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mr-no-life · 2 years

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Eurovision 2022 Review

Ahh Eurovision, that time of year where we in the States realize that we can not have anything nice. This is the first year I listened to all the songs for the Simi-Finals witch has been made easier thanks to the official Youtube channel showing the music videos, it made doing this write up A LOT easier. It still does not change the fact that here in America it costs an arm and a leg just to see the live shows… Now, I will not be grading this the way they do in the actual contest, I will be using simple 1-5 scale for each song and highlight what I like about each one. All opinions are personal and are by no means professional in any means.

First Simi-Final (aired 10/May/22 written same day):

Sekret by: Ronela Hajati (Albania) 4/5

I did not know what to expect from Albania, but it was not this. I do not believe I have heard a female artist have such a diverse vocal range like this, and it is freaking awesome. The fluid transition between English and Albanian lyrics is quiet a nice touch on top of the instrumentation and how you can almost follow the song from beginning to end and is not all over the place. This has the potential to gain some good traction post Eurovision and rivals some American artist in this genre.

Eat Your Salad by: Citi Zēni (Latvia)- 5/5*

By far one of the funnier songs I have listened to so far. I feel like this was all a metaphor for wanting to have sex with someone all in the disguise of explaining how to solve a real-world issue. The jazzy/pop vibes this gives off is awesome and it just sounds so smooth like, I can not think of the right words to describe this. In some cases, saxophones are a nightmare because they are either too quiet or too loud. Not here, it is mixed perfectly in with the rest of the song, and nothing seems like it is out of place. A beautiful song and one of my favorites of the first Simi-Final so far.

Sentimetai by: Monkia Liu (Lithuania) - 4/5

To me this sounds like something that would be in a modern French Noir film. The overall rhythm and flow of the song is smooth, and everything is in place where it is supposed to be. A nice snazzy beat accompanied with simple yet dynamic vocals just goes to show that simple is sometimes better.

Boys Do Cry by: Marius Bear (Switzerland) - 4.5/5

It takes a lot for a song to make me cry. But this song (and the music video that goes with it) almost made me cry (got teary eyed not going to lie). Any song that can drive such strong emotions with a simplistic instrumentation has the most respect in my book. The lyrics do a splendid job in breaking down the stereotype that “men/boys do not cry” when in fact they do. “And sometimes airplanes, fall down from the sky, and mountains they crumble, and rivers they run dry…” all examples of things that we normally think are strong and can not break but they do. The societal norm of “the man shows no emotion” is broken down in this song and shows how it is okay to cry when you feel like you have to.

Disko by: LPS (Slovenia) – 3.5/5

I like this song; it has good flow and rhythm. But I feel like it is missing something, and I do not know what. This lands me in a tricky spot because I like the song, but it is missing that one thing to really give it that special touch. I do hope Slovenia dose well this year because I am willing to bet most of us forget that they exist (and this is not me hating on them I genially do forget they are a country in Europe).

Stefania by: Kalush Orchestra (Ukraine) – 4/5

For starters I think it is amazing that Ukraine is in this year despite current geopolitical situations (at the time of this writing). I think not only singing in their native language (witch not saying singing in English makes a song good/bad, but I think it is a nice touch) added a lot of character in this song. The song is a tribute to the lead singer’s mother (witch to be honest made me want to cry because it is another nice touch). What stands out the most to me is that you do not see a lot of Rap songs in Eurovision, especially rap songs that draw influence from traditional folk as well. The fact that a Rap song made it this far is amazing and I hope to see more of this moving forward.

Intention by: Intelligent Music Project (Bulgaria) - 5/5*

A slight bias for this one. I am big fan of the rock/metal genre, and this is now one of my new favorite rock songs so far (we still have a lot more to go). This gave me strong early Bon Jovi mixed with Foo Fighters vibes and I am loving it. Clean instrumentation and solid song flow, another one of my favorites right up there with Latvia’s submission.

De Diepte by: S10 (Netherlands) - 4.5/5

Where do I start? To be transparent, I am a fan of slow(ish) songs in a non-English language (Dutch in this case). When reading the English lyrics while listening to the song, the song paints a striking narrative of when a relationship turns sour, and you cannot seem to shake the feeling of them out of your head (at least that is how I took it). The overall tone of the song is sad yes, but it is well put together and is by far one of my favorite Dutch based songs I have listed to.

Trenuleţul By: Zdob și Zdub (Moldova) – 4/5

Shoutout to Youtube for having English lyrics on hand because I do not know what I listened to, but it was pretty great. According to some research I have done, this is not the band’s first rodeo with Eurovision (this is there third go around) (just a fun little fact). This is a prime example of how music can highlight a country’s culture just from instrumentation alone. The energetic nature of this song makes it almost binge worthy to listen to. Definitely a song that I think is an acquired taste for some (at least of the American listener, the style is not seen as much in mainstream America), but it is overall a very pleasant listening experience

Saudade, Saudade by: MARO (Portugal) – 4/5

A quaint little song. I think this benefits being a mainly vocal heavy song with not a heavy focus on the instrumentals. I do not have much to talk about outside of that, it’s mixed well, and I think that this represents Portugal quite nicely.

Guilty Pleasure by: Mia Dimšić (Croatia) – 3/5

I hate to say this, but the song sounds good but is low key generic. I know that seems like an odd term to use (especially with the current music scene), but to me it sounds like a lot of other similar songs in the genre and dose not really stand out. Like I said, it sounds good, mixed well, but that is about it really.

The Show by: REDDI (Denmark) – 4.5/5

Right out the gate, starting with a piano solo that kind of sounds like Creep threw me off for a bit, but then the smash cut to high energy and a faster tempo was executed PERFECTLY. I think there needs to be more female rock artists that need this level of publicity and attention because it is clear as glass that they can keep up the energy and tempo of a male dominated genre (and industry as a whole).

Halo by: Pia Maria ft. LUM!X (Austria) - 3/5

I do not have much to say in all honesty, a little generic sounding but has a nice solid rhythm that is easy to track and is not overbearing. As mentioned with Croatia’s submission, it is hard to say when something sounds generic, but at the same time when you pick up on it you can’t shake it. It’s a well-made song and I think this a strong submission for Austria.

Með Hækkandi Sól by: Systur (Iceland) – 5/5*

This is the track that gave me the idea for this in the first place. I absolutely love this song, from the instrument arrangement to the vocals it is an all-around amazing piece. If I could vote in the official Eurovision contest, I would put the max number of points (witch I think is twelve) on this song. I know it sounds like I am being bias and gushy about this, but it is hard not to be in all honesty.

Die Together by: Amanda Georgiadi Tenfjord (Greece) – 4/5

A solid little banger in all honesty. Beautiful vocals accompanied by a decent mix of a drum kit and an orchestral arrangement. When mixed together you get a song that surprisingly feels really dynamic both technically and lyrically.

Give that Wolf a Banana by: Subwoolfer (Norway) – ?

Umm… All I can say is... What the fuck did I listen to? I guess there is always that one song that makes you question your existence as not only a human but a music lover, this is that song. Now, it’s made well do not give me wrong, but shortly after listening to this song my brain decided to shut down from the confusion. I do not know how to even rank this song because I am genially disturbed by what happened. Props for Norway for letting the freak flag fly and showing the world that “Zero Fucks, caution to the wind.” Joking aside, I am glad Norway went with something like this, because this is what Art and Music is all about. It does not have to make sense to the audience, if a select group of people like it, then there you go.

Snap by: Rosa Linn (Armenia) – 4/5

This gives me big Florence + The Machine vibes and I dig it. It is amazing what an acoustic guitar and a drum arrangement can do for a song (and I mean that in a good way). I think this puts Armenia (a country that I did not know was apart of the Soviet Union at one point) on the map musically quite nicely and I hope for the best.

First Simi-Final conclusion:

Wow. All these songs sounded amazing for assorted reasons, and it was almost hard at times to put to words. From the wide diversity of genres to the gender representation, this is by far an excellent showcase of what it means to make Music. But overall, I would rate the first batch of songs a 4/5. There were some solid bangers, some songs that were almost there, and only a couple I felt like were not there for me.

Top Three:

Með Hækkandi Sól by: Systur (Iceland)

Intention by: Intelligent Music Project (Bulgaria)

Eat Your Salad by: Citi Zēni (Latvia)

Second Simi-Final (aired 12/May/2022 Written 13/May/2022

** Editor’s note these reviews were written over the period of both Simi-Finals and the Grand Final, so my reviews and predictions are made ahead of the official release (this will be addressed towards the end) **

Jezebel by: The Rasmus (Finland) – 4/5

This gives me strong mid-2000s rock vibes, and I dig it. Not going to lie the opining lyrics caught me off guard (but at this point after Latvia I’m used to it) but the overall lyrics were pretty solid. This is about what I expected for a Finnish submission, and I hope for the best moving forward.

** Editor’s note, the following submissions I pretty much had the same ratting and thoughts about them.**

The following Submissions I rated 3/5 due to there over all generic sounding nature. They sounded good and were mixed good but were over all just bland.

I.M by: Michael Ben David (Israel)

I am Honestly Surprised they are here anyway in all honesty

I Am What I Am by: Emma Muscat (Malta)

It sounded a bit corny and a bit repetitive

Would make for a grate back track to an advertisement

Stripper by: Achille Lauro (San Marino)

Started strong but fell flat quick

Very on key with Italy’s 2021 Submission (witch I liked)

That’s Ritch by: Brooke (Ireland)

A bit disappointing considering the music scene in Ireland

Circles by: Andrea (North Macedonia)

Points for at least making it this far

Llámame by: WRS (Romania)

Points for the Romania lyrics sprinkled in

Very Latin inspired (and that is awesome)

(Like San Marino) Started strong and fell flat quickly

Miss You by: Jérémine Makiese (Belgium)

Very early Chris Brown mixed with Usher

Excellent vocal range

Painfully generic R&B instrumentation

In Corpore Sano by: Konstrakta (Serbia) – 5/5*

This whole song oozes Lady Gaga and it WORKS. From the vocals to the rhythm, it flows like melted butter in your ears. This is also another prime example on how non-English vocals can make a song just pop. One key lyric that stood out to me (when translated to English) would have to be, “A sick mind in a healthy body.” This song really dose highlight how we as people are so focused on how our body looks and we do not give much of a care to how we feel or think.

Fade to Black by: Nadir Rustamli (Azerbaijan) – 4/5

This would honestly do great on U.S markets (and that can be a good or bad thing, take your pick. This song also doses a surprisingly little trick where it has a subtle tempo increase but you do not feel as if you are being left behind (as I personally feel a lot of songs in this genre do). Being able to carry your vocal through a song and not tapper out towards is quite the feat (so props to him and who ever mixed this song because it is great).

Lock Me in by: Circus Mircus (Georgia)– 5/5*

This is by far one of the more unique songs of the submissions today. A nice little funky tune that its simplistic nature sculpts its own fashion. It is almost hard to put this into words about how this song’s odd quirky nature. If you would have told me that this is from a country that most people get confused with a U.S state I would honestly not believe you, and I am eager to listen to more of them.

Not The Same by: Sheldon Riley (Australia) - 4/5

Okay, for starters, I (like many others) am wondering why Australia is here. But none the less I think this is a solid track. His delivery is very Adel like, and it is hard not to hear it as such. Having heard the live version, I do not think I have heard many male singers have this sort of range (at least in a live setting) and it really helps pull the song together.

Ela by: Andromache (Cyprus) – 4/5

Right out the gate this song is almost harmonious in the balance of Mediterranean and modern instruments and that makes this song slap. This is only further supported by the stylistic choice of the English to non-English mid-sentence. Fun little fact, she is named (or her stage name) is based off of Greek Mythology (I thought it was a nice touch).

Hope by: Stefan (Estonia) – 4/5

Once again, we find ourselves on the verge of a generic track. This time it is saved with the fact that it has a nice little western twang to it. I know I have made a lot of comparisons to other artist through this post, but this time I swear this sounds like an early Avicii style songs and it kind of shows. I would not have guessed this is from Estonia if you played this side by side with other like tracks.

River by: Ochman (Poland) – 4/5

Now, this is interesting. The instruments are nothing really to write home about, in fact I think this would benefit from no drums and more strings (personally) Because I do genially love his vocal range and the natural flow during this song. I feel like it is trying to accomplish to much but somehow still coming out wit ha song that actually makes sense. As I mentioned with several countries, this is an interesting submission from Poland (the fact they are at this point is surprising enough in my opinion).

Breathe by: Vladana (Montenegro) – 4/5

I have noticed a small pattern, the countries we never hear much about have some pretty solid bangers coming out of them (most of the time). Were there are spots in this track that are kind of generic, there are moments in this song were it just carries this track and makes you think “Now why can’t we have more of THIS?” But nevertheless, in short, we have a classic case of very nice and powerful vocals being accompanied by a beautiful instrumentation.

Hold Me Closer by: Cornelia Jakobs (Sweden) – 4/5

So, this almost ended up being added to the “generically bland list” but luckily it didn’t. Something about the vocal presence through this song almost demands attention and to listen. Witch not a lot of singers in this genre manage to pull off now a days. It’s not surprising that the same county that gave us ABBA for Eurovision continues the interesting tradition of having some solid singers/performers.

Lights off by: We are Domi (Czech Republic) – 3.5/5

Hm. This one is tricky, because it dose sound a bit generic not going to lie. But I can not help to get a bit of a Deadmau5 vibe from time to time. Mixed and sounded well, and not bad for a country that not many people see much of now (especially in the music scene). I decent little way to cap today’s line up.

Second Simi-Final conclusion:

Oof. Not as strong as the first, but there were a few solid songs. I hate to say this, but a good portion of these songs just sounded generic, bland, and just not appealing to me. Similar to the first, I appreciate the equal gender representation, but the genres were not as much. Overall, I rate this batch a 3.5/5, some duds, but there are some diamonds in the rough.

Top 3:

Lock Me in by: Circus Mircus (Georgia)

In Corpore Sano by: Konstrakta (Serbia)

Ela by: Andromache (Cyprus)

The Big 5 (France, Germany, Italy (also the host), Spain and the United Kingdom)

I am going to be honest, none of these submissions caught my ear and were all bland (yes despite the attention Space Man (U.K) has gotten.). I honestly think it is kind of weird that these countries get to automatically go the Grand Final, but everyone else has to go through this process. I feel like if you want to have a competition like this, make sure EVERYONE is on the same playing field and being judged the same.

The Grand Final and Final Opinion (aired 14/May/22 written 21/May/22)

** Editor’s note this is written a week after the end of Eurovision.**

Well, after the dust has settled it was announced Ukraine won. I am actually surprised that they won. Geopolitical events aside, they were not my favorite submission, but I did appreciate the cultural touch they added in their work. Having only seen the music videos of each submission I have to say that this was a doozy of an experience. One gripe I have seen over Twitter was the number of slow Ballads that were in the Grand Final, and that is a fair criticism. Moldova and Norway were by far the one that stood out the most and were really in a league of there own from all the submissions (despite how freaking weird Norway was). I think overall this Eurovision was a decent showcase of the wonderful music talents of these countries (even if a bulk of them sounded the same) and I hope moving forward they’ll FINALLY LET THE U.S WATCH IT FOR FREE.

Jokes aside I enjoyed this very much and I hope you all enjoyed reading this impromptu review. Feel free to ask any questions on Twitter or in the DMs here on Tumblr.

#eurovison 2022 #art #audio engineering #audio production #audio music #music #live music #ukraine #song #musical revue

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tiny-crecher · 4 years

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Unus Annus Secrets

Here I’m going to try and explain all of the Unus Annus codes + possible lore. If I have forgotten some information or if one of these links doesnt work/is incorrect please let me know. This post will be updated when needed.

This is LONG, so be prepared.

At first, these codes were only in videos edited by NerdFiction, but as of October 26th this is no longer true. (The possible exception to this would be the first video I’ve listed, as the editor is not in the description).

1) 5 Weird Apps That Predicted Our Death

“Here at Unus Annus the end is nigh... when the timer hits zero we will cease to exist. is it fate? is this a simulation? Can anybody hear me? My name is.... [FILE REDACTED]”. Timestamp - 0:14

2) Ethan Roasts Mark for 15 Minutes Straight

“and in the comments, you will read the words you soon will see are wise controlling pawns who type our deed ‘That is Discord, not FaceTime’” Timestamp - 0:40

“within this truth a question stands, is the pee sauna ever close?”. [“Pee Sauna”was uploaded about a week afterwards] Timestamp - 0:40

3) Our Fans Try to Scare Us with Their Homemade Creepypasta

“What will happen if the clock stops”

“Could I find a way to keep it going?”

“If neither hand is right, what deals are left?”

“Who is the master of the clock?” (all around 8:44)

4) Learning to Cry on Command to Increase Our Youtube Views

“remember the key, the incompletion of a logolept’s corrective action” [a logolept is “a person who takes a keen interest in words”. Marcus is likely referring to himself.] Timestamp - 1:49

“the long wait ends with twenty four more for a path of destiny chosen before”[“Pee Sauna” was uploaded the day after] (closely after the last code)

5) Becoming One With the Horse

“They heard me, I knew it could work!” (timestamp currently unknown; to be updated)

Around this time, NerdFiction’s Twitter bio said, among his normal information, that he was “trying to stop the Unus Annus clock from within.”

6) Preparing a 5-Star Meal for Our Youtube Famous Dogs

“I couldn’t stop it. Will I die with the machine?” (Timestamp - 21:33)

7) Does This Magnetic Skincare Routine Really Work?

“freed or so I thought. Another layer, but still the clock.” (Timestamp - 9:45)

“The Beginning of The End”.

On July 26th, at 12pm PST, a video was uploaded to Unus Annus titled “Traversing the Desert to Find Our Inner Truth”. This video was only up for a few minutes before it mysteriously disappeared, only to be replaced by another video, titled “The Beginning of The End”. At first glance, the videos were identical, save for different titles and slightly different descriptions. However, the second video was slightly longer than the first, and upon further inspection, many came to realize that the audio was slightly different as well. You can listen to both audios here. There was a rumor going around that the captions of “Traversing the Desert to Find Our Inner Truth” said something about looking out for Norbert Moses, but no one has been able to confirm this to my knowledge.

8) Puberty Simulator

“Happy birthday to the beast or to the body that once housed me. A transfer made for pity’s sake. Tricked into the machine as he had my cake.” (Timestamp - 14:36) [The same code was found a week earlier in “Mark and Ethan Shave Chica”, uploaded on NerdFiction’s birthday. The original code was very difficult to make out, so it is likely he inserted it into a different video to make it easier for us.]

On the same day, NerdFiction’s Twitter bio read “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies. Memento Memoriae” (remember memory)

In “The Koala Challenge: TikTok’s Intimate Couple’s Trend” one of the clips is edited to look like a TikTok video, with the user ron_somberest being used. Ron_Somberest is an anagram for Norbert Moses. This TikTok account does actually exist, and the icon is a zoomed in and brightened photo of Norbert Moses’s face with the eyes scribbled out.

Around this time NerdFiction’s Twitter bio read “’It’s not dark, never was’ - Ron Bestsmore”. Ron Bestsmore is also an anagram for Norbert Moses. It is possible that the “dark” being referred to here is Darkiplier, and NerdFiction is trying to imply that Dark is not involved in this.

About a week after the koala challenge video was “How to Start a Fire (except don’t)”, which featured an appearance from Unus. NerdFiction’s Twitter bio read “In the end, who is your savior and what are they saving you from?”

Things were quiet for about a month. NerdFiction eventually erased the cryptic message from his Twitter bio.

9) Learning To Use The Force

“wait no something is wrong. he knows!” (Timestamp - 10:45) [translated from small coded words hidden in the montage]

“STOPTHISWHATAREYOUDOINGO3″ (Timestamp - 11:40)

“it worked” (a spectrogram, derived from a sound played at the end of the video)

10) Momiplier Tells Us True Scary Stories from Korea

“As I was, as I’ve done to him now. Am I right to decide his fate?” (Timestamp - 5:44) [Right before this, Mark’s mom is talking about a nightmare she had where she was paralyzed, possibly implying that nerdfiction was once paralyzed and has now paralyzed someone else (pointed out by @/minervas-sandwich)]

11) Cryptid Olympics

“I thought you’d join us but, hey, that was just a theory, Memento Doctrina” (remember learning). (Timestamp - 5:49) [The code references the Game Theorists channel, which had uploaded a video about Unus Annus earlier that same day.]

- From here on, every video has had some sort of code -

12) Edward Pumpkin Hands - This was the first coded video not edited by NerdFiction, instead being edited by Diceroll.

At various points throughout the video small parts of a url are seen. When pieced together, this link is made: https://imgur.com/a/tyDewJ7. It leads to a photo of the Unus Annus hourglass. When edited, a series of binary text is shown, which translates to “zhIaNL2“. Inputting this into another imgur link gets you to https://imgur.com/a/zhIaNL2. After editing the photo (although you can still sorta see it without doing so), a cipher of a custom alphabet is shown (I posted an edited photo here).

At 5:01 in the video a weird image is shown for only a moment (a slightly brightened version of it here). Nobody knows what the hell it means.

At the same time, there is a reversed audio of someone (presumably Ethan; it sounds like him) saying “we did that”. For context, the sentence said right before that line was “if one of us dies, the other has to take over for the remainder of time”. This is possibly implying that someone, or multiple someones, has/have died and been replaced.

13) Blood Bath - edited by rad_r

“Everything’s fine”

The Unus Annus timer is shown. It counts down for three seconds before counting up for one second. Heavy breathing can be heard over it. It is then cancelled by an error message

“ITS NOT FINE HELP” (this and the previous two messages are hidden at 5:57)

“you’ve done it now.. a machine observed. there is no returning.. a machine unnerved. there is only.. a machine unconqured.” (right at the end of the video, before the timer)

14) The Unus Annus Annual Costume Contest - edited by nerdfiction

“I saw just one door in a hall filled with many, I locked your gate but they were too late to join me. He was re-placed, she was undone, I had escaped yet he had still won”. (Timestamp - 2:05) [possibly talking about diceroll and rad_r. The pronouns would line up, and it would make sense with those two now having edited coded videos.]

15) Ethan Turns Mark Into a Werewolf - edited by rad_r

“futility or farewell? only time time time.” (timestamp - 7:17)

16) Ethan Kidnapped Mark - edited by Diceroll

Two spectrograms are shown in this video; one at 14:08 and one at 17:38. Combined, they create an imgur link: https://imgur.com/a/gKB62sv

The imgur link shows a photo of a key. On the key is a code translating to “stop the clock”

At the end of the video before the timer is a set of text in the custom alphabet previously mentioned. Translated and decoded it translates to “I can hear it coming theres not much time left the ones that tried to stop it have had their hearts cleft it is now your turn to put this loop to rest take us out of here and show us a new nest”

17) Being Brutally Honest with Each Other

“It is alive, no longer living / misunderstood beats unforgiving / escaped that fate but lost the tale / does a hope yet remain or just one final nail?” (Timestamp - 26:03)

18) Recreating Every Single Unus Annus Video

“The bottom of the spiral” (timestamp - 10:55)

19) “All Our Video Ideas That Never Happened”

“Be careful for what you wish for” (taken from two different codes)

*20) The Unus Annus Last Supper + Who’s Cutting Onions In Here??? - both edited by rad_r

“We’ve asked... we’ve tried... is there no way to stop the end? To those who aren’t deterred: how much will you sacrifice to ascend?” (A quotefall puzzle, split into 2 parts)

21) Everything’s Legal If You’re Dead

Norbert Moses is mentioned at 10:50. Look closely, his name is only there for a couple frames.

These have been the only codes I’m aware of as of 11/11/20.

(be sure to check out @gemstone6’s list as well!!)

Link to my Unus Annus theory

#unus annus #UA codes #crankgameplays #markiplier

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lo-frequency · 3 years

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Class 1-A on Various TV Shows

So this is the first part of a "tv show" themed series of headcanons I have planned. I still have some requests to get to, but I hope y'all can enjoy these in the meantime!

Bakugou:

-American Ninja Warrior

- Please, you can’t tell me they wouldn’t have a pro-hero version of ANW. It’d have to be an international/Japanese version in this case, but the concept would be the same.

-SHOW SUMMARY: So in case you’ve never seen/heard of American Ninja Warrior, it’s a game show (?) where contestants have to cross a challenging obstacle course that tests your athleticism and physical strength. The course is outside (w a crowd watching), and there’s water beneath the course, so if you fall, you’re off the show. To win, you have to have the fastest time of all the successful contestants. END SUMMARY

-Anyway, in his introduction clip, they’d show Bakugou doing some intense training/parkour or whatever and he’s like “This’ll be an easy win. I do courses like these as a light workout”, you know, the usual arrogance we all love so much.

-Would be one of those contestants with a backyard Ninja course/personal gym and he’d be on that thing everyday. He eats, sleeps, and breaths ANW until the day he runs the course

-Now, for this particular version of ANW, Shoji has the #1 record with the fastest time in Pro-Hero ANW history (hard to beat somebody w 6 arms and over 1000lb grip strength)

-So for Bakugou, it’s not a matter of finishing the course or even winning the show, he’s training for the that #1 champion spot.

-Would he beat Shoji’s record? Probably not, but he’d definitely go down in the hall of fame

-I think it would be pretty cool to watch him show off the results of all those 6am workouts, lol

Hell’s Kitchen

-Do I even need to continue the headcanon?

-Chef Ramsay’s actual twin, blonde hair and everything

-As the judge (aka Chef Ramsay), he’d be so hard on the contestants smh

-He’d have your blood pressure high with how much he’d be yelling at the other chefs

-Would take too much pleasure in giving the losing teams punishments

-Probably sent everybody out of the kitchen during dinner service at one point, just shut down the whole service out of rage

-As a chef, he’d be the most intense on his team

-Wouldn’t have been a team player at first bc he knew his skills alone would keep him on the show, but as more people got eliminated, he would learn to work with others so they’d be more likely to win challenges

-Would’ve been told to humble himself on multiple occasions by Chef Ramsay, I can’t imagine him taking criticism very well either, w Chef’s usual tone.

-He’d fit right into the show honestly, bc most of the chef’s on there fight and have bad attitudes anyway 💀

-Would definitely be a finalist, has a pretty high chance of winning the show bc he has strong skills despite his sucky attitude. It would be a season to remember, for sure.

Kirishima

-Would have a fitness Youtube channel , “Red Riot Fitness” or something like that

-Weekly workouts for all fitness levels, really enthusiastic and one of those instructors that’s constantly hyping you up and making those dramatic sounds as you get your last few reps in

-Does mostly resistance training and HIIT workouts

-If he has other people working out with him in the video, he’d go around the room encouraging them and doing the exercises with them

-Very popular with stay at home moms, they’re all up in his livestreams ;) (shoot, I’d be right there with them)

-Makes those inspirational videos like “You’re winning even if you can only do 5 minutes!!”

-Could see him collaborating with other fitness channels and doing something unexpected like Zumba or a hip hop dance class for the fun of it.

-Probably makes videos like “My Daily Workout Routine” or “What I Eat in a Day” and then people would start making content like: “I Worked Out like Red Riot for a Week and This Happened 😱”

Izuku

-Sports newscaster, always makes the most accurate predictions about game outcomes.

-March Madness? He’d get closest to guessing the actual Final Four

-Knows all the player stats like he coached them himself

-If he had a radio show he’d constantly be getting into debates with co-hosts or listeners about player performance or which teams are the best

-Gets genuinely excited about interviewing the players after games

-Good at narrating games until he gets too hype and starts rambling out of excitement

-Pretty well known commentator throughout the world of whatever sport he follows.

Todoroki

-Brace yourself, because this is truly a concept: messy reality show host Shoto

-They’d have him hosting the sit-down meetings at the end of each season, where the cast members sit together and have a “discussion” about that season’s events.

-No, stay with me on this. He’d be perfect because he would “unintentionally” instigate the drama between cast members like:

- “So Alicia, how is your relationship with Colby?”

- “Uh, it’s fine, now…?”

- He raises his eyebrows “Really? I’m surprised, since he cheated on you with Kelly.” 👀.

- “He what?”

-*Camera pans to Shoto looking knowingly into the camera, sipping his drink while Alicia and Kelly fight.*

-Later on, during individual interviews, he’s like “I knew Alicia was unaware, although Colby was making it obvious, in my opinion. I just thought it was about time Kelly got exposed for being the fake friend she is.” he says in his usual flat tone, with a slight shrug to his shoulders.

-I’m telling you, this would make good television.

That’s all I've got for now! Thanks for tuning in, as always :)

#bnha headcanons #bnha sfw #bnha fluff #bnha x reader #bakugou headcanons #todoroki headcanons #izuku midoriya headcanons #mha headcanons #kirishima headcanons

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neo-culture-taste · 4 years

Text

Subscribe! - Another clothing haul video (sexy edition)

Pairing: Johnny x Reader (fem)

Genre: AU, romance, comedy, fluff

Word count: 3182

Summary: A YouTube inspired drabble series where you and your boyfriend upload videos catering to the couple tag.

Author’s Note: Felt a bit nostalgic. This one practically wrote itself. I apologize in advance for all the cheese - D

For other members, see masterlist.

The video opened with your boyfriend grinning into the lens as he held the camera high in the air, making good use of the wide angle to reveal the space of your living room with you standing not too far away in the distance.

“Whaddup Johfam--Oh, shit, wait,” Johnny stopped himself mid-sentence to laugh at himself when he realized he made a mistake in his introduction. “This isn’t my channel.”

“Gimmie that,” you said as you rushed to his side to swipe the camera from him, which was way out of your reach. “I knew you were going to try and take over my channel one day.”

Still laughing, your boyfriend handed you the camera. “I didn’t do it on purpose. It came out naturally. It’s a habit.”

“Yeah sure it is,” you said suspiciously. “I’m watching you.” You opened your eyes as wide as they could go as you gazed at him. He mimicked your expression, commencing the staring contest. But it was short lived, as you stretched out your face comically, causing the both of you to burst into laughter.

The video cut to you centered in the frame, the camera once again being held up by the long arm of your boyfriend. “Hey everybody! It’s me again. And this sasquatch is here because today we’re doing another episode of...Johnny’s. Fashion. Evaluation!” You said the title of the segment very dramatically and emphasized each word with equally as dramatic poses done by both you and your boyfriend. “You all loved the first one so much we figured we’d treat you all today,” you said through a big smile after straightening up. “Johnny, what we got? Tell them what we got.”

“Today we got four outfits,” Johnny stated like an announcer for a sports game.

“Four,” you repeated, and held up four fingers on one hand.

“Four themes.”

“Mmhmm.” You held up four more fingers with your other hand.

“Four evaluations.”

“Cuatro evaluaciones.”

Johnny couldn’t help but laugh at your sudden switch to a different language. He tried to hold it in, but he was unable to stop the snort that came from his nose as he attempted to hold back his smile. Unable to resist your cuteness, he put his free arm around your shoulders and hugged you close. You took this opportunity to lay your head against his shoulder.

“So I’m going to give Y/N’s outfits a letter grade like we did the last time,” he continued with the introduction.

“And he’s going to say whether or not it’s a smash or pass.”

Johnny’s face twisted in surprise as he turned to face you. “Woah, woah, wait.”

“What?” you asked with a knowing grin.

“We didn’t do that in the first one.”

“Yeah, but these outfits today need those ratings.”

Blinking, Johnny stood in silence briefly as he processed what you were saying, then his eyes quickly lit up and his mouth fell open in pleasant surprise. You simply smiled back at him with a waggle of your eyebrows, prompting him to look into the camera like he had just won a prize.

~~~

The video cut to a view of the entryway of your hallway. You poked your head around the corner, making sure you didn’t reveal the rest of your body to Johnny. “So this is the 'I'm late for my prime time sitcom audition after being rejected five times and the barista spelled my name wrong on my grade iced caramel macchiato with three expresso shots' outfit.”

Johnny laughed out loud behind the camera. “What even is that?”

“It’s the theme, babe,” you explained to him like it was obvious. “You’ll see in a second.” You pulled your head back out of sight, then came out fully to pose in the middle of the entryway like a model in a fashion show. You were wearing a high necked, short sleeved, black and white, horizontal striped cropped top with a tie in the front, matched with a pair of black shorts and a simple black belt. On your feet, you wore socks with the same design as your top inside a pair of black booties. For accessories, you wore a chunky, silver chain necklace, a set of silver bangles on your left wrist, and a pair of black oversized sunglasses over your eyes.

“Oh, nice. Very nice,” you boyfriend complimented, genuinely impressed. He stood up from his spot on the couch and grabbed the camera as he moved towards you to get a closer look. “I like that your socks match your shirt,” he began his evaluation. “And this chain is a really nice touch. The sunglasses are a bit much, though.”

“Really?” You took off the sunglasses and looked at your boyfriend expectantly. “What about now?”

“Hmm,” he hummed in thought. “Try putting them on your head.” You did as suggested. “Now that’s fashion. Johnny approves.”

You smiled at him brightly, proud of the ensemble you put together. “What’s my grade?”

“An A- since I had to help you.”

You puckered your lips in acknowledgment. “That’s fair. But would you smash or pass?”

“I mean…” Johnny hesitated, causing you to raise an eyebrow inquisitively at him. “This is like something you’d wear normally, so it’s not like super striking, y’know?”

“So...are you saying you’d pass on me in my normal clothes?”

“No, of course not! It’s you that makes these clothes hot for me, so yeah I’d def smash. But if this was on anybody else, I’d pass. No offense to anyone else who dresses like this. It’s just a normal outfit to me.”

You side eye him, pretending you aren’t fully convinced by his explanation. “Sure. Nice save.”

He chuckled at your expression. “I gave you an A! That means I like it.”

“You wouldn't have taken off points if you really liked it! Just say you think the way I normally dress is boring so we can move on,” you said in mock offense.

He continued to laugh. “Y/N, stop! You’re going to make them think I’m an asshole.”

“Then stop being one, geeez,” you said with a dramatic roll of your eyes, but you were unable to keep the smile off your face.

“Y/NNNN, “ he whined your name.

“Alright, alright! I'm kidding everyone! You all know my Johnny’s a big sweetheart.” You stuck your tongue out at the lens, officially ending your little ruse. “Oh, and go subscribe to his channel if you haven’t already.”

“Yeah cuz I actually am an asshole on purpose over there.”

“Pfffft!”

~~~

The video cut once again to the view of your head peeking around the halfway entrance. “Okay, yeah. The first one was kind of mild. But this one is going to be hot! The theme is ‘a high class woman sitting alone at the bar who keeps getting free drinks from other patrons while she waits for her blind date only to be catfished by them in the end, but she doesn’t really care because she plans to go home with the bartender anyway.’”

“I have low expectations after the first weird theme you made up.”

You scoffed. “Just for that, I’m not coming out.”

“I’m kidding! Come out!”

You walked around the corner and posed dramatically before you began walking the rest of the way into the living room as if you were walking down a runway. You were wearing a tight, dark red mini dress that hugged your every curve. It was a halter neck dress with a very low neckline that exposed quite a bit of your cleavage. You didn’t wear any jewelry around your neck since the straps of the dress were made of gold chains, so instead you wore a pair of dangling gold earrings. On your feet, you wore a pair of strappy gold stilettos.

“Dayuuuuum!”

“Like what you see?” You asked Johnny before doing more sexy poses.

“You look good!”

“I know I do. Check out the back.” You turned around to reveal the open back part of the dress.

“Oh my g--smash. Hella smash,” he rated the outfit without hesitation.

“Not yet! You didn’t do the evaluation,” you scolded him.

“A+.”

“No, Johnny, focus! You have to talk about the presentation.”

“Oh right,” He picked up the camera and moved closer. “I really like the way you matched all of the gold stuff. The straps on this dress are really pretty and they really accentuate.…” He trailed off as he fully admired the front of your outfit, and his gawking caused the camera to linger on your chest for a bit too long. He cleared his throat once he gathered his wits and remembered what he was supposed to be doing. “Those.”

“Johnny!” You quickly brought your hands to your chest to cover it from your boyfriend’s horny gaze.

“Look, everyone. She’s showing us her matching bracelet and ring set. But they’re kind of in the way of the best part of the outfit.” He attempted to move your hands away, but you swatted him away.

“Stop before I go take it off!” you threatened.

“You stop before I take it off.”

“John, oh my gosh!” You turned around completely from the camera and looked back at him, playing coy. “You’re going to get my video demonetized.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll stop.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I won’t.”

~~~

“This one is even hotter than the last one,” you said after the video clipped to the next scene. You weren’t peeking your head in the entryway this time. Instead you were completely hidden around the corner.

“I like the sound of that,” your boyfriend answered excitedly.

“So this is ‘the boss bitch sitting on top of her golden throne surrounded by siberian tiger statues in her music video for her new chart topping, number one hit single’. Are you ready?”

“Yeah, bring it.” He didn’t even bother acknowledging the convoluted title of the theme you made up.

“You’re not ready,” you told him matter-of-factly.

“C’mon Y/N. I can handle whatever you got.”

“Oookaaayyy,” you sang at him, knowing full well that he wasn’t ready for what you were wearing at all.

You walked out into the entryway and immediately struck a power pose, causing your boyfriend’s breath to completely leave his body as he stared at you in shock. You were wearing an off-white two piece mini-skirt and blazer set matched with the same pair of strappy heels you wore with the last outfit. The skirt had high splits above both your legs with zippers for optional closure. The blazer also had zippers on both sides, mimicking the openings of pockets, and was held closed by a single button. The button was barely functional, and revealed almost all of what you wore underneath, which was what looked to be a zigzagged patterned, black and grey bralette.

“Speechless aren’t you?” you asked him before giving him a turn.

He still hadn’t said anything, and continued to look you up and down from behind the camera, licking his lips hungrily at his snacc of a girlfriend.

“I saw that,” you called him out on his lechery.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said rather calmly, although, a smile could still be heard in his voice. After that, he went silent again as he went into deep thought.

“Talk!”

“B.”

“What?!” You were more than taken aback by the grade he gave you. You thought he really liked it, considering how hard he was ogling you. “Why?”

“The bra underneath kind of takes away from it,” he explained. “Maybe if you put on a plain one, it would look better.”

You looked down at the garment being addressed. “Well actually it’s a swimsuit top,” you said with a laugh and looked back up at him. “And this jacket is supposed to be worn without anything underneath.

He gasped loudly behind the camera. “So you came out here and altered the designers original vision?! B-.”

“Hey no! I had to keep it PG-13 for the camera,” you defended yourself. “I’ll show you what it’s actually supposed to look like later.”

“You can show me now. We’ll just censor it in post.”

“No, that’s too much work. You’ll just have to wait.”

“Okay, then I’ll put the camera down and follow you into the hall and we’ll just cut this part out.”

“Ugh, fine.” You gave into your boyfriend’s wishes with a huff, though you ended up keeping this part of the video anyway.

Johnny put the camera back down onto the coffee table and waited for you to call him into the hallway a few seconds later. When you were ready, he followed you into the hallway as planned, disappearing around the corner and out of the camera’s view. Since he was so far away, the camera’s microphone was barely capable of picking up what he said upon seeing the true version of your outfit, so you added a caption in post for his response.

“Smash.”

~~~

“This is the last one and the hottest of them all!” you called out to him from around the corner.

“Don’t get me excited. That last one is going to be tough to beat.”

“The theme is ‘a cosplayer who wore the design of her original character she made for her favorite JRPG to a convention and had to be escorted out of the building because she was too X-Rated for all the horny nerds to handle!’”

He laughed and shook his head at your ridiculousness. He didn’t know how much more of these crazy theme titles he could take. And this one sounded a little bit personal. “Hurry up before the battery dies--,” he started to say, but once you walked out from the hallway, his eyes almost jumped out of his head before he began to laugh hysterically.

You were hearing another crop top, but this time it was a very, very short, hot pink crop top with long fishnet sleeves. It was meant to show a considerable amount of underboob, but to keep your video from getting age restricted, you still wore the swimsuit top you had on underneath your previous outfit. For your bottoms, you donned a pair of cut-off blue jean shorts, that were so short they might as well have been underwear because they barely covered your backside. Also, they couldn’t even close in the front. The button was just for decoration. To counteract any possible demonetization from those, you wore the matching swimsuit bottoms underneath the shorts, making sure all of your booty cheeks were properly contained. Your shoes were a pair of white gogo boots that came up just below your knees and laced up in the front. To top off the outfit, you wore a pair of blue ski goggles on your head and bright green biker gloves on your hands.

“Why?!”

“You--You--look like a hooker!” he managed to say in between fits of giggles.

“JOHNNY.”

He doubled over on the couch and clutched at his stomach. “Pass, hard pass!”

“Oh my gosh!”

“What is that?”

“This?” You pointed to the swimsuit bottoms. “Yeah, PG-13. Remember?”

“You look so ridiculous. Like you’re trying too hard or something.”

“Try to imagine it without the swimsuit.”

"Wait, wait, okay," he wheezed. "Turn around, turn around." You did as you were told, only for him to laugh harder. "No I can’t! I can’t unsee this! Y/N this is a fail!"

"A fail?!"

"The boots, Y/N! The boots!"

"I actually like the boots!"

"Not with this, Y/N!"

"But a fail, really?"

Johnny straightened up on the couch after regaining most of his composure. "Well, maybe a D since I can see what you were trying to do and maybe if you put like a regular bralette on then it wouldn’t look so bad. But those swim bottoms ruined the entire thing."

"Well, give me a second and I’ll show you how it’s supposed to look." Once again you disappeared into the hallway to take your swimsuit off and called Johnny to come look at your outfit once you were done. The captions that appeared across the screen were as follows:

"Now that’s hot."

"No touching!”

~~~

The scene opened up with the two of you back in your living room. Johnny was holding the camera above you both just like when the video first started and you were wearing your navy silk robe around your body since you were too lazy to change out of your last outfit.

“Welp, that was everything I could come up with,” you said to the camera, putting your arms around Johnny’s torso to hug him closer. “Let me know in the comments which ones were your favorites and don’t forget to like this video and subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already. I put a link to Johnny’s channel and links for all the items I wore today in the description.”

“Where do they even sell clothes like that?” Johnny asked you with genuine curiosity. “Where’d you get the boots?

You said the name of the store you purchased the boots from, but then you suddenly remembered something you forgot to say to your viewers at the beginning of the video. “Oh! This isn’t a sponsored video, in any way! All of the items worn today were purchased by me with my boyfriend’s credit card.”

Johnny’s face fell instantly. “Pardon?”

“Hm?” you answered him, pretending like you didn’t hear what he said.

“You bought all of this with your credit card, right?”

“What did I say?”

“You said you did it with mine.”

“Oh...yes...what I meant to say was with my……..boyfriend Johnny’s credit card!” You let go of his waist and sped away from him, zipping into the halfway at lightning speed.

“Y/N, you better be joking!” he yelled after you, but you didn’t answer him. “Y/N, I swear--”

The clipped jumped to Johnny sitting on the couch and going through his phone, checking his bank app to see if there were any recent charges to his credit card. He scrolled down a little ways and then visibly blanched once he saw the consecutive charges on his card, all in the triple digits. You had walked back into the living by then to see him react, and upon hearing you footsteps approach him, he looked up at you with eyes completely devoid of amusement.

“You’re going to wear these clothes everyday,” he chided.

“Well that benefits you, too, now doesn’t it.” Since you weren’t in the view of the camera, you took this opportunity to untie your robe and open it to show Johnny what the last outfit you had on was supposed to look like again.

Without saying a word, he looked you up and down, rolling his tongue in his cheek.

“You good?”

He silently looked you all over again and then nodded his head in affirmation. “Yeah, sure.”

“You’re welcome.”

Johnny did a double take between you and the camera’s lens before reaching over to stop the recording and turn the device off, officially ending the video.

- D

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defensefilms · 3 years

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European Super League Is Everything You Hate About Modern Sports

“A wolf should be beaten first, so that the other wolves will smell it’s blood and know what might happen to them and so never come again”- The Heart Gently Weeps by Wu-Tang

I don’t talk about soccer/football much on this blog. I mostly save that for Flex Files TV and this is a topic we’ve talked about on our Youtube channel.

On Saturday the 17th of April, a news story broke that the top teams in European football were planning to break away and start their own competition to replace the annually contested UEFA Champion’s League.

They essentially want to eliminate the little guy. They are essentially trying to monopolize the sport and divide the pie amongst only the elite teams in European football.

The teams named as co-conspirators in this treason are AC Milan, Inter Milan, Juventus FC, FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool FC, Arsenal FC, Chelsea FC and Tottenham Hotspur.

What do I believe should be done?

First and foremost, there must be punishment. Severe punishment.

I want FIFA, UEFA and all the world’s top football associations to collaborate and crush this act of greed, insolence and rebellion. I want them to do what parents used to do back in the day. Which is just lay in the cut and wait until you watching tv or sleeping, and then proceed to hand out beat downs.

A three year transfer ban for all the teams involved would do the trick. A lot of the teams named have ageing squads so forcing them to sit three seasons with the same players, would teach them a lesson and restore the balance of power in each of the various leagues they play in.

Then you need to limit their exposure by giving them live television broadcast times that are out of left field. Want to watch Real Madrid live in the three next years? Prepare to stay up until 1AM at the earliest.

Another way is to start opening the avenues for players to do business ventures independently of the clubs that they play for. This would change the business landscape but would hurt the big clubs the most, especially at the beginning. You’d also likely have to talk to jersey manufacturers like Nike and Adidas to implement it well but all you’d be doing is creating a revenue stream that the clubs won’t be allowed to share in.

If you think about it, corona virus is a perfect excuse to hit the big teams live game attendance as well. Big teams draw bigger crowds don’t they? Shouldn’t there be heavier restrictions on them because of this? Start limiting how many fans the likes of Liverpool and City can have in their venues. Only you allow the smaller clubs to sell more tickets to the same fans. So the likes of Leicester City, Napoli FC, Valencia can sell more tickets because they don’t have the same capacity but they’re selling to more fans than they would otherwise.

You get the drift. Start hitting them where it hurts. Start taking away the things that allowed them to become the major conglomerates they’ve become.

Heads have got to roll, gentleman. Preferably roll on to the end of a pike that should be placed at the entrance of every football venue, for fans in attendance to throw rotting vegetables at.

I grew up with this sport. The idea that some owners in suits and ties, living in the ivory towers somewhere, think that they have the right to alter and change this game because they can and because their greedy enough to do it, is a low-down, dirty, filthy, shame.

What should be happening is a mob-justice, French Revolution style ting but the veneer of civility, modernity and money, allow people to get away with things.

Let me address Manchester United, before I jet.

I’ve rooted for this team since I was 13 and you know, this team hasn’t given me much to celebrate lately. We were once a symbol of excellence. We were once the standard bearers of the entire sport. We were once the most revered football culture in the world.

Now look at us.

Docile. Greedy. Incompetent. Scheming, Backstabbing. Manipulative.

We once stood front and center of the sport. The one team you could always trust to raise the bar in a big game.

Now we’re defined by boardroom meetings where guys with bald spots try to influence and bend an entire sport to their will, and our ownership is right there trying to do the same thing.

The Glazer family are the worst thing that ever happened to Man United. Their influence is the single biggest thing behind Manchester United becoming the annual, season-long comedy show we’ve turned in to. I wasn’t surprised at all that we were involved. Our ownership are not high integrity people and it shows in how they run the football club.

Make no mistake the Glazers are the failsons of football ownership. The team they inherited (they bought the club in the 00′s) was in such a great place as far as on-field results and they have completely wasted it away. One dumb executive decision and coaching hire after another.

See anyone can buy a football club. Believe it or not, there is no shortage of people who would be willing to take on the financial risk of a team like Man United, especially when you look at how commercially viable the team already is and how many revenue streams they have built over the last three decades.

Billionaires have pulled off the trick of making you think they are special. They’re not.

This is what this once-great sporting institution has devolved into. An abomination/golem slowly devouring itself and now clutching at everything else around it, including the league that helped make them the television draw that they are and the money they’ve made along with it.

Former Manchester United right-back and now Sky Sports pundit/presenter, Gary Neville, had a heartfelt speech live on-air on Saturday afternoon that definitely put my feelings across.

Football fans feel betrayed by this and we have every right to feel that way.

#football #treason #super league #european super league #the end of football #disgusted #soccer #esl #manchester united #man united #gary neville #sky sports

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artzychic27 · 3 years

Text

Mendeleiev’s Class Headcanons (Thanks @nerd-chocolate for helping me come up with these!)

Reshma: 🪡

Cis/Demiromantic/Lesbian/ She/Her

Originally from India

She got money! But she’s very humble. (Unlike some people *cough* Chloé *cough*)

Loves magical girl shows and cosplays as the characters

She and Marinette are sewing buddies, always making costumes for conventions

Very shy, but she has her moments

Will raise hell if one of her friends gets hurt

Rando: Your friends are shit.

Reshma: … Guys, hold my things while I kill this guy.

Out of all her classmates, she’s the most protective of Ismael

Not interested in Lila’s lies and gets uncomfortable when she talks

Simon: 📱

Demiboy / he/him & they/them / Pansexual

Bit of a grump (Also a little shit from time to time)

His phone is his best friend and he prefers to look at it rather than what’s around

They’re into video editing and has a YouTube channel where they make anime music videos

Lives with their aunt because their parents are neglectful. She got custody when they were six

Has a History Buff rivalry with Alix

They’re both the top students in History and are always testing each other’s knowledge whenever they see each other.

Simon: Catherine the Great died while trying to engage in bestiality!

Alix: That hasn’t been proven to be true!

Both Classes: We worry about you two.

But one thing they do have in common is their love for Epic Rap Battles of History videos

Has facts to disprove Lila’s lies

Marc: ✍🏼

Gay / he/him / In a relationship with Nathaniel

Born of the first day of June during a pride parade

Has two moms named Penny and Alyssa

Has a little brother named Kiran who embarrasses him a lot

Kiran when Nathaniel came over: My brother said you have a cute butt.

Marc: *Immediately covers his mouth while Nathaniel laughs*

Surprisingly, he likes horror movies. Especially the REALLY suspenseful ones

He’s into anime and superheroes (Of course)

His criticism of bad writing is Gordon Ramsey level harsh. But he isn’t like that with his friends, he just screams internally

Chanel likes to take advantage of this and misspell twenty words and make tons of grammar errors just to see if he’ll combust

Marc gets teased the most for his love life

He knew Lila was a liar right out the gate

Denise: 🌌

Nonbinary / they/them / Polysexual

What a dork 🤓

Afro-Cuban

When angry, they’ll slip into Spanish and curse up a storm

They’re the most physically fit in their class

Every time there’s an Akuma, they will carry their friends to safety (They can carry up to five)

The class flower child who’s always trying to make sure their friends stay calm so they don’t attract Akumas

But harm their friends, and you die

Has a twin sister named Floramaria

Is into astronomy

Would like to become an astronaut

Denise: Hon, Princr Ali works with children, not the environment.

Lacey: 🧗🏼‍♀️

She/her / asexual / bi-curious

The adventurous one

LOVES rock climbing and it comes in handy during Akuma attacks

The only one in her class willing to take on Kim’s dares. She never loses and he never learns

Lacey doesn’t look like a risk-taker, so people underestimate her until they see her doing parkour around Paris

Lives with her grandparents and her two younger brothers Jeremy and Evan who are two little shits

So she knows how to handle rude people

Pretty sure she got into an arm-wrestling contest with Denise and it ended as a draw

Unintentionally disproves Lila’s lies

Jean: 🎭

Pansexual / he/him & they/them / Demiromantic

The class Christine Canigula

“I love Play Rehearsal!”

Also the class Drama King

Will take the opportunity to make a musical theater reference

Simon: This is rough.

Jean: KINKY!

They’re learning many acting methods when a role comes up

They like to cosplay as characters from their favorite shows like Veronica Sawyer and Jared Kleinman

They’re into cross dressing, so it isn’t rare to see them in a skirt and heels

He and Marc were voted ‘Best Dressed’

Would love to star in a musical or play, but not movies. (He thinks they take away creative freedom)

Scared of horror movies, so they’re always hiding behind Marc during class movie night

Is a polyglot which comes in handy for characters who speak other languages

Lives with his very supportive dad

Because of his years in the theater, he knows a liar when he sees one

Mireille: ☔️

Demigirl / Omnisexual / She/her & they/them

One of the ‘Class Moms’

She and Theo are brother and sister! Everyone got that?… Good. That’s all they are, nothing more.

She’s secretly Alec’s daughter (Which is why she won the weather girl contest) and she has a strained relationship with him

Used to be really shy before meeting Aurore

She’s still soft spoken, but is working on it

She and Aurore run a blog called ‘Ladybug and Cat Chat’

Knows Lila is lying but is too nervous to call her out for it

Zoe: 😇

Disaster Sapphic around pretty girls. *cough* Marinette *cough*

Fine with any pronouns

Terrified of bugs because of that prank at her old school

She wants her sister to love and change for better no matter how agonizingly slow that process may take

They took up acting to cover up their true self to avoid bullying.

So, he’s basically a nicer version of Lila

Loves DIY (Plus, it gives her an excuse to make jewelry with Marinette)

They may or may not be plotting Lila’s demise.

Harm Mari in any way, and you die.

Ismael: 😏

AroAce Trans Boy

Originally from Pakistan

Short

Bit of a tsundere towards Marc and teases him the most when it comes to his love life

Will bite homophobic and transphobic dicks… He has done it before.

Comes off as a little shit sometimes, but he really does care for others and his personality is just for defense

None of his classmates have ever seen him cry

He’s kind of into magic. His favorite magician is Criss Angel and he watches old clips of his acts

His parents are separated, and instead of living with his loving father, he lives with his neglectful mother

Loves the feel of his cardigans! He often commissions Marinette for some

Does not believe any of Lila’s words, but he’s subtle about it.

Lili: *Bunch of lies*

Ismael: WHY YOU ALWAYS LYIN’?!

Aurore: ☀️

Raging lesbian / She/her

The class mom along with Mireille

Has spare parasols and umbrellas in her locker.

Is amazing at helping people gain confidence. Dubbed, ‘The Aurore Effect’

“Little Miss Perfect”

She’s the class’ ‘Marinette’

Gets good grades, class rep, has a binder listing her classmates’ allergies, birthdays, interests, all of it

Her parents are unknowingly putting pressure on her to succeed and making her feel like she can’t be herself like she is at school- Just a chaotic blonde who will smack a bitch if necessary

They have no idea how stressed she is until an anonymous source sheds some light. *Cough* Mireille *Cough*

So they lay off, stop expecting so much, and allow her to join the clubs and extracurriculares she wants to

ADORES Marc (Her favorite child)

Aurore has chased Lila away with her parasol once because she would not shut up

Chanel: 💄

Demigirlflux / She/her they/them it/its /Bisexual

Doesn’t like liars and hates when two people are oblivious to their feelings for each other

Takes the title ‘Geek’ with pride

Wants to be a makeup artist and often practices with Marc

Is actually learning how to make their own products

Comes from a military family. Her mom’s in the coastguard and dad’s a professional chef

She’s DEEP in the closet around them

Has two older siblings named Yvette and Jordyn that are seemingly perfect in every way

Their parents have deep rooted issues with their own parents so they have a hard time showing how proud they are of their children

Because of this, Yvette and Jordyn have superiority complexes and put others down so they can feel like winners. Chanel is often their go-to

Chanel wasn’t noticed a lot by its’ parents because of their jobs and it didn’t have many friends

Aurore was their first friend and is a product of ‘The Aurore Effect’

Yvette and Jordyn can be assholes, always putting it down, but they supported their sibling when it came out.

Has called Lila out, gets threatened, but still calls her out because it has the class backing it up.

#miraculous ladybug #ms. mendeleiev #miraculous oc #mlb ocs #marc anciel #zoé lee #aurore boréale #mireille caquet

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novasintheroom · 3 years

Note

Hey its ray-jaykub! I saw that you did requests and i was wondering if i could get head-cannons on the turtles and what they like to do with their respective s/os

OMG I love you!!! Okay I gotta calm down hooo

Leo

· Love love loves to carry you over rooftops and sit on high points to look over the city with you. This is one of his ways to calm down and think about things without his brothers’ around to stress him out, and having you there some nights, looking at the glitter of the lights – poetry for his heart

· Speaking of poetry – you guys will have contests for who can make the worst poems. Just something to pass off to each other between visits, something you find in your bag or in his bed sheets. Cheesy, unrhythmic, stupid, whatever. You guys have cried laughing before b/c of this. However, every once in a while he’ll slap you with a real intimate and loving poem that just makes you melt.

· You’ve started trying to sneak up on him. It doesn’t work. He still lets you do it, just so he can turn around and grab you at the last second. Sometimes he throws you on the nearest soft surface, sometimes he gives you a big kiss, sometimes he just starts carrying you around like a sack of potatoes – depends on his mood honestly. Your determination to spook him is cute.

· Watching or listening to True Crime stuff becomes a quick couple’s hobby for you guys. Usually it’s playing in the background as you each do chores or work on some project, but you’ll each talk about the case throughout. You’ve hit him more than once for giving away what happened or who killed who. He’s too good at figuring this kind of stuff out!

· He loves when you sit with him when he meditates. Even if you aren’t the meditating type, if you just sit quietly by him or read, he already feels much calmer. If he’s practicing balancing moves, he’ll sometimes grab you to hoist you up in the air, “to practice strength” at the same time. You’ve learned it’s a very bad idea to squirm when he’s got you planking above his head; he will start tickling you if you don’t keep still.

Raph

· Once he gets a good enough disguise, he loves to ride around on his newly built motorcycle with you on the city streets. It’s fun to zip through cars and people and drive out to the sparser points of the city to watch ships come in and out of the bay or go to a park outside the city to watch the lights as they all turn on at dusk.

· Loooovvess having movie nights with you. Seriously asks for it every week. You two get comfy on the couch with like 3 blankets thrown over your laps and watch something like Jurassic Park or Mad Max and gorge on buttery popcorn and chocolate. Sometimes you’ll slip in a chick flick like Pride and Prejudice. He acts like he doesn’t like it, but you’ve caught a goofy, happy smile on him more than once at the end of the movie, and then he starts lifting your hand like Mr. Darcy and adopting more “romantic” actions and it’s just *chef’s kiss*

· You guys will spar together. It’s kinda required once you date him; he wants you to be able to kick butt if he can’t get to you fast enough. But these sessions usually end up with you and him wrestling/tickling each other and him holding you down with a foot while he lifts weights. Get comfy princess, he ain’t moving that foot ‘til he get 100 reps.

· He has a really good eye for fashion and makeup. He’s actually the one that sews together all of his family’s clothes, as much as possible with the scraps they find around. It’s calming to make something instead of the stigma he has of destroying stuff. He’s the first person you SnapChat with an outfit just to make sure it looks good, and he sends back honest feedback, like “why do you still have that scarf, you know it doesn’t match anything in your closet,” or “try the red sweater with that long gold necklace you have.” Everyone compliments your outfits so much because of his input

· Likes to go swimming with you. There’s a few clear, clean pools in the sewers (Donnie approved) where you guys go just to have a good swim. There’s usually some candles lit and music playing. More often than not, you’ll end up laying on his chest while he floats on the surface and just enjoy each other’s company. At least until he gets the idea to dunk you.

Donnie

· Sneaking into the rafters of Broadway is a regular event for you guys. He manages to disable any security they have up around your “spot,” and you get a free show with your favorite person. He’ll be quoting his favorite lines for days after, all the while talking about the next show to see. He’d so be a theater kid if he had the chance.

· One of the main things that got you guys together in the first place was you helping him put together tech he’s working on. It still continues now, since you have a steady hand and a willing ear to listen to his theories and ideas. You’ve even inspired him a few times with your comments! It’s a casual bonding activity for you both, and he values your thoughts.

· Spontaneous dances are a must. Sometimes he’ll grab you and dance around the room – especially if an experiment of his goes well – sometimes it’ll be goofy dances to see how badly you two can embarrass anyone looking, and other times, you guys will just slow dance before you leave, just as a way to be close before having to part.

· You guys form your own little potted plant collection in the lair. It’s both a hobby, and a way for you to check on how he’s doing. If he’s doing well, the plants are watered and taken care of. If he’s getting sucked into things and forgetting to care for himself, the plants suffer. He tries to get an auto-watering system for them, but you shut that down quick. It’s good to do some things yourself rather than rely on technology!

· Cupcake Saturdays are a thing. He’ll take you to a bakery, where you’ll go in and get a box of cupcakes (extra frosting). You guys will then just chow down on them on the rooftop, often with him licking a lot of the frosting off the cupcakes before eating the actual “cake” part.

Mikey

· Such a fan of trying every new restaurant you can find in NYC. It’s become a date-night tradition every Thursday to either order or pick up some hole-in-the-wall place’s food, meet up somewhere, and Gordon Ramsay the crap out of the food. He does a mean Ramsay impression, and you’ve snorted more than one ramen noodle out of your nose from laughing so hard.

· If you aren’t a fan of video games, you will be once you date this guy. It’s not even just watching or playing video games with him, he’s just funny when he plays! He’ll make the most stupid comments about something going on in the storyline, or mess around, even glitch out a game. He’s managed to get out of the maps of Among Us more than once. You’re convinced if he started his own YouTube gaming channel, he’d be a quick star.

· Game nights are a must for you guys. It usually turns into a family game night with you, the turtles, Splinter, April and Casey, which Mikey just adores because he gets to see everyone he loves having fun. You two will usually team up against the others, or turn on each other to stab the other in the back. Uno and Cover Your Assets have made you guys question your loyalty to each other more than once. That Uno Reverse card, man…

· Arts and crafts are his favorite. Anytime a holiday is coming up, Mikey gets hyped ‘cause he knows you guys are gonna start making decorations for it. You guys will usually make decorations for each other. Mikey loves this, just because he feels like a normal person by having actual Halloween decorations around the lair instead of stuff he and his bros scraped together off the streets.

· Loves to stargaze with you in the summer time. He’ll convince Donnie to let him drive the truck out of the city to the countryside of New York, bring you with him, and set up on the roof of the truck in the middle of a field (that he totally didn’t crash through a wood fence to get to). Fireflies will fly over your faces, and he’ll joke that they’re shooting stars and make a thousand and one wishes on each of them. He won’t tell you that all of those wishes are for you and him to be together forever, but it’s not hard to guess with how mushy he gets after each one.

#ray-jaykub #supershiny-raven #answer #tmnt #tmnt x reader #request #headcanons #tmnt headcanons #leo x reader #raph x reader #donnie x reader #mikey x reader #leonardo x reader #raphael x reader #donatello x reader #michelangelo x reader #reader insert #my writing

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kidalias · 2 years

Text

Weird Dream I Had

Had a crazy awesome weird dream. It started with me and a ton of friends (none of which I recognized) in some kind of contest or working on some project where we were supposed to make a certain length video for a comedy YouTube channel. We separated into sub-groups each meant to provide a certain chunk of time to the video. We were all in some large alleyway, and in the lore of the dream it’s common knowledge that we have funny memories with a boiler out in the alley so no one chooses to do any jokes with it because we all expect the others to. So my group is stuck with filling a missing 3-4 mins. for the video, and I suggest we do improv sketches at one of the ends of the alley. I have some bad ideas, and I scrap them before sharing what want to do with the group. We start and then mid-bit the dream morphs to show a bunch of weird cartoon/anime-lookin humanoid things and they have this squishy gummy quality. (The dream has shifted from Live Action to Animation now). They’re all lined up on their backs side to side shoulder to shoulder with each wearing a jumpsuit having a main color of R, O, Y, G, B, Cyan, or I (No Violet for some reason) and white as the second color for all of them. Then they turn on their sides, but not like on their own. They turn like they’re being turned. The 2D animation was actually really smooth. This reveals each of them had a line of previously unseen giant red dots going straight down their side. Then in First-Person I jump on them and they squash and stretch then the red dots shoot up like spikes. It’s like they’re being stretched into the night sky. (Side Note: Holy shit I’m remembering right now that the dream started in the middle of the day and time was actually passing!) I’m not skewered by them as they fly up, and the bodies are 100% unaffected by the physics of this. Then there’s a fade or a cut to all the bodies standing upright facing the same direction on my right and an identical set that’s smaller on my left facing them, but they reversed order so the red one is the closest one to me. There are no red dots anymore. (we’re still in the alley btw) The Trash Taste Podcast starts and I hear Garnt ask “So what did you think of the Eva remake? Did they make the fuckin’ new squishy western animation work?”

Connor “Did it work? No! Of course it didn’t fuckin’ work. It’s fuckin’ shit, man!”

Garnt and Joey laugh

Joey through the laughter “Oh what you didn’t like tiny Shinji running around on older Shinji?”

At this point Rexplosion from Invincible pops out and he’s the size of Ant-man as he walks around on the red suit humanoid to my right which I guess means he’s playing Shinji in my dream and these things are Evas? And also the ones to my right reversed order so the red one is the closest to me like the ones on the left.

Connor “It’s so fuckin’ stupid, man.”

Garnt “Didn’t they have, like, an incredible 3D model there?”

Connor “Yeah. One thing I’ll say I liked was the cell shaded animated tiny Shinji looked fuckin’ beautiful, man. It was so smooth it was like watching the smoothest 2D animation.”

This is true. All of this is being said as I watch Rex run around on “Older Shinji’s” shoulders and the cell shaded animation is amazing. I think in the lore of my dream it’s implied that the story of this Eva movie they’re talking about is about a new generation of Eva pilots being mentored by the original cast while they’re older. So maybe Joey was calling Rex “Tiny Shinji” Because this movie wrote him as a successor to the actual Shinji. Idunno. Although, I will say, while I have yet to watch a single episode of Eva or even a review for fear of spoilers, this movie my dream crafted is probably the worst of the worst things someone could do with this series. The most in depth takes I’ve gotten ever about the series were offhand remarks in videos on other anime, random comments on YouTube, exactly 2 episodes of Game Grumps, and Trash Taste Podcast episode #66.

There’s more ribbing and banter that I don’t remember and then I woke up.

#Eva #Trash Taste #trashtaste #trashtaste podcast #Evangelion #evangelion anime #weird dream #reallyweirddream #I had the weirdest dream

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scrivenerofmossflower · 3 years

Text

I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost

Word Count: ~2.8k Summary: Four new friends decide to celebrate their recent meeting by doing some light breaking-and-entering at the local cemetery. They're looking for a ghost. They accidentally come out with the seeds for a YouTube channel. In which Gonff has done research, Rose brought the video camera, Martin's a little too comfortable with this, and Columbine wonders how a pre-med like her wound up stuck with two theater geeks and an enigma. read on ao3 Notes: Human AU, College AU. Un-beta’ed, all mistakes are my own. I’ve been sitting on this for like, over two years and the fact that the ‘verse is still bothering me and I still remember all the details to the set up means that I’m just going to have to exorcise it. Have a Halloween fic the day after Halloween.

The cemetery was on the western edge of town and looked not as a cemetery usually does, with neatly kept graves and graveled paths and mown lawns, but as a cemetery should. With the sun just below the horizon and night falling quickly, the overgrown graveyard with it’s off-kilter, lichen covered headstones and crumbling mausoleums looked like something right out of a horror movie.

“Hollywood called, they want their set back,” Rose said. All four friends were leaning against the iron gates at the entrance, nerving themselves up to go in.

“Oh, come on, this is B-list horror fodder at best,” Gonff countered. “More like Haunted Mansion or Hocus Pocus than—are you recording this?”

“Yep,” Rose said. She turned her phone towards him, zoomed in and out on his face, and stuck out her tongue. “You know how big a wimp my brother is about the spooky stuff, so I was going to send it to him. Congratulations, he just found out you’re a massive Disney geek.”

“Everyone likes Hocus Pocus—”

“Are you seriously going to do this?” Columbine interrupted, and rolled her eyes when Rose turned the camera on her.

“Scared?”

She sighed. “Of getting arrested for trespassing? Yes.” She reached out and made a swipe for the camera, but Rose avoided the grab. “Especially if you’re going to be recording us breaking the law—Martin!”

While they’d been talking, Martin had swung himself onto the top of the chest-high wall and sat straddling it with one leg to either side. “What?” he asked. “It’s not that high.”

“That’s not really her point, mate,” Gonff said. What was chest high on Martin was shoulder high on Gonff, and between that and a bit of extra pudge, it was a bit more of an undignified scramble up. Martin snagged the back of his shirt and heaved when it looked like he wouldn’t quite make it. “Thanks. C’mon, Columbine, you’re up next.”

She sighed again, but took both their hands and let them haul her up between them, with a neat little twist that left her sitting on the wall, feet on the outside.

“Here, catch,” Rose said. She tossed her phone up to Martin and waved off their assistance, bracing her hands on the top of the wall and hopping up, accepting her phone back with a grin. The group paused again on the top of the wall. “So,” Rose said, dragging out the vowel and turning the camera on each of them. “What do you think we’re going to find?”

“I was poking around in the library this afternoon,” Gonff volunteered, drumming his heels against the wall, “and turned up a couple of specifics. Apparently there was this chemist—and I use the term loosely, he wasn’t trained and it was the 1700s, I think—but when he died he said he’d be back.”

“And was he?”

“Well, he was exhumed at some point, and the body was unsettlingly preserved. Though I suppose saying the tomb was broken into would be more accurate; a curious medical student tried to cut off his head.”

“And you say it’s the theater geeks who’re weird,” Rose said. “When has a theater geek ever tried to cut off someone’s head in the name of science?”

Columbine just raised both eyebrows in Rose’s direction. “Really? We’re really going there?”

“Okay, but when has a medical student willed their skull to a theater so it can be used in a production of Hamlet?” Martin asked, and ignored how all three just looked at him in bewilderment. “Go on, Gonff. The body was unusually preserved, the student tried to take its head.”

“Which I contest, honestly,” Columbine interrupted. “You could get as good a sample without desecrating the corpse like that.”

“Anyway,” Gonff said. “As he was putting the head in the sack he’d brought with him, he heard whispers coming from the corners of the tomb.” He gestured, describing the scene with relish. “Whispers at the edges of reality, seeping through the cracks. When he turned around, there were shadows writhing and twining in the corners, reaching out as if they would pull him into the void itself.”

There was a beat of silence.

“And this tomb is in this graveyard?” Rose said, scanning the layout of the ground below them.

“Yep. The student ran, of course, and left the head behind. It’s probably still there, kicked into a corner by a panicked foot.”

Martin and Columbine exchanged skeptical looks. “Guilty conscience, obviously, and probably wind through the leaves,” Columbine said. “Look, there’s trees all along the wall, and there’s grass and stuff, too. When was this?”

Gonff blew out an exasperated breath. “I don’t really remember, a few years after the guy died?”

“So call it the 1810s at the latest,” Columbine said, crossing her arms. “Way before electricity was harnessed for things like flashlights. If he had a lantern or an oil lamp, those shadows were probably caused by the unsteady light source, and obviously an overactive imagination.”

“Speaking of which, anyone else have a flashlight?” Martin asked. “First quarter moon won’t be up for another few hours.”

There was another, longer silence.

“We are really bad at this,” Gonff said finally. “Martin’s the only person who brought a flashlight? Seriously?”

“I was just going to use my phone,” Rose said. “But that’s going to eat my battery, especially if I’m recording at the same time.”

“Lesson learned. When poking around old graveyards after dark, everyone in the crew brings a flashlight,” Columbine said, shaking her head.

“We’ll keep it mind for next time,” Rose decided, and hopped down into the graveyard without further commentary. “Come on, let’s go find this tomb. You remember which one it was, right, Gonff?”

“Yeah, it’s in the north corner. I’ll lead the way.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Martin said as he helped Columbine down off the wall, “I swung by earlier today to talk to the groundskeeper. Ghost hunters aren’t new to him, and we’ve got permission. As long as we don’t break anything, leave trash around, make too much noise, etcetera, he’s fine with it, if a little resigned.”

“I’m beginning to think you’ve done this before,” Columbine said, half joking, half accusing.

Martin shook his head. “No, I just don’t see any reason to take unnecessary risks.”

Gonff laughed from in front of them, and turned around to walk backwards and still face them. “Matey, I’ve known you for a week and I can already say with full confidence that that’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told.”

“I did say unnecessary risks,” Martin said with complete calm. “Besides, I haven’t been that reckless around any of you.”

“Yes, because jumping two flights of concrete steps is perfectly reasonable,” Rose said, giving him a very disappointed look.

“I was running late and took the landing on my shoulder like you’re supposed to.”

The deeper the four friends passed into the graveyard, the older the headstones became. What names and dates had survived the years were obscured by green-gray or orange lichen. At the very back were a row of small marble buildings, some with long fractures in their walls, some with craggy domes, some in eerily perfect repair but with the iron grate hanging askew. The casual back and forth banter grew quieter as they approached, until at last the muffled sound of shoes upon gravel swallowed it up entirely.

“That’s it,” Gonff whispered, nodding towards a mausoleum built into a low hill, the dark space where its door should have been framed by ivy and brambles.

Rose took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Break my phone and I’ll curse you,” she said, and thrust it into Gonff’s hands.

“Wait, what are you doing?”He fumbled it, checking the camera and keeping it trained on Rose. The image was becoming grainier as the light faded, but it was still enough to film, for now.

“I’m going inside,” Rose said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

“Oh, no, not without me you’re not,” Gonff said, shoving the phone at Martin. “Here, you hold this.”

“I’m pretty sure this violates the 'don’t break anything' request we got from the groundskeeper,” Columbine said, rubbing at her forehead.

“Do you want to go in to explain every ‘experience’ they have, or shall I?” Martin asked. The video wouldn’t show the fond grin he wore, but it was clear enough in his voice as he trained the camera on Columbine, equally fond for all her exasperation.

“You’ve got the flashlight,” Columbine pointed out, waving him on. “I’ll stand guard on the off chance someone comes to run us out.”

“We can jump the wall and make for downtown if that happens,” Martin said. “Always have an exit strategy.”

“You’ve definitely done this before.”

“No, that’s just general life advice.”

They were interrupted by a low call from Gonff from inside the mausoleum. “Martin! Flashlight?!”

Martin fished the penlight out of one pocket with one hand, keeping the camera steady on the door as he approached. He knocked on the jamb with it. “Hello? Sorry for the disturbance, but we were just hoping to look around for a little bit, if you don’t mind the company. We’ll leave you in peace again soon.”

He flicked the light on, and startled back when it illuminated Rose, who was far closer than he’d expected. She also backed off with a pained protest. “Warn a girl before you do that, will you?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Martin said, angling the light a bit lower.

She rubbed at her eyes. “Were you talking to the ghost just now?”

“Look, if there is someone in here, just because he’s dead doesn’t mean we have to be rude,” Martin pointed out, following Rose into the crypt. “How’d you feel if someone came poking around your room without even apologizing for it?”

“You don’t even believe in ghosts,” Gonff pointed out, squinting around. The three of them drew closer together—ghost or no, they were in a small space with a dead body after dark, circumstances creepy enough to raise the hair on the back of anyone’s neck.

“I prefer to hedge my bets,” Martin said, sweeping the penlight slowly around. It was mostly empty, but for a few dead leaves in the corner and a low, rectangular construction in the middle of the room—the tomb itself. “I don’t see anything in here. Should we go a bit deeper?” They were huddled near the door, the blue-bright LED penlight aided by the distant starlight and the sickly yellow glow of a nearby streetlight.

“Yeah, why not,” Gonff said. His voice was a bit higher than normal, but he slid one foot forward, then another. Rose trailed behind him, looking closely around the room.

“Are you sure I shouldn’t go in front?” Martin asked.

“You’ve got the camera,” Rose said.

“Right,” Martin muttered, not sounding too pleased with that. “Of course.”

“I’ll curse you, too, if you break my phone—” Rose started, only to cut herself off with a gasp. “Did you hear that?”

“No?”

Another long moment of tense silence, before all three heard a rustling sound from beyond the tomb.

“I heard that,” Gonff said, this time with an almost manic sounding giggle. “It sounds like he doesn’t like curses. Maybe don’t talk about that right now?”

“Right,” Rose said. She swallowed. “Sorry.”

“There’re a lot of dead leaves in here,” Martin said, directing the penlight towards the corners. “It was probably the wind, or an animal. Something like—huh.”

The light illuminated a misshapen lump closer to the entrance, a bundle of something that looked like it might be cloth. The trio stared at it for a moment.

“Do you think that’s the head?” Rose whispered.

“It’s definitely something,” Gonff said. All three drew closer together until their shoulders were touching.

“You know, I sort of thought the head would’ve been moved, or missing, or eaten by now,” Martin said.

Gonff blanched. “Eaten?”

“Well, yeah. Animals, scavengers, that sort of thing. What, did you think I meant cannibalism?”

“No…”

“Well, only one way to find out,” Rose said. She squared her shoulders. Each step forward echoed hollowly in the empty mausoleum, and when she spoke, both Gonff and Martin couldn’t quite suppress a jump. “Martin, will you stop moving the light around? I’m nervous enough as it is.”

“I’m not moving the light, Rose. And my hands are steady, before you ask,” Martin protested, eyes on the video to make sure this was the case.

Rose halted without turning around. When she spoke, her voice was forcibly calm. “If it’s not the light, what’s making the shadows move?”

“Martin, are you getting that?”

“I’m recording the shadows acting like shadows, yes,” Martin said patiently. “They’re moving because you’re moving, Rose, and you’re between the light and the—oh,” he said, as the shadows trembled again and moved up the wall.

There was a crash of stone on stone from behind them, loud in the sudden stillness. All three screamed, Gonff and Rose both latching onto Martin’s arms. Martin had dropped the penlight to free one hand, and the light swung wildly about the mausoleum, chasing spiky shadows and weird shapes up the walls.

“I think we should get out of here,” Gonff said, already backing out and dragging Martin along with him.

“Good idea,” Rose agreed, matching Gonff pace for pace. “Great time and all, really interesting, but we ought to, you know, go analyze the footage, see if we got an EVP—”

“Not find out what that was?”

“A ghost angry about a joke about curses.”

“Don’t joke about curses, I was cursed once and it offends me,” Gonff agreed with another high pitched giggle.

“This is just for practice anyway, next time we’ll go investigate,” Rose said.

There was another rustling, and the penlight caught the reflective gleam of eyes at the other end of the room.

They broke and ran, bursting out of the mausoleum and almost bowling over Columbine.

“What, what did you—”

“Eyes, dark, something—”

“Just run!” Rose said, pushing the both of them ahead of her.

“Over the wall?” Martin asked the group.

“Yes, fine, just away!”

This wall was conquered far more easily than the first, the fear adding extra speed to all four friends’s flight.

“You really saw a ghost?” Columbine panted.

“No,” Martin said, at the same time Gonff said “Yes!”

“There were eyes, mate, actual, glowing eyes!” Gonff continued. “And the shadows, you saw the shadows!”

“I saw shadows move that weren’t caused by Rose,” Martin said.

“And the crash? And the rustling?”

“Coincidence. Dead leaves. There wasn’t a ghost in there.”

They stopped a dozen blocks away, Rose clutching a stitch in her side, Gonff with his hands braced on his knees, gasping for breath.

“Then what was it?” Rose asked, leaning her head against the wall of the closed coffee shop.

“I don’t know,” Martin said. He was breathing deeply, deliberately slowing his breathing back to normal. “But it wasn’t a ghost.”

“That’s… because… it was a fox,” Columbine said, also bent double and panting for breath. She waved her phone, which the other three only just noticed in her hand. “I saw it come out about two seconds before you did,” she said, straightening as her breath came back. “Snapped a few pictures. He’s a cutie, you probably scared him.”

“We scared him?” Rose repeated, scandalized.

“Oh, let me see,” Gonff said, leaning over her shoulder as she swiped through the handful of pictures.

“Wait, let me get a shot of this,” Martin said, a grin beginning to steal over his face. He raised Rose’s phone again, getting a good angle on Columbine’s. “Aw, he is cute.”

“What about the eyes—?”

“Probably a family,” Columbine said. “I mean, that’d be a great place for a den, wouldn’t it? Sensible people don’t go in.”

“Did I ever claim I was sensible?” Gonff asked her, turning to look at her indignantly with his chin still propped on her shoulder. “Did Rose? Did Martin?”

Rose shook her head, beginning to laugh. “So our first ghost… was actually a family of foxes,” she said.

“Apparently,” Gonff said.

“Stepping through leaves, knocking something over, moving around so that there were shadows,” Martin listed. “And our imaginations did the rest.”

Columbine shot them all a grin. “Good thing I didn’t come in with you guys, then, or I wouldn’t have evidence,” she said, waving her phone in Gonff’s face.

“Well, you’ll have to figure out a way to get evidence from the inside next time,” Rose decided. She put out a hand and wiggled her fingers. Martin passed her the phone.

“Next time?” Columbine repeated.

“Absolutely,” Rose said, and panned the camera around the group. “After tonight, we’ve got to find a real ghost. This is too embarrassing a note to leave on, don’t you think?”

#my fic #redwall #Late LateRose Channel AU #one-shot #Martin the Warrior #Gonff #Columbine #Rose #look I don't remember where this came from #but I love it #please love it too

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gay-otlc · 3 years

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I would love to hear more about the Tumblr Fandom Fandom fic if you have anything planned out! are there protagonists or anything like that?

Alright! So, the main characters from the actual series are all there- Sophie, Keefe, Fitz, Biana, etc, and I suppose they’d be the protagonists. All of them are humans in the human world, they’re teenagers, and they’re all involved in a fandom, interacting in various ways. Keefe draws fanart, Sophie, Biana, and Marella write fanfiction, Dex makes memes/cursed edits, Tam and Linh run a podcast together, Fitz has a youtube channel where he talks about his theories for the next season of the show they all watch.

Now, what is this show they all watch?

It’s current title is “Keepers of the Chaos,” though it might change later. I’m not sure if there’s a main protagonist for that one. Season one starts at the beginning of January, when a large group of middle/high school students at Tumblr High School learn about a contest taking place. There’s some sort of prize for the contest- money or whatever, idk. Other highschools in the county, like Instagram High School and Pinterest High School, are also participating in the contest.

The contest is a writing contest. Each school is given a premise; Twelve year old Sophia, hiding her secret telepathy, meets a teal-eyed boy named Finn who tells her she’s an elf and takes her to a secret world, where she meets the rebel organization who created her and another rebel organization that wants to kill her. There are other details given as well, like Finn’s friend Keith, his sister Bianca, Sophia’s horse Silvery, and their incompetent council of twelve leaders.

About fifty people from Tumblr High School volunteer to join the contest, and they start meeting every day after school to start writing. However, these Tumblr High Schoolers... get off topic a lot. They’re slowly working towards the “main” plot, which they’ve nicknamed “Elf AU,” but they work a lot on doing things like turning everyone Jewish, writing gay fanfiction about their own characters, and all wearing those sleep masks with teal eyes on them.

The actual KOTLC characters love this show; they find our shenanigans hilarious and hope we win the contest against our enemy the Pinterest Fandom. And they have fun in their own fandom!

That’s pretty much the plot so far.

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megalodon-writes · 4 years

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Ah okay thank you!! May I request headcanons of bokuto, sugawara, kuroo, nishinoya and semi (separately) staying in with their s/o during lockdown - how does their day look like? what activities do they come up w during quarantine? etc. Bonus for fluff and romantic themes ❤️

Of course! Thank you for asking ❤️ okay but can you imagine the chaos of all 5 of those guys being together during quarantine?? Comedy GOLD. Also I would love being in isolation with all of these guys. all of them. 💖 also I just wanna say that they all would 100% be very aware of the situation and be respectful about being safe. I hope you have a good day/night!!

Headcanons for how Bokuto, Sugawara, Kuroo, Nishinoya, and Semi are in quarantine!

Bokuto

He would be super excited about the whole thing. Spending time with his baby?? Down.

While everyone was stocking up on tp and water he was busy grabbing crayons and fake flowers. He would be so excited to make flower crowns and a bunch of inside activities!!!

That scene in spiderman homecoming where peter does all the things and he was only there for like 20 minutes? Yep. Bokuto would last about 40 minutes and then get depressed and stare longingly out the window like dogs do

You guys go on nature walks/ hikes all the time. Inside is for when the sun isn’t visible

He also still sticks to his exercise routine, but this time he includes you - pushups with you under him, lifting you instead of weights… though usually it would end in some n i c e kissing

BONUS: He would teach you how to play volleyball/if you already knew you’d run drills together

Sugawara

Puzzles! You guys would do puzzles. The more pieces the better

Suga sticks his tongue out slightly when he thinks really hard while doing them - it’s honestly adorable and when you commented on it he just blushed like mad

He also would cook all the time. He found old cookbooks while cleaning once and tries to make new things every day he’s really good at it

You guys do go outside but I could see the two of you having a dog, so you go to parks and play around with the pup

Really deep conversations. You get to know Suga more than you had ever learned before

BONUS: aight listen, out of all of these boys he would be the one to be like ‘so you know, we could just happen to have a baby 👉👈’

Kuroo

Forts. You basically construct the most incredible fortress because Kuroo brought home a lot of cardboard from work and you have a million blankets/pillows

You watch documentaries all the time - especially if it’s science ones

Normally you would find it boring but he gets so excited that you just love watching him learn things

You guys would make out all the time or at least cuddle. The mans is touch starved okay - also lazy mornings. you get out of bed at 2 pm

Whenever you guys watch movies together and characters do anything slightly suggestive or kiss or anything like that… he just gives you a side glance accompanied with a smirk

BONUS: You guys start a tik tok/ youtube channel and people love you

Nishinoya

Hand stand contests

Rearranges everything specifically so he would be able to practice moves though then he just ended up laying on the floor and looking up at the ceiling while mumbling about his role in the universe

You guys like to gather a bunch of random gear and just go ‘get lost’ in the woods

He loves being the little spoon when y’all cuddle. change my mind, I dare you

THIS GUY LMAO he would make you do a fashion show of all your clothes and his he thinks he’s being smug but he ends up hyping you up so much

BONUS: He writes you poetry and it’s not very good you love it. example:

‘today was another day of doing nothing I love spending time with you because you’re cute I just wanna do something Maybe you, my sweet fruit’

Semi

Home concerts. I’m not sure what instrument he plays but he does it very well and thus serenades you - also wrote you a song

He convinced you and your friends to all meet in an empty parking lot, park about 15 feet from each other, and BLAST MUSIC aka dance party

He also would like to be inside, but for some reason he knows about this secret river and you guys go swimming there

At night he’s actually really caring and would just lay there cuddling you... but he would mumble a lot of compliments. ie. ‘you’re so pretty.’ ‘you looked really cute while swimming’ ‘i love your voice’

HA - you guys watched a couple rom coms and he has made it his life goal to make you swoon like the girls do

BONUS: He secretly loves sewing?? he made you an incredible outfit that you wore as often as you could. also you guys have matching pajamas

#bokuto #sugawara #kuroo #nishinoya #semi #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#hq #headcanons #bokuto headcanons #sugawara headcanons #suga #kuroo headcanons #semi headcanons #haikyu #haikyu!!#haikyuu headcanons

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talesofafangirlwithadvr · 4 years

Text

APRIL PICKS!

And we’re back with new picks for the month!! Man, this has been some strange times we’re living in. I saw a post that said March felt like 300 days, while April feels like 3. I could not agree more. I’ve watched a lot this month, which isn’t a shocker due to our current circumstances. There’s a pretty big range, so there might be something here that you can check out during quarantine.

Here come the spoilers!

THE SOCIETY

I’m going to start with my latest watch from Netflix, The Society. Wow. I really enjoyed this one. Going into it I knew it would be like a Twilight Zone meets Lord of the Flies show, but there was so much unexpected stuff that occurred. Much like Degrassi the Next Generation, they went there. The students from New Ham, Connecticut go off on a field trip, but the buses don’t get too far due to the storm. This forces them back into town only (maybe) a couple hours from when they left. No one is home when they get back. No adults, kids, or others who were not on the school trip. The town is theirs and there is no way out. At first it’s all partying, but things take a dark turn fast and the teens must come up with laws for there to be some sort of order in this new world if they want to survive and find a way back to their real home. The 10 episodes go by really fast. It leaves a nice cliffhanger for season 2 (which is supposed to be in the works, but I don’t know if Corona affected that at all). This show definitely contains a lot of surprising twists including one very early on that is hard to predict. If you have watched this show previously or are interested in giving it a shot know one important thing.

This is the BEST character on the show.

I have not met one person who doesn’t love Grizz. He is the greatest. (The fan love for him really reminds me of the love for Stiles in Teen Wolf.)

DC’S TITANS- Season 2

At the start of April, I started the second season of Titans. As someone who does not have the DC streaming service I have to wait till the seasons are accessible on DVD. I watched the first season back in December and loved it, so I couldn’t wait to watch season 2. I was excited to see all the characters they were adding to the team. As someone who LOVES superheroes, but gets most of their knowledge through watching TV and movies rather than the comics, I went in not knowing a lot, which made it even more exciting. I would say my only main issue with this season was the staggering of plots. Because there were so many characters to follow and so much going on there were a lot of times when I was excited to start the next episode (because the previous one always ended on the BEST cliffhangers) only to have the episode involve a completely different story-line. While Deathstroke was the main villain for the season, sprinkling in CADMUS and finishing off Raven’s dad at the start felt like a lot for me. Most of the side conflicts added up to involving Slade, but looking back (because I did watch this at the beginning of April) it often felt like a lot in the moment. Some of the moments that were my favorite were finally getting the Nightwing reveal, seeing Bruce and Dick interact, being at Titans tower, hearing Hank sing and all of Connor. I think he was my favorite addition to the show. (I could be biased because I’m a Superman fan.) I’m upset with the ending and they better find a way to reverse it!! I would also like to see more of the team together next season because I really missed that too.

On a lighter note....

NAILED IT!

This is the PERFECT show for the crazy times we are in. It takes your mind off the repetitive news and is a great stress reliever, plus it is super funny and you will find yourself laughing uncontrollable. Maybe more in some episodes than others. Nailed it is the baking game show for people who strive to be better bakers in the kitchen, but are struggling when it comes to appearance (or taste...or both). In the half hour show there are two tasks for the three contestants to perform in order for a chance at the Nailed It trophy and $10,000. They are both often very difficult, with the second creation much harder than the first. Watching the contestants is hilarious as well as their reactions to baking and not having any clue what to do sometimes. I also love the judges. Nicole Byer is too funny and Jacques Torres is one of my new favorite people.

Plus Wes is just beautiful and I loved when Nicole called him the human form of Simba from the Lion King.

Continuing on with more comedy...

I know of several people who quote John Mulaney’s comedy specials on the regular, plus his gifs are EVERYWHERE. So it was about time I watched his specials and what better time than right now when I can use all the laughs I can get. I watched The Come Back Kid and New in Town and was laughing all the way through. If you’re already familiar with his stand-up you can enjoy some of these moments again below. If you aren’t then I HIGHLY suggest you check them out on Netflix or by simply YouTube-ing some of his best moments. (My computer cannot stop putting them in my suggested now.)

Returning to some of my past favorites this month....

(Some of these should not come as a shocker)

ZOEY’S EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST

One of my February Picks is back (not that it ever really left). Zoey’s is the show that I can’t stop talking about and even if this past Sunday’s episode (not the one airing tonight because I obviously haven’t watched it yet-while he’s been bothering me I can’t wait to hear Max’s rendition of ‘Bye, Bye, Bye’) gave me issues because everyone was blowing up at each other and there were times I wanted to shout at the TV, I would still suggest this show to anyone. This dramedy has so much going on from captivating (and sometimes heartbreaking) plots, to realistic and lovable characters and songs you will quickly want to add to your personal playlist. It’s honestly just a feel good show that usually puts me in such a great mood (again, despite last week’s...) With only a few more to this season I cannot wait to see what happens next!! (If you enjoy the show check out my other posts on this page!)

NANCY DREW

The CW retelling of Nancy Drew is in the top 2 of shows that I currently cannot stop talking about. It’s still a little shocking to me that I have grown to like Nancy Drew SO MUCH. If you told me that at the start of the season I would have been like ‘really?’ But as this first season has progressed I really fell in love with the show and the characters. While we ended on an earlier cliffhanger than was intended it was still an AWESOME one that has left me with so many questions. I am so happy this show was renewed and I cannot wait till they can start filming the second season. Because I need more of these kinds of moments:

I’m pretty sure I ended my last post this way too. But come on these two are the cutest and deserve to be endgame!

Just like with Zoey’s check out this page for more detailed reviews if you are also a Nancy Drew fan!

I DIDN’T DO IT

I am SO HAPPY that this show is now on Disney Plus. I have talked about this show since it got canceled from Disney Channel far too soon (much like many of their great shows on that channel). But at least they had gotten 2 seasons and both are now available to watch on the streaming service as much as you’d like. (I think I already made it up to episode 12). In my personal opinion season 2 is stronger than season 1 mainly because it doesn’t follow the classic structure of the “I didn’t do it” episode. What I mean by this is starting the episode out with some sort of hi-jinks and having the 5 best friends exclaim they “didn’t do it” or this isn’t how they thought things would go. Then we flashback to events either earlier in the day or week, etc, leading up to the first scene’s events. This style can get very repetitious, but with funny plots and likable characters certain episodes work better than others. However, by season 2 this structure was gone completely and I think the show strongly benefited from it. I truly believe this group of friends felt like a teenage “Friends” sitcom. They had a hang out at a smoothie cafe, two of them were siblings (here twins) and each member of the group resembled a character from the classic NBC show. They even had the two that felt like Ross and Rachel like each other romantically. Who knows where the show would have gone if it wasn’t cancelled. Check it out and let me know if you find more comparisons.

And Last But Not Least...

WORLD ON FIRE

The most recent show I’ve started watching is currently airing on PBS after previously airing on the BBC. This drama throws us into the beginnings of WWII as we follow several characters from different parts of the globe, from England to Germany and Poland. I’m really loving the diverse cast and seeing through the eyes of so many characters during this turning point of history. While I have only watched 2 episodes so far, I already feel very invested in each of their lives and cannot wait to see what happens next. Already so many twists and turns have occurred in such a short amount of time. The episodes go by really fast and will have you thinking a lot after. If you are a fan of a lot of other Masterpiece’s Classics I would highly suggest checking it out.

I hope everyone is staying safe and well!

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artificialqueens · 4 years

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Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor, 1 (Branjie) (and background everyone) - Ortega

a/n: hey everyone! no ur not getting deja vu, i’m reposting what i have of this fic again just with a few necessary adjustments if u kwam. rip all my notes and lovely comments as i’m going to have chapter 1 deleted after this for obvious reasons, so feel free to still leave me some luv bc i’m ngl, re-jigging two fics is taking it out of me asdfghjklkjhgfds. without further ado may i now present to you strictly au 2: electric boogaloo xo

(this one goes out to the anon who wanted radio 1 DJ Heidi Nina Closet xo)

fic summary: Strictly Come Dancing enters its 18th series and its producers, after being goaded by a rival dance show on its inclusivity, commission it to be an all-female cast. Unlike Akeria who’s just here to bone her potential dance partner, dancer Vanessa is ready to act like a professional.

And then TV presenter Brooke Lynn walks into the rehearsal room.

***

8th August 2020

Political correctness gone mad. Or at least, that’s what all the straight, white, 50 year old men have been tweeting. But the TV bosses thought that a same-sex version of the nation’s favourite dancing show would pull the viewers in, at least get some hype going like the good old days. The show’s been going since 2004, Vanessa thinks, as she rolls her neck and looks at the various alleged celebrities opposite them. This is what caused the death of the X Factor, all these sensationalist spin-offs, and now they’re doing the same with this one. She supposes the BBC were intimidated by Dancing on Ice, who had a single solitary same-sex couple on their show and were called out live by H from Steps. How humiliating. She’s only been part of the show for two years; this is her third, but her first one with a partner. She scans her eyes back down the line again, her gaze interrupted as Akeria whispers to her.

“Who you gunning for? I like that goddess, third from the right. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin. Shit, our babies would be beautiful.”

Vanessa pauses, looks at who Akeria’s talking about and snorts a laugh. “Keeks, that’s Asia O'Hara. The chef? She’s been on Saturday Kitchen a couple times.”

“You actually watch that shit?” Akeria side-eyed her.

“Hey, drop the judgemental tone, bitch! It’s easy, chilled-out Saturday morning viewing. Anyway, chefs? Nah. Two left feet and they stomp their way across the dancefloor.”

“It ain’t the dancefloor I’m worried about. I’m more interested in what’s going on in the bedroom,” Akeria wiggles her eyebrows, making Vanessa snort a laugh. Seeing her friend’s expression of disbelief, Akeria rolls her eyes. “Oh, come on, Vanj. You telling me you never thought about it? A lil’ steamy affair? Get the Daily Mail’s tongues wagging?”

“Shut the hell up. You’re awful,” Vanessa laughs long-sufferingly in reply, casts her eyes back down the line of celebrities. Scarlet Envy is at the top- Vanessa knows her, she’s in one of the big soap operas. She’s talking quite earnestly to Yvie Oddly. Vanessa is aware of Yvie only because her niece is obsessed with her Youtube channel. What is it she does again? Gaming walkthroughs? She can’t remember. There’s a tall newsreader with dark hair that Vanessa doesn’t remember the name of but she knows that Jan’s eyeing her up from across the room, so even if she ends up being half-decent and Vanessa gets on well with her Jan will still cut her to make sure she ends up with her as a partner. There’s a black girl with a mane of dark hair and a gap tooth chatting to a blonde woman with glittery makeup, some pretty girls that must be influencers or makeup artists or something (in fact, Vanessa definitely recognises one from Love Island), and Monet X Change. Vanessa definitely knows her, and she’s quite surprised the show managed to net Monet given that most of the singers that appear on the show are usually washed up talent show rejects. Vanessa’s seen some clips of her touring, she knows she’s a good dancer. Maybe she’d be good.

Vanessa takes one final sweep down the line as she sees the producers readying themselves to begin. One, two, three, four…hang on. There’s only eleven celebrities, and unless she’s suddenly lost the ability to count Vanessa knows there’s twelve dancers. Maybe they were going to be more cutthroat than she thought, maybe this would be where they decide which dancers they’re giving partners to and which one they’re cutting. Vanessa nervously shifts in her character shoes as the producers begin their welcome.

As they’re talking, the huge rehearsal room doors burst open and a tall blonde comes rushing through them, dressed in white trainers, a baggy white gym top, and black Nike leggings. She looks on her way to be sweating half of her perfectly made up face off as she runs over to join the other celebrities, sweeping her long, curling-ironed hair up into a bun and apologising frantically as she does so.

“Kiki,” Vanessa whispers to her friend. “Who’s that?”

She feels Akeria shrug beside her. Luckily Monique is standing by her right side and has heard her question.

“Oh, bitch! That’s Brooke Lynn. She presents stuff.”

“What the fuck’s stuff?” Vanessa laughs quietly, not wanting to incur the wrath of the producers by talking over them.

“She did, uh…The Voice. An’ she did some kind of consumer show in the evenings. She does The One Show now. Bunch of boring ass shit, basically,” Monique waves a hand dismissively towards the end, gets distracted by a wink and a small wave across the room from Monet X Change.

“Damn. So they give her all the boring shows to present because they know people will tune in ‘cause she’s hot?” Vanessa muses. It’s just a fact, after all. She’s not been able to tear her eyes away from her since she rushed into the room. Vanessa hopes she’s a good dancer.

“Oop. Here we go already. The Strictly curse claims its first victim,” Akeria overhears her, sticks her tongue out at her as Vanessa bats her on the arm. The sudden movement causes one of the producers to whip round and glare at Vanessa and she immediately drops her arm and fixes him with an easy smile.

When she looks back at Brooke Lynn, she’s hiding her mouth with her hand and her eyes are twinkling at her in a laugh. Vanessa presses her lips together to keep from smiling back.

They all warm up together, even though Vanessa’s already warmed up, but it’s a good chance to see who has potential and who looks more like an octopus out of water with half its limbs cut off. She scans the mirrored wall as she rolls her shoulders in time with the EDM that’s blasting from the speakers. The blonde influencer-looking girl is fucked from the start, Vanessa notes. She’s rolling her shoulders both the wrong way and off-beat. One of the celebrities, the pouty one from Love Island, is already complaining that she’s pulled a muscle. Vanessa makes the executive decision that if she gets partnered up with her then she’s quitting the show and also possibly going on a killing spree in Elstree Studios.

Brooke Lynn hasn’t met her eyes since they caught each others’ earlier. She’s not being weird, it’s just an observation. Vanessa’s, however, have drifted her way a couple of times. Brooke seems to be sailing through the warmup that Jaida’s leading easily, and Vanessa notes how easily she’s managing the split stretches, how she can bend her body almost in half until her head touches the floor. She’s clearly had some sort of dance training before, and Vanessa thinks her good looks would just be a bonus of being partnered with her. She sweeps her gaze across the room again as she stretches out her other leg, her gaze landing on Yvie. She’s bendy, her forehead pressed to the floor as she stretches out and giggles at Scarlet beside her whose body appears to be made almost entirely of cardboard. Vanessa stifles a giggle herself as Jaida starts leading them in squats, hears Monique muttering something to her as she drops to the floor. Vanessa fixes her with a confused face.

“Think you’ve got an admirer,” Monique repeats a little louder, raising her eyebrows and jerking her head behind them to where the celebrities warmed up. Vanessa brings herself up out of the squat, whips her head round to see Brooke looking right at her.

Or rather, her ass.

As Brooke suddenly looks at about six different places in the room in the space of a second and her face turns roughly the same colour as a fire engine, Vanessa turns her head back round, trying to ignore the heat she can feel attacking her own face.

It’s kind of ironic that every year at least one couple is claimed by the Strictly curse and yet the producers still call the process of finding a potential partner “Speed Dating”. The curse is a phenomenon that Vanessa has felt the brunt of and knows all too well- a partner and a contestant, almost every year, end up either falling for each other or falling into bed with each other. It’s natural, she supposes- you can’t spend practically every waking moment of every day pressed up against someone else and not trip and fall onto their dick. However, this is a room full of girls, at least half of whom Vanessa knows are gay as all hell, and maybe this year there’ll be a bit more nuance and obliviousness and just general all-round idiocy.

Looking at the celebrities, she sees Scarlet joke-grinding against Yvie, both of them almost falling over laughing. Maybe everyone will be a little less oblivious than Vanessa has given them credit for.

One of the producers launches into a spiel about how the pairing up process will work. Everyone knows they won’t get properly paired up until the launch show, but this will be more of a chemistry test than a dancing test, he explains, to see who gets on with each other best. Then at the end, all of them will get to write down their top three potential partners.

“After all,” he laughs, “You’re going to be spending a long time together!”

There’s a polite bubble of laughter that pops in the room, and Vanessa feels her stomach explode suddenly with butterflies. What if she gets paired up with someone she doesn’t get on well with at all, never mind someone who can dance? Her mind drifts. Phi Phi’s standing beside her, her face set in a small frown. Vanessa whispers to her.

“Who you got your eyes on?”

Phi Phi doesn’t shift her gaze, and Vanessa follows it. Her gaze lands on the woman with the glittery makeup who’s laughing like a seal at something that gap tooth girl has said and isn’t paying any attention to what the producers are saying. “Anyone with a pulse who’s taking the competition seriously. I know who I don’t want, put it that way.”

Vanessa indulges her in a laugh. Phi Phi has reached the semi-final four times and has never advanced further, and her frustration is starting to show. Vanessa supposes she’s at an advantage here- she’s fresh on the show, she doesn’t have any chips on her shoulder. As she looks around the room, she can see each of the dancers’ past experiences reflected on their faces like battle scars: four-time World Championship finalist Courtney is smiling easily, happy in the knowledge that she won last year and will probably get a dud partner this year, Shea, former West End Choreographer who could literally get given Theresa May and still manage to advance to the finals has a calm exterior, and frowning determinedly is 2018 Latin European champion Vixen, who bowed out early last year with her partner and has expressed very openly and very loudly to everyone who’ll hear her that she’s going for the glitterball this year. In a similar boat is World Cup Freestyle Latin Champion Aja, who was up against Courtney in the finals last year and lost by only a tiny margin of the vote. The girl doesn’t seem bitter, but she’s already got her eyes trained on Monet and has clearly backed her winner already. Crystal is lost in a daydream, classic. To the untrained eye the girl may look as if she couldn’t even do the macarena in time, but the girls know better. Crystal is hard-working, determined, creative, clever, and one of the highest-ranking ballroom and Latin dancers in the country. Vanessa knows that whoever she gets as a partner she’ll be able to mold into something amazing.

Vanessa’s gaze then lands on Plastique. The girl is a fierce dancer and it’s her fifth year on the show already. If she’s nervous, she doesn’t show it. Then again, she trained under Alyssa Edwards so she’s very possibly not felt butterflies in her stomach since the year 2012. Vanessa’s eyes widen a bit as she notices Plastique eyeing up Brooke. She’s going to need to turn up the charm all the way to 100, as Plastique’s reputation precedes her and she’ll be top choice for a lot of the girls opposite.

One by one, the dancers introduce themselves. Vanessa keeps her introduction short and sweet. She doesn’t like to brag about her titles unlike some of the other girls, and she knows that her achievements are outshone by many so she focuses on the fact it’s her first year with a partner instead.

“I ain’t got a track record like Courtney, but I also ain’t got one like Monique either,” Vanessa jokes, her friend nudging her and shouting in protest as the other girls laugh. Monique takes it in good humour though- she’s been an early out for a few years in a row having kept landing Olympic sportsmen with limbs like toy soldiers, so it’s a fair enough comment. Vanessa continues, trying not to let her eyes land on Brooke all that much. “So whoever gets paired with me don’t need to be worried ‘cuz they’re gonna always end up being special to me. My first partner on the show, and the first person I get to experience it with. And I’d be happy to get any of you, because you all look nice and smiley an’ friendly!”

She adds in that last bit to come across as gracious, and it seems to work as the celebrities opposite all smile at her gently and she hears a couple of “aaw!”s thrown her way. She can practically feel Phi Phi, Aja and Vixen all roll their eyes at her, but she doesn’t care. It’s a point in her favour with the girls opposite at least.

After the professionals have all said their piece, the celebrities pipe up. To give them their dues, there are quite a few that Vanessa would be glad to be partnered up with. Peppermint, a TV journalist, seems like she’d be great to gossip with if nothing else, Gigi, the once so intimidating-looking model has got a goofy side that would keep Vanessa sane in rehearsals, and Instagram influencer Blair seems similarly sweet and is so eager to please that it almost hurts. Then Brooke steps forward, her expression the serene calm of a woman who’s used to speaking in front of an audience, and all Vanessa can think about is how much of a point that confident, in-control body language would be in their favour when they took to the floor in week one.

No, not when. If. She’s getting ahead of herself.

“Hey everyone! I’m Brooke Lynn Hytes, uh, I present stuff. I’m basically like Ant and Dec but without the loveable double-act element and the millions of national TV awards clogging up my trophy cabinets and gathering dust.”

Vanessa lets out a snort. The actual joke isn’t even that funny, but Brooke’s delivery was so deadpan and matter of fact that it made the whole thing ten times more hilarious. Akeria turns to face Vanessa, raises her eyebrows and hisses over to her.

“Girl. Any further up her ass and your new nickname is gonna be suppository for the rest of the season.”

“Uh, dance-experience-wise I actually have a fair bit. I did exams and dance shows in high school. I don’t know if I should’ve mentioned that, now you’re all gonna be fighting over me like a pack of zombies,” Brooke laughs. The other girls join in with the laughter and Vanessa shifts from foot to foot. Brooke doesn’t know how accurate she’s just been. Oblivious, she carries on. “So yeah! Good luck to us all. Please don’t tear me limb from limb.”

Another laugh that Vanessa joins in weakly with. Unsurprisingly, Brooke introducing herself to the room has done nothing for Vanessa’s nerves. She has a favourite now, but it’s akin to putting money on a greyhound race- it’s a complete gamble. She tells herself that she can’t pin her hopes on getting partnered with Brooke, even though that thought is a bit like locking a stable door after the pony’s bolted, or whatever the goddamn figure of speech is. As gap-in-teeth-girl who’s standing beside Brooke begins to introduce herself (Heidi’s a Radio 1 DJ, and that explains why her voice sounds so familiar) Vanessa jumps a little as she hears Monique whisper to her out of nowhere.

“Girl, Jesus. Dare you to be less obvious.”

Vanessa narrows her eyes at her as she turns her head. “What?”

“Brooke Lynn,” Monique cocks her head towards the girl in question. Vanessa keeps her gaze steely. “Put your tongue back in your mouth, sis.”

“Oh, like you’ve not got a favourite already,” Vanessa whispers back. She’s got the Monet card she can use if she wants to.

“You know you don’t have to take that partner thing literally, right? You don’t actually have to fuck the person you get matched with,” Monique shoots back, pressing her lips together to stop herself from laughing. Vanessa rolls her eyes.

“You’re being ridiculous. She’s got dance experience, the height difference is good, I could win with her. There’s nothing more to it than that. I’d be happy with any of these bitches.”

Monique raises her eyebrows. “You’re not tryin’ to be Miss World, Vanj, it’s okay to say you wouldn’t kick her outta bed.”

“Okay, so what about Monet? I’m sure the reason that you keep lookin’ all the way down that end of the room is definitely…shit, I don’t know…some sort of eye condition?” Vanessa uses her trump card, smiles and sticks her tongue out at Monique who gives her a little shove and clamps her mouth shut in a pout, knowing she’s been outmanoeuvred. Vanessa tunes back in to the introductions. The Love Island girl introduces herself as Farrah, and she’s pouting and asking the pros not to work her too hard. Vanessa thinks back to what Phi Phi had said. She’ll give the girl some credit. Maybe Vanessa should focus more on who she doesn’t want after all.

The producers start leading girls from their side of the room to the middle so that they form two big vertical lines in front of each other. Vanessa starts in front of Blair, who smiles kindly at her and appears too shy to speak. There’s no time for Vanessa to really attempt to strike up a conversation as they’re all getting shuffled around based on their heights. She watches as Brooke gets moved from in front of Aja, past Shea, past Crystal, and finally given to Jan.

Fuck.

Vanessa shakes the disappointment off. She’s being ridiculous, she knows she’ll get a turn with mostly everyone and the fact that Brooke’s tall, statuesque frame contrasts with her pint-sized self means that she’s a dead cert to get a shot at dancing with her. There’s not many people smaller than her so she knows she’s not going to be leading. This is good, as she’s obviously not used to it. The girls paired up with the smaller celebrities are going to have to work twice as hard.

Blair gets shuffled around to be partnered with Aja, and eventually Vanessa gets Gigi deposited in front of her. She gives her a friendly wave and a pleasant smile, and eventually everyone is paired up- for now. Vanessa looks over at Akeria, notices she’s been given Asia to dance with first. Akeria meets her gaze and gives her a smile that Vanessa doesn’t think she’s going to be able to wipe off her face until mid-June of next year.

As the producers give the girls some time to teach the celebrities an incredibly basic salsa step to start them off with, Vanessa relaxes as she begins talking Gigi through the steps. She’s glad she’s finally getting to do what she loves instead of being consumed by nerves and what-ifs. She knows how to dance and she’s good at it- it’s just a fact- and she knows she’s able to teach things, having helped out with the kids at her dance school when she was younger. To her delight Gigi picks things up quickly, and the two of them are simply dancing the same four basic moves in a loop as they move on to chatting.

“You’re a good teacher! It’s taking some of these other bitches ages,” Gigi laughs, Vanessa giving a guilty giggle at the comment as she notices Jadia, very patiently and very deliberately, walking Scarlet through the steps again.

“See, you wouldn’t think I never had a partner before!” Vanessa beams back at her, twirling around and landing back in Gigi’s hold. To some of the girls it might be a little awkward trying to make small-talk with someone they’ve just met whilst holding one of their hands and having another pressed to their back, but to Vanessa it comes naturally. She notices that Gigi is scanning the room and looking at the other girls. Vanessa knows a searching pair of eyes when she sees one. “You got your eye on a girl?”

“Well, you’d be good,” Gigi says immediately, although how much of that is out of courtesy Vanessa doesn’t know. “Or, I mean. Jaida’s a fierce teacher, and she’s won it before, right?”

Vanessa nods. She knows that Gigi is still holding back the namedrop of the girl she really wants. “But I guess, you know, Crystal’s a talent. It kind of seems like everyone sleeps on her despite the fact she’s got all these trophies and ranks so highly and she does ballroom and Latin. She ever won before?”

“Not yet. She got paired with some stompy politician last year and was an early out, but she made the semis before that,” Vanessa indulges her, although she’s quite sure that judging by the slight blush on Gigi’s face that she’s well aware of where Crystal’s ranked in previous seasons. Gigi seems nice, and she’s complimented Vanessa so she decides to throw one her way too. “You’ve got potential, you could take her to the finals easily. She could do a lot with you.”

“That’s sweet. Thanks,” Gigi smiles, Vanessa giving another twirl just as the producers get everyone to stop and switch round again. Time passes by in steps and twirls rather than minutes, but the variety of people she gets paired with ensures that things don’t become boring. Vanessa gets Scarlet, who steps on her toes about three times and, in her own words, dances like an inflatable waving tube man stuck outside a car showroom, then actress Willam, the one with the laugh like a seal and sparkly makeup and scant regard for the moves she’s been taught, preferring to make Vanessa laugh the whole time. After that she is paired with Jackie, the newsreader she’d noticed earlier. She shows promise but Vanessa does notice Jan’s head bobbing about looking at them from the other side of the room the whole time they’re together like an invasive meerkat so Vanessa does her a solid and talks Jan up a storm. She can’t really focus too much on Jackie, to be fair, because Plastique’s been partnered with Brooke and the two of them are already laughing and hitting it off with each other and Vanessa feels her blood fizz with determination.

Finally, mercifully, Brooke gets led down by one of the producers to stand in front of her, and for a moment Vanessa is tongue-tied. Brooke’s dark green eyes and her gorgeous face are a little intimidating, not that she’s got a crush or anything, and Vanessa feels herself growing shy for a second. But then she remembers that they only have minutes together, and if she wants to be partnered with this girl she’s going to have to up the charm offensive. The producers have been stalking the room like lions with notebooks, recording every laugh and lingering glance.

“Hey!” Vanessa starts cheerfully, fixing Brooke with the winning smile she always used to flash at the judges when she was competing. “I’m Vanjie. Well, Vanessa. Either. Is fine.”

Brooke smiles back at her despite the fact that her introduction was so awkward Vanessa feels like digging a hole in the ground and leaping into it. “Nice to meet you, Vanjie-Well-Vanessa. I’m Brooke Lynn.“

Before Vanessa can feel any more embarrassed at Brooke’s teasing, she takes a little bow and stands ready, her hand held out for her to take. "May I have this dance?”

Vanessa lets out a laugh at the cheesiness of it all, takes Brooke’s hand and stands in hold with her. Their hands seem to fit perfectly together and even though their bodies are still quite far apart Brooke’s hand on her back makes Vanessa feel close to her in a way she’s not felt dancing with any man before.

Monique’s teasing face appears in her mind and Vanessa shakes those particular thoughts away.

“I bet you said that to all these girls,” Vanessa quirks an eyebrow at her, and Brooke tilts her head to the ceiling in thought.

“Uh…no, don’t think so. Just you so far,” she shrugs, and it definitely doesn’t make Vanessa feel special in any way at all.

They start to step and oh shit. This is exciting. This is the first girl that’s properly led her, the first one that the moves have seemed to come so easily to, and Vanessa can feel her heart going like a train as she imagines what she could actually choreograph with a girl like Brooke to work with. She’s a bit quiet as she’s lost in thought, so she cracks an impressed face at the girl opposite her.

“You’re good.”

“Yeah, so are you,” Brooke looks at her a little funny, her face inquisitive. “Hey, how come you didn’t mention any of your accolades? Y'know. World Latin Champion 2016, four-time finalist. That’s a bragging right.”

Vanessa almost loses her steps she’s so shocked. How the fuck does Brooke know about all that? She’s not mentioned it. Brooke can clearly see the shock on her face and a blush hits her cheeks. “That probably sounds weird. I looked you up when I knew I was coming on the show.”

Vanessa laughs, pulls a face at Brooke. “Nah, that sounds even more weird. You’re just digging yourself a hole now.”

Brooke gives an embarrassed giggle, looks up at the sky to avoid Vanessa’s gaze and oh fuck she’s still moving perfectly and she’s not got her eyes trained on her feet holy shit. “No, I mean I looked all the girls up!”

Vanessa bursts out laughing again. The girl’s not helping her case. “Dig, dig, dig, bitch!”

Brooke squeals in protest as Vanessa feels her smile hurt her face. “You know what I mean! Ugh, God. Just answer the question and stop picking on me. I’m a very important celebrity. Don’t you know who I am?”

Brooke’s deadpan sort of humour is killing Vanessa. She tries to get out another jibe through her laugh. “Jesus, I hope that’s not how you normally interview people.”

There’s a pause as Brooke laughs back. Vanessa thinks over her question. “I don’t know. Guess I just didn’t want to come across like a showoff.”

“But it’s just a fact. You’re good,” Brooke shrugs. The praise makes Vanessa’s heart light up.

“An’ I guess I didn’t want the same as you. People fightin’ over me,” she shrugs back, making light of Brooke’s compliment. Brooke pulls a face.

“I don’t know about that, I think I’m going to have to fight off a couple of these girls if I want you,” she comments offhandedly, Vanessa suddenly feeling like she’d been shocked with a tazer. She’d been so focused on trying to charm the partner she wanted that she had no idea the celebrities would’ve been gunning for her too.

“Who wants to be partnered with me?” she asks, thinking retrospectively that she could’ve tried to appear a little less keen.

“Well, Asia’s making a bee-line, I know that much. And Willam was all smiles after she left you. And, I mean, I wouldn’t mind getting you either,” Brooke says, her last comment making Vanessa happier than it should.

“Wouldn’t mind? You’re gonna have to work harder than that,” Vanessa raises her eyebrows, faux-unimpressed. She has to slam her mouth shut at the end of her sentence to avoid tacking on a “baby” to the end of it. Jesus, what is wrong with her?

“You know they give us that card at the end where we write our top three partner choices on it,” Brooke continues. The fact she is trying so hard to come across as nonchalant is making her seem everything but, and Vanessa is loving it. “Hypothetically…would I be on yours?”

“Hypothetically? You might be,” Vanessa grins at her, spins round and misses the look that Brooke gives back at her. Is this flirting? She needs to stop.

“And, uh, hypothetically, of course, would I be first, second or third on that list?”

Vanessa looks to the ceiling, maintains the charade of not appearing overly keen. “At the moment, you are…third.”

Brooke’s face is so actively shocked that Vanessa bursts out laughing. “Third?! You bitch! Why?”

Vanessa composes herself. “Well first of all, I don’t know where you’re putting me on this list, girl, so I gotta hedge my bets. Second, I’m still trying to recover from wouldn’t mind, so that knocks you down a place. Also you just called me a bitch, so you’re now reserve-third.”

“If I told you you were first on my list, does that move me up a place?” Brooke smiles at her cheekily. Vanessa tries to keep a calm exterior and not show Brooke that she’s maybe-sort-of-a-little-bit melting at her words.

“You could. How do I know you’re telling the truth, though?”

Brooke shrugs a little. “Well, I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

With that, Vanessa feels Brooke’s hand being ripped out of her own and coming to rest in between her shoulder blades, and suddenly she’s being dipped to the ground and brought back up again. She ends up pressed up against Brooke’s chest, her face tilted up to meet hers and her lips way too close to be good for Vanessa’s heart rate. She hears an impressed cry from someone- probably Monique or Akeria stirring the pot- and there’s a kind of hush that falls over the room in response to the move that’s a little bit more advanced than anyone was expecting.

“O-kay!” a producer exclaims, and Vanessa melts out of hold, only a little bit captivated. “If we could all switch round again, uh, I think we’ll have Aja with…Farrah-”

Brooke gives her a wink and a smile as she walks away towards Courtney who she’s been paired with next, and Vanessa attempts to compose herself as she gives a little wave back and tries to focus on Monet who she’s now in front of.

If things all ended up the way she wanted them to, this was going to be a very interesting season.

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