#NETFLIX BEEN REAL QUIET SINCE WE WON

[denimbex1986]

ANDREW SCOTT IS REDIRECTING THE CONVERSATION.

The actor, who plays the enduring queer-with-a-questionmark antihero Tom Ripley in the new Netflix series Ripley, has been doing just that in interviews as of late, and you can hardly blame him; he’s just coming off a promotional run for All of Us Strangers, a romantic fantasy film that has the real-life gay actor playing an adult gay man reliving his youth, including coming out. Scott — beloved as the “Hot Priest” from six-time Emmy winner Fleabag (Prime Video) and nominated in 2020 for an Outstanding Guest Actor turn in Netflix’s Black Mirror — got an avalanche of accolades for the film and, unsurprisingly, questions from reporters keen to link Scott and the character he plays. Interviews hint the Dublin-bred performer, who started acting as a kid and then matriculated through theater, may be weary with forays into identity politics, at least in relation to acting. He’s advised we retire “openly gay” as a descriptor and has likened the sometimes meandering “representation” discourse to a dead end. “It can be a cul-de-sac, certainly,” he told The Guardian. “I think transformation is as important as representation.”

He transforms in Ripley. This adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novels is a stylized, eight-episode noir thriller, with Scott as the titular, elusive con man. It’s true that people had a lot to say about The Talented Mr. Ripley’s queer-coded subtext almost as soon as Highsmith published it in 1955, with critics and essayists noting the homoeroticism oozing from Tom’s obsession with Dickie Greenleaf. Novelist Edmund White read Tom’s penchant for forgery as a metaphor for “passing,” as gays and lesbians of the era did to survive. Of course, cultural commentary and musings about identity have only intensified since, and that discourse nowadays can influence who gets cast and what gets made in the first place. Ripley is rendered in black and white, but black-and-white connections to Tom’s ambiguous sexual orientation, to his behavior or to Scott’s own interior life are, to this actor, the least interesting part of the story.

“I wanted to work very, very hard,” Scott tells emmy from Palm Springs, where he’s gone for a rest after sprinting through awards season. “And that involves just trying to imagine what it’s like to be this character, not play what people’s perception of what the character is. Tom has a very large brain. And watching the brain at work is what makes him such a fascinating character. Anything else, to me, is superfluous. I’m not sure he thinks about himself too much in that way.”

Scott was seduced by the writing. "The scripts were just so brilliantly economic and gripping," he says. "I thought it was a great opportunity to spend that amount of time with such a fascinating character." Steve Zaillian, who wrote, produced and directed Ripley, won an Oscar for his Schindler's List screenplay and received three Emmy nominations for HBO's The Night Of, which he cocreated, cowrote and directed, in part.

Set in the early 1960s, Ripley begins in New York and traverses a handful of Italian locales including the Amalfi Coast, Capri, Rome and Venice. Production ran from the summer of 2021 through the spring of 2022, including some of the pandemic’s most intense days, which forced cast and crew to adhere to stringent protocols. Yet the timing also meant that the citizens and tourists who ordinarily clog streets had vanished, allowing Ripley unobstructed views of Italy’s scenic vistas. As a result, Ripley has a strikingly stark feel that, combined with its blanched palette, conveys a chilly, quiet sparseness that affords full focus on Scott.

“Andrew’s transformation from a disreputable petty crook on the Lower East Side streets of New York to a sophisticated expatriate thriving in Italy is extraordinary,” Zaillian says. “Everything about him gradually changes — the way he looks and carries himself, how he behaves and speaks, how he thinks. It is a finely measured performance.”

Ripley follows Highsmith’s text almost to the letter. In the first episode, we meet Tom in the slums of New York City’s Lower East Side, where he ekes out a living by forging collection notices, stealing checks and committing petty grifts. You know the rest: Tom has a chance encounter with the wealthy father of a casual acquaintance, Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn, Genius: Einstein, Emma). Pretending to be an Ivy League grad and closer friend than he is, Tom is hired by Dickie’s dad to go to Italy and bring home Dickie, a trustafarian flitting about Europe with his girlfriend, Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning, The First Lady, The Alienist). Armed with a first-class ticket on an ocean liner and enough cash for six weeks, Tom finally tastes the affluence he’s always wanted, resented and believed he deserved but was never able to touch. He finds Dickie and develops an unhealthy obsession with him that eventually culminates in murder and identity theft.

It's the unsettling crime story where the bad guy not only wins but makes us complicit in his devious deeds. "What I think Patricia Highsmith does brilliantly," Scott says, "is make us root for somebody, even though they're doing something that we probably wouldn't do ourselves. He is constantly surviving. I can empathize with him, what that feels like, where he's just not being looked at. It's easy to say that someone is a monster because that moves us away from having to look at ourselves. Human beings do monstrous things to protect themselves. That's why that story has stuck around for so long."

Transforming into Tom Ripley took a toll. Even for a performer as versatile and energetic as Scott, who won a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA for playing Moriarty on Sherlock in 2012 and stunned audiences in 2023 by playing all eight parts in the Chekhov-inspired Vanya on the West End. Ripley demanded more than is typical. "What's unusual about this particular bit of television is how much time you spend with one character," he says. "A lot of the time in television, we can spend time with a hospital crew or a family or a police department, but it's unusual, I think, to spend so much time with one character over eight hours," He's in almost every frame. "I had to have an awful lot of stamina."

You really see that stamina in Ripley's fifth episode, a contained, tightly wound thriller unto itself. Scott is terrifying as he feigns innocence to Freddie Miles (Eliot Sumner), a friend of Dickie's suspects foul play. We know Freddie is doomed the moment he enters Tom's elegant Rome apartment, but it's at the end of Freddie's visit that we see Scott's endurance tested as he lugs a heavy body and makes split-second decisions to elude attention, exuding a demented, friendly calm all the while. Scott - with minimal dialogue - slithers past whatever moral walls we believe separate us from monsters.

"You have to, through his face, be able to understand what he's feeling - sometimes in absolute silence," Scott says. "You have to e able to radiate a thought, which is quite difficult when you don't have language to support you. (The audience) is not thinking, 'I hope that inspector catches him.' No. You think, 'Oh my God, hurry up! Someone's coming!' That's extraordinary considering what he's just done. That feeling of, 'What would you do?' That's what the scripts have achieved."

Ripley's hushed tension is complemented by a cinematic approach that producers don't want to call "Hitchcockian" but that whispers influences like La Dolce Vita and Nightmare Alley. Hard lines, curves, shadows, stairways and vacant passageways tease sensual danger, while meticulously curated costumes and objets d'art (including the ashtray that extinguishes poor Freddie) bathe viewers in a fully fleshed-out world of savage beauty.

"The world that Steve wanted to represent was very lonely," says production designer David Gropman, who previously worked with Zaillian on Searching for Bobby Fischer and A Civil Action. Zaillian was exacting and precise about the tone he wanted "cat and mouse," Gropman calls it. That specificity helped him execute Zaillian's vision, but having a clear brief didn't make the realization easier.

Gropman's team included three researchers, five art directors and two supervising art directors, all spread over different countries. They spent months sojourning the Italian coast to select the perfect hotels, banks, post offices and train stations. The team built facsimiles of the main train stations in Naples and Rome, as well as the Lower East Side tenement apartment where we first meet Tom. Every single object we see serves a purpose; in episode five, Tom is in a record shop purchasing a copy of "Il cielo in una stanza" by the Italian singer Mina, who vanished from the public eye in 1978 and has not been seen since - though she continues to release music. A subtle allusion to Tom's ghosting act? Perhaps. Either way, the prop is one of countless Easter eggs that nod to the time, place and sense of dark romance associated with the era.

"He cares about every detail," says Gropman, a two-time Oscar nominee. "We, by Steve's decree, weren't allowed to shoot on streets where there wasn't cobblestone. There were over 200 locations. It's the hardest thing I've ever done."

Others agree that Ripley was a difficult and intense, albeit rewarding, shoot. Flynn recalls struggling with the isolation and anxiety caused by quarantining and distancing after travel, which made seeing his wife and three children in London complicated. Scott and Fanning spent a lot of time with just each other in barren towns. They were lonely, but as number one on the call sheet and a producer, Scott took ownership and worked to take care of his team. "I was finding it really hard," Flynn admits. "He was trying to sneak me care packages. It was really sweet. He was generous and available to everybody, even though he's carrying this huge thing, which I thought was commendable." Fanning called Scott one of the loveliest people she's ever met - warm, funny and full of life. "He's the opposite of his character."

Marge is deeply suspicious of Tom from the jump, but like Tom, she has minimal dialogue. Her intuitive awareness manifests in a furrowed brow, a pursed lip and a clipped smile deployed as a mask. "There's not a lot of people in the story that are fooled by Ripley," Fanning says. "Marge knows something is off but can't quite put her finger on it. There's a lot of acting without words." She loved playing in that box, and with Scott especially. "We just dove in and went through it all together. It was such a challenge, but he couldn't have been a better person to take on this role. He's a grifter who's making you emotional."

Grifter, con man, crook, thief - Tom Ripley might deserve a lot of labels, but one Scott is reluctant to apply is "sociopath" or, for that matter, any other badge that files him in some neat category. "It was important not to diagnose the character with lazy assumptions," he says. Of course, Scott understands all the thinking about Tom's queerness; he's even thought about Highsmith's own complex relationship with her lesbianism in relation to her writing. But he says thinking too much about Tom's orientation, and any notion that it could be more pronounced in this modern take, distracts from the real power of the narrative. "Homophobia can exist sometimes through silence or people's speculating about other people's sexuality," he says. "And there's a lot of speculating about Tom. Sometimes the speculation itself is the (more) insidious thing."

As he told The Guardian, transformation can be as important as representation. And anyway, Tom's sexuality isn't what makes him alluring. It's his ambiguities. All we need to know about Tom Ripley is on the page.

"I wanted to ask questions about him without necessarily answering every single one of them clearly. He has to make stuff up on the spot for survival. He's an absolute brilliant, talented genius," Scott says. "Who is Tom Ripley? The point is we never really know."

#Ripley #Netflix #Steven Zaillian #Andrew Scott #Patricia Highsmith #The Talented Mr Ripley #Johnny Flynn #Dickie Greenleaf #Dakota Fanning #Marge Sherwood #Freddie Miles #Eliot Sumner #Emmys #Black Mirror #All of Us Strangers #Fleabag #Hot Priest #Palm Springs #BAFTA #Moriarty #Sherlock #Vanya #West End #David Gropman

[mouse-fantoms]

EVERYONE THIS IS NOT A DRILL WE WON THREE EMMYS 😭😭😭

#the fact that we were even nominated EIGHT times is unbelievable in and of itself #NETFLIX BEEN REAL QUIET SINCE WE WON #all ya gotta say is ‘this band is back’ and then we’ll be off your ass about it #the moment you say those 4 beautiful words... that will be a moment #tbh I do feel a bit salty that we didn’t win the best casting award but like WHATEVER I GUESS #julie and the phantoms #jatp #jatp netflix #jatp fandom #jatpsongs #netflixwewantjatp2 #netflixwewantjatps2 #netflixwewantjatpseason2 #renew jatp #jatp julie #julie jatp #julie molina #jatp luke #luke jatp #luke patterson #jatp alex #alex jatp #alex mercer #jatp reggie #reggie jatp #reggie peters #jatp cast #kenny ortega #owen joyner #owen patrick joyner

[blueskrugs]

Jump Then Fall | Jack Hughes

I am eternally soft for this kid, okay. this is not the original birthweek fic I had planned for him, but it is a bonus Swift Fic because I couldn't help myself. enjoy while I work on getting my shit together for the summer!

tagging: @marcoscandellas @stlbluesbrat21 @dembenchboys @poltoncarayko @robthomissed @letmeplaytheblues @troubatrain @ayohockeycheck @blackwidowrising @aria253264 @antoineroussel @starswin @glassdanse @ch-ristiane @majdoline @nazdaddy @hockey-more-like

length: 2k words

High school relationships never worked out. That’s what they always told you, at least, when you and Jack were young and in love. And they were right, sort of. You’d broken up not long after you’d both graduated, with Jack off to be drafted and you off to college. Except you’d stayed close, texting and talking on the phone often once Jack had headed off to New Jersey. He was one of your best friends, and you were thankful he was still in your life, but you weren’t sure you’d ever stop loving him, not really.

I like the way you sound in the morning We're on the phone and without a warning I realize your laugh is the best sound I have ever heard

Saturday mornings always meant long phone calls with Jack. You’d both wake up early and make coffee before spending most of the morning on the phone, talking about everything and nothing. Sometimes you wished more than anything that you could see his face, but you weren’t sure what would come spilling out of your mouth when you saw him.

One cold morning in December, you were pretty sure Jack had still been asleep when you called. His voice was slow and rough when he spoke, but you could still hear the smile in his voice.

When you heard him yawn, big enough his jaw cracked, you laughed. “Am I keeping you awake?” you asked.

Jack rushed to answer, “No, never.”

“Jack,” you warned.

Jack laughed. “We got in late last night, I’m just a little tired, I’m fine,” he told you.

“I can let you go back to sleep,” you said.

You heard Jack sit up on the other end of the line. “No way, absolutely not,” he said.

“We’re not even talking about anything important.” You’d mostly been stressing about the end of the semester.

“So? I like talking to you,” Jack argued.

You sighed. “You’re an idiot,” but it came out more fond than annoyed.

Somehow, that phone call lasted almost two more hours. Later, you wouldn’t remember what dumb thing you’d quipped that had made Jack burst out laughing, but you’d always remember the sound of that laugh. You’d wished you’d been able to record it, to have it to listen to on rough days, on days you missed Jack a little extra.

I hear the words but all I can think is We should be together

Jack was telling some story about his teammates. You were only half-listening, paying more attention to his face as he talked. It was late, and Quinn and Jack were home for Christmas. You and the three Hughes boys had taken over the basement for the night. Quinn and Luke were sprawled out on the couch opposite you, and you were buried under several blankets with your feet in Jack’s lap. He was using one hand to help illustrate his story, but the other was resting on your ankle, warm despite the chill outside, his thumb absently rubbing against your bare skin.

Quinn threw a balled up napkin at you, jolting you back to reality. “What’re you thinking about over there?” he asked.

“What?” You threw the napkin back at Quinn.

Luke chimed in, “Yeah, Jack’s not that funny, there’s no way you’re smiling at him.”

“Hey!” Jack protested. You dug your heel into his thigh, and he turned to grin at you.

You hadn’t even realized you were smiling. You always seemed to be smiling when you were around Jack, you couldn’t help it.

“Just missed you guys,” you said, grinning back at Jack.

Jack squeezed your ankle and went back to telling his story. You still weren’t listening.

Well, I like the way your hair falls in your face You got the keys to me I love each freckle on your face, oh

When Jack first started growing his hair out, you hated it.

“No, why,” you said the first time you saw him that summer. Luke laughed from somewhere behind you.

Jack ran a hand through his hair and smirked at you. “What do you mean?” he asked. “You love my hair.”

You tilted your head, pretending to consider. “I’ve changed my mind,” you said.

Jack squawked, outraged and offended. He slung an arm around your shoulder and pulled you in close as you giggled and tried to get away. “You’ll pay for that,” he told you. You dug your elbow into his ribs until he let go of you.

Later that night found the two of you left alone near the bonfire as the sun went down.

“Hey,” Jack said. You locked your phone and tilted your head back to look up at him upside down. “Do you really not like the hair?” he asked.

You snorted. “Would you cut it if I said I didn’t?” Jack shrugged, not quite meeting your eyes. You sat up and twisted to look at Jack properly. “You wouldn’t, oh my God.” It was hard to tell, but he might’ve been blushing in the fading light,

“Just tell me the truth,” he said.

You looked at Jack, really looked at him. He was tan, a new burst of freckles dusted across his nose. He’d shoved a hat on since you’d first seen him earlier in the day, but you could still see how his hair was just beginning to curl at the ends past the nape of his neck. Jack stared back at you, blue eyes dark.

“I guess I could get used to it,” you said.

Honestly, you were so gone for him, you were pretty sure you’d end up still liking him no matter what he looked like.

When people say things that bring you to your knees I'll catch you

Sometimes you didn’t know how Jack put up with it all. From losing streaks to being called a draft bust to people questioning whether he was capable of being a leader, there wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t have to deal with some bullshit. You knew it wasn’t easy, but he rarely let it get to him. Rarely, but not never.

It didn’t surprise you when your phone rang after a rough game. You answered the FaceTime call without thinking about it, smiling softly when Jack’s face filled your screen. He looked tired, dark bags under his eyes and his hair hanging limply in his face.

“Hi, bud,” you said.

Jack closed his eyes and sighed, long and loud, scrubbing his free hand across his face. You’d been able to watch the game, had watched the blowout happen in real time, just another loss in this skid, in a season that had started out promising for once.

“I’m tired,” Jack whined.

“You look like shit,” you told him. Jack stuck his tongue out at you. “Do I need to get Ty to delete Twitter off your phone again?” you asked. Jack rolled his eyes, but you weren’t joking.

“No, I just-” Jack rubbed his eyes again. “Did you see what my plus-minus was tonight?”

It was your turn to roll your eyes. “Oh my God, no, we’re not doing this,” you said. Sometimes Jack wanted to forget everything about a shitty game, but other nights he got frustrated and wanted to pick apart every mistake he’d made on the ice. You dragged your laptop closer to you. “C’mon, open your Netflix, we’re watching a movie.”

There was some scuffling on the other end, with Jack accidentally pointing his phone at the ceiling. “Fine, but I get to pick,” he said.

You argued half-heartedly with him for a while, but he won in the end, and you settled on some movie you’d both seen a dozen times. It was quiet while you watched, a comfortable silence, heavy with familiarity.

“Hey,” Jack said lowly as the end credits rolled later. You’d been half-sure Jack had fallen asleep on you. “Thanks.”

You smiled tiredly at him. It was late, and dark in his room, and you could barely make out his blurry form on your phone. “Anytime, Jacky,” you said, but you meant, “I love you.”

You can jump then fall, jump then fall Jump then fall into me, into me, yeah

Your doorbell rang one morning in early May. When you pulled open the front door, there was Jack, hands shoved deep in his hoodie pocket, standing on your parent’s front porch.

“I thought you weren’t coming home for a few weeks still,” you said, leaning against the door frame. The Devils season was over, but Jack had told you he was planning on sticking around for a while or traveling some before coming home for the summer.

Jack took one of his hands out of his pocket and ran it nervously through his hair. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, instead of responding to your non-question.

You raised an eyebrow at him. You’d known Jack for years, and you could probably count on one hand the number of times you’d seen him be nervous. “Well, don’t hurt yourself with that, bud,” you told him.

He made a face at you, but it also got him to smile. “Will you just let me-” he started, but he didn’t finish his sentence.

“Hey, c’mon, let’s go inside,” you said, stepping back to let Jack follow you into the house.

In the living room, the TV show you had been watching was still paused, but you both ignored it. You sat back on the couch, but Jack stayed standing, awkwardly shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“You’re freaking me out a little, Jacky,” you said.

Jack sighed and sat on the floor in front of you, leaning back on his hands with his legs stretched out in front of him. “I miss you,” he said.

“Jack, we talk every day,” you told him. “I’m right here,” you added softly.

Jack huffed and ran his hands through his hair again. He laid back for a moment, staring silently up at the ceiling fan as it slowly turned above you.

“Have you ever thought about getting back together?” he asked when he sat back up.

You thought about it a lot, actually, but you just said, “Yeah.”

“Do you think we could do it?” Jack asked next.

You hesitated on that one. You’d thought that, maybe, you could’ve made it back when you were in high school, but things were so different now. You’d listened to the opinions of others so much back then, had broken up in part because you thought that it was inevitable anyway. Could you make it through all that again? You still had a few years until you graduated, and New Jersey wasn’t exactly close.

Then again, you two were as close as ever. Jack had only missed a handful of your Saturday morning phone calls, and it was always just because of hockey. He was still sitting on the floor in front of you, looking nervous as he chewed on his bottom lip.

“I don’t know,” you said honestly.

Jack’s face fell a little. “Do you think we could try?”

“Yeah, I think so,” you said, just as honestly. You’d never been good at saying no to Jack, anyway.

Jack beamed, and you knew exactly why you still loved him after all this time. Jack leaned forward and tugged at your foot. “Hey, come down here,” he whined. “Wanna kiss you.”

“Or you could come up here?” Jack tugged harder. “Oh my God, you’re so fucking needy,” you laughed, but you slid off the couch and let Jack pull you into his lap.

His hands went to your waist, sliding under your T-shirt, and he smiled smugly up at you. “Hi.”

You pressed a kiss to his nose. “Hi,” you said back.

“Uh-uh, you can do better than that.” A kiss to his cheek. Jack rolled his eyes and put one of his hands on your cheek to drag you in for a real kiss. “That’s better,” he whispered, but you were already leaning in for another kiss.

#cait writes things #jack hughes #jack hughes fic #jack hughes imagine #nhl fic #nhl imagine

[aion-rsa]

Squid Game’s Most Heartbreaking Hour is Also Its Best

https://ift.tt/3u23hm5

This Squid Game article includes MAJOR spoilers for all nine episodes of the series, including Episode 6.

“Gganbu” isn’t the Squid Game episode with the highest kill count. It’s not the episode when we finally discover the man behind the deadly competition, or its ultimate winner. It is not the most fast-paced or action-driven of the Netflix series’ nine installments, nor is it the bloodiest. Instead, it is a relatively quiet hour that divides its characters into teams of two, with each pair acting as their own mini-social experiment. If the “deadly competition” trope is designed to reflect on the inherent goodness or not of humanity, then Squid Game‘s most articulate answer to the question of what humans will or will not do to survive comes in “Gganbu,” and it is as nuanced as it is heartrending.

What Happens in “Gganbu”?

“Gganbu” concerns itself with the events of Round 4. Before the next, mysterious competition begins, the remaining players are asked to pair up, unaware of how the structure might come into play. Once they have chosen partners, they enter a massive room designed to look like a traditional Korean village. Each player is given a bag with 10 marbles, and instructed to play a game of their choosing with their partner. After 30 minutes, whoever has won the game, and all of their partner’s marbles, will pass the round and survive. The loser will be “eliminated.” This is the round when characters we have come to care about start dying…

This is also the episode that gives the most time to a round of a competition. Episode 7, “VIPs,” comes close with its depiction of Round Five’s bridge of glass, but the narrative focus is split between the competitors and the disgustingly rich men who have come to watch. In “Gganbu,” there is no such split focus. The players begin choosing their characters around the four-minute mark, and they enter the playing arena at around the 13-minute mark. This is where they will stay until the end of the episode, which means the viewer experiences Round 4 in what is, more or less, real time. “Gganbu” makes use of every bit of it.

Can any of these players hold on to any scrap of their humanity when they have been manipulated into Squid Game? This is the question the “deadly competition” trope seeks to explore and, sometimes, answer. Squid Game doesn’t opt for one definitive answer, but rather a more complicated and nuanced one. It does this by giving us four clear, varied scenarios to see this theme played out.

Deok-su vs. Ja-hyoung

First, we have our duo with the least surprising thematic outcome: gangster Deok-su and henchman Ja-hyoung. Unlike Sang-woo, these two have rarely pretended to prioritize anything over their own survival and accumulation of power. When Deok-su betrays Mi-nyeo, leaving her to her presumed death again and again rather than risking his own survival by teaming up with her, it’s expected. Past that, there is little artifice to Deok-su’s games with Ja-hyoung. Ja-hyoung has dropped the act that he will obey Deok-su’s orders without question, but not even Deok-su is surprised by that. After all, he lives his life without the comfort of human connection, solely trusting in violence and money as security—why should he expect anything else from his social circle? What’s most interesting here is the game stipulation that says Deok-su cannot use violence to win the marbles. This puts Deok-su at a disadvantage because violence has always been how he exerts power. While Deok-su ultimately wins, this is the most unsettled we’ve seen him up to this point, and a reminder that even violence has its limits when it comes to ensuring survival.

Sang-woo vs. Ali

Lying can be a form of subtle violence, and it’s one that Sang-woo has demonstrated himself very capable of since the beginning of Squid Game, most notably when he chose to knowingly send his “teammates,” including childhood friend Gi-hun, to the harder dalgona challenges in Round 2. If you’ve been paying attention to Sang-woo, then his betrayal of Ali isn’t particularly surprising, but it cuts much deeper. That is because, while the viewer may not be shocked that Sang-woo would trick Ali to his death to save himself, Ali is. While this characterization didn’t always work for me—I think Ali would be more discerning as a 33-year-old immigrant who has been screwed over before—it works on an emotional and thematic level. Ali is depicted as the most innocent character within the game; he is almost child-like in his portrayal. To see Sang-woo take advantage of that innocence is upsetting. It may be tempting to see Ali as a passive player in this game, but that’s not how I view him. To me, believing in the goodness of others, and taking a chance on the relationships you have built is not only an active decision, but one of the bravest ones—an action that Deok-su and Sang-woo are much too cowardly to ever take themselves.

Gi-hun vs. Il-nam

While Gi-hun may struggle to play “fair” against Il-nam when his own survival is at stake, it’s all in the context of Gi-hun’s first major decision in this episode: to take Il-nam as his teammate. When the partner requirement is announced, Gi-hun initially goes to seek a more able-bodied contestant—and he has some good options. However, when someone points out that there is an uneven number of people and makes the assumption that the odd man out will be killed, Gi-hun sacrifices the edge a more physically able teammate might give him in order to make sure Il-nam doesn’t die. In this episode, Gi-hun hits peak aspirational relatability. He is the kind of player, the kind of human, we would like to believe ourselves to be. He’s relatable in that, when Il-nam’s apparent dementia gives him the chance to avoid losing, he takes it; he wants to survive. He’s aspirational in that, when faced with entering Round 4 in the first place, he chose friendship and compassion over the presumed competitive edge. It’s not the first time we’ve seen him make that decision, and it won’t be the last.

Read more

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Ultimately, the outcome of “Gganbu”‘s contest between Gi-hun and Il-nam hits different once you’ve seen the ending of the season, and the Oh Il-nam twist. Il-nam doesn’t die here. In many ways, Il-nam’s arc in this episode foreshadows that reveal. For most of the episode, we and Gi-hun are led to believe that Il-nam doesn’t fully understand what’s going on. Then, with only minutes left in the round, Il-nam reveals to Gi-hun that he knows Gi-hun has been tricking him, using his apparent memory problems against him to ensure he isn’t taken out of the game. It’s a manipulation not unlike the larger manipulations of the game in the sense that Il-nam has so much more power than Gi-hun, and is using that power to play with him and see what he will do. It’s cruel because it is dishonest. Watching this the first time, Il-nam’s decision to let Gi-hun win is a powerful one, and it disappoints that the Il-nam plot twist retroactively undercuts that narrative choice. That being said, the playing out of this dynamic—both a first and second time—helps to give us a complex, nuanced view of humanity.

Sae-byeok vs. Ji-yeong

While most of the players spend their half hour playing marbles to the death, Sae-byeok and Ji-yeong choose to “enjoy” what will be the final 30 minutes of one of their lives. This decision alone is a thematically impactful one: it treats life as precious. By using that 30 minutes to share their secrets with one another, they are choosing humanity’s capacity for togetherness and connection over humanity’s capacity for violence and desperation. They tell stories about the pain they have endured, and trade dreams about a future only one of them (and then neither of them) will have. While some, especially during an initial watch, may think the “Gganbu” of the title refers to the friendship between Gi-hun and Il-nam, I think it refers to the connection between Sae-byeok and Ji-yeong. If a gganbu is, as Il-nam describes it: “a good friend, one you trust a lot [and] you share things with,” then Sae-byeok and Ji-yeong become gganbu over the course of this hour of television.

In the end, Ji-yeong decides to let her gganbu, Sae-byeok, win. If Deok-su and Sang-woo represent the worst of humanity’s capacity for selfishness, then Sae-byeok and especially Ji-yeong represent humanity’s capacity for hope. And, unlike so many stories in this subgenre, Squid Game treats Ji-yeong’s act of desperate hope as just as likely as Deok-su or Sang-woo’s desperate acts of self-interest.

Humanity is not a monolith. Some of us make selfish decisions and some of us make selfless ones. Usually, it’s a combination of both. Squid Game neither wholly condemns humanity, nor wholly celebrates it; instead, it goes for something in-between, with an eye towards hope. While other episodes in Squid Game‘s first season concern themselves with a criticism of how society allows the ultra-powerful few to make decisions about the value of human life, “Gganbu”‘s ambitions are simultaneously simpler and much more ambitious: It chooses to depict the most powerful and affecting act not as a show of violence, but rather as a quiet gift of friendship and the sharing of one’s own name. As a result, “Gganbu” is Squid Game at its absolute best.

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The post Squid Game’s Most Heartbreaking Hour is Also Its Best appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3zxZq1a

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[itsomgitsgreenblogging]

Xhorhassian Castle Strategy: A Shadowgast fanfic

Shout out to the ETFC. I swore I wasn't going to write this...and then we had such an amazing conversation that I just had to write this because of the vibes. The Queen's Gambit is a great show on netflix about chess...which I know nothing about and I just figured since that there are no rules for the dnd equivalent dragonchess so I could do whatever I wanted lol. This is really here for the vibes.

Enjoy! Read on AO3 The hotel was a swanky joint, one of the most expensive hotels in all of the Dwendalian Empire. Essek didn’t have much use for the light and the noise...it wasn’t like they were trying to make anything easier for him and he wouldn’t have asked regardless. However, once they all got past the formal stilted manner of most Empire competitions during the actual playing, the after-affairs tended to be rather convivial and light-hearted. Most players knew each other from circuits and practice and other competitions, so it wasn’t too surprising to see players who had just been engaged in tough matches to reach each other and ask to meet up for dinner or a drink.   Essek, as a rule of thumb, couldn’t be bothered with those kinds of things and didn’t really know anyone besides. After all, he was the only Dynasty dragonchess player who had been invited to the tournament...and it had been done out of obligation rather than a sense of sportsmanship. You couldn’t claim to be running the “Dragonchess World Championship” without the top players from across the world...even if they were your political enemies. Essek was sure they would have rather had Adeen (who had come in last or second to last in the past five World Championships) just to save their glorious Empire sense of superiority. But Essek had trounced him months ago so decisively that Adeen had gone to “find himself and his play style” out in whatever backwater Greying Wildlands hovel that artists went to go and starve for their creative vision in. And so, Essek had been invited and now was on track to win. There was only one final obstacle in his path.  The Zemnian was there with the others, milling about after the day adjourned. He had finished his game quickly. Though Bryce was known for their elegant and thoughtful play on the board they got discouraged quickly. The Zemnian had made quick work of them as soon as he smelled discomfort. Brash and bold on the board, cocky almost to a fault in contrast with his placid demeanor-he played to win and was out for blood every time. He had smashed through Bryce’s defence almost instantaneously the minute the other had faltered. Essek, though he wouldn’t like to admit it, had a much harder time with Beauregard Lionett. She was the opposite of the Zemnian. Though her personality was all bluster and edges, she played a precise and precocious game-was flexible and agile upon the board. It was like trying to capture a swallow-though in the end, she had been cornered and forced to submit through gritted teeth. 

Essek made his quick escape up to his room, not wanting to be pulled into an obligatory conversation or useless pleasantries. For a while, he lay on the couch and let the tension seep out from his back. When he played he often felt numb to everything but his thoughts. It was wonderful and freeing and exhilarating. However the minute he stopped playing he would feel his stress pounding in his ears...locking up his jaw and neck and joints. It was like a residual pain that haunted his body and he did his best to just block it out. In his mind, the moves echoed there like footsteps. He could almost ignore the pain when he focused on them. Clicking into place in a rhythm of the clock and-

“Essek? We’re back,” Verin said as the door opened and revealed him and his mother. It startled Essek, but it shouldn’t have. His brother had never had a good sense of privacy. Verin set a bottle of water by the table for him, and Essek took it and swung himself into a seated position despite the complaints in his muscles. “Well? Congratulations on making it to the finals.”   “He was watching me again,” Essek sighed as he took a sip of his water and not having any time for his empty congratulations considering his only real challenge was ahead. Essek would only accept congratulations when he won. Which he would, of course, but still. He eyed his notebook where he had written down his notes the dragonchess matches from that day. He should have been studying his only real competition’s moves, he should have been mentally preparing, but the only thing he could think of was his eyes. Blue and piercing and digging into his thoughts. It was infuriating if he was being honest.  “Who?” Verin asked curiously, tipping his head to the side.  “The Zemnian,” Essek said, annoyed that he even needed to clarify.  “Why?” Verin asked, still clueless as ever. Essek tried to breathe his irritation out and settle his mind. Victory only came when your mind was as still as a pool, it was an old proverb that Leylas Kryn liked to say to him.  “He unnerves me,” Essek admitted. 

“Oh please,” his mother, Deirta sighed from where she was lounging, dramatically draping herself as if she had no time for his concern. “You don’t really believe he will beat you, do you?” 

“The reason I dislike you mother is because you are so incapable of surprise. You lack imagination. I know I don't,” Essek said as he got up with a huff, unable to be in the room with them any longer or else he was going to kill them. And he couldn’t do that...he needed them to get home.  “I’m going to get a drink.” 

His mother threw her hands in the air but let him leave from the hotel room they were occupying. He got a few looks from people as he walked down the hallway but didn’t pay them any mind. Drow weren’t a usual sight in the Empire, and he knew he had a reputation. Essek Thelyss, the young upstart dragonchess prodigy-representative of the hope of thousands of others to break through and make the Empire bend the knee in any way they could. Personally, Essek could do without it all. He wanted-no, he needed to win to satisfy his vanity and ego. But he didn’t care about the hopes of his country. Honestly, it was exhausting to pretend he did. But he didn’t want to lose, and if he didn’t want to lose then he had to put up appearances so the Dynasty would bankroll his way to competitions. 

He stood in the elevator, the other tenants hoping off on the way down. In his mind he replayed the game in his mind and visualized the moves of the game. Barbarian to C5, Monk to 4D-then the Archmage Reversal formation. If he had just put the Rogue in an offensive decision the game probably would have been decided three moves sooner- The elevator opened, and the Zemnian stood for a minute. His face was a study of surprise, as he blinked rapidly at him. Essek felt his back straighten as he held his head high and refused to give the Zemnian more than a cursory nod of greeting. The Zemnian walked in, looked at the button for the lounge that Essek had already pressed, and then stood a few steps away from him. Essek for a minute closed his eyes and tried to breathe, refusing to look at the Zemnian. The pressure in the air could have made Essek’s ears pop-the weight of his attention chafed against his flesh like cheap fabric and almost made him squirm. 

“The opening was surprising for you,” the Zemnian finally said. His voice was much quieter than Essek had expected. Essek was sure he had heard him speak in interviews before, but it was still a surprise. “You prefer the Xhorhassian Castle Strategy.”

 “Beauregard Lionett is a student of Grandmaster Dairon,” Essek said, insulted by the insinuation and folding his arms over his chest. “Expositer’s Gambit. Only an idiot would play Xhorhassian Castle against a Monk lead. I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes as Obann.” 

“You studied her game against Obann?” the Zemnian asked, a quiet reflective surprise in his voice. Essek refused to turn his head and look at him. He didn’t want to see him-see his blue eyes or his rugged jaw or the lines in his face. 

“A decisive and well played match,” Essek said curtly. “I make it a habit to work through all of my competitors’ matches, no matter how unknown or new they are.”  “I see.”  “I know you see, you’ve been watching me,” Essek said as he watched the elevator buttons continue to light up as it moved down. Surely this was the longest conversation of his entire life and he was going to personally murder whoever had built this elevator for forcing him into it. “I imagine you were doing the same.”  “Of course,” The Zemnian said, and Essek was glad he didn’t bother to deny it. Essek could feel his gaze digging into his neck and it made him want to swat at his own skin.  “If you want to enjoy staring at me longer, it may be worth your time to invest in a photo,” Essek said, tapping his foot at the elevator that hit the floor before their destination. He couldn’t hide his irritation.“I have quite a few good ones in the Dynasty Times.”  “I know...I’ve seen them,” the Zemnian said. Essek refused to flush or flinch, and clenched his jaw so tight he was sure he was about to crack a tooth.  “Of course you have,” Essek said with a controlled sigh as the elevator finally hit the floor and opened. Essek took a few steps out only to turn and see the Zemnian reaching out his hand. Essek stared at him. He couldn’t have been more surprised if the Zemnian had grown a second head and started singing Marquesian folk songs. 

“I was going to meet with my friends,” he said, his expression was soft-like Essek was a slightly feral creature he was trying to soothe. “We were going to go over the matches so far. Would you like to accompany me?” 

“You mean my matches,” Essek said, unable to help narrowing his eyes. His hand returned to his side in response. “With who? Beauregard Lionett? Veth Brenatto? Jester Lavorre?”

 “As well as Fjord and Caduceus,” he said with an almost-smile. “Is it not practice in the Dynasty to do the same?” 

Essek almost grimaced. It was standard practice for groups of skilled dragonchess players to go over games and sequences and practice together. Essek never did. Standard practice to be bogged down by old players stuck in their old ways, to be told you were too young or too ambitious or too reckless or too careful. There was nothing to be learned from such sessions that you couldn’t learn on your own or from just watching. 

“Dragonchess is an individual affair,” Essek reminded him. “At the end of the day, you and I are going to face each other alone. I’ll win on my own terms.” 

“I played like that before, but I find this way more enjoyable,” he said with a tinge of humor to his tone. 

“I know you did, back when you had a different name and a different circle you ran with,” Essek said simply. “Your play style hasn’t changed too drastically-you always were a stickler for the scorched earth tactic no matter how you like to present yourself.” 

“My name is Caleb Widogast,” the Zemnian told him, an unreadable expression on his face. 

“It doesn’t matter to me what you call yourself-Nine Hells, you could call yourself King Dwendal and it would make no difference to me,” Essek told him. “My only request is you meet me on the board at your best tomorrow. Show me the best you can do. If I wanted to beat a player like any of your friends, I would just play them again.” 

“That’s a big request coming from the youngest Xhorhassian Grandmaster in history,” Caleb said with a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth where Essek was definitely not looking. 

“Said the youngest Zemnian Grandmaster in history,” Essek pointed out with a roll of his eyes. 

“Have a good evening, Herr Thelyss,” he said with a look that Essek refused to register as something deeper. Their eyes met, and for just a single moment Essek wondered how it would feel to be seen like that all the time. But the thought was fleeting. After all, victory came from clarity...and his greatest clarity was only found in solitude. 

“Have a good evening, Mr. Widogast,” Essek said quietly, not for an instant feeling regretful. 

And so they parted ways without a single look back. After all, Essek had his eye on the prize.

#critical role #critical role fanfic #shadowgast #shadowgast fanfic #essek thelyss #caleb widogast #queen's gambit au #dragonchess

[illumose]

BTS reaction : they ignore their s/o

genre : angst, fluff, hurt and comfort.

warning : mention of sex in Taehyung’s reaction.

author’s note : here’s a new reaction, it took me a week to fulfill it due to my lack of inspiration and motivation.

seokjin •

Seokjin and you had an argument a few days ago, about you spending your time out with your friends. You understood his point of view, however, his condescending tone pushed you to snap back. You’ve had arguments with him in the past, but it never lasted. You would always find a way to make up.

His attitude towards you was cold and distant, he clearly ignored you despite your attempts to apologize. Both of you had crossed the line, saying things more than stupid and mean. The more he gave you the cold shoulder, the more you felt the urge to cry. You weren’t the only one in the wrong, yet, he knew it.

You hanging out with a couple of friends should not have caused a conflict. You gave him most of your free time, but sometimes, you needed to have time for yourself, which included your girlfriends who have always been here for you. You did not quite understand Seokjin’s reaction, mostly because every time you went out, he was practicing.

"D’you want to eat Chinese or Italian?" You questioned, looking at the flyer in your hand. It was about a new restaurant which opened in town, the first reviews were great, so you wanted to try it.

He felt the urge to look at you, but he did not. He was still looking at the screen of his phone, avoiding your gaze. Seokjin’s behaviour was childish, however, it was his way to show he was not going to back down from his position.

"Ok, I guess I’ll go there alone. I’ll find someone to talk to because, apparently, you don’t want to acknowledge my presence. Come to me when you’re ready to grow up," You sighed, taking your jacket, your hangbag and your car keys.

yoongi •

You were used to Yoongi ignoring you. Whenever a comeback was coming, he would lock himself up in his studio. You would barely see him for a few days, at most. He’d always come back for you, because he craved your cuddles and warmth.

This time, however, it did not happen. It has been two weeks of radio silence, you’ve only had two texts from him, letting you know that he was still alive. You were worried about his health, staying in a room all day and night was not good. Two weeks that you hadn’t cuddled your sweet and gentle boyfriend. Two weeks without his gummy smile.

You knew that going there would only infuriate him, he liked to be alone whilst producing. Nonetheless, despite the fact that you understood his attitude, you couldn’t help being slightly annoyed. He could have, at least, checked on you. You could have died during the week, and he wouldn’t know until next Sunday.

As you were thinking about Yoongi, you heard footsteps from the hallway. Someone was in your house, perhaps a robber. You took the first thing you could reach, which was a vase. You carefully opened the door, and took a glimpse at the dark corridor.

"Babe, I’m—" A masculine voice resonated, making you frown. You lowered the vase, recognizing the shadow figure of your boyfriend.

"Oh my god, you scared me to death," You exhaled loudly, relieved.

"What were you doing with a... vase?" He questioned, an amused expression on the face. You jumped in his arms, hugging him tightly. "Missed me, honey?" He smiled, placing a soft kiss on your cheek.

He was finally back, and you were glad to be able to hold him close to you.

hoseok •

Hoseok’s jealousy was rare, but it popped in right before a date night. He saw you hugging one of his members, a harmless gesture which he did not like it. Perhaps the fact that he sought your full attention was the reason of his reaction.

The pang of jealousy did not leave his heart, even when the two of you were at the theatre, in the queue to see the new Fast and Furious. "Why are you so silent, Hobie?" You frowned. He was quiet, when usually he would be loud and excited.

No response. You pinched your lower lip. You wondered what you had done wrong for him to ignore you on your date night. The cashier’s voice brought you back to your senses. As you paid for the tickets, Hoseok stayed silent. He did not even thank you for the ticket.

You started to be irritated by his behaviour. You were here to have a good night with your loving boyfriend. If he did not want to come, he should have told you instead of being cold and distant.

As you walked to the seats, you noticed how he did not glance at you a single time. Usually, his attention would be focused on you. "What’s wrong with you? I can’t stand this type of attitude, Hobie, and you know it," You asked, with patience. No answer. This time, you put a fake smile on your face. "Ok, you act as if I don’t exist. You know what? Have a nice movie, I won’t waste my time with—"

He cut you off with a steamy kiss, full of love an passion. "I’m so sorry, Jagiya. I did not plan on ruining our night out, nor to upset you," He mumbled, his nose brushing past yours. "I shouldn’t have behaved like this."

namjoon •

You pranked Namjoon a few days ago, with Jungkook’s help. It was his idea in the first place to put a fake hickey on your neck, he thought it would be fun to watch his hyung’s panic. However, it didn’t turn out to be a funny prank, Namjoon’s reaction was far worse than what you expected.

You thought he would ask you a bunch of questions, or guess it was a joke and not the reality. That’s not what happened. He did not say anything, and left the dorm. Since then, he ignored you. You, of course, told him the truth, but he still continued to give you the cold shoulder.

"C’mon, Joonie. I shouldn’t have pranked you. We were expecting an hilarious reaction, not your silence and coldness. I’m sorry," You whined, trying to reach out for his hand, but he backed away. You could not understand his behavior. Yes, cheating was not a thing to take lightly, nevertheless, it was false. Why would he stay mad at you?

A pout formed itself on your face, and you looked down at the floor with sadness. You wanted your sweet boyfriend back. You felt like dating a Zombie, which was a horrible feeling.

"I guess giving you space could make it up... I’ll be at the boys’ dorm," You were ready to go to your bedroom to pack a bag when you felt his hand on your wrist, stopping you from moving.

"Don’t go, babe. I overreacted, and I know it. It’s just that you’re my whole world, so I felt terrible when I saw this fake hickey. I know you wouldn’t cheat on me, but the possibility’s still here. I’m sorry for ignoring you, I love you too much to be far from you," He sighed, making you sit on his lap. You giggled a little at his confession.

Your hands were wrapped around his neck. "I forgive you because you forgave me."

Jimin •

Jimin had difficulties dealing with his insecurities, it always pushed him to stay alone with his worries for friends. He would work harder, tiring himself out until he passed out from exhaustion.

You tried to give him space and time to reflect on his issues, but it only worsened with time. He would barely talk to other people, which worried you a lot. You loved him with all your heart, so seeing him destroying himself because of comments he read on the internet, it broke your heart. You wanted to help him overcome his insecurities. You never understood why he was self-conscious, because for you, he was flawless. He danced ans sang with so much talent. He was handsome, kind, generous and caring.

"Jimin, it’s not good for you to stay here all day. You can barely stand on your two feet, you look sick, love," You approached him, with a voice full of concern. You scrutinized his face, he was definitely lacking sleep. "I know that mentally you’re not in the best place, but you shouldn’t push us away," You went on saying. "The boys are scared about your health, they want nothing more than seeing you smile again. You ignored everybody for a whole week, you cannot keep doing this to yourself."

He looked up from the floor, his eyes finally meeting yours. He was on the verge of crying, but you did not care. You went to hug him, holding him tightly against your chest. "Thank you," He muttered with a broken voice.

You caressed his cheek, and flashed him a reassuring smile. You knew he felt like a burden to his relatives, and it was not the case. "I love you so much. I don’t like watching you suffer. I’d do anything for you, babe."

With those words, he buried his face into the crook of your neck and hummed your soft perfume, which he absolutely adored. He knew that you were the one keeping him grounded on the floor, keeping him going. Without you, he wouldn’t fight against his insecurities and demons. "I love you too," He mumbled.

taehyung •

You ate Taehyung’s last cookie, without knowing it would anger him. It was not done purposefully, and he knew it. However, he couldn’t help feeling annoyed by this small thing. He ignored you. When you would ask him a question, he wouldn’t answer. When you tried to cuddle him, he would reject your touch.

It was like living with a ghost. You absolutely hated this situation, even more when your vacation came to an end. You spent the five days of holiday in quietness, watching netflix and reading books because your boyfriend did not acknowledge you at all.

"Are you happy? Contented? I’ve wasted five days of well-earned vacation. I thought we could have spent time together, like a real couple. But apparently, you decided to ignore me. Silent treatment, what a way to enjoy each other," You laughed, sarcastically. You were done with him and his puerile and immature behaviour. "Next time, tell me when you plan on acting like a teenager. This way, I’ll go to a friend’s house to have a good time. You won, Taehyung."

With that, you left the room to go to the bathroom. You still had a few hours to enjoy your vacation, and you wanted to take a bath. You were furious and needed to rest. About half an hour later, you heard a knock on the door. If you hadn’t yelled, he wouldn’t be in front of the room, ready to apologize.

"Y/n? Can I enter?" He asked, in a soft voice. He wasn’t bitter anymore.

"Yes," You replied, playing with the bubbles of soap.

"I’m here to apologize because of my recent attitude," He started, walking towards the bathtub. "I’m truly sorry for ruining your holidays, I know you were looking forward to it. Give me a chance to make it up, love," He suggested, undressing himself.

A bath together, ending up in cuddles and sex, there’s nothing better.

jungkook •

He ignored you, with the aim to prank you. He wanted to see how you would react to his coldness. He did not expect you to do the same thing in return. He thought you would have tried to make him talk to you with tickles or a little bit of teasing.

Now, he was sitting next to you on the sofa as you watched a serie on the television. He sighed for the hundredth time, a pout on the face. He wanted your affection and attention. Things you weren’t willing to give him. What he did not know is the fact that you found out about his prank and decided to give him a taste of his own medicine.

"Please, baby. Look at me, talk to me. You can punch me, slap me, yell at me. I don’t care. It’s horrible not to hear your wonderful laughter," He whined, like a child begging for his mother’s attention. "I’ll do anything for you to talk again," He promised, falling on his knees in front of you.

"Anything?" You muttered, a smirk on the lips. He finally got a reaction out of you, making him smile happily.

"Yes."

"It’s an interesting proposition that you have here, but I don’t know if I can trust you," You added.

"What do yo want? To go shopping? To go to the theatre?" He questioned, quickly. He was desperate to have your love.

"Food. I’m craving french fries and a cheeseburger," You told him. As fast as he could, he stood up and ran to get his keys and wallet. In a matter of seconds, he was out in the direction of the first fastfood to fulfill your wishes. You laughed, rolling your eyes. He could be an angel when he wanted.

#bts imagine #bts reaction #bts scenario #bts imagines #bts reactions

[iwanthermidnightz]

“Not a shot. Not a single chance. Not a snowball’s chance in hell.”

Taylor Swift — who, at 30, has reached a Zen state of cheerful realism — laughs as she leans into a pillow she’s placed over her crossed legs inside her suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, leaning further still into her infinitesimal odds of winning a Golden Globe, which will zero out when she heads down to the televised ball in a few hours.

Never mind whether or not the tune she co-wrote, “Beautiful Ghosts,” might actually have been worthy of a trophy for best original song (or shortlisted for an Oscar, which it was not). Since the Globe nominations were revealed, voters could hardly have been immune to how quickly the film it’s a part of, “Cats,” in which she also co-stars, became a whipping boy for jokes about costly Hollywood miscalculations and creative disasters. Not that you’ll hear Swift utter a discouraging word about it all. “I’m happy to be here, happy to be nominated, and I had a really great time working on that weird-ass movie,” she declares. “I’m not gonna retroactively decide that it wasn’t the best experience. I never would have met Andrew Lloyd Webber or gotten to see how he works, and now he’s my buddy. I got to work with the sickest dancers and performers. No complaints.”

If this leads you to believe that the pop superstar is in the business of sugarcoating things, consider her other new movie — a vastly more significant documentary that presents Swift not just sans digital fur but without a whole lot of the varnish of the celebrity-industrial complex. The Netflix-produced “Taylor Swift: Miss Americana” has a prestige slot as the Jan. 23 opening night gala premiere of the Sundance Film Festival before it reaches the world as a day-and-date theatrical release and potential streaming monster on Jan. 31.

The doc spends much of its opening act juxtaposing the joys of creation with the aggravations of global stardom — the grist of many a pop doc, if rendered in especially intimate detail — before taking a more provocative turn in its last reel to focus more tightly on how and why Swift became a political animal. It’s the story of an earnest young woman with a self-described “good girl” fixation working through her last remaining fears of being shamed as she comes to embrace her claws, and her causes.

Given that the film portrays how gradually, and sometimes reluctantly, Swift came to place herself into service as a social commentator, “Miss Americana” is a portrait of the birth of an activist. Director Lana Wilson sets the movie up so that it pivots on a couple of big letdowns for its subject. The first comes early in the film, and early in the morning, when Swift’s publicist calls to update her on how many of the top three Grammy categories her 2017 album “Reputation” is nominated for: zilch. She’s clearly bummed about the record’s brushoff by the awards’ nominating committee, as just about anyone who’d previously won album of the year twice would be, and determinedly tells her rep that she’s just going to make a better record.

But she suffers what feels like a more meaningful blow toward the end of the film. In the fall of 2018, Swift finally comes out of the closet politically to intervene on behalf of Democrats in a midterm election in her home state of Tennessee. As the Washington Post put it, this announcement “fell like a hammer across the Trump-worshipping subforums of the far-right Internet, where people had convinced themselves… that the world-famous pop star was a secret MAGA fan.” Donald Trump goes on camera to smirk that he now likes Swift’s music a little less. The singer is successful in enlisting tens of thousands of young people to register to vote, but her senatorial candidate of choice, Democrat Phil Bredesen, loses to Republican Marsha Blackburn, whom she’d called out as a flagrant enemy of feminism and gay rights.

“Definitely, that was a bigger disappointment for me,” Swift says, pitting the midterm snub against the Grammy snub. “I think what’s going on out in the world is bigger than who gets a prize at the party.”

It was not always thus for Swift — as the detractors who dragged her for staying quiet during the last presidential election eagerly pointed out. If you had to pick the most embarrassing or regrettable moment in “Miss Americana,” it might be the TV clip from “The Late Show With David Letterman” in which the host brings up politics and gets Swift to essentially advocate the “Shut up and sing” mantra. As the studio audience roars approval of her vow to stay apolitical, Letterman gives her what now looks like history’s most dated fist bump.

Thinking back on it, Swift is incredulous. “Every time I didn’t speak up about politics as a young person, I was applauded for it,” she says. “It was wild. I said, ‘I’m a 22-year-old girl — people don’t want to hear what I have to say about politics.’ And people would just be like, ‘Yeahhhhh!’”

At that point, Swift was already starting to record isolated pop tracks, taking baby steps that would soon turn into full strides away from her initial genre. But whether she had designs on switching lanes or not, the lesson of the Dixie Chicks’ forced exile after Natalie Maines’ comment against then-President George W. Bush had branded itself onto her brain at an earlier age, when she’d just planted her young-teen flag in Nashville and overheard a lot of the lamentations of older Music Row songwriters about how the Chicks had thrown it all away.

“I saw how one comment ended such a powerful reign, and it terrified me,” says Swift. “These days, with social media, people can be so mad about something one day and then forget what they were mad about a couple weeks later. That’s fake outrage. But what happened to the Dixie Chicks was real outrage. I registered it — that you’re always one comment away from being done being able to make music.”

Maybe the most transfixing scene in “Miss Americana” is one where Swift argues with her father and other members of her team about the statement she’s about to release coming out against Blackburn and — it’s clear from her references to White House opposition to the Equality Act — Donald Trump too. The comments were so spontaneous that Wilson wasn’t there to film the moment, but the director had asked people to turn on the camera if anything interesting transpired, and here it most certainly did.

“For 12 years, we’ve not got involved in politics or religion,” an unnamed associate says to Swift, suggesting that going down the road of standing against a president as well as Republican gubernatorial and Senate candidates could have the effect of halving her audience on tour. Her father chimes in: “I’ve read the entire [statement] and … right now, I’m terrified. I’m the guy that went out and bought armored cars.”

“I needed to get to a point where I was ready, able and willing to call out bullshit rather than just smiling my way through it.” TAYLOR SWIFT

But Swift is adamant about pressing the button to send a nearly internet-breaking Instagram post, saying that Blackburn has voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act as well as LGBTQ-friendly bills: “I can’t see another commercial [with] her disguising these policies behind the words ‘Tennessee Christian values.’ I live in Tennessee. I am Christian. That’s not what we stand for.” Pushing back tears, she laments not having come out against Trump two years earlier, “but I can’t change that. … I need to be on the right side of history. … Dad, I need you to forgive me for doing it, because I’m doing it.”

Says Swift now, “This was a situation where, from a humanity perspective, and from what my moral compass was telling me I needed to do, I knew I was right, and I really didn’t care about repercussions.” She understands why she faced such heated opposition in the room: “My dad is terrified of threats against my safety and my life, and he has to see how many stalkers we deal with on a daily basis, and know that this is his kid. It’s where he comes from.”

Swift was recently announced as the recipient of a Vanguard Award from GLAAD, and she name-checked the org in her basher-bashing single “You Need to Calm Down,” which was released as one of the teaser tracks for last fall’s more outwardly directed and socially conscious “Lover” album. Part of her politicization, she says, is feeling it would be hypocritical to hang out with her gay friends while leaving them to their own devices politically. In the film, she says, “I think it is so frilly and spineless of me to stand onstage and go ‘Happy Pride Month, you guys,’ and then not say this, when someone’s literally coming for their neck.”

A year and a half later, she elaborates: “To celebrate but not advocate felt wrong for me. Using my voice to try to advocate was the only choice to make. Because I’ve talked about equality and sung about it in songs like ‘Welcome to New York,’ but we are at a point where human rights are being violated. When you’re saying that certain people can be kicked out of a restaurant because of who they love or how they identify, and these are actual policies that certain politicians vocally stand behind, and they disguise them as family values, that is sinister. So, so dark.”

Her increasing alignment with the LGBTQ community wasn’t the only thing raising her consciousness to a breaking — i.e., speaking — point. So did the sexual assault trial in which judgment was rendered that she had been groped by a DJ in a backstage photo op (for financial restitution, Swift had asked for $1).

Her experience with the trial was crucial, she says, in finding herself “needing to speak up about beliefs I’d always had, because it felt like an opportunity to shed light on what those trials are like. I experienced it as a person with extreme privilege, so I can only imagine what it’s like when you don’t have that. And I think one theme that ended up emerging in the film is what happens when you are not just a people pleaser but someone who’s always been respectful of authority figures, doing what you were supposed to do, being polite at all costs. I still think it’s important to be polite, but not at all costs,” she says. “Not when you’re being pushed beyond your limits, and not when people are walking all over you. I needed to get to a point where I was ready, able and willing to call out bulls— rather than just smiling my way through it.”

That came into play when Kanye West stepped into her life and publicly shamed her a second time. In the video Kim Kardashian released in 2016, you can hear the people-pleasing Swift on the other end of the line sheepishly thanking him for letting her know about the “Me and Taylor might still have sex” line he plans to include about her in a song — only to regret it later when the eventual track also includes the claim “Why? I made that bitch famous.” The boast, of course, referred back to the moment when he interrupted her and stole her spotlight at the MTV VMAs six years earlier as she was in the middle of an acceptance speech. West’s is not a name that ever publicly escapes Swift’s lips, so it might be surprising to fans that these events are recapped in “Miss Americana,” although Swift says the filmic decisions were all up to the director, who explains that Swift’s reaction to the episode was important to include.

“With the 2009 VMAs, it surprised me that when she talked about how the whole crowd was booing, she thought that they were booing her, and how devastating that was,” says Wilson. “That was something I hadn’t thought about or heard before, and made it much more relatable and understandable to anyone.”

“I see the movie as looking at the flip side of being America’s sweetheart.” LANA WILSON, DIRECTOR OF “TAYLOR SWIFT: MISS AMERICANA”

Swift acknowledges how formative both incidents have been in her life, for ill and good. “As a teenager who had only been in country music, attending my very first pop awards show,” she says now, “somebody stood up and sent me the message: ‘You are not respected here. You shouldn’t be here on this stage.’ That message was received, and it burrowed into my psyche more than anyone knew. … That can push you one of two ways: I could have just curled up and decided I’m never going to one of those events ever again, or it could make me work harder than anyone expects me to, and try things no one expected, and crave that respect — and hopefully one day get it.

“But then when that person who sparked all of those feelings comes back into your life, as he did in 2015, and I felt like I finally got that respect (from West), but then soon realized that for him it was about him creating some revisionist history where he was right all along, and it was correct, right and decent for him to get up and do that to a teenage girl…” She sighs. “I understand why Lana put it in.”

Adds the woman who started her recent “Lover” album with a West-allusive romp that’s pointedly called “I Forgot That You Existed”: “I don’t think too hard about this stuff now.”

What’s not in the film is any mention of her other most famous nemeses — Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta of Big Machine Records, with whom she’s scrapped publicly for several months. “The Big Machine stuff happened pretty late in our process,” says Wilson. “We weren’t that far from picture lock. But there’s also not much to say that isn’t publicly known. I feel like Taylor’s put the story out there in her own words already, and it’s been widely covered. I was interested in telling the story that hadn’t been told before, that would be surprising and emotionally powerful to audiences whether they were music industry people or not.”

Still, the way Swift has been willing to stand up politically for others parallels the manner in which she stood up for herself in regard to Braun, et al., at the recent Billboard Women in Music Awards, where she gave an altogether blistering speech, naming names and taking no prisoners, going after the men who now control her six-album Big Machine back catalog. Certainly Swift was aware that, along with supporters, there were many friends and business associates of Braun among the VIPs in the Hollywood Palladium who would not be pleased with what this very reformed people-pleaser had to say.

One thing everyone who was in the room agrees on is that you could hear a pin drop as Swift used the speech to get even bolder about the meat of these disputes. Some would say it’s because they were riveted by her boldness in speaking truth to power, others because they just felt uncomfortable. Says one fellow honoree who works in a high position in the industry (and who’s worked with some high-profile Braun clients): “People were excited for her at the beginning of the speech. But once she started going in a negative direction at an event that is supposed to be celebrating accomplishments and rah-rah for women, I felt it fell flat with a good portion of the room, because it wasn’t the appropriate place to be saying it.”

Wasn’t it intimidating for Swift, knowing she might be polarizing an auditorium full of the most powerful people in the business? “Well, I do sleep well at night knowing that I’m right,” she responds, “and knowing that in 10 years it will have been a good thing that I spoke about artists’ rights to their art, and that we bring up conversations like: Should record deals maybe be for a shorter term, or how are we really helping artists if we’re not giving them the first right of refusal to purchase their work if they want to?”

“Obviously, anytime you’re standing up against or for anything, you’re never going to receive unanimous praise. But that’s what forces you to be brave. And that’s what’s different about the way I live my life now.” (Braun’s camp did not respond to a request for comment.)

One thing Taylor Swift can’t bend to her determined will is her family’s health. She revealed a few years ago that her mother, Andrea, a beloved figure among the thousands of fans who’ve met her at road shows, is battling breast cancer. Swift addressed the uncertainty of that struggle in an anguished song on her latest album, “Soon You’ll Get Better.” Many who view “Miss Americana” will look for signs of how her mom is doing. The subject comes up in a section of the film that includes a relatively light-hearted scene in in which it’s shown that one of Andrea Swift’s ways of saying “eff you” to cancer recently was to break the mold and bring a canine — her “cancer dog” — into a famously feline-friendly family.

The real answer may come in Swift’s touring activity for “Lover.” Whereas typically she’d spend nine months in the year after an album release on the road, she plans to limit herself to four stadium dates in America this summer and a trip around the festival circuit in Europe. This may not be 100% for personal reasons: “I wanted to be able to perform in places that I hadn’t performed in as much, and to do things I hadn’t done before, like Glastonbury,” she says. “I feel like I haven’t done festivals, really, since early in my career — they’re fun and bring people together in a really cool way. But I also wanted to be able to work as much as I can handle right now, with everything that’s going on at home. And I wanted to figure out a way that I could do both those things.”

Is being able to be there for her mother the main concern? “Yeah, that’s it. That’s the reason,” she says. “I mean, we don’t know what is going to happen. We don’t know what treatment we’re going to choose. It just was the decision to make at the time, for right now, for what’s going on.”

In her case, it’s as if her manager had taken seriously ill as well as the person she’s always been closest to, all at once. “Everyone loves their mom; everyone’s got an important mom,” she allows. “But for me, she’s really the guiding force. Almost every decision I make, I talk to her about it first. So obviously it was a really big deal to ever speak about her illness.” During filming, when Andrea’s breast cancer had returned for a second time, “she was going through chemo, and that’s a hard enough thing for a person to go through.” Then it got harder. Speaking about this latest development publicly for the first time, Swift quietly reveals: “While she was going through treatment, they found a brain tumor. And the symptoms of what a person goes through when they have a brain tumor is nothing like what we’ve ever been through with her cancer before. So it’s just been a really hard time for us as a family.”

Compared with that, nearly any other topic the movie might address would pale. But it finds weightiness in addressing other kinds of unhealthiness, like the physical expectations that are placed on women in general and celebrity women specifically, Swift being no exception. In this department, she has her own heroines. “I love people like Jameela Jamil, because he way she speaks about body image, it’s almost like she speaks in a hook. Women are held to such a ridiculous standard of beauty, and we’re seeing so much on social media that makes us feel like we are less than, or we’re not what we should be, that you kind of need a mantra to repeat in your head when you start to have unhealthy thoughts. I swear the way Jameela speaks is like lyrics — it gets stuck in my head and it calms me down.”

Swift’s collaborator in this messaging, Wilson, was on a list of potential directors Netflix gave her when she expressed interest in possibly doing a documentary to follow the concert special that premiered on the service just over a year ago. You could discern a feminist message, if you chose to, in the fact that Swift chose a director most well known for a documentary about abortion providers, “After Tiller.” Swift says she was most impressed, though, that Wilson’s docs look for nuance and subtlety in addressing subjects that do lend themselves to soapboxes, and their first conversation was about their mutual desire to avoid “propaganda” in any form.

If there’s a feminist agenda in “Miss Americana,” Wilson and Swift wanted it to emerge naturally, although the director admits it was pretty blatant from the outset, given that she set up the film (which is co-produced by Morgan Neville, the director’s “sounding board”) with an all-female crew. Or nearly all-female, says Wilson, laughing, “I will say that we did always have male production assistants, because I like trying to show people that men can fetch coffee for women.”

Adds Wilson, “When I started filming, it was before she’d come out politically. She knew that she was coming out of a very dark period, and wanted collaborate on something that captured what she was going through and that was really raw and honest and emotionally intimate.” The political awakening, the director says, “was a profound decision for her to make. In that, I saw this feminist coming of age story that I personally connected with, and that I really think women and girls around the world will see themselves in.”

“The bigger your career gets, the more you struggle with the idea that a lot of people see you the same way they see an iPhone or a Starbucks.” TAYLOR SWIFT

The film borrows its title from a song on the “Lover” album, “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince,” that’s maybe the one fully allegorical song Swift has ever released — and, in its fashion, is a great protest song. The entire lyric is a metaphor for how Swift grew up as an unblinking patriot and has had to reluctantly leave behind her naiveté in the age of Trump. Her partner on that track, as well as other message songs like “You Need to Calm Down” and “The Man,” was a co-writer and co-producer new to her stable of collaborators this time around, Joel Little.

With the song “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince,” although the lyrics are cloaked in metaphor, “We like to think it was a very clear statement,” Little says. “There are lots of little hidden messages within that song that are all pointing toward the way that she thinks and feels about politics and the United States. I love that it uses a lot of classic Taylor Swift imagery, in terms of the songwriting topics of high school and cheerleaders, as a clever nod to what she’s done in the past, but tied in with a heavy political message.”

“Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince” doesn’t actually appear in the documentary, but the director says the film’s title is understood by fans as an obvious reference to political themes in the number. “Even if you don’t know the song,” Wilson says, “I see the movie as looking at the flip side of being America’s sweetheart, so I like how the title evokes that too.”

The doc doesn’t lack for its own protest songs though. In the wake of her midterm disappointment, Swift is seen writing an anthem for millennials who might have come away disillusioned with the political process. That previously unheard song, “Only the Young,” is seen being demo-ed before it plays in full over the end credits; it’ll be released as a digital single in conjunction with the doc. Key lyric: ““You did all that you could do / The game was rigged, the ref got tricked/ The wrong ones think they’re right / We were outnumbered — this time.”

“One thing I think is amazing about her,” says Wilson, “is that she goes to the studio and to songwriting as a place to process what she’s going through. I loved how, when she got the Grammy news (about “Reputation”), this isn’t someone who’s going to feel sorry for herself or say ‘That wasn’t right.’ She’s like, ‘Okay, I’m going to work even harder.’ You see her strength of character in that moment when she gets that news. And then with the election results, I loved how she channeled so many of her thoughts and feelings into ‘Only the Young.’ It was a great way to kind of show how stuff that happens in her life goes directly into the songs; you get to witness that in both cases.

So is the film aimed at satisfying the fan base or teasing the unconvinced hordes who might dial it up as a free stream? “I think it’s a little bit of both,” Swift says. “I chose Netflix because it’s a very vast, accessible medium to people who are just like, ‘Hey, what’s this? I’m bored.’ I love that, because I do so many things that cater specifically to fans that like my music, I think it’s important to put yourself out there to people who don’t care at all about you.”

In the wake of the last round of Kanye-gate, stung by the backlash of those who took his side, Swift took a three-year break from interviews. The mantra of her 2017 album “Reputation” and subsequent tour was “No explanations.” But her Beyoncé-style press blackout was a passing phase. With “Lover” and now, especially, the documentary, she could hardly be more about the explanations. Although this interview is the only one she currently plans to do about the documentary, it’s clear that she’s come back into a season of openness, and that she considers it her natural habitat.

“I really like the whole discussion around music. And during ‘Reputation,’ it never felt like it was ever going to be about music, no matter what I said or did,” she says. “I approach albums differently, in how I want to show them to the world or what I feel comfortable with at that time in my life.” Being more transparent “feels great with this album. I really feel like I could just keep making stuff — it’s that vibe right now. I don’t think I’ve ever written this much. That’s exhibited in ‘Lover’ having the most songs that I’ve ever had on an album” (18, to be exact). “But even after I made the album, I kept writing and going in the studio. That’s a new thing I’ve experienced this time around. That openness kind of feels like you finally got the lid off a jar you’ve been working at for years.”

Cipher-dom never could have stood for long for someone who’s established herself as one of the most accomplished confessional singer-songwriters in pop history. “I don’t really operate very well as an enigma,” she says. “It’s not fulfilling to me. It works really well in a lot of pop careers, but I think that it makes me feel completely unable to do what I had gotten in this to do, which is to communicate to people. I live for the feeling of standing on a stage and saying, ‘I feel this way,’ and the crowd responding with ‘We do too!’ And me being like, ‘Really?’ And they’re like, ‘Yes!’”

Swift believes talking things up again isn’t a form of giving in to narcissism — it’s a way of warding off commodification.

“The bigger your career gets, the more you struggle with the idea that a lot of people see you the same way they see an iPhone or a Starbucks,” she muses. “They’ve been inundated with your name in the media, and you become a brand. That’s inevitable for me, but I do think that it’s really necessary to feel like I can still communicate with people. And as a songwriter, it’s really important to still feel human and process things in a human way. The through line of all that is humanity, and reaching out and talking to people and having them see things that aren’t cute.

#swift finally comes out of the closet politically.... yes they REALLY wrote that

[bluewatsons]

Alice Bolin, The Ethical Dilemma of Highbrow True Crime, Vulture (August 1, 2018)

The “true-crime boom” of the mid- to late 2010s is a strange pop-culture phenomenon, given that it is not so much a new type of programming as an acknowledgement of a centuries-long obsession: People love true stories about murder and other brands of brutality and grift, and they have gorged on them particularly since the beginning of modern journalism. The serial fiction of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins was influenced by the British public’s obsessive tracking of sensational true-crime cases in daily papers, and since then, we have hoarded gory details in tabloids and pulp paperbacks and nightly news shows and Wikipedia articles and Reddit threads.

I don’t deny these stories have proliferated in the past five years. Since the secret is out — “Oh you love murder? Me too!” — entire TV networks, podcast genres, and countless limited-run docuseries have arisen to satisfy this rumbling hunger. It is tempting to call this true-crime boom new because of the prestige sheen of many of its artifacts — Serial and Dirty John and The Jinx and Wild, Wild Country are all conspicuously well made, with lovely visuals and strong reporting. They have subtle senses of theme and character, and they often feel professional, pensive, quiet — so far from vulgar or sensational.

But well-told stories about crime are not really new, and neither is their popularity. In Cold Blood is a classic of American literature and The Executioner’s Song won the Pulitzer; Errol Morris has used crime again and again in his documentaries to probe ideas like fame, desire, corruption, and justice. The new true-crime boom is more simply a matter of volume and shamelessness: the wide array of crime stories we can now openly indulge in, with conventions of the true-crime genre more emphatically repeated and codified, more creatively expanded and trespassed against. In 2016, after two critically acclaimed series about the O.J. Simpson trial, there was talk that the 1996 murder of Colorado 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey would be the next case to get the same treatment. It was odd, hearing O.J.: Made in America, the epic and depressing account of race and celebrity that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, discussed in the same breath with the half-dozen unnecessary TV specials dredging up the Ramsey case. Despite my avowed love of Dateline, I would not have watched these JonBenét specials had a magazine not paid me to, and suffice it to say they did very little either to solve the 20-year-old crime (ha!) or examine our collective obsession with it.

Clearly, the insight, production values, or cultural capital of its shiniest products are not what drives this new wave of crime stories. O.J.: Made in America happened to be great and the JonBenét specials happened to be terrible, but producers saw them as part of the same trend because they knew they would appeal to at least part of the same audience. I’ve been thinking a lot about these gaps between high and low, since there are people who consume all murder content indiscriminately, and another subset who only allow themselves to enjoy the “smart” kind. The difference between highbrow and lowbrow in the new true crime is often purely aesthetic. It is easier than ever for producers to create stories that look good and seem serious, especially because there are templates now for a style and voice that make horrifying stories go down easy and leave the viewer wanting more. But for these so-called prestige true-crime offerings, the question of ethics — of the potential to interfere in real criminal cases and real people’s lives — is even more important, precisely because they are taken seriously.

Like the sensational tone, disturbing, clinical detail, and authoritarian subtext that have long defined schlocky true crime as “trash,” the prestige true-crime subgenre has developed its own shorthand, a language to tell its audience they’re consuming something thoughtful, college-educated, public-radio influenced. In addition to slick and creative production, highbrow true crime focuses on character sketches instead of police procedure. “We’re public radio producers who are curious about why people do what they do,” Phoebe Judge, the host of the podcast Criminal, said. Judge has interviewed criminals (a bank robber, a marijuana brownie dealer), victims, and investigators, using crime as a very simple window into some of the most interesting and complicated lives on the planet.

Highbrow true crime is often explicitly about the piece’s creator, a meta-commentary about the process of researching and reporting such consequential stories. Serial’s Sarah Koenig and The Jinx’s Andrew Jarecki wrestle with their boundaries with the subjects (Adnan Syed and Robert Durst, respectively, both of whom have been tried for murder) and whether they believe them. They sift through evidence and reconstruct timelines as they try to create a coherent narrative from fragments.

I remember saying years ago that people who liked Serial should try watching Dateline, and my friend joked in reply, “Yeah, but Dateline isn’t hosted by my friend Sarah.” One reason for the first season of Serial’s insane success — it is still the most-downloaded podcast of all time — is the intimacy audiences felt with Koenig as she documented her investigation of a Baltimore teenager’s murder in real time, keeping us up to date on every vagary of evidence, every interview, every experiment. Like the figure of the detective in many mystery novels, the reporter stands in for the audience, mirroring and orchestrating our shifts in perspective, our cynicism and credulity, our theories, prejudices, frustrations, and breakthroughs.

This is what makes this style of true crime addictive, which is the adjective its makers most crave. The stance of the voyeur, the dispassionate observer, is thrilling without being emotionally taxing for the viewer, who watches from a safe remove. (This fact is subtly skewered in Gay Talese’s creepy 2017 Netflix documentary, Voyeur.) I’m not sure how much of my eye-rolling at the popularity of highbrow true crime has to do with my general distrust of prestige TV and Oscar-bait movies, which are usually designed to be enjoyed in the exact same way and for the exact same reasons as any other entertainment, but also to make the viewer feel good about themselves for watching. When I wrote earlier that there are viewers who consume all true crime, and those who only consume “smart” true crime, I thought, “And there must be some people who only like dumb true crime.” Then I realized that I am sort of one of them.

There are specimens of highbrow true crime that I love, Criminal and O.J.: Made in America among them, but I truly enjoy Dateline much more than I do Serial, which in my mind is tedious to the edge of pointlessness. I find myself perversely complaining that good true crime is no fun — as self-conscious as it may be, it will never be as entertaining as the Investigation Discovery network’s output, most of which is painfully serious. (The list of ID shows is one of the most amusing artifacts on the internet, including shows called Bride Killas, Momsters: Moms Who Murder, and Sex Sent Me to the Slammer.) Susan Sontag famously defined camp as “seriousness that fails,” and camp is obviously part of the appeal of a show called Sinister Ministers or Southern Fried Homicide. Network news magazine shows like Dateline and 48 Hours are somber and melodramatic, often literally starting voice-overs on their true-crime episodes with variations of “it was a dark and stormy night.” They trade in archetypes — the perfect father, the sweet girl with big dreams, the divorcee looking for a second chance — and stick to a predetermined narrative of the case they’re focusing on, unconcerned about accusations of bias. They are sentimental and yet utterly graphic, clinical in their depiction of brutal crimes.

It’s always talked around in discussions of why people like true crime: It is … funny? The comedy in horror movies seems like a given, but it is hardly permitted to say that you are amused by true disturbing stories, out of respect for victims. But in reducing victims and their families to stock characters, in exaggerating murderers to superhuman monsters, in valorizing police and forensic scientists as heroic Everymen, there is dark humor in how cheesy and misguided these pulpy shows are, how bad we are at talking about crime and drawing conclusions from it, how many ways we find to distance ourselves from the pain of victims and survivors, even when we think we are honoring them. (The jokey titles and tongue-in-cheek tone of some ID shows seem to indicate more awareness of the inherent humor, but in general, the channel’s programming is almost all derivative of network TV specials.) I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but in its obvious failures, I enjoy this brand of true crime more straightforwardly than its voyeuristic, documentary counterpart, which, in its dignified guise, has maybe only perfected a method of making us feel less gross about consuming real people’s pain for fun.

Crime stories also might be less risky when they are more stilted, more clinical. To be blunt, what makes a crime story less satisfying are often the ethical guidelines that help reporters avoid ruining people’s lives. With the popularity of the podcasts S-Town and Missing Richard Simmons, there were conversations about the ethics of appropriating another person’s story, particularly when they won’t (or can’t) participate in your version of it. The questions of ethics and appropriation are even heavier when stories intersect with their subjects’ criminal cases, because journalism has always had a reciprocal relationship with the justice system. Part of the exhilarating intimacy of the first season of Serial was Koenig’s speculation about people who never agreed to be part of the show, the theories and rabbit holes she went through, the risks she took to get answers. But there is a reason most reporters do all their research, then write their story. It is inappropriate, and potentially libelous, to let your readers in on every unverified theory about your subject that occurs to you, particularly when wondering about a private citizen’s innocence or guilt in a horrific crime.

Koenig’s off-the-cuff tone had other consequences, too, in the form of amateur sleuths on Reddit who tracked down people involved with the case, pored over court transcripts, and reviewed cellular tower evidence, forming a shadow army of investigators taking up what they saw as the gauntlet thrown down by the show. The journalist often takes on the stance of the professional amateur, a citizen providing information in the public interest and using the resources at hand to get answers. At times during the first season of Serial, Koenig’s methods are laughably amateurish, like when she drives from the victim’s high school to the scene of the crime, a Best Buy, to see if it was possible to do it in the stated timeline. She is able to do it, which means very little, since the crime occurred 15 years earlier. Because so many of her investigative tools were also ones available to listeners at home, some took that as an invitation to play along.

This blurred line between professional and amateur, reporter and private investigator, has plagued journalists since the dawn of modern crime reporting. In 1897, amid a frenzied rivalry between newspaper barons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, true crime coverage was so popular that Hearst formed a group of reporters to investigate criminal cases called the “Murder Squad.” They wore badges and carried guns, forming essentially an extralegal police force who both assisted and muddled official investigations. Seeking to get a better story and sell more papers, it was common for reporters to trample crime scenes, plant evidence, and produce dubious witnesses whose accounts fit their preferred version of the case. And they were trying to get audiences hooked in very similar ways, by crowdsourcing information and encouraging readers to send in tips.

Of course the producers of Serial never did anything so questionable as the Murder Squad, though there are interesting parallels between the true-crime podcast and crime coverage in early daily newspapers. They were both innovations in the ways information was delivered to the public that sparked unexpectedly personal, participatory, and impassioned responses from their audiences. It’s tempting to say that we’ve come full circle, with a new true-crime boom that is victim to some of the same ethical pitfalls of the first one: Is crime journalism another industry deregulated by the anarchy of the internet? But as Michelle Dean wrote of Serial, “This is exactly the problem with doing journalism at all … You might think you are doing a simple crime podcast … and then you become a sensation, as Serial has, and the story falls to the mercy of the thousands, even millions, of bored and curious people on the internet.”

Simply by merit of their popularity, highbrow crime stories are often riskier than their lowbrow counterparts. Kathryn Schulz wrote in The New Yorker about the ways the makers of the Netflix series Making a Murderer, in their attempt to advocate for the convicted murderer Steven Avery, omit evidence that incriminates him and put forth an incoherent argument for his innocence. Advocacy and intervention are complicated actions for journalists to undertake, though they are not novel. Schulz points to a scene in Making a Murderer where a Dateline producer who is covering Avery is shown saying, “Right now murder is hot.” In this moment the creators of Making a Murderer are drawing a distinction between themselves and Dateline, as Schulz writes, implying that, “unlike traditional true-crime shows … their work is too intellectually serious to be thoughtless, too morally worthy to be cruel.” But they were not only trying to invalidate Avery’s conviction; they (like Dateline, but more effectively) were also creating an addictive product, a compelling story.

That is maybe what irks me the most about true crime with highbrow pretensions. It appeals to the same vices as traditional true crime, and often trades in the same melodrama and selective storytelling, but its consequences can be more extreme. Adnan Syed was granted a new trial after Serial brought attention to his case; Avery was denied his appeal, but people involved in his case have nevertheless been doxxed and threatened. I’ve come to believe that addictiveness and advocacy are rarely compatible. If they were, why would the creators of Making a Murderer have advocated for one white man, when the story of being victimized by a corrupt police force is common to so many people across the U.S., particularly people of color?

It does feel like a shame that so many resources are going to create slick, smart true crime that asks the wrong questions, focusing our energy on individual stories instead of the systemic problems they represent. But in truth, this is is probably a feature, not a bug. I suspect the new true-crime obsession has something to do with the massive, terrifying problems we face as a society: government corruption, mass violence, corporate greed, income inequality, police brutality, environmental degradation, human-rights violations. These are large-scale crimes whose resolutions, though not mysterious, are also not forthcoming. Focusing on one case, bearing down on its minutia and discovering who is to blame, serves as both an escape and a means of feeling in control, giving us an arena where justice is possible.

Skepticism about whether journalists appropriate their subjects’ stories, about high and low, and about why we enjoy the crime stories we do, all swirl through what I think of as the post–true-crime moment. Post–true crime is explicitly or implicity about the popularity of the new true-crime wave, questioning its place in our culture, and resisting or responding to its conventions. One interesting document of post–true crime is My Favorite Murder and other “comedy murder podcasts,” which, in retelling stories murder buffs have heard on one million Investigation Discovery shows, unpack the ham-fisted clichés of the true-crime genre. They show how these stories appeal to the most gruesome sides of our personalities and address the obvious but unspoken fact that true crime is entertainment, and often the kind that is as mindless as a sitcom. Even more cutting is the Netflix parody American Vandal, which both codifies and spoofs the conventions of the new highbrow true crime, roasting the genre’s earnest tone in its depiction of a Serial-like investigation of some lewd graffiti.

There is also the trend in the post–true-crime era of dramatizing famous crime stories, like in The Bling Ring; I, Tonya; and Ryan Murphy’s anthology series American Crime Story, all of which dwell not only on the stories of infamous crimes but also why they captured the public imagination. There is a camp element in these retellings, particularly when famous actors like John Travolta and Sarah Paulson are hamming it up in ridiculous wigs. But this self-consciousness often works to these projects’ advantage, allowing them to show heightened versions of the cultural moments that led to the most outsize tabloid crime stories. Many of these fictionalized versions take journalistic accounts as their source material, like Nancy Jo Sales’s reporting in Vanity Fair for The Bling Ring and ESPN’s documentary on Tonya Harding, The Price of Gold, for I, Tonya. This seems like a best-case scenario for prestige true crime to me: parsing famous cases from multiple angles and in multiple genres, trying to understand them both on the level of individual choices and cultural forces.

Perhaps the most significant contributions to post–true crime, though, are the recent wave of personal accounts about murder and crime: literary memoirs like Down City by Leah Carroll, Mean by Myriam Gurba, The Hot One by Carolyn Murnick, After the Eclipse by Sarah Perry, and We Are All Shipwrecks by Kelly Grey Carlisle all tell the stories of murder seen from close-up. (It is significant that all of these books are by women. Carroll, Perry, and Carlisle all write about their mothers’ murders, placing them in the tradition of James Ellroy’s great memoir My Dark Places, but without the tortured, fetish-y tone.) This is not a voyeuristic first person, and the reader can’t detach and find joy in procedure; we are finally confronted with the truth of lives upended by violence and grief. There’s also Ear Hustle, the brilliant podcast produced by the inmates of San Quentin State Prison. The makers of Ear Hustle sometimes contemplate the bad luck and bad decisions that led them to be incarcerated, but more often they discuss the concerns of daily life in prison, like food, sex, and how to make mascara from an inky page from a magazine. This is a crime podcast that is the opposite of sensational, addressing the systemic truth of crime and the justice system, in stories that are mundane, profound, and, yes, addictive.

#true crime #adnan syed #media #ethics #The Way We Live Now #culture #andrew jarecki #james ellroy #criminal justice #detective fiction

[inspiringwhilerespiring]

Get to know me?

Yoooo - yall remember Myspace, and people would blog survey posts lol. Well thats me, I’m people. And I just wanna write my lil heart out and avoid all of my real life responsibilities. So found a lil questionnaire thing and I’m gonna fill it out. Also lowkey like doing this every so often so I can look back on it and reflect and see how much I may have grown/changed/shifted viewzzz ya feel? :) 

Sooo here yall go <3 

1. Who was the last person you held hands with?

My neice maybe?

2. Are you outgoing or shy?

People who know me would tell me to put outgoing, but I honestly feel shy on the inside, so it just depends.

3. Who are you looking forward to seeing?

Literally anyone lmao fuck this quarantine

4. Are you easy to get along with?

Definitely

5. If you were drunk would the person you like take care of you?

Lets hope so

6. What kind of people are you attracted to?

Kind souls <3 always notice how they talk to their friends and family, but even people they don’t know like servers or janitors, etc. that shit matters heavy.

7. Do you think you’ll be in a relationship two months from now?

Probably not

8. Who from the opposite gender is on your mind?

A few homies

9. Does talking about sex make you uncomfortable?

Nah not really, just depends

10. Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with?

Not sure -it’s been a min since I had a “deep” connection or convo that I can remember - but was probably with my bestie R’Bo

11. What does the most recent text that you sent say?

“Google that shit” lmao me, giving advice to my friends

12. What are your 5 favorite songs right now?

TOUGH!!!! After Hours by The Weeknd is up there, Cayendo by Frank Ocean (been jamming his shit HAARD lately) and Inside Friend by Leon Bridges & John Mayer….but also been listening to albums - like Childish’s new album, Floreyyy for lo-fi shit, and also got into 070 Shake recently just to name a few.

13. Do you like it when people play with your hair?

FUCK YA

14. Do you believe in luck and miracles?

Yeah budddyy

15. What good thing happened this summer?

Idk, my bday party was lit?? And lots of river floats happened

16. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

Lol

17. Do you think there is life on other planets?

Cant deny that there isn’t so yaaa

18. Do you still talk to your first crush?

No

19. Do you like bubble baths?

Yes

20. Do you like your neighbors?

Just moved, so don’t know em

21. What are you bad habits?

Procrastination lol and biting my nails

22. Where would you like to travel?

Literally ANNNYY-fuckin-WHERE!

23. Do you have trust issues?

Hmm I wanna say generally no, but I also always keep it one hunnnid with myself, and as much as I’d like to say I don’t have any - I think I def have insecurities with myself, that have the potential to become “trust issues” in certain relationships, but overall no. I live by the whole “you have my trust til you fuck it up” mantra

24. Favorite part of your daily routine?

Coffee in the morning lately, missed it and forgot how energized it makes me - gives me time to wake up and reflect/set daily goals

25. What part of your body are you most uncomfortable with?

Stomach forever :((((

26. What do you do when you wake up?

Scroll on my phone, pee usually, or feed my cat lol

27. Do you wish your skin was lighter or darker?

Tanner maybe?

28. Who are you most comfortable around?

My mom or my best friend R’Bonney - but any of my close friends and fam honestly

29. Have any of your ex’s told you they regret breaking up?

Not directly

30. Do you ever want to get married?

Lol ok, so this is always changing…but lately (and by lately I mean the past few years) its been a no. I’m open minded though and am aware that I’m always changing my mind sooo who knows

31. Is your hair long enough for a pony tail?

yeppperoo

32. Which celebrities would you have a threesome with?

Honestly, those aren’t my “thing” lollike id prob laugh or be awkward or just have to be hellllla drunk - but like I wouldn’t mind Jason Momoa and Tom Hardy tossin me around

33. Spell your name with your chin.

hjaylkee

34. Do you play sports? What sports?

Scocer back in the day - actually went and kicked it like a week ago for the first time in YEARSSSS - felt so damn good

35. Would you rather live without TV or music?

TV, music forreeevverrr

36. Have you ever liked someone and never told them?

Lol story of my life

37. What do you say during awkward silences?

“Soooo” then probably ask a question or some shit lol

38. Describe your dream girl/guy?

Hmmm…definitely have to be funny/have a good sense of humor. They’d have to be open-minded for sure. Up for trying new things, places, cultures, food, music, etc. Just have an adventurous spirit I guess when it comes to that. Have a good line of communication/openness - and just be able to have a deep/intellectual convo about anything and everything. Bonuses: taller than me, likes cooking, and going to music shows.

39. What are your favorite stores to shop in?

Amazon lol I hate shopping

40. What do you want to do after high school?

To go back to high school :( lmao so much id re-do, cant believe its almost been a decade

41. Do you believe everyone deserves a second chance?

Hell yeah, this is life my dudes, dont take it so seriously - we all fuck up at some point or another

42. If your being extremely quiet what does it mean?

Something is on my mind for sure, or im just tired lol

43. Do you smile at strangers?

Yeah

44. Trip to outer space or bottom of the ocean?

DAMNNN WHAT so hard - I guesss if I had to pick, space…just because it’s more rare/harder to do I’d think.

45. What makes you get out of bed in the morning?

My cat lol with his meowing ass

46. What are you paranoid about?

Lowkey a lot lol

47. Have you ever been high?

8)

48. Have you ever been drunk?

Who hasn’t????

49. Have you done anything recently that you hope nobody finds out about?

naw

50. What was the colour of the last hoodie you wore?

Black probably, like half my wardrobe

51. Ever wished you were someone else?

Of course

52. One thing you wish you could change about yourself?

My bad habits

56. Favourite colour?

Yelllllow :)

57. Favourite food?

Oh gaaawwd, literally anything - lately: PB&J’s, fries, wings, Mediterranean, Mexican, pickles, ice cream, ramenzzzz

58. Last thing you ate?

Pistachios

59. First thing you ate this morning?

Cofffeeee w creamer

60. Ever won a competition? For what?

Idk, not off the top of my head - maybe something back in elementary

61. Been suspended/expelled? For what?

Nah

62. Been arrested? For what?

Yeah lmao

63. Ever been in love?

Yes

64. Tell us the story of your first kiss?

No its really not that interesting and idc to type it out

65. Are you hungry right now?

24/7/365

66. Do you like your tumblr friends more than your real friends?

Lol yes a few of them <333

67. Facebook or Twitter?

FB

68. Twitter or Tumblr?

Tumblr

69. Are you watching tv right now?

Noooo

70. Names of your bestfriends?

R’Bonney is number 1

71. Craving something? What?

Foooood, and companionship? Lol

72. What colour are your towels?

Idk, random, mostly blue

72. How many pillows do you sleep with?

A lot lol

73. Do you sleep with stuffed animals?

Lol no, but I have my one from my childhood in my room

74. How many stuffed animals do you think you have?

1 - shout out to you Mr.Fluffy

75. Favourite animal?

I am fascinated by sharks; and like gators/crocs. But I have mad respect for elephants, they’re sooo damn smart and beautiful.

76. What colour is your underwear?

Dont have any on

77. Chocolate or Vanilla?

BITCHHHH CHOC

78. Favourite ice cream flavour?

All of them

79. What colour shirt are you wearing?

Tie-dye

80. What colour pants?

none

81. Favourite tv show?

Game of Thrones prob

82. Favourite movie?

Avatar or Shawshank Redemption

87. First person you talked to today?

Sissy

88. Last person you talked to today?

Friend on FT

89. Name a person you hate?

No one, maybe Trump? lol

90. Name a person you love?

Everyone, fr fr

91. Is there anyone you want to punch in the face right now?

Nah

92. In a fight with someone?

Nah

93. How many sweatpants do you have?

Not enough <3

94. How many sweaters/hoodies do you have?

Not enough <3

95. Last movie you watched?

The Decline on Netflix, short lil foreign oil, was deep/interesting

96. Favourite actress?

Not sure-Sandra Bullock? Or Meryl

97. Favourite actor?

Denzel or Morgan Freeman

98. Do you tan a lot?

Nah not anymore honestly

99. Have any pets?

Yessss

100. How are you feeling?

Mediocre

101. Do you type fast?

Ya

102. Do you regret anything from your past?

Im sure

103. Can you spell well?

Ya

104. Do you miss anyone from your past?

Lol im nostalgic af, so yes

105. Ever been to a bonfire party?

Yes litttty tittyyy

106. Ever broken someone’s heart?

Probably :(

107. Have you ever been on a horse?

Hell yeah brother, I’m from TX

108. What should you be doing?

So much shit lol

109. Is something irritating you right now?

The fact that I ain’t doing all the shit I should be lol

110. Have you ever liked someone so much it hurt?

Yooo yes

112. Who was the last person you cried in front of?

Prob my sister or my mom?? Lol I cry a lot, idk and idc

113. What was your childhood nickname?

Hayls?

114. Have you ever been out of your province/state?

Yes

115. Do you play the Wii?

Back in the day

116. Are you listening to music right now?

Surprisingly, no

117. Do you like chicken noodle soup?

Nah, unless maybe if its homemade

118. Do you like Chinese food?

Yeah occasionally, more of a Thai food chick or Japanese

119. Favourite book?

Kite Runner

120. Are you afraid of the dark?

Low-key sometimes lol

121. Are you mean?

Hell noooo

122. Is cheating ever okay?

Ok, this is an interesting one lol I mean no, it’s not “okay” - since it usually constitutes lying/hiding/hurting someone - BUTTTT, for a lack of a better term - I wanna say it’s “normal”? But thats because I, personally, am on the fence about the concept of monogamy. Like no, I’ve never cheated nor experienced that in return - but the whole concept of monogamy and like that a person can love and only love or be with one person is WILLLLDDD and I can’t help but note that its a social construct that we, as a society, are conditioned to from the time we are born. Idk if that makes sense bc im high af lol but those are my thoughts…like to sum it up - cheating is fucked up and sucks, but at the same time its not all that surprising/shocking anymore, like borderline “normalized” just as divorces are and shit, so I feel like bc biologically we aren’t made to be with one person lol. I don’t condone it tho. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

123. Can you keep white shoes clean?

Hell to the naw naw

124. Do you believe in love at first sight?

Hmmm idk about that one, but also can’t deny it

125. Do you believe in true love?

Yeah of course, you’re talking to a hopeless romantic

126. Are you currently bored?

I guess we could say that

127. What makes you happy?

Food and close, loved ones

128. Would you change your name?

Nah, too much paper work

129. What your zodiac sign?

Cancer, with my lil moody, sensitive ass

130. Do you like subway?

I did lol

131. Your bestfriend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do?

Story of my mf life lol literally all my exes are “best friends turned lovers” situation, so guess it would just depend lmao

132. Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with?

133. Favourite lyrics right now?

Lol oh godddd; ok off the top of my head - Tupac - Keep Ya Head Up is what comes to mind; just a timeless song and the lyrics are still relevant/apply to this day and idk just really resonate with the message behind that song <3

135. Dumbest lie you ever told?

Idk, but it was probably SO dumb, and told to my parents lol

136. Do you sleep with your doors open or closed?

Either or, lately open so my cat can go in and out lol

137. How tall are you?

5’6 mayyybeee 5’5 actually lol

140. Summer or Winter?

Fall!!

141. Night or Day?

Def a lil night owl, always have been

142. Favourite month?

April and October for weather at least

143. Are you a vegetarian?

No but I try, and go through phases, I’m definitely mindful the older I get and more focused on my health I become

144. Dark, milk or white chocolate?

FUCKIN ALLLLL

145. Tea or Coffee?

Coffee but I like tea too, just seem to drink coffee more regularly

146. Was today a good day?

The grateful-to-just-be-alive in me wants to say yes lol but idk, felt off/unaccomplished and cried a lot, so no.

147. Mars or Snickers?

Snickers

148. What’s your favourite quote?

“This too shall pass”

149. Do you believe in ghosts?

Sure why not

150. Get the closest book next to you, open it to page 42, what’s the first line on that page?

“After all, what he had always wanted was just that: to know new places.” -The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

#survey #about me #haylee #thoughts #mine #questions #ask me anything #ask #lets chat #be my frieeennnddd

[allthingsfangirl101]

RA&L Chapter 18: Results and A Confession

Masterlist

"Della. . . Della. . . Adeline. . ."

I hummed when I heard someone mumble my name over and over. I jumped when I felt someone kiss my nose. I opened my eyes to see Dylan resting his chin on the side of my bed.

"What?" I mumbled, still sleepy. He laughed as he leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to my lips, making me smile. I sat up and ran my hands through my hair as Dylan sat next to me, wrapping his arm around me.

"How was your nap?" He asked teasingly.

"Not long enough," I mumbled as I leaned my head on his chest. We sat like that for a few minutes as Dylan gently rubbed my arm.

"Well, I might have some news that will perk you up." He said, breaking the silence. I hummed still a little sleepy.

"I won."

I sat up and looked at him like he was crazy. "You won what?" I asked, almost skeptically.

"The bet we made yesterday." He laughed when he saw the confusion on my face. "Remember? I bet you that your test results would come back strong and healthy. Then, if I won, I got to take you out on a real date away from this center."

My cheeks burned as he smiled at me. "Technically, I haven't gotten my results back yet," I teased. He sent me a knowing look before leaning forward and pressing a small kiss to my nose.

"Either way," he sighed, pulling me back into his chest as he laid us against the headboard. "I'm taking you out on a real, out-of-this-center date. The kind I would've taken you on for our first date if we had met under different circumstances."

"If Eric lets us," I mumbled.

"He will." I could practically hear the smirk on his face.

"Oh yeah?" I teased. "And how do you know that?"

"Because I already asked him," he said simply. I playfully hit his chest causing him to laugh.

We spent the next couple of hours watching Netflix. In between episodes, there was a knock at the door. We looked over to see Eric peeking his head in.

"Hey you two," he smirked as he walked in. When he did, I saw a folder in his hands.

My results.

My eyes widened when I made that connection. He must have seen the look on my face as I sat up because he laughed.

"So?" Dylan asked, breaking my staring contest with the folder of results.

"Great news, Della," Eric started. "You're even better than we anticipated."

"Really?" I asked, my voice getting stuck in my throat and not because of my vocal cords. Eric smiled as he nodded. Happy tears started to build up as I felt Dylan tighten his arm around my waist.

"Your vocal cords are still scared, they always will be but they're healing. They'll always be a little damaged but the tests we ran yesterday have proven that you have about 85% of your usage back."

"85," I said under my breath. "Does that mean. . ."

The smile on his face fell when I didn't finish my question.

"Unfortunately," he cleared his throat, "the 15% you're missing is keeping you from being able to sing. I'm sorry, Della, but your vocal cords aren't strong enough for you to be able to sing and they may never be."

I nodded, trying to hide my disappointment as Dylan and Eric shared a knowing look. I took a shaky breath, trying to look on the bright side.

"At least I'm better," I said, looking back up at them. I smiled, even though it didn't reach my eyes.

There was an awkward silence as we let the news sink in. I looked over when I saw the smile on Dylan's face.

"Hey Eric," he started. "If Della is 85%, does that mean I can take her out on a date away from the center. Alone?"

His question instantly made Eric smile. I looked between the matching, almost evil, smiles on their faces. "Why, yes. That does mean you can take her on a date away from the center. Alone."

"I'm not sure I want to be alone with either one of you right now," I said slowly, causing them to laugh.

"But in all seriousness, yes Dylan. You can take Della on a date outside of the center," Eric said, bringing seriousness back to the room.

"That actually brings us to the other part of the good news I have for you, Della. Do you remember when you first got here, we told you your percentage had to be above a certain number before you can head home?"

"No," I said hesitantly. The look on his face made me feel suddenly uneasy.

"Well, originally you needed to be above 70% before we could send you home."

"She hit that," Dylan mumbled.

"She did," Eric laughed. "And then some."

"Wait," I cut off their excited laughter. "If I'm at 85 when I needed to be at 70. . . Does this mean. . . Does this mean I get to go home?"

"It does," Eric smiled at me. "All I have to do is call your parents and start the paperwork. That'll take a few days to get finalized, probably by next week. But that means this is your last week at the center, Della."

I jumped up and ran over to him, quickly wrapping him in a tight hug. I cried as he hugged me back. "I told you we'd get you better," he whispered into my ear.

I pulled out of the hug, completely speechless. "I can't believe. . . After all this time. . . I'm finally going home?" I said excitedly, making Eric and Dylan laugh.

"Yep," Eric laughed. "I"m sure your brothers will be very excited."

My eyes started to water again when I thought about my family and everything they've gone through.

"Oh, Della," Eric sighed when he saw the tears start to stream down my cheeks. He pulled me back into a hug and gently rubbed my back.

"Your brothers are going to be so excited to hear that you get to come home. I know for a fact that your parents have left your room just like you did, waiting for you to come home. All your work, all the tests, all the pain has finally paid off. Congratulations, kiddo."

                       * * * * *

I looked in the mirror at my reflection. I was wearing the only dress I brought to the center, the one I haven't worn since before the accident. I started nervously chewing on my bottom lip as I thought about how things were finally changing.

Things were going great between Dylan and me, I was above my improvement percentage, and was going home as soon as the paperwork was finalized. I couldn't decide which of those two were more unbelievable; the fact that I was in a happy relationship that I never thought I'd be in or that I was finally leaving this center and going home, back with my family.

I jumped when there was a knock at my door. I took a shaky breath as I grabbed my phone, put it into my purse, and walked to the door. When I opened it, a smile instantly formed on my face as I saw Dylan standing in the hallway, in a suit. He reached up and scratched the back of his head, smiling at me.

"Wow," he sighed. "You look beautiful."

"Thanks," I blushed as I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. He grabbed my hand and led me out of the center.

I tried to ignore the several glances he sent my way as we drove to dinner. Dylan pulled up to the restaurant and parked in front of the valet stand. He got out as a valet opened the door for me. I smiled politely as he helped me out.

As Dylan jogged around and grabbed my hand, two black vans pulled up. I looked at him, instantly seeing the nerves on his face.

"Shit," he mumbled as he tried to lead me into the restaurant. Before we got to the door, guys with cameras jumped out of the vans and started taking pictures of us.

Dylan quickly pulled me into the restaurant before they could corner us. We were both breathing hard, my heart rate slowing down as we got safely inside.

"I'm so sorry, Della," Dylan said as the doorman kept the paparazzi from coming inside the restaurant. "People are always following me. I should've been more careful when I visited you every day. I'm so sorry, Della."

I cut him off by reaching up, cupping his cheek in my hand and standing on my toes to press a soft kiss to his lips. I pulled away and bit my lip as my cheeks burned.

"It's okay," I whispered as I let go of his cheek and grabbed his hand. "I understand it's part of your life. And I. . . I want to be in your life so. . ."

I bit my lip when he smiled down at me. "I want you in my life too," he smiled before leaning down and pressing his lips to mine. Our lips moved in sync until we noticed lights flashing outside the glass windows. We pulled apart, our cheeks burning when we saw the paparazzi taking pictures of us making out.

Dylan grabbed my hand and led me to the hostess. "Sorry," he whispered with a small laugh.

"It's okay," I whispered back.

Luckily, we weren't bothered the rest of dinner. We ate without anyone taking pictures of us and without anyone bothering us. Dylan had just paid the bill when he looked up at me, a strange look in his eyes.

After dinner, we decided to walk through the park. I noticed he was especially quiet as we left the restaurant and headed to the park. I waited until we had started our walk before speaking up.

"You okay?" I asked. "You've been acting kind of weird since we left dinner."

"Yeah," he laughed, scratching the back of his neck. He bit his lip before reaching over and grabbing my hand.

Suddenly, he stopped walking making me stop next to him. He took a shaky breath, slowly looking up from our hands and at me. He continually opened and closed his mouth, struggling to find the right words. I sent him a soft smile, waiting patiently for him.

"Adeline," he said slowly.

"Adeline? Uh-oh," I tried to joke to lighten the mood and ease some of his tension. "Am I in trouble?"

"No," he laughed. "It's not. . ."

He stopped talking, the seriousness returning to his face. "Della, I know you keep telling me I don't need to be guilty for what I did to you, but. . ."

"Dylan," I tried to cut him off.

"Please, let me finish. I need to get this out," he said quickly. I nodded as he took a deep breath. "I know you aren't angry with me, but I'm furious with myself. I destroyed your life, Della. To make it worse, I got away with it. When it happened, I didn't care about other people or how my actions would affect anyone but me. I was selfish and stubborn and. . . I was a dick, Della. And knowing that? Remembering how I acted makes me feel like I don't deserve you."

He paused, looking away from me. My heart broke as he slowly let go of my hands. Before he could put his hands in his pockets, I quickly grabbed them and intertwined our fingers.

"Dylan," I said gently. "Please look at me."

He sighed before slowly looking up at me. I sent him a smile as our eyes met. "I hate that you think you don't deserve me. You have no reason to think that."

"But, I. . ." He tried to jump in but I shook my head, cutting him off.

"The guy you were back then, isn't who you are now. The guy who got in our accident isn't who is standing in front of me right now. The guy who is the reason I spent that past year and a half in and out of remission, isn't whose hand I'm holding. The guy who was selfish and only cared about himself isn't who has spent the past few months doing everything in his power to make me happy. The guy I know, the guy in front of me is caring, kind, funny, selfless, and never fails to make me smile. That's who you are now. That's who you are to me."

I gasped as he suddenly let go of my hands, grabbed my face, and pressed his lips to mine. I instantly started moving my lips against his. As we kissed, he slowly let go of my face and wrapped his arms around my waist.

I snaked my arms around his neck as our lips continued to move in sync. Dylan was the first one to pull away. He leaned his forehead against mine as we caught our breaths.

"Della, I need to tell you something." He whispered. He leaned back, looking directly into my eyes. He reached up to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, his hand lingering on my cheek.

"What is it?" I asked when he didn't continue. "You can tell me anything."

He smiled down at me, slightly hesitating. I waited as he took a deep breath.

"Della, I think I might be falling in love with you."

His confession made my breath get caught in my throat. I stood on my toes and pressed my lips to his. Dylan laughed into the kiss as he started moving his lips against mine. This time, I was the first to pull away.

"I think I might be falling in love with you too, Dylan."

He let out a sigh of relief that quickly turned into a laugh. I gasped and giggled like a little kid as he picked me up and spun us around. He put me back on my feet, not letting go of me.

He opened and closed his mouth, struggling to find the right words for a different reason. He laughed before pulling me back into his chest and pressing his lips back to mine.

The butterflies in my stomach went crazy as our lips moved in sync. I felt Dylan slide his tongue across my bottom lip, asking for permission. As soon as I gave him access, his tongue started exploring my mouth.

He pulled apart when there was a flash. We laughed as he grabbed my hand and led me away. We quickly lost them as we ran back to his car. He opened my door before sliding across the hood to his side.

"Was the slide necessary?" I laughed as he jumped in and started his car.

"I say if you can do it, do it." He reached across and pressed his lips to mine. I smiled into the kiss as our lips started moving in sync.

Dylan pulled away from the kiss, leaning his forehead against mine. "You make me extremely happy, Della," he whispered.

I leaned back, instantly reaching up and cupping his cheek in my hand. "I owe you a lot, Dylan." I laughed when I saw the look on his face. "Yes, that. But also. . . Before you came to the center and started forcing yourself into my life, I was really struggling." My voice broke as I told him the truth.

He grabbed my hand that was holding his cheek, intertwining our fingers. "The truth is, Dylan. . . Do you remember when Evan was showing you around and you walked into the music room? I was at the piano playing a song I used to sing all the time. What you may not have seen or heard was Evan walking over to me and whispering for me not to stay and torture myself."

"Torture yourself?" Those two words got caught in Dylan's throat. I nodded as I nervously bit my lip.

"Whenever I got really depressed and needed to feel something, I'd go to the music room. Playing the piano used to relax me but after the accident, it became a painful reminder. The day you came to the center, I woke up that morning feeling. . . Feeling like I couldn't do it anymore. I was ready to give up, Dylan. I was ready to end my pain and my misery. But then you. . ."

My voice broke as I saw his eyes start to water, I reached forward and caught a tear that escaped his eye.

"You gave me a reason to keep pushing. I wanted to see what you would do. You started paying attention to me, wanting to be in my life. Ever since I met you, I haven't gone back to the music room. I know you think you ruined my life, but it's the exact opposite, Dylan." I laughed awkwardly, trying to lighten the mood. "You saved me."

Dylan reached over and cupped my cheek in his hand. "You saved me, Della." He whispered. Before I could say anything else, he pressed his lips to mine. I didn't hesitate to start moving my lips against his.

The kiss got heated fasted as he let go of my cheek and reached across my body to grab my hip. With our lips still moving in sync, Dylan turned me so I was facing him.

Dylan broke the kiss and didn't hesitate to move his lips to my neck. I let out a small moan as he kissed up and down my neck, leaving a trail of wet bruises. My breathing sped up and I tilted my head back as he kissed my collarbone, biting slightly.

"Dylan," I moaned when he sucked on a part of my skin that sent a bolt of electricity through my entire body. He pulled away from my neck, a loud popping sound filling the car.

He smiled as he pressed his lips back to mine. Our lips instantly started moving in sync as I reached forward and snaked my arms around his neck, deepening the kiss. We finally pulled apart when both of us were struggling to breathe.

Dylan leaned his forehead against mine as we caught our breaths. "We should probably go," he whispered still out of breath. "Especially before the paparazzi find us."

I nodded, biting my lip. He leaned back and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. "You okay?" He smirked when he saw the redness on my cheeks.

"I. . . I'm just," I stuttered. "That was one hell of a kiss."

"Yeah, it was," he laughed.

I bit my lip, suddenly embarrassed. "What is it?" Dylan asked, scanning my face.

"Dylan, the thing is. . ." I hesitated as I saw the way he was looking at me. "I don't want you to think that I'm. . . Or there's a reason. . ."

"Della," he said, grabbing my hands. "Just say what's making you make your "Della Worried" face." I bit my lip, a small smile forming at his teasing.

"I've never done this before," I sighed. "I've never had a real relationship."

"Della," he said with a small smile. "I don't care that you've never had a boyfriend. That doesn't bother me. It surprises me a little because of how amazing you are, but it doesn't bother me."

"It's just," I sighed. "My life revolved around my singing. I didn't have time for a boyfriend. I have time now and I. . . I'm scared."

Dylan leaned over and pressed his lips to mine. The kiss wasn't near as heated as the one before but there was even more emotion behind it. He pulled away, not looking away from me.

"I'm scared too," he whispered.

"Really?" I asked, my voice getting caught in my throat.

"Yes, really." He smirked at me playfully. The smirk was quickly replaced with his genuine smile. "I've never been in a relationship like this. Meaning, I've never felt this way about a girl before. And now that I have? There is no way in hell I am letting it, letting you go."

#dylan o'brien #dylan o'brien imagine #dylan o'brien fanfic #tfios #rehab love story #RAL

[romancingromanoff]

I See The Stars (Carol Danvers x femme reader)

Fluffytown trip for when the reader feels insecure about dating Carol when they’re just a normal human.

Congratulations, on behalf of the Admissions Committe we would like to offer you a place-

“YES!” you try to muffle your scream but let yourself at least fist punch the air before standing up to look over your cubicle walls and make sure nobody heard you. Looking at the clock it read 4:37, so you only had a little over twenty minutes before you could get off work and celebrate. And you knew that the first person you were going to tell was your girlfriend.

You half skip-jogged your way out from the elevator and pushed your way past the crowds of New York commuters flooding into the streets at five. Rushing down the subway steps you almost dropped your card you were just shaking with so much excitement and energy. The ride uptown had no unexpected stops or breakdowns, thank God, and you soon made it to your stop at the Wakandan Consulate. Coming up from the ground, a gasp from a nearby crowd caught your attention and you looked up to see what they were watching with a fat grin on your face. Even after six months of dating, you still got butterflies in your stomach watching your girlfriend fly around like a real life fireball. You watched her land on the roof of the consulate where some other people were waiting for her before quickly trying to cross the street to run up there and greet her yourself.

“I like the feel of it,” Carol remarked lifting up her arms and admiring how lightweight yet sturdy the new vibranium made suit she was wearing held up.

“I am glad that you do,” T’Challa smiled obviously pleased with how impressed she was. “We can also customize the colors of course. My sister, Shuri, has already come up with a few different template ideas.”

“Great, I’d love to take a look at them,” she nodded when the sight of a familiar looking little person running towards her caught her eye. “Hey baby!” she exclaimed as you ran into her arms and she lifted you up and spun you around.

You have her a quick peck on the lips before she set you down. “I got in!” you squealed and she immediately spun you around some more making you laugh. “Oof, watch the dress though,” you didn’t want the neckline slipping down anymore than it already was. At least, just not in public.”

“Sorry, but I knew you would! They’d be stupid not to take you!”

“Well, having a girlfriend that’s actually seen a black hole helps out a lot too.” You were an aspiring astro-physicist and now a soon-to-be PhD student at MIT as of thirty minutes ago. Your work primarily centered around black hole research which is why you first bombarded Carol with a load of questions that first day Tony had introduced you two. You were usually super nervous around cute girls but the nerd in you just took over and began rambling once you found out who she was. Eventually, Carol actually got so aggravated by your nonstop talking that she had to shush your lips with her finger and said, “Can you just be quiet for a second so I can get your name and ask you out on a date?” You has been utterly mortified, shocked, and flattered at the same time.

“Can we go grab some milkshakes to celebrate?”

There was a small retro diner that you’d been wanting to go try with your girlfriend. It had everything from the jukebox to the workers in paper hats to the neon lights, and, most importantly it was said to make the biggest milkshakes ever.

“I’m so sorry babe,” Carol frowns sadly. “There’s an emergency on a dwarf planet a couple of light years away from here that I need to go take care of. I won’t be back till the day after tomorrow at the earliest.”

“Oh,” you were trying so hard to hide the disappointment in your voice. “I totally understand, go save the universe sweetie.”

“Cool. I’ll let you know if I spot any black holes along the way,” she offers and you just smile as best as you can. “Oh, and can you help pick out my new suit design for me? You’re the only one I trust, babe.”

And just like that, her entire body glowed gold and she shot up through the sky and beyond the planet’s atmosphere faster than the speed of light. As you continued to watch her till she was nothing but the size of a pushpin, your phone in your pocket vibrated and you pulled it out. Your phone case was one of those clear ones you had just picked up off of a street vendor in China town for about 3 bucks but it never failed to make you smile because behind it with some dried up flower petals from cherry blossom season was your favorite polaroid picture of you and your girlfriend. Looking at it you longed for those days when Carol didn’t have to keep checking the clock or her messages to check for some galaxy wide emergency.

Your best friend had texted you asking about your admissions decision. But aside from the one message, the rest of your evening was pretty uneventful which left you and your thoughts all alone for some serious over-thinking time. You decided to walk back home most of the way since you had nothing better to do and when you got to your apartment you mechanically heated up some leftovers, sat on your couch and browsed through shows on Netflix before finally settling on the one you just rewatch over and over, then eventually passed out some time in the early morning. So when you woke up the next day, not only were your eyes extremely groggy but you also smacked your tongue at that familiar taste of overnight breath. In the bathroom you accidentally dropped your toothbrush so you ran out to a drugstore on your block to buy a new one. You really only needed one, but if you bought four in a pack then it would save you money in the long-term and you just couldn’t decide between those two options.

“Hey! I don’t got all day, lady!” a grouchy old man barked at you to make a decision and stop blocking the aisle. 

“Sorry,” you mumbled still half-awake just grabbing for the one toothbrush. As you paid for it and began to walk back to your apartment a really terrible thought dawned upon you. Was this your actual life? How was it that your girlfriend was out single-handedly saving different planets while the most impactful thing you had done today was piss off a cranky old dude? You just felt so useless compared to Carol; the idea of being so painfully normal made you question why she had even been interested in you in the first place.

“Shit,” you said opening your bag and realizing that you’d actually grabbed a children’s toothbrush. It was purple and had Skye on it from Paw Patrol but at this point you couldn’t care less. The stupid toothbrush had just helped you get through the greatest obstacle you’d had in the past two weeks. It was absolutely humiliating imagining how stupid and insignificant your problems were compared to your girlfriend’s. You just couldn’t see how she took you seriously with your lowly, mundane problems. 

“Babe, you would not believe the size of the army I just fought. One blast and I vaporized an entire ship!” Carol said entering your shared apartment to find you with your arms crossed on the kitchen table. In front of you was a bunch of scrapbooks you had been staring at all night. But what she noticed was weird was that while you were looking at all of the cut out newspaper headlines and epic shots of her that had made the news there was only one picture of yourself up there. It was a polaroid that had been taken of you when you won $1000 from a scratch ticket. In the picture you were holding it up all excited and Carol personally loved how cute you looked in it.

“What’s wrong, babe?” she could tell something was up. Her girlfriend was just not in her usual chipper mood and she seemed awfully down wearing her grey sweatpants that matched the dark circles under her eyes.

Carol rests her hand on your shoulder but turn and walk away not brave enough to face her. “You do all of this amazing stuff everyday like it’s no big deal. You have powers and have been to places that I probably can’t even dream about they’re so complicated. I just don’t understand why you’d be interested in me - just a normal human. I mean, it’s not even like I have special powers like your other friends and could ever keep up with you.”

“Y/N, that’s not important to me.”

“No, Carol, you don’t understand. I can’t even let you pick me up and fly me around with you because I have freaking asthma. I just feel like you’re always grounded because of me and I just hold you down when you could be doing so much more with anyone else.”

“Listen to me,” the blonde kneeled down next to your seat and took your hands into hers with a fierceness and look of determination in her eyes. She wanted you to take her words very seriously. “I love you for you. There’s nothing that you have to prove to me because I already fell in love with the girl who’s extremely smart when, frankly, I rush into bad decisions; the girl who’s patient with me when I’m quick-tempered; the girl who’s selfless when I’m arrogant; and the girl who also loves me for more than just being able to shoot fire out of my fists. You hate thinking that you keep me grounded? Y/N, you’re the only one that keeps me sane most of the time! Before I met you I was so lost and had no idea where my place was in the universe, but you brought me back down to Earth and reminded of where I belong and who I am. Nobody else can do that.”

You sniffle because even though you’ve been telling yourself for the past few days that you’re not special at all, only Carol can make you feel this way. Only she can make you feel like you’re the only person in the universe that matters.

“I need you, you dork,” she snorts playfully pulling on your hands. “Without you I’m just Captain Marvel to everyone else and to myself. You helped bring back the girl that I’ve always been: Carol. She wouldn’t be here without you. I wouldn’t be here without you,” she gently cups your cheek in her hand and you notice its still a bit warm and cooling down, but that just shows you how intensely she’s feeling these feelings for you. 

She moves her lips up to plant a small kiss on your forehead (which have always been a favorite of yours and hers) before moving down to take your lips into her own with a gentleness she rarely shows to other people. This softer side of her is just reserved for you; only you can tame her when her flame gets to be too wild and you cry into the kiss just thinking about what she’s trying to show you with her light, considerate touches. But she’s also more than welcome to deepen it when you start letting your own feelings of passion take over and you speed up the pace. There really is a beautiful balance between the two of you that you don’t plan on messing up ever.

#captain marvel #captain marvel x reader #captain marvel imagines #captain marvel x you #carol danvers #carol danvers imagines #carol danvers x reader #carol danvers x you #captain #marvel #carol #danvers #ofc #fluff #the gayness #love #imagines #reader insert #captain marvel reader insert #insert #you're just a girl but you're carol's girl

[littlestsnicket]

the witcher: the end’s beginning

Whenever I hear the netflix noise, I automatically start singing Look Away. Doesn’t matter that I haven’t actually rewatched ASOUE that many times.

i very much appreciate how they make this first monster fight look difficult (it gives such scale to how dangerous these monsters are when you compare it to Geralt fighting Renfri’s posse later). And Geralt’s not at all human eyes. The spidering poison is super unnerving and feral looking. Great introduction to the character. (per my understanding of the video game, he absolutely ate that deer raw, when he tells Renfri he’s full later, he is FULL OF RAW MEAT.)

so that paper 100% says kikimora on it. important a scene or two later. 

some of the costuming decisions aren’t 100% but I am a big fan of the set design. especially all of the candles. 

i want to squish renfri’s cute little face! (her costuming is also on point, i really love the specific red color of her shirt. Although on further examination, the fit is actually a little strange? Or the pleating doesn’t read right on screen all the time.)

“more and more i find monsters wherever i go.” yup... early introduction of *theme*

“I killed a rat this morning with my breakfast fork.” Got to love Marilka!

“You don’t scary me”/“That’s too bad.”

(Geralt will be a good adopted father to Ciri, he’s good with violent, headstrong teenage girls.)

Marilka lied there, the flier was absolutely for a kikimora. She is very deliberately intercepting him to take Geralt to Stregobor. And Geralt is just like, fuck fine? You do sort of get the impression that people refusing to pay him as contracted is something he deals with ALL THE TIME!

“I think that makes you a hero.” (aww, Marilka!)

Marilka and Geralt are so cute together (I think he likes people who will talk at him)

Geralt’s little smile when she says “girls can’t be witchers that’s the stupidest thing i’ve ever heard”

Gratuitous nudity? Nah, we’re establishing something about Stregabor with this. Also, it’s just sort of there... in the background, like we should barely pay any attention to it. (So, per the timeline, Stregobor has already tried to prevent Yennefer from going to the court she wants for no apparent reason. Stregobor is a bastard.)

“I seem to remember that Witcher’s don’t feel anything”

Aw, Ciri dressed as a boy handing out with some rascals. She’s wearing normal pants here... 

”Gross”, yes Ciri your horny grandparents are gross.

“Wizards are all the same. You talk nonsense while making wize and meaningful faces. Speak plainly.” Geralt is so done with everything. That’s how we meet him. I question the received fan wisdom that Geralt doesn’t talk very much. He’s just surrounded by people who talk A LOT.

How full of shit is Stregobor? It’s very difficult to tell. Does he actually believe his bullshit? What evidence did he actually have of these internal mutations? How did they die so he could autopsy them? Difficult to say. Also, there is something super weird about how Stregabor talks to Geralt, the way he’s moving and the tone of voice he’s using--like he’s trying to get in his head. Is it strictly psychological or is he attempting to do what he accuses Renfri of and manipulate him with magic? Make him kill Renfri?

“Pretty ballads hide bastard truths.” (Rewatching, this makes me think of episode 4, they’ve met Jaskier. I wonder if Jaskier wrote anything about Calanthe — there are so many references throughout the series of the power of song to change perception of the past, which changes the present.)

I can’t unsee how the bodice of Crir’s dress doesn’t lay quite right and the fabric is weirdly modern looking. (Her face when she is doing the kicky part of the dance--she’s so right, what the hell even is that.)

GERALT’S FINDING SHIT TO MAKE A POTION! 

“Queen Calanthe of Cintra, she just won her first battle” — if you are paying attention, the timeline stuff is actually pretty clear, the clues are all there. I was explaining to a friend that i have trouble watching things that are of midrange complexity; i can follow this and i can follow a sitcom, but I often have trouble following things inbetween. 

“Because then I am what they say I am” — Geralt is morally incapable of rehabilitating his own reputation, he’s too concerned he might deserve it

renfri says “no more princess” and then Geralt calls her a princess. He is SO DELIBERATE with words. 

The violence in this battle is something. The visuals are weird; it’s not torture porn, it’s frantic and horrifying. There is this unbelievable level of squelching and bits flying around, but very little blood. And I don’t think i’ve seen a battle sequence that is washed out in that precise way--the overcast sky reflects the sun everywhere until you can hardly see. That’s got to be a horrible circumstance to fight under. 

I hope we see Ciri comfortable enough to be this impetuous again. 

Does Mousesack know Stregobor? Why does he choose to tell Ciri a story where a wizard systematically kills young girls? There’s no real moral relevance or connection to what they are talking about, unless it is the cruel callousness of fate. 

Calanthe is so devastated when Eist dies :(

Ciri looks so scared and like the world is ending, talented actress, she’s wonderful!

Geralt’s giant monologue talking to his horse. Yeah, perceived fan wisdom isn’t quite right. He talks. He’s pretty verbal and good with words. He’s just so very careful around people and cultivating this very specific image.

“She took one look at me, screamed, vomited and then passed out. Yeah I thought the world needed me too.” I bet he is still thinking about Marilka calling him a hero. 

Back in Cintra... the color has shifted so drastically from the glaring white to the orange burning. 

Geralt is THERE, right NOW. escaping from the prison cell Calanthe put him in. DESTINY! But why?!?

The way Mousesack looks at Ciri when she does the magic yelling thing for the first time. He does not look surprised. 

“Find Geralt of Rivia, he is your destiny.” I should have counted how many times the word Destiny is said. I’m sure it’s off the wall. 

Note to self: Mousesack and Calanthe know that Nilfgard is here for Ciri. They say so. Were they too in denial about it to take appropriate action? Cause strategically, if they knew that, nothing they do makes any sense. And they could not have gotten new information since Calanthe went off to battle. 

Cintra doesn’t have a court mage, and hasn’t for ages. Pretty sure Mousesack is a druid, but is it hard to convince Calanthe to let him stay? (should get back to this train of thought in episode 4)

This bit with the soldiers handing out the poison drives home how scary Nilfgard is so much more effectively than seeing them graphically torture people. (Not that what we see of the slaughtering people isn’t graphic enough.)

Calanthe just tipping out the window gets me every time. The soundtracking is great, the way is gets quiet and picks back up again. 

Geralt is so fucking close to Ciri in this moment, but not close enough!

What is Renfi’s intent in sleeping with Geralt? Is it just because she wants to or does she have some ulterior motive? Does she think it will sway him? They both look at eachother so softly though. The way it is done in this weird prophesizing flashback is so strange. 

“You have to choose the lesser evil.”

Geralt goes from resigned fuck to snarling so so fast when it becomes obvious that Renfri’s posse is not going to back down.

“They created me just as they created you, we’re not so different.” — what does she mean by that? Does she mean it philosophically that they have both been badly mistreated by society, or is she implying that her mutations are deliberate. And she was created, like a Witcher. Not a coincidence of being born during an eclipse. If that was the case, Stregobor would know, possibly even have been the one to do it, that creepy fucking bastard. I don’t have easily searchable transcripts handy, but I *think* Geralt mentions something in another episode about how he’s found mutations to be deliberate. Going to keep an eye out for that. I’m proposing that Stregobor was out to create an army of female witchers and it went... badly and he killed them all off. Maybe he was even doing it to replace Tissaia and Aretusa. This could be a *thing*. 

I am 90% sure Geralt just grabbed the blade of the sword. Yup, he’s definitely holding the sword in his off hand by the blade when he kills Renfri. The fuck Geralt? Does that not hurt your hand?

Renfri’s giant eyes when she’s dying. God. 

So Ciri legit causes a giant crevice to form in the earth. WHAT IS SHE CAPABLE OF?!?

The way Stregobor looks at Renfri’s corpse. So upsetting. He doesn’t look at her like a person. Stregobor is definitely using the idea of Renfri’s mutation manipulating people to turn the crowd against Geralt; make him seem more untrustworthy and shut down any attempt for him to defend himself. Protecting Renfri’s corpse from horrible wizard dude is 100% in character for him. 

Shit. Geralt’s resigned but completely devastated face when Marilka tells him to leave and not come back. And she is so soft and quiet about it too, that must make it so much worse. And Marilka looks like she’s about to cry too--she’s lost something: her innocence, her chance to escape, both. What does she really, deep down, think of Geralt here? Will she lie awake at night wondering if she should have said something else? I wonder what becomes of her. What does she think about Stregobor after this? Her face though, she has to know something is wrong here. Does she leave Blaviken? Does she hear tales of Geralt the White Wolf as an adult? What does she think of them?

Close up shot of the pin he took from Renfri.

And then the clear visual cue that Ciri is the girl in the woods. If you just roll with it and assume things will get explained a little better later, this really isn’t confusing. You just need to let go a little.

#the witcher #mayo blogs the witcher #this was fun/easy--will totally do all eight episodes

[palmtreepalmtree]

Alright guys, it’s time for a new edition of...

The Worst Movie on Netflix Right Now!

Let’s just say when this (Falling Inn Love) popped up in my feed on Thursday, I watched it immediately.  Like --- I heard the opening bars of the promo music and my eyes dilated like I’d taken a deep hit of nitrous-oxide and I hit PLAY.  Yup, it’s like that.

The Premise

So this falls into the pretty well-known category of made-for-TV romances I like to think of as “City Girl Rehab.”  In these movies, whether they’re Christmas-time or whatever time, an ambitious urbanite is forced out into the country for some contrived reason and learns to value what’s really important.  HINT HINT -- it’s not her job or her ambitions!

This particular story centers around Gabriela who works for some Chad at an internet start-up (that’s literally the character’s name) before things go entirely wrong.  Within minutes of the movie starting, Gabriela loses her job and her boyfriend in a quick one-two punch.  In a fit of rosé-drunk (a totally appropriate reaction to the shit-show of her life) she enters a scam-email contest to “Win an Inn!”  

And of course, she does win the inn.  Or at least that’s what an email tells her.  And seemingly, that email is enough for this competent woman to pack a small suitcase, buy an airline ticket, and get on a plane to fucking NEW ZEALAND (hey kudos to New Zealand’s film commission board for enticing this production).  

Anyhow, against all fucking odds, Gabriela has in fact won an actual inn.  As in she now owns real property.  

And that’s the end of the story!  Gabriela is now a property owner!  Happy ending!  Woo!  

...

...

No?  Okay.  Anyhow, the inn in question is in rather poor shape (that was a fun sentence to say in my head).  So here comes a handsome contractor, Jake (I think?  Fuck if I remember), to help her turn this money pit into a moneymaker! 

From there, the movie continues to follow the usual tropes of small-town romance.  A little bit of fish-out-water, a little bit of house-flipper, a little bit of love-hate, and we’re in business.

The Good

So, guys.  I gotta confess.  I made a fatal mistake on this one. I watched it twice.

I was falling asleep towards the end it felt unfair to review a movie I hadn’t entirely seen.  Damn my conscience.  Once you’ve seen a movie twice, it’s a lot harder to avoid finding things you like in it.  And shit.  There’s actually some decent stuff in here!

Decent is high praise in the land of made-for-TV romances.  But here are some of the highlights:

First, the screenplay does a decent job of capturing the alienation of our current economy.  Gabriela is stuck in a job where she can’t advance, in spite of her competence, because she’s blocked by techbro Chads and Kyles.  Then the job dematerializes over-night for reasons the employees only learn about through Twitter.  And when she tries to find something else, she jokes with a potential employer that she knows she’s overqualified, but they don’t have to tell anybody, right? Haha!?!?  

Yeah.  It sucks.  And even though it’s played for breezy laughs by the director, it lands.

It’s obvious that the two writers of this movie, Elizabeth Hackett and Hilary Galanoy, actually thought about some of their choices in this story.  Gabriela is a surprisingly proactive protagonist.  For example, although the writers contrive for Gabriela to hit rock-bottom in a cliche way to kick this movie off, they’ve done so at least partially on her terms.  When she realizes that her relationship isn’t progressing the way she wants, she ends it.  When she realizes the inn situation isn’t exactly as she imagined it, she pivots to make the most of the opportunity for herself.  This movie isn’t happening to her, she’s happening to it.  

In addition, some of the tropes don’t quite end up where you would expect.  I sighed at the appearance of a female rival---but it’s a rival for the property not the man.  And that rival relationship doesn’t quite wind up where you expect.  Same thing with her off-again boyfriend---when he returns in the final act, his response to Gabriela’s rejection isn’t misogynistic cruelty, but understanding and acceptance.  If only all guys just nodded and smiled with acceptance and walked away.  That’s the dream, ladies.  That’s the dream.

I also wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t call out the occasionally witty bits and one-liners in this script, like: “Chad and his buddies are like a free-range bachelor party.” or “Finish up your Habitat for Hobbits and get on a plane.”  It’s... not terrible?

The Bad

Now that I’ve been complimenting the film for about 20 paragraphs, you’re probably wondering why I still put this in the “worst” category.  

It’s cause once they set their genre-twisting goals up high, they crashed through every fucking cliche on the way back down before landing with a fucking SPLAT.  

First of all, what’s with the hate-him-before-you-love-him trope?  Gabriela meets Jake with open hostility for reasons completely unknown either by the actress or the script.  This is a good-looking guy with a nice smile.  What’s the fucking problem!?  Nobody knows.

Gabriela’s hostility to assistance in general seems strange and inconsistent.  As if the writers/director are trying to make some sort of comment about female independence.  But who gives a fuck?  This isn’t a Destiny’s Child song. 

Also, why does every director have to undermine a competent female character by forcing her into slapstick absurdity?  It’s not relateable and it’s not particularly funny.  Christina Milian, the actress playing Gabriela (you may remember her from pop stardom????), is under pains to behave in a way that few women would.  She screams at a goat three times in this movie.  It’s not fucking funny (although the goat is cute as hell and can stay).  She rolls out of bed twice (in goat-related incidents).  She physically hides from Jake at least once.  She goes from doing a yoga headstand (impressive!) to not being able to do a tree pose (what!?).  

Fucking hell, JUST LET THE WOMAN BE COMPETENT FOR ONCE.

But mostly, more than anything, Gabriela is a cardboard cut-out character here.  She is every-woman, and thus, she is no one.  All the other characters in this cliche little movie have at least something going on with them (even the owner of the hardware store has a cute running joke about never having had a nickname before but always wanting one).  But with Gabriela, there’s nothing.  

We don’t know anything about her.  About her childhood or her family.  Her education.  Her passions.  Jake prods her to open up at one point, and she responds by recounting the events from the first part of the movie: things in San Francisco sucked, so I applied for a win-an-inn contest.  As if she never existed before the beginning of the movie.  We know nothing about her.  

The Ugly

So there’s a lot of not great stuff in this movie as described above.  But some of the worst of it is just the cringe-factor shit.  The poorly landed jokes.  The dialogue that’s entirely too earnest.  The stuff that makes you say aloud to no one in the room, Oh no.  

Like when Gabriela refers to Jake as “Crocodile Dundee.”  YIKES.  Or a little sing-a-long number during a jeep ride that does not unfold in a way that it ever possibly could in real life (but hey, good job on securing some music licenses, Netflix!).

Or when someone starts a speech with, “I’ve learned that...” not once, but twice.  

And then there’s the occasional moment where the directing is moving in perfect contradiction to what’s happening on screen like this exchange:

Shelley: It’s very rural.  It’s incredibly... quiet.

Oh, really?  It’s quiet? 

There are cocktail party sound effects going behind Shelley’s dialogue here, and there are six extras, not including the two main characters, moving in and around the frame throughout this exchange.  The effect is that it’s actually a pretty lively place.  What the fuck?  Is everyone shopping at the gardening store on the same day at the same time!?  This is the whole town right here, right!?

This probably seems like nit-picking, but it’s an example of a weird disconnect that happens throughout the film, where the script is saying one thing, but the directing, either in tone or visual communication, is saying something entirely else.  

When a movie is about a small town, there can’t be people in every single shot.  You have to find a way to communicate that sense of remoteness visually.  The town itself should be a character.  It’s such a missed opportunity here, especially since it’s obvious they actually filmed in New Zealand!!!

In Conclusion

The overall message of this movie---which is the same in every movie of this little subgenre---is that people who live in small towns are kinder and more caring than people who live in the city, and that small-town life is qualitatively better.  And you know what, they may have a point.  I don’t live in a small town, but I sure fantasize about it a lot.  Which is why this subgenre is so fucking effective.

And let’s be real.  If someone were to give me free property pretty much anywhere, yeah, I’d probably move there too.  

But no matter what these movies are trying to sell me, I’m pretty sure everywhere you go there’s assholes.  Different place, different problems, different assholes.     

And that’s why this is the Worst Movie on Netflix Right Now.  

#the worst movie on netflix right now #i need a tag for these #this one was long #sorry not sorry #ptpt reviews

[queermediastudies]

Between a mistress and a male lover, who will win?

Dear EX is a Chinese comedy-drama movie co-directed by Mag Hsu and Hsu Chih-yen (Chu, 2019). The film nominated a lot of prize in Asian, it won the Best Narrative Feature Film of 20th Taipei Film Awards and Best Leading Actress of the 55th Golden Horse Awards. It received a lot of positive reviews in the Asian area and selected as the Taiwanese entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards. The two-hour-long movie is built around the beneficiaries of insurance and centered with a thirteen-year-old boy called Song Cheng-xi. Song Cheng-xi’s father was died because of cancer several weeks ago when his mother Liu San-lian found that her husband Song Zheng-yuan left his insurance to his male lover Jay. Jay is a director and actor in a small theater and did not live in a very rich life. Jay met and fell in love with Song Zheng-yuan 17 years ago when they met each other in a college drama club. They broke up because Song Zheng-yuan wanted to have a “normal” life and got married to San-lian. San-lian believed that the insurance should be left to her son to study abroad and she brings her son together to get the money back. However, Song Cheng-xi stands on Jay’s side and lived with him to find some answer about his father’s relationship with Jay. The film shot from the child’s point of view to show audiences the story of queer, family, marriage and love.

The title of the film in Chinese is “谁先爱上他的”, the meaning of the title is “Who fell in love with him first?” which is a little bit of different from the English title. “Him” in the title represents Chengxi’s father Song Zheng-yuan, both San-lian and Jay believed that they are the people who first be in love with Song Zheng-yuan at the beginning of the movie. The movie did not begin in chronological clues, the director mixing the flashbacks with present-day screen to show Song Zheng-yuan’s relationship between neither Jay or San-lian. Using alternates between the three characters’ perspectives to show the characters’ identities, motivations. Each one back to their own life at the end of the film, Cheng-xi learned to get on well with his mother, Si-lian also gave up to hate Jay and her husband and Jay continued his life in a small theater with the insurance money. San-lian helped Song Zheng-yuan to get his package for the drama club, she fell in love with the handsome man for the first time they met. Jay attracted by Song Zheng-yuan when Song ran into the drama club and talked about theater issues. Director did not answer the question that “Who fell in love with him first,” the truth was that Song Zheng-yuan met Jay and San-lian on the same day.

Dear EX provides a look at homosexual people’s life in the Asian area. Under the context of Asian traditional culture, homosexuals still as a marginalized group in society faced a lot of social problems especially in morality and marriage issues. Dear Ex as a movie that enters the mainstream media and released to the pubic hope to make more people aware of the problem and understand this group.

Although the film and its actors received many accolades include nominations for Best Actor in Golden Horse Awards, it still failed in the casting issue since the homosexual characters are represented by cisgender people. Martin’s article stated that hiring LGBTQ people in the film is not only necessarily important for issues of representation and diversity but also important with respect to labor issues in the market (Martin, 2018). A cisgender actor represents homosexual role based on their heterosexual identity and experiences, audiences will take away roles from real gay men. It is not good for showing the image of the actual guy men in the movies.

Meanwhile, since Dear Ex is a Chinese movie we should critique the movie with the guide of an ethic of cultural humility. Caution must be taken to avoid imposing the worldview of researchers on the sense-making of participants whether under the guise of academic imperialism, gay imperialism, or the Western gaze (Goltz, Zingsheim, Mastin, & Murphy, 2016). The problem that hiring a cisgender actor to play homosexual roles is caused by the traditional Chinese culture. Although Taiwan is one of the most openly are in Asian toward LGBTQ issues, the LGBTQ group faced more pressures than in western countries. Actors as public figures and also people who have great influence cannot easily come out in China (Taiwan). Audiences will connect the actor with the character together that the image of the actors may be related to homosexual identity. Actors who used to play homosexual roles want to get rid of the “homosexual identity” tag on them.

While Dear EX did a good job of showing the real-life and pressures homosexual people have in Chinese society. The heteronormative almost through the entire movie that people see the world in a binary system and define heterosexual as a common behavior by default (Andersson, 2002). San-lian did not want his son to hear the quarrel between her and Jay because she thought that her son will get bad influenced when he knew that his father is a guy. Another plot is when San-lian told her friend that her husband gave the insurance money to the mistress in the office. Her friend cannot understand the reason San-lian did not sue until she knew that the mistress was a male. When San-lian spoke out that her husband was cheating on with her on a man, everyone in the office kept quiet. San-lian did not want others to know that her husband had a male lover because it was a kind of shame for the family. Sian-lian kept calling Jay as a mistress or a pervert before she reconciliation with Jay. The movie represents the real-world situation that most people in China still believed that heterosexual is the right or the more acceptance option under the idea of binary-sex.

The movie also reflects the common stereotypes of the LGBTQ community from the young kid and Sai-lian’s perspective. By the influences of heteronormative and traditional Chinese cultures, the young boy Cheng-xi thought that Jay must be on drugs because Jay wears his colorful pajamas every day and he is gay. However, Chengxi’s thought changed at the end of the movie because he found that Jay took good care of his father in his last time of life. For San-lian, she is the representative of the traditional Chinese mother who takes good care of the child’s everything in life and wants her child to put all efforts into the study. Her thoughts about homosexuals are also influenced by traditional cultures. When her husband told her the truth that he is gay and he decided to leave the home to live with the male lover. San-lian’s first idea was to take her husband to see a doctor and get him back to “normal.” Although homosexuals did not count as a disease in China since 2001, still a lot of people think homosexual as a disease and doctor can solve the problem through treatment.

Furthermore, Dear Ex also discussed the meaning of coming out through the change of main character Song Zheng-yuan’s perspective toward the issues. Coming out is a process that “the individual realization that one was homosexual, and acknowledgment of sexual identity to other gay people (Gross, 2001, p.22)” and it is also the growing of self-conscious among gays and lesbians. Song Zheng-yuan came out in the movie when he reappeared in Jay’s life 17 years after they broke up. However, from Jay’s memory, we can know that Song was afraid of coming out. Song prevented Jay from coming out to his mother and decided to hide their sexual orientation. Song said to Jay “I need a normal life and a normal marriage” when they broke up. In traditional chines cultural, people value the succession of the family. A “normal” life for Song means to marry a woman and have their child for the family. Song came out to his wife when he was diagnosed with cancer. He decided to be himself in the remaining days of his life. Coming out is still a serious issue for homosexual people in China. Coming out is not only related to the self-conscious to the person but also as opposed to the traditional content of marriage that being a homosexual person will lose the succession of the family. With the pressure from family and society, a lot of homosexual people did not have enough courage to come out in China. In the movie, Song had the courage to come out only after he knows that he did not have much time to live.

As a movie that entered the mainstream media and released in the theaters, the director uses a lot of doodles and bright colors to tell the story in a relaxed way. Dear EX discussed a sensitive topic in China which is called “TongQi.” “TongQi” means a woman who gets married to a gay man but she did not know his husband is gay. It can be said that the traditional concept of marriage led to this tragedy. Song deceived San-lian and got married to her but finally left the home. Jay and Song fell in love with each other but Jay been in Song’s company for a short time before he died. Everyone in the movie is a victim. The movie does not give the only answer to who is justice. The film was released in November in 2019, it was in the window between the court ruling that couples had the constitutional right to marry (May 2017) and the actual moment of legalization in May 2019 (Brown, 2019). The film wants people to think about the pressures and problems caused by the traditional Chinese contents, and to further explore the importance of legalization of same-sex marriage.

As a Chinese and a straight person, I was really happy to see a movie like Dear EX can be released in the theaters (Taiwan) and Netflix. My Chinese identity can help me understand the content of the movies very well since some words are hard to translate. After knowing more and more queer contents from our class, I have more thoughts on the movie when I saw it for the third time. I awarded the heteronormative in the movies and started to think about the relationship between traditional marriage content in China and coming out in China.

References

Andersson, Yvonne (2002). “Queer Media?: Or; What Has Queer Theory to do with Media Studies?” IAMCR, 1-10. 

Brown, C(2019). "This Film Is Blessed by the Gods": Talking with Mag Hsu, Director of Dear Ex. Retrieved from https://brightlightsfilm.com/this-film-is-blessed-by-the-gods-talking-with-mag-hsu-director-of-dear-ex-netflix-2018/#.Xbyqj5NKhaW.

Chu, K. (2019, September 16). Oscars: Taiwan Selects 'Dear Ex' for International Feature Film Category. Retrieved from 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/2020-oscars-taiwan-selects-dear-international-feature-film-category-1239706.

Goltz, D. B., Zingsheim, J., Mastin, T., & Murphy, A. G. (2016). Discursive negotiations of Kenyan LGBTI identities: Cautions in cultural humility. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 9(2), 104-121. doi:10.1080/17513057.2016.1154182

Gross, Larry (2001). “Ch 2: Coming Out and Coming Together” and “Ch 3: Stonewall and Beyond” in Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America, 21-55. 

Martin, Alfred L. Jr (2018) Pose(r): Ryan Murphy, Trans and Queer of Color Labor, and the Politics of Representation. Retrieved from https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/poser-ryan-murphy-trans-queer-color-labor-politics-representation/.

#QueerMedia #chinese homosexual movie #heteronormativity #traditional chinese culture #stererotype #DearEX

[frgt-me-not]

Angelic ~ Paint

Previous part // Part 16 // Next part

(Words: ~1150)

Jimin’s POV

If it hadn’t been for losing that one death match against Jungkook there would’ve been no way I would’ve gone downstairs to get both of us a beer.

We’d thought the six-pack would’ve lasted us at least a couple of hours, but it turned out that we had drunk all of them in the course of an hour.

For a few seconds, we’d argued about who should go and get us another pack at the store, which is less than a kilometer away.

Jungkook had proposed a match in some stupid game that I hadn’t played or even seen since I was eleven.

Without any real effort, Jungkook had won the game and completely destroyed my ego within ten minutes.

All the way through the house I’d been cursing under my breath, thankful that Jungkook’s mom wasn’t home to hear me.

She was rarely home, but when she was, the house was a non-cursing zone, and it didn’t matter if you were one of her children or just a guest.

I’d learned that lesson the hard way after shouting a not so child-friendly word after losing a very important bet to Jungkook.

Their house is fairly quiet if you don’t count the sounds from Jungkook’s tv behind me, which sounds like the zombie apocalypse has just broken out.

I’ll be back within five minutes if I walk quickly.

My eyes land on the closed door at the end of the hall, which has been painted to look like the ocean. The door is always closed and the person behind it rarely shows her face anymore.

I don’t dwell on it and instead, I rush down the stairs and through the painfully white living room.

When I return with twelve cans of beer, thinking six wouldn’t be enough, Jungkook isn’t in his bedroom anymore.

For a second, I’m convinced he has gotten a text from some girl and left me here. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case, he didn’t last for more than a week last time we made a bet that he wouldn’t bail on me to hook up.

A muffled scream sounds from down the hall.

I twist around and stare down at the blue door.

I stay rooted to the spot, waiting to hear if the sound reappears, but the house remains quiet.

I find my phone and call Jungkook, but it goes straight to voicemail.

A breath weasels through my teeth and I set the beers on the coffee table.

As I turn to sit down on the bed one of the several dozen photos covering the walls catch my attention.

It’s the same picture that I always look at when I come in here.

It’s a picture of y/n from six months ago before she began to hide in her room.

Only the top half of her face is visible behind a bouquet of pale white flowers.

Something about her reminds me of an Angel.

I jerk back from the picture, realizing I have moved closer to study it.

It had been the sound of another muffled scream, followed by the crunchy sound of glass smashing against something hard that had jerked me out of my trance.

Concern floods my mind as I move out of the room and down the hall.

It’s not hard to find the source of the scream, because shortly after, something thumps against the door to y/n’s room.

I’ve only ever been in there once and that was three months ago when she allowed me to watch her paint for about ten minutes.

I hold my hand in front of my face before gradually opening the door, just in case something is going to be thrown at the door again.

“I come in peace,“ I announce as I creak open the door.

She shrieks and jumps back holding up a brush as if she’s going to defend herself with it.

When she catches me staring at it, she drops it, flinching when it hits the ground.

My eyes dart from her wide eyes to the wall where colored water is dripping down on several large and small shards of glass lying on the ground.

Splotches of paint are splattered across the room and across her skin.

There is a thick stripe of deep blue paint on her face, drawn from right under her right eye to halfway down her throat.

A few seconds pass where neither of us says anything, and even though she looks like she’s in shock, I feel an overwhelming urge to laugh.

When I give in to the urge, I see her body visibly relax.

She lets out a deep breath and stares at me with an illegible expression on her face.

Through my fit of laughter I try to form a coherent sentence, “Let’s get you cleaned up a little, shall we?“

I grab her paint covered hand and lead her into the bathroom.

“You really don’t have to,” she argues, but I just tug her over to the sink.

“Blue suits you,” I comment, following the line of blue on her face with my eyes before lifting her off the ground and onto the counter.

She watches me reach up to retrieve a cloth.

I wet it with lukewarm water and lift it to her face.

She stays completely still as if she’s a statue while I wipe her swollen cheek, removing some of the paint.

It’s easy to tell that she has been crying, but I don’t say anything.

“Why are you doing this?” She asks after several minutes of silence.

I wash some of the paint off the cloth, watching the swirl of color disappear into the drain.

I grabbed her hands and gently rub them, “Did you just want me to pretend like I hadn’t seen you?”

She doesn’t reply, but she doesn’t have to.

“What happened?” I question as I move over to the bathtub and begin to fill it with water.

She eyes the tub with an odd look on her face, “I won’t stay in here,” I grin at her and help her onto her unsteady feet.

“Did you splatter yourself with paint?”

Despite her looking like she wants to disappear completely, her fingers wrap around the fabric of my T-shirt while her eyes briefly flicker away from mine, “It was just Jungkook playing a stupid joke on me.” She murmurs in a small voice.

My face falls when she says Jungkook’s name, “Please tell me he didn’t.”

She swallows hard when I move away from her towards the door, determined on finding Jungkook.

“Jimin?” y/n’s voice says, while something nudges my thigh.

“Did he die or something?” another voice asks.

I groan, clutching a painful throb in the back of my head.

I blink my eyes open, slowly getting used to the bright light around me.

Two dark figures above me come into focus and one of them has her brows furrowed in concern.

“Hey Angel,” I mutter.

Tag list: @books-netflix @namiiy @jjksbabybun @aesthetically-nonpleasing @ibelievein-goats @attaeboy @ilikeyoo-ngi @lovemusicn1d @rokathryn @goldngguk @taeandakookiewsuga @conslack @momdancingtomcr @bts-enthusiasts @jiminsbitchface @softyfor-sweaterpaws @decaffeinated1amwriting  @a-lovers-discourse-ended @elena-0707-blog @moonfairyjoon @bts-lys @minniestudies

Masterlist: here  Ask box: here  Playlist: here

#angelic #bts #bts park jimin #park jimin #jimin #jimin social media au #bts scenarios #bts social media au #bts college au #bts chats #bts fanfic #bts fake chat #bts fake texts #bts angst #bts au #bts jimin fanfic #bts jimin #bts jimin fake texts #bts jimin social media au #bts jimin fake chat #park jimin scenario #park jimin imagines #jimin fanfic #kpop #kpop bts

[btsybrkr]

Please Come Dine With Me

In today’s world of Netflix originals, glossy reality series and big budget drama, it’s easy to forget about TV’s old reliables. You know, the programmes with nothing to say, but so much to give. They’re the television equivalent of an ex that you can’t help but miss, despite having brought absolutely nothing to each other’s lives. The absolute king of this brand of TV can only be Come Dine With Me, the dinner party contest that began broadcasting in 1892 and has been playing simultaneously, on all 26 branches of Channel 4, at every hour of every day ever since. Seriously, flick through the channels, I can almost guarantee it’s on right now.

Come Dine With Me, now in its 37th series (I’m actually not making that bit up), must unironically be one of the best things to ever air in this country. During a casual viewing, it seems that nothing much happens, but a quick Google search unearths an absolute goldmine of unforgettable moments. Some have already been cemented into pop culture history, destined to be repeated on ‘100 Greatest...’ clip shows until the sun swallows the Earth whole - like the man who decided to sample a sauce he was making by nonchalantly shoving the whole whisk into his mouth, or sore loser Peter Marsh’s ‘you won, Jane’ speech, which is, in my opinion, a hundred times more brutal than anything Ricky Gervais could or would ever come out with whilst presenting an awards ceremony. Others are unfortunately never spoken about, but remain a vivid memory in the consciousness of the lucky viewers who caught them, such as the moment a particularly eccentric contestant, known only as DJ Dom, drafted in indie musician Badly Drawn Boy to help him cook for his ‘Madchester’ themed dinner party, before telling the viewers “All done, just got to go and change me kecks!” and coming back downstairs in the exact same outfit, right down to the bucket hat. Or the iconic Preston week from series 7, in which we were introduced to so-posh-it-hurts Valerie Holliday, whose pronunciation of the word ‘pheasant’ (or fezzaaaunt, as she might say) is superglued to the insides of my brain, where it will stay for the rest of my days. I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

I’m sure we’ve all, at some point, had the ‘who would be invited to your dream dinner party?’ conversation with our friends or family, but what we should really be asking each other is “who would be on your dream episode of Come Dine With Me?”. If you think about it, they’re two very different questions, with very different answers. Of course, I’d love the chance to sit and speak with Tom Hanks, Mac Demarco and Phoebe Waller-Bridge over a glass of wine and a really good burger, but do I think it would make entertaining TV? Well, yeah, probably. But not on Come Dine With Me. That’s a horse of a very different colour.

Anyway, here’s what my dream episode of Come Dine With Me might look like. Narrated in your brain by Dave Lamb, probably.

Today, we’re in Blackpool, where our first contestant, 23-year-old chronic timewaster Betsy (that’s me!), is gearing up to host the opening night of the week, and we’re sure it’s going to be an absolute belter. Let’s see what her fellow dinner party guests make of the menu.

“A cheeseboard? As a starter? What’s that about?”, asks living soundbite and reality TV icon, Gemma Collins. She’s unimpressed with the menu, largely on the basis that it pales in comparison to the sort of luxury she’s used to, such as the gourmet camel penis she could have been tucking into on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! In 2014, had she not packed it in after three days. Actually, I think the celebrity version of Come Dine With Me might be the only reality programme that Gemma Collins is yet to appear in. Maybe we should be writing to the powers-that-be at Channel 4 and getting them to sort that out, since I’ll surely be making a strong case for her appearance here. Anyway, who’s next?

Our third contestant is equally disappointed with the offerings. “I don’t fuck with stilton”, states the self-proclaimed second coming of Jesus, Kanye West. Yes, he’s an odd choice for a daytime cookery/popularity contest, especially since I’m almost 100% sure he doesn’t cook for himself under any circumstances, and is probably only popular among people who’ve never had to try and sit through an actual conversation with him, but who cares? Kanye does what Kanye wants. And if Kanye wants to appear on Come Dine With Me, then that’s his business, and he’ll shit in the Yeezys of anybody who disagrees. Or pay someone else to do it for him, obviously. Anyway, onto contestant number four, who can surely only be disappointing after that… can’t they?

Of course not!! Contestant number four is TV’s shouty queen-of-clean Kim Woodburn, who is really excited to get her teeth into some red hot beef. Not the food kind, either. The kind of beef she dished out to Philip Schofield, while he was asking her questions about the beef she dished out in her fondly-remembered ‘chicken-livered bunch’ rant from Celebrity Big Brother. She’ll be glad to know I’m not serving any chicken livers at my dinner party, I’m sure. Not that she’ll be particularly enamoured with my cooking skills overall.

“It all looks terribly common, darling”, she says, as she holds the menu in one Marigold-wearing hand, and a glass of an expensive gin in the other. Suit yourself, then, Kim.

Contestant number five hasn’t bothered to read the menu yet, but that’s because he’s been busy begging the Channel 4 producers on set for another series of Deal Or No Deal now that his hefty I’m A Celebrity paycheck is all but gone. Yes, it’s Noel Edmonds, TV’s favourite bearded arsehole. After Alan Sugar, of course, but I’ve already written a bit about him on here, so there’d be no point in putting him in this one as well. You know, someone I knew a few years back once told me that Noel Edmonds did a guest lecture at his university, in which he offered some lucky students the chance to spend their summer doing a couple of months unpaid work experience on his radio show. Imagine that! Spending day-in-day-out with Noel Edmonds, without even a penny in compensation. I know they say ‘life’s not fair’, but that really would be pushing it. 

Anyway, that’s everyone, and as I anxiously pour boiling water into five chicken and mushroom Pot Noodles, my all-star dinner guests begin to arrive. First at the doorstep is Kim, who I greet with open arms. 

“Wonderful to meet you, luvvie”, she says. The worried glance she gives the camera afterwards tells me otherwise. Perhaps she’s unimpressed by my unshiny door handle. That’s not a euphemism. 

Gemma and Noel arrive soon afterwards, both carrying bottles of champagne that I couldn’t possibly ever afford myself. They’re not to share, of course, they were bought in anticipation that the wine I’m providing wouldn’t be up to standard, which it is, because I’m serving all my courses with a glass of Summer Berries Echo Falls. It’s £5.99 a bottle and gets you absolutely Bankered. 

We mingle in the living room, eagerly anticipating the arrival of my final guest. Just as Gemma, Kim and Noel begin bonding over the trials of being paid many thousands of pounds to sit around and simply exist for the viewing pleasures of mere mortals like myself, Kanye West teleports himself into the room, in a futuristic flash of lightning and to the tune of his 2010 hit Power, blowing a massive hole into the entire left side of my house in the process. It’s true what he says, you know - the man really is a genius.

We take our seats at the dinner table, as soon as the rest of my guests are done with the obligatory search through my knicker drawer (cue a comeback for Kim’s famous How Clean Is Your House? catchphrase, “Oh, you dirty devil!”) that happens on every edition of Come Dine With Me. You know, despite everything else on the programme, that’s the one bit of it that I’ve never really understood. Every single one of the show’s 1,647 episodes includes a bizarre sequence in which the contestants go running around the host’s home, rifling through their personal belongings and mocking them for the cameras. I’m sure the point of it is supposed to be to give the guests a chance to ‘get to know’ the host, but then I’d have thought that spending five nights eating and chatting with them would be a fairly effective way of doing that. Besides, can you imagine catching your guests doing that in real life? I wouldn’t be sitting them down for a meal and rating them for a chance to win £1,000, I’d be throwing them out, maybe even calling the police, depending on what exactly they were doing with the belongings in question. Not that I have time to think about that right now, I’ve got a cheeseboard to prepare!

First topic of conversation is, of course, TV, and as we tuck into our Ritz biscuits and Tesco Value mature cheddar, Noel gives us his opinion.

“My main issue with television these days is that I’m just not on it enough.” A valid viewpoint. We take a moment to collectively long for the days of Noel’s HQ, a drunken nightmare that was somehow harnessed and broadcast to the masses by Sky1, way back in 2008. Noel’s HQ has been mostly lost to time, except for the presence of a video on YouTube entitled ‘Noel Edmonds speaks with passion’, which is well worth a watch if, like me, you enjoy four minute long videos of TV presenters struggling to stifle their own belief that they might just be The Best Person Ever. There’s a great bit in it where he angrily declares to his delighted audience, “I don’t get paid a penny for doing this show”. Noel, I think I speak for everyone when I say thank you for your sacrifice. 

Speaking of The Best Person Ever, Kanye is noticeably quiet. But then, Kanye isn’t here to share his views. Kanye isn’t particularly here to do anything. Kanye is simply here to observe - to greet his subjects, and work out what makes them tick. Kanye can sense our excitement to be sat in his presence, and Kanye enjoys this. It feeds Kanye. Far more than my meager dinner offerings ever could.

I press Gemma for her own opinions on TV, as someone who is literally always on it. Gemma Collins gets where Domestos can’t. It may sound like I’m being flippant, but in all honesty, I love Gemma Collins. I’m not even sure why, I just know I do. She’s famous for the sake of being famous, and she’s bloody good at it. She’s also quite possibly the most quotable public figure since Shakespeare himself. Maybe even more than Shakespeare. Think about it. What inspires you more? “To be or not to be?”, like anyone knows what that actually means, or “Nah, fuck this, I’m out of here. Get that fire exit door. Am off.”, a poetic sentiment, which conveys an emotion we’ve surely all felt at some point in our lives? I know who gets my vote.

Kim misunderstands the question “what do you think of television today?” as “how clean do you think my television is?”, and responds by pulling out a five pack of dusters and a can of Mr Sheen, and getting to work on the flatscreen in the corner of my living room. Oh well, at least all that cleaning will make her hungry in time for the main course. Speaking of which, maybe it’s time I got on with that.

Despite their disappointment with the starters, the main course - Super Noodle sandwiches, with a generous side-helping of curly fries - appears to delight all my guests, except Kim, who mutters under her breath that it all seems very tacky. I won’t let it get me down. It’s my heartfelt belief that anything can be a sandwich filling if you’re brave enough, and my other three guests agree with me. Kanye lets out a satisfied ‘hm’. Excellent. 

We sit down to dessert, and another glass of Echo Falls. The wine is going down surprisingly well, especially with Kim, who has started subtly rolling her eyes at the conversation between myself and Gemma Collins, who are bonding over how much we love Gemma Collins. Kim purses her lips. Her Spidey-senses are tingling. There’s conflict afoot. 

I quiz Noel about an article that I saw in 2015 and have never forgotten. It was featured on The Independent, and was headlined ‘Noel Edmonds says that ‘death doesn’t exist’ and that ‘Electrosmog’ is more deadly than Ebola’. I know that this sounds like something I just came up with, but I regret to tell you that is absolutely something he said. In real life. I’ll give you a minute to take that in.

Noel Edmonds reaffirms this view to me, speaking with the same unnerving passion he did in the YouTube clip I mentioned earlier. I nod politely. I begin to wonder if everyone’s had a little too much Echo Falls, and if I can really handle another four nights with these people. It’s at this moment that, for the first time all night, His Almighty Westness speaks. 

“I really feel what you’re saying right now”, he tells Noel. We wait together for the next part of the statement, but it never comes. Kanye West outstretches his arm to Noel Edmonds. They shake hands. None of us can quite believe it. And for a moment, Noel and Kanye are right. It does feel as though death doesn’t exist. Nothing exists outside of this dinner party. Everything that matters is happening around my dining table at this very second. 

The silence is broken by Kim Woodburn tutting into a wine glass. 

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” she drawls, rolling her eyes, “What a load of nonsensical tosh.”

“Excuse me?”, asks Noel, still hand-in-hand with Kanye West, an alliance he is clearly eager to keep going for as long as possible, on the off chance that he fancies funding another series of Noel’s House Party, “I don’t see you bringing anything to the table here, Kim.”

She widens her eyes, taking another generous gulp of Echo Falls - and I know exactly what she’s about to bring to the table. A big old fight. 

Gemma Collins throws in her two cents. 

“I think we should all calm down a little bit, d’ya know what I mean? I’m having a lovely meal at a fan’s house, I can’t be arsed with an argument.” Wise words, as always, Gemma. Wise words.

It all kicks off.

“You can be quiet, you talentless, orange foghorn!”, sneers Kim, “You’ve contributed nothing to the conversation this evening, other than talking about yourself.”

Gemma’s eyes seem to cloud over with anger, as her complexion quickly transitions from Dulux shade Tangerine Twist to Cranberry Crunch. She knocks the rest of her wine back. Everything goes quiet again for a moment, as Noel, Kanye and I watch the two TV divas stare at each other. It’s like a scene from an old Western, but with diamonds and veneers.

With a violent roar, she launches herself across the table, grabbing Kim by her fake ponytail. I jump up to hold her back, as Kanye leaps from his seat to hold Kim from Gemma. There’s a mad blur of acrylic nails and tufts of bleach blonde hair flying between them, some of it landing into the banoffee pie I had worked so hard on. Noel stands back, arms folded, watching the action in dismay. If you could see the whole picture, it might resemble a renaissance painting, the sort that could be hung in a gallery anywhere in the world and analysed for it’s artistic importance. ‘Nous aimons le boeuf’, it might be called. French for ‘we love the beef’. Doesn’t really matter it means, though, to be fair, as long as it sounds clever and artsy.

Noel shakes his head. 

“What the hell am I doing here?”, he asks, frustrated, “I’m a huge TV star.”

Security eventually intervene, somewhat reluctantly, given the fact this is the most action they’ve seen on a shoot for Come Dine With Me, possibly ever. Producers watch back the footage of the fight on an iPad, sat on my sofa, attempting to mask their delight at what they’d caught on camera.

Kanye eventually stands up, soberly taking in the scene in front of him. Is this how Jay-Z felt as he left the elavator?, he wonders.

“I’m gonna take off”, he informs everyone, breaking the silence that had fallen over the room in the aftermath. But before he can teleport out of the room again, possibly blowing a hole in the other side of my house, the producer speaks up.

“Same time tomorrow? It’s Gemma’s night.”

Four more nights of this… four more nights, all for the chance to win £1,000… is it worth it? 

Of course it is. It was a blast. Same time tomorrow, indeed.

To see some highlights from the iconic Preston week of Come Dine With Me, click here. To see Noel Edmonds speak with passion, click here. To follow me on twitter, click here, or here for instagram :)

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