your dad did an awesome job.” Kate said, playfully swatting Scott away.

“Oh, Kate, this is….”

“Nina Dobrev.  Yeah.” She reached out and shook Nina’s hand. “I’m a fan of ‘The Vampire Diaries’.”

“It’s nice to meet you.” Nina said. “Scott told me all about you.  Glad their dad got your tooth fixed up for you.”

“Me too.”

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

The conversation went smoothly over dinner.  Everyone seemed impressed with Kate’s cooking.  They especially loved the Ranch dinner bread.  That was finished off quickly.  Scott had brought two bottles of wine and those were finished off quickly as well.  After dinner, Scott had decided it would be a good idea to go out for some fun.  It was decided that karaoke at a local bar sounded like the most fun.  They had a table near the back that still had a good view of everything.  Their second round of drinks were on the table and Chris and Scott were up talking with the DJ about what songs he had and choosing which one they wanted to do.

Nina leaned over to Kate. “Chris really likes you.”

Kate blushed and smiled slightly. “Yeah?” 

“I’ve known him for a few years now and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this at ease with someone.”

“He’s said as much to me.”

“Do you not believe him?”

Kate glanced up at Chris. “Oh I believe him, it’s just really hard to wrap my head around.” Nina shrugged. “It’s not every day a person goes from being a fan to actually being with that person.”

“No, but it’s happened.  I will warn you, though, it’s not easy.  Especially with someone as famous as Chris is.  The paparazzi aren’t always the nicest people.” “Honestly, I haven’t even thought about it.  I mean…. Well, I’m just trying to take it one day at a time.  That’s gotten me through a lot in the past.”

“It’s a good way to live.  Enjoying the moments and experiencing life as it comes to you.  Do you do yoga?”

“I used to.  Back in my figure skating days.”

“You were a figure skater?  That’s so cool!”

“Yeah.  Right up until I destroyed my knee when I was fourteen.”

“Oh no!  What happened?”

When Chris and Scott came back, Nina and Kate were deep in conversation about Pilates and yoga and the benefits that it might have on Kate’s knee now. “I see you two are getting along great without us.” Chris said, sliding in next to Kate.

“Kat’s really awesome.” Nina said. “You know how to pick them, Evans.”

“Thanks!”

“What song did you pick?” Kate asked him.

“I thought you and I could do a duet.  I picked ‘Don’t You Want Me’.  Classic 80s.”

“What?” She glanced at the stage. “You want me to go up there?”

“I did not peg you for someone with stage fright, Kitty Monroe.” Scott said, referring to her burlesque name.

“Well, it’s real.”

“How!?  You get up and dance and take your clothes off in front of people.”

“Wait, what?” Nina asked.

“Me singing is a whole different beast.” Kate insisted. “I’ve done musicals, but those don’t count as me singing.  That was my character singing.  I haven’t sang in front of people since high school and I’m not sure it exactly counted because it was at church in front of little old ladies who would never tell you if you sucked or not because ‘you’re wonderful no matter what you do, dearie’.”

“We can be the little old ladies.” Scott offered. 

“You’re not going to suck.” Chris said. “I’ve heard you sing.”

“To my niece.  Who doesn’t care if I can sing or not.”

Scott waved over a waitress. “We’re going to need some limes, eight shots of your best tequila, and another round of drinks.”

“Oh god!  Tequila?”

Scott laughed. “Tequila makes everything more fun.”

“You know the song ‘Tequila Makes Her Clothes Come Off’?” Scott nodded. “Well, it’s true.  At least in my case.”

“All the better for my brother, then.”

“Scott!” Chris yelled. “Oh my god, dude!” Scott just smiled wickedly at them and waggled his eyebrows.

“Can we go back to the part about dancing and taking your clothes off on stage?” Nina asked. “Are you a stripper?”

“She’s a burlesque performer.” Scott said.

“No!  Really?”

Kate nodded. “Yeah.  I’ve been performing around Richmond and DC for a little over two years now.”

“How does someone get into that?”

“Well, there’s a school in Richmond.  A friend of mine runs it.  I went to a burlesque show and fell in love with it.  I went through a few months of debating whether or not I wanted to give it a try.  I kind of freaked out about it.  My friend Lara and I were supposed to sign up together, but I chickened out.  I ended up signing up for the next six week course and I haven’t regretted it for a moment.”

“That would be awesome to see sometime.  Do you have those pretty feather fans?”

“I just got my first pair earlier this year.  I did a Katniss Everdeen routine with them to ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’ for a movie show.”

“Cool!  How many routines do you have?”

“Uh…. I don’t know.  Ten maybe?  I’ve been working on a Peggy Carter one for a Marvel show a friend of mine is putting together.” Kate looked up at Chris. “My friend Em and her friend Zhora are doing a routine of Captain America battling the Winter Soldier.”

“I would love to go to that show.” Chris said. “You have to let me know when it is.”

“I’m not sure they would be able to handle Captain America himself sitting in the audience.  And I might be the most shy of them all if I know you’re there.”

Scott grabbed Nina. “Come help me sing.” He pulled her out of the booth and up to the stage.

Chris looked over at her and the look he gave her made everything inside her tighten and her face flush with heat. “Maybe you could rehearse beforehand.  And maybe I could be there to give you some helpful tips?”

“I think I wouldn’t remember anything if it was just you I was performing for.”

He smirked moving his face a little closer to hers. “What if I took one piece of my clothing off for each piece of yours?”

“Is that the tequila talking?”

“It takes a lot more than a couple of tequila shots and three beers to get me drunk.”

“Me too.  But I think it was enough to loosen your tongue.”

“Maybe a little.” He took her hand and held it between his against his chest. “I won’t push you if you’re not comfortable, ok?  I want you to feel comfortable and safe with me.”

“I’ll let you know if you push too hard.  Right now, I’m ok.” She closed the distance between their lips and kissed him.

Tag List:

@joannaliceevans-fanficblog @jamielea81 @southerngracela @kelbabyblue @introvertedmouse @tfandtws @sullyosully @deidrahouseofpain @lovinevans @ajosieface

[tmntxreader-fics]

COMMISSION MATCH-UP #1

Our very first Match-Up Commission, (squeeeee), is for my AMAZING friend @morte-witch ! 

Thank-you so much for your support and I sincerely hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it :)

ALSO I KNOW FOR A FACT THAT YOU’D LOVE THIS GIF CONSIDERING I ACCIDENTALLY SPOILED EVERYTHING BY SENDING YOU THIS ATROCITY XD

DISCLAIMER: This is a request for my written opinion. I, of course, do not properly know you and cannot be entirely accurate when judging your personality because of this. I have chosen a specific character based entirely off of my evaluation of the information given to me. Each individual’s personal opinions will vary but this is simply a requested fun use of observatory and literature skills combined. 

MATCH-UP: LEONARDO

WHY: 

You have a base connection with both your emotions, character and the environment that surrounds you, seemingly on a level that many don’t quite understand. The fact that you acknowledge these connections and their ramifications implies self-awareness in which you can directly identify your character, your strengths, and weaknesses that you need to improve on. 

Now, who else can we think of that has similar attributes and genuinely appreciates others who can understand and operate on a corresponding wavelength?

Appreciating the simplest things, reveling in the quiet and challenging the storm are kindred tokens of both your own and Leonardo’s personality. Even your aesthetics are similar; water (representation of both his color and his technique), the moon, dark colors and East Asian cultural appreciation. 

At your core, you and Leonardo are cognate; sharing the same foundations, values, strengths, and weaknesses. While most would argue opposites attract, in order for a relationship to truly work, the couple’s fundamental beliefs and values need to be at least very similar. Quirks, traits, likes and dislikes are what makes up the personality, sure, but it’s what’s at the very center of the other person’s being that captivates someone.

This is not to say that your differences in certain aspects are non-existent. It would undoubtedly be a difficult relationship at times, being so close in similarities but so far away from each other because of the simplest differences. However, even when considering flaws, the ironic oxymoron, ‘your imperfections are perfect for each other,’ serves incredibly well. 

STRENGTHS:

1. Your relationship would have a depth to it that is incredibly rare; with the both of you so aware, discussions of simple things that you’re appreciative of wouldn’t seem strange or pointless. There’s genuinity within your conversations of simple observations and positive affirmations of the world around you and life itself. (These conversations are probably where he’d attempt to convince you to learn to meditate.) 

2.a. Both of you help each other grow; contrary to popular belief, Leonardo loves to learn- though definitely not in the way Donatello does. Leo craves wisdom and emotional knowledge, and while he struggles with his own emotions, you are very in tune with your own and he would definitely take the chance to learn from you and grow with you. 

2.b. In addition to this, we know that Leonardo is incredibly observant, especially with those that he holds romantic feelings for. You can be sure that any cues that you may give, (intentional or not), will be picked up on; discomfort, anxiety, irritation- Leonardo will see it. He notices your difficulties when it comes to interacting with others, and while he struggles with similar issues, he would ensure that he helps you to this best of his abilities. Whether it’s whisking you away from a situation once he spots a cue or it’s subtle encouragement- he’s got your back. 

3. Minimal fighting; while there will often be petty tiffs or the occasional full-blown fight, they will be far and few in between. There are rarely misunderstandings between you both and even when things begin to get heated you are a very patient pair of people and generally, that is what proves to be the saving grace of your relationship over and over. 

WEAKNESSES:

Leo’s arrogance, stress, and frustration would become overbearing at times. Considering Leo is the leader both within the team and amongst the family, there’s a hierarchical driven arrogance that comes along with it. There will be times where you will disagree on certain things and he simply tries to take the decision by force; using his role as ‘leader’ as his weapon. 

He struggles immensely with his emotions and defers to bottling them in an attempt to pretend they don’t exist, so when he does lose control it’s horrible. Leo has never learned to properly cope with his issues and emotions and it is clearly seen within your relationship. During these moods or moments, he is intolerant, explosive and passive-aggressive. When he does try to communicate how he feels with you it never comes out correctly and you discover that you become irritated by his wording and arguments. It puts significant strain on you both and it worries you a little that whenever his control slips he embodies everything you dislike.

HEADCANONS: 

Basically just the initial stages of your friendship and romantic integration. Everyone likes their relationships a certain way so touching down on the beginnings is probably the best way to remain accurate.  

- Leo’s never been one to initiate casual conversation with anyone outside of his familial circle. In fact, the more he thinks about it, he realizes that even where April and Casey are concerned, he has little to no interactions with them unless it’s out on the field. He never intended to avoid them, he supposes he just never felt the need to connect with them on that particular level. 

-Even with this new revelation, he feels fairly comfortable with his introversion. So long as he remains polite, he is generally satisfied with everyone’s lives remaining their own.

Until you. 

- Suddenly, he wants to talk; he wants to hear you talk for hours about everything and anything you could possibly conjure. And you do, you talk, just not to him. Never to him. His brothers are more available for conversation, generally the ones to initiate it and make you feel comfortable in their presence. Especially Mikey, the youngest brother basically initiated friendship without your acknowledgment. 

- You’ve always wondered about Leonardo, you’ve simply begun to view him as the mysterious leader who wanders the halls; walking with purpose but no particular direction. If you were anyone else you would have already initiated conversations with him, tried to get to know him. Unfortunately, you simply can’t bring yourself to take that risk beyond the polite greetings, his demeanor both drawing you in and warding you off simultaneously. 

- Leo has made it his mission to try to talk to you more. He doesn’t exactly know why but you’ve become an itch that he desperately needs to scratch before it drives him to lose focus of his tasks. On the other hand, maybe he does know the reason. Denying his problems or anything that could cause future complications has been his specialty; he wouldn’t surprised if he later discovers he’s been in denial the entire time. 

- You’d be lying to yourself if you didn’t say that, as of late, he’s started to freak you out. The turtle would make an appearance out of nowhere, generally at times where his brothers were not in the vicinity, and talk to you. But, that’s not what’s made you apprehensive; it’s the way he’s tried to interact with you.

- Leo would start off with his generic greetings, polite as always, then drag the conversation to something equally as vague. It has always seemed as if he’s frustrated with himself and the energy puts you off a little, making things incredibly awkward. Well, more so.

- The reality is that he knows he’s not making any headway, he doesn’t know how to integrate into having a real conversation with you and the last thing he wants to do is ask you about the weather for the sixth time this week. Finally, you throw him a bone when he asks about the weather (seventh time), and instead of replying with a polite ‘good’, you smile and comment “it’s cleared up enough to see the stars out. The constellations are amazing when you really take the time to look at them.” 

- Your first conversation takes off. You find yourselves moving to settle in the dojo, distantly thanking whoever was listening that training was finished for the day. Without the interruptions from his brothers or the ill-timed intervention by Splinter, you both manage to engage in conversations ranging from the sky, to culture to things that you just found interesting. 

- You can’t say that the conversation was easy, initially. You discover Leo to be an incredibly intense person and you find yourself questioning every single one of your responses- especially when he pauses to watch you for a brief moment after you finish your sentences. You hate second guessing yourself constantly, it puts you on edge and you find yourself rigid in your seat. 

- Luckily, Leo is able to pick up on these cues and scrambles for ways to relax you without outright leaving the room. If he leaves, he knows that it will take him weeks to work up the courage to try this again. He can’t help the heaviness of his presence, when he’s nervous he either rambles like an idiot or shuts down and interrogates instead of conversating. 

- Eventually, you catch on to the way he consciously tries to appear less intimidating. The way he leans back onto the counter instead of standing upright, hands on either side of him holding the edge of the bench to support himself. A very casual position that implies an openness. His voice lowers to a softer tone that, to your complete and utter surprise, does something a little funny to your stomach. 

- The more he relaxes the more you relax and within ten minutes you both find yourselves laughing along to the conversation. It’s then you discover your similarities in interests. 

- After the conversation comes to a close, thanks to Mikey entering the room like a fucking tornado, he nods at you with a small smile and exits quietly. A small tug in your chest makes you raise an eyebrow. Of course, only you would manage to get mildly attached to someone after a single conversation. 

- Despite your inner scoldings, you find yourself trying to work up the courage to talk to him in the hallways. 

(You never do, you just give him an awkward nod and scuttle past before he has the chance to get a word in). 

-The funny part is that, on the other side, Leo has been doing literally everything within his power to have another conversation with you. Everything. Well, everything other than instigating it, of course. He’ll sit down near you, approximately three feet away to avoid discomfort, and wait for you to initiate the conversation. He’ll go to the kitchen exactly 3 minutes after you’ve walked in to try and catch you alone- a plan that always fails because the kitchen is generally hosting at least two people at a time. 

- The day of success is the day neither of you suspects. You’ve settled in on the roof of your apartment building, attempting to clear your head by embracing the cool night’s air. After an hour or so of drawing vague figures in the sketchbook you had brought up with you, you simply lie on your back with a huff; analyzing the stars in a hope to disperse the heaviness in your chest. 

- That’s where Leo finds you. It wasn’t on purpose, of course. He was on patrol and assigned himself to this particular section of the city. It was a quiet night so far, and whether he’d admit it or not, he was absolutely bored. So when he drops in on a roof with a random lying down on their back he’s not sure whether to immediately turn back or check if they’re dead. Instead, he settles for having a silent heart attack while he stares at the figure on the floor praying somebody would simply airdrop him the answer. 

- However, the longer he stares at them the more familiar they seem. Taking a few tentative steps forward, careful to remain in the dark, he realizes it’s you. 

- Cue another heart attack. 

- Moving into the light, he opens his mouth to say something, praying to whoever is listening that he doesn’t scare the absolute fuck out of you and make this awkward. Instead, the only noise that comes out of his mouth is a wheeze that vaguely sounds similar to your name. 

- Instantly, you bolt up into a sitting position, gaze snapping to where he stands frozen. Before a scream rips from your lips you recognize the Leader’s face, despite the ‘deer-in-the-headlights’ expression etched onto it. 

- You swear loudly, raising your hand to your chest and flopping back to the ground with wide eyes distantly staring into the night sky. 

- Immediately he’s sidled up next to you, apologizing profusely for his rude appearance. Frustrated, you motion for him to sit down beside you and be quiet, in which he grimaces but obeys. He tentatively lays onto his back, completely unsure of whether it’s appropriate or not but the adrenaline in his system tells him it’s worth the risk. 

- Both of you are quiet, your hearts settling back from their racing pace to a steady rhythm. When you do decide to talk, you turn your head to the side, observing his profile. Instead of asking why he’s out here, you instead choose to ask him about his views. Does he ever sit down sometimes and just take in the stars above him? Does he ever wonder about all the unexplored possibilities of life? 

- He tells you that he does, that on nights where his responsibilities get too heavy he lies on his shell and stares at the stars; almost hoping he’d get an answer from them. Then he turns to face you, heart beating beneath his shell. 

“I do wonder about the unexplored possibilities, but, lately I’ve been trying to explore them.” 

You turn to look at him, heart leaping into your throat when you catch his gaze. “What do you mean?” 

He clenches his jaw, wondering whether he should get it wired shut and communicate purely by sign language for the rest of his life. At least, then, his mouth wouldn’t talk before his brain could tell him to shut up. 

“As in, I’m exploring one right now,” he breathes, eyebrows furrowing slightly as he takes in your features. 

“Do you make it practice to scare the shit out of all of your unexplored possibilities?” You joke, unsure of how to appropriately respond to what’s beginning to sound like a confession of interest. “Because while it works for this possibility, I’m not sure about the others.” Your heart is literally trying to claw it’s way out of your chest at your lame attempt to flirt, but the way his lips quirk at your comment eases the nervousness. 

“No,” he smiles, “I generally reserve that for the ones that could actually lead somewhere.”

“You think this possibility could lead somewhere, then?” You question softly, eyes moving to take in the stars above you once more. 

“If you’d be interested in exploring it with me, then I’m certain it could,” he replies. You can feel his gaze on the side of your face and you pluck up the courage to turn back and face him. Instead of the intensity, you were expecting, his expression is gentle. There’s no pressure on you to answer the way he hopes you do, it’s an olive branch. 

With that realization, you smile. “Then by all means, let’s see where it could lead.” 

[jupiterjunebug]

WHERE'S THE WEREWOLF ESSAY, OP??

@malaloba @bisexualducknewton You also dared me to say this so you get a tag

Okay so fun facts about Tyler Keegan Casey (I literally just wanted to make a joke about Tyler Casey abbreviating to Tyler K.C):

His parents, Edgar Casey and Rebecca Wilson, got married at 18. Their reasoning was "hey, we've been together all of high school, we still like each other, and I think our kids would be really hot." A bit of the shine wore off for Rebecca, though, when it turned out Edgar inherited a controlling streak from his parents. He got it in his head that his growth as a person required moving as far away from tiny little Casper, WV as he could. Which was fine, and would've been true if he’d put any actual EFFORT into growing up, except he made that decision without consulting his wife. Family was the most important thing in the world for her, which meant she didn't want to leave. Unfortunately, family was the most important thing in the world to her, and Edgar was technically her family.As far away as possible turned out to be Fortville, Indiana. At around 3000 people, it was certainly bigger than Casper, but much smaller than Edgar's ambitions. Unfortunately, they'd run out of gas, and got stuck in town long enough for Rebecca to work up her courage and deliver an ultimatum: they were eight hours from Casper, close enough to drive over, and she'd live no further away than that.Tyler was born a few years later and grew up the only "daughter" of the household, pretty in a generic way and polite to a fault. His homesick mama taught him that he'd know when he found his people on account of the decision to give up everything for them would only hurt a little. His pyramid-scheme chasing daddy taught him that the key to success is for people to think you're one of their people, and who gives a shit if it's true or not?Up until he was twenty he was a full-on social chameleon: he wore the closest thing he could get to the "right" clothes, he did his hair in the "right" way, he laughed at the right jokes and had a crush on all the right boys. Third runner up for prom queen, dated at least three members in the football team (the breakups were never his fault, of course. He'd take a relationship as far as the other person wanted, he only dated them because they wanted to date him after all), popular but not so popular for people to consider him a threat.Every holiday, Tyler and his mama went off to Casper to visit her family. That meant he ended up at the kids table with his two younger cousins Franc ( @keplersheetz) and Vicki. Franc and Vicki were practically sisters, Franc lived with Vicki's parents whenever her ma was off dealing with her host of mental issues, which meant that Tyler was kind of the third wheel.

Tyler ended up the responsible one, and town gossip went on about how they hoped he'd be a good influence, because wasn't he just a perfect little child? Gossip about Franc went on about how she was wild, about how she didn't follow rules, if she wasn't careful she'd end up just like her mother and didn't Vicki's parents worry about if she was a bad influence? No one gossiped about Vicki at all.

It created a weird circle of jealousy, where Tyler envied Franc for having the guts to be herself, Franc worried that Vicki would end up liking Tyler better than her, and Vicki wished somebody might talk about her instead of other people’s “influence” on her. In general, Tyler and Franc didn't get along on account of they were very different and had no interests in common, but when you spend months each year as an obligatory playmate you end up developing at least a little fondness.Tyler went to Indiana University Bloomington, close enough to home for both his parents and also in possession of a Bachelors program for early childhood education. He quickly acquired a job at the library, a reputation as "a pleasure to have in class," an overcommitment to several clubs, and a thoroughly mediocre boyfriend. He also ended up in two classes with and as a coworker to Monet, ( @pleasekalemenow). In sophomore year, the two were roommates and in three classes together, which was haha a funny coincidence. Then in Spring term Tyler had a stress breakdown and Monet was so thrown by composed, fake-ass Tyler losing his shit over something completely minor that she ended up sitting with him for four hours and now they're best friends.In the summer before Junior year he was like "hey wait a fucking second, if I'm completely changing my personality around other people so that they'll like me...do they actually like me?" and decided that fuck it, I'm going to just have my own personality and work my hardest to make it so people find that person likable. The most obvious shift - aside from him breaking up with his mediocre boyfriend and quitting half of his clubs - was coming out as, you know, a dude.

His parents didn't really...get it? His mom continues to this day to treat it as something she supports but just can't understand, and his dad kind of took it as a personal attack because his dad is a self-obsessed jackass. The rest of the family didn't really express an opinion on any of this, on account of Vicki had a baby and Franc ran away from home just a little while later. Compared to having a daughter under 18 and just straight up disappearing, being trans wasn't all that embarrassing to them.Things went pretty decent for half of Junior year. Then one day while he was watching a kindergarten class, the last kid to be picked up at the end of the day turned into an eldritch horror and ate the other student teacher. The FBI’s Paranormal Research and Investigation division showed up and was like "hey I'm pretty sure you can guess that we're going to tell you to keep this hush hush, so keep this fucking hush hush." Tyler went "wow you know I don't like being kept in the dark about all this," so he changed his major to criminal justice and worked his ass off to graduate at the same time as everyone else. Then he joined the FBI, and when they were interviewing him he dropped some line about "oh, I saw something once and the, uh, I think it was PRI? Said that it was top secret dangerous business. I'd like to solve murders like that :)" and the PRI kind of went "well...I guess? we can hire? Him? He did a god job on all of his exams...we have no reason not to."At around this time he played the love interest in Monet's breakout limited access TV show, Once Upon a Cryptid. This show eventually gained Dr. Horrible levels of cult-classic fame, and Tyler is eternally thankful that T has at this point changed his look enough that no one really recognizes him beyond people he talks to on case being like "haha isn't it funny that you look kind of like actor Tyler Casey and you're an FBI agent just like his character?" And he just says "haha yeah I get that a lot :)"The PRI was also like "hey can you keep an eye on this person who is causing trouble with conspiracy theory shit?" Tyler says "uh yeah, sure? Anything I should know?" And the PRI is like "well it's your cousin, but other than that, nah, glhf :)"Tyler found this situation Vaguely Uncomfortable, so instead of being actually good at his job he took this opportunity to leave reminders to eat and warnings to keep her head down when she overreached. They were all signed with "The FBI Agent That's Watching You Right Now" and wow isn't it fucked up that they're closer as anonymous FBI stalker and conspiracy theorist than they were as proper childhood playmates? It fucks me up sometimes.Five years before the game starts, he goes on an investigation into what may or may not be a supernatural murderer. While in the area he runs into August Caraway ( @transagentstern), who is. Super his type. He immediately starts finding excuses to spend time w/ the hot, sensitive, painter, asking August to be his guide around the area. And also if he could see that painting that August is working on because it sounds really :) great :). Eventually he comes to the conclusion that the long periods of time between attacks and the COD indicate either a werewolf attack or a very patient predator. He goes "well, it's the new moon tonight...so if I take August out on a da-I MEAN INVESTIGATION into that clearing in the woods it'll be safe."Spoilers! It isn't!They get attacked by a werewolf. Tyler says "well, I'm an FBI agent so I should be the one to sacrifice myself" and tries to shoot the werewolf. It quickly takes him to the ground, but hey! At least August has time to run! Except instead of running, August goes up to try and save Tyler. Which ends in them both getting bitten before the silver bracelets August always wears fend the thing off. August manages to drag Tyler to civilization before losing consciousness, and the two wake up in separate hospitals. August is told Tyler got sent to a special FBI hospital, but is fine. Tyler is told August got tired of waiting around for him to wake up and left. (More fun facts: this happened the day before Pigeon's birthday! Wow! Terrible)Tyler is kept under observation for the rest of the month, just to make sure he's fine. He is, of course, not fine. The PRI is super stoked to have access to someone who is fully willing to spend the rest of his month j chillin' and then come in on the full moons, on account of most of the werewolves they have access to are ones they caught and have to keep hold of all the time. Which, like, unlawfully contained civilians are a shitty baseline.So, despite having research in their name, the PRI kinda fucking sucks at research. Their methodology is to just try shit until they figure out 1. How to kill the monster and 2. How to spot the affliction/how it progresses. They are perfectly aware of how to kill werewolves, so really all they do is stage observations under different stress conditions to play “how to spot a werewolf”.

Every experiment is just put them in a cage with moonlight access, see whether the transformation is faster/slower when the person has a certain diet/fitness level/etc. Most of the subjects can’t leave bc they’d run away and are also liable to transform sometimes which is inconvenient.

The PRI isn't especially concerned about Tyler, because they know one of the conditions for a transformation is high stress and if there's one thing he's good at it's completely repressing an anxiety attack, so he's able to pretty much do his job aside from the whole "locked up under the full moon" thing. Of course, he's ostracized by his coworkers on account of he's like. Literally a monster. But that's fine! He has Monet! Who he never tells anything about all this because he doesn't want to worry her, and also because her brother (coincidentally August, though Tyler doesn't know that) died around the time of his attack and he doesn't want her to blame herself for never trying to come see him.Good things that happen in these 5 years: he has an amicable relationship with Franc. He gets good at his job. He and Monet discover that the uncanny coincidences which led to them always having classes together carry over into their adult life, and they constantly run into each other while performing their respective jobs. She sometimes invites him to parties to stop men from hitting on her, and because he looks vaguely like Jake Gyllenhaal (that's Tyler's face claim) they get to laugh about all the tabloid rumors that Monet is dating Jake.The bad news is Tyler never had access to the other werewolves prior to the attack (it wasn't his division, and he wasn't usually in a position to take anything alive) which means he's never been around to see a new one, to watch the arc of their deterioration. Usually it goes like this: they wake up, alone and naked in a room with only a bed, a desk, and an uncomfortable wooden chair. They are given clothing by an FBI agent, sometimes that agent is sympathetic, sometimes sneering, but usually expressionless. Each full moon they transform, and remember nothing of it save pain, hunger, and the feeling of their claws digging into the metal walls. Fear is a trigger for transformation, as is anger. They are always afraid, always angry. Eventually, it becomes rare to see them in their human forms.The PRI is fucking stupid. A reasonable person might say "duh, werewolves turn when they're scared, maybe if we put them someplace less scary they'll stop turning so much." Instead, they write in their notes, the notes Tyler receives, "we're fairly certain that, at some point, the humanity of a werewolf is completely lost." He only sees werewolves that have not been human in months, or even years. Or, he sees the ones who are even worse off.The worse news is that Tyler is told there's a cure. Sometimes, the PRI manages to poke and prod at a werewolf and for reasons we just don't understand they never transform again. So he doesn't argue with the tests, and even if he writes a will he doesn't tell Monet anything because he might be fine, and he doesn't want to worry her. He throws himself into his work and into making Monet happy, because he wants to make sure that if he is lost he leaves a legacy. There's something to prove that Tyler Casey's existence was justified.Then he finds out what the cure entails. It's not recovery, not at all; it's pushing someone so hard, making them so afraid, that their body can't take being afraid anymore. A person who’s too tired to feel doesn't shift, not even under the full moon, because the werewolf's state of mind is defined by the person's emotions before it happens (so if someone was actually CALM, really truly calm, then they'd manage to control it, but hunger and anger and fear can all throw that out of wack). If the person is numb, there is nothing for the curse to react to.Tyler Casey would rather die after trying his hardest than live longer but not be able to do anything. So, when he manages to find a job opening at The Askar Foundation, a secret society with more funding and more knowledge than the FBI could ever hope for, he has no qualms spilling the PRI's secrets in exchange for a position as a field agent.As you can probably guess, August, Monet, and Franc are all there as well. The circumstances of their recruitment were significantly less...consensual than his (Monet and Franc recently saw too much and got pressganged in, and after nearly killing Franc while transformed August got dragged in for Askar's own brand of tests). This leads to a veritable five layer dip of fucking drama:1. Franc and Tyler have a private conversation which leads to the revelation of several character secrets on both their parts. This ends when Tyler and Franc both insist that they saw different things during one of the scenes. Franc has always had the ability to tell when people lie to her, but she is also convinced she's right about their topic of conversation (which uh, she IS right, so). That means that, despite the fact that she can't feel him lying, he MUST be. She's convinced that he's had the supernatural ability to get around her own uncanny powers this whole time, and thus they engaged in a Comedy of Errors where instead of mistaken identities it’s Tyler saying things that further convince Franc he's trying to manipulate the entire team2. The Askar foundation would very much like to keep their shiny new field agent, and also Tyler still has connections to the FBI and him snitching to them would be.........inconvenient. So they're willing to put effort, within reason, into making sure he doesn't find out anything that might cause problems, like the fact that August is a kind of monster Tyler has a massive vendetta against. Or uh...anything else that might make him question them. This leads to3. Askar shutting down a conversation between him and Monet, leading to her concluding that talking about their past experiences with the supernatural OR the workings of Askar will never go well. (Exacerbated by the fact that Askar had already been trying to keep her from finding out shit about her brother) 4. Consequently, Monet will no longer talk to him about deep personal topics if they lead back to these things at ALL5. Franc ended up in a romantic entanglement w/ the monster of the week, who is a shapeshifter unwillingly being used to bring about...the apocalypse. He thinks the reason she doesn’t trust him is because she figured out he was a werewolf, and doesn’t trust him/is keeping an eye on him so she can put him down when he becomes dangerous. So he thinks she hates him bc he’s a shapeshifter that has no control over himself, but then she’s fine with...the OTHER shapeshifter that has no control over himself.6. August thinks Tyler hates werewolves because of the attack, and is afraid to enter a relationship with him because he wouldn't be able to keep his condition a secret7. Tyler refuses to let himself entertain notions of actually DATING August, because Tyler thinks he's going to die and doesn't want to hurt even MORE people when he goes8. Tyler and Monet platonically love each other so much and are also living together in Seinfeld's mansion that she stole the keys to, and Tyler is an idiot which means August thinks Tyler wants to date Monet (August's SISTER)So tl;dr, Tyler thinks that after Franc gained access to more Askar files she suddenly doesn't trust him (he assumes she knows he's a werewolf), he knows that Monet suddenly doesn't want to TALK to him and knows that if he discovers anything suspicious he thus cannot tell her, and he knows he......really, really, REALLY is starting to enjoy August's companyThis means that conversations oscillate between Tyler being professionally friendly with all his coworkers, Franc interpreting something random as a personal attack, Monet deeply wishing she could tell Tyler something, and then a completely stupid conversation where Tyler and August are flirting about something stupid and getting cockblocked by Tyler's hangups and August remembering that as far as he's concerned Tyler and Monet should get together.Oh and also Askar definitely is fucking with his head at least once a session.

[crmacgal]

New Releases

Okay, I admit it.  I like new stuff.  I like brand new shoes.  A brand new handbag.  Even taking that sticky clear wrap off of my brand new refrigerator.  And even though a book’s setting can be a hundred or more years ago, if it’s new to the market, I’m definitely more interested.   That doesn’t mean I don’t go back and read the classics or books that I might’ve missed at first release; it just means I’m going to be drawn to the newer release first.  Trust me, I know it doesn’t make sense and I understand this isn’t necessarily logical.  But that’s me, and these are four books I’ve just finished reading, all fairly new.

Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell

You know that person—that man or woman—who simply fades to the background at your office/bus/class/other? You know, the one who isn’t especially noteworthy?  Maybe they are a little odd, or don’t quite have the best social skills to fit in?  But that doesn’t necessarily make them a bad person…or a creepy person, does it?  In Lisa Jewell’s latest book, we meet a whole cast of characters who are (or can be) almost invisible at times.  So when a young girl goes missing, and the oddball teacher is accused, no one is really very surprised.  Lisa Jewell’s latest book is another psychological thriller that doesn’t disappoint. I wasn’t sure where it was going for a bit, and it’s told from multiple perspectives so you have to pay attention, but it’s definitely worth a read.

4 Stars

Note:  A special thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read in exchange for an honest review.

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The Best of Friends by Lucinda Berry

Three married couples, all friends and each with a high school senior boy, with all three of the boys being the very best of friends.  Until one night when the three are together and a handgun goes off.  One is killed instantly, the other suffers a horrible wound leaving him on life support, and the third boy, although physically fine, is emotionally scarred to the point that he’s not talking.  Even though I picked this book initially because of the suspense aspect (how did this happen….and why??), I quickly became engaged with the characters and the complexity of emotions each of the women go through.  Told from each mother’s perspective, it’s easy to see that no one comes out of a situation like this without being traumatized, without questioning their parenting skills, and without questioning friendships.  This is the first book I’ve read by Lucinda Berry, but I’ll read more for sure.

4 Stars

Note:  A special thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read in exchange for an honest review.

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Who Did You Tell? by Lesley Kara

Recently sober and trying desperately to make it stick, Astrid has left her life in London behind to come and live with her mother in a small seaside town, off-season from the tourist.  With a slower way of life, and her only new “friends” being those from her AA meetings, Astrid feels she should be calmer and better able to resist any temptations.  But she feels like someone if spying on her, and she’s constantly smelling her old boyfriend’s cologne.  And when she starts finding notes left for her, along with tempting bottles of alcohol, she afraid someone knows all of her secrets.  I’ve never read anything by Lesley Kara, and this story/setting isn’t exactly new or original, but I still enjoyed it very much. I came to like Astrid and found myself rooting for her to come out of her situation ahead.  I’ll definitely read more book by this author.  

4 Stars

Note:  A special thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read in exchange for an honest review.

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 Husband Material by Emily Belden

Charlotte Rosen is almost 30-years old and she’s in search of the perfect husband.  Sound familiar?  Yeah, it probably is, except in Charlotte’s case, she already had a perfect husband, one who passed away suddenly almost 5 years ago.  Now Charlotte is trying to move on with her life and career, living with her roommate Casey and her French bulldog, Leno.  But when the mausoleum where her husband’s urn is housed gets in the way of the California wildfires, she has to find a new “home” for her husband, and work through all of the memories that come back as well.  I thought this book would be a little more humorous (yeah, I know—dead spouse funny, in what world?) and on the chick-lit side, mostly based on the cover and title, but I found the characters to be well-written and loved the level of description the author provided.  I’ve had this in my queue for a couple of months now, and I’m really glad I finally got around to reading it.

4 Stars

Note:  A special thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read in exchange for an honest review.

[alexsfictionaddiction]

14 Bisexual Books Everyone Should Read This Pride Month

It is a lie universally acknowledged that bisexuals are either extremely promiscuous or just confused. We do not adhere to such slanderous assumptions but simply do the work to ensure that this negative stereotype is knocked firmly on the head. The term ‘bisexual’ typically means a sexual attraction to two or more genders and that’s pretty much the size of it. As far as we know, bisexuals don’t particularly show any increased levels of horniness, infidelity or confusion than any other sexuality. So now that that’s cleared up, let’s get to the books. -Love, Alex x

1. Full Disclosure by Camryn Garrett.

16-year-old Simone can’t let anyone at her new school know that she is HIV-positive, especially not her new crush Miles, but a note in her locker says that someone knows her secret. This heartwarming, funny YA novel doesn’t shy away from being open and honest about all aspects of sex, making it vital reading for any contemporary teen.

2. Adaptation by Malinda Lo.

Reese can’t remember anything before the accident but she knows she has woken up in a world where everything is different and things are only about to get stranger. This is a dark dystopian that is incredibly thought-provoking and explicitly portrays Reese’s bisexuality through two very well-developed love interests. 

3. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Veteran Hollywood starlet Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to share the story of her incredible life. It’s a sprawling, heartbreaking story of forbidden love with a conclusion that is both slow-burning but somehow inevitable. Evelyn Hugo is one of my favourite books of all time and I urge you desperately to pick it up!

4. Far From You by Tess Sharpe.

Former drug addict Sophie is out of rehab and on the trail of her best friend Mina’s killer before they catch up to her. This is a gut-wrenching mystery that features a young woman who is incredibly secure and confident in her bisexuality, making it a wonderfully refreshing portrayal.

5. Autoboyography by Christina Lauren.

Bisexual teen Tanner is dared to enter his school’s prestigious Seminar, challenging students to write a book in four months, but he doesn’t bank on falling for his mentor Sebastian. Autoboyography is a unique, charming and sensitive collision of worlds with fantastic bisexual positivity.

6. Star-Crossed by Barbara Dee.

Mattie is crushing on Elijah, when she is cast opposite pretty new girl Gemma in the school’s production of Romeo and Juliet and she starts to wonder if it’s possible to be attracted to both boys and girls. There are very few middle-grade books that explore sexuality at all but Star-Crossed does it in a thoughtful, educational way with some Shakespeare fun thrown in!

7. America Is Not The Heart by Elaine Castillo.

When Hero is disowned by her Filipino family, she moves in with her uncle and his family in America but her epic story slowly begins to unfold. Set against a tumultuous political backdrop of 1980s and 1990s The Phillippines, it’s a literary family saga exploring identity, sexuality and expectation.

8. Little & Lion by Brandy Colbert.

Suzette’s stepbrother Lionel has bipolar and he needs her emotional support, so it’s not great when she finds herself falling in love with the same girl he’s in love with. Emotionally charged and fantastically diverse, Little and Lion is a unique family story of divided loyalties.

9. Red, White And Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston.

When photos circulate of a brawl between America’s First Son Alex and Prince of Wales Henry, the two families orchestrate a reconciliation between them that begins to escalate. The chemistry between Alex and Henry is pure electric, which adds a fire to this cutesy rom-com.

10. Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney.

When college students and former lovers Frances and Bobbi meet journalist Melissa and her actor husband Nick, unexpected, complex connections are formed. Despite the cast of very unlikeable characters, Sally Rooney’s debut is an addictive, all-consuming, heady experience.

11. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

One of the story strands in Cloud Atlas follows Robert Frobisher, a bisexual composer who assists an elderly, dying man in writing his last composition, which inspires him to write his own music again. The book has a very intricate, complex structure and bounces between time periods and perspectives, so be aware of this before picking it up!

12. Spellbook Of The Lost and Found by Moira Fowley-Doyle.

When Olive and Rose start losing things, they join forces with a trio of feral strangers Hazel, Ivy and Rowan in commandeering an ancient spellbook to help them retrieve what has been lost. There are a couple of really beautiful romances amidst this strange, haunting tale of witchcraft and whimsy.

13. Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli.

Drummer and all-round sass-pants Leah Burke is bisexual but she hasn’t told her friends yet, so she isn’t sure what to do when she starts to like one of them as slightly more than a friend. It’s a companion novel to Simon Vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda and I would advise you to read that or watch Love, Simon before picking up this slow-burning, quirky rom-com.

14. Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde.

Vlogger and actress Charlie has recently broken up with her co-star Reese and now has her sights set on long-term crush Alyssa, while her best friends Taylor and Jamie have their own ‘will-they-won’t-they’ thing going on. Queens Of Geek is a very cute, nerdy rom-com that celebrates the power of fandom and being your true self. 

[chrismroyce]

Sports Night – Episode One – Pilot

Season One: Episode 1: Pilot

Original Air Date: 22 September 1998

Written By: Aaron Sorkin

Directed By: Thomas Schlamme

Starring: Josh Charles, Peter Krause, Felicity Huffman, Joshua Malina, Sabrina Lloyd, and Robert Guillaume

Also Starring: Kayla Blake, Greg Baker, Timothy Davis-Reed, Ron Ostrow

Guest Starring: Robert Maihouse, Bernard Hocke, Nina Jane Barry

Spoiler-Free Summary

Sports Night is show that takes place at the New York Headquarters of a sports show called– appropriately enough–Sports Night. The pilot episode–the first episode of television the Aaron Sorkin ever wrote–does a more than adequate job of introducing the setting and characters, and setting up the primary conflicts for the run of the show. We have our two stars, Dan Rydell & Casey McCall (Charles & Krause), who anchor the show from NYC (later we'll be introduced to some of he show's on-air analysts and field reporters) and the production staff led by Managing Editor Isaac Jaffe (Guillaume), Executive Producer Dana Whitaker (Huffman), and Senior Associate Producer Natalie Hurley (Lloyd). Joining the show-within-a-show is Jeremy Goodwin (Malina,) who has a rather awkward but very verbose interview in the third act of the episode.

In the pilot episode there is immediately a major problem to solve that has ripple effects throughout the personal and professional relationships of the ensemble. Casey is recently divorced and, as a result of not dealing with his issues surrounding his marriage, his job performance is suffering. His friends & coworkers attempt to help Casey return exercising his full potential behind the anchor desk. Casey's performance on the air–or lack thereof–catches the attention of the representative of the Network, J.J. (Mailhouse), who wants to replace him.

As we kick off the first entry in the Sports Night portion of the Rewatch, try not to be too distracted by the now-preciously-ancient laptops & other electronics, and enjoy what Sorkin himself refers to as "the redemptive power of sports." 

The Breakdown

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

The first thing that needs to be addressed is the incredible distraction that is the artificial laugh track. The ABC executives weren't sure that the audience would know that the show was supposed to be funny without the artificial laughter added, even though Sports Night "doesn't have the rhythms of a

regular sitcom," Sorkin explains on the DVD commentary. The laugh track will gradually fade through the first dozen or so episodes, so we won't have to deal with it for the entire run of the series. On to more relevant things...

The pilot introduces the six principle members of the ensemble by setting up an immediate conflict to pit them against each other, and make them find reasons to unite. The storyline of the pilot episode is not so different from A Few Good Men or The American President. Our protagonist has some deep-seated emotional issues that he cannot deal with alone, and performs uncharacteristically poorly at their job until pushed to greatness by those around him. 

Casey

Here we see Casey McCall in the Dan Kaffee/Andy Shepherd role, unable to process the frustration and loss and confusion of his recent divorce. His writing partner Dan and his producer Dana try to hold his hand through this personal transition, while preventing him from doing to too much damage to the institution of the show itself. Much like any other personality-driven television program, the face of the show is the show in the public eye, so Casey not being Casey is a big problem for Sports Night–one that cost people their jobs.

Peter Krause, doesn't have enough time in this first episode to completely flesh out Casey's brilliance and complexities, but cracks open the door for the audience to peer through. His transformation at the end of the episode ("Ntozake Nelsen's got something' to say about a world record!") is truly a thing to behold, especially given his lackluster reads at the top of the show. 

Dan

Dan's main function in this episode is comic relief, as the audience adjusts to the interplay of the characters and Sorkin's unique dialogue style. He is having a "New York Renaissance," and gleefully pesters everyone in sight with his epiphanies about the city. Josh Charles never allows us to think that Dan is vapid or insubstantial, however. When J.J.-the-suit tries to get Dan to turncoat on Casey in favor of another partner, he responds with singular pith and intensity, "My future is writing and anchoring a sports program with my partner, Casey McCall. Now if it's here, it's here, if it's not, it is someplace else."

His loyalty and passion are expressed even more forcefully at the end of the episode, when he confronts his writing partner head-on about his issues. Danny's is easily the best speech of the night, as he refutes the petty problems objections Casey is hiding behind. 

I've been here every day Casey, every day. And I have kept my mouth shut, because that's what you asked me to do. But if you'd've asked me, I'd've told you that Lisa is an angry, unhappy, punishing woman, and in ten years there's never been a single moment that has suggested to me that she has any affection for you at all. And I have no patience for people like that. Now the people here, they like you. Isaac, Natalie, Kim, Elliot... I don't know who the new guy Jeremy is, but he seems to like you just fine. Have you even noticed that Dana's been keeping J.J. and the network away from you with a whip and a chair? Huh? Have you noticed that she's been risking her job for you every day? And do you really think, my friend, that it has that much to do with your talent? These are people who like you, okay? They know what you've been going through, and for three months now, you have shown us nothing but the back of your hand–and now you're gonna show us the door? Well excuse me, but the wisdom of your decision isn't entirely clear to me here, okay? 

This is the critical moment for Casey–and by extension, the show as we know it. Without this moment of confrontation, maybe Casey really does leave, and who knows what Sports Night becomes without the Dan-Casey-Dana partnership at it's heart. Danny doesn't single-handedly solve the problem, but he provides a crucial setup for the finale. 

Dana

"You're screwing up my show," Dana tells Casey during the first heart-to-heart Casey experiences in this episode. This is just one in a series of management-level decisions and conversations that Dana, as Executive Producer, is called upon to conduct in the pilot, alone. She rides herd over the office shenanigans of her producers and the many myriad departments necessary to run a live nightly television show.

Like Dan & Casey, her personal loyalties are just as important as her professional connections. She stands up for Casey not just because it's her duty as a boss, but because it's her role as a friend, telling Isaac, "I owe it to him... We all do."

And also like Dan & Casey–and basically everyone else in the Sports Night cast/family–sports isn't just Dana's vocation, but her passion. We'll learn more later about her personal connections to the world of professional athletics, but during this episode it's easy to see that this woman loves what he does. 

Isaac

There is no question from the way Robert Guillaume walks that Isaac Jaffe is in the man in charge. He is the leader of the ensemble, managing his staff and their corporate bosses with confidence and a plainspoken eloquence. We'll get more of his backstory in a few episodes, and hear about the incredible career in journalism and broadcasting he has had. Isaac is far more than just another suit, and Sports Night will never stop reminding us throughout the run of the series. 

Natalie

The character that may be the most underdeveloped in the pilot is Natalie Hurley. Sabrina Lloyd will be given far more to sink her teeth into in subsequent episodes, but for now, Natalie seems rather similar to Samantha Mathis's Janie Basdin from A Few Good Men: a person playing an exceptionally professional and dedicated supporting role. Natalie clearly has substantial responsibilities on the show, given her position as Dana's right hand in production and management, but we have yet to see her at her strongest. For now, she is depicted as being confident and passionate, but still a bit of a goof. 

Jeremy

Our introduction to Jeremy Goodwin comes four and a half minutes (& an entire act break) before we actually see him on screen.

Dana mentions to Isaac that she'll be interviewing the "finalist" candidate to fill an open associate producer slot that afternoon, and Natalie (the only staff member who has met Jeremy thus far) describes him in perhaps a less than professional way. "You guys, he is so totally cute and intense, with a dark mystery about him that says: 'this is not a technician, this in an artist.'"

When the time finally comes for his interview, he is crippled by anxiety brought on by breathless enthusiasm. What follows is his spectacularly eloquent and impassioned freak-out. 

SORKINISMS

This being just the series premier, we're a bit light on proper Sorkinisms, but we do have a few fun examples of the characteristic, Sorkin-esque dialogue. When Isaac and Dana are headed into their daily rundown meeting, they briefly discuss Casey's on-air performance, and Isaac tells her, "I know all about his problems. You know, the network knows about his problems, too. As a result of which, they become my problems, and I'm saying at the very most, I want them to be your problems." Additionally, we have the sequence in the rundown meeting, where Casey continually insists–interjecting into the conversation of those around him–that "he can't kick." 

THE MIGHTY SORKIN PLAYERS

The role that Joshua Malina plays in Sports Night is the first of his television career. Malina had originally read for the part of Dan Rydell, but after losing out to Josh Charles, the part of Jeremy Goodwin was rewritten so that Malina could play it as a series regular. Another tidbit on the 10th Anniversary DVD Commentary: Sorkin and Felicity Huffman knew each other from "coming up together" doing theater in New York in the 1980s. Huffman was a member of Atlantic Theatre Company when it did the first "out-loud reading of A Few Good Men." Peter Krause and Aaron Sorkin tended bar together before they were able to work full time in their respective disciplines. 

Greg Baker, who plays Eliot, will have a small role in an episode in the first season of The West Wing in the episode entitled "Ellie." 

All three control room techs later portray reporters in the WH press corps on The West Wing, but only two of those actors actually appear here in the series premier. Timothy Davis-Reed plays Chris, and Ron Austria plays Will. They both have stand-out moments sparring with Press Secretary C.J. Cregg (portrayed by by the brilliant and talented Allison Janney) in the first few seasons of that show. 

We've got a few new additions to our list of recycled character names:

Andy – II

Charlie – I

Dana – II

Daniel – II

Jed – I

Leo – I

Lillianfield – I

Matthew – II

McCall – II

Pennybaker – I

Samuel – I

Stackhouse – I

Whitaker – II

William  – II

DYNAMIC DUO

Dan & Casey, of course, with their lefty-righty, side-angle desk high-five move, are the quintessential example of this type of relationship. As we will learn in subsequent episodes, they have written together for years, and have an immense reservoir of personal loyalty.

Sports Night also has another twosome, Dana & Natalie. Their interplay in the control room is the obvious example of how hey work effectively together, but a less obvious display is during their interview with Jeremy. Lloyd & Huffman already seem very comfortable together, with an established big sister-little sister relationship. We'll learn more about each of them in a few more episodes, and why they're not on precisely as equal of footing with each other as Dan and Casey are. 

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

Much like The American President, the pilot of Sports Night features father issues in the inverse: one of our characters dealing with being the father, himself. We will come to learn over the course of the series that the only other parent in the cast (as explicitly stated, anyways) is Isaac, but the first episode features Casey talking to his seven-year-old son, Charlie. At the climax of the story, Casey has returned to form ("I like getting people to like sports") and feels compelled to call up his son, despite the lateness of the hour, and share with him the incredible race that he is watching. One of the best parts of this scene has to be the "WTF" expression/gesture that Krause makes when Casey asks his son "Did you finish your homework?" This glimpse into one of the pro forma aspects of parenting rounds out Casey's character in a very specific way. In only a brief moment, we get a window into his internal monologue; I'm supposed to make sure he's done his homework right? That's what the father's supposed to ask... His intent is clearly sincere–but watching Casey's parenting experience develop is an important aspect of his character. 

THE MAGNIFICENT BICKERSONS

The pilot of Sports Night moves fairly quickly, so we are only treated to brief glances at Kim (Kayla Blake), Eliot, Chris, Will, and Dave. Also, not all of the members of the comic relief team are yet in place: Bernard Hocke portrays Dave in this episode, his one and only appearance on the show.

(Dave will of course be played throughout the rest of the show by Jeff Mooring, as the only member of the supporting ensemble to be credited with 44 episodes rather than 45.) In the premier, the only shenanigans that the Sports Night team get up to is having trouble figuring out where Helsinki is (Finland.) 

WRITERS BLOC

"I like writing about writers who are struggling with writing," Sorkin says (again on the DVD commentary,) "especially when I'm struggling with writing." If the primary through line in Sports Night is the relationships (romantic and otherwise) between the members of the ensemble, one of the secondary through lines is Dan & Casey's writing process, and their efforts to create content for their live broadcast each night.

In the pilot we get a brief glimpse of their interaction, towards the end, right before Danny's earth- shaking speech calling out Casey's selfishness. Dan is at the desk, refining his script longhand and out loud (and about 15 minutes before airtime, by the way) when Casey helps him miss a bit or a verbal pothole in the road. ("Yesterday/speedway... you don't want the rhyme.") We see that Dan & Casey are good partners with complementary skills. The premier episode covers a lot of territory, so this is all we'll see of their authorial adventures for now. 

NETWORK NOTES

Sports Night has multiple layers of authority that the staff have to deal with over the years: there is Continental Sports Channel (CSC) aka "the Network," and Continental Corp(oration) the parent company. While we will see a handful of different capitalist stooges pass through and give counter-productive advice and pointless notes and generally gum up the works with their existential self-importance, in the series premier we meet our primary antagonist. He is the man known only as JJ. 

Robert Maihouse plays JJ exquisitely. We are invited to hate him immediately, and without conscience. He is more concerned with ratings then objectively interesting or valuable content. He is put into conflict with Natalie–who represents the heart & soul of the show–in the rundown meeting, interrupting her passionate description of an inspirational story of... "In these meetings, mine is the voice of the Network." He's subsequently stomped on (figuratively) by Casey, and while it's obvious that it wasn't super appropriate for him to speak with such hostility and then storm out, it's also hard not to want to stand up and cheer at this arrogant suit getting knocked down a peg. But fear not: this is not the last we'll see of JJ. 

SPECIAL POWERS

As of yet, the only romantic subplots revealed explicitly are Casey's divorce, and Natalie's crush on Jeremy. During Jeremy's epic freak-out, though Dana is nonplussed, Natalie's expression betrays a range of emotion: hope, delight, fascination, and the recognition of the kinship between people who share a common passion (in this case, Sports).

Casey's divorce has already happened, and the pilot represents the majority of his growth in dealing with the aftermath of a marriage that has come to an end. The next step for Casey is getting badgered by the people he works with (especially Dan and Natalie) to "get back out there" and start dating again. 

This leads us to the other relationship that we get the briefest of glimpses of in the pilot: Casey & Dana. When he wrote the pilot, Aaron Sorkin already knew he was going to make them the Sam and Diane of the series, modulating the romantic tension between the two characters throughout the run of the show. One the 10th Anniversary commentary track, it is Tommy Schlamme who makes note of a throwaway line uttered by Isaac to Dana: "is there something going on between the two of you?"

She, naturally, immediately denies that there is, and the stage is set for one of the main threads of the series to come. 

[theworstbob]

the thing journal, 5.7.2017 - 5.13.2017

capsule reviews of the cultural things i took in last week. in this post: manchester by the sea, 2.0, old baby, no burden, we cool?, the far field, after laughter, stories we tell, brooklyn nine nine s2, hopeless romantic

1) Manchester by the Sea, dir. Kenneth Lonergan: So in one of the first couple Thing Journals, I gave a glowing review to PWR BTTM. I won't say something stupid like "I wish I could take them back," because I can't take back how I related to something at the time, but I do love it less than I did even just last week. So now I have to ask myself why I'm okay disowning PWR BTTM, but I still made time to watch and think about this movie. Casey Affleck isn't the whole movie, of course, there's several minutes' worth of credits showing that this movie is more than just one person's contributions, but he's the main part of it, this movie is about his character, this movie is about a dude who did something horrible and has to face up to the consequences, and Casey Affleck, who did something horrible and had to settle a case out of court, is playing that dude. It's a film about redemption, and everything about it (save the score, which, you're gonna make a film about lower-middle-class Boston and set it to opera? why...y?) is masterfully done, the teen boy isn't a whiny puke he's a person that does shitty teenager things and never has illegitimate angtsy feelings, the way people react to the Casey Affleck character coming into town is perfect, I would say this film is worth pushing past any discomfort one might have with the lead actor. It asks questions that one can argue require casting someone with a checkered past, namely, how do you decide when a person who did something awful deserves redemption? But: there are women who are permanently scarred by what Casey Affleck did to them, and if you can't push through that to see an A- film, that's a choice I can agree with. Art should be difficult, but everyone has limits, and all limits are valid.

2) 2.0, by Big Data: Well now that THAT'S out of the way, hey, this was just nice and good! This was a fun indie/electronic album with which I spent 40 minutes on a nice Sunday! I don't have much else to say, I don't do a lot of indie/electronic so I don't have a lot to compare it to, and it's just shallow enough that even when listening to it I couldn't come up with a lot in my mind other than "this is nice! this is also nice! just so many nice songs!" Which brings to mind one of the flaws of Thing Journal, which is that I'm turning each experience into a sort of solo thing, when I probably should be discussing the things I take in with other people so that I can develop more informed and better-rounded opinions on the things I enjoy, rather than bandying my opinions about in my own mind and growing all the more self-involved. So hey if anyone else wants to discuss a two-year-old indie/electronic album I've already forgotten, HIT ME THE HELL UP.

3) Old Baby, by Maria Bamford: If there's even a list of comics better than Maria Bamford going right now, it's probably a pretty short list. It's the same material as 20%, which means we get the joke about Maria Bamford telling her husand he CAN swim great distances if he really wants to, but I love the spin on the traditional stand-up setting: I think anyone coming to a Maria Bamford special understands what stand-up looks like, so this special devotes itself to the process, testing out jokes in front of smaller audiences or even just yourself, seeing how people react up close before you put them on a stage where you can't so easily gauge how an audience responds to them. It's just a treat. Maria Bamford's just a treat.

4) No Burden, by Lucy Dacus: It's funny how we come to albums sometimes, right? This came to me via Julien Baker's Twitter, via Dan Campbell's Twitter, via Grantland all those years ago. I really dug this one. I should have either taken more notes or put down these thoughts to WordPad before the day I needed to post a Thing Journal, HAHAHA REMEMBER HOW I FUCKED UP LAST WEEK WELP DID IT AGAIN Y'ALL, but I'm definitely down with what she's doin'.

5) We Cool? by Jeff Rosenstock: One of my favorite genres of music is "world-weary punk scene veterans who're still making music," and I thought this was a dope enough entry into that genre. I might revisit this, connection issues on the bus ride home meant I had to restart my phone twice while listening to it, but there's a lot I like here, like a less-folky Frank Turner sort of thing. Two sentences, that's enough, right, that's why this dude made an album to score two sentences on some dude's recap of things he barely thought about last week?

6) The Far Field, by Future Islands: I resisted listening to Future Islands for a long time because I wanted their Letterman performance to remain Perfect. I didn't want that thing, which is something I believe in whole-heartedly, to be sullied by knowing that Future Islands as a whole was something I might not be terribly into. But! I need to do 7 things a week, and they dropped a new album not too long ago so AWAY WE GOOOOOOOO I thought it was fine, mostly. I think it's quite obvious that this is a band that makes their trade performing live -- albums at this point are just flyers for live shows, but with this band, and that Letterman performance from several years ago, it truly feels like albums are perfunctory for this band, and what's great about their songs comes out in the live performance. So, hey, maybe one day I'll actually go to a concert? What a weird idea, to actually support artists! Might be fun tho

7) After Laughter, by Paramore: this is such a fucking amazing album about being depressed, about saying "fuck it" and being impatient with optimistic people and not knowing where to go or how to extricate oneself from the darkness. every song on here is amazing, and the new sound is great without being that dramatic a departure for paramore -- it's new, but it's also a logical next step, if you can't be pop/punk forever hey guess what POST/PUNK, and the cheery '80s backdrop is the perfect set for this album about feeling empty and seeing no way out. It's not even an album about a way in; there's never any reason given for being depressed, no one died, nothing was lost, it just happens, which is true to the reality of mental illness. This is a classic, and it's gonna take a hell of a thing to supplant this as 2017's #1 album.

8) Stories We Tell, dir. Sarah Polley: This is a brave piece of art. The effort it must have taken to get all the parties to agree to do this, to tell their story of Sarah Polley's mother and her parentage, is just unfathomable, convincing all these people that the project is a good idea and that there is a clear vision and that their voice is needed to paint the whole picture. And, man, they really nail it -- I love the way everyone's accounts inter-mingled, people contradicting each other, people all agreeing that one person did something and that person saying someone else was responsible, it's all woven together to create something beautiful. One of the best moments in this film is maybe one of my favorite moments in any film, something that made me sit up and say "Oh, fuck yeah" to this documentary on my laptop, when one of the storytellers rails against the very idea of this movie by stating exactly why this film needed to exist, it was this beautiful, Real moment. The more i think about this, the more I find I really dug it.

9) Brooklyn Nine-Nine s2, cr. Michael Schur & Dan Goor: This made a leap, yep. I thought the Peralta/Santiago romance worked a lot better this season, mostly because they accentuated Santiago's teacher's pet/hall monitor tendencies -- they took steps to paint Santiago as someone who isn't that much more mature than Peralta, but without completely tearing her character down, only down enough that it made the romance more believable. Rosa in a relationship was great, giving Andre Braugher an enemy and letting that character seethe with rage was always gold, and the show used guest stars perfectly this season. I love Craig Robinson as a recurring thing, Kyra Sedgwick was outstanding as Wuntch, and I always forget that Eva Longoria's a talented comic actress. It didn’t quite make the leap into greatness; the show thinks that Hitchcock and Scully are funnier than they are (and it’s really hard to derive humor from incompetent white cops in 2017 when the cops that are committing atrocities are the Hitchcocks and Scullys of the world; there was a way for them to know this when the show started, if not in a way that was readily apparent, and as time goes on and we learn more, those characters are really tough to accept as harmless boobs), and Joe Lo Truglio sometimes seems like he’s on a different show (he’s great I love him, but even on this show he is way too cartoony, he and Andy Samberg aren’t the chillest comic duo in the world y’know?), but even if it’s not one of The Greats, I don’t think I can point to an episode from this season I would grade lower than a B. Solid stuff.

10) Hopeless Romantic, by Michelle Branch: This is kind of like the Acceptance record from a couple months back: it is lovely to hear seasoned professionals doing the thing they do best. I am unlikely to revisit this, I think I've pretty much nailed down how I feel about this (I feel it is nice and the songs are fine), but the thing Michelle Branch is best at is writing songs, and it was a pretty much okay way to fill a walk on a nice Saturday afternoon.

[gilbertineonfr2]

TROOPERS 2017 Day #3 Wrap-Up

The third day is already over! Today the regular talks were scheduled split in three tracks: offensive, defensive and a specific one dedicated to SAP. The first slot at 09:00 was, as usual, a keynote. Enno Rey presented ten years of TROOPERS. What happened during all those editions? The main ideas behind TROOPERS have always been that everybody must learn something by attending the conference but… with fun and many interactions with other peers! The goal was to mix infosec people coming from different horizons. And, of course, to use the stuff learned to contribute back to the community. Things changed a lot during these ten years, some are better while others remain the same (or worse?). Enno reviewed all the keynotes presented and, for each of them, gave some comments – sometimes funny. The conference in itself also evolved with a SAP track, the Telco Sec Day, the NGI track and when they move to Heidelberg. Some famous vulnerabilities were covered like MS08-067 or the RSA hack. What we’ve seen:

A move from theory to practice

Some things/crap that stay the same (same shit, different day)

A growing importance of the socio-economic context around security.

Has progress been made? Enno reviewed infosec in three dimensions:

As a (scientific) discipline: From theory to practice. So yes, progress has been made

In enterprise environments: Some issues on endpoints have been fixed but there is a fact: Windows security has become much better but now they use Android :). Security in Datacenter also improved but now there is the cloud.

As a constituent for our society: Complexity is ever growing.

Are automated systems the solution? They are still technical and human factors that are important “Errare Humanum Est” said Enno. Information security is still in progress but we have to work for it. Again, the examples of the IoT crap was used. Education is key. So, yes, the TROOPERS motto is still valid: “Make the world a better place”. Based on the applause from the audience, this was a great keynote by an affected Enno!

I started my day within the defensive track. Veronica Valeros presented “Hunting Them All”. Why do we need hunting capabilities? A definition of threat hunting is “to help in spotting attacks that would pass our existing controls and make more damages to the business“.

People are constantly hit by threats (spam, phishing, malware, trojans, RATs, … you name them). Being always online also increases our surface attack. Attacks are very lucrative and attract a lot of bad guys. Sometimes, malware may change things. A good example comes with the ransomware plague: it made people aware that backups are critical. Threat hunting is not easy because when you are sitting on your network, you don’t always know what to search. And malicious activity does not always rely on top-notch technologies. Attackers are not all ‘l33t’. They just want to bypass controls and make their malicious code run. To achieve this, they have a lot of time, they abuse the weakest link and they hide in plain sight. To resume: they use the “less effort rule”. Which sound legit, right? Veronica has access to a lot of data. Her team is performing hunting across hundreds of networks, millions of users and billions of web requests. How to process this? Machine learning came to the rescue. And Veronica’s job is to check and validate the output of the machine learning process they developed. But it’s not a magic tool that will solve all issues. The focus must be given on what’s important: from 10B of requests/day to 20K incidents/day using anomaly detection, trust modelling, event classification, entity & user modelling. Veronica gave an example. The botnet Sality is active since 2003 and still present. IOC’s exists but they generate a lot of false positives. Regular expressions are not flexible enough. Can we create algorithms to automatically track malicious behaviour. For some threats, it works, for others no. Veronica’s team is tracking +200 malicious behaviours and 60% is automated tracking. “Let the machine do the machine work”. As a good example, Veronica explained how referrers can be the source of important data leaks from corporate networks.

My next choice was “Securing Network Automation” by Ivan Peplnjak. In a previous talk, Ivan explained why Software Defined Networks failed but many vendors improved, which is good. So today, his new topic was about ways to improve the automation from a security perspective. Indeed, we must automate as much as possible but how to make it reliable and secure? If a process is well defined, it can be automated as said Ivan. Why automate? From a management perspective, the same reasons come always on the table: increase the flexibility while reducing costs, to have faster deployments and complete for public cloud offering. About the cloud, do we need to buy or to build? In all cases, you’ll have to build if you want to automate. The real challenge is to move quickly from development to test and production. To achieve this, instead of editing a device configuration live, create configuration text files, push them to a gitlab server. Then you can virtualise a lab, pull config and test them. Did it work? Then merge with the main branch. A lot can be automated: device provisioning, VLANs management, ACLs, firewall rules. But the challenge is to have strong controls to prevent issues upfront and troubleshoot if needed. A nice quote was:

“To make mistake is human, to automatically deploy mistake to all the servers use DevOps”

You remember the amazon bad story? Be prepared to face issues. To automate, you need tools and such tool must be secure. An example was given with Ansible. The issues are that it gathers information from untrusted source:

Scripts are executed on managed devices: what about data injection?

Custom scripts are included in data gathering: More data injection?

Returned data are not properly parsed: Risk of privilege escalation?

The usual controls to put in place are:

OOB management

Management network / VR

Limit access to the management hosts

SSH-based access

Use SSH keys

RBAC (commit scripts)

Keep in mind: Your network is critical so automatic (network programming) is too. Don’t write code yourself (hire a skilled Python programmer for this task) but you must know what the code should do. Test, test, test and once done, test again. As an example of control, you can perform a trace route before / after the change and compare the path. Ivan published a nice list of requirements for your vendor while looking for a new network device. If your current vendor cannot provide you basic requirements like an API, change it!

After the lunch, back to the defence & management track with “Vox Ex Machina” by Grame Neilson. The title looked interesting, was it more offensive of defensive content? Voice recognition is more and more used (example: Cortana, Siri, etc) but also on non-IT systems like banking or support system: “Press 1 for X or press 2 for Y”. But is it secure? Voice recognition is not a new hipe. There are references to the “Voder” already in 1939. Another system was the Vocoder a few years later. Voice recognition is based on two methods: phrase dependent or independent (the current talk will focus on the first method). The process is split in three phases:

Enrolment: your record a phrase x times. It must be different and the analysis is stored as a voice print.

Authentication: Based on feature extraction or MFCC (Mel-Frequency Cepstrum Correlation).

Confidence: Returned as a percentage.

The next part of the talk focused on the tool developed by Grame. Written in Python, it tests a remote API. The different supported attacks are: replay, brute-force and voice print fixation. An important remark made by Grame: Event if some services pretend it, your voice is NOT a key! Every time you pronounce “word”, the generated file is different. That’s why the process of brute-forcing is completely different with voice recognition: You know when you are getting closer due to the returned confidence  (in %) instead of a password comparison which returns “0” or “1”. The tool developed by Grame is available here (or will be soon after the conference).

The next talk was presented by Matt Grabber and Casey Smith: “Architecting a Modern Defense using Device Guard”. The talk was scheduled on the defensive track but it covered both worlds. The question that interest many people is: Is whitelisting a good solution? Bad guys are trying to find bypass strategies (red teams). What are the mitigations available for the blue teams? The attacker’s goal is clear: execute HIS code on YOUR computer. They are two types of attackers: the one who knows what controls you have in place (enlightened) and the novices who aren’t equipped to handle your controls (ex: the massive phishing campaigns dropping Office documents with malicious macros). Device Guard offers the following protections:

Prevents unauthorised code execution,

Restricted scripting environment

Prevents policy tempering and virtualisation based security

The speakers were honest: Device Guard does NOT protect against all the threats but it increases the noises (evidence). Bypasses are possible. how?

Policy misconfiguration

Misplaced trust

Enlightened scripting environments

Exploitation of vulnerable code

Implementation flaws

The way you deploy your policy depends on your environment is a key but also depends on the security eco-system where we are living. Would you trust all code signed by Google? Probably yes. Do you trust any certificate issued by Symantec? Probably not. The next part o the talk was a review of the different bypass techniques (offensive) and them some countermeasures (defensive). A nice demo was performed with Powershell to bypass the language constraint mode. Keep in mind that some allowed applications might be vulnerable. Do you remember the VirtualBox signed driver vulnerability? Besides those problems, Device Guard offers many advantages:

Uncomplicated deployment

DLL enforcement implicit

Supported across windows ecosystem

Core system component

Powershell integration

Conclusion: whitelisting is often a huge debate (pro/con). Despite the flaws, it forces the adversaries to reset their tactics. By doing this you disrupt the attackers’ economics: if it makes the system harder to compromise, it will cost the more time/money.

After the afternoon coffee break, I switched to the offensive track again to follow Florian Grunow and Niklaus Schuss who presented “Exploring North Korea’s Surveillance Technology”. I had no idea about the content of the talk but it was really interesting and an eye-opener! It’s a fact:  If it’s locked down, it must be interesting. That’s why Florian and Niklaus performed a research on the systems provided to DPRK citizens (“Democratic People’s Republic of Korea“). The research was based on papers published by others and devices / operating systems leaked. They never went over there. The motivation behind the research was to get a clear view of the surveillance and censorship put in place by the government. It started with the Linux distribution called “Red Star OS”. It is based on Fedora/KDE via multiple version and looks like a modern Linux distribution but… First finding: certificates installed in the browser are all coming from the Korean authorities. Also, some suspicious processes cannot be killed. Integrity checks are performed on system files and downloaded files are changed on the fly by the OS (example: files transferred via an USB storage). The OS adds a watermark at the end of the file which helps to identify the computer which was used. If the file is transferred to another computer, a second watermark is added, etc. This is a nice method to track dissidents and to build a graph of relations between them. Note that this watermark is added only on data files and that it can easily be removed. An antivirus is installed but can also be used to deleted files based on their hash. Of course, the AV update servers are maintained by the government. After the desktop OS, the speakers reviewed some “features” installed on the “Woolim” tablet. This device is based on Android and does not have any connectivity onboard. You must use specific USB dongle for this (provided by the government of course). When you try to open some files, you get a warning message “This is not signed file”. Indeed, the tablet can only work with files signed by the government or locally (based on RSA signatures). The goal, here again, is to prevent the distribution of media files. From a network perspective, there is no direct Internet access and all the traffic is routed through proxies. An interesting application running on the tablet is called “TraceViewer”. It takes a screenshot of the tablet at regular interval. The user cannot delete the screenshots and random physical controls can be performed by authorities to keep the pressure on the citizens. This talk was really an eye-opener for me. Really crazy stuff!

Finally, my last choice was another defensive track: “Arming Small Security Programs” by Matthew Domko. The idea is to generate a network baseline, exactly like we do for applications on Windows. For many organizations, the problem is to detect malicious activity on your network. Using an IDS becomes quickly unuseful due to the amount and the limitation of signatures. Matthew’s idea was to:

Build a baseline (all IPs, all ports)

Write snort rules

Monitor

Profit

To achieve this, he used the tool Bro. Bro is some kind of Swiss army knife for IDS environments. Matthew made a quick introduction to the tool and, more precisely, focussed on the scripting capabilities of Bro. Logs produced by Bro are also easy to parse. The tool developed by Matthew implements a simple baseline script. It collects all connections to IP addresses / ports and logs what is NOT know. The tool is called Bropy and should be available soon after the conference. A nice demo was performed. I really liked the idea behind this tool but it should be improved and features added to be used on big environments. I would recommend having a look at it if you need to build a network activity baseline!

The day ended with the classic social event. Local food, drinks and nice conversations with friends, which is priceless. I have to apologize for the delay to publish this wrap-up. Complaints can be sent to Sn0rkY!

[The post TROOPERS 2017 Day #3 Wrap-Up has been first published on /dev/random]

from Xavier

[canyouhearthechurchbellsringing]

#46: Ali

03/05/17

FTP: So, here we are at the final entry. From awakening in the motel room to now exactly a month had passed, and I was no closer to comprehending the riddles Darek had left behind for me. I still had half a set of coordinates on a notecard. Entry #43, which you have read by now, solved some puzzles but created so many more. The motel room was mine for a few more days and then I would be homeless, living on the streets. Luckily I had an angel watching over me and I’ not necessarily referring to Alice here.

I didn’t get a chance to include it in the earlier entries, but sometime between learning Casey had died and meeting Madrik I had a conversation with Ali in my grief. The end result of it was her asking to come visit me. This entry is the events of her visit. It also includes a little bonus story I think is beneficial to post which reveals the origin of Darek. This is the final entry I had worked on before being convinced to let the investigastion go, so the next entry I post will be in the present. I’m so sick of all these logs bouncing from the past to the present constantly. With luck, this will be the last log that takes place in the past. Then again, I’ve said that before.

09/24/16

I couldn’t quite tell you what it was, maybe Darek’s gaze behind my eyes, but Ali looked beautiful to me. I swear there was a golden aura glowing off her bright hair like a halo.

I’ve been lying most of these entries, shrouding the truth in social status and false appeals. Now I want to tell the truth. Now I want all to be known.

I first dated Ali after my senior year went to hell. My so-called friend Grant had a lot of lies to tell about me and it pretty much ruined my life, everything I felt I was. She was there for me, emotionally… and physically. I told her from the start that our relationship would not work out. Yet I longed for the caresses Casey introduced me to, the feel of someone against my body. Even then I think I may have still harbored a deep yet unrevealed love for Casey. But Casey wasn’t the one there for me. It was always from that moment on me and Ali.

Despite my lack of feelings for her I gave my all to the relationship. I tried to shower her with my affection, and there was a lot of it. I can still grasp that time in fleeting memories. Once we climbed the chain link fence to the elementary school and explored in the dead of night. Ali was no good at fence climbing; back when we dated she was overweight and exercise challenged She ended up losing a lot of weight because her dad pretty much starved her. On the way out of the school she got caught at the top of the fence, too scared to jump down. I encouraged her and cheered her on until she finally made the plunge to safety. As we walked away from that place a cop rolled up to the gate. We lucked out. He didn’t even notice us. When we went to retrieve our bikes we found out that someone had set off one of the silent alarms in the school. Who would have guessed elementary schools were so well-guarded?

That wasn’t the first school we had broken into that night. We had also visited the high school. That memory stuck out in my head. It was the reason we were so confident going into our adventure in the elementary school. We had snuck in through a hole under the fence. I climbed the inner gates and let her through from the other side. We circled round to the football stadium where we had sat through so many dreadful pep rallies and where countless students had displayed their school spirit in support of their team. We climbed to the highest point, over the commentator box, overlooking the whole school. The rain was falling from the heavens, drenching us, and we stripped off all our clothes and made out a bit. If she hadn’t been on her period, God knows I would have lost my virginity that night.

Here she was in front of me, a girl I thought was dead, a girl I considered my best friend, a girl I’d shared many an intimate moment with, and I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. I just broke down crying in her arms, my ear pressed against her chest, listening to her heartbeat.

“She’s dead. Oh God, Ali, she’s dead and I killed her.”

She shushed me and stroked my hair. I felt guarded in her embrace, hidden from Darek and Madrik and Mark and Veronika and all the darkness that dwelt within and without. I let the tears flow like a faucet for my anguish. I knew if anyone could understand my suffering it was Ali.

“It’s all right, sweetie.” She whispered. “God, I haven’t seen you cry like this in ages….”

“I’ll bet.” I whispered into her bosom and laughed. “I missed you, y'know.”

“I know.” She answered quietly. “I missed you, too.”

A silence passed between us, not uncomfortable at all. We had ended up sitting on the edge of my bed in each others’ arms. In the turbulent war my life had become, this was the safest I felt I could be. Maybe that was all I wanted. Someone who understood to hold me and soothe my raging emotions. I guess God has a funny way of answering your prayers.

I looked up at her, deep into her eyes, into her soul. “Do you miss it? Being with Darek?”

She shook her head. “I missed you more.”

I remembered after we broke up, how I couldn’t talk to her without losing my temper, how I chased her away and made her feel worthless. I remembered meeting her again, nearly a year later, around the time I met Jake and started hanging out with Ben and Casey more. I remembered what she told me, how many times she’d tried to commit suicide after it was clear she could never speak to me again. We ended up reaching a sort of homeostasis, her satisfied having me as a friend, me relieved to find someone I could confide in. Even then, though, I remembered all the times she told me she was in love with me, starting before I even asked her out and not ending while she was with Rob. Sure, she never professed any feelings for me flat out, but I still knew. In fact, now that I considered it, she had said it out loud at one point. That was a night I tried not to dwell on, though. That was the night Darek was named. “I never…” I began, tearfully. “I never meant, y'know? For it all to play out like this.”

“Mat, I know.” She pressed her finger to my lips to quiet me. The tears still broke free despite it. “Nobody wanted it like this. It just is.”

I nodded, still at odds with my guilt and longing and insecurity. Life was really something else, putting me in a place like this, a place where I longed for a girl six feet underground and the girl who longed only for me was forced to hold the bronze medal happily. I didn’t even consider Alice in the ironies. Alice was above the hormone-fueled feelings I had for Casey and Ali. In fact, that whole night I spent with Ali, Alice Rachelle Langdon never crossed my mind.

I don’t know why. I certainly didn’t expect it of myself, and I didn’t think it was Darek motivating my actions. Its root changed nothing. I still did what I did. I leaned in closer to her and kissed her on the lips, gently, so gently, but desperately, longingly.

I needed Alice. And I longed for Casey. I didn’t feel either of those things for Ali, but by God I wanted her. I wanted her and in that moment I knew she was all mine.

She returned my kiss with more intensity. She subtly controlled the energy level between us in a way that time seemed to float unhindered and we moved seamlessly from affectionate pecks to enthused deep kissing. I felt my mind slide away to somewhere distant, somewhere sacred.

Something exploded in the center of my mind’s eye. I was in two places then, one engorged with pleasure and abusing the moment for all it was worth, the other trapped in a memory of misery, a night my life changed forever, a night I could remember with ease despite the effort I put into forgetting it.

It was the first time I’d gotten kicked out. Used to be thought of as the only time, but, so far from home, I suspected this was not the case anymore. I met Ali and Rob at the McDonalds we always hung out at, my situation laid bare. Rob promised me if nothing else worked out, he could offer me a place to stay with him and Ali. I should have known better than to get in the middle of their turbulent relationship. But nothing else worked out, and so I was swept far away from my home with two people I loved whose feelings for each other would only grow blacker by the night’s end.

It was a long night in a place next door to Rob’s second mom. It was explained in depth to me before I went there that if I made any commotion it would get them all kicked out. She had brain cancer and her family was very protective of her privacy. Plus he and Ali had had their share of arguments already and were on thin ice. I swore to be on my best behavior and even had Ali promise, if I was getting out of hand, that she would slap me to bring me to my senses. One thing led to another. There were two beds but one was hard as a rock. Rob wanted the comfy bed for himself, but there was no room for Ali. She didn’t mind; she said she’d sleep on the floor. After hearing of the other bed’s infamy, I made the innocent comment: “Well geez, if it’s that bad I might just sleep on the floor with Ali.”

Now I know it wasn’t so innocent. Now I know it was a part of Darek’s messed-up plan to make himself exist. Suffice it to say, Rob took it entirely the wrong way. The two of them got into a very heated debate. Voices were raised, feelings were hurt, and I got to watch up until the startling conclusion, where Ali ended up in a corner, sobbing and saying, “I’m in love with two people. How can that be? What do I do?”

The next confrontation happened in the front of the two houses. She was running. He was chasing. I tried to stop him, I knew it was for his own good, but he only saw me as an obstacle. He shoved me down and caught up to her, grabbing her by the wrist and spinning her around roughly. I wasn’t even aware of getting back on my feet. I only knew I was pissed.

“Hey asshole! Just leave her alone!”

Both of their eyes locked on mine and they were striding purposefully toward me.

“Mat, lower your voice.” Rob said.

“Oh, now you’re suddenly calm!? Bullshit! You were just pissed as shit and now that I am it’s not okay?”

I swear I don’t even remember what happened next. I didn’t see Ali’s hand coming at me but I guess Darek did. Next thing I knew I was in a dream state, watching from my eyes, speaking with my mouth, but only passively observing the phenomena

“Get away from me! Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!”

I ripped up clumps of grass and dirt and hurled them at her. Somehow I had ended up back on the ground. I felt a massive presence within me, something dominating my senses and creating a sort of radio interference. It overrode my disposition with a single command. Destroy… destroy… destroy…

Ali and Rob shared a look, their earlier argument forgotten. They wordlessly left me behind and strode back to the house. I sat in a daze, too stupefied by what had just happened to think. Finally I regained control of my legs. I stumbled like a zombie back to the door, only to find it locked. Though I seemed to have control of my body, my mind was still reeling with violent thoughts, homicide and suicide and everything in between. Apparently I wasn’t as in control of my body as I thought because my attempt at knocking on the door turned into a relentless hammering.

The door creaked open. “Come in. Just be quiet, please.”

I went in and fell to my knees, my fists clenched, my mind working in reverse. “Help me…”

“What do you want, Mat?” Ali asked, concerned.

“To destroy.” I answered shakily. “To hurt. To maim. To wreck. To kill.”

“Not to this house, you’re not.” Rob answered authoritatively.

I shook my head. “No.” I stuttered. “No. Not this place. Not you. Only me. Give me a knife.”

Rob pulled a switchblade from his pocket. “Casey taught me the importance of bleeding.” He assured me, offering the blade.

I took it like a beggar would snatch up food. Hungrily, without looking, I dragged the blade across my forearm. The blood leaked from the wound, staining the knife with my life’s fuel. It was like a pressure release. All I could do was break down in tears, leaving the knife beside me on the floor.

“Come on.” Ali whispered, leading me to the good bed in the next room to rest. I wrapped my shirt around the wound, savoring the dull pain.

“That… that wasn’t me….” I whispered, terrified. She let me down and smiled. She smiled at me.

“See? I knew you had one in you.”

That gave him his breath of life. That made me believe in him.

“Why…. ?” I couldn’t articulate quite yet. “Why didn’t you slap me like I asked?”

“Mat, I did.” She said. “You swatted my hand away and started freaking out worse.”

I cursed under my breath. Those words still came to me effortlessly. “S- sorry…”

“Just rest.” She whispered, kissing me on the cheek and leaving.

I believed her when she said Darek was real. I believed her because, before Ben and Mark, before Jake and Madrik, before Casey and Veronika, there was Ali and Kendra. Kendra was Ali’s Darek.

As I moved in and out of her that night in the motel, lost in passion’s embrace, it was Kendra on my mind. Kendra and her eerie calm, as if she were always in control of everything. Kendra and her beautiful words, the way she made me feel like I was the most important person in the world. Kendra who was so totally different from Ali. Kendra who I probably fell in love with without even intending to.

With a moan of pleasure she brought me to climax. Time ceased to hold meaning. Everything stopped and became immortalized in my mind. Every sensation, every perception, magnified a hundredfold. Something awoke in me in that moment, something grander, more powerful, more frightening than Darek could hope to be. I rolled over in the bed, both of us naked under the covers, a thin sheen of sweat reflected in the faint glow of light coming through the sheet over the window. I saw it in my mind. The doorway. I knew I could get back. I knew that, no matter what memory he took from me, I could always get back if I only remembered the doorway.

After I’d stopped trembling the night of Darek’s birth, I texted Casey. I told her there was something inside me, something psychopathic, sociopathic, homicidal, suicidal, a paradox walking a contradictory path inside my pacifistic mind. I asked her what to name him. Derek. She answered. Then, an afterthought. Or Darek if you want to spell it different. So it went. The girl I was in love with supplied the name for the presence the girl in love with me solidified in my mind. That’s how I was infected. That’s how the darkness planted years ago flowered into the demon I now lived with every day. Maybe it wasn’t another being controlling me. Maybe it was adrenaline and nothing more affecting me that night. The tulpa theory claims if you believe something strongly enough, it becomes real. Well I certainly believe in Darek enough for him to have a hold on me.

“What am I to you?” Ali asked beside me. I was staring up at the patterns in the ceiling.

“Right now? You’re everything I have. The only good thing in a world Darek brought crashing down around me.”

Silence.

“Ali?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m scared.” I confessed. “In a week or so I won’t be able to stay here anymore. I can’t bring myself to contact my family. They certainly haven’t tried contacting me. I don’t know where to go. So… I’m scared.”

She shifted beside me to face me. I didn’t look at her, only played games with the ceiling. “Mat, I’ve been working these past few months. You probably didn’t know that since…. you know. But. After me and Rob broke up… he kicked me, out and I got in touch with my cousin. My job is with Google Enterprises so I can do it all from a laptop wherever I am. Anyway the two of us have been splitting rent on a place a couple hours away from here. If you want…”

“Really?” I cried, surprised by the offer.

“Really.”

“Oh Ali.” I said quietly, a whisper full of desire. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

I scoffed. It was a beautiful, brilliant night.