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borkthemork · 3 years

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Drabble Request: Anne and Marcy after her rescue

You know what, Anon? You get a 2,600 word draft as a treat. Thank you for your patience!

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Anne had read books before.

She wasn't the kind of person to read long-winding literature like the typical bookworms back home, but she did read whatever interested her. From magazines to comics to zoo books about bird mating dances, Anne liked stuff that had meat to it.

Give her enemies to lovers, she'd cheer at the makeouts. Give her gut wrenching biographies about surviving the Himalayas, she'd bawl her eyes out. And if one gave her story about being one's true self under the guise and acceptance of a duck instructor then she'd quack it up and never be heard from again.

There needed to be meat, drama, scenes of people kissing in the rain. Stories were all about getting punched in the gut over some random guy, and that would always be the best part!

So she had no idea why Cynthia Coven never stood out to her.

It might be because of the choppy writing style or perhaps fantasy wasn't her thing, but that didn't make sense to her. After all, she'd read anything as long as it was interesting and somehow the Coven books just…didn't stick?

Sure, Cynthia had a pet squirrel. Anne could find a squirrel at the park anytime. Cynthia had spells, curses, people with talking body parts that shouldn't be talking at all. Okay, cool — ugh, why wasn't she interested? Everything about it seemed right up her alley!

She chalked it up to preferences and moved on.

But somehow, after all these years, the same book fluttered between the pages in her hands. And she found herself narrating, speaking the paragraphs out loud under the green canvas of her tent.

All because the bedridden girl beside her couldn't sleep.

It had been forty-six hours since Anne and the girls united. It felt a lot longer than that, if she wanted to be honest, but all the footing, fighting, and planning they did to get out unharmed from Andrias's castle had taken a toll on them. And for Mar-mar even more so, what with the amount of stuff that went down. A lot of explosions. Crying. Frog-on-frog violence.

So in this tent came privacy. Not enough privacy to basically stop Sprig or Sasha from barging in, but the makeshift walls were one of the most protected cliff faces inside the forests. So they were basically between a rock and a hard place.

And since Amphibia's nature became a hazard to not only the typical frog but aggro robot intruders, nothing got through as a threat in the end. Not even the huge mother frobo that she and Sash fought days prior.

Anne flipped a page.

The cold draft had slipped in and raised goosebumps on her umber skin. It almost seemed surreal that Summer started to transition out with the months passing, but the chirp of birds and the lack of cicada song had marked a new season, and now Anne shivered slightly with her narration.

Marcy's wounds needed to heal. From the remains of the stab wound to the headache to the numerous nicks upon her feet, if she didn't start sleeping then the medicine Maddie gave wouldn't come into effect anytime soon.

And if she didn't snore in the next ten minutes, Sash would have to knock her out with some sleepshroom grub saute and Anne wasn't going to let her get drugged anytime soon.

But from what was currently happening, Anne became unsure.

Marcy's eyes fluttered shut a few times. She would start drifting off at some random part in the story and then jolted back to listening intently as if nothing had happened. Nothing in the book could get her to sleep. Not Cynthia's introduction to werebeasts, her dramatic one-liners, or how she got knocked out for a minute straight from drinking a pint of Canadian beer.

Wait, could teens drink beer in Canada? Gah, that wasn't important!

What was important was that Marcy looked dead — terrifyingly dead — and no matter how much Anne tried to keep her eyes on the words, the fear clung to the recesses of her mind, asking if everything was going to be alright despite the girls' current luck streak.

That maybe this would be the last time she'd ever see Marcy alive. All because she fell asleep.

Anne leveled her voice when these thoughts struck her, and hoped Marcy didn't note the hitch in her throat or how she blinked faster to catch herself from crying.

Because Marcy was strong. She was stronger than people gave her credit for.

Anne peered down. Marcy's thumb had pressed to the side of Anne's fingers, their eyes meeting for a second; one harbored bags under her eyes, the other of worry.

"I promise I'll sleep." Her smile reached her gaze, the weariness plain on her worn out dimples and ashen cheeks. Anne might need a washcloth later. "It's been a long time since I've read the Cynthia Coven series, my brain can't help but pay attention."

"I know, Mar-mar." Anne closed her eyes for a second and let out a relaxed sigh. "Seven months can be pretty long."

"Tell me about it." Marcy's eyes lingered at the ceiling, licking her lips. "I've been so busy with everything that's been happening that I've barely caught up with the latest book."

"Yeah." Anne smiled. "You know they've got a new release out?"

She blinked. Almost as if Anne punched her in the face at that moment. "Are you serious? Aw man, I missed so much."

"Hey, it's alright. It'll be waiting for you when we get back." Besides, Anne already wrapped the edition in a lot of Christmas paper, might as well keep the surprise.

But Marcy still looked miserable. She pouted, letting her sink more into the mattress almost comically, and Anne bit back a laugh when she groaned. "Oh man, I'm so excited, this sucks! At least tell me if Cynthia gets over the Bridge of Quintessence."

"I don't know what that means and besides, you're two books behind, why would you wanna spoil it!"

They shared a laugh and carried on. Anne missed this. She did. In between the page clips and the eagerness flowing in Marcy's voice, it almost seemed like they were back to what they once were: Two girls laughing and making fun of bad jokes, giggling at stuff that didn't make sense in the story. It almost made the worries over Andrias and her parents grow into background noise.

Almost.

Anne perked up. A question had flown past her, and now Marcy stared at her, inquiry clear in her eyes. "Oh, sorry, I zoned out a bit. What'd you say, Marbles?"

"I'm curious, Annarama."

"Curious about what?"

Marcy's eyes traveled over her shoulder for a second. Was it the fatigue? Judging from how she fiddled with her fingers, the question must've been something serious, maybe something about Andrias or what happened back in the castle.

Whatever it was, Anne readied herself as she waited.

And then:

"Is that mine?"

Anne blinked. She ogled her book, then at the bedside table with its medicinal herbs, then the Thai Go logo printed fresh on her shirt. "What's yours?"

She pointed to Anne's waist.

When Anne looked down, the realization struck her like a bat. Under the filtered sunlight, she almost forgot that the yellow jacket around her waist was there to begin with, snug and tight in that hard knot Anne tied everytime she stepped out of the house.

And somehow, it remained clean from countless dimensional hops and Super Saiyan power-ups. And now it was here. Being scrutinized by her and the girl opposite her.

With that, she started to sweat.

Right, that.

A nervous laugh burst out from her mouth, making Marcy stare at her more out of concern.

How was she going to explain that?

"Oh, yeah! I almost forgot!" She rubbed her neck, trying her best to pick out the right reasons in her mind, but nothing stuck out to her. "It's a funny story actually, so funny that you'll probably forget in the morning so why not another time?"

A smile formed. "I don't know, Anne." Her eyes scrunched up too in pleasure, pressing her thumb against Anne's knuckles. "I'm all for sleeping to a comedy. Remember when we watched Borat? I laughed so hard I passed out."

"Oh, Mar-mar, that's not what I mean."

"Then what do you mean?" She then pulled her hand away, frowning. "Unless I'm pushing you, then I'll just—"

"No, no. You're fine!" What wasn't fine was how her heart pounded against her chest. Or, that the more she tried to take a deep breath, Marcy's growing concern made her laughter sound more like an old man wheezing from an asthma attack.

Anne was about to make a dumbass out of herself and that was fine! As long as she stayed calm and explained then maybe she wouldn't feel nervous about this.

Wait, why was she nervous anyway? It was just a jacket!

Oh, she knew why.

"Okay." Anne placed the book down, trying to regain her breath. Might as well go for it. What was the worst that could happen? Don't answer that. "So you remember how I've been trying to find my way back after I got through the portal?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, I didn't want to forget. Not like I would've but I thought you died and I knew taking down Andrias was the only way to avenge you and get Sasha back." Anne sharply inhaled — words speeding past her ears. "So I thought 'Hey, I'll carry your jacket so I don't forget' and I basically wore it around everyday until I finally found a way back. So…"

Marcy's stare didn't help her sweating as she spoke, giving jazz hands to finish it all off. "Here I am. Yeah."

Marcy continued to stare at her. She'd never seen her this gobsmacked before; usually she found a way to ask questions, to let her enthusiasm shine through with eager stride, but now she became a deer in the highlights. All agape. All wide-eyed.

Oh Frog, I broke her.

"Mar-mar, you okay?"

"So you wore my jacket as a reminder to stop Andrias," she asked slowly, "after months of finding a way back?"

Anne puffed out her cheeks. "Maybe?"

"Anne…"

"Okay, okay, yeah." She hung her head, defeat in her voice. "I did."

"Oh." Marcy's eyes widened to the size of saucers, a shaky exhale breaking through. "Oh."

Anne stood up. If she didn't get out in the next fifteen seconds, she was going to explode. "Okay, yep! That's it for the Cynthia Coven series! Goodnight, Mar-mar, I'll check up on you later—!"

"Wait, wait!"

Marcy latched onto her wrist. Her ears pounded on, hard to focus with her sweaty palms and the shallowness of her breath. Because this whole situation was awkward and weird and it made her feel funny things in her heart and darn it Anne should've handled this back on Earth — not while they were stuck in the middle of a Frog darn war!

"Anne, please look at me."

She did.

When she turned, the sight surprised her. Marcy's cheeks had darkened considerably as they held each other's gazes, the hold on her arm still having them tethered to one another.

Then the touch loosened slightly. It didn't speak of fear nor did it speak of pain. It didn't speak of the desperation Marcy once had when she held her fists in the broken halls of the Newtopian castle. What Anne instead found was reassurance. A reassurance in their interlocked hands, at how they gazed intently under the tent canvas, a heat creeping well onto Anne's cheeks too.

"It's really sweet that you wore my jacket like that." Marcy then bore down at the bedding lines, almost squeaking her words. "And very clever! Yeah! Because a physical reminder is a great alternative to notebooks and to-do list, and since my jacket has emotional connotations to me, of course you'd wear it! It just makes sense."

Marcy coughed into her sleeve, words almost a whisper. "You've always been good at improvising, after all."

"Mar-mar..."

"And thank you."

Anne stopped. She could've honed in on the bustling Wartwoodians outside. Or the rustle of the forest trees. But she focused on the comforting tap of Marcy's fingers, and the gleam in the girl's eyes — almost as if Marcy was about to cry.

"You've always been kind," she murmured. Her fingers trailed circles on Anne's palms, leaving her to shudder slightly under the touch. Especially when Marcy's eyes grew half-lidded. Remorse on her lips. "And to know you worked so hard after everything I did to you and Sash, I don't how I'll ever make it up for it."

"You don't have to do that," she said. Her words drifted between them, remembering what Mrs. Wu said a few months ago: That Marcy was the best out of all of them. Because she always needed to be. "What Andrias did was not your fault, and I'll beat him again if he ever makes you think it is."

"Besides," she said, putting on a smile. "Having you beside me has always been enough. Honest."

But Marcy's grief remained on her face, unspoken as her fingers faltered their dragging on Anne's palms.

Because she wanted to hold her hand instead, both their fingers trembling from the bedridden girl's arm.

"Anne, I hurt you. I did. No matter how much I try to justify myself, I still omitted everything about what I knew." Her eyebrows furrowed, glaring more at their shaky hands. "I was selfish. I wasn't honest."

"Don't say that. You didn't know this would happen, I understand this now."

"But you're still angry." Marcy sighed. "I know you are."

The conifers rustled silently. The faraway bugs whistled, occupying each interval as they held hands, their gazes observing anything but the other. Until Anne couldn't think up a better excuse anymore.

As much as Anne tried to forgive, there was something frightening about the resentment in her skin, underneath all that warmth. It went against every lesson she learned. Every lesson of compassion. Or maybe she was just denying it for what it truly was — a tight angry wound that had reason to exist as much as their handlock.

Her body sagged at the thought. She'd gotten so far, trying to deny anything about herself would reverse so much.

"Yeah," she said softly. "I'm still mad. I don't want to be, but I am. But that doesn't mean I was gonna leave you guys in the middle of a war." The next words were under her breath. "I never wanted you guys to get hurt in the first place."

Marcy brushed her knuckles. "Take as much time as you need."

"I think a few months is enough."

"Or a year."

A smile. "Maybe more."

And Anne held her hand until the silence heard their heartbeats. Until their smiles returned slowly, surely.

"I talked to Sasha before you came in," Marcy said.

"You did?"

She nodded. "Mhm. And I don't know if she told you this, but we both agreed to a concordance." Marcy faltered. "An agreement I mean."

Anne snorted. "You don't have to dumb yourself down around me."

"Heyy, I'm not, I just don't want this to sound...clinical."

"Right."

The younger girl shuffled closer to her, which was surprising enough with the limited room on the bed itself. But when Anne held her eyes, there came recognition of something new. Was it relief? Worry?

"What we agreed on is that you don't have to forgive us. Maybe you'll be mad at us for a long time—"

"Mar-mar, I'm not—"

"Let me finish," she said softly. Anne hesitated. She resolved to caress Marcy's knuckles instead, and, of course, she didn't seem to mind. "Whatever happens, whatever you decide, we're not going to abandon you. If you want us out of your life, we'll respect it. If you want us to stay, then we'll respect that too."

Marcy inhaled, slow and careful.

"And when you're ready, I'll make sure to be close by."

There had been times where Anne couldn’t predict what her future held. There had been numerous moments where Anne wanted to quit, to get angry, to question how her life hit upon all these coincidences like pinball and found herself in the most surprising of situations.

But when Marcy finished, stared at her, waiting for her to let her statement sink in, everything seemed to click in place. For just a single moment.

Each word had come out resilient, well thought-out. Anne could imagine the planning so clearly: How Sasha and Marcy sat in the same positions as them, sat with their heads together as they discussed what to say. And the more Anne listened, she could only hope that Sasha was just around the corner, ready to say the same things in her own Sasha-like way.

But for now, they gripped each other's hands, squeezed their fingers until Anne could only think of the heat. The burn in her nose. Then the bit-back sob and her trembling lip as Marcy pressed a thumb carefully to Anne's cheek, rubbing the tear trail away.

Because out of everything Anne predicted to find at the other end of the portal, it wasn’t this.

"You promise?"

Marcy smiled, the ends of her lips twitching weakly. "I promise this time." Her voice broke. "I do."

With it, came the waterworks.

#amphibia #marcanne #annarcy #asks #Anonymous #fanfic #this took weeks to write here ya go

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cinnaminsvga · 4 years

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Taming of the Bridezilla | Seokjin

→ summary: Picture this: You had been (not-so) cordially invited to the wedding of your least favorite cousin—a woman who had been hellbent on making your childhood a living hell. Now older and wiser, you would think that you would put aside your differences and attend your cousin’s special day without any hard feelings, right? You wouldn’t seek revenge, now would you?

→ genre: fake dating!au, i2l, humor/crack, fluff → warnings: seokjin and oc paradoxically have big yet small brains, fake proposals, not-so fake mutual pining, thinly veiled baby-making jokes, terrible family members, ass slapping (no worries it’s consensual) → words: 6.3K → a/n: first of all, no this is not a horror fic; i just thought the title was funny. unless you consider the stupidity of the characters to be mildly horrifying, then sure you can count this as a horror fic. this insanely ridiculous fic was commissioned by @breadoffoxy!! anyone who loves chaotic jin is an angel in my book. yes, this comm is a bit longer than expected but what can i say... i love me some jin. anyway i hope you guys enjoy!

“You got the ring, right?”

Seokjin pats his left breast pocket and gives you a quick smirk. The bump where the ring should be is fortuitously hidden by his large and garish boutonniere, looking to all the world like he had pinned a whole head of cabbage to his suit. Even then, he still somehow manages to make it work. “Of course I did. This entire plan would be useless if I didn’t have it,” he says.

“What flavor did you get? I quite like the watermelon one,” you muse, smacking your lips in anticipation. “Though it’s hard to remember since I haven’t had a ring pop in years.”

Seokjin laughs loudly, startling a group of aunties gossiping in the corner. They all shoot glares at him, though the effect has lost its novelty as they’ve already been glaring at you from the moment you arrived. You suppose that they have a good reason to, considering that you both arrived at the reception an entire 30 minutes late. You can imagine them cursing you under their breath, saying something like, “You’ve brought dishonor to us all!” or whatever it is that aunties like to say these days.

“I could have gotten you all the flavors available at the convenience store if you wanted, but then we’d be 40 minutes late instead,” Seokjin sighs, pretending to be anguished at the thought.

You snort in the most unladylike manner that you can, grinning wildly when you hear one of the aunties gasp in horrified disbelief. From the way they’re reacting, you might have thought that you just flashed them your Borat-inspired neon green thong.

“I do love a man who can treat me well,” you giggle, earning a soft pinch from him.

“Oh, hush. I know you love it. You nearly burst into tears the other day when I bought you a McFlurry because your broke ass was a dollar short,” Seokjin teases. You squawk indignantly, unable to come up with a retort.

“Whatever! Just because you’re a trust fund baby doesn’t mean you get to bully my impoverished state. Just you fucking wait ‘til I get hit by a wealthy 77 year old’s BMW and then I’ll be made for life,” you huff, your illusion of annoyance quickly shattered by the large, dumb grin on your face. “Hey, would you still love me if I broke all my limbs but had a massive bank account?”

“I’d rather buy you McDonald’s for the rest of your life than see you in pain,” he answers simply, patting you gently on the head. “Though I suppose helping you inject thousands of calories into your bloodstream would also cause you pain later on in life, but hey, at least you’d go down doing what you love.”

“Oh, yes. Keep talking dirty to me. I love it when you talk about the ways you’d kill me by association.” You laugh, casually looping your arms together as you walk past the slowly growing crowd of aunties and entering the reception hall to find your seats. Almost everyone is already in their seats, with a few guests milling about and greeting one another with tight-lipped smiles and hollow laughter. The sight brings goosebumps up your arm, bringing back terrible memories of having to make niceties with these people despite knowing that they despised you and your less affluent family.

Remember, you’re only here as a representative for your parents, you tell yourself. You’d rather bear the brunt of the thinly-veiled insults than to have your parents have to experience this hell. Besides, you have big plans for today, and they would only be brought to an end if your mother ever found out what you wanted to do in the first place.

“As they say… We’re here for a good time, not a long time, which I suppose is our philosophy for tonight as well,” he quips back. He taps you lightly on the hand, wrenching your gaze away from the magnificent chocolate fountain on the dessert table and back to his somewhat less magnificent face. A straight-up lie, but it is the only defense mechanism you have in your arsenal that can keep you from staring at how gorgeous he looks in his suit and tie like a braindead idiot. Denial, after all, hasn’t failed you during the last five years that you’ve been in love with your own best friend.

“What is it?” you ask, curious when he furtively points out one of your cousins near the front of the hall. “That’s Namjoon. Do you know him?”

“Know is a strong word,” Seokjin hums, winking at your cousin when he happens to turn towards the two of you. Namjoon’s eyes light up when he sees him, but his excitement immediately vanishes when he notices who Seokjin has beside him on his right arm. You could see the mental cogs going on inside Namjoon’s head as he stares at the two of you, but you don’t get to see him reach a conclusion before Seokjin is pulling you away, walking in the opposite direction.

“Seokjin? What was that all about?” you ask, though you have to admit you’re kind of afraid to know the answer to your own question. As much as everything about tonight’s scheme had been your idea, you can’t help but think that Seokjin’s intense enthusiasm to help you isn’t merely out of his own desire to help you as a friend, but rather due to his innate calling to cause chaos wherever he goes.

“I have a secret bonus surprise for the bride and groom once we get kicked out from this joint after we do our thing,” he says. “And, dare I say, it’ll be quite a treat for all the guests here.” The smirk on his lips is downright heinous, only exacerbating the frantic racing of your heart. There must be something wrong with you, not with how badly you want to do unspeakable atrocities to him and his evil-looking ass. Or perhaps he was simply put down on Earth to test your slowly fraying sanity.

He snaps you out of your dumbfounded, horny stupor when he continues, “If everything goes according to plan, then we’ll truly end this night with a bang, no pun intended.”

“What was even the pun there?” You raise a brow, slightly disconcerted by the way Seokjin was struggling to keep his laughter (at his own joke) at bay. “You know what? Don’t even answer. I guess I’ll just have to find out later tonight.”

After some pointless meandering while the two of you locate your seats, you are finally able to locate your table, unsurprisingly situated near the farthest corner of the hall where no one would have to see you. You’re honestly more surprised that your newly-wedded cousin had even remembered to give you a seat, though you suppose that it must have been at the behest of your uncle. While your devil of a cousin has always been rude and cruel to you, you have to admit that at least her father knew some manners, though that only begs the question as to what happened to his daughter along the way. Genetics and expensive etiquette classes can only help so much, you suppose.

“Thank you again for doing this with me. You really didn’t need to,” you say when you take a seat, nearly elbowing him in the process. Your chairs are wedged right beside the emergency exit and a grotesque ice sculpture of the bride and groom, forcing the two of you to sit so close that you could feel Seokjin breathe directly into your ear. If you shifted just slightly to the right, you’d basically be sitting on his lap (which is a prospect that intrigues you greatly, but you refrain from voicing it in fear of creeping him out… for now).

“How could I ever resist the offer to ruin your cousin’s wedding? This has been on my bucket list for years,” he winks cheekily at you. “Besides, you’re my dearest friend, Y/N. You could ask me to fight a bear naked, and I’d gladly let it eat my dick in one chomp!”

“I wouldn’t let a bear eat your dick,” you say kindly, patting him gently on the back. “You can’t afford to lose an inch when you only have two to offer.”

Before you could laugh hysterically at Seokjin’s howls of betrayal, your attention is pulled away when the soft violin music stops playing abruptly. From far away, it’s hard to tell what’s going on until you notice a bright light reflecting off of the sea of attendees, the balding head of the reception’s host bobbing up and down as he makes his way to the front of the hall.

“Attention esteemed guests! We will now begin serving dinner shortly. Please remain in your seats as our waiters attend to you.” The host speaks into a crackly microphone just as a few scraggly-looking underpaid teenagers in black dress shirts come out with the first course of the night.

Seokjin cranes his neck, trying to see what the food is. “What the hell is that? Why does it look like green shit in a bowl?” he murmurs, loud enough so that only you can hear. “I didn’t know your cousin was a Dr. Seuss fan. Are we being served green eggs and ham?” Before you can guess, you watch as his nose crinkles in disgust, a vile stench making its way to your area even though none of the waiters were even close to your table. “Oh my goodness, is that stench what we’re supposed to eat?”

“Smells like a barnyard,” you comment, though you aren’t as surprised as he is by the revolting smell. “Well, my cousin always did like making atrocious vegan recipes on her shitty WordPress blog, so I wouldn’t put it past her if she made up the menu for her own wedding.”

“She’s a vegan and a bully? What are the odds,” he says drily, cringing when he watches one of the guests begin to dry heave the moment a spoonful of the green stuff enters their mouth. “Christ. I didn’t know I was signing up for a life or death mission.”

“At this rate, I don’t think we’re getting served until the end of the night anyway,” you say, observing as the understaffed employees tried their best to get to every table while insufferable aunts did their worst to hinder their progress by nagging and complaining. Why were they so adamant about eating the food anyway? Were they itching to get diarrhea on a Saturday night? You do admit that it would probably be better, so then at least you’d have an excuse to leave earlier. “Though I suppose... Do you think eating the mystery goo while it’s cold would be better or worse?”

“It’s okay, I’ll treat you to McDonald’s when we finish up here,” he says, smiling sweetly at you. Never in your life has the mention of greasy fries and chicken nuggies made your heart race faster than it did at that moment, but then again, it could also be your high-blood pressure kicking up. Either way, you can’t ignore the way your face heats up at his offer, now more excited than ever for the reception to be over.

You and Seokjin chat as you wait for everyone around you to finish eating, not even bothered when the waiters forget to bring your food. You’re in the middle of debating the pros and cons of cock and ball torture when large dark shadows loom over both your heads, much like a solar eclipse. A cold shiver runs up your spine when you look up to find the reptilian faces of your aunts, the fumes of their designer perfume creating a cloud so noxious that you could feel your lungs shrivel into prunes.

“Hello, Y/N. It’s nice to see you after such a long time,” your Aunt Sohee greets, her tone indicating that there was nothing pleasant about seeing you at all. Your aunt, who had gotten so much botox done that she was reminiscent of a plastic balloon ready to pop, has her entourage of fellow aunties behind her, all of whom looked ridiculous in their fake designer dresses. You swear you can see that one of them had forgotten to snip off the Made in China tag before wearing it to the wedding.

“Aunt Sohee, you’re looking… young,” you say after a moment, deciding to settle on lying for now. Even though your main plan for this evening is to create chaos at your cousin’s wedding, your one condition is that you wouldn’t cause a scene with your aunts. While you are hardly in the running for favorite niece, there is still a 1% chance that you could get some inheritance from them once they hit the grave, so you’ll have to grit your teeth and bear the incoming barrage of personal questions coming your way lest you lose out in the long run.

“Why, thank you. I can’t say the same for you,” she huffs, shamelessly grabbing my cheeks and squishing them like stress balls. She peers sourly at your disfigured face, trying to squint judgmentally at you but failing due to her horrendous plastic surgery. “How old are you? Why do you have so many wrinkles?”

You feel your eyebrow twitch involuntarily, unable to respond even if you wanted due to the gorilla-hold she has on your face. You side-eye Seokjin, who is looking back at you with a blank and calm expression. You had already told him beforehand that you wouldn’t be arguing with your aunts, but that doesn’t mean he’s not allowed to be an asshole.

Being an asshole, after all, is Seokjin’s favorite pastime.

“Hello, Aunties. My name is Kim Seokjin, and I’m Y/N’s long-term boyfriend. She’s told me many good things about you,” he says with a polite smile, his hamster cheeks puffing up in that adorably boyish way. The surrounding aunties all begin to coo at his handsome face (unfair!), but they’re quickly silenced by a sharp glare from your Aunt Sohee. She appraises him, giving him a once over with a pursed lip.

“Long-term boyfriend, huh? Are you sure you aren’t paying her or something? Y/N hasn’t had a boyfriend in years. Her cousins have told me that she’s been too busy with other… extracurricular activities to bother sticking around,” your aunt says snidely, her sneer deepening. She lets go of your face, crossing her arms when she spies the expensive watch on his wrist. “Ah, I see that you’re well-off. I just can’t possibly see why else you’d be staying with her if not for other reasons.”

You can feel your blood pressure rising, the veins on your forehead undoubtedly bulging as you try to suppress your rage. Screw your cousin for spreading a rumor that you’re a whore! It’s as if you were the one sucking guys off in the locker rooms when the two of you were in the second year of high school and not her. You haven’t even had your first proper kiss, for heaven’s sake!

Instead of getting angry, Seokjin’s expression hardly changes at all. His serene smile is still plastered on his face, but only you can tell that he’s even remotely bothered by their rude remarks. You can feel the air around him turn frosty, but your oblivious aunties are still too busy tittering amongst themselves, exchanging insults at your expense.

“Oh, are we that obvious?” Seokjin tilts his head, feigning innocence. Your head jerks towards him, your eyes bugging out of their sockets. What the fuck? “You are so right, Auntie Sohee. I’m sure Y/N must have informed you about our predicament. You see, we’ve—”

“Your predicament?” Aunt Sohee scoffs, interrupting Seokjin mid-speech. “I can’t believe the nerve of this girl, bringing her little boy-toy to the holy matrimony of her cousin—”

“—been trying to produce an heir to the Kim Line for months now,” Seokjin sighs heavily, looking off into the distance with glazed, dreamy eyes. You nearly cough out a lung at his sudden proclamation, about to interject and ask him what on earth he was talking about. Your words die on your tongue, however, when he grips your hand tightly underneath the table. He taps three times on the back of your hand: an old sign that you both made back in high school whenever he was busy bullshitting his way out of trouble.

Luckily, none of your aunts notice your blunder, all of them too occupied trying to wrap their heads around what Seokjin had said. Multiple mouths drop open in surprise and disbelief, including your Aunt Sohee. Her penciled eyebrows arch comically high, her smoothened forehead wrinkling infinitesimally (a feat in itself, for you were sure she had long since lost any ability to move the skin on her face.)

“I beg your pardon?” she whispers, staring daggers at Seokjin.

Then beg, you think to yourself. Judging by the way the corners of Seokjin’s lips lift slightly, you have a strong feeling that he was thinking the same thing to himself. Instead, he says, “Yes, Aunt Sohee. You see, I come from a long line of businessmen. Ever heard of Kim Enterprises.”

Her face turns pale. “You mean… the Kim Enterprises? The one that owns—”

“South Korea’s largest chain of department stores? I’m flattered that you’re familiar,” he winks. He leans forward, gesturing for your aunts to come closer, like he’s imparting state secrets to them. “My older brother, who has been married for quite some time, has chosen to remain childless at the behest of his wife. For that reason, my father put me up to the task of producing an heir for the company.”

“An heir?” your aunt repeats, dumbfounded.

Seokjin nods, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Yes, it’s quite unfortunate, but it’s a responsibility I’m willing to take. My family is notorious for planning our lives, even for the next 50 years, so I am forever grateful to have Y/N who is willing to bring me multiple potential heirs to my family.”

“Multiple heirs?” Your aunts shriek in unison, causing a few nearby guests to look over at your table in curiosity. You wave at them awkwardly in apology, hoping to get them to ignore the absolute clusterfuck happening right in front of you.

You feel Seokjin kick you gently in the shin, urging you to say something as well. You clear your throat, channeling all the pent-up Seokjin energy that you had indirectly absorbed over the years of being his friend. “That’s right… My Jinnie has always been so lonely, living in his gigantic mansion with his piles of money. He may have never felt the loving touch of his father, but I’m certain that we’ll be great parents to our children. Why, we’re almost like a pair of rabbits when it comes to—”

Aunt Sohee clears her throat abruptly, a deep flush coloring her cheeks as she glares daggers at you. She looks absolutely peeved, and it takes all your mental fortitude to restrain yourself from jumping up in triumph. Take that, wench!

“I have to admit that this is somewhat… unexpected,” your aunt says carefully, pointing a tight smile at Seokjin. He beams back, positively delighted.

“Y/N is quite the catch. I’m grateful to have her in my life,” he says, his tone growing soft by the end. He looks at you then, and you find a mysterious emotion floating in his eyes that you can’t quite name. When you blink and try to get a closer look, his careful façade is back in place.

Eventually, your aunts lose interest in you once they realize they can no longer bully you, not when you had an incredibly rich boyfriend to back you up. “Must be nice being a rich boy, huh?” you snicker, teasing the blushing boy beside you. Thanks to his hair growing longer than usual, the tips of his ears are miraculously hidden away. When you brush his hair back, they are as red as a baboon’s ass.

“Oh, shut up. You know I hate flaunting my dad’s money,” he whines, pouting cutely. He fingers the watch on his wrist, staring at it uncomfortably. “This isn’t even my watch. I had to borrow one from my brother.”

“Well, you did it for me, so I suppose it’s not all bad,” you laugh, pinching his cheek lightly. “Plus, it was funny watching my aunts shut up for once. They’re just mad that you’re richer than the groom.”

“Really? What does he do?”

“He’s an entrepreneur.” You snort, emphasizing the word with air quotations. “Honestly, he just calls himself that while he waits for his self-made business to pop off or whatever. No such luck so far, if what I heard was right.”

“Lucky for you, you’re stuck with my devastatingly handsome face and stinkin’ rich bank account,” he jokes, contorting his face into a funny expression until you’re left snorting at his antics. Little does he know, you still would’ve l***d him even if he wasn’t any of those things, but that’d be too cringey to say. What are you, some sort of romantic lead protagonist?

It takes a little bit over an hour for dessert to start getting served, by which point the bride and groom decide to make their rounds to greet the guests. “Don’t you think this is the perfect time to put our plan into motion? The dance floor is open and we should be able to make it to the center without anyone noticing,” he whispers, his breath tickling your neck.

“Yeah, let’s go,” you say, but just as you’re about to get up from your seat, a flurry of white blocks your path in an instant. You startle slightly, falling back to your chair and hitting Seokjin in the chest with a soft grunt. “Shit, sorry about that Seokjin—”

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t my dear cousin,” a voice cuts you off, the disdain in their voice dripping like acid down your ear canals. Your blood freezes instinctively, years of past trauma crashing down on you as your childhood bully stands just inches away from you, her blood-red lips stretched into a broad smirk.

“Kairi,” you greet.

“Y/N,” she responds.

“Seokjin!” Seokjin adds helpfully.

Your cousin turns to him slowly. “Quite right,” she hisses, eyebrows pinched together in thinly-veiled annoyance. “I’ve heard through some whispers that my baby cousin finally managed to snag a rich kid for a boyfriend and I just couldn’t help but let my curiosity drag me over here.” She looks you up and down, snorting at what she sees. “You would think that having a chaebol as a boyfriend would mean you could at least afford a proper dress.”

You glance down at your dress: a hand-me-down from your mother because you couldn’t be bothered to buy a new one, not when you’d rather choke on Satan’s hot fiery balls for all eternity than spend any amount of money just to attend your cousin’s wedding. Despite this, you can’t help your cheeks from heating in embarrassment, an automatic response after years of bullying and torment from that spoiled bitch.

When you don’t reply, Kairi’s smirk widens. “Oh? Cat got your tongue? Sugar daddy couldn’t even be bothered to buy you a dress? While you’re at it, maybe you should ask for a new car too. I’m surprised you even made it here alive in that old metal deathtrap of yours. You’re lucky you were just late to the reception instead of dead on the street.”

You can sense Seokjin staring at you from your right. Your fists are clenched tightly on your skirt, your nails nearly tearing the fabric in your searing rage. Slowly, carefully, Seokjin slips his hands underneath yours—he pries your death grip open until he can lace his fingers in between yours. At once, your anger melts at his tender gesture, your focus pulled away from your cousin and back to him. He thumbs the back of your hand, as if assuring you that he’d handle this himself.

He smiles at Kairi, not a single ounce of kindness in his eyes. “Yes, indeed. It is my mistake entirely for not ordering a dress much sooner. Y/N is so incredibly humble; she’d rather wear a vintage outfit than wear one of those paper-thin dresses from YesStyle that you and your bridesmaids seem to favor,” he sighs, pretending to be pained.

“Paper-thin? YESSTYLE?” Kairi screeches, her voice breaking the sound barrier. You watch in fascination as her skin turns an unflattering ruddy shade.

Unperturbed by her murderous aura, Seokjin prattles on. “Quite right,” he mocks her with her own words, smirking ever so slightly. “Though, I must apologize for being late to the reception. That was my fault as well. My father had a general meeting this morning for all the employees at the company, as he had wanted to announce that I would be the Vice President starting next Monday. We tried to leave sooner, but everyone had been too busy congratulating us,” he apologizes, though not apologetic in the slightest.

Your cousin could cosplay as a walking crack pipe with how much steam was puffing out of her ears. She’s livid, so much so that her fury was preventing her from formulating any sort of comeback. “You—how dare you—I swear on my—” she stutters incomprehensibly, her vulture-like nails tearing her dainty paper-thin skirt into shreds.

Just as she looks about ready to blow, her father comes around to your table. He places a hand delicately on his daughter’s shoulder, immediately understanding the situation when he sees you. “Kairi, I think it’s time for you to greet the rest of the guests. Uncle Iverson said he has a gift for you that simply cannot wait,” he says, doing his best to appease you. He gives you a genuinely regretful look; you shake your head, waving off his concern.

“It was nice seeing you, Kairi. I hope you and your husband will have a wonderful year together,” you say. You gasp exaggeratedly, holding a hand to your heart. “Oh, sorry. I meant to say I hope you have wonderful years together. Pardon my mistake.”

Before the scant amount of brain cells in your cousin’s brain could process your words, her father pulls her away, dragging her to the next table over. Once they’re out of earshot, you heave a sigh of relief. Beside you, Seokjin lets out a laugh that he had been undoubtedly holding in the past few minutes, sounding like a fish gasping for air with how much he is shaking with mirth.

“Fuck, that was hilarious. Did you see how angry she got? Beautiful,” he says, wiping away a stray tear. “Love that for us!”

“Damn. I knew you were good at bullshitting, but even your acting skills almost convinced me,” you whistle lowly, impressed. “You sure you’re not a con-artist in disguise?”

“All good businessmen are con-artists, my young padawan,” he snickers, winking at you. He shrugs. “You get used to dealing with assholes like her when you attend enough rich people parties. Besides, all good lies are rooted in the truth, after all. That’s what my father taught me when I was seven.”

“You must have been a terrible child, then.” You laugh, before realizing what he had just said. “Wait. Rooted in the truth? What does that mean?”

“Oh. Well,” he clears his throat, giggling nervously. He rubs his neck, embarrassed. “I am the vice president of dad’s company now. I just lied about the meeting being this morning. He announced it a day ago or something. Not that it’s a big deal or anything…”

You gawk at him, speechless. Not for the first time in your life, you are once again stunned by the absurdity of the man before you. How did men like him exist outside of cheesy k-dramas? He’s handsome, rich, funny, AND well-mannered? It’s almost like some love-crazed author had penned him into existence for their entertainment.

Seokjin breaks you from your reverie, tapping you thrice on your shoulder. “Shall we go? The dance floor is still empty. It’s now or never.”

You nod excitedly, standing up to head towards the center of the hall. This time, there is no one stopping you as the two of you make your way towards your destination. The lights near the dancefloor are still dimly lit, as most of the lighting is currently focused on the guests as the bride and groom make their rounds to greet everyone. Even if Seokjin got onto his knees right now, only a few people nearby would notice, so you’d have to do something to catch people’s attention.

“This is going to be moderately to highly embarrassing for a few moments, but I think that’s the atmosphere we’re going for, isn’t it?” Seokjin whispers, his mouth embarrassingly close to yours as he holds you gently by the waist. There isn’t a need for him to stand so close to you, but you have to admit his presence is mostly calming—minus the fact that he’s been your crush for five years and he’s going to be fulfilling one of your deepest fantasies in front of your entire extended family. No biggie.

“I suppose so. What are you gonna do to get their attention?” you ask, palms beginning to sweat. Despite this, Seokjin still takes your hands into his own, a small smile on his lips.

“Just watch,” he whispers, before slowly getting down on one knee.

Ba-dump. Here we fucking go.

“My dearest Y/N… The apple of my eye, the straw to my berry, the con to my dom,” Seokjin says, projecting his voice so that it can be heard even above the music. One of the violin players is even startled long enough to stop playing, further causing more heads to turn in their direction. You hear a gasp coming from your left, but you force yourself not to look. Instead, you stare right back into Seokjin’s sweet brown eyes, your heart beating a mile a minute.

This isn’t real… This is just a prank, bro. Get over yourself, you hiss internally, but your heart refuses to listen.

“You’ve been in my life for almost half a decade, and not a day goes by wherein I don’t wonder what it would be like to live the rest of my days with you. In many ways, I wouldn’t be the person I am if it hadn’t been for your presence in my life,” he says. If you look deeper into his eyes, you can almost trick yourself into thinking that they looked wetter than they had just a moment ago.

“Y/N, you are the person I’ve loved for years now. I used to think you didn’t like me as much as I liked you, so I was always scared to pop the question. I had many opportunities to ask, but I suppose tonight just felt like the right moment. I was afraid that if I didn’t do it now, I might never get the chance to ask again, and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let you slip away out of cowardice.”

For some reason, his words seem almost too real, like he was speaking the truth. You have never doubted his acting skills, but would you be willing to wonder if there was even a small possibility that there was some truth to his tale? You swallow thickly, the need to ask just dangling on the tip of your tongue.

He rifles through his jacket pocket, procuring a small velvet box. He thumbs it almost reverently, his hands shaking slightly, but you can blame that on the nerves from hundreds of people watching you. He takes a deep breath, opening the box with a soft click. “My dearest Y/N… Would you give me the honor of spending the rest of my days with you?”

You feel your breath get knocked out of you in an instant, the genuine adoration in his eyes too much for you to handle. You stammer slightly, too busy staring at him to properly register the loud claps, screams, and hollers all around you. “I… Seokjin… This is…”

“MAKE THEM STOP! SOMEONE KICK THEM OUT RIGHT NOW!” You dimly hear your cousin screaming obscenities somewhere, but you are still too caught up in the moment to care. The world only consists of you and Seokjin—nothing else matters right now.

When you look down at the box in his hands, fully expecting to see a comically large ring pop nestled in its cushions, but instead you find—

You gasp, nearly doubling over in surprise. “Oh my god, Seokjin. Is that a real fucking diamond ring?!”

He shrugs, smiling wryly. “Only the best rocks for the girl who rocks my socks off every night,” he jokes, but his nervousness is palpable. He’s sweating, a drop trailing down the side of his face despite the strong air conditioning.

Oh shit. It hits you right then that his proposal is real. The damned idiot is fucking proposing to you in front of your most hated family members, and he’s proposing to you for real.

“Kim Seokjin, please fucking explain yourself—”

But before he can have the chance to open his mouth, you feel rough hands grab you by the shoulders, pulling you away from him. “I’m sorry I have to do this, ma’am. Bride’s orders,” one of the waiters says, awkwardly escorting you to the exit. When you turn back, you see another waiter pulling Seokjin away as well, the box with the ring still clutched tightly in his hand.

The two waiters deposit you outside the hall, bowing stiffly before heading back into the room. You’re still breathing heavily, the adrenaline coursing through your veins. Seokjin isn’t any better, bent over with his hands on his knees. From your vantage point, you can see how red his entire neck is, his blush reaching even past the collar of his shirt.

“Seokjin…” you trail off, unable to say another word. You’re completely flabbergasted, elated, annoyed, and mostly just mind-fucked because when on earth did Kim Seokjin ever have a crush on you?!

“I’m sorry. That must have been quite a shock,” he coughs out a laugh. He rubs his face, embarrassment rolling off of him in waves. “I just… It was sort of a last-minute decision I made. I’ve been into you for years now, and I know I’m kinda putting you on the spot by proposing like that, but I knew if I didn’t do anything soon, you might just slip away before I can say anything.”

“Wait. So are you really… proposing to me?” You squeak out the last bit, your face mirroring his reddened state.

“No!” He shouts suddenly, before covering his mouth with his palm. “S-sorry, what I mean to say is, it wasn’t really a marriage proposal. It was more like… just a general proposal? I do want to live with you forever, but I know that thought must be daunting and—oh god, I don’t even know if you like me like that, so this must be incredibly weird and out of line. Please excuse me while I shove a cactus up my ass—”

“Seokjin,” you interrupt, silencing his rambling. He clamps his mouth shut. “Are you… asking me out?”

He nods his head. “Yeah…”

“And what you said is true? You actually like me?”

“No, you don’t understand. I love you,” he says, before getting shy again. He looks down at the ring box. “Fuck. This isn’t a real engagement ring, by the way. It’s more like a promise ring, so you don’t have to feel bad for rejecting me.”

“Oh my god, I’m in love with an idiot,” you groan, pulling him into a hug. You nestle into his chest, giggling hysterically into his shirt. “I fucking hate you.”

“Wait, I’m getting mixed signals over here,” Seokjin says, gasping when he feels how tightly you embrace him. He doesn’t complain, however. He returns the gesture in kind, nuzzling deep into your neck. “So, does that mean the feeling is mutual?”

“Yes, you idiot. Now give me my ring.”

“My pleasure, princess.” He laughs, drawing away slightly so that he can slip the ring on your finger. The diamond shines brightly under the fluorescent lights, but nothing brings you more joy than having the boy you love in your arms.

As the two of you are sharing a sweet moment, it takes a second for you to realize that the commotion from inside the venue still hasn’t stopped. When you crane your heads, you spot one of the doors had been left ajar, allowing you to slip your heads through the crack just in time to see Seokjin’s beautiful bare ass being projected onto a large screen.

The musical notes of Rick Astley’s most popular song play loudly on the speakers, drowning out the sounds of the bride screaming bloody murder as the IT people tried their best to sort out the mess. The Seokjin on the screen slaps his ass in time with the tune, his glorious moon-shaped globes shaking mesmerizingly for all to see.

When you look to Seokjin for an explanation, he merely shrugs his shoulders. “They really should do background checks on the people they hire for these things. Taking that one video editing course in university really does pay off, huh?”

“Sure does,” you grin, linking your arms together. “Now let’s get some fucking McDonalds.”

And so, you lived happily ever after—the end.

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bound-up-feelings · 3 years

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Sacha Baron Cohen x fem reader

In Character

Requested: @333fairies

Warning: I am not sure what to call this? I’ll say fluff??

(Hey there! So, I hope I made this to your liking and hopefully you like it! I’m not sure of this fic so please give feedback and tell me if I messed something up. Also this is based on a Johnathan Ross interview I saw with him and Sacha/Borat. Anyways enjoy!)

You had been at this talk show for only 5 minutes. Literally nothing could screw this up. It was probably the best yet funniest talk show you had been on. It was great. The questions, Johnathan Ross, and the audience were amazing. The questions were your favorite because not only did Johnathan ask question but so did the audience. Some of the audience were younger people in their early, early twenties but that was ok because they had very good questions that actually got you thinking. Like now you had just answered a funny question with a even funnier answer. The host points to another man in the audience. "Hi! I am such a big fan, I would just like to ask. Are you single?" You chuckle and blush a small bit "Well to answer your question, no I am not single. I am in a relationship with a man by the name of Sacha?" The audience gasps "Yes I mean Sacha Baron Cohen for those who are wondering." "For how long?" Johnathan asks. You think for a hot second trying to get as close to the real amount as you could "Almost 2 years so far." The host nods his head "Congratulations!" You smile and thank him "Where is he right now?" "Oh he's back home, actually." He nods and looks at his cards "Well y/n we have a special guest here with us tonight. I hope you don't mind?" "Of course not!" "Good because he came all the way over here from Kazakhstan." When he says that its like a truck hit you. You've heard of that place before. It rung so many bells in your head but where have you heard that before? You give a shocked/confused face and Johnathan try's to hide his smile "Ladies and gentlemen please help me welcome, Borat!" He says as he stands. You look behind you, the audience cheers and applauds, then right as you stand you see Sacha come out, but it wasn't Sacha. Borat was walking over to you both with his thumbs up and a big smile plastered on his face. He comes up to Johnathan and kisses both sides of his cheeks before kneeling down and kisses his crotch. This freaks you and Johnathan out. "Woah, woah what are you doing!?" "I am giving you great honor?" He says before looking over to you. He smiles real big and shakes your hand before kissing both sides of your cheeks. He then kisses your lips "That is giving great honor to woman." He says as he sits down "You have couch, very nice!" He says nodding. You all sit down. You knew this was Sacha but you had never seen him in character before and it honestly made you feel a certain way.

After Johnathan asks a few question he looks straight at Borat "So in Kazakhstan are you familiar with Ms. Y/n L/n here?" He says gesturing over at you. Borat's eyes widen "You are Y/n L/n?" "Yes I am." "WA WA WEE WA! We are very much familiar with your work! We even have day dedicated to you!" He says smiling "You do?" "Wait what do you do on this day?" Johnathan asks "Well all men in our city, come together and masturbate!" He says as he smiles. You laugh just as you were taking a drink of water. You cover your face and laugh even harder. How is he able to keep it together? "Do you celebrate this day Borat?" Johnathan asks knowing just how much you're hating this. "Oh yes, I'm always first to be there and I am first to ejaculate!" He says, he then looks at Jonathan and suddenly says "High Five!" As he high fives Jonathan. You give a shocked face but you laugh anyways. You were practically crying by now. "In Kazakhstan we find you very sexy!" He says as he smiles and nods you way. "Wel-" you say before you start laughing again the crowd laughing with you. "Well, thank you Borat! I'm very flattered!" "You are flatted? You do not look flat in this area?" He says as he gestures to your breasts, Laughing again you shake your head "No, no I mean I'm flattered, means I'm honored that you find me sexy." You shake your head again as you look at the crowd, mouthing a silent 'Help me'.

As Johnathan asks more question and more hilarious stuff starts to happen, it was finally time to say goodbye "Well Borat, it was a pleasure having you here on the show!" "It was pleasure to be here!" He says as he again kisses his cheeks and turns toward you "It was pleasure meeting you y/n! Here is my number, please call, it will make all the men in Kazakhstan very jealous." He says as he kisses your cheeks and leaves, his thumbs are up and the huge smile is still plastered on his face. "Well y/n, that was quite interesting was it not?" "That was definitely something." "Y/n I'd like to say thank you for joining me on the show tonight, I hope someday you can come back and have another interesting time!" "Me too Johnathan, thank you so much and thank all of you for having me, have an amazing night!" You say waving at the audience before exiting through the opening. When you get to the back you see Sacha or Borat? Standing there talking to the back stage crew and as you approach him he greets you first "Well hello again! What coincidence?" You chuckle "Yes it sure is." "I be leaving in moment, would you like me to give you ride home?" He says giving you the most serious look you've see all night. "Yeah sure, if your ok with that Borat?" "Of course, perhaps if you want we can have the sexy time?" He says as he claps his hands together before grabbing yours and leads you out to his car.

When your actually on the rode, you ride in silence. You smile and look over at him, he had one hand on the steering wheel and the other was placed on his right leg. You reach over and grab it, squeezing it in your smaller one. He looks over and smiles at you. "What you think of Borat?" He says smiling at you out of character "Well after seeing the movie I thought I had seen it all. But you continue to surprise me. It was absolutely hilarious!" He smiles and takes his hand away to peel off the mustache that was on his face. "I'm glad you enjoyed it dear." He say as he takes your hand back "And not to mention kind of scary." He snickers at this "Scary? The way you were looking at me in there made me think you thought of me in a not very appropriate way?" He says wiggling his eyebrows, you shake your head "I was not thinking that....!" "Uhuh! You think I'm sexy!" "Oh shut it!" "No shame. I am a sexy man, in Kazakhstan no lady can resist my charm!" You roll your eyes as you look out the window "Would you like to have the sexy time? I promise to be gentle." You laugh "I am not having sex with you when your acting as Borat." "But I make it worth your while. I make you feel things you have never felt before." You look at him with a straight face, which doesn't last long. He just looks at you his smirk that tells you he's being serious. "I love you way to much." "Is that a yes from Ms. Y/n?" You chuckle as your cheeks heat up "Yes, its a yes Sach-" "No, no! Not Sacha, Borat!" He says as he sticks his mustache back on. And gives his big smile. You knew that tonight would be interesting. This had never happened before and you never talked about it, so obviously this was quite the change up. But you had a feeling it would be good. I mean it was Sacha after all.

(Hey so I hope you liked this and its what you kind of had in mind?? Please give feed back, I need it! Have an amazing day and stay strong!)

#sacha baron cohen x reader #sacha baron cohen imagines #sacha baron cohen #borat #request anytime

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ratingtheframe · 3 years

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Everything That Happened at the 2021 Golden Globes

The first two months of the year are finally over and as the days grow longer, we can start to see the early signs of spring. With spring comes summer and with summer comes an influx of movie releases, with the majority of films that were put on hold last year scheduled to be released in the following months in cinemas across the world. You know, cinemas, as in those big rooms where you pay to sit and watch movies from start to finish without pausing it? Gosh have I missed the pre movie adverts, comfy chairs and super wide screens. It's not the same at home and despite Netflix, HBO and Amazon Prime thriving, we shouldn’t set anything in stone when it comes to the quality and accessibility of film.

Cinema is tradition whereas On Demand is convenience and usually choosing convenience over tradition does impact the quality of work being distributed. There are a bunch of films on streaming platforms that would be too inappropriate for cinemas, seeing as they lack a cinematic or dramatic feel to them to be good enough for a big screen. This allows mediocre to downright awful films to find an audience via streaming platforms. All well and good, seeing as these platforms are great exposure for upcoming filmmakers but at the same time it's a capitalistic system that puts views above the quality of content. It doesn’t matter if what you’re watching on Netflix is bad, they just want you to keep coming back for more. This can be said for mainstream cinema too, but to a lesser degree seeing as cinemas typically release around 68 movies per month, whereas Netflix has the ability to add up to 200 releases on their platform per month. It makes perfect sense that Netflix has the viewers that it does, as we can see that it releases almost twice the content of cinemas per month. For the avid cinephiles, this leaves us wanting a lot more as we’re only able to enjoy maybe one or two films a month from online streaming services, because the quality is so inconsistent. I hope that cinemas open soon so that I can relax knowing that the film I’ve paid money for will be of a good quality.

Speaking of good quality films, Chloé Zhao, director of Nomadland (2021) became the second woman in the 78 year history of the Golden Globes to win an award for directing. This is an exceptional triumph and from the moment I saw Nomadland, I knew that it would have an incredible impact on awards circuits this year. Nomadland also won Best Picture, which proves something that up and coming filmmakers may need to start getting their heads around. People may not necessarily be gravitating towards cinema for a chance of escapism any more. I thoroughly believe those days are behind us, buried in the 70s and 80s with films that defied the laws of filmmaking and went to extreme lengths to serve us an entire universe that we couldn’t even comprehend. However, as the world grows more fragile and people start to realise the fragility of life, we want to connect with one another authentically and realistically.

The way that film can do this is by showing our real selves on screen, showing our pain, redemption, emotions, fear, honesty, laughter, race, gender, humanity, darkest secrets and biggest dreams using the backdrop of cinema to sell us a story. People want films that are honest and are a reflection of humanity as well as the current society we’re living in. Not necessarily “a slice of life”, but a slice of humanity that we never see because it’s never impacted us directly, yet we still want to be made to feel like it has through film. That’s the key to success in any film, making the viewer feel like they’ve experienced something on screen even when they haven’t. If the film is too far away from our own psyche or humanity, we switch off, as we can no longer relate or even want to relate to something so obtuse and boring. Nomadland was the complete opposite to this theory, bringing us humanity in all its glory; its sadness and pure emotion that affects millions everyday, especially in such a time when loneliness is rife.

This is why Mank (2020) lost out. In a time where the world is in a sensitive disposition, Mank came as ineffective to the world of film. Though triumphant in it’s making, the film proves the fundamental foundation of film that Mank failed to do; have a good story. Mank just wasn’t the story people wanted or needed to see and one can appreciate a filmmaker’s efforts to make films but at the end of the day, the story is truly the only thing that’ll carry a film and if it's uninteresting and impersonal, people switch off. And they clearly did, seeing as Mank lost out to all SIX of its nominations. Less is more, I suppose, seeing as Nomadland won two out of four awards, including the top prize of Best Picture. David Fincher even took a shot every time he lost a category. Better luck next time.Other snubs included Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman (2021) starring Carey Mulligan ,which was released on VOD last month. The film was nominated for four prizes and I suppose the lack of release in cinemas worldwide or at a Film Festival meant the lack of hype for the film. Regina King’s One Night In Miami...failed to pick up a prize, having been nominated for three awards. King shouldn’t be too disheartened, seeing as her debut definitely got her the recognition she deserved.

Aaron Sorkin most notably won Best Screenplay for his amazing picture, The Trial of the Chicago 7. I had the fortune of catching this in cinemas and the musicality of this screenplay was unreal. An incredibly authentic, riveting and honest piece of work, I believe we can safely say that Aaron Sorkin is the greatest writer for cinema and TV in our day and age. Sorkin is used to being showered with accolades, from Primetime Emmys with The West Wing, to an Oscar with David Fincher’s The Social Network.

The late Chadwick Boseman was honoured in full glory, having won the award for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture for his role as Levee in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. An exceptional performance that reeks with Oscar success, Boseman is the first actor to be awarded the prize posthumously.

What’s also to be noted is the amount of British nominees and winners at this year’s ceremony. It seems like the American Film & TV market is wide open for Brits, seeing as Emma Corrin, Josh O'Connor, Daniel Kaluuya, Sacha Baron Cohen, Rosamund Pike, John Boyega and Anya Taylor Joy all won awards for acting. Helen Bonham Carter, Olivia Coleman, Vanessa Kirby, Riz Ahmed, Gary Oldman, Antony Hopkins, Dev Patel, James Corden, Hugh Grant, Jodie Comer, Lilly Collins and Nicolas Hoult all received nominations and were all born in the UK. The Crown in particular just seems to be getting more successful with each year and despite its controversy, the show has won Netflix 7 Golden Globes and 10 Emmys. What does this tell us about our actors and their ability in comparison to our friends overseas? Is it just a stroke of luck that the majority of actors who won this year are British or are we doing something different? Only time will tell as more British actors begin to be recognised for their flare over in the US.

If anything, we’ve learnt that The Golden Globes is for everyone. Anyone can win an award despite their background as long as those who control the awards ceremony are willing to give a variety of films a chance, not just ones directed by David Fincher. Nomadland is certainly an underdog for cinema, one that may not have done as well had other films been released last year. COVID-19 created space for this film to be seen and has truly been taken in as a work of art, proving that films of the same kind deserve to be seen in the up and coming future. British actors can and have made it big in Hollywood and it seems like American audiences welcome them with open arms. Sacha Baron’s Cohen’s humour in Borat Subsequent MovieFilm wasn’t unrequited, seeing as it won Best Musical / Comedy at this year’s award season, meaning every moment of that film (incriminating or not) WAS WORTH IT. Even though Regina King and Emerald Fennell lost out on their respective films, their work has been courageous and profound in helping to give space to women in the film industry. The fact that they were even nominated along with Chloé Zhao, was an achievement in itself and has women like me looking up to the success of these three women and realising that I could have the same shot. Mank came at the wrong time, and though good visually, it lacked a beating heart that the Golden Globes could identify with enough to give it at least one award. Soul was named Best Animation Feature Film of the year, also winning an award for music with a beautiful score by Atticus Ross, Trent Reznor and Jon Batiste. The Queen’s Gambit also reigned supreme, as Anya Taylor Joy won Best Actress for a performance in a mini series / tv film and the overall series won Best Television Mini Series / Television Film.

This has to be the best Golden Globes I’ve ever witnessed. Not only did it champion diversity in the film categories, British Actors and female directors, it actually gave consumers as well as judges, something that actually wanted, which was to see underdogs thrive in an environment that’s usually laid bare for the same characters. Let’s keep this up for the next ceremony !

ig @ratingtheframe

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tarysande · 3 years

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Lucifer Fic: Sheet Happens (1/1)

For @thedeckerstarnetwork’s Halloween Challenge. @calia05 asked for “ghost” and “trick,” and said she loved Ella and Azrael. This is the result! <3

Also on AO3

Sheet Happens

Miss Lopez delivered the invitation in typical Miss Lopez fashion: as exuberantly as the world's friendliest golden retriever high on Adderall. Clearly handmade, she’d cut the card into the shape of a cartoonish ghost, white bedsheet and all, and covered it with an absurd amount of silvery glitter. Meaning, of course, that it covered him with an absurd amount of silvery glitter in short order. The sparkles stood out against the black of his suit like snowflakes. Or dandruff. Not that the Devil was in any way personally acquainted with the latter.

“Thank you,” he said gravely, holding the glitter bomb at as close to arm’s length as he could politely get away with.

Miss Lopez wore her every emotion not just on her sleeve, but from the top of her head to the tips of her platformed running shoes. Today’s t-shirt featured a sad ghost with a spilled cup of coffee and the phrase ‘Sheet Happens.’ “So, you’ll come?”

“Ah.” Even as the syllable emerged, Miss Lopez’s face began to fall. “It’s a … popular evening at Lux. I do rather feel I owe my patrons an appearance.”

“Oh,” she said, smacking her forehead with the heel of her hand and leaving ghostly glitter behind. “Duh. I should’ve thought of that.”

The glitter was sentient. He could practically feel it creeping up his fingers. He would have to burn the suit; once infected, recovery was impossible. He could only imagine how infested her home must be. The mind behind the creation of the stuff was truly devious; in the darkest of hellscapes, he’d never come across anything quite so … persistent.

“Would you … prefer to offer the invitation to someone else?” he asked, gesturing slightly with the ghost held between the tips of finger and thumb.

This was, evidently, the wrong thing to have said. She wilted, and when she shook her head, even her ponytail seemed sad. “I made it for you,” she tossed over her shoulder, already fleeing back to her lab as fast as her impractically high shoes would allow.

“You’re going, Lou.”

Lucifer blinked. Though the music and revelry, sin and sensation raged around him at top volume, the words reached his ears as clearly as if they were spoken into utter silence. Beside him, Azrael slouched, wearing the form so clearly influenced by Miss Lopez.

Or perhaps it was the other way around? The Azrael of old hadn’t slouched. She hadn’t worn bizarre spectacles or sported bowl-cut hair and t-shirts with sayings on them. When she glared up at him, hands planted on hips, her cloak parted wide enough for him to make out today’s offering. In the same cute-cartoon style as Ms. Lopez’s, it depicted a Grim Reaper, coffee in hand and wearing the exhausted expression Lucifer had so often seen on human faces after too little sleep or too much alcohol, next to the words ‘I FEEL LIKE DEATH.’

Lucifer sipped his whiskey to give his hands and his mouth something to do besides reply.

“Not just for Ells. Literally every one of your friends is there.”

He sighed, stepping aside as a tipsy angel with crooked wings tried to press up against his side. The cloying scent of her cheap Victoria’s Secret perfume wasn’t as easy to avoid. Neither was her pout.

“But you’re the Devil,” she whined in a voice he wished he heard much less clearly. “And I’m an angel. It’s sexy.”

“More like incestuous,” Azrael murmured, catching Lucifer so off-guard he choked on his drink. The smug grin she shot him was entirely the Rae-Rae of old. She nudged him with her cloaked elbow. “Still got it.”

He inclined his head at the disappointed angel, sidestepped a werewolf and vampire with tongues so deeply down each other’s throats that witnesses would convert to #TeamWhoNeedsBellaWhenYouHaveEdwardAndJacob at the sight of it, and swiped a bottle of whiskey he refused to see poured for anyone with such undiscerning tastes as the Borat who’d just ordered it. Evidently the bouncers had forgotten the longstanding no-neon-green-mankinis rule.

Azrael followed on his heels, and though he bloody well knew no one else could see her, somehow the seething crowds parted more easily for her than they had even for him.

“Why are you here instead of there?”

“I—you see how busy—”

“Uh, I see how you haven’t talked to anyone for longer than two minutes, your piano’s nowhere to be seen, and you’re basically oozing sulking-Devil-do-not-approach vibes.”

“You try my patience, Azrael.”

She shrugged. A trio of sexy nurses—or perhaps maids; it was hard to tell given the lack of fabric—contorted themselves into shapes he should have found pleasing to avoid being too near to her. One attempted to fall toward him, but he slid to the side so she ended up grappling with one of the evening’s nineteen (at last count) Captains America.

“Yeah? Well, you’re bugging me too,” she said, evidently oblivious to the effect her presence was having. “You didn’t even read the card, did you?”

“The … excuse me?”

Azrael’s prodigious eye roll involved every muscle in her face. “From Ella?”

A twinge of something like regret turned the whiskey on his tongue to ashes. He’d dropped disco-ghost into an evidence bag before it could do any more damage and left it at the precinct without sparing it a second thought.

Azrael thrust that same evidence bag into his chest hard enough to send him staggering back half a step. Another angel got partway through a curse Lucifer had a hard time imagining any of his siblings speaking before she realized the Devil to whom that curse was directed. He sensed a new rule for the bouncers brewing.

Of course, the most persistent of the angels presently irritating him didn’t obligingly flit off into the crowd at his glower. He’d no idea how someone so vertically challenged could make him feel small, and yet. The evidence bag and its spectral occupant had fluttered to the ground between them, where it lay like a murder victim bathed in blood glittering red from the overhead lighting. Sheet happens.

He bent from the waist, snatching up the invitation and stalking toward the elevator. The sea of demons and various sexy professionals and animals and … bloody hell, Sexy Donald Trump was infinitely worse than the worst mankinied Borat. Some things couldn’t be unseen.

And then he was in the elevator, and it didn’t matter that Azrael wasn’t with him because she’d be waiting for him with her ridiculous fringe and, beneath it, eyes that always reflected the brother he could have been, perhaps, if he didn’t fail so spectacularly so often.

He scanned the room when the elevator door opened but saw nothing out of place, and when he called out, no one answered. Azrael could creep and hide and lurk as effectively as the angelic purpose over which she held dominion, but rarely from him.

He opened the evidence bag and dumped its contents on the bar, releasing the spirit and its miasma of sparkles. The bloody thing looked so bloody cheerful—and not at all like any of the spirits he’d had occasion to meet over the millennia.

Then again, give the thing a spectral ponytail and a cute t-shirt and maybe—

He silenced the thought by reaching for a bottle. He didn’t, at least for the first burning pull, even bother with a glass.

He poured the second drink. By the third, he was ready to open the damned—ha bloody ha—thing. In the ebullient handwriting so familiar from paperwork and post-it notes, Miss Lopez had written, “My brothers made Halloween more about tricks than treats, usually at my expense. It would be ‘boo’tiful if you could come to my party. COSTUMES MANDATORY.” Instead of her name, she’d drawn a pair of ghosts. One was grinning. It had a ponytail. The other was taller; it held a microphone. It also had devil horns and a tail.

It was grinning, too.

Lucifer closed the invitation and pushed it away with trembling fingertips.

“Why aren’t you there, Lou?”

He gripped the edge of the bar until the moment before the marble would have crumbled. “Surely you know better than anyone, sister.”

The sound she made, caught somewhere between a gasp and a cry, was enough to turn his head. “I’m not—Lucifer, you know I’m not—”

“But you will,” he said. “Because they’re human. Because you’re you. And because you will do as you must. So forgive me for choosing to spend this night of specters and shadows amidst those whose deaths, when they come, will not weigh near so heavily.”

Moments stretched into minutes. Azrael’s jaw worked, and her expression said the words she chewed were bitter ones. Finally, narrowing her eyes, she said, “That’s bullshit.”

Unexpected.

A flush rose in her cheeks and her eyes sparkled not with admiration or sisterly love, but with anger. “You’re sad their time is finite, so you’re wasting what time you do have sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. Listen to yourself, Lou. No, seriously. Like, stop for one minute and actually hear the crap coming out of your mouth.” She glanced down at her hands like she was trying to figure out just how much damage they were capable of inflicting. “You’re so … dumb. Like. Just … dumb.”

And though he wanted to protest, wanted to explain in painful, specific detail just why death and eternity and banishment from Heaven made his situation so much bloody worse … he didn’t.

Because Miss Lopez had drawn them as grinning ghosts. To her, this night was treats and costumes and friends and, as in so many traditions throughout all of bloody human history, defying the coming dark by facing it head-on. Perhaps the current tradition didn’t involve bonfires or sacrifices, but he’d be bloody damned—more damned—if gorging on candy and gathering in friendship and depicting the things humans knew went bump in the night without truly knowing how to name them as cartoons and bad puns wasn’t the very same flavor of ritual.

He released his grip on the bar. His hands glittered.

“Costumes are mandatory,” Rae-Rae reminded him.

When he glanced over his shoulder again, she was gone.

He stood outside, listening to the laughter within, for fifteen minutes. He raised his hand to knock eighteen times. He turned to leave at least seven.

“I’m gonna do it if you don’t, Lou.”

Bloody sisters.

He knocked. Moments stretched into eternities.

The door, decorated with glimmering ghosts and glittering pumpkins, opened, revealing Miss Lopez in all her pool-noodle-turned-double-helix-DNA glory.

For a moment, Miss Lopez’s wide eyes were so like Rae-Rae’s—the same belief in him; the same, dare he say it, love—that Lucifer couldn’t find breath for whatever foolish, nonchalant nonsense he’d usually have opened with. And when those eyes filled with glistening tears to accompany a grin no drawing could possibly capture, he was the first to look away.

“You came! In costume!” Leaning forward, she squinted at him, then reached out and plucked at his costume. “Oh my God, Lucifer, tell me you didn’t cut eyeholes in a freaking silk sheet that probably cost like, a month of paychecks.”

“I do not lie, Miss Lopez, so I can say no such thing.” Though she couldn’t see it, he grinned at the way horror and delight mingled on her features. He brushed close, close enough to give the phantom equivalent of the hugs she handed out so enthusiastically, and pretended not to feel a little teary-eyed himself at how tightly she returned the gesture. “Who am I to defy your command?”

She laughed and punched him on the arm. “Have you met you?”

“Ahh,” he replied gently. “But have you met you?”

This time, the laughter he heard belonged not to Miss Lopez but to his sister. And though she, too, was bound to her commands, as he stepped into the warmth and light and laughter of Miss Lopez’s home, Azrael’s dominion was the very last thing on his mind.

#thedeckerstarnetwork #lucifer morningstar #chloe decker #deckerstar #lucifer on netflix #calia05 #thank you for your prompts #it's still halloween ... in Hawaii?#i'm not in hawaii #but at least it's halloween somewhere #my fic #lucifer fic #HAPPY HALLOWEEN

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randomrichards · 3 years

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BEST MOVIE MOMENTS OF 2020

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Abe Makes Dinner from ABE

Teen chef protégé Abe (Stranger Thing’s Noah Schnapp) hopes that his dinner blending Israeli and Palestinian dishes will mend a bridge between his Israeli and Palestinian families (as well as his atheist father). But he gets a sad dose of reality when he learns the hard way that a wedge between families can’t always be solved with a meal.

“Wait for It” from HAMILTON

On June 16, 2016, Leslie Odom Jr. surprised many by beating Hamilton star/creator Lin-Manuel Miranda for the Best Actor award at the Tony Awards. And now they understood why thanks to Disney+ presenting the musical. And it all has to do with the song “Wait for It.”

In this soulful musical number, Odom Jr. allows us to understand Aaron Burr’s beliefs in letting fate leads his path. Whether it’s winning the heart of a married woman or watching all his loved ones parish, Burr is willing to wait for destiny to reveal why. It also showcases the contrast between Burr and Hamilton. This song changes Burr from History’s villain to a complicated anti-hero.

10) Deku and Bakugo go full Super Sayan in MY HERO ACADEMIA: HEROES RISING

My Hero Academia always delivers great action scenes and they truly shine in their latest round in the cinema.

In his final battle to protect young brother and sister Mahoro (Tomoyo Kurosawa in Japanese, Dani Chambers in English) and Katsuma (Yuka Terasaki in Japanese, Maxey Whitehead in English) from ruthless power-stealer Nine (Yoshio Inoue in Japanese, Johnny Yong Bosch in English), underdog hero-in-training Izuku “Deku” Midoriya (Daiki Yamashita in Japanese, Justin Briner in English) transfers his “One-For-All” power to hotheaded classmate Bakugo (Nobuhiko Okamoto in Japanese, Clifford Chapin in English). The result is an image of the in super powered form resembling Super Sayans.

When Deku reaches 100% power, the film suddenly turns white then stretches into abstract imagery.

Honestly, the main reason I put this on the list is because it’s pure awesome and I’m not afraid to admit it.

9) A Survivor Model from COLLECTIVE

This documentary follows the reporters of Romanian Newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor as their investigation into the Colective Club fire in Bucharest that killed 27 people and left 180 injured exposed vast health care fraud that caused survivors to die in the hospital and would bring down the government. Another key focus is a survivor who was so badly burned she lost most of her fingers. The camera focuses on her as she watches conferences about the fire.

In a standout moment, she models for photo shoots. In this moment, we see a beautiful woman who refuses to allow her disability to stop her, revealing her power.

8) the Wuhan Flu Song from BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM

Many best scenes of 2020 will focus on the bed scene with Tutar and Rudy Gulianni. But I prefer to focus on the scene where Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) performs the “Wuhan Flu Song” at a Anti-Masker Rally. Not only is it deliciously cringy and hilarious, but It perfectly captures all of Cohen’s strengths as a comedic performer.

As with Borat’s previous cringy yet catchy “Throw the Jew Down the Well, Cohen uses the Borat persona exposes the ugliest side of America. Watching the Qanon conspiracy theorists cheering on Borat (under the guise of Country Steve) singing about injecting Obama with the Coronavirus horrifies while splitting sides. This moment reveals the dangerous consequences of misinformation and conspiracy theorists on society. Plus, the song is shamelessly catchy as hell.

Add the fact that Cohen was nearly attacked during this scene shows how far he’s willing to go to make a point and get a laugh.

7) The Dinner Scene from LET HIM GO

This scene is a perfect example of how you put subtext in a scene. On the surface, It’s just Weboy matriarch Blanche (Lesley Manville) serving porkchops to her daughter in law Lorna’s(Kayli Carter) former parent in laws Margaret (Diane Lane) and George Blackledge (Kevin Costner). But with the context of Margaret and George trying to deliver Lorna and their grandson from her abusive husband, you can feel the hostility in the atmosphere.

It’s a credit to the actors and their ability to hide their aggression under a mask of southern hospitality. It’s especially true for Manville, who brings to life a woman who is a master of hiding her cruelty under a pleasant smile. She may sound welcoming to them, but you can tell something’s off about her. No wonder she’s able to manipulate the police into siding with her. Hell, many audience will be surprised when they find out she’s British in real life.

Lane matches her every step of the way with the most nuanced jabs.

It won’t get as much appreciation due to it’s unassuming nature. But it’s a perfect scene to show how to bring nuance to a performance.

6) The Restaurant Scene from THE INVISIBLE MAN

At first, it seemed Cecilia (Elizabeth Moss) finally has the drop on her sociopathic control freak ex Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). After days being tormented by him, Cecilia finally has proof of how he turns invisible. Now she goes to a public restaurant to convince her sister Emily (Harriet Dyer). But then a levitating knife appears out of nowhere and slits Emily’s throat before flying into Cecilia’s hands.

Director Leigh Whannell and cinematographer Stefan Duscio do an excellent job using everyday envirnoments to create a sense of unease. Whenever the camera lingers on a kitchen, you search with anxious eyes for any sign of Adrian. In this case, they use the ambience of a crowded fancy restaurant to create a false sense of security. And yet, you can’t help but wonder if Adrian’s still watching them.

It’s in this scene where title character goes from a good villain to a great villain. Here we see what a cunning monster he truly is. The scene also showcases Moss’s terrific performance as her desperate eyes showcase the complete helplessness she feels in this scenario.

5) Edna sheds her skin in RELIC

Rarely do the words “horror” and “heartbreaking” go together, but that describes the ending to this underrated gem.

Kay (Emily Mortimer) returns to her family home to care for her mother Edna (Robyn Nevin), who seems to be suffering from dementia. Now she and her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) find themselves trapped in the crawlspace while fleeing a warped Edna, who has been warped by a supernatural force. With contorted joints and decaying flesh, she has become monstrous. At first it seems they have defeated Edna and are heading out the door.

Then Kay looks back to see her mother lying on the ground, struggling to breath. This brings the film into a unexpected turn as Kay carries the creature that used to be her mother to bed. When Kay peels the skin off Edna’s body to reveal a charcoal skinned, dying creature, the film goes from creepy to heartbreaing. Anyone who ever lost a loved one to dementia will recognize to devastating feeling of watching them fade away right in front of your eyes.

4) The one-take action scene in EXTRACTION

Well, we can’t have a best movie moments of 2020 list without mentioning the 10 minute action sequence from Extraction.

As black market mercenary Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) shields the kidnapped son of a drug lord from other mercenaries, his race across a Bangladesh village delivers all you want from an action movie. Fast paced car chase? Check. Semi-automatic gun battles? Check. Hand to hand combat? Check. Parkour across rooftops? You bet. Sometimes you’ll even get people get hit by cars during hand to hand combat. All of this happens while cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel makes it look like one take.

Sure, sophisticated viewers will recognize there the cuts are hidden. But when director Sam Hargrave is willing to ride on the hood of a car as it races across dirt roads for the sake of a shot, you can’t help but be impressed

3) Opening Bike Ride from THE CLIMB

The film begins with what sees like a regular bike ride. American Mike (Director and Co-Writer Michael Angelo Covino) and Kyle (Co-Writer Kyle Marvin) are racing across the road of a French mountain before Kyle’s wedding. But then Mike reveals he’s slept with Kyle’s fiancé, resulting in the furious Kyle to chase Mike. Unfortunately, they’re both too exhausted to commit to a long chase.

The whole opening sequence could be its own short film. Covino and cinematographer Zach Kuperstein) shoot it all in one unbroken take, allowing the awkward exchange to flow more naturally. It leads to a hilarious moment when Kyle tries to chase Mike, but neither have the energy to keep going. Plus, it summarizes the reoccuring cycle of the film with Mike becoming increasingly self-destructive and a terrible friend and Kyle being nice until pushed too far.

2) The Ending from UNCUT GEMS

After spending two hours in a state of panic, it looks like the audience will finally breath a sigh of relief. After locking his pissed off brother in law Arlo (Eric Bogosian) and his goons Phil (Keith William Richards) and Nico (Tommy Kominik) in the Jewelry store with him, smooth talking jeweler and gambling addict Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) makes the biggest win of his life via pinpoint accurate predictions of a basketball game. Now he has millions of dollars; way more than enough to pay off his debt. Everything’s coming up Howard. That is until the furious Phil puts a bullet in Howard’s head and proceeds to rob his store.

With all his reckless behaviour (including putting his girlfriend at risk) and overconfidence, you knew at somehow Howard was going to be punished. But when the flilm cuts to scenes of Howard’s family celebrating the game and his girlfriend leaves with the money, you can’t help but know how bad they’re going to feel when they find Howard dead.

Then the camera zooms into Howard’s bullet wound to reveal the same colourful kaliedescope imagery as shown within the title uncut gems. With Daniel Lopatin’s enchanting new wave score playing, this moment gives the audience a moment to finally relax before closing with Gigi D’Agostino’s L’amour Toujours.

In spite of (or because of) his flaws; Howard is himself an uncut gem.

1) The little things inspire Joe from SOUL

Everyone recognizes “The Pixar Moment”; that scene that elevates a Pixar film from great to extraordinary. No one can truly define it, but it’s the one scene from the film everyone talks about. It’s the ten-minute prologue from Up. It’s Anton Ego’s reaction after trying Remy’s dish in Ratatouille. Even a lesser Pixar film can have this moment; a perfect example is when Lighting McQueen allows Ramirez to race in his place in Cars 3. Now we can add another film to the list thanks to Pixar’s latest masterpiece Soul.

After a day of escaping the afterlife and being trapped in the body of a therapy cat, Joe Gardner’s (Jamie Foxx) has finally achieved his dream of being in a Jazz band. And he feels…nothing. So, he heads back to his piano to ponder his direction in life. Then he finds the items 22 (Tina Fey) collected while in his body. What results is a moment fans will be coming back to in their moment of need.

As Joe rests 22’s items in front of his piano and starts playing, he comes to realize how a pizza crust and a seed truly meant to her. In the process, he comes realize the moments that seemed meaningless at first had some magic in them. The joy of playing for his father. The feel of the ocean waves flowing on his feet. The taste of a café’s pie.

In a time when many people can’t do any major activities, this moment serves as a reminder of to appreciate the little things in life. I imagine many audiences will return to this scene in their lowest moments.

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tays2centsonstuff · 4 years

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JOJO RABBIT, 2019

synopsis: a young boy in hitler's army finds out his mother is hiding a jewish girl in their home.

director: taika waititi writers: taika waititi stars: roman griffin davis, thomasin mckenzie, scarlett johansson, taika waititi

genres: comedy | drama | war

country: new zealand, usa, czech republic language: english, german filming locations: czech republic

runtime: 108mins

---

overall opinion:

oh lord. ohhhhh lordy. this one. I know what you think… a comedy / satire about world war II??? that sounds terrible and disrespectful, no?

yep, that’s kind of what I thought. so I went into «jojo rabbit» with skeptical thoughts, as did a lot of people I think, simply because a comedy about world war II, how funny can it actually be without being tasteless? but I love taika waititi and I knew both he and scarlett have jewish roots so that kind of told me it couldn’t be bad.

and oh boy am I glad I watched this.

this movie made me laugh until it had me bawling like a baby.

okay, first. this movie was nominated for 6 oscars: best picture, best supporting actress (scarlett johansson), best production design, best costume design, best film editing, and best adapted screenplay for which it won. I wish it would have won more (best picture and best supporting actress, come on). it’s such a unique movie in that it portrays one of the worst periods in human history in such a fun, light-hearted and at the same time sobering and poignant way. you laugh, then you’re shocked, then you smile, then you cry, ... this movie is an absolute rollercoaster. it has so much soul and the characters are phenomenal (rosie just captured my heart). I fell in love with all of the characters instantly.

the story follows johannes «jojo» betzler (roman griffin davis), a 10 year old boy living in nazi germany, who’s a proud member of the hitler youth. throughout the movie, his imaginary friend adolf (taika waititi) guides him and tries to influence him (as in, jojo tries to convince himself that he’s doing the right thing as a nazi). at some point he finds out that his mother rosie (scarlett johansson) who is secretly anti-nazi is hiding a young jewish girl (thomasin mckenzie) in their house. for safety reasons, jojo and the girl, elsa, decide not to tell rosie that they have met, and instead meet up in secret while rosie is at work. jojo can’t believe he «caught a jew», and tries to find out all kinds of information to then tell the other nazis to give them an advantage in the war. except everything turns into a completely different direction.

man, what a ride. honestly, I think this is a movie everyone should watch. all the actors are phenomenal, especially roman griffin davis (this was his first movie ever) as jojo, taika waititi as hilarious satire-hitler, and scarlett johansson as jojo’s mother rosie. every single one of them deserved an oscar for their performance. it was simply beautiful to watch.

the cinematography and the colours were also amazing. the movie looked stunning, despite the sad topic it covered. I love how taika decided to use vibrant colours and stylish costumes to contrast the dark matter of the film. it works beautifully and gives it a very human touch – like there was more to life than just the war, even during this time.

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SPOILERS AHEAD, I would invite you to watch the movie first and then come back for the rest if it’s something that interests you. :)

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out of all the perfect characters I think rosie was my favourite. she is anti-nazi and handing out little notes against the regime, which you know from the beginning is a death-sentence. at home, whenever she is with her son, she is this happy-go-sunshine person, ever dancing, making jokes, pretending everything is fine, all to protect her son and the girl she so selflessly invited into her home, knowing it would kill her if they found out. I had to actually PAUSE the movie and recover for a few minutes when jojo walked past those shoes hanging in the air. I CRIED. she was such a loving character. one of my favourites, ever. in any movie or book. simply beautifully created. I want to be rosie when I grow up.

but in the end, I fell in love with all of them. jojo, who was just so sweet in his ways, how he was convinced hitler was doing the right thing and he was proud to be helping them, but in the end realised that «those jews» are just normal people. the bond he develops with elsa over the course of the movie is so sweet and touching. the way he writes those letters to her «from her boyfriend» who he didn’t know had died. he was trying so hard to make her feel safe and happy even though she was «the enemy». that said a lot about him and roman brings him across so well.

and elsa, the jewish girl, played by thomasin mckenzie, wasn’t just intent on playing the victim. she was funny, sarcastic and clever, giving the most absurd answers to jojo’s questions on his quest to figure out more about jews. it made me laugh even though the situation wasn’t funny at all. it took some of the weight from the topic which I thought was great.

honestly, this film has it all. a great story, great morals, phenomenal acting, funny moments, heartbreaking moments, beautiful cinematography, and it will definitely leave you thinking after the end credits.

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why it stayed with me:

the whole movie is such an emotional rollercoaster. it’s funny, it’s really sad, really intense, but then in the end… there is so much hope.

the way taika waititi managed to tell a gruesome story in such a poignant way, you just can’t help but love what he’s done. I hate slapstick usually, especially about sensitive topics (like, I would rather die than watch borat which I turned off 15mins into the film), but this was done so well and with so much heart and soul.

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favourite scene / moment:

the dinner scene with jojo and rosie. iconic. (39:40–44:00)

and when elsa and jojo are staring out the window at night and having a really sweet conversation.

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what I didn’t like:

nothing. it was perfect. although I HATED the fact that rosie died but I guess it was bound to happen.

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interesting trivia / fun facts:

both taika waititi and scarlett johansson have jewish roots. when taika, who is maori/jewish, was asked about why he chose to play the role of adolf hitler, he said «the answer's simple, what better 'fuck you' to the guy?»

one of taika’s reasons for making the film was the realisation that after world war II people cried that «we should never forget» but given the behaviour of «certain people in certain parts of the world», it felt to him like we are forgetting.

even though the spoken dialogue is all in english, all written or printed text in the movie is in german.

«I don't like the idea of seeing people hang,» taika waititi said, and that's what led in part to the reveal of rosie's death without showing her face. he added that seeing your dead loved one is an intimate thing, and that we didn't «have permission» to see what jojo saw.

in the scene where the boys burn books at the camp, tom waits’ «I don’t wanna grow up» is playing in the background. in 2009, scarlett johansson recorded an album with tom waits covers, which also features that same song. the album is called «anywhere I lay my head» and is available on spotify.

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favourite quotes:

[rosie and jojo come upon six people hanging from the gallows in the town square]

jojo: what did they do?

rosie: what they could.

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rating: 10/10.

this movie broke my goddamn heart and it had the audacity to do so while I was having a really fun time watching it!

simply a must-see.

#jojo rabbit #movies #drama #comedy #war #2019 #scarlett johansson #taika waititi #tays2cents #world war 2 #war movies

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cynicalkairos · 4 years

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That Stupid Borat Voice

Summary: The office finds out Ted is not only dating someone but married and Paul is determined to find out who is the mystery man.

Warnings: Mentions of alcohol, language

Word Count: 1851

A/N: Enjoy this little thing I wrote a while ago. I found this and never posted it.

Nothing new ever happened at the office.

Paul lost his paper that he printed to one of the many printers. Charlotte tried to hide her unintentional smoking and drinking habits from everyone with no avail. Melissa ran around, asking every member of the staff if they wanted to join the company softball team, only to be rejected every time.

Despite the amount of time that they bickered, anyone could find Bill and Ted ranting and complaining to each other, primarily because it was understood between the two that both were willing to listen. Bill was always trying to be helpful or very stressed about a certain subject. Ted was a nosy piece of shit or just wanting someone to talk to about a certain subject.

Usually, that subject for Bill was his daughter, Alice, but Bill could never figure out the identity of the person that Ted was going on about.

“So, like, ya know how some people are just naturally perfect?” Ted said immediately when he sat down at the table with Bill.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I can tell ya one thing that is not.”

“What’s that, Ted?” Bill replied flatly, barely awake from his coffee.

“My husband,” he said with that terrible Borat impression. “I mean, like, he is perfect, but—”

Bill nearly choked on his coffee, sprinting over to the sink to spit it out before it went everywhere. He took a couple deep breathes. “What?”

“Dude, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but are you?”

“Of course! What the fuck are you goin’ on about?”

Bill gaped at him and then sputtered out, “You’re married!”

“Yep,” Ted said curtly, showing off the thin, gold band on his left ring finger.

And, sure enough, the ring on his left hand was definitely a wedding ring.

Once the news spread around, everyone sped into the break room to hear the tale and ask questions. Ted would answer all of them, loving the ability to talk about his husband to the entire world.

“Is he handsome?”

“Fuck yeah.”

“How long have you been together?”

“Over a year.”

“Is he good in bed?”

“Oh, ho ho,” Ted said, taking a sip of his coffee. “You have no idea.”

“How long ago was it?” Charlotte asked.

“Was what?”

“The wedding.”

“Oh, about a couple weeks ago, I guess. It seems like forever ago.”

“Do you love him?”

“What kind of stupid fucking question is that, Bill? Of course, I do! Next!”

Then Paul asked, “Well, who’s the… lucky man then?”

Ted simply shook his head and chuckled, saying in that stupid Borat voice, “My husband.”

Because of that answer, Paul never gave up.

Paul would ask him at any time and any place, trying to find out who this mystery man was.

In the bathroom. In the morning before Ted had his coffee. The middle of the night over the phone. Through memos. By any and all ways that he could.

Every single time, Ted said in that stupid Borat voice, “My husband.”

The rest of the office mostly found Paul’s attempts at discovering Ted’s husband amusing, including Ted. It became a running joke on their floor. If someone asked for someone’s name, the other would use the Borat voice to respond.

Paul, on the other hand, was frustrated.

He found Ted in the break room, making his coffee peacefully, and pulled him to the side. Ted jumped from the sudden movement, almost spilling his coffee everywhere. “Paul! You almost made me spill my fucking coffee!”

“Doesn’t matter. Who’s your husband?”

“I’ve already told you! My—”

“‘Husband.’ Yes, we know. But, who is he? Why can’t you tell us?”

Ted scoffed and drank a portion of the coffee. “Why the fuck do you care?”

“I just—”

“You don’t believe that I am actually married, don’t ya?”

Paul sighed and nodded. “Yeah, like— how can someone like you find someone— and I mean anyone?”

Ted looked away from Paul and smiled fondly, the thoughts of his husband filling his mind. “I don’t know, Paul. I really don’t have a clue.”

Ted walked off with his coffee, leaving Paul standing here. He was surprised, to say the least. It was definitely weird. He didn’t expect the… the sentiment behind his words. Fuck, he was wrong, wasn’t he? Ted was definitely in love.

————

Soon, Christmas rolled around a few months later and Ted never gave up his husband’s identity.

With some reluctance, Paul stopped asking him about it… as frequently.

“Are you ever going to tell everyone?” Paul asked, rolling over to Ted’s cubicle one afternoon.

“I’ll have to. He’s coming to the Christmas party,” Ted replied, never looking up from his computer.

Paul’s jaw dropped. “Wait. What?”

Ted turned around and nodded. “Yeah, he wanted to come to meet everyone.”

“Then why didn’t he come to any of the other parties?”

“He’s a professor. They always happened when he had a lot of work or a thing at school.”

“You married a professor?!”

Ted frowned. “Yeah?”

“I can’t believe you tricked someone smart to marry you.”

“Hey!” Ted interjected. “There’s nothing shitty about him… except his cooking. Can’t cook for shit.”

“Okay, but he’s coming, right?”

“Yeah, definitely. We’ll be there.”

———

It was the night of the party and the office was packed with people, food, and booze.

Paul and Emma were talking with Bill and Charlotte when Ted walked in, going right over to them with a drink already in his hand. “Which one of you fuckers are ready to party?”

Paul smiled curtly and raised his glass to him, acknowledging his presence. “Where’s your husband?”

“He’s coming. The parking was shit, so he dropped me off.”

Bill gave Ted the side-eye and looked at Charlotte with a chuckle, handing her ten bucks. Ted looked at them incredulously, before continuing, “What the fuck was that for?”

Charlotte giggled, clearly a little tipsy. “We made a bet. I said that you would give some excuse as to why he wouldn’t show up and Bill said otherwise. I won.”

Emma smiled. “I was about to bet, but I didn’t want to lose my money.”

“I just didn’t want to,” Paul said.

“Well, don’t worry, Bill. You should be getting you money back real—”

“Ted! There you are,” a voice from behind them called out. “I leave you for five minutes and you’ve already started drinking without me.”

The group turned around to see none other than—

“Professor?” Emma asked, completely shocked. She definitely didn’t expect to see her biology teacher standing behind them.

“Emma! Good to see you again,” Henry replied, before moving over to Ted and kissing him on the cheek. “Hello, sweetheart.”

“Hey, babe.”

Ted gave Henry his drink and wrapped his arm around Henry’s waist, while Henry’s hand slipped into Ted’s back pocket. “Guys, this is—”

Henry sighed and rolled his eyes fondly. “Ted, don’t you dare do it.”

“My husband, Henry,” Ted continued in that stupid Borat voice, despite the complaints from his husband.

They were met with silence from the rest of the group. Emma was still shocked that her reclusive professor was married to the office asshole. Paul couldn’t believe that he was actually real. Bill and Charlotte just exchanged glances and then the money that Bill had rightfully won.

Emma stepped forward and downed the rest of her drink. “Oh, god, no.”

“I’m afraid it’s true, Emma,” the professor said, only then looking away from Ted.

“That’s the man you’re married to?”

“Uh— yes?” He really didn’t know how to answer that question.

“How?”

“Well, I proposed to him and we eloped… after we consumed a lot of alcohol.”

“Yeah, it was really a blur, but I don’t fucking regret it,” Ted interjected.

“Well—” Henry started before Ted cut him off with a quick scoff. “I’m only joking, my dear. I don’t either. We’re having an official wedding ceremony later, though.”

Ted nodded and they looked at each other, giving each other a small but loving smile.

Charlotte smiled and clapped her hands, unintentionally getting their attention. “How do you two meet?”

They glanced at each other and then Henry spoke first. “Emma asked me to deliver something to Paul after he forgot a coffee at Beanie’s. It was on the way to work, so I agreed. I gave it to him and— well, met Ted. I hated him at first. I thought he was a complete douchebag.”

“Me too. I thought he was a pretentious prick,” Ted chimed in.

“You’re so sweet, dear.” Henry chuckled, before continuing, ”The same thing happened a few days later, so I brought the coffee over here again, but it was about the end of Ted’s shift. We parked near each other and began talking some more. I started to hate him less—”

“‘Less?”” Ted interrupted.

“At least, I only thought you were an asshole by that point.”

“Thank the lord.”

Henry rolled his eyes again and shook his head. “Then we ran into each other at Beanie’s about a week later and we talked for a long time— Don’t look too surprised, Emma. It wasn’t on your shift.— We had a lot in common and didn’t hate each other anymore. Then he eventually asked me out and the rest is history.”

Charlotte and Bill gave them a small “Aww!” while Paul looked confused and Emma looked happy.

“Well, I’m glad it worked out for you, Professor,” Emma said. “It’s good to see you happy.”

“Thank you, Emma.”

Emma then turned to Ted, sizing him up despite her height and poking him in the chest. “If you ever hurt him, then I will kick your ass until you’re pulp. Got me?”

Ted laughed and winked at her. “Believe me, that won’t be necessary, fun-size.”

Then Ted dragged him off to get more alcohol and food abruptly by his hand, leaving a fumbling Henry to wave goodbye to the rest of the group.

Paul stared at them and said a very audible, “What the fuck?”

———

The night was coming to an end when Paul was the only one of them left. Mostly everyone had left, including Emma, Bill, and Charlotte, but a few people that he didn’t really know and Melissa, who was still trying to get people to join the softball team.

As he was leaving, he saw Henry and Ted talking quietly near the large wall of windows. For the time that he knew Ted, he never saw him so happy. He watched as Henry noticed the mistletoe hanging above them and pointed at it. Ted, who was turned around for a moment to place his drink down, looked back at it, as Henry took his hand and twirled him around, dipping him with a grace that Ted could never have achieved.

Paul smiled and exited the door when Henry pressed a gentle kiss onto Ted’s lips, leaving the pair to their privacy.

Even from that distance away did Paul hear Henry say, “Did you really use that stupid Borat voice for four months, instead of just telling them?”

“You bet your beautiful ass I did,” Ted said in response.

#tedgens #short fic #ted tgwdlm #ted richards #henry hidgens #professor hidgens #professor hidgens x ted #tgwdlm #melissa tgwdlm #bill tgwdlm #charlotte tgwdlm #paul matthews #emma perkins

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charliejrogers · 3 years

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Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

In 2006, Borat was one of those great cultural touchstones that transcended the big screen. There was no aspect of pop culture after its release that wasn’t in some way affected. It perfectly coincided with the rising popularity of YouTube, such that those who hadn’t seen it (or couldn’t because they were too young to get into the rated R movie) could at least see many of its famous clips. Everyone knew Borat in 2006. Everyone. You couldn’t go two fucking steps without someone going “very nice!” or “my wife!” It was such a wonderfully smart movie. It combined the best aspects of a Jackass movie, i.e. the trolling of innocent and unsuspecting bystanders, with a noble cause, to expose to the world the ignorant side of America. It was a novel and insightful look at our country.

In 2020… there is no insight in telling us that much of the country is ignorant of the truth, racist, or sexist. As Borat himself points out in this film, in the years between when he filmed the first movie (2005) and the new movie 2019-2020, America has become transfixed by their new “magical abacuses”, i.e. cellphones. Phones, the internet, social media, all of them expose us everyday to how the other half lives in their little social bubbles. We don’t have to wonder “do people really think this?” Just type whatever terrible or stupid theory you can think of into Google, and you’re guaranteed to find at least one person who endorses whatever heinous thing you just wrote. Again, this is portrayed within the film when Borat, confronted by the fact that maybe some of his core beliefs are lies, finds websites that say that (much to his anti-Semitic disappointment) the Holocaust was not real. So, one is left wondering… what can Borat bring to the table in 2020 that is fresh?

Unfortunately, the answer is… not a whole lot. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm feels mostly like a retread of 2006 with the only additions aiming more for “shock factor” than real comedy aimed to grab headlines (which it succeeded in doing). This is not to say this is not a funny movie. It is. The film’s opening where Borat describes the typical (fictionalized) Kazakh’s view of American politics is hysterical. In sum, America went to shit with the election of Obama, paving the way for other Africans to take power of the West (cue the photo of Justin Trudeau in Black face). Now with Trump in power, Borat is sent on a mission to curry Trump’s favor so that Kazakhstan and its leader will be viewed with the same favor that Trump has bestowed upon other “tough guys and tough guy countries” like Russia/Putin, the Philippines/Duerte, North Korea/Kim Jong Un, Brazil/Bolsonaro, etc. The gift is supposed to be an overly sexually aggressive chimp for Vice Pussy Hound (i.e. Vice President) Pence. However, Borat’s daughter Tutar sneaks into the crate with the chimp, and after a chain of events Borat has no choice but to gift his daughter over to Pence, and eventually Rudy Giuliani, instead.

It’s a simple enough plot but I think the movie gets a little too caught up in it. No one is asking for a plot line for this movie. If this were just a string of sketches with a vague whiff of a plot to transition between the sketches no one would fault it. In fact, that sounds like the first Borat. We are just here for the sketches. Yet the movie is looking to do a little bit more than the first movie. It’s not content to just say, “Hey, look at yourself, America! You’re fucked up! Let’s all laugh at you.” This movie has specific targets that dominate its focus: Trump and Trumpland.

This is, I think, an unfortunate choice not because I don’t approve of bashing Trump and Trumpland, but because whereas the first movie felt like comedy was king with the sociopolitical insights as a dominant undercurrent, here the story and the humiliation of Trump and his base is the end goal. This still makes for funny scenes, but when I think back to the first Borat (and as I re-watched clips of the first movie after finishing this movie), some of the greatest parts of Borat had nothing to do with politics or sensitive subjects. Much of the humor was just based around the ballsiness of Sacha Baron Cohen. This is a guy who when invited into a person’s home for dinner makes openly sexually complimentary remarks about two of the female guests, but explicitly states that the host’s wife is ugly. Never mind the fact that at that same dinner party, Borat hand-delivers his shit in a bag to a guest, claiming to not know how Western toilets work. It’s hilarious, it’s daring, and has nothing to do with politics.

In essence, the first Borat was such a success because Cohen played the character with such a believable naivete and loose grasp of English idioms, that he was a factory of malapropisms, a genius of comedic-timing, and a troll that could annoy the ever-living daylights out of anyone. There are as many scenes of him trolling nice, innocent people (like the driving instructor, the man who teaches him jokes, the group of feminists, or really any time he goes on the news) as there are scenes of him trolling people so that Cohen can make a political point or social observation (like the singing the wrong national anthem at the rodeo or his innate criticism of a Pentecostal Chruch’s weirdness). And in the end, the “point” of that plot at least had nothing to do with politics. You can watch this movie, get your laughs, remark at America’s racism, and still get your laughs.

Here, there really isn’t any scene I can think of that wasn’t done to make some sort of observation or political point. The closest I can think of are the bits towards the beginning before the plot kicks into high gear. There’s a recurring bit I love of him communication with the Premier of Kazakhstan via fax machine at a local UPS Store. The genius isn’t contained in the sentence I just wrote, but that he requires the aging worker of the UPS Store to hand-write all of his faxes for him and read any and all replies. Similarly, there’s a quick bit of genius at the beginning where Borat goes to a cellphone store and cannot understand FaceTime at all. He assumes the person on the phone must be the brother of the phone store worker he sees in front of him; they cannot be the same. Similarly he somehow enlists the help of a delivery person to re-seal the crate in which his daughter came to America in.

But otherwise, the jokes are there either to say, “Woah! Aren’t these Americans terrible?!” (whether he’s talking about QAnon’s theorists, anti-abortionists, or anti-maskers). Or there’s gross out humor, mostly about vaginas and periods, (or moon blood, as Borat calls it). As I said, these aren’t all unfunny. Probably my favorite sequence in the film sees Borat and his daughter at a pregnancy crisis center because Tutar has accidentally swallowed a little baby doll that was on top of a cupcake her father had “given” to her as a “treat” that was just supposed to be “their little secret” because women in Kazakhstan aren’t supposed to have sweets. So she ate the cupcake behind a dumpster. I’ll let you guess what happens when you enter a Christian pregnancy crisis center asking for them to take out the dumpster baby your Dad wasn’t supposed to be giving you… but it’s hilarious to see the worker sorta squirm his away around addressing the reality of incest.

But mostly, I felt kinda fatigued knowing that Cohen and co. were mostly trying to show me the “underside” of QAnon and anti-maskers… but as I said, in 2020, I am unfortunately well aware of both these groups, their psychologies, and their world. So merely highlighting that these ideas exist and that the people who endorse these ideas don’t really have a lot of great ideas otherwise, isn’t that novel as it might have been back in 2006.

Probably the more “interesting” side of the film is it’s focus on feminism. The film uses Tutar (played perfectly by previously unknown Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova and deserves all the praise she gets) to really expose how America, despite being a “feminist” nation, still shares many aspects with the fictionalized version of Kazakhastan where women are considered equivalent to livestock. The movie hopes to shed light on the far reaching effects of the patriarchy. The movie ends at the top of the pyramid with politicians who feel like it is their right to use their power to sleep with whomever they want (Trump’s obviously the true target of this criticism and I will say, the final Giuliani scene feels a little bit like entrapment… that said, I think it’s fair to say not every man would be so willing to fall into that trap). But leading up to that we see aspects of America designed to fit perfectly with the patriarchy’s demands. We hear from a shallow, vapid Instagram influencer that to get by women need to be docile and pretty, and we see a frankly horrifying discussion from a plastic surgeon talking about all the things wrong with Tutar that he would fix with surgery so that men would want her… despite the fact that she’s a beautiful woman and has nothing wrong with her! We live in a society that recognizes the horror of a patriarchical society, but still so clearly buys into it.

But in the end… you’re not watching Borat Subsequent Moviefilm to get an education on feminism and the problems with the patriarchy. That should be the extra cherry on top of a main course of hearty laughter. In focuses on the politics, Cohen and co. find plenty of laughs and memorable moments, but fail (perhaps inevitably) to recreate the signature naivete and bumbling oafishness of his titular interviewer, in the process losing some of the film’s humor and paradoxically its ability to leave a lasting message.

**/ (Two and a half stars out of four)

#borat #borat 2 #borat subsequent moviefilm #Sacha Baron Cohen #tutar sagdiyev #tutar #borat sagdiyev

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thisandthat-whatever · 4 years

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I just came across this petition online. Kazakhstan is not happy about the upcoming Borat-2 film. 😬 They definitely were not happy about the first one and they’re condemning the second one too. On one hand it is clearly a comedy film where license of exaggeration was greatly used therefore one shouldn’t take it too seriously and shouldn’t get too offended, but at the same time I totally empathize with Kazakhs feeling annoyed that everything in the film misrepresents them pretty much. In the past few months I found that Kazakhstan is one of the richest countries in Central Asia, so you cannot find the type of slum there that the film depicts. The film definitely misrepresents the economic level of the country and of course there are other misrepresentations about the characteristics and traditions of the people too.

And I think the problem is which is where I empathize with Kazakhs’ issue with this film is that it’s still a relatively unknown country worldwide therefore moviegoers are extremely naïve and impressionable when it comes to getting their first hand information from movies. So even though clearly this is a comedy, there will be people out there who will view and think of Kazakhstan like that . And I should know because as a Turk coming from a country where most Americans don’t know much about, I myself faced a lot misconceptions that I had to erase in the minds of the Americans I came across.

So I get their frustration and I know why they try to cancel the film but of course it’s not going to happen. They may perhaps ban it in their country but they can’t “cancel” the film internationally. And I mean since a lot of what is shown about Kazakhstan in the film are totally fictional and untrue, I don’t know why Sasha Cohen didn’t make up a fictional name for an imaginary country and put “stan” at the end of it to make it seem like it’s from that part of the world, because at least that way no one would have been offended and nothing would have been misrepresented. Like let me just make up a country name: Burkistan. There you go. It took me a second. And it’s not like any of the people Borat interacted with in the first film knew anything about Kazakhstan, so it didn’t really need to be a real country’s name. A made-up name would have sufficed

So, I don’t know why Sasha intentionally wanted to offend a large group of people , actually an entire country, because it was clear they were going to be offended. That film would have been still as funny if it was a made up country, so I don’t get his intention behind putting a real country’s name in it.

#borat 2 #kazakhstan #борат #казахстан

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jj-lynn21 · 5 years

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VEE Chapter 2

ch 1 ch 3

Warnings: Violence, blood, decapitation

Bill photo

Jen never knew what to expect at work Monday mornings when she had been off three days, but it was never easy. The floor manager, Brenda, was always on her for things that didn’t get done over the weekend. She thought Brenda was probably jealous because she was cute and petite. Brenda was a monstrous height for a woman. She would never talk back to a boss, but she joked to a friend once, “I should get the ladder in the back and climb it to look her in the eyes while she is borating me.”

Jen got to work assessing the department she would be working in today which was more than one department today. Brenda came storming out of the back looking around. Jen was the only one there. One person scheduled on a Monday. That just makes things more stressful.

Brenda yells, “Why weren’t the cloths put away all weekend? Why can’t you do your job quicker, so others don’t have to clean up after you on Monday morning.”

Jen glared at her, “I didn’t work since Thursday morning. When I left everything was caught up, so this mess isn’t my fault. Maybe you should ask one of the staff members that buy you lunch or drinks at the bar instead of dressing appropriately and doing their job.”

Brenda scoffed, “what other workers do or don’t do is none of your business…”

Jen shushed her mid-sentence and went to the back to grab the ladder. Brenda had a perfectly stunned look on her face as Jen climbed the ladder. She was looked down on Brenda for a change. Jen felt the angriest she had ever been. She opened her mouth. Jagged sharp teeth formed. She bit Brenda’s head clean off. Blood was bursting in her face as Brenda’s lifeless body fell.

Jen screamed as she woke with her heart pounding. Disoriented she checked her teeth. They were fine. She laughed at herself as she woke up completely. It was 11:45 a.m. on Sunday.

She yawned while stretching out in the bed. She reached for her phone, but it wasn’t on the charger. The night before started coming back to her. The good and the frightening thought, that kinky freak bit me. What the Hell. She pulled the covers off to feel her inner thigh where she thought it happened.

She didn’t feel anything. That sort of thing was bound to leave a mark. She stood up. Feeling a bit lightheaded so she sat back down. Then got up slower, slid off her dress and grabbed her rob from behind the door. Looking at her tired eyes she thought, I must have dreamed some of last night. Just like the early morning dream biting my boss’ head off. That made her laugh.

The mind can come up with some crazy things, she laughed to herself again. As soon as She walked out of the bedroom, she saw her purse and cellphone laying on the glass coffee table in front of the couch. She grinned replaying some of the events of the evening thinking, I guess it wasn’t all a dream. I hope I didn’t fall asleep when he was performing so well. I was tired but damn how could I do that to him. She grabbed her phone. Then she grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator before taking the cellphone back to her room.

Jen noticed several messages from the girls. They were just asking if she was still alive since she wasn’t answering last night. She put the phone on the standing charger and picked the whole thing up to start a group chat.

Molly, Sara, Beth: I’m fine. Hope your hangovers aren’t debilitating. LOL

Sara: Not funny.

Molly: I’ll live.

Beth: I need a hangover cure. Breakfast anyone? Or should I say late brunch? Lol

Jen: sure, the usual spot in about an hour.

Sara: Sure, but I might still look like death warmed over.

Molly: I’ll have to make it a quick brunch. I have-to work tonight…ugh.

Jen finished the water and walked to the kitchen to put on coffee. She needed the caffeine to really wake-up. Looking at the clock she guessed she had about five or six hours of sleep last night. A hot shower should help. On her way out of the kitchen she noticed her keys were hanging from the hook by the door which reminded her, her damn car was still at the bar.

Beth lived closest so Jen would text her for a ride to get her car after she got ready. She was very curious about what was going on there anyway. She hoped the fire damage wasn’t bad. Maybe it was considering Bill didn’t want her to go out front to get her car. She hoped her car was ok. She really couldn’t afford repairs right now or a new car. All sorts of worse case scenarios went through her mind as she was showering and getting dressed. Did the fire burst out of the building and blow up my car? Would it be stripped by the time I got there? Would I see Bill while picking up my car and he wanted nothing to do with me since I fell asleep? Over thinking can drive you crazy if you are not careful but she was often over thinking. After she poured some coffee, she texted Beth

Jen: My car is still at the bar. Can I get a ride?

She added sweet N low and Cheesecake flavored creamer to her coffee. She sipped it from time to time while brushing her hair out.

Beth: no problem. Ten minutes, we can go get your car after brunch.

Jen: Sounds good.

She finished getting ready. She put her hair in a ponytail slicked back to stay in place with leave in conditioner. She looked though her purse, which honestly, she usually does sooner after a night out, to make sure everything was in it. Nothing was missing. That was a load of her mind. She put her keys and cellphone in her purse. She went out locking the door behind her. When she turned to watch for Beth her car was right in the driveway. She grabbed her phone to cancel the pickup, but Beth was pulling up.

Beth leaned out her car window laughing. “I guess you don’t need a ride after all.”

Jen laughed, “I guess not. It was an interesting night for sure. We will exchange stories at brunch.”

Beth grinned, “wasn’t it though. See you at Papa’s.”

There is only street parking at Papa's. It’s a small café in the middle of the Santaria's shopping district. A Sunglass Hut is on one side of Papa's. On the other side is Shabby's, a clothing store with mostly jeans and funny saying T-shirts. There are five outdoor tables at Papa's with umbrellas for shade. The girls were already sitting with their mimosas when Jen joined them at one of the tables.

“We all know I got laid last night. Derick is so amazing,” Beth bragged. So, how was your first one-night stand, Jen? Inquiry minds want to know.”

Jen blushed but was ready to spill it all when Bill swung a chair around to their table, he sat backwards straddling it.

He took her hand and kissed it. “Good morning ladies. Last night wasn’t a one-night stand, I hope.“ He looked to Jen for an answer.

Jen blushed, “No, I think there is much more we could try.”

Sara’s eyes bulged in surprise, “Wow, so you just dropped her off.? That’s different.”

Beth was intrigued, “I’m not sure if that is just really weird or super romantic.”

Jen grinned, “Well, he didn’t just drop me home.”

Bill got up, “I was there, so I don’t need to get in the way of your girl time, Jen. I have some business to attend to. I just saw you and want to ask if you wanted me to come over later?”

Jen tried to play it cool even though her body was begging for more, “Yeah, that’s cool. I’ll be around. “

He gave her a kiss on the cheek and left.

Beth laughed, “Wow.”

Sara looked at Jen in shock; “Tell us everything.”

Molly grinned, “Oh, you totally hit that.”

Jen told them about popping his shirt button. That made them laugh. Then she continued with the other details as much as she remembered. She didn’t have to exaggerate at all. She was a bit flushed as she shared, but in this-day-and-age everyone seems to kiss and tell all the little details. Sometimes she doesn’t even want to hear her friend explicit stories. Her friends eat up every exploit anyone would tell them.

Sara swooned, “how romantic. He brought your car back to your house. He even stopped here when he saw you.”

Molly had her doubts, “There are no fairytales. Its who can get you off the best and stick around to annoy each other until death do you part or a divorce gets you everything. “

Beth said, “Don’t be so cynical Molly. I am totally in love with Derick. And Jen is head-over-heels in love with Bill. He is completely enamored with her.”

Jen laughed, “I don’t know about love. He could just be a stalker. We had a fight at the bar about him manipulating the situation to meet me. He saw Derick and Beth getting to know each other. We did catch each other’s eye, but he had to leave so he set up the meeting at VEE with Derick. “

Molly shook her head, “I vote stalker. “

In Beth’s mind she was already thinking double wedding, “I vote romantic.”

Sara giggled, “Romantic stalker. It’s just what every girl wants and dreams.”

They all were laughing as the waiter came over to take their order. Jen order a mimosa and pasta primavera. She then told them her work-related dream which just got applauses.

Sara was laughing so hard orange juice came out of her nose, “I didn’t know you had such a dark side Jen. Brenda is the worst, but she is probably miserable and powerless in her personal life, so she takes out her frustrations on us, well mostly you for some reason. I say let her suffer and we have a good time.”

Molly got up, “Which reminds me I have to jet. I hope she isn’t the floor manager tonight.”

In unison Jen, Sara, and Beth yelled, “Good luck.”

They finished brunch chatting about other things. Jen was barely listening really. Her mind was wondering to Bill coming over later. She had to get to know him a lot better before things went any farther. She didn’t think he was really a stalker. Still she felt he wasn’t telling her something important. She often felt that way about people in general. He wasn’t any different. In general, people suck.

#blood #horror #friends #writing #creative writing #romance #lovestory #romantic #stalker #romantic story #shortstory #short story #scary #creepy #lol #Vee #bill skarsgard

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gloriousclio · 5 years

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HARRY POTTER WORLD

It was so much fun!!!!!!!!! And expensive. BUT SO MUCH FUNNNNNNN.

And it was so much fun to go on a trip and not have it be for work. I didn’t have to give a presentation on metadata or archives or anything.

The only thing that got to me was being called a muggle repeatedly. YOU DON’T KNOW MY LIFE!!!!

Okay, read more if you like, otherwise just know that it was super fun and sun-shiny and good. My friend took most of the pics, but I’ll throw in a few for flavor.

So ok, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a very nervous flyer. I hate going through security, I don’t like how expensive everything is. But mostly I don’t like being that high up. My body doesn’t love the pressure changes. My ears don’t pop. To make flights better for me, I take half a xanax when the boarding process starts, and I use these little doodads called earplanes which help equalize my ears. I won’t fly without either thing. Before I discovered earplanes, flights were a thousand times more painful, literally trying to cup around my sinuses with my hands, and crying from the pain of it. If your ears have trouble popping on planes, you know how painful that can be. Try these things, it really helps me. Pop them in when you get all settled in, pull ‘em out when you reach your flying altitude, and then an hour before you land, pilots will start to slow down and descend so pop ‘em back in again.

(I also pray rosaries during turbulence, but that’s a result of the catholic upbringing more than anything. I can do it on my fingers without pulling out the beads so it’s just a pattern I can focus on. The beads are in my purse at all times, I’ve only ever needed to pull them out once.)

ANYWAY

Monday! I drove to my parents’ and parked my car in the driveway, and then Dad drove me to the airport. My car would have been fine on the street at home, I’ve never had a problem, but it’s nice to know they were keeping an eye on it. Freak blizzards are a thing. The flight down to Florida was in the afternoon, I encountered the longest security line I’ve ever dealt with in my life. MSP is usually pretty efficient, but not on the 29th. Yikes. On the whole, this flight was fine, but I wasn’t paying for the inflight wifi. Screw that, Delta!

We got there kinda late, and we never found the hotel hottub that was advertised. Pizza for a late supper, and then sleep.

We were on the first shuttle to Universal on Tuesday morning! We saw all the HP things! The first ride we went on was Escape from Gringotts, and they trick you into thinking the first drop is a long one, but apart from the uncomfortable seats, this became my second favorite ride. We poked around in Diagon Alley, practiced some magic with the interactive wand we splurged on, and then caught the Hogwarts Express.

I’m really really impressed with the “London” bits. No one talks about it, but I did a double take at “King’s Cross” because, having taken journeys (north!) from there, my body kinda slipped into UK mode, and I kept greeting the park employees with a cheerful “hiya!” which I only say when I’m over there. There was a little kiosk area with some English snacks, and then my eyes would snag on the “chips” which of course are crisps in the UK. It’s not so different when people use cyrillic letters as stylized latin letters when talking about Russia (you know, like the “Borat” movie posters? My eye snags on the д, which gets used as an A in that case, but is a D sound. Little things like that. Brains are weird.)

I also know there’s a lot of complaints about Hermione’s “voice”, particularly on the train. Lexie probably experienced that differently than me. I have seen exactly 3 of the movies and have very few clear memories of any of them. So for me, the entire park felt like a fun and playful interpretation. It doesn’t match what’s in my head, but it was totally playful and whimsical.

Okay, so Hogsmeade was great, and we probably spent the most time there. There’s a little Hippogriff rollercoaster that we went on twice - you get a cool view of the castle, and hurtled past Hagrid’s hut as well. It’s so fun!

And then the castle ride itself. Like the Gringotts line, they are very intentional about how they constructed the line. You don’t stand outside in the sun for very long, much of it is spent indoors, there are lots of architectural details to look at, and bits of story play out in the moving images. You get to go in the Gryffindor common room, which is full of lovely, faded tapestries and more moving portraits. Dumbledore’s office is crammed full of stuff. You pass the Mirror of Erised at one point. (In Gringotts, there’s the great hall and the poem, and there’s a “back” area full of ledgers, and you ride in a “lift” in an attempt to control the line a bit, again, very smart and a great use of space and time). Everything is pretty well detailed, and there was always something new to peep at.

That said, the longest line we stood in was 30 minutes, and advertised to be 60. They have lockers where the “free” time is adjusted to the wait time, so Lexie set timers on her phone - we got to get right back in line without changing lockers a few times.

We took advantage of our early admission on day one, and blasted through both parks. Towards the end of the day, we mutually agreed there wasn’t enough to keep us entertained the whole day on Wednesday, especially since they weren’t doing anything special on Halloween (I was hoping for a Death Day party or something to honor Lily and James, a secret Halloween Feast menu, literally anything). In fact the Diagon Alley side of the park closed early both days for a horror night that Universal does.

The second day, we went shopping at a Disney themed shopping center (after pricing out the Kennedy Space Center, which was too much for our budget this trip, sadly. I think both of us would have loved to go! Not just me). I will say, I won family Christmas with what I picked up at the center. No one tell my parents or brother, but I got us all Darkwing Duck mugs, which was a favorite cartoon for all four of us when J and I were little. There is almost never DW merch. I was not expecting that, and since no one knows we took this lil’ side trip, they have no idea what’s coming.

In the afternoon, we went back to HP world and knocked around, doing some magic, admiring everyone’s costumes, and doing the rides a few more times.

Apart from the mugs I didn’t intend/expect to buy, and of course, food, I bought a Gryffindor quidditch shirt, Gryffindor earrings, a pygmy puff, and a pretty Honeydukes Candy Jar. And some treats and sweets. Sadly, their butterbeer recipe is waaaaaaaaaay too sweet, even for me. I would split another one, but I like my recipe better (which is just cream soda and butterscotch schnapps, haha. The park version is non-alcoholic).

(I named my Pygmy Puff Lollypop Charlotte Hanover, Esq. or Lolly for short.)

We had so much fun! If I were to do it again, I’d only do one day (but get the two park ticket again so I can go back and forth). I would absolutely come in October again. All the staff members were quick to say that this is not a busy time for them, even on Halloween. We almost had no lines to speak of. The weather was absolutely perfect, sunny and warm, upper 70s and into the 80s. We knew we were running the risk of going during hurricane season, but it worked out really well, we got a great deal on a nice hotel, tickets for 2 parks/2 days. And because our hotel was bundled with the park, we got a personal driver to and from the airport (!) as well as free shuttles to the park.

It was really great and fun and playful. It felt like interactive, self-insert fanfic at certain points (which is not in anyway a knock on it, as you know). My HP experiences in the UK can’t really be compared to this, obviously.

The flight home was rather more turbulent than the flight down, but all in all, both flights were relatively relaxed for me.

But I will say, it’s great to be home and in my own bed (also I’m not about to drop $10+ on every meal for awhile).

If you’re a Potter fan like me, it’s a really fun trip. If you’re going, make sure you splurge for tickets to both parks on however many days so you can go back and forth. There’s outdoor performances that happen, our favorite was for sure Celestina Warbeck’s. (The singing toads and the presentation of the Beauxbaton and Durmstrang schools were not super impressive, just saying, and they were the movie version, so oof, those performative gender roles.)

Harry Potter is so great!!!!!!

#the wizarding world of harry potter #the wixen world #hp #harry potter #diagon alley #hogsmeade

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