#which is about the most brooklyn private school shit ever

[hopexhappiness]

Episode 9 has a title referencing La Cage Aux Folles? Who behind this is trying to specifically make ME happy!

[xstellan]

hey! i’m ari and i’m so excited to be here!! one of my friends linked me to this rp, so here i am 💜 stellan is a muse i’ve had for well over three, maybe four years now?? he’s honestly just big 🤡 energy no lie sjkfnvjkfnvf if you wanna talk outside of tumblr my discord is 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯'𝘴  𝘩𝘰𝘦#2960!! enough abt me tho let’s get to this mess of a dude

is that herman tømmeraas on campus? oh no, that’s stellan alto. from stavanger, norway, the twenty one year old has come to study veterinary science. rumor has it he is energetic and adventurous, but reckless and spoiled, which is why he is known as the hedonist. he resides off campus and can’t wait to graduate.

basic stats ;

full name: stellan paolo alto nicknames: legit just stellan, if he likes you enough, maybe you can get away with calling him stellbells gender: cis male height: 5 ′ 8 age: 21 birthday / zodiac: january 23, 2001  ( aquarius sun , capricorn -  aquarius cusp, or the cusp of ‘mystery and imagination’, aries moon, libra ascendant ) right handed or left handed: left handed eye color: hazel, shooting more towards green hair color: light brown piercings and tattoos: no piercings, small aquarius symbol tattoo on his right ring finger sexuality / romantic orientation: homosexual / homoromantic  place of birth: sintra, portugal hometown: stavanger, norway languages spoken: norwegian, portuguese, spanish and english three things he likes: any type of animal ever, designer brands, traveling three things he dislikes: people thinking he’s incapable, warm beers, chipped nail polish five aesthetics: a peculiar accent you can’t quite pinpoint, perfectly painted nails, getting high, long drives without a specific destination, helicopter rides last four songs listened to: strawberry fields forever by the beatles, weight of love by the black keys, idfc by blackbear, teen romance by lil peep character inspo: titus andromedon from unbreakable kimmy schmidt ( mostly just personality wise ), eric effiong from sex education, gina linetti from brooklyn nine nine, david rose from schitt’s creek 

background story ;

!tws for domestic violence, toxic relationships, mental illness, drug abuse and neglect, proceed with caution!

so stellan was born to paolo and angelique alto in his father’s hometown, sintra, portugal. he was really only born there, as basically all of his childhood was lived in his mother’s birth and hometown, stavanger, norway

his family comes from money that originated in the early 1900′s. it all started with an idea for a clothing line, and a loan, given to his great great grandfather. much to his luck, his idea blew up. it started off with just clothes but soon expanded to other accessories like watches, glasses, wallets, all the things you can think of. soon, alto inc. expanded world wide, and to secure their wealth, the alto’s have bought into just about everything. gas and electric, furniture brands, even the gastronomy industry…. basically built an empire that will either never die, or live on for centuries

this kid? basically born with a golden spoon in his mouth. honestly has never heard the words no for anything money wise! spoiled little bitch, but it all came with a catch. his parents basically threw themselves into their work, traveling everywhere, leaving stellan with the best help money could buy. he grew up with nannies, butlers, cooks, personal drivers, all this boujee shit. he spent most of his time traveling and attended private boarding schools all around the world. he grew up speaking norwegian and portuguese, then later learned english and spanish

honestly, from the outside, his life truly looks enviable, and he’s not complaining about the money, since he’s rather materialistic, but he was basically neglected by his own parents since he could remember. not even neglect, they were just straight up absent. phrases like ‘we’re sorry we couldn’t make your birthday but we sent you money!’  or  ‘we swear we’ll make it next time’  were commonly thrown around. when he was younger, he would definitely believe them

however, as he got older, he started coming to terms with the fact that there wouldn’t be a next time, but there would be a next deposit, and as much as he repeatedly tells himself that he doesn’t care, that he’s happy having all these things and doing whatever he wants whenever he wants, he knew deep down, that there was this certain emptiness he could never seem to fill, no matter how many times he swiped that damn card

he grew up with fake friends, endless small talk, basically superficial shit with no deeper meaning. this is what he was used to

he did whatever he wanted though, often traveling to exotic places , staying at his parents’ pent house in california, doing whatever he felt like ( literally ). if he wanted to road trip, he would road trip. if he felt like staying somewhere foreign for months, simply because he was bored, he would do just that. again, never heard the word no. the truth is that his parents kind of felt guilty never being there for him, so they just gave him money, money, and more money, which really did nothing to teach him about the real world, but stellan didn’t care

maybe this is what led him to rio de janeiro in brazil. him and his friends had the idea to do an ayahuasca ritual in peru for the summer. stellan was going to do it, but after further researching the effects, he chickened out last minute. legit chickened the fuck out and just randomly ended up in brazil. he really had no intentions of staying either, but he really liked it. spoke the language ( even though his portuguese is from portugal but ) he got on. he’s rich, he’s foreign, and he’s a great time, so he made a lot of friends and he just decides to stay. this is probably one of the worst decisions he ends up making, but in his defense, he didn’t really know that at the time

basically met a guy he fell head over heels for. they were in the same social class, his name is thiago sousa and maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, if this guy wasn’t like, balls deep in the closet

stellan? has basically been out his entire life. he literally didn’t even really have to come out because people just knew. he swore to himself he would never in his entire life fuck with anyone who was closeted, but, as cheesy as it may sound, there was just something about this guy that he was drawn to. stellan really can’t even explain why he liked him so much? like to this day he dead ass has no idea why he was such a simp for this guy  –  he just was. is it because he’s never had a boyfriend before? because he doesn’t know what genuine love is because his parents were never around and never showed him any? because he always feels so lonely and doesn’t know what the fuck a healthy relationship even looks like? whatever it was, stellan couldn’t put into words what this guy made him feel. it was one of those relationships where you lose who you are, because this guy pretty much treated him like shit

!tws for internalized homophobia, toxic relationship / domestic violence for the next 6 bullets! they couldn’t hold hands in public or kiss, he didn’t want stellan standing so close to him, they couldn’t hang out whenever his friends were around because thiago was afraid his friends would think he was gay ( which he was, but that was besides the point ). stellan has always known he’s gay, and he’s always been very open about who he is despite people’s criticism towards him  –  he just didn’t care. it kind of just goes to show just how much he wanted to be loved by someone, even if that love was toxic

the excuse stellan gave himself, for a while, is that he couldn’t force him out. he held onto this false illusion that he would one day come out of the closet, kiss him in front of everyone and not care what anyone else thinks, but if you guessed it, that day never came, and things just progressively worsen instead

it starts off small really, some verbal abuse here and there that stellan doesn’t think much of because he knows he’s in denial. one day though, they get into a fight so bad, thiago throws his phone at stellan, and it lands right on his eye . this not only scares him, but leaves him with a torn iris and a bruise

just like most toxic and abusive behavior, it’s followed by endless apologies , ‘i’m so sorry i didn’t mean to hurt you’ ‘i swear, i meant to throw the phone against the wall, not at you’ ‘you know you’re my entire world’ ‘i would never do anything like that again’ ‘please forgive me, i’m so so in love with you’ basically… bullshit. at this point , stellan is so infatuated with this guy, he, unfortunately, forgives him, and he really thinks it would be the first and only time, but if you guessed it, it wasn’t

now when a relationship relationship gets to this point, you would expect him to just leave and never turn back. stellan always wondered how people got sucked into abusive, toxic relationships like that and stayed, always telling himself  ‘those people are so stupid, that’s never going to be me’. however, when his relationship actually turned into one of those? it was a completely different story. he soon came to realize why some people who are in these relationships stay for as long as they do, because really? he wasn’t sure how to leave. he wanted to, he was just scared

long story short, but stellan lets himself be manipulated and abused by this guy for well over a year, basically two, but the final straw had to be him ditching him in new years to hang out with his friends. he becomes so upset, he packs all his things, buys a plane ticket, and leaves. first goes to los angeles, then eventually san diego, and he’s been here ever since. he’s been in uni since he was twenty

pretty much no one knows what happened at all? he basically buried that shit. no one here knows his backstory, his previous toxic and abusive relationship, and most of his traumas and he likes it like that. he would rather have people think he’s a rich, stuck up snob rather than have them know even the slightest bit about his past, because honestly? he’s embarrassed by it. he’s embarrassed to know that he really stayed with someone so toxic for as long as he did because he was scared. it’s also traumatic for him to talk about, so he just doesn’t, and he probably never will

he’s also very good at shallow conversations, if that makes sense? like, you can have a four hour conversation with him, laughs, smiles, an all around good time, but when he gets up to leave, after he’s gone you’ll kind of realize ‘i kinda of don’t really know them?’, it’s all superficial shit. the second you ask about his personal life, he’ll discreetly turn the topic back to you, change the subject quickly, or just shut down completely and leave. he’s very good at small talk, but once the conversation becomes greater, he’s out

he can be very fake if he doesn’t like you. legit like that mean girls scene like ‘ oh, i love that skirt, where did you get it?’ but the second you leave dude is like ‘that is the ugliest effin skirt i’ve ever had the displeasure of seeing in my life’. he can be very real and deep, don’t get it twisted, but will anyone ever see that side of him? will he ever let someone in like that? get some therapy dude

stellan is also kind of flighty. he will hook up with just about any cute guy who is willing, no doubt about it, but he will literally leave the next morning before the person even wakes up. sex is easy for him, but the moment he see’s someone wants something more, he’ll ghost. he refuses to have any type of romantic relationship now, as his last one has left him scarred

on the contrary, if he does like you, he’s fiercely loyal. he’s a generally fun person to hang around. he’s funny, the enabler, there’s simply never a dull moment. he lives life to the fullest, basically a huge hedonist. don’t come to him if you wanna be talked out of doing something stupid because 10/10 he will encourage you to do the stupid thing, huge ‘ that’s so dumb hahaha…. do it !’ energy, the ‘you do you fam’ type of friend . huge hype up person and very supportive , very much ‘ i’m here for a good time not a long time ’ vibes, that one gay friend who will hold your hair back when you vomit but also enable the worst behavior. his weak spot is coke and unfortunately, he has the money to support this dirty habit

he has undiagnosed bipolar disorder, with a lot more manic episodes than anything . he’ll get very paranoid ( think ian gallagher or effy stonem? ) . if his manic episodes get really bad, he will feel like people are following him, plotting against him, etc, etc. the only thing is that he hasn’t had one of these in ages, as he’s constantly under the influence, and never really has time to let his mind process things. like you know what’s terrible for psychotic symptoms in manic episodes of bipolar disorder stellan? fucking coke 🤡

he will crash one day, but until then , his climb up will be just as exciting as his downfall. it’ll only be a matter of time before he loses it lbr

would actually rather drag his bare balls across blazing hot concrete than talk about his feelings, he said emotions? we don’t know them , we just get high instead ! 😗✌️

he has a huge love for animals, literally three dogs and a cat, loves pets more than actual people. he’s currently a vegetarian, but he’s borderline vegan, probably will become one real soon ( this is why he wants to be a vet too, loves animals )

i’m gonna end this here because this is already super long but below is his birth chart for some extra tea!

birthchart ;

[annetteblog]

Intro & My take on KM

Hi!

I’m new around here so it’s supposed to be (not so short) introduction, since I don’t know how to start a blog heh. I hope to sprinkle my 0.5 cents into the KM conversation and maybe to bring a new perspective from someone, who is not a part of the typical English-speaking West.

Who /the hell/ Am I?  

(please, consider it to be said with NJ’s voice from Intro: Persona :D)

I was born in Siberia (it’s in the Asian part of Russia), currently live in the European part of the country while studying at a Uni (European in terms of geography, not in terms of everything else i’m definitely not shading rn lolllll). English is not my first language, I’ve just kind of learnt it to some extent. Due to this it takes me more time to write a post; and I may (and will) make some grammatical & other mistakes. Plus I’m lazy AND busy with Uni, so I won’t even promise to be consistent in posting smth lol. But I thought I need more practice in terms of writing in English, so here I am, actually scribbling something. This feels weird, because I’ve been around stan Tumblr since 2015, but never ever interacted, just read.

How I ended up around Jikook/Kookmin (and BTS) & My (long&messy) take on this matter

Although I had heard of BTS before, I became an Army only in October 2018. I had kinda avoided them, because you know... boybands.... sing songs about romantic love and how they love girls.......... (+I had been around Twitter when 1D been at their peak and I remember a quite toxic community of fans, whom always had scared me). Shortly, hello stereotypes. Obviously, after I got engaged I felt terribly sorry that I had been sleeping on them, but what is done cannot be undone. 

Someone I knew back then reposted one of their MVs and I, during my sad hours of procrastination, decided to watch it. Then I saw their live performance with the same song. And I thought “wow these guys can sing and dance and the music is kinda cool, i need to check this out maybe??” 

Then a funny thing happened. One of the next videos I watched (the same person had it added to their page) was a 2016 BangtanBomb where JM and JK practiced their Coming of Age dance. 

Do you know this moment with Gina from the 1st episode of Brooklyn 9-9:

Well, that was precisely me after I watched it. I don’t even know how to explain this, it was kind of a gut feeling? Whatever you call it, I started to get suspicious and couldn’t even explain to myself why. /actually now a do have questions to this vid and the main one - why does everyone cringe that much? if it’s a girly choreo than they had done some “girly” moves before. why is there such strong reaction??/

I started to get deeper and went to some ru-shipper communities. Shipping culture among Russian speaking fans is... well, weird to some extent, but I maybe address this topic some time later. You need to consider that (as far as you probably know) Russia is quite homophonic country and sadly is not the greatest place for LGBTQ+ community at the moment. The non-frienly influential attitudes hanging in the society + the general shippers’ weirdness = the result is not that nice honestly. 

I struggled for some time in order to find more mature people (not just in terms of age but in general sanity), failed, ended up with some EXTREMELY toxic ru-fans of TK, which was/is the most popular pairing here, spent among them like 15 minutes and ran away horrified. After that I didn’t even try to engage with shippers or believers or whatever of any pair and just decided to enjoy the music and the content (which is a great idea, highly recommend!)

After a couple of days I discovered that JK makes videos. I love video, films and visual art so I immediately found them on YT, saw the titles with names of different cities from all over the world and was like “Oh that must be so cool, he’s visited so many outstanding places I’ve never been to, so I really need to watch it! I shall enjoy some beautyyy”. Then I clicked on GCFt.

Well, what can I say. I did enjoy some beauty, but not the type I had initially anticipated. The biggest clickbait in my entire life. JK should be proud of himself.

                                       /as I said - the beauty/

I had already known Troy back then and I known the song’s lyrics so it would not be an underestimation to say - the video just blew my mind. I was like - hold on is this real? seriously?? no really really????? he manage to get away with something THAT obvious?????? dude how

As a person who edited videos AND is not a native English speaker, I don’t buy the explanation “oh he mustve didnt get the lyrics lmao”. You just don’t do that. You don’t. DON’T. You google and translate every shit you don’t understand, every word and idiom you’ve never encountered, because otherwise the possibility of an epic failure is very likely. You wouldn’t want to give your mum a video as a birthday present and then discover that you used a song with WAP-ish lyrics, right? (well maybe that would be okay in your family, I don’t judge, but that’s not the case for people I know). So don’t you dare to degrade JK’s intellectual capacities; such assumption is really offensive. He is a smart boii, he knows exactly what he’s doing in terms of his art.

So I was shocked, but decided to look for the context - maybe I missed some previous events regarding this Tokyo thing (another great idea - always check the context). Well, apparently I didn’t, because the whole narrative with the trip for two, lovely selfies etc. made my poor brain lowkey explode. (I still don’t buy the rings theory thing though)

But I didn’t give up lol! I’m a bit stubborn and it’s very hard to convince me in anything, so I decided to search for more context, more of their interactions, moreeee. Remember, the late October 2018, there were no swan lakes, RB, and even MMA18 hadn’t happened yet. 

This time I ended up watching content in more or less consistent way, and when I saw all of these scenes with affectionate JM and a cool badass i-don’t-care-about-anyone-i’m-a-manly-man-with-no-feelings-whatsoever JK, I just hysterically laughed. 

Homophobic Russia, remember? I recognized this. Growing up here being LGBT myself, taught me the same type behaviour during my high school days. When a girl I kinda liked but didn’t what to admit it to myself was nice to me or (oh god) flirted with me, I did something similar. It’s like a huge panic mode. Being an introvert doesn’t help either. The funniest thing is that you may not entirely realise what exactly is going on in terms of your own feelings, especially at that age (16-18ish). In my personal case, I thought I liked her but as a friend, only later to realise that well not as a friend oops :DDD The second thing (already not so funny) is that you actually consciously or unconsciously try to avoid the subject as much as possible, as long as possible and pretend that nothing is going on. We’re just bros. Stop doing this stupid gayish thing and don’t look at me like that, you’re annoying. If you ever do this again I (gently) kick you. I’m straighter than a straight line in my math textbook. IDK, but probably that’s your brain is somehow trying to protect you. Again, in my case&position I knew that the consequences for any non-straight person being outed would be bad (TW not to the point of being killed bad, but to the point of being excluded from a big part of society). So for me it was a mixture of the internalized homophobia + lack of self reflection + just being a bit emotionally slow + very! straight community around. Shit happens, I was a teenager and made my share of mistakes, but that experience helps me to recognize the same pattern of behaviour up to this day.   

So coming back to KM, because the post is already waaay too long and I just ramble. It’s been 2+ years for me being a part of this fandom, and what can I say... Things become more intense and eventful with every year passing by ;) Funny how I felt that vibe from the 2016 dance practice video. Seeing the Black Swan performance a week ago almost had me choked, no joking. They are amazing.

                                                    Pure Art

However, and I would like to emphasize that, I do not incline that KM are 100% romantically involved and/or gay or whatever. I tend to treat people with respect and not to make too much assumptions about their private life. That’s not my business. However, I’m also not a fan of heteronormativity, so I’m just sitting here and observe everything that’s going on putting some distance and not forgetting being generally polite and critical thinking. But if they are just straightest besties please give them an Oscar before Grammy

Anyways, I hope this blog won’t kick the bucket from the very start and I will post something every now and then. You can always ask me questions about some BTS/Jikook related stuff or something about Russia and a Russian view on mass culture topics, since I’m pretty sure some of you have very stereotypical view of what is going on here :) However, do note that I’ve never been to America or Europe, therefore I may not be aware of something verrrry obvious to you or just have a completely different experience. 

P.S.  And yeah, I’m used to say Jikook, since it’s the name which is used much more frequently in Russian.  i like it better and what will u do haha

[everybodyscupoftea]

maybank drunkenness scale

frat jj x reader

picture originally posted by @rudths​

words: 1429

warnings: alcohol and cursing as usual, implied sexual content (pretty vague though), this is just Soft

synopsis: jj is a touchy drunk + a bit of tailgating and football game shenanigans (scale idea based on santiago drunkenness scale from brooklyn 99)

JJ was always touchier when drunk. It was a habit you picked up on very quickly into your relationship, and you had it down to a science.

One drink JJ was goofy, constantly tugging at your hair and curling it around his finger, or booping your nose. It was hard to hold conversations with other people when he was like this, you were always batting his hand away. He liked to have your attention, but you definitely didn’t mind giving it to him.

Two drink JJ bumped into you. He followed you around like a lost puppy, sometimes even walking so close that he was stepping on the backs of your shoes. You pretended to be annoyed, normally pushing him away with an eyeroll, but you actually liked having his full focus.

Three drink JJ liked to hold your hand. No matter how, fingers linked together or just him grasping your palm, JJ refused to let go of your hand that wasn’t holding your drink. Sometimes he linked thumbs and stroked the skin on the back of your hand, he would tipsily mumble about how soft your skin was. It tickled and you giggled a lot at three drink JJ.

Four drink JJ had his arm around you at all times. It could be draped over your shoulder, hand still holding yours with your fingers clasped tightly, or it could be wrapped around your stomach, keeping you pulled tightly to his chest. Normally you liked your personal space, but JJ was warm and you didn’t mind it too much.

Five drink JJ’s hands wandered. One was tucked in your back pocket or wrapped around your waist, fingers playing with your waistband. He would rest his head on your shoulder, lips occasionally catching the skin of your neck. You never let it get too far, but if five drink JJ could get you alone and in private, you’d let him have his way.

Six drink JJ demanded your full attention. Leaning against you, making you hold most of his weight, cracking jokes in your ear with the end goal to make you laugh. He didn’t want you to talk to anyone else, but your whole focus was normally on keeping him upright anyway.

You’d never made it past six drink JJ, and you weren’t really sure you wanted to. His ability to stand straight and still and be relatively understood when he spoke was pretty shot, and frankly, any more dead weight and you’d have to call Pope or John B to come help drag him back home.

During football season, four drink JJ thrived. The two of you tailgated together, you arriving later than him, and he was already two drinks in.

“Babe,” he called out when you walked up to Sigma’s tent, “come sit.” There wasn’t actually a chair for you and you had to sit on his thigh after grabbing a drink of your own. One of the senior brothers brought a TV and hooked it up to show other conference games playing while they all drank and shot the shit.

JJ only let you up to get a plate of food, and you knew he’d try to eat stuff off it, so you made sure to get extra. His hand rested on your thigh, thumb stroking higher and higher, slowly pushing your shorts up.

“J,” you mumbled, grabbing his hand to stop its climb.

He just grinned at you cheekily, and pulled his hand away to reach for the juul tucked in his pocket. After he took a few hits and put it away, his hand went right back to your thigh. The pattern repeated over and over again until it was time to actually go into the stadium for the game.

JJ wrapped an arm around you as the two of you moved slowly to the student entrance. His movements were sluggish and lackadaisical, and his hat was knocked askew. You played with his fingers as the two of you stood in line to go through the metal detectors, and he ducked his head, rubbing his cheek against yours like a cat.

You gently butted his head with yours, and he huffed out a laugh, shifting slightly away from you. John B, Kie, and Pope stood in front of you, holding a conversation that they occasionally brought you into. JJ didn’t pay even a little bit of attention.

He decided he was hungry as soon as you made it into the stadium and detoured to the concession stand for a slice of pizza. You ordered a bottle of water for him. JJ decided to sit behind you, draping his arms around your shoulders, and you leaned back against his legs, getting as comfortable as possible in the hot, metal bleachers.

JJ didn’t really care too much about football, but he liked the atmosphere. It was electrifying, and in his lax state, he liked to soak in the energy. You didn’t care about the school spirit aspect, but you loved football. JJ mimicked you, cheering when you cheered and booing when you booed.

He ate his pizza really slowly, almost forgetting about it between bites. At one point, during a TV timeout, he held it up, offering you a bite.

“No dairy, J, thanks though.”

JJ looked down at his pizza, betrayed, and tugged some of the cheese off, offering it to you again. It was incredibly endearing, and while you weren’t particularly hungry, you took the bite anyway. He smiled at you and poked your cheek, “How’s it?”

“You’ve been eating it too, don’t you know?”

“But I eat it with cheese, totally different experience.”

Which was true you guessed. You shrugged, “It was okay, not the best pizza I’ve ever eaten, but not the worst.”

“Gonna get you some good pizza after the game,” JJ promised, sounding way more serious than the situation warranted.

“It’s okay, J, I promise. But, hey, can you lean back so I can pull my hair up, it’s sticking to my neck.”

JJ perked up, “Lemme.”

He put the slice of pizza in his mouth and gently tugged the scrunchie off your wrist. Gathering your hair slowly in his hands, he did the best he could in his drunken state to tie it back. JJ nudged you with his knee when your laughing made him drop a piece of hair, and you laughed harder, causing him to drop the rest.

Kie watched him with an amused smile and held up her phone. She called out over the crowed, “JJ!”

He looked over and saw the camera, grinning around the pizza in his mouth. You glanced over your shoulder and laughed at the dopey expression on his face. Looking down at you, JJ quickly refocused and tied your hair back.

“All done,” he told you proudly before leaning forward to wrap his arms around you again.

At halftime, John B called over, “Yo, J, you going out after the game?”

You leaned your head back, resting it on his knee, and looked at him, waiting for his answer. He finally shrugged, “I don’t know. Babe, you wanna go?”

“Meh, not feeling it tonight, kind of just want to watch a movie and sleep.”

JJ drummed his fingers against your collarbone, “Nah, I’m going to stay in too, JB.”

John B nodded and looked down at his phone, likely trying to coordinate a group. You sighed, kind of ready to leave, it was a blowout game and not really exciting, and JJ could tell your energy was quickly waning.

“Ready to go?” he asked before you could bring it up to him.

You stood up, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand,” he mimicked with a laugh.

With a groan, you followed him up the bleachers and out of the stadium, his hand tightly grasping yours as he pulled you through the crowd. Your dorms were near the football field, so the two of you walked there fairly quickly.

JJ collapsed onto your bed with a groan and you looked over, “Hey, shoes off on the bed.”

He sighed and gave you a bratty look, “Fine.”

Tugging his shoes off, JJ laid back down, knocking his hat totally off in the process. You changed out of your clothes into something more comfortable before joining him in bed. He wrapped himself completely around you as you turned the TV on and pulled up It’s Always Sunny to have on in the background.

“Hey babe,” he broke the silence.

You hummed to show you were listening.

“Did we win today.”

[westofessos]

What I’ve Watched During Quarantine (so far):

TV Shows:

The Last Kingdom - holy shit I love this show and I cannot wait for a new season. Æthelflaed is a badass bitch. But I miss Alfred.

After Life - the most heartbreaking show in the world, with Ricky Gervais being funny between making me cry.

Community - maybe my favourite sitcom. I fucking love this show. I’m containing myself because if I don’t, I’ll go on forever.

Hunters - I love love love love love this weird-ass, terrifying, mind-bending, incredible show. What a ride. Sister Harriet is my favourite even though I don’t trust her.

Tiger King - Yes, along with everyone else I watched this fuckery. What is there to say? I was entertained, that’s it.

Making a Murderer - I was on a roll after Tiger King and wanted something crazy, and I got it. What a bunch of fucked up shit. I can’t believe this is real. Also Kathleen Zellner is a badass bitch and I love her.

Good Omens - I broke down and watched it. And this was the weirdest shit I’ve ever seen but I loved it. Crowley and Aziraphale are a delight. And my history nerd heart couldn’t handle it.

The Boys - wow this was the most disturbing, wonderful show. Truly terrifying but great. Billy Butcher is incredible.

Peaky Blinders - when I say I am in love with Thomas Shelby. Wow. What a fantastic show. I didn’t expect to like it, but I finished all five seasons in less than a week because I’m absolutely addicted. Damn you Thomas Shelby and your pretty eyes.

The Umbrella Academy (S2) - wow wow wow wow what an amazing season. I don’t want to spoil anything but it was absolutely fantastic.

Rewatches:

Lost - my favourite show of all time, and my favourite series finale of all time. Fuck what people say, Lost is brilliant and I would die for this beautiful show.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine - what an all around great time. I just love it so much.

Roseanne - ah, old school Roseanne. My actual favourite sitcom. Y’know, the one that was my entire childhood, basically made me who I am today, only for me to find out that the actress that played my actual idol was a racist. Yeah, that one. It was nice to ignore that though and love my favourite show regardless.

Scrubs - I just watched it for the first time just before quarantine, and decided to watch it again during. What a brilliant show. It means so much to me. Also, Perry Cox is one of the greatest, most complex characters to ever exist. And Carla Espinosa is an underrated queen. I’m also listening to Fake Doctors, Real Friends, which is Zach Braff and Donald Faison’s Scrubs rewatch podcast, and it’s great.

Friends - I missed this show, really. It’s still so great. Chandler Bing is amazing and I forgot how adorable he and Monica are.

Movies:

The Philadelphia Story - again, Cary Grant is lovely. Also, Katherine Hepburn is incredible and I love her.

Rocky 1-4 (haven’t gotten hold of 5 yet) - oh, yes, yes, yes. These movies. I love love love these movies. Rocky and Adrian are the couple.

Cocktail - this one wasn’t bad, considering I hate Tom Cruise. I’d watch it again.

Anastasia - I’ve been wanting to watch this one for a while, and it was awesome. I love Meg Ryan so much.

Rebel Without a Cause - this is such a great teen movie. I was surprised about how much I related to it. Also, as if everyone didn’t already know, James Dean is gorgeous.

Thelma & Louise - what a beautiful story about friendship and badass ladies. This is exactly my shit. Yes.

Steel Magnolias - this was such a lovely, sad movie. Oh, I love it.

The Wedding Planner - this one set me on a JLo kick, because this was such an adorable movie. Her and McConaughey were adorable.

Maid in Manhattan - ah, JLo, you did it again. I loved this one so much. Loved it.

Save the Last Dance - I hadn’t heard of this one, but I saw Julia Stiles and immediately clicked. That was the right choice. This movie was so cute, oh, I loved it.

All the President’s Men - me geeking out over journalism, politics, and history for two hours? Yes please. Also Robert Redford is gorgeous and I never found him that attractive before.

Terms of Endearment - oh, break my goddamn heart why don’t you. Fuck, this was so heartbreaking. I loved it.

Taxi Driver - a garbage movie for garbage people. Imagine if Fight Club just like, wasn’t a good movie. That was the vibe of this one. God, don’t waste your time.

Singin’ in the Rain - what a lovely, fun movie. All three main characters were great, the songs were awesome, the relationships were fun, what more can I say? Oh yeah, Gene Kelly? Damn.

His Girl Friday - overall an okay movie, but it was pretty funny, and Cary Grant. Dear god, I love me some Cary Grant.

Good Will Hunting - oh, fuck me, this movie. How dare you make me feel such things, Matt Damon. What an incredible movie. It made me, a person who hates Ben Affleck, not hate Ben Affleck for two whole hours. It made me cry, of course. Robin Williams, dammit. Wow. And Matt fucking Damon was so brilliant, and so was Minnie Driver, and they were so good together, and I could gush about this movie for days.

Set it Up - as of now, I’ve watched this movie, oh, nine thousand times?? How perfect is this movie? All of the actors are great, and I’d watch two hours of just Charlie looking at Harper. Ugh. The way he looks at her gets me every time.

The Old Guard - I’m not usually a fan of action movies but this one was so good !! I loved the plot and just the idea in general, and all of the characters were so awesome. It was a really great movie.

Rewatches:

Tombstone - I could watch this movie every single day. Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday might be my favourite performance ever. I can quote almost this entire movie, and I don’t even like westerns.

Gladiator - I hadn’t watched this in a long time, and I knew it was good, but it was so, so, so good. Wow.

Memento - maybe my favourite movie ever. Definitely my favourite mind-fuck movie. So cool, and just. . . god, it’s such a good movie. Hats off to you, Chris Nolan.

The Usual Suspects - this is one of my favourite movies of all time. Everyone is so good in it and that ending is incredible. I could gush about this movie forever. Dean Keaton deserved better.

This is the End - such a funny movie, wow. Anything with Seth Rogen and James Franco is good. Jay Baruchel, wow. I adore Jay Baruchel.

You’ve Got Mail - in my books, the best romantic movie ever. I watch this shit constantly. Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are so adorable together. Add in Dave Chappelle, and it’s perfect.

Unbreakable, Split, and Glass - M. Night Shyamalan is always good and I’ll fight anyone on that. These three expecially. He’s the absolute master.

Back to the Future 1-3 - if I’m being honest, they’re not the greatest movies, but fuck, aren’t they, though? They’re cheesy as hell, but absolutely iconic and I still love the hell out of them.

The Neverending Story - this is the weirdest goddamn movie I’ve ever seen but the nostalgia hit me harddd. This movie was my whole childhood and even though it’s absolutely disturbing, it’s still great.

Talk to me about any of these!! I’m desperate to rant about my favourite movies and tv shows, and if you are too, feel free to reply to this post or message me privately! I’m always ready to talk and gush about things I love.

[l2fmpnathan]

Jean Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat (French: December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent.

Basquiat first achieved fame as part of SAMO, a graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s, where rap, punk, and street art coalesced into early hip-hop music culture.

By the early 1980s, his neo-expressionist paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally.

At 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist to ever take part in document in Kassel.

At 22, he was the youngest to exhibit at the Whitney Biennial in New York. The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his art in 1992.

Basquiat's art focused on dichotomies such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience.

He appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique.

Basquiat used social commentary in his paintings as a tool for introspection and for identifying with his experiences in the black community of his time, as well as attacks on power structures and systems of racism.

Basquiat's visual poetics were acutely political and direct in their criticism of colonialism and support for class struggle.

Since his death at the age of 27 from a heroin overdose in 1988, his work has steadily increased in value.

At a Sotheby's auction in May 2017, Untitled, a 1982 painting by Basquiat depicting a black skull with red and yellow rivulets, sold for $110.5 million, becoming one of the most expensive paintings ever purchased.

It also set a new record high for an American artist at auction.

Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 22, 1960, shortly after the death of his older brother, Max. He was the second of four children of Matilde Basquiat (née Andrade’s) (July 28, 1934 – November 17, 2008) and Gérard Basquiat (1930 – July 7, 2013).

He had two younger sisters: Liane, born in 1964, and Jeanine, born in 1967.

His father, Gérard Basquiat, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and his mother, Matilde Basquiat, who was of Puerto Rican descent, was born in Brooklyn, New York.

Matilde instilled a love for art in her young son by taking him to art museums in Manhattan and enrolling him as a junior member of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Basquiat was a precocious child who learned how to read and write by the age of four and was a gifted artist.

His teachers, including artist José Machado, noticed his artistic abilities, and his mother encouraged her son's artistic talent.

In 1967, Basquiat started attending Saint Ann's School, an arts-oriented exclusive private school.

There he met his friend Marc Prezzo; together they created a children's book, written by Basquiat at the age of seven, and illustrated by Prezzo.

At the age of seven in 1968, Basquiat was hit by a car while playing in the street.

His arm was broken and he suffered several internal injuries; he eventually underwent a splenectomy.

While he was recuperating from his injuries, his mother brought him a copy of Gray's Anatomy to keep him occupied.

This book would prove to be influential in his future artistic outlook.

His parents separated that year and he and his sisters were raised by their father.

His mother had been committed to a mental institution when he was 10 and thereafter spent her life in and out of institutions.

By the age of 11, Basquiat was fully fluent in French, Spanish and English, and an avid reader of all three languages.

His family resided in Bodrum Hill, Brooklyn, for five years, then moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1974, where Basquiat studied at Saint John's School in Cond ado.

After two years, they returned to New York City.

Due to his mother's instability and family unrest, Basquiat ran away from home at 15. 

He slept on park benches in Washington Square Park, and was arrested then returned to the care of his father within a week.

Basquiat left Edward R. Murrow High School in the 10th grade and then attended City-As-School, an alternative high school in Manhattan, home to many artistic students who failed at conventional schooling.

In May 1978, Basquiat and his schoolmate Al Diaz began spray painting graffiti on buildings in Lower Manhattan, working under the pseudonym SAMO (same old shit).

They inscribed poetic and satirical advertising slogans such as "SAMO© AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO GOD."

In June 1978, Basquiat was expelled from City-As-School for pieing the principal. 

At the age of 17, his father kicked him out of the house after he decided to drop out of school.

Basquiat worked for the Unique Clothing Warehouse at 718 Broadway in NoHo while continuing to write graffiti at night.

On December 11, 1978, The Village Voice published an article about the SAMO graffiti.

SAMO Xerox poster (1979)

In 1979, Basquiat appeared on the live public-access television show TV Party hosted by Glenn O'Brien, and the two started a friendship.

He made regular appearances on the show over the next few years.

In April 1979, Basquiat met Michael Holman at the Canal Zone Party and they formed the noise rock band Test Pattern, which was later renamed Gray.

Other members of Gray included Shannon Dawson, Nick Taylor, Wayne Clifford and Vincent Gallo.

The band performed at nightclubs, such as Max's Kansas City, CBGB, Hurrah, and the Mudd Club.

Around this time, Basquiat lived in the East Village with his friend Alexis Adler, a Barnard biology graduate.

He often copied diagrams of chemical compounds borrowed from Adler's science textbooks.

She documented Basquiat's creative explorations as he transformed the floors, walls, doors and furniture into his artworks.

He also made postcards with his friend Jennifer Stein.

While selling postcards in SoHo, Basquiat spotted Andy Warhol at W.P.A. restaurant with art critic Henry Geldzahler.

He sold Warhol a postcard titled Stupid Games, Bad Ideas.

In October 1979, at Arleen Schloss's open space called A's, Basquiat showed his SAMO montages using colour Xerox copies of his works.

Schloss also allowed Basquiat to use the space to create his "MAN MADE" clothing, which were upcycled garments he painted on.

In November 1979, costume designer Patricia Field carried his clothing line in her upscale boutique on 8th street in the East Village.

Field also displayed his sculptures in the store window.

After Basquiat and Diaz ended their friendship, the SAMO project ended with the epitaph "SAMO IS DEAD," inscribed on the walls of SoHo buildings in early 1980.

When they separated, a mock wave started for SAMO.

Later that year, Basquiat began filming Glenn O'Brien's independent film Downtown 81 (2000), originally titled New York Beat. 

The film featured some of Gray's recordings on its soundtrack.

[crimsonhcadache]

      - ̗̀ NOW INTRODUCING:  IVES ❝ IVY ❞ SERRANO !

( DANNA PAOLA, CISFEMALE, SHE/HER, SCORPIO, 24 ) I just spotted IVES “IVY” SERRANO at the beach today. Don’t you know them? They live down by the TOWERS and usually hang out with the RICH KIDS & MUSICIANS cliques. From what I’ve heard, they can be DECEITFUL, but they’re also ADAPTIVE. I always think of them when i hear LAST LAUGH - FLETCHER and tend to associate them with STRAWBERRY CHAMPAGNE, A FRESH SET OF STILETTO NAILS, AND RED LINGERIE. ( tay, she/her, 22, est )

full name: natalie rose serrano ives serrano nicknames: ivy, poison ivy faceclaim: danna paola voiceclaim: lana del rey birthday: november 1st, 1996  zodiac: scorpio sun, aries moon, gemini rising sexuality: bisexual occupation: influencer, instagram model, musician, scammer / thief positive traits: effervescent, bold, creative, charismatic, coquettish, intuitive, ambitious, alluring, adventurous, perceptive  negative traits: cantankerous, deceitful, envious, manipulative, dramatic, stubborn, narcissistic, materialistic, reckless, quick-tempered character inspos: maddy perez euphoria, jackie burkhart that 70’s show, blair waldorf gossip girl, margo hanson the magicians, every lana del rey song ever, lucrecia montesinos and cayetana pando elite, rosa diaz brooklyn nine nine, the entire rose family schitts creek, jen harding dead to me

- ̗̀♡ — › background !

the main thing u need to know about ivy is that she is lying ! always !! her real name isn’t even actually ivy smh

she was born NATALIE ROSE SERRANO, to two working class parents in new york city. she knew from a young age that she was just supposed to be rich and famous, and that something had gotten mixed up somewhere and she was put in the wrong life.

in high school she got a scholarship to a fancy private catholic school, and that’s where she started to hone her craft of manipulating rich people. she would befriend all of the richest bitches at school and take advantage of everything that came along with it: vacations to far away places, stays in the family’s cabins and lake houses, even designer clothes that her friends no longer wanted and would gift to her, thinking it was their idea all along

as she grew up and got better at getting what she wanted out of people, her entitled attitude only got worse, driving a wedge between her and her parents, who kept waiting for her to develop a work ethic and kept being disappointed. a few months after she graduated high school, on her 18th birthday, her parents kicked her out of the house and cut her off, hoping that it would force her to grow up and take on any responsibility

but that plan backfired for them, her parents underestimating how truly stubborn natalie was. the day after her 18th, she wandered into a local strip club and got a job, figuring it’d be the easiest and quickest way to get some cash, and she took to it naturally and actually really enjoyed stripping

she started to embody an entirely new persona that she had created for herself, dancing under the name POISON IVY and telling everyone she was a trust fund baby that had been cut off from her rich parents, needing to dance to supplement her income, and her lies just continued to spiral out of control until she almost started to believe it herself. she had never told anyone at the club her real name, not even the other strippers, just going by “ivy” for a while.

she had learned to weaponize the power she had over people by being pretty and charming, using her looks for absolute evil and doing whatever it took to get money—from straight up pickpocketing, to making men buy her expensive gifts, to blackmailing, to sugar babying, to getting patrons wasted and manipulating them into tipping her absurd amounts… she did it all, very quickly earning enough to live the life she had always dreamed of, that she felt she deserved for whatever twisted reason.

she started posting on instagram with the name poison ivy generally just flaunting her carefree, extravagant life, often exaggerating or down right lying just to really dazzle her quickly growing audience

as she started to go down the influencer route, she realized she needed to do something to hide the skeletons in her closet ( the fact that she didn’t actually come from money and was making far more than was normal for even the best of dancers, a couple of small possession / shoplifting charges, and just generally anything that could lead people to her real identity ) so she started to tell people her name was ives, fully taking on the new identity. she even went so far as to make some of the people that had been closest to her sign NDAs about her real identity, making sure that no one could sell info about her should her plan of being famous work out

she also moved out to california to run away from everyone in the city that was starting to catch on to what she was doing, basically doing all the same shit but now in a New Place.. this was about 3-4 years ago, so she’s been in sunhollow for a while now doing the whole influencer thing !!

and it did work out !! at first she was definitely buying followers/likes to boost her likelihood of brand sponsorships, but eventually she faked it until she made it and actually attained influencer status. she then used her newfound internet fame ( and some classic blackmailing ) to get herself a record deal 

she also started sleeping around with pretty much any famous person she could, having very public relationships and breakups and scandals to keep her name in the press, which ultimately lead to more exposure/people following her, if only to see what she did next, which lead to even more sponsorships

eventually she stopped dancing and just focused on her influencing and more recently ( like... less than 6 months ago recently ) her music career. but she never stopped sugar babying and scamming rich stupid men, still very much using that as a means to keep up her lifestyle. she’s also done a few modeling things, but it’s mostly just like catalog work or being the face of a trendy campaign bc she’s way too short for the runway

she also recently made an only fans account bc she was bored one night and was mostly planning on posting once as a joke but then she made a bunch of money / got a bunch of subscribers and was like oh word ? i can do that ! so she will post on there from time to time but she’s not like… super serious about it ya know ? also her music label is big mad at her for it bc they’re like bUt yOuR rEpUtAtIoN and she’s like yeah.. but my bank account ? also it’s no secret she used to be a stripper so she rly just.. doesn’t give a fuck ! 

so basically she’s jus here making money being pretty and pulling a long ass scam on… everyone

- ̗̀♡ — › personality / headcannons !

she’s a real two faced bitch… she has perfected the art of becoming whoever she thinks other people want her to be, quickly adapting her personality to get whatever she wants

she’s usually pretty friendly actually, really charming and outgoing and just trying to have a good time

she has a pretty short temper tho and holds grudges like you wouldn’t believe, so once you’re on her bad side… good luck lol she is so ruthless

she’s like… deeply, deeply selfish and will always put herself first, but she’s so manipulative that she can make people do things that they think are their idea, but it’s really just something she planted in their head so it’s not always obvious

also very spoiled and will throw a mf fit if she doesn’t get her way or u say no to her

always going out !! always doing the most !! she’s the type to show up randomly at ur door at 8pm on a tuesday with a bottle of tequila and make u party with her whether u like it or not

she’s a lot smarter than she lets on sometimes, like she knows people expect her to be stupid and ditzy and shallow and she’ll let them underestimate her when it’s beneficial

always looks perfectly put together— her nails are always meticulously manicured, usually w stiletto shaped acrylics, and you’ll literally never see her outside her house without makeup and a perfectly composed outfit. it’s also a rare occasion that she’s not wearing at least six inch heels, trying to make up for bein so mf short ( she’s 5’3 )

she talks A Lot but is really good at saying a lot of words without actually saying anything, like you can be best friends with her for months and then just be like “i don’t actually know a single thing about her”

always up to no good and sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong !! she’s always got some sort of scheme going or getting in to some kind of drama

v much a hoe and v much proud of it, will sleep w just about anyone especially if she can get something out of it

also a serial dater !! she’s always hoping in and out of relationships and being rumored to be with a dozen people at once

most definitely calls paparazzi on herself, especially when she’s around other famous ppl but will never admit it

compulsive liar, she will literally lie about the dumbest things like she doesn’t even need a reason to lie she jus.. does

she has a luxury two bedroom apartment that she lives alone in ( one room is kinda a guest room but also mostly just a giant closet ) in the towers and the gag is she doesn’t even know how much her rent is bc one of her random sugar daddies pays her rent.. her power tbh 

- ̗̀♡ — › wanted connections !

hookups / flings / one night stands / fwbs all that shit !!

exes on bad terms … gimme drama pls

enemies / ppl she’s stolen from maybe… she would definitely deny it and say they’re jus jealous of her or smth stupid but that could make the feud worse

party pals !! like i said she goes out a lot and always somehow manages to make new friends and drag them into her shenanigans

on again / off again exes… i want the Angst so bad..

shallow friendships / influencer friends like they play it up a lot for insta bc they both have a pretty big following but they dont really... like each other that much ?? like they definitely seem to be a lot closer than they really are

pr relationships this could be past or present !! in the same vein as the last one except they pretend to date ( or maybe just act like they’re gonna date but never actually do ?? like to fuel rumors ) 

unlikely friends !! like ppl who are nice and sweet and Pure, she could use a lil good energy in her life

situationship / flirtationship like they’re super flirty and maybe hook up a couple times but everyone assumes they’re dating or like gonna date but they’re jus vibing. bonus points if one or both of them actually has feelings but can’t tell if they’re just friends / casually hooking up or if it could turn into something more.. im a slut for some mutual pining !!

neighbors … mb they hate her for always being loud n throwing mini parties OR maybe they join in

mean girl rivalries !!

someone she’s taking advantage of / stealing from without them knowing .. oof

partner in crime !!!

one sided crushes or like someone she’s stringing along smh

sugar daddies mb 😇

someone to put her in her mf place JDKDKD like they call her out on her bs and are like “i see what ur doing bitch stay away from my friends” type thing

idk anything really !! gimme all the messy plots ok :~)

[stolethekey]

all i’ve ever known is how to hold my own (but now i wanna hold you, too)

for @caniwritemywayout​ as part of @b99fandomevents​!

Charles grabs Jake’s arm, ignoring his profuse questions and demands, and drags him to the side of the room. On the way, he gestures at Rosa, who is currently in conversation with a woman Jake has never seen before.

“That’s Amy,” Charles explains unnecessarily. “Santiago. The new teacher.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

or, the high school teacher au

read on ao3

preview under the cut, but full fic is only on ao3 because this guy is LONG!!1!

Jake Peralta hates the summer.

It’s hot and muggy outside, which he hates more than anything, and it’s the opposite of Christmas, which means it’s the opposite of Die Hard and holiday parties and free-flowing booze.

Plus, if he’s being honest, he misses his job.

John Roebling High isn’t exactly an exceptional school; it’s solidly average on every list ranking Brooklyn high schools, and in most ways, it is precisely what one would expect a conventional American high school to be.

Except his colleagues are awesome, and so are his kids, and every day he spends with them makes him a happier person.

So he hates the summer, and he wiles away the hours movie-hopping and sipping large orange sodas with Charles, reminiscing about the semesters past and looking forward to the semesters ahead.

“Gina said there’s gonna be a new teacher this year,” Charles says conversationally, wincing slightly as they step out of the air-conditioned theater and onto the sidewalk. “Some Ivy-league grad. She’s teaching classic literature, or something.”

Jake stops to throw his popcorn bucket into the trash and raises his eyebrows. “We never get new teachers. And classic lit? Why do we need that when we already have AP Lit? What is this, some kind of private religious school?”

“You teach film,” Charles reminds him. “That’s not exactly standard public-school fare, either.”

“I—well, I just don’t get why an Ivy grad would ever want to teach at John Roebling. Not because we’re not awesome, but because—”

“We’re too cool for that stuffy, snobbish shit. Yeah.”

There’s a beat, and then Charles says, “Holt invited her to our school-year kickoff party.”

Jake nearly spits out his drink. “He what?!”

“It makes sense, I guess. She’s a teacher. All the other teachers go.”

“All the other teachers are friends,” Jake grumbles, and privately he wonders if this is the year the magic dies.

-

Raymond Holt’s school-year kickoff parties are Jake’s favorite part of summer.

They’re as close to ragers as is appropriate for a bunch of high school teachers and their principal to throw, which is to say that they’re not ragers at all—but both alcohol and warm conversation flow freely and abundantly, so who is Jake to complain?

He maneuvers around Holt’s house with practiced ease, smiling at his colleagues and stopping by the shrimp platter a little more often than necessary. At one point, Hitchcock corners him in the kitchen and bestows upon him an incredibly long, scripted pitch for what is clearly a pyramid scheme. Jake pops Skittles into his mouth one at a time, nodding with what he hopes is believable interest, and once his bowl is empty he decides it’s time to leave.

“That sounds great,” he says, patting Hitchcock on the shoulder and ducking under his arm. “I’ll let you know.”

“But I didn’t even finish—”

“Sorry!” Jake calls, spotting and making a beeline for a familiar shade of khaki in the living room. “Boyle needs me!”

Charles turns at the sound of his name, rolling his eyes as he waits for Jake to approach. “Did he give you the Nutriboom pitch too?”

“Yeah, it was terrible—”

“Well, good, because that’s gonna make what I’m about to do seem a lot better.”

Charles grabs Jake’s arm, ignoring his profuse questions and demands, and drags him to the side of the room. On the way, he gestures at Rosa, who is currently in conversation with a woman Jake has never seen before.

“That’s Amy,” Charles explains unnecessarily. “Santiago. The new teacher.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

His first thought is that she’s younger than he expected. His second thought is interrupted by Rosa and Santiago’s conversation.

“You have a lot of opinions on this,” Rosa says gruffly.

“I’m just saying!” Santiago’s voice is bright, and her eyes are shining with the excitement Jake reserves exclusively for sour candy and action movies. “Emily Brontë is the worst Brontë sister and that is entirely because she wrote Wuthering Heights, which sucks ass.”

“I’ve gotta say,” Jake says loudly, sidling up beside Rosa. “I never thought I’d hear such a boring topic discussed with some enthusiasm.”

Santiago turns toward him, her voice indignant when she answers. “I teach classic lit, I should hope that I’d care about it.” The indignation fades she takes him in, replaced by a recognition that Jake finds slightly unsettling. “Oh. Holt told me about you. You must be Jake.”

“And you must be fun at parties.”

She shakes his outstretched hand, her mouth twisting into a wry smile. “I was under the impression that I was currently at a party.”

“I—you are,” Jake stammers. “This is.” He glances at Charles for help. Charles beams at him. Jake wrenches his gaze back towards Amy, who has allowed a slightly smug expression to float onto her face.

“Well, you let me know whether your prediction turns out to be true,” she says evenly, then nods politely at Rosa. “I’m gonna grab another drink.”

Jake glowers at her back until it disappears into the kitchen. When he turns, Rosa has a supremely superior smirk on her face.

“What?” He demands.

“Nothing,” Rosa says, her smirk growing even wider. “I’m just excited for the year.”

keep reading on ao3!

[utouchmycookie]

Open Your Eyes

Chapter One: Flash

I (utouchmycookie) am the author of this piece. I don’t own the characters or locations, but the idea is mine. Also, I am ignoring my boring class by putting this here.

Flash walks into AcaDec expecting the heated glares of the girls, at the very least. Being verbally berated and kicked off the team by unanimous decision at the most likely. He doesn't even know what to think of at the most. Social death outside of the popular jocks (who have sway, but not nearly as much as they would at non-preppy need schools) seems like a possible outcome.

None of this happens. He does a double-take. Apparently there are no sides, which leaves the options that a) nobody gives a fuck (possible, but unlikely), or b) she said nothing (he'd figure this to be unlikely, but apparently it was entirely possible). She doesn't bother to look up at him entering the room, earbuds in and hair shielding the notebook she's scratching away in. Ned Leeds gives him the most dangerous look he's ever seen the happy go lucky President of the Computer Science, Ethical Hacking, Cybersecurity, IT, and Coding Clubs give; Michelle Jones manages to scare any sense of relief he'd mustered right off as she glances over the top of her book at him, and her glance says she knows, but the perfect expressionless deadpan and the way she almost immediately turns back to her book without giving him any further insight to what her thoughts are sends him into a horror and terror related trauma induced break down. Yes, he knows that's not a thing or the least bit grammatically correct but it's exactly what was headed for him.

He wishes she would do anything - scream at him in anger, sob in heartbreak, curse hysterically in hurt, even sigh in disappointment. She does none of these. She doesn't even bother to give him particularly serious cold shoulders and silence treatments and talk as if he isn't there and walk as if she doesn't even realize he's in the vicinity of her.

She's colder than she's ever been to him, including when he'd shoved Leeds into a locker, but she's no less polite than she's ever been. God, she's never been anything worse than curt with him, and he's such a dick and a douchebag and a tool and a piece of shit and a worthless waste of space. Even now, as he jostles to get her attention, she simply turns her eyes on him, listens to his cruel jests, and turns away when he's finished. God, here he was hoping for her to show him her heartbreak and here he was falling to pieces with his (and it was his own damn fault, his own stupid fucking choices).

Their (out of the know) teammates definitely recognize the difference in her behavior, but they chalk it up to her finally building an extra wall between them (something they've been trying to get her to do for literal years now. It was always, "Why are you so nice to him? He just shoves your books out of your hands to be a dick!" "I think he just needs some kindness in his life," "As if! I have all the kindness I could ever need, you psychotic whore!" "Sure seems like it." and god-fucking-damn her perceptiveness, her big heart, her endless kindness, her naïvety that she could help him; he would be forever indebted to her kindness and her gentleness and how much it had saved him and then he had ruined it with his stupid ass dumb fucking decisions and even now she couldn't be cruel to him, not even once.). Mr. Harrington pulls her aside after practice to double-check that he didn't hurt her, and the honesty and lack of attack in her response had made it hurt more (and how was that fucking possible anymore?!).

"He's Flash, Sir. He's always rude to me, and yes he did something nasty and it hurt, but it's not of the school's concern, it won't affect my performance in AcaDec, it's nothing I can't handle, and quite honestly, Mr. Harrington? I just don't want to stoop to his level."

"You are one of the most brilliant students I've had the honor of teaching, and are miles kinder and wiser than any other human being I've ever met. You're going to go far someday, and I cannot wait to see what you do someday."

"Thank you, Mr. Harrington. I couldn't do any of it if you didn't put your heart and soul into helping us even when it seems impossibly difficult." And then she smiled that innocent, sweet smile that let you know that she had no idea that she sounded like a brown-noser because she honest to God meant it.

So here's the thing: Peter Parker is an angel of a human being. The planet Earth 's disturbingly large number of vocal, disgusting humans didn't deserve her one bit. Flash among them.

But Peter Parker also suffered left and right.

She had been one of the few who had joined Midtown Tech's high school portion their freshman year, on one of the few scholarships offered. She'd started with an hour commute to school, and her high school career had started horribly. She was alone and friendless and new and definitely not in her socioeconomic class. What she had going for her was the school being an elitist nerd school. You had to be smart, and damn was she smart. That made her popular here. The geeky clubs made her cooler - Marching Band was perhaps not the straight dash to popularity choice, but one that gave her lots of social exposure. The International Club was a genius decision, because nobody at the school had less than Tier 1 universities in their future and everyone knew it was about being well-rounded. Acing Academic Decathlon had shot her right up to the top, earning her a spot in the likes of Liz Allen's favorite people to talk to. Peter hadn't intentionally done it, either, but she'd enchanted herself to the school by being utterly introverted and sweeter than a Pixie Stix without an ounce of dishonesty in her.

Then they'd gone to OsCorp. Norman Osborn and Dr. Curt Connors had revealed an open secret and it should have ruined her social life, but the students in the room had had nothing but sympathy for the horrible way of spilling her private life's facts - her parents were famous scientists, and dead.

The story hadn't gotten outside of their graduating class, at least, but the majority seemed to collectively decide she was their epitome of a Class Cinnamon Roll.

It helped their case that she was out sick for two weeks after OsCorp, and most people assumed that the stress of such horrible things being dragged up in such awful ways meant her mental health giving out and depleting her physical health. She'd come back and looked like shit for a week before she started looking healthier than she had before.

And then the hardest hit yet had slammed her, because Peter Parker never caught a single break.

Everyone in the school knew about Ben Parker's death. Peter's truancy was waived when she missed another week of school. Even the toughest teachers softened at the sight of her puffy, red eyes constantly wet with tears and ghost white face. Someone read the paper, and everyone doubled down on trying to soften up on Peter. Even Flash's buddies didn't have the heart to pick on her knowing she'd seen her uncle shot and held his hand as he died, helpless to do anything. She pulled herself together and two weeks later, and finally made her best friend out of Ned Leeds, generic friends with all the AcaDec girls, and at least acquaintances with the guys. Midtown decided she was not a cinnamon roll, but a gingersnap cookie from the Dollar Tree, like Seymour had once been dared to eat by a Brooklyn Visions' student back in middle school, when they had a kid from lower end Brooklyn who sold the cheap-ass things like damn drugs. Betty had told them they all needed to watch Ouran High School Host Club because they had the same energy as the Host Club drinking instant coffee, but everyone just took her word for it. Anyways, Peter. Dollar Tree gingersnaps. Tough as a Chips Ahoy cookie in light blue packaging, but not crumbly at all, and horribly sweet and spicy all at once.

Two years had been difficult, but survivable, until Thanos.

Plenty of people got fucked by the Decimation and the Blip. Half of the universe had died and returned five years later. A sixteenth of Earth's human occupants had been killed by factors associated with appearing and disappearing. An estimated fourth of all lives had been left in ruins with no way to restart. Not a single person went unaffected. Peter Parker though, she really could not catch a break.

No one outside of Flash's crew didn't believe Peter's having a Stark Internship. Therefore, learning that she had been at Stark's funeral due to being a close companion of his - and seemingly the girl out of the "girl and Spider-Man" who he had saved half the universe for, according to Ms. Potts-Stark directly, was a good sign as to the hurt she was feeling.

It was Thursday afternoon, and Mr. Mounts didn't care what they did this afternoon, because they had a paper due on Friday and half of a class in specialty Tech school that had an entrance exam who were taking AP Lit a year early had already turned in their papers. Mr. Mounts was a smart man, and a great teacher, but he was not technically inclined. He did not care though, so they all saw his YouTube views projected onto the Promethean Board with the noise up. That meant there was no stopping if the viewing of an ad — sort of.

A live news channel cut off the video with an announcement, the scene of a man who had lost it as a direct result of the Decimation and Blip completely ruining his old life during an appointment with the Maria Stark Foundation trying to help him get a new one on track. He'd gone absolutely psychotic, murdering the innocent charity worker, and setting himself loose on the streets. The news was warning of him being loose still and mourning the middle-aged woman now dead, by displaying a nice picture of her from the Maria Stark Foundation. Peter had announced, "I'm going to puke," and bolted out of the room. Ned and MJ had been on her heels, and the rest of the class was in shock.

"Oh Jesus Fuck," Sally finally said. And yeah, that was fair, because Flash knew that face as well as the rest of the AcaDec kids. It was the face of the sweet lady who once brought them Belgian Cream Pie straight from the German Bakery down the street from her apartment; she had got it at half-price because the owner's son was thoroughly charmed and the owner thought she would make an excellent daughter-in-law and that was deserving of half-priced pie even though he knew it was never going to happen.

There's a knock on the door, which opens to reveal Principal Morita looking very depressed and trying not to cry - "I need to borrow Miss Parker - oh fucking shit," he hisses.

"She went to the bathroom to puke, Sir. With Michelle Jones and Ned Leeds."

Somehow, the day only gets crazier. Everyone knows by the time Peter is safely tucked away in Mr. Morita's office, with the police officer who had to deliver the news, Mr. Morita, MJ, and Ned. The only people to go in or out is the secretary - who sends messages to the three students' teachers, as if they aren't tuned into the rumor mill - and a social worker.

MJ and Ned are sent to fetch lunch so the social worker can talk to Peter with only adults.

"Peter?... Do you have any other family you can contact? We... Uh, we tried the contact left in case of this type of horrible event, but given the nature of the contact, we couldn't get a call through -" the social worker pauses, "If not, we have options. Good homes that want a beautiful, brilliant girl like you."

"I'm sorry about that, Ma'am, but I'm sure you're aware that phone lines are a bit risky where my family is concerned. I can as soon as I heard," Pepper Potts-Stark announces as she brushes into the room. A mild-looking man follows her in, his red and white cane rattling as he swipes if in front of him. "And this is Miss Parker's lawyer, Matthew Murdock."

"I hate that we have to meet in such dismal circumstances."

"Oh, Honey," Pepper coos sadly to Peter, sinking down beside her and setting off another round of tears. "I know, Baby, let it all out, I know."

Chapters 2 and 3 up now!

[wordywarriorwrites]

Chapter 17: Deliverance

Masterlist: The Boss of Brooklyn  A03 Story Link Author: @wordywarriorwrites​ Summary: When it comes to being The Boss, James Buchanan “JB” Barnes rules with an iron fist. For him, there’s no room for sentiment, and certainly no time for distraction, even if it is in the form of an old flame. Steve Rogers had bowed out of the life a long time ago, but a twist of fate brings him right back into the fold, and face-to-face with a man he once loved. When a game of cat and mouse turns into a matter of life and death, both will be forced to decide whether they’ll be loyal to the business, or faithful to each other. A/N: Bucky Barnes Mob Boss AU. Stucky. For: @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan Star’s Multi-Fandom Follower Celebration with the prompt, “Why did you do it?” & @sherrybaby14 Sherry’s Fall Into You Challenge with the prompt, “Show me. Prove that you can handle me.” Warnings: Language, violence, drug use, alcohol, smoking, explicit sexual content, illegal activities. *Re-blogs are welcome. Plagiarism isn’t. *

Twelve Weeks Later…

Grand Bahama Island was nothing short of paradise.

Clear-blue waters and sandy shores. All-inclusive resorts, fantastic cuisine, and a population that consisted of friendly locals, old money, and the nouveau rich. Privacy, exclusivity, and luxury, all wrapped up in an idyllic package.

And now, Bucky owned a piece of it.  

The deed was discovered inside an understated, navy-blue letter storage box. It had been found crushed at the very bottom of the heap of customary tributes and gifts Bucky received on his birthday. Banner, Sam, and Natasha had been helping him sort through everything and write thank-you notes for weeks, and they were finally in the home stretch.

Those lower on the totem pole gave cash or a nice bottle of booze. Others higher up on the food chain arranged to foot the bill for more extravagant things, like a tailor-made suit or a custom watch. People at the very top spared no expense, and usually gifted items like a trip to a destination of his choice or an imported car, but in this instance, someone had decided to give him a multi-million-dollar mansion just off the coast of Florida.

“It’s from Fury,” Banner declared. “Paperwork’s legit and the place is legally yours.”

Sam let out a low whistle, “That’s one hell of a birthday present.”

Natasha opened the final envelope from the pile and pulled out a stack of papers, “And here’s another.”  

Bucky quickly scrawled a personalized message to Fury before he set his pen aside and accepted the file. The pages had little sticky-note flags that drew attention to each place that required a signature, and all corresponding lines had been properly dated, initialed, stamped, and notarized.

It had taken awhile, but Steve finally signed the documents, and had formally stepped aside.  

“I hope you’re happy now,” Natasha muttered.

Bucky sighed and turned to Bruce, “Take this directly to Wanda, and tell her to transfer the money as discussed. Sam, go with him. I want you both back here and ready to leave in thirty minutes.”

Both men nodded and hopped to it, and once they were gone, Natasha crossed her arms over her chest and gave him the stink-eye. He pointedly ignored her huffiness, left the office, and went to double-check his luggage. He, Sam, and Bruce were due to fly out to Bermuda in three hours to set up shop, and after Bucky made sure he had everything he needed, he left his bedroom, and dropped the bag by the door.

“He’s gone,” Natasha snapped as she entered the living room. “Are you satisfied?”

“Don’t start,” he warned.  

“Given enough time, you two could’ve taken the whole of New York. You could’ve been an unstoppable, untouchable powerhouse, and your influence at home and abroad would’ve been limitless.”

“He wanted his freedom,” Bucky bit out lowly. “And I granted it.”

She laughed and threw up her hands, “Well, if you won’t have him, others will. I know some guys here who’ve been chomping at the bit for years, and they just can’t wait to get their hands on him.”

Somewhere on the fringes of his brain, he heard Natasha point out that Steve was smoking hot, filthy fucking rich, and had that whole “wounded, bad-boy” thing going on – all of which his future bedmates would find exceedingly attractive. She also surmised Steve was bound to fall in love again eventually, and might even get married someday. Natasha then went on to say she hoped to be invited to the wedding, and that if Steve and his future husband ever adopted children, she would be the best auntie.

Bucky wasn’t entirely too sure how it happened. One minute, Natasha was prattling about baby clothes, in-home nannies, private schools, and how expensive college tuition was; the next, he had her by the throat, and slammed up against the wall. How the gun got in his hand was a mystery, and he didn’t know how the barrel ended up pressed to the center of her forehead, either.

All it took was one look into her triumph-filled eyes for Bucky to know she’d keyed him up on purpose. Natasha was the only person in his life he truly trusted and cared for, and Bucky had never raised a hand to her before, but his violent overreaction was proof he’d let his emotions overrule his reason yet again.

Bucky immediately released her and lowered the gun, “Nat… Shit, I didn’t…”

“An unacknowledged weakness is a dangerous thing,” she wheezed.

He cleared his throat and took a step back, “I just… I need you to leave it alone, alright?”

Natasha closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall, “What you need to do is nut up, go to Steve, and beg for his forgiveness. You know he belongs here with you, so, stop fighting it.”

The long stretch of heavily-weighted silence was broken by the return of Sam and Bruce. Both men had been laughing and chatting excitedly about the upcoming trip, but when they saw the cannon in Bucky’s hand and the abrasions around Natasha’s throat, they fell silent.

“Everything cool?” Sam wondered.

Natasha coughed and waved him off, but it wasn’t until Bucky holstered his weapon that the tension dissipated. While Banner examined Natasha, Sam approached him, and asked if he was all good.

Bucky nodded and clapped him on the shoulder, “Just a misunderstanding. Won’t happen again.”

A few moments later, a text announced the arrival of their car, and as it was Sam’s job to ensure it was actually their ride and not some sort of ambush, he shouldered his rucksack, and headed down first. After Bucky received the all clear, Bruce picked up his duffel, mumbled that travelling with the Boss was a pain in the ass, and followed suit.

Bucky gathered his bag and told Natasha he’d text when they landed. He’d been waiting in the hallway for the elevator for some time before the door to his penthouse opened, and she came out to join him.      

“Can you forgive me?” he requested solemnly.

“Bring me back something pretty and I’ll consider it.”

“Just let me know what kind of jewels you want.”

Natasha said, “diamonds and rubies,” and on the heels of her quip, the elevator door parted. As they descended, she linked arms with him, placed her head on his shoulder, and confessed she didn’t want him to be alone. When he pithily told her that she’d end up with wrinkles if she didn’t stop worrying, she pinched his bicep hard, and called him an asshole.

Bucky grinned and pressed a kiss to the top of her head, “Stop busting my balls, alright? I’ll be fine.”

Whatever she may have said by way of response was cut off when the elevator signaled that they’d reached the ground floor. The driver was quick to stow his bags and open the door for him, but before he could get in the back seat, Natasha tugged his arm, and halted him.

“Just promise me,” she insisted. “Promise me you’ll think about what I said.”

Bucky was saved from having to lie to her when Sam leaned out and yelled that they needed to get a move on. The last thing he heard before Natasha slammed the door in his face was, “Steve’s in Île Saint-Louis,” and her blurted declaration caught not only his attention, but Bruce’s as well.

“That’s not good,” Banner spluttered. “If Steve’s in Paris… Oh, that’s bad. Very bad…”

Sam glanced at him and made a motion with his hand for him to continue, “You want to fill me in?”

Bruce launched into what could only be described as an impassioned tirade that lasted for the entire drive to the airport and all the way through take off.  

He informed that Mason Dubois, the only child and beloved son of multi-billionaire and former mob Boss, Luc Dubois, lived in Paris. They were direct descendants of Jules Bonnot, who founded the Bonnot Gang in France in the 1900’s. Luc had followed in his ancestor’s footsteps, but unlike Jules, he hadn’t been an anarchist, and he’d never been caught. Before his untimely death, Luc ran the biggest game in the country; when the father passed away, the son stepped in, and his political ties, fortune, and Bonnot lineage meant he had more money, status, and power than God himself.

It was common knowledge that the Hornec gang was the most active and notorious crew in Paris, and though Dubois received a cut of the profits, racketeering, drugs, and illegal slot machines weren’t his stock and trade. He and his associates were definitely upper-crust, white-collar criminals, and they were extremely well-funded and very well-connected.

Sam still couldn’t see what the problem was, which prompted Bruce to reveal that Mason Dubois was Wanda’s cousin by marriage. He’d been in town the night of Bucky’s party and Wanda had introduced him to Steve. They were both in the business, knew some of the same players, and had common interests. Mason was also considered one of the most eligible bachelors in France, and for all intents and purposes, Steve was single as well.  

The not-so-subtle implications of Banner’s long-winded diatribe made Bucky close his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose. As soon as the plane landed and they got checked in to the resort, he retreated to his suite, and poured himself a more than liberal drink.

Bucky had done the impossible. He’d reclaimed Brooklyn; restored his people’s confidence in full; asserted complete control over the West Indies; and had come back from what could’ve been a very costly and fatal mistake. He should’ve been glad his long-term plan had succeeded, but he wasn’t, and the more he examined the reasons for his uneasiness, the more uncomfortable he became.

Steve’s acquiesce to the terms and subsequent departure to Paris meant he’d decided to free himself from the last vestiges of their strained, complicated relationship. He was no longer under any obligation to Bucky or the Families, which meant all bets were off. Wanda could play match-maker all she liked, and as a free-agent, Steve could conduct business -- and climb into bed -- with whomever he wished to.

And there was nothing Bucky could do about it.

His former best-friend, past partner-in-crime, and soon-to-be-lost love of his life was in danger of being taken off the market in more ways than one, and Bucky knew Natasha’s parting words had been a last-ditch effort to make him come to terms with it. She wanted him to not only admit his feelings, but also face the consequences of his actions, and repair the damage.

If Bucky had been honest – if he’d, just once, put Steve first – maybe things could’ve been different. If he hadn’t pulled him back in; hadn’t lifted him up just to screw him over; hadn’t betrayed him and rejected him and broken his heart so many fucking times…

The sound of his phone going off prodded him out of his thoughts; he’d forgotten to text Natasha, which explained why she’d reached out first, but before he could type a reply, another message came through.

The words, “Let me handle Bermuda,” appeared, along with a URL that redirected Bucky the website of his preferred airline. According to the departure schedule, if he booked the ticket immediately, and hauled ass to the airport, he could be in France just after sunrise. Natasha followed up again mere seconds later with, “You go get him and bring him home.”

Bucky scraped a hand over his face, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. With his heart somewhere in the vicinity of his fucking throat, he penciled himself into first class, checked in before he could change his mind, and called down to the lobby for a car.

Though the prospect of an uncertain outcome terrified him, Bucky was going to Paris, and in twelve hours, he’d know for sure whether or not his change of heart was just in time, or far too little, and much too late.

Chapter 18: On Va Voir

Everything: @jennmurawski13​​​ @nerdy-bookworm-1998​

Steve Rogers: @patzammit @hearttoearth​ The Boss of Brooklyn: @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan​ @jamesbarnesappreciationsociety​ @captain-rogers-beard​ @lilliannaansalla

[frankics]

hello  all  you  lovely  lovely  people  !  thanks  again  for  applying  to  this  rp,  you  have  NO  idea  how  excited  i  am  to  get  this  going.  i’m  lily,  i’m  newly  20,  in  the  est  timezone  and  my  pronouns  are  she/her.  i  love  trash  tv,  my  puppies,  and  the  collected  works  of  the  greatest  band  in  history  (one  direction).  this  is  my  trash  daughter  frankie,  she  truly  belongs  in  the  garbage  but  i  love  her  so  much.  below  the  cut  is  my  long  ass  intro  for  her,  i  forgive  you  if  you  don’t  read  it  all  because  looking  at  it  now  i  wouldn’t  want  to  either  !  anyway,  if  you’re  interested  in  plotting  with  me  and  frankie,  hmu  on  discord  and  you  can  check  this  blog  for  some connections  i  would  love  to  see  !

( alisha boe, cisfemale, she/her, MUSE E ) — oh my god, i totally just saw FRANCESCA ARCHER walking through greenwich village! you know, she plays SKYLAR ELLIS on that new netflix show, the village? i can’t believe they’re already famous at TWENTY-ONE. i’ve watched all of their interviews, and they totally come off as IMPERTINENT and RECKLESS, but they can also be ROMANTIC and WITTY. based on their social media, i’d describe FRANKIE like ( worn out black high-tops, mischievous smiles, nails painted different colors, peach vodka, swimming in an ocean during a storm ) — totally makes sense that people call them THE SPITFIRE.

important links: bio. statistics. filmography. muse posts. social media. 

warning: death tw on the 5th bullet point!!

the frankie archer story begins in 1996, when her mother yasmiin moves from her home of somalia to brooklyn to pursue an art career. she moved into a tiny apartment halfway across the world, knowing nothing and no one, looking for inspiration. she found it in the form of lorenzo archer, her next door neighbor. they dated for two years, but neither family approved of the other as a match: yasmiin’s family wanted her to return to somalia, and lorenzo’s roman catholic family were not pleased about their son selecting a non-catholic woman. but lorenzo and yasmiin didn’t care, and got married at new york city hall with the court appointed witness. two weeks later, yasmiin was pregnant with frankie. 

francesca simone archer was born on june 9, 1999. she is a gemini sun, a scorpio moon, and an aries rising. she was named francesca for her grandmother on the paternal side, and simone after nina simone, the singer that was playing on lorenzo’s record player when they first met. her two siblings, nala archer and zahi archer, were born in 2001 and 2003 respectively. 

her childhood is generally quite happy. lorenzo and yasmiin were born to be parents and they love frankie, nala, and zahi endlessly, the type of supportive love that makes children thrive. frankie possesses a natural wit and excels academically, nala is the star athlete, and zahi is a wizard with watercolor. frankie loves the movies and decides she wants to be an actress when she grows up, so lorenzo and yasmiin enroll her in acting classes and improv camps. things chug along in the archer family beautifully. 

that is, until frankie gets a high school scholarship to packer collegiate institute, located in the affluent neighborhood of brooklyn heights. she takes it, of course, with her parents’ full support. but she is nothing like anyone else who attends packer, and for a 14 year old who wants to blend in, that is the worst possible thing. she is suddenly, painfully aware of her worn-out clothes, her used books, her strange mother with paint stains on her bleached out jeans. frankie lashes out, screaming and storming off and slamming doors. she and her mother are hurricanes and the rest of the family simply battens down the hatches. one day when frankie is 15, she tells her mother that this family is her worst nightmare. it is the last words she will ever speak to her mother. 

a few hours after, the archers get a call that yasmiin has been in an accident. it was a hit and run: a drunk driver t-boned her, and they’re rushing her to the hospital. when the family arrives, the doctors break the news that yasmiin is comatose and that things aren’t looking good. lorenzo refuses to take her off life support, insisting she’ll recover. she is in a coma for nearly a year and a half before he is convinced to pull the plug. 

and now, the part of the frankie archer story that everyone knows, the serendipitous hollywood beginning. she’s just a charming, talented, grieving, all-american girl from brooklyn, heading off to juilliard in the fall. on her 18th birthday, the first one spent without her mother, she attends an open call for a role in an indie film called thursday mourning. she thinks it’ll be a fun way to spend the day, or at least distracting enough. and then she gets the fucking part. 

long story short, the film blows up. it’s shown at venice, winning the golden lion and a prize for frankie as the most promising young actor in the festival. it’s nominated for four oscars, including a best supporting actress nom for frankie. she doesn’t win, but it’s created a path for her to do whatever she wants, acting-wise. she does three more films in the next two years, gaining a reputation as an indie darling before realizing that indie films don’t make all that much money. 

and she needs money, because her father is drowning in hospital bills from yasmiin’s death that he can’t pay. that’s when the offer comes through from her agent: a starring role in an ensemble cast netflix show called the village. she’s planning on throwing the script away. she’s not interested in any television show, much less a teen drama. she’s a serious actress and she certainly doesn’t want to be the next veronica lodge, made fun of on the internet by strangers with discerning taste. but with a little coaxing from her agent, she reads the script, and the role is good, the writing strong. so she takes the village, even though she wants to do movies more, even though she might get memed into oblivion. one episode will halve her father’s debt. 

frankie was tapped for the village because while she’s definitely not as famous as some of her other castmates, nor does she have the hollywood background, she has consistently received acclaim for her performances. the producers think it will bring them some clout with the critics, and she has a sterling reputation as a hard worker on set.

so that’s the basic bio of frankie! now onto her personality >:-)

first of all, and most importantly, if you call her francesca you are DEAD.

frankie’s described by the media as a spitfire, and she definitely lives up to that description. she’s not particularly patient with interviews or paparazzi, she has a nasty mouth and an acerbic sense of humor, and to the general public she probably comes across as quite guarded and private about her life. she got into this business to be an actress, not a celebrity. 

nevertheless, if she wanted to be a celebrity, she could probably be a pretty beloved one. frankie has a very charismatic, charming way about her, that probably lets her get away with more in the public eye than she should. there’s just something about that hollywood story that makes people relate to her and root for her. 

the number one defining characteristic of frankie is her passion. she throws herself intensely into everything she does, feels emotions too vividly, fights for what she wants. she cares so much about everything. acting is her main passion, her forever love. it’s why she’s so good at what she does: she’s not the most talented, she doesn’t have the most training, but she feels so intensely. it also makes her very emotional (classic cancer!) if you’re close with her

also because of this passion, she’s probably the most competitive person you’ll ever meet in your entire life. she’s like, slightly insane about it? she wants to win everything, but she hates losing even more than she likes winning. she’s the type to throw a tiny tantrum if she loses a game of uno. 

frankie’s always been bold, likes to live life on the edge, but it became something much uglier after her mother’s death. she’s reckless to the nth degree: doing her own stunts, drinking and partying the night away. she’s not suicidal, but in some ways, it’s like she doesn’t have a huge regard for her own life. 

in her private life, frankie is pretty different. it’s not so much that her negative qualities disappear -- she still swears like a sailor and is less than patient. but rather, the flaws become less apparent when you get to know her. she’s sort of a goofy little marshmallow wearing a giant suit of spiky armor. 

one of the most loyal people you will ever meet, because she throws herself headlong into friendships and relationships. she’s sort of an all or nothing type gal, so if you befriend frankie expect it to be a very close relationship whether you like it or not. 

she is kind of the crazy friend? she’s baby? like she’s absolutely the person who’s encouraging everyone else to do dumb shit, and she’s always coming up with ridiculous ideas and pranks. side note give frankie a prank buddy on set!

she’s really quite witty. she absolutely loves twitter, which is basically the only glimpse the general public would get as to who frankie is in private. her twitter filled with her dumb jokes and random thoughts. in another life, she might have been a twitter comic.

she is a hopeless romantic, which she will never admit to anyone in the world unless it’s layered under 100 miles of sarcasm. the only relationship she’s really ever known is her parents’ relationship, and they were madly in love til the bitter end. she desperately wants something like that, but hasn’t quite found it. she’s been in exactly one pr relationship, but nothing particularly real or long-lasting.

she loves fashion. her mother taught her to sew and she sketches and makes some of her own clothes. her absolute dream is to collab with a designer on a fashion line: some of her favorite labels are marc jacobs, jean paul-gaultier, sies marjan, and moschino! she’s also had a lot of positive press for her red carpet looks. 

she has a dog, who she loves more than anything! his name is duke, he’s a staffie rescue, and she brings him on set frequently. she’s lobbying to get him cast as someone’s dog. 

she’s playing skylar ellis on the village, and because this is literally so long you can find some info about skylar at these links: statistics, muse posts, social media. i haven’t finished writing her entire bio yet but here’s the rundown: skylar appears to everyone like the pretty princess who has everything she could ever want. her parents are rich, she’s beautiful and smart, and she has a perfect relationship with phillip. but on the inside, she’s drowning. her dad wants her to take over the family company but she wants to be a writer, and the worst part is that she’s good at writing and horrible at business! she’s always been content to go with the flow (aka, what her parents want) because things are good in her life, but after her encounter with james over the summer, she’s realizing that she is completely trapped in a life she doesn’t want in the least. now she’s a conflicted mess of emotion trying to figure out what to do. 

[bloodydamnit]

(1/5) hey! so I had smth that im a little nervous/scared to say, in regards to rr season 2? ive been debating mentioning it, & I dont know how to word it exactly, because I ADORE everything yall are doing, dont get me wrong. I ADORE robin, I love how yall are developing her: however, some of the elements feel like homeschooler stereotypes? which may not be the intention, im sure its not, but like,,

Hey there! First of all, thank you so much for sending this message. There’s no reason to be nervous or scared! We really appreciate messages like this. It helps us further develop ourselves in addition to our characters and helps us think about things outside of our own experiences. So this is really really great. 

With that being said, it absolutely was not our intent and while I completely understand where you’re coming from, all the things we’ve used to describe Robin has kind of been in the absence of thinking about her being homeschooled? To be honest, I don’t even really think we thought of much of her homeschooling, besides the fact that she was, why she was, and who took the time to teach her. I dont know if you’re a part of the discord, but last night Robin spoke a bit more about herself in the chat. And there, she said she grew up in the Bronx, NYC. Our point of homeschooling her wasn’t only because it was the only viable option we saw? Considering she did lose 6 years and catching her up would be somewhat of an impossibility, especially since she lost so much of her formative education, but because her venturing out into the Bronx, alone, as a kid with others, wouldn’t have been conducive to her learning or growth. Especially with the few resources the Bronx gave in their area, Robin’s family’s monetary status, and the utter neglect NYC provides to particularly children of color, children of color from underprivileged backgrounds, and in her case a child of color who was so far behind with such a wrought and traumatic past. 

Okay that was a lot. I’m just trying to explain why we had her homeschooled in the first place. As for the stereotypes, Im really sorry it came off that way. It was in absolutely no way our intent. Molding her to the character she is was more based on her parents being overprotective (sometimes justifiably so) rather than anything that could be placed on homeschooling. That includes her not being around many kids, not knowing how to interact in social circles, etc. On the note of her not being around many kids, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Bronx or Brooklyn, or east Harlem specifically (since everything is becoming so gentrified), but a lot of kids end up being sent out to private schools further in the city so they don’t get caught in the neglection of public schools (by the city) in their neighborhoods. That also includes the prevalence of gangs and other ‘negative’ influences that take hold in the black community in particular. One example I can give is Spiderman into the Spiderverse lol. That’s just something recent that I know most people have seen and can go ‘ooohhhhh’. Same thing with “The Hate U Give” and a shit ton of other movies. It was more of her parents being overprotective in her community due to what happened to her and wanting to keep an eye, rather than our stereotypical view of homeschooled people (I’m friends with many!)

As for Robin’s way of speaking, I completely get how that can be seen as a stereotype. Honestly, we made her that way because 1) we had to separate her typing from the others. Andrew’s very grammatically correct, Neil’s fairly short, Seth uses all lower cases, Allison types how she speaks, Renee is very polite, and Dan is fairly assertive. We had to find something to separate Robin from the group. And what we chose is that her sentence structure may not be perfect in the sense that a lot of her sentences are run-ons and she lacks commas. 2) We chose her lack of cursing more for her own moral code than anything. Her way of speaking is something she can control. How she voluntarily comes off to people is under her control. And after growing up in the Bronx, being a mixed black kid, having a traumatic story, a lot of people will look down upon her and expect the worse. We wanted Robin to sort of rise from the ashes, so to speak. We wanted her to know exactly how she comes off to people and how she can ‘be taken seriously’ in the white pockets she needs to be in order to get her story out. We sort of see it as a very long, committed, code switch. Especially since for so many years, she wasn’t. Hence why she came to Neil and Andrew in the first place. 

I’m sorry that this is so long and if this is confusing or doesnt make any sense!!! It really wasn’t our intent and I’m not trying to clean up and save our ass or anything. I just wanted to explain why we chose to make Robin the way we did and honestly, it was in the complete absence of homeschooling. But I totally see how it can come off that way and I’m sorry! We’ll be more cognizant of it in the future for sure. Perhaps not in changing her character because we feel really strongly about why we’ve made her the way we have, but most certainly in explaining OUR motives throughout the story, etc. Maybe we’ll even have a talk in the story with a character about stereotypes like that. If we choose that, I would love to talk to you more to make sure we get it right!

Again, thank you so much for this. It really helps us become more aware and we appreciate it a lot. Sorry for blabbing for so long!!! And thank you for the support. It means a lot and if we ever do something to make you uncomfortable, please let us know so we can either rectify or change it or at least become more aware!

-BloodyDamnit

[bruciewayne]

in my head

stevetony, college au, mutual pining, getting together, 2k

‘college roommates’ @iron-man-bingo

-

Finals were over, and everyone’s burning their textbooks and workbooks on the roof of their apartment building. Everything that was sellable had been sold, portfolios, important coursework and projects had been safely locked away to show future employers, 'Hey look, I earned my degree’. But everything else - worksheets accumulated over the past four years, textbooks that had been useful for one year and one year only, essays scribbled over with red - everything else is in the fire, happily burning away.

The sun’s starting to set, meaning the fire, bright and orange, and the fairy lights strung between the posts sticking up out of the corners of the roof, as the light. No-one’s in any way sure why the posts are there, but they’re useful. Even if the fairy lights had been a joke at one point.

Steve’s lying on his back on the wall-barrier-thing, one arm behind his head, the other has a half-finished bottle of beer, dangling over the side. He has one leg bent up, foot flat on the wall, the other hanging down the side of the building the unsafe side the part of his brain that sounds suspiciously like his Ma and Bucky, warns, he ignores it for the time being - he’s not a physics major but he’s reasonably certain that he’s balanced, it’s comfortable. He turns his head to face the roof, watching with fascinated disinterest.

It’s quiet, peaceful, there’s not that many of them there, not compared to the whatever’s going on a couple blocks down. He’ll be honest, he wasn’t exactly sure what Sam was on about, but according to everyone who didn’t live in their apartment block (so everyone who isn’t Steve, Tony, Bucky and Clint) there’s a police-level party going on somewhere.

Steve much prefers this, a couple of friends, on their last night together - not forever, of that he’s sure, but for the foreseeable future - music from the ‘everybody’ playlist (something they made the first time everyone hung out together, about a month into Steve’s first year - Tony’s first year of his PhD, and kept updating) floating out of the old stereo Tony fixed up. Clint had brought up marshmallows and skewers a couple hours ago, when the fire really started burning, but by now, they’d been finished, they still have lots of alcohol, though Steve doubts that everyone’s going to get loud-drunk, they’re tired, happy, because thank fuck it’s over, but tired, because it took a hell of a lot out of them. And they all know that.

He’d thought, for a brief moment that Tony would’ve gone to the bigger, louder party, but he’d caught his eye and smiled, don’t worry, I’m staying right here. Bucky’d told him once, maybe last year, that it was creepy how they could talk without saying a word, but Steve likes it, one look and, nine times out of ten, he knows what Tony’s thinking, and it works the same in his end, there’d been many mornings when Tony knew what he wanted for breakfast before him.

And many more, their lease is up soon, which means that they’re going apartment hunting next week, someplace in Manhattan, both of them have internships in Manhattan coming up in the fall, so it makes sense for them to live together, or so Steve keeps telling himself.

Right now, Tony’s laughing about something with Rhodey, a couple feet away from where Steve’s lying, he didn’t catch the joke, but he can see Tony throwing his head back, his curly hair flopping about. His eyes crinkle at the corners, the flickering light from the fire catches in his irises, and Steve feels that familiar pang of love and affection, strong and bittersweet, because, God, Tony’s beautiful, breathtakingly stunning, and bright, in every sense of the word. He lights up any room he’s in, simply by his presence, and Steve feels lucky to even know him, let alone be classed as one of his best friends, but that’s all he’ll ever be to him, nothing more.

Because guys like Tony, wildly intelligent and drop-dead gorgeous, witty and funny, guys who could have the whole world at their feet, just by asking, simply don’t fall for guys like Steve, sickly, small, laughable ugly next to his friends. To the point that when he wears skinny jeans, that are still a little loose on him, Tony pretty much completely ignores him for the rest of the day.

The last time he did, Tony kept leaving the room with some half-formed excuse, practically running away.

And Steve’s okay with it, he is, he understands it, he’s perfectly content with being his friend, admiring from afar, and never, ever, letting Tony know what he feels, that he wishes that he could kiss him, just because, because he had pretty-pretty-pretty, incredibly kissable lips, hug him longer, sleep in the same bed, hold hands, cheesy couple-y stuff he knows Tony doesn’t give a shit about. Tony will never get to know any of this because Steve values their friendship over some fleeting crush, he knows, with absolute certainty that Tony won’t ever look at him the same way if he ever so much as uttered a single syllable of his feelings.

So he’s fine with watching the firelight reflect off his hair, watching him laugh, light and free, as a friend.

His chest feels tight after a couple seconds, not quite asthma-tight, so he tears his gaze away from Tony and shifts his head to stare up at the stars, letting his mind wander from thoughts of beautiful, smart, funny engineers.

He’s always loved the stars, the moon, space in general, everything to do with it, exploration, rovers, planets, galaxies, he’d based his first-year project on space rovers and rockets. He grew up in Brooklyn, which meant that there’d been too much pollution to see all the stars, but he’d stuck up glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling when he was 11, and went to the planetarium every year with his Ma for his birthday, still did.

He loves all of it, the sheer vastness of it all comforts him, he’s simply a guy on a planet in the universe, does he have a purpose? Maybe. That’s up to him. He loves how little humanity, how much more there is to discover, the leaps and bounds in exploration technology - he’d never been the best at CompSci in high school, he leaves all that to Tony, but damn he can appreciate it.

“Star-gazing again?”

Tony’s warm voice surprises him so much he almost falls off, startling and tipping towards the street below, he probably would’ve fallen, but Tony catches him with an arm stretched across his chest, with lighting fast reflexes. His arm stays there for a beat before he slides it around his back and guides Steve, so he’s sitting upright.

“Sorry,” Tony says sheepishly, keeping the arm behind Steve’s back, supporting, he tells himself.

“I’m gonna put a cat bell on you,” Steve grumbles, but the effect is completely lost when a grin spreads across his face. Steve leans in to his arm a little, not so much as to arouse suspicion, but Tony’s always been pretty tactile with him, so it’s not too out of the ordinary, he’s close, so close that Steve can smell his spicy cologne, mixed in with engine oil and coffee. Somehow, he almost always smells of coffee.

“Neither of us want that,” Tony promises, with a tiny, private smile. He jumps up onto the ledge with his other arm, ‘accidentally’ pulling Steve closer. From here, he can see the tiny freckles that are brushed over the bridge of his nose, they only really come out in summer, faint and small, Tony feels a tiny sense of pride that he knows this about Steve. He can also see the hints of green, in the blue of his eyes, another thing he’s positive that most people don’t know. He’s absolutely breathtaking.

He knows that it ridiculously cheesy to say, but Steve, on multiple occasions, has literally taken his breath away.

Steve in skinny jeans was invented to stop Tony’s heart - he’s positive of it, whenever he wears them, which is tragically rare, Tony just Cannot be around Steve, out of genuine fear of popping a boner, because he’s positive that, whilst their friendship has survived a lot, that’s one thing that’ll have Steve look at him differently.

So he’ll stick to mild heart attacks whenever Steve wears something tighter than usual, but Steve in too-big hoodies, also gives him a stroke, because, more often than not they’re his hoodies, because they live together, and they’re not the best at laundry, so Steve sometimes ends up with too-big hoodies in his drawers, and Tony sometimes ends up losing his. It’s a win-win situation, really, now that Tony thinks about it, because Steve gets hoodies and Tony gets to see Steve in his hoodies and feel a wholly undeserved and, on every level, wrong, feeling of possessiveness that he has absolutely no right to feel.

Because he and Steve are just friends, best friends, mind you, but just friends, regardless of the fact that Tony wants to hold him, constantly touch him and kiss his sinfully red lips, and make him laugh, because, holy shit his smile is beautiful, he makes his entire body, and by proxy, Tony, light up like a firework, he’s just, inhumanely gorgeous, all the time. Even in the morning, eyes half-closed, hair tousled, he’s adorable. He even looked good during finals. A godawful mess, no doubt, but a gorgeously beautiful mess.

He’s well aware just how fucked he is.

“You never know,” Steve says shrugging and taking a pull of his beer and then putting the bottle over to the side, still grinning, looking up at Tony, so, so bright, if he was to ask him to wear a cat bell, he’s not too sure that he’d say no, not with the way that Steve’s looking at him. Tony swears it’s the light and the slight melancholy of the evening, that makes it seem like Steve’s looking at Tony like he hung the moon and stars. He’s not. It’s just the lighting; because Steve doesn’t like him like that.

Instead, Tony laughs, and ducks his head, “I guess not.”

They lapse into a comfortable silence, Tony still with his arm around Steve and Steve leaning in, both simultaneously lost in their own heads and so, so aware of each other.

Tony’s mind wanders off to a class he was in, maybe a couple weeks ago, entirely by accident, because he’d been in search for his supervisor, and someone’d told him the wrong room, and he’d ended up in some philosophy or epistemology class, about solipsism, according to the powerpoint. No-one had noticed him coming in, so he stayed until his supervisor sent him a strongly worded text to meet him in his office.

Tony overthinks. To the point of panic attacks, he’s gotten better, but still, he knows that he sometimes does, which is why he didn’t really do philosophy, it was fascinating sure, but, it just made him think too much, so he usually avoids it. But solipsism sticks in his mind.

“You ever heard of solipsism?” Tony asks suddenly, quietly, not quite breaking their peaceful bubble.

Steve turns to face him. Tony’s still looking up at the stars, so he probably can’t see the stupidly lovesick expression he knows he has. “Don’t think so, tell me?”

Steve only has one secret he’s kept from him, but times like these he feels it bubbling to the surface - they’re so comfortable and relaxed around each other that it would barely feel like anything would change if were to Steve lean over and kiss him. It’s dangerous, and risky, but Steve can never find a legitimate reason to go, like Tony’s the sun and he’s every damn planet in the solar system.

“A philosopher, Greek, pre-Socratic, Gorgias, found this belief, that, basically, everything around you is made by your own mind,” Tony says, softly, still staring up at the stars.

“Well, if everything around me if my imagination, you’re the best thing I’ve come up with,” Steve says, without thinking. Like he said, risky.

Tony turns to him sharply. “What?”

“I…” Fuck. Steve’s going to lose one of the most important people in his life, all because he can’t keep his mouth shut. Fuck. He can feel his entire face reddening up, he’s thankful for the darkness. Hopefully Tony can’t see it.

Steve looks like he’d rather throw himself off the roof than carry on this conversation, he’s not meeting his eyes. This is the first time in the entire four years that he’s known Steve, that he thinks that he’s going to run from confrontation.

So Tony kisses him. Maybe it’s stupid and impulsive, but perhaps it’s been a long time coming.

And with the way Steve kisses back, full of passion, clutching at Tony’s shirt like he might disappear if he lets go, Tony’s pretty sure that Steve likes him back.

It only took them four years to get here.

--

iron man bingo masterpost

tell me what you thought?

[berlinner]

This is a photo of some of the cast/ crew that my friend, Barry Keating (choreographer of Orchestra Luna) emailed me today. The participants in the Frank Height unfinished (we were busted and put in jail) movie, The Sad Eyed Lady. In Grenada West Indies. Below is what I wrote about it in #THEPARAGRAPHS. With Francesca Reitano (sitting next to me with cliche hippie beard, hair), Janie Hannigan (the muse/star of the whole deal), Helen Spielman (Helen Of Troy Eleanor Rosevelt Neilson Parker). It was also the very first time I ever played my songs with other musicians (LSD may or may not have helped).VERY LONG STORY:

BUSTED IN GRENADA1970. learning to act at the Yale Drama School (same time Meryll was there). starting to hate it. the perpetual ‘one’s body and one’s self is one’s ‘instrument’ and one needs to practice ‘it’ all the time’ was turning me inside out: ‘practicing’ accents, facial tics, postures. my friends wondered what- the-fuck was going on with Kinscherf? why does he seem so fake? when i heard that a friend of a friend of mine, a pot dealer from Amherst College, was shooting a movie in the West Indies and that i could have a part, it was the nudge i needed. i dropped out of Yale and got my pal Francesca to hop on the bus, bounce outta New Haven and fly on Amherst’s dime to the Caribbean. tough call, right? we taxied cross-island to one of several pink bungalow beach houses, were given our own rooms, our own Vespa scooters, our own cars to share andall the food, booze and drugs we could foie-gras-choke down. our homework the first week: ‘familiarize’ ourselves with the island. this meant getting stoned, drunk, tripped-out and pirate tanned on our own private postcard-perfect beach. twocrescent halves forming a white sand/black sand middle finger insinuating out into the Gulf with a chubby lighthouse at the fingernail tip. its beacon—a favorite LSD drop spot where kaleidoscopic film clips spit-fired out of gonzo foreheads. deep in the jungle we skinny-dipped in waterfalls, parrots swooping overhead, banana clusters plopping like puppies into our sated laps. seafood spreads and rum cocktails paraded on the cheap in open air St. Georges casbahs. natives laughing (at us? with us?). this was paradise and it was all ours all the time. one week in and against the inky blue-black of a starry starry night a sailboat, our sailboat, the schooner Janeen (re-named and re-painted The Sad-Eyed Lady) edged past the psychedelic lighthouse and dropped anchor in our tiny personal bay. a two-masted monster, tip top lights winking, full crew in dress whites, galley with a chef from Paris, lobster, steak and champagne on ice—the works. we were oared out to eat, drink, smoke, dance, whatever, not caring what-the-fuck this movie was about or when we would begin to shoot it. we were surfing an infinite rainbow. being here now was an induced reality. one night our main man from Amherst gathered us round and told a story, obliquely and slo-mo stoned. the plot: we were 21st-century pirates chasing leftover refugees after an earth kill nuclear freeze. our orders: seize any ship or person caught in the crosshairs. that was it?! who cared? we were down for the count. i became ‘lookout,’ awarded an all brass telescope which i polished obsessively and had macraméd bya Grenadian hippie so that i could wear it like cutlass. arrgh! i loved the thing. wore it all over the place, ‘getting intocharacter’ drug-induced Actor’s Studio-style. the first shoton the first day was of me, naked, at the top of the mid-mast spyglass-spotting a mom-‘n-dad sloop with a teenage daugh- ter who was booty bounty. that girl, Janie, was (not certain about this) the girlfriend of our benefactor and possibly the muse for his film-to-be. but who knew about anything for sure? i can’t emphasize enough that we were, most of us most of the time, skyscraper high on vitamin LSD. that first dayof the shoot i saw below my dangling legs, a deck so minia- turized it looked like a toy boat bobbing in a bathtub. when we cut through a 50-yard-diameter-dart-board oil slick so astonishingly beautiful my eyeballs hurt, i wanted to dive into the shimmering bull’s eye and shape-shift onto a mountaintop in Nepal. seriously. at night we skinny-dipped in a phospho- rescent sea so manifest that swimming felt like flying. or like finger painting. we’d anchor in St. George’s harbor, motor a dingy into town and get more fucked up and more outrageous by the minute. we set up a full band on deck and blasted end- less iterations of ‘Satisfaction’ ‘cross town, our girls topless. usually topless. all this behavior occurring without complaint. case in point: a young chiquita, a Grenadian, had herself rowed out to The Sad-Eyed Lady to see what was happening. just a kid, no more than 16 wearing a sequined Carmen Miranda pineapple turban with three rattlesnake maracas in each tight fist, eyes flashing. her name, i kid you not, Helen Of Troy Eleanor Roosevelt Nielson. her mom, a Grenadian, her dad a shipping baron from across the pond in Holland. Helen glommed onto us like a starfish, flitting in and out of our orbit and adjusting to our weirdness as best she could. as did handsome Australian sailor boys who, like us, wanted to gulp down the full feast of booze, weed, acid and hash that was all over the compound. 20th-century world-weary refugees who pulled into Port Wherever, worked, partied, fucked and then, after they had enough, hired onto a new rig, a new ocean,a new port. ‘round and ‘round the globe—a moveable feast, Aussie style. as much as any time in our lives this was heaven on earth, wild, heart-throbbing freedom all too soon to end. around the third/fourth day of the filming as i was monkeying about in the rigging, the one boat Grenadian ‘Navy’ putt-putted into our slip stream, armed and megaphoned. the charges: drugs and nudity. both true. we were whisked off the Janeen, driven to a dank, up-island prison (nerves on edge now that the drugs and booze had worn off) and dumped into a two-room, cinder-block jailhouse. boys in one hole, girls in the other. tin buckets to piss and shit in. the trial set for the next day. one minute, drug blind in our pre-fab nirvana, the next, incarcerated. and the next? court. would we be trapped and raped here for life? not to be. lucky result: Helen of Troy Eleanor Roosevelt Neilson’s cousin, a guy named Maurice, signed on as our defense. he painted us as unwitting victims from good, American homes having innocent fun who had been caught at an awkward, unguarded moment. we were on a plane early the next morning. Helen came along for ride. she got married in Boston a few weeks later and became Helen of Troy Eleanor Roosevelt Nielson Parker—my dad Dick, her best man. the rest of us fled to a house by a river in Greenfield, MA, paid for and outfitted, again, by our pirate king. the plan: start a band and get famous fast. more acid, more weed, more insanity until one night, driving back from Janie’s house, i saw flames roman-candling the night sky. Plan 2, a one and done. coda: our lawyer, Maurice, was elected Prime Minister of Grenada. in 1983, the island was invaded by Castro Cubans and Maurice was assassinated. Reagan sent in the Marines making tiny war history. i moved to Somerville, started my first band, Orchestra Luna and wound up living in the same damn town for the next 40-plus. no more Kerouac road trips. coup de gras? Helen is now Helen Of Troy Eleanor Roosevelt Nielson Parker Spielman and lives in Hawaii. the movie? atrophying in a freezer somewhere in Brooklyn.

[gwilyoubemine]

i was tagged by the lovely and iconic @fancytelephonepatter

rules:

pick 5 tv shows, don't cheat and answer the questions,, and tag people

so i picked:

1. that 70's show

2. nathan for you

3. rupaul's drag race

4. brooklyn nine nine

5. stranger things

who is your favourite character in 2?

lmaooo...nathan for you is a dumbass show about a guy who graduated from business school with decent grades and develops shitty, but hilarious, business plans. it's not really a show with characters since he goes to real businesses but nathan is the only main character i suppose so yes, him. but there's this reoccurring dude who works as this private investigator (who thinks he is the shit) and watching him interact with nathan is so damn funny so there's that.

who is your least favourite character in 1?

it used to be jackie...even though mila kunis is great...jackie was just so annoying, man. but it could very well have been hyde. he was so irrelevant at the beginning and i was kind of like who is this guy?? but then he grew on me and now i think he is one of the best. as of right now..maybe laurie is the worst one for me.

what is your favourite episode of 4?

man, that's too hard to answer. i love so many. i don't want to start talking about other eps i like because there are so many iconic moments in that show and i would really just go on for too long. i would have to say 'beach house' because it was honestly just hilarious...all of them trying to be on their best behaviour for captain holt..the hot tub scene...how they had to make sure some of them were upstairs with holt while they partied downstairs sksksk. those cuts of the conversation with him kill me. a personal fave quote is: 'now, the recorder is generally thought of as a training instrument for children but listen to it...in the hands of an expert like joram leifgrum..the passion is...breathtaking'

favourite season of 5?

confession time,, i haven't watched one or two. well, a few eps. my siblings were really obsessed so they basically told me everything that happened anyway. i just watched season 3 with them and i really enjoyed myself, even with how intense it all got. all i can say is...alexei is a precious god given gift. and man, i love the whole scoops lads plus two epic kiddos gang. and billy looked real good. real good.

favorite couple in 2?

man whY is nathan for you such a bad tv show for these questions pmsl. it's a meme. nathan and the asshole private inspector dude for sure. my otp.

what is your favourite episode of 1?

i have only just got onto season 3 so i have a long way to go and many potential fave eps to come but...i would have to say 'the best christmas ever' or 'halloween'...honestly fez and hyde make me laugh all the time. and kelso, that dumbass.

what is your favourite episode of 5?

that one with alexei and the cherry slush. is that also the one where he is at the funfair place? because that was cute as heck too.

what is your favourite season of 2?

probably the first one, that was especially funny. go and watch nathan for you. it's a bit awkward but with shows like the office and...the inbetweeners...that awkwardness is a key part of the comedy.

how long have you been watching 1?

i started it...not long ago. at the start of this month i think. it feels like i have been watching it for longer though since i have been binge watching it.

how did you become interested in 3?

honestly, i didn't think i would like it?? i saw memes every now and then but i didn't really care for it. one day last year my younger sister put on an ep of season four and we just started watching it. and now we have watched every season up to 11 and most of the all stars. best decision of our lives. rupaul's drag race is iconic..all stars is iconic...it's just great tv.

who is your favourite actor in 4?

andre braughner even though i haven't watched him in anything else. captain holt is just gold. but all those actors are seriously amazing at what they do. amazing cast.

do you prefer 1, 2 or 5?

atm i love that 70's sjow but nathan for you is just so dumb and hilarious. it's really hard picking :( can i say both? maybe if i watched seasons 1 and 2 of stranger things i would be able to say that...i don't know

which show have you seen more eps of, 1 or 3?

rupaul's drag race of course. i have watched like..10 whole seasons or something. that's alotta drag. i loved every moment tbh.

if you could be anyone from 4, who would it be?

probably holt...i just love him so much. or jake? because he has a lot of dumb fun, has a cute gf (wife now ah) and is a kick ass detective. and he gets a cool boss like that.

would a crossover between 3 and 4 work?

i doubt it lmaoo... i can see boyle and terry really getting into it, getting dragged up. and jake pmsl. i think rosa and michelle would defo have a stare off or something. wow i just envisioned scully and hitchcock in drag and it's horrifying.

pick two characters from 1 who would make an unlikely but strangely okay couple.

i don't even know the endgame couples..or couples along the way...but i would have to say that gay guy buddy and eric :-)))))

overall, which show has a better story-line, 3 or 5?

stranger things just because drag race has no real story line.... but the story line in stranger things is really unique and gripping. very nice stuff.

which has better theme music, 2 or 4?

both are good...but yep..the b99 theme music does indeed slap

i tag @xiaoqueencava @killergwil @denimmay @rogerina-is-hotter-than-me @deaky-trash @bensroger @queenbbarnes @cyndagoaway @supersonicfreddie

[thepatricktreestump]

pride month asks!

some questions and answers about my experience with LGBTQ+

1.       What do you identify as and what are your pronouns? 

I identify as bisexual and genderfluid, so my pronouns regularly change from she/her to he/him.

2.      How did you discover your sexuality, tell your story?

I have always been a huge ally to the LGBTQ+ community, but one day I was stepping out of the shower, and kind of thinking to myself what the difference between having sex with a guy and having sex with a girl was. After contemplation, I thought to myself that they really weren’t all that different to me, and I’d probably enjoy having sex with a girl just as much as having sex with a guy. I researched online a little bit, and I figured out that yeah, I’m probably bi. Especially after I fell in love with both Brendon Urie and his wife Sarah, I was pretty damn sure I was bi.

3.      Have you experienced being misgendered? What happened and how did you overcome it?

Sometimes I do, but it honestly doesn’t bother me too much because I come from a very conservative, religious, small town background. I grew up in a private Catholic school where everyone is Republican and nobody even knows what being gay is, much less a different gender. So I’m kind of used to putting up a façade for others. As I graduated and moved away from my hometown, things have been much better, and by politely correcting others, I’m able to be confident in who I am as well as educate the people around me.

4.      Who was the first person you told, how did they react?

Oh god, haha. I distinctly remember that night when I knew I was going to tell my best friend I was genderfluid. I was so nervous and scared, I just sort of blurted it out over text, in all caps, like “I’M GENDERFLUID” and then I kind of panicked, so I proceeded to send her about a hundred Hamilton gifs to cover up what I had typed out and sent. Although it was awkward in the moment, we both laugh about it to this day, and she’s been so accepting and kind to me ever since that moment.

5.      Describe what it was like coming out, what did you feel?

For my friends, it was a lot of anxiety and doubt. For my parents, fear and chaos. My friends didn’t understand, they thought it was a disease of some sort, and actually a lot of them stopped talking to me. Again, conservative religious background, but still, no excuse. I grew up in a very abusive household, and it wasn’t my choice to come out. My therapist had forced me to tell my parents in a session and it was an absolute mess. Coming out wasn’t the best experience, especially as a freshman in high school.

6.      If you’re out, how did your parents/guardians/friends react?

I kind of explained above, but basically not so well. My dad went absolutely off on me, and said some of the most horrible things I have ever been told in my life. He said that I was dragging everyone I knew towards hell, that what I was is unmoral, unnatural, and unnormal, acted like I was some sort of monster, said it was extremely difficult to even be related to me, and that I was corrupting his family and disrespecting his household. It was a miserable time for me, but through music, I was able to write a song about it that helped me cope.

7.      What is one question you hate people asking about your sexuality?

A lot of people assume that because I’m bisexual, I’m some sort of fetish they can use to fulfill their dirty fantasies. I’m always asked to be a part of a couple’s threesome. I am told that the only reason I’m bi is because I want double the opportunities to have sex. It’s ridiculous and disgusting. I’m bi because I like people. Not because I like sex.

8.     Describe the style of clothing that you most often wear.

I really fucking love beanies! Most of the time I read that’s the essential clothing item for all genderfluid people, which makes me laugh, because it’s true. Combat boots or converse, black jeans, a band t-shirt, a sports bra or binder, a jean jacket, and a beanie is always my go-to outfit. So much so, to the point my sister told me that every time I go out in public I’m always wearing the same thing, which kind of makes me laugh.

9.      Who are your favourite lgbt+ ships?

I don’t know if you’ve ever read the magna, Tamen de Gushi, but I absolutely love it! That lesbian couple is everything! I also really love Shane Dawson and Ryland Adams, of course. Captain Holt from Brooklyn Nine Nine and his husband is amazing. Elijah Daniels and Sam also make me super fucking happy.

10.  What does makeup mean to you? Do you wear any?

Growing up as a theater kid, I’ve always seen makeup as accentuated and over the top. I only ever wore makeup on stage, and even then, it was special effects type stuff, zombies and clowns and shit. Once I hit puberty though, my mom would force me to wear makeup because she said it would make me beautiful. I hated it. She would force me to put on makeup before I left the door and it made me have horrible self image issues. As I grew older, I found a love for makeup through beauty gurus and drag queens, and I sometimes dabble in it either for fun or for special events like prom or fancy dinners. I always prefer no makeup though, I feel like to me, wearing it is just hiding behind a mask.

11.   Do you experience dysphoria? If so, how does that affect you?

ALL THE GODDAMN FUCKING TIME. Since I’ve gotten my haircut, a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. Wearing a binder also helps so much! However, I still really want to start T and I think that will help a lot. Dysphoria affects me in so many ways, whether my self confidence or my body image, my anxiety and my mood, etc., a lot of it depends on how comfortable I am in my own skin.

12.  What is the stupidest thing you’ve heard said about the lgbt+ community?

Homophobic people are probably the stupidest people I’ve ever met in my life, to be honest. I’ve heard thousands of dumb things come from their mouths. I think the most outrageous myth I’ve heard is probably that being gay is a disease, and that simply being around another gay person will make you gay. Like who the fuck comes up with this shit? Smh.

13.  What’s your favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?

How creative we are. We’re resilient and outspoken and passionate, but most of all, so talented. The queer community is full of inventors, politicians, emperors, artists, directors, actors, musicians, and more. It’s gorgeous just how much we are capable of.

14.  What’s your least favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?

The discrimination breaks my heart. The fact that we are terrified to so much as hold hands with the one we love in public. To be beaten, tortured, and killed simply for who we are. That is what hurts me the most.

15.  Have you ever been to your cities pride event? Why or why not?

No, I find it sort of ironic every time there is a pride event I happen to have a concert on that day. Once, a Panic! concert, which honestly is sort of the equivalent of Pride. We went and there were so many LGTBQ+ flags and people and it was so gorgeous. I have attended pride prom once though, and it was probably the most fun I had ever had in a really long time.

16.  Who is your favourite lgbt+ Icon/Advocate/Celebrity?

I absolutely adore Miles McKenna. He has helped me so much in finding myself and accepting who I am. He’s such a huge spokesperson for the community and I am so grateful to have him in my life.

17.   Have you been in a relationship and how did you meet?

I’ve been in several relationships, surprisingly, through parties and discussions and friends. My s.o. right now I met through high school, which was crazy in itself, but we’ve been dating for almost two years now and I love them to death.

18.  What is your favourite lgbt+ book?

Beautiful Music for Ugly Children is one of my favorite books ever and it’s about being FTM trans and I love it so much wow.

19.  Have you ever faced discrimination? What happened?

So very much. After coming out to one of my best friends, she stared at me, disgusted and went “well don’t try to have sex with me or anything” and then proceeded to never talk to me again. I’ve received dirty looks and glares, been misgendered on purpose, and even received death threats. It’s horrible.

20. Your Favorite lgbt+ movie or show?

I love American Horror Story so much because of just how much representation it gives our community and how natural they make it seem! And of course, “Love, Simon” was an amazing movie that made me cry like a baby.

21.  Who are some of your favourite lgbt+ bloggers?

I don’t really know about bloggers, but definitely Youtubers! Shane Dawson, Miles Chronicles, Thomas Sanders, Ally Hills, Anthony Amorim, Elijah Daniels, Elle Mills, Garrett Watts, Sam Collins, Todrick Hall, and Trevor Moran are a couple of my favorites.

22. Which lgbt+ slur do you want to reclaim?

I don’t think queer should be a slur. I think queer is a form of self expression and an umbrella term for the community, and I believe many other LGBTQ+ members agree. It’s a word that we take great pride in rather than shame or discrimination.

23. Have you ever gone to a gay bar, or a drag show, how was it?

No, but god I would love to.

24. How do you self-identify your gender, and what does that mean to you?

For me, it’s simply just a part of who I am. Just like the weather, my gender simply changes and I adapt to it. It makes me comfortable in my own skin and proud of who I am. I wouldn’t change being genderfluid for the world.

25. Are you interested in having children? Why or why not?

I fucking hate the idea of pushing a human being out of my vagina, and I would probably want anything else in the entire world other than giving birth. Being pregnant for nine months sounds absolutely miserable and dysphoric, and I cannot even imagine going through labor. However, I would like to have kids, just simply through foster care or adoption, never like my own biological children. There are more than enough kids who need good homes who already exist and I’m more than happy to give it to them.

26. What identity advice would you give your younger self?

You aren’t alone and there are so many people just like you. Your parents do not own you and cannot tell you who you are supposed to be. You are you.

27.  What do you think of gender roles in relationships?

Gender roles are complete bullshit. Let a guy be a stay at home dad. Let a woman be the working one. Everyone should have responsibilities regardless of their gender. If there’s dirty dishes, do the fucking dishes, don’t wait for your spouse to get home to do them. It’s absolutely ridiculous, really. Just do your part in the relationship.

28. Anything else you want to share about your experience with gender?

It breaks my heart how much pain and suffering one has to go through just to be themselves, especially for women and trans people. It’s horrible.

29. What is something you wish people know about being lgbt+?

It’s natural! It’s comfortable! And it’s normal! Being oneself is just part of life, there’s no need to have shame or guilt about it. Respect someone the way you wish you would be accepted and loved.

30. Why are proud to be lgbt+?

We have worked so fucking hard to be recognized for who we are. There’s still so much we need to do though, and we aren’t ever going to stop until every single one of our siblings gain the love and respect they deserve.