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httpknjoon · 1 year

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the house is on fire | ksj

plot | The best way to set a virtual fire is to suddenly take an unexpected break.

words | 1.2k+

genres | humor/crack, fluff, actors!au

pairing | actor!jin x famous!reader

note | usernames used in the fic are all fictional. this was set in 2022. a subtle explanation of why the other drabbles are set from the previous years. let me know your thoughts! enjoy reading.

main masterlist | drabble series

It was the last week of February 2022. Just a couple of weeks after the successful release of From The Other Side, headlines about you surfaced the internet. Deadline reports:

Ana De Armas In, Y/N Exits Apple’s Chris Evans-Starrer ‘Ghosted’ With Dexter Fletcher Directing, Skydance Producing

This was not the first time you left a project. But it was still a surprise for your fans as this was one of the most anticipated films for 2023. Plus, you didn’t really shy away from showing your then-crush with the actor, Chris Evans.

@/GhostedMovieUpdates: According to Deadline, Y/N exits Ghosted with Ana De Armas replacing her. [insert link]

replying to @/GhostedMovieUpdates

-@/ynblueprint: NOOOOOOO 😭😭😭😭😭😭

–@/c_evansfan: this is so sudden :(( filming abt to start in two weeks right??

@/frannystan: what do you mean y/n is leaving ghosted?!

@/purpleynjin: there’s no way this is because of ‘busy schedule’

replying to @/purpleynjin

-@/maybeitsme: ikr??? they’ve been wanting to work with each other for like months now

The only reason shared to the public was busy schedule. As usual, some believed it while others didn’t, making nonsense rumors out of it. Some made a joke that Jin probably stopped you from doing the film since you always joked about him being jealous with your infatuation over the other actor.

Just when March came by, you only posted a picture of Francheskat in Instagram without any caption. Just your sweet grey pet chilling in what seems like a big basket.

Then, another week passed, and there was another headlines with your name in it. And man, it’s like throwing a burning matchstick in gas. Collider reports,

Y/N Bows Out From Wes Anderson’s Upcoming Film A Month After Casting Announcement

@/thegreatyn: okaY WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING

@/jiniuskim: oh my god yn is in her ross and rachel era

replying to @/jinuskim

-@/heyyn: what do u mean

–@/jiniuskim: maybe she is ‘on a break’

@/YNUpdates: Don’t worry, loves. I’m sure Y/N has a great reason with all of this! 💗 Let’s just wait and please refrain from interacting with malicious rumors.

@/francheskat_update: Y/N (@/urfavecatlady) posted an Instagram story with Francheskat rolling around on her bed. [insert clip]

@/cha0ticynjin: the fucking fandom is on fire and yn is out here sharing francheskat contents

In your years in the industry, this is the first time you reported two successive exits in your future projects. It seemed like you cleared out the productions that will begin filming this year. But fans are still hoping that you will still go on with your other projects that you signed on for 2022.

On the other hand, Jin is doing his own thing. He just finished filming for a Netflix limited series that would probably won’t come out until the end of the year. He didn’t really get to be active on social media too as he is doing press and promos for his upcoming movie, Nope. His last online activity was an Instagram story of him and Donny hanging out.

Y/N Deleted Her Twitter Account and PPL Are *Very* Concerned

The multi-awarded actress-songwriter didn't give a reason for the sudden departure from Twitter, but she's still keeping her fans posted

On Friday, in the same day as April Fool’s, actress Y/N deactivated her Twitter account. Y/N, 27, didn’t share any reason for her unexpected departure from the social media site.

Y/N’s name began showing up on the said platform’s trending list Friday afternoon when her fans learned her account “doesn’t exist”. Users posted screenshots of her account’s blank page that says, “Something went wrong, try again”.

This sudden move by Y/N fueled more confusion among fans as she also left a couple of projects just last month. Fans were left to solve to find out who or what is the culprit with Y/N’s recent exits. Some wondered if this is for a new career move, or perhaps a personal life event is going on. But whatever the motive is, it appears the actress won’t be updating via Twitter anytime soon.

The actress-songwriter-producer had a busy six years. Ever since the year of 2016, Y/N appeared in at least two movies annually. She has been The Highest Paid Actress in both 2020 and 2021. She also co-produced a couple of films and series. She’s been doing and attending charity works and events every year as part of her advocacy for children’s welfare. In addition, there is a rumor going around about Y/N planning to dive into entrepreneurship.

The Don’t Look Up actress’ social media presence isn’t completely gone. Y/N is still active on her Instagram account although she often only posts images of her iconic Persian cat, Francheskat. Other than that, her last non-Francheskat post is about her holiday celebration in South Korea. It was rumored that she flew across the world with her rumored boyfriend, actor Jin, and a few close friends.

“It was a well-deserved break.” a source said, pertaining to the Christmas and New Year celebration in the East Asian country. “Although the two are admired all over the world, the locals in South Korea were all respectful of their privacy, including their four friends who went with them. His family loved and welcomed her with open arms during their four week-stay.”

She shared images of the said trip on Instagram after her appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon earlier this year. When asked about the trip during the red carpet premiere of From The Other Side, she simply replied with a shy smile:

“It was fun. Lovely.”

@/ynbestactress: OKAY SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING

@/cassiepyw: idk what to feel with any of this

replying to @/cassiepyw

-@/cassiepyw: i mean if this is for her own wellness then great but i’m really worried what’s going on

–@/YNEARRINGS: same 💔 she even left two projects

@/YNJINfilmss: now both my parents are not on twitter ☹️☹️

@/blueeyedsunshine: i swear if hailey have something to do with this, i’ll be standing at her doorsteps

@/YNJINUpdates: @/DonnyNextDoor you will be our reliable source of updates from now on 🙂😇

Just days later, you broke the silence by posting again in your Instagram stories. It was a black and white picture of clouds and written in the lower right corner of it was a simple text.

will be taking a break from everything. don’t worry, loves. will be back soon! love u all 🤍✨☁️🌹

That was the last time you alluded to your hiatus on Instagram. But ever since March 2022, you only posted two posts and rare Instagram stories (usually about the organizations you support). You also didn’t have any public appearances after that. Fans were worried and curious. Gossip about the same things floated around again: break-up, pregnancy, early retirement. And since you already showed your distaste over those kinds of news about you before, your loyal supporters worked together virtually to take down those articles.

@/YNUpdates: Again, please avoid interacting with absurd articles. Let’s all respect Y/N during her break ✨🤍

And when Jin was subtly asked about you and your sudden hiatus during an interview for a magazine, his only reply was,

“She still sends me memes she sees online. So I can tell, she’s happy and well. I’m sure with a lot of free time in her hands now, she has a ton of pictures of Francheskat in her phone.”

additional note: send me an ask if you have questions for the a-listers! thanks for reading! <3

taglist rules

THE A-LISTERS TAGLIST

@seolaquotes @fatimaaaaa129 @bangtannieshope @jub-jub @yoontaethings @kissme-ornot @dayyy-siii @sleepy-daydreams @veronawrites @cuteipat @stoop18 @ratherbefangirling @babystarcandy-gcf @akirawhore @alpacaparkaseok @rjsmochii @prlan @lovesickbangtan @zealouslightcookiebasketball @rapmonie2047 @btsiguess-kpop @angelarin @walkinganxiety0 @tpwk-280 @mediumcatt @bloopkook @stopeatread @sahazzy @yoooonie @amara-mars @firesighgirl @zwiehe

PERMANENT TAGLIST

@dunixxd @cixrosie @moonchild1 @jksjx @embrace-themagic @buttvi @starbtslove @missseoulite @vanntaesworld @barbiekatz @pixybear

#jin x reader #jin fluff #bts jin #jin fic #jin au #seokjin x reader #seokjin fanfiction #seokjin fluff #bts fluff #bts angst #bts x reader #bts imagine #bts series #bts au #bts fanfic #the a listers ksj

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macbeth-n-cheese · 1 year

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Undetectable...?

Warning: potential spoilers for the "Human Error" questline in the town of Covenant!

"Third generation synthetics represent the pinnacle of synth technology, being virtually indistinguishable from natural-born humans right down to the cellular level. [...] Though entirely biological, each Gen 3 synth contains a neurological implant inside their brain allowing them to be 'programmed' and manipulated via voice commands. This implant cannot be detected or removed without killing the synth. Synths can also have additional components installed, such as neuro-servos and other implants." (Fallout Wiki)

The statement that synths are indistinguishable from humans up until they die —and you can dissect them for components— has always made me a bit suspicious. Raised some eyebrows, from a medical perspective.

Fallout has, even after the bombs, a vast collection of solid medical technology. Focusing on diagnostics, there are x-rays (as proven by the light boxes we see around the wasteland), microscopes, and biometric scanners (judging by the name, those would tell temperature, blood pressure, heart beat, the basics), and I'm pretty sure EEG/ECG and MRI also exist, considering the implants and other enhancements people can buy, that would require some level of care and complex surgical tinkering.

And they mean to tell me none of those are able to detect components and implants. Preposterous, but alas, let's hypothesize on how this would be possible!

Regarding x-rays, there are two important terms we must keep in mind: radiotransparent and radiopaque. A radiotransparent material is that which allows the rays to completely travel through it, while radiopaque materials do the opposite, they stop the rays and "cast a shadow" on the plate below, and that's what creates images on the film. For something to not show up on an x-ray, it would have to be entirely radiotransparent, or hidden behind something entirely radiopaque.

Because of the brain and the fluids inside it, a skull is not perfectly radiopaque, allowing for foreign objects (especially those made of metal) and even some tumors to show up on the results. For this reason, a synth's components would have to be made of some specific plastic or other radiotransparent material such as epoxy resin or carbon fibers.

While we do obtain plastic from scrapping them in Fallout 4, that would most likely be its outer shell and support structures, because it would need to have internal circuits to work as intended, and those are usually not radiotransparent. Unless, of course, the institute invented/perfected a type of conductor for this exact purpose, something I wouldn't put past them.

MRI is a bit more complicated. It's a very thorough exam, and not easy to explain on a casual setting, but you can basically see everything through it. Splinters, tumors, abscesses, hernias, hardly anything escapes an MRI, especially not a foreign object, even if it is radiotransparent and non-metallic (metal and MRIs do not mix), this exam will most likely show it's contour in the tissue that surrounds it. And even if there was some built-in function on the component to muddle the results, a doctor would still be able to notice something was wrong based on that alone.

Those exams aren't commonplace, however, especially in post-apoc., and that may be why synths escape detection by it. Another thing is that the components are located in the brain, and would only show up if this area was scanned (groundbreaking information!). I imagine the rates of brain tumours, aneurysms and strokes in androids aren't that high.

Things get a bit more interesting on the EEG. An electroencephalogram, if you want to be posh, detects the electrical activity of the brain, which happens with every synapse your neurons make; and synapses can be defined as electric impulses that stimulate different parts of the brain to fulfill different functions. Those constantly moving currents create an electromagnetic field that is picked up by sensors glued to the patient's head.

It's important to consider that, according to the electrodynamics area of physics, the movement of electrons in any circumstance creates an electromagnetic field. Electrons move around constantly in every functioning electronic device (yet more groundbreaking information), and because of this, the circuits of the implants would be emitting an EM field at all times, seeing as they doesn't shut down. Logically, the EEG machine would end up registering this activity, the results of which would be most probably abnormal when compared to a normal EEG.

Again, this is not a very frequent exam to be made, and there is a chance that its results for a synth could be mistaken with those of an epileptic patient, so the possibility of synths going under the radar is still present.

What I conclude is that, under normal circumstances it would be extremely difficult to detect a synth, but if you were actively screening for them, taking what happens in Covenant as an example, you would certainly know what to look for and most definitely wouldn't waste your time with silly psychological evaluations. I know those folks were not that well in the head, but that much paranoia is bad for efficiency. Not that I want them to capture any synths, mind you, screw that entire creepy ass town!

To wrap it up, a competent doctor would be able to detect a synth if he was focused on it, and it's a bit of a wasted story/quest potential for Drs. Amari and Carrington if you ask me. Like many other lore details from Fallout 4, this one suffers from what I think is just plain old rushed production lol.

And that's it for today! Have a Deckerd for free serotonin :)

#fallout 4 #nick valentine #fallout #my weird rambling #synths #biorobotics #me inventing tags #fallout 3

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juniaships · 2 years

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Buck Cluck Deserves the Hate

Or, how to make a kfc meal 😈😈😈😈

Nowadays when I think of Chicken Little I think of it as a failed attempt at emulating Shrek without actually bothering to look into what made Shrek so memorable. Is it because it had likable characters? A plot that satirizes fairytales yet at the same time takes itself seriously? Well crafted jokes?

Well if you're looking for that in Chicken Little...you won't get it!

But this post isn't to review the film itself, no, what I'm here to do is give a certain character a well-deserved roasting befitting a Sunday meal at KFC. Hating this guy has become something of an past-time; perhaps this comment which has now been reached to levels of legendary might ring a bell:

Yes. Tonight I'll be serving a steaming plate of chicken right from the virtual oven!

To start, Buck is the father of the titular character and a lazy one at that. In the beginning of tbr film he troes to appease a crowd of angry civilians after his son caused mass hysteria that nearly ruined their lives. While their reactions are realistic enough, it's rather vile to direct hate towards a child for the crome of...being a child. Children are dumb and naturally stuff lile this could be a great learning experience!

Learning? In this town? Not a chance!

One year later the Littles (or Clucks, shouldn't it be called Buck Little well that describes the size of his cock but anyways) the Little Cocks are now ostracized and Chicken being a social pariah. From Buck's expressions and words, we can see how embarrassed he is by the whole thing. But the thing is here buck they didn't make a movie about you they made a movie about your kid!

One boring scene after another and very soon Chicken joins a baseball team! Yay! Now he can go out there show everyon8e what's he made of and make his daddy proud!

Now here is things get weird: aome people defend - yes DEFEND - Buck using this scene. But it doesn't work on liege of too little too late. This dude had the entire movie to treat Chicken Little like somebody and waited until the last minute to bother with him. And his apology comes off rather fake. It was so satisfying seeing Chicken call him out on his crap!

The most infamous wiki page in the history of wiki pages.

The mere mention of thus pissbucket is enough to set off a horde of rightfully enraged fans. Now some do come to his defense citing his eventual turn around. But the fact it took an alien invasion and his own son calling him out to do so shows that Buck is simply ineffectual. He can't truly think for himself. That's why he always goes with the crowd. It's the easy choice even at the cost of his son's self esteem. And for what? Because Chicken didn't peak in middle school??

What a coward!!!

Anyways I have little else to say about this raging cock other than the fact he is one of the worse of not THE worse character to come out of the house of Mouse. The only happily ever after he deserves is being the main course at sunday dinner!

Anyways that's my Friday roast session. Got any suggestions on the next character i can pick apart? Send it in the ask box!!

#fuck cluck all my homies hate buck cluck #disney #chicken little #buck cluck #fuck that guy #the only good thing he is is a 16pc Dinner! 😈😈😈😈😈😈#rant #vent

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maximumwobblerbanditdonut · 1 year

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Love Again: First Reviews

Love Again: Film Review

loud and clear reviews maxance vincent

MAXANCE VINCENT

The welcomed (but completely unnecessary) presence of Céline Dion cannot save Love Again from being amazingly trite.

Love Again is a big deal in Quebec, as it will mark the first film role of Céline Dion (as herself, of course. Who wouldn’t want to achieve this legendary status?). I’m curious to find out the box office numbers in the province this weekend. Still, Céline fans will not be disappointed at her appearances in the movie and at the multiple nods to Georges-Hébert Germain’s 1998 “Céline: The Authorized Biography”. Hell, our male protagonist, Rob (Sam Heughan) reads the book frequently to get to know more about the person he’s going to profile.

Rob is a music critic who feels he’s not the right person for the job to profile Dion, as he recently suffered a bad breakup and can’t handle her love songs. His boss (Steve Oram) believes he’s the right person for the job. Rob receives a professional cellphone as a gift. Still, he starts to receive cryptic text messages from a number belonging to Mira Ray (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), who believes she is texting the phone number of her deceased boyfriend, John (Arinzé Kene). He passed away two years before, and the audience sees this tonally jarring scene at the top of the film that sets the stage for how clichéd and exhaustingly boring the whole affair is going to be.

Then Céline Dion comes into play, badly shoehorned into a movie that does not need her presence. As herself, Dion is fine, but her appearance doesn’t make sense. The film was based on a 2016 German film titled SMS für Dich (which I, unfortunately, did not get a chance to see as it was unavailable pretty much everywhere), which in turn was based on the novel of the same name by Sofie Cramer. I may be wrong, but my preliminary research shows that no pop singer is giving advice on love to our protagonists in those source materials. So what is Céline Dion doing here?

Of course, some will argue that the underlying theme of the film is love, and that Dion is the epitome of love, as she sang songs like “My Heart Will Go On”, “Because You Loved Me”, “The Power of Love”, and released albums like “S’il suffisait d’aimer” (also a song), “Let’s Talk About Love”, “Falling Into You”, “These Are Special Times”, “Loved Me Back to Life”, “The Colour of My Love”— you get the idea. Dion also lost her husband (and manager) René Angélil, who passed away in 2016. She has always described him as “the love of my life,” and does so frequently in this film. In isolation, this all makes sense. And it would’ve made more sense if the film was about a fictionalized version of Dion inside a story that allows her to heal from that loss.

What doesn’t make sense is how she’s integrated into the story about something completely different. Like, why is she here? Every time she’s on screen, it’s great because Dion has always had a legendary presence in Quebec media. Still, one can’t help but think she adds nothing to the film, especially with its main relationship that feels so Hallmark-lite in how unimaginative it is. Rob falls in love with Mira by reading her texts addressed to her dead boyfriend? That’s just… creepy. But it does have something in common with another 2023 romcom, Your Place or Mine, where the realization that one character is in love with the other is done when they’re apart (in this case, they don’t know each other). Much like Your Place or Mine, the two leads have virtually no chemistry when they go together.

Priyanka Chopra Jonas is a charming actress and is quite funny in a scene where she’s paired with her real-life husband Nick Jonas (playing a total douche as a date), but can’t match with Heughan, who is as flat and unengaging as Ashton Kutcher was in Your Place or Mine. It doesn’t help that their relationship is filled with endless clichés, from the moment they accidentally “meet” to their first date to the (predictable) scene where she inevitably finds out about the texts. Their reconciliation is amazingly baffling, but one would’ve thought this is where the filmmakers would save the best Céline Dion scene for last, yet…it never comes.

Love Again never coalesces into something interesting. The leads aren’t a “perfect match,” and Céline Dion’s fictionalized version of herself doesn’t feel as inspired by the material as Chopra Jonas, who tries so hard to make this movie work (her phone call with Céline is quite magical). However, it’s not enough for the movie to work. This is all stuff audiences have seen before and done even cheaply on the Hallmark channel, where they at least acknowledge their lack of originality. Wasting Céline like this feels criminal. She deserves better. We all deserve better than a film like Love Again.

Love Again will be released in US theaters on May 5, 2023.

youtube

Heughan, who is as flat and unengaging as Ashton Kutcher was in Your Place or Mine 😂🤣

#Youtube

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casual-video-transcripts · 2 years

Video

youtube

“The History of How We Watch Movies” by Be Kind Rewind

Transcript by CCKN starts under the cut

[0:00] I’m going to assume that if you’re watching this video

[0:01] you subscribe to at least one streaming platform

[0:05] or at the very least

[0:06] you use someone else’s password to access the streaming platform.

[0:09] There are already so many

[0:11] and a new one seems to pop up every day.

[0:13] After reading about yet another new service,

[0:16] I started to think about the history of this relationship

[0:18] between the audience, content providers, and how we watch stuff.

[0:22] The core of this relationship is actually a very logistical question.

[0:26] Literally, where do studios put their content

[0:30] to make sure people can see it

[0:31] and more importantly pay for it?

[0:33] For a long time the answer was pretty simple.

[0:36] Every single penny film industry made went through the box office window,

[0:40] but in 2019 the answer is a lot more complicated.

[0:44] Our freedom to access film has varied throughout film history.

[0:47] And like most things it’s usually contingent on technologies and business strategies outside of our control.

[0:53] Audiences, studios, and content providers are constantly negotiating

[0:56] supply and demand to make films available.

[1:00] Consumers like to be entertained in the least expensive,

[1:03] most convenient way possible.

[1:05] Studios and other content providers, well,

[1:08] they want to earn money and to varying degrees support artists or ideas,

[1:11] but let’s be honest,

[1:13] they own businesses and they want to keep the lights on.

[1:16] So that’s what we’re gonna talk about today:

[1:18] the methods and changes in how we watch movies,

[1:20] and why those have happened,

[1:22] and how the benefits and drawbacks of each

[1:25] advantage certain parties over others.

[1:32] Virtually impossible to imagine for some of you I’m sure,

[1:36] but for at least 30 years a theater was literally the only place you could watch a movie.

[1:41] The exchange in that world appears pretty straightforward.

[1:44] You go to the theater, you pay for a ticket, and that’s it.

[1:46] Studios are happy, you’re happy.

[1:48] Yeah, you had to leave your house but don’t know any differently,

[1:51] so was it really so inconvenient?

[1:53] Well kind of.

[1:55] So back in the day movie studios not only produced and distributed their films,

[1:59] but they also could actually own the theaters where films were exhibited.

[2:04] They realized owning theaters allowed them to gain

[2:06] complete control over the entire film changes when you’re making money on where it’s playing.

[2:14] So let’s say as a hypothetical,

[2:15] to be clear this is a hypothetical,

[2:18] [the] Disney-owned AMC theaters.

[2:21] You would naturally expect AMC to have some kind of advantage when the next Avengers movie comes out.

[2:25] Eh, that's basically what happened.

[2:28] Studios did give advantages to their own theaters in ways that weren’t exactly convenient for consumers

[2:33] or conductive to competition within the film industry.

[2:36] For example they often refused to exhibit independent producers,

[2:40] they set price minimums on tickets.

[2:42] They would release a film to only one theater within a geographic zone to ensure that they would obtain the largest possible audience for the film

[2:50] and to prevent other theaters in close proximity from competing for the same customers.

[2:54] They gave films special clearances,

[2:56] meaning they’d play a film in one theater for a certain amount of time

[2:59] and then to a wider release to independent theaters later

[3:02] after most people had already seen it.

[3:04] And a wide release had little value.

[3:06] Studios also engaged in “block booking,”

[3:08] which is the practice of offering a

[3:09] feature upon the condition that

[3:11] the exhibitor license a bundle of other features.

[3:14] The idea of being one or two of a group of five might be good

[3:17] but you ensure a return on all of them regardless of quality or box office potential.

[3:22] Now to be clear studios didn’t own every single theater

[3:26] only about 17% of them in fact.

[3:28] However the vast majority of those happen to be the most important,

[3:32] high trafficked theaters in major markets around the country.

[3:35] So they had an outsize financial impact.

[3:37] For example exhibition contributed to

[3:40] approximately 60% of Paramount’s profits

[3:42] from 1940 to 1948.

[3:45] So even though they were blatantly

[3:46] robbing audiences of choice and

[3:48] preventing independent producers from succeeding,

[3:51] studios really, really liked owning their theater.

[3:54] The government however

[3:56] was not such a fan.

[3:58] They saw this as anti-competitive behavior

[4:00] and for nearly 25 years continuously litigated this issue in court,

[4:04] sometimes winning small victories,

[4:06] sometimes looking the other way in

[4:08] exchange for favors.

[4:10] Finally the Justice Department took on

[4:11] eight studios for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act

[4:15] and found that the defendants had engaged in a widespread

[4:17] conspiracy to illegally fix motion

[4:19] picture prices

[4:20] and monopolize both the

[4:21] film distribution and movie theater markets.

[4:24] The Supreme Court upheld this

[4:25] decision in U.S. versus Paramount in 1948,

[4:28] outlawing the distribution practices I outlined earlier

[4:31] and mandating that studios divest from their theaters.

[4:35] Such deeply structural changes

[4:36] would deprive the studios of vital income.

[4:40] So they had to take a step back and rethink how they ran their businesses.

[4:44] In a post-Paramount world,

[4:45] failure became much more expensive.

[4:48] Without block booking,

[4:51] each film had to qualitatively stand on its own.

[4:53] With no financial investment in theater ownership,

[4:54] the incentive to maintain the

[4:56] volume of production required to run a

[4:58] national network of theaters disappeared.

[5:01] As a result, studios made less films per year

[5:06] but tried to make them better.

[5:07] They spent more on publicity for each

[5:08] and used the technological advances of traditional exhibition to their advantage,

[5:13] which partially explains why

[5:14] Widescreen, Technicolor, and 3D took off.

[5:17] But even though they had a strategy for

[5:19] handling all of these changes

[5:20] the transition wasn’t easy.

[5:22] Hollywood entered a decade-long recession,

[5:25] four thousand theaters closed their doors and profits plummeted.

[5:28] Companies disposed of their back lots and other assets,

[5:32] and paired producers, stars, and directors from their payrolls.

[5:36] The studio system was on its deathbed.

[5:38] Perhaps I’ve made the Paramount decree sound extremely destructive.

[5:41] And don’t get me wrong,

[5:42] they were a pain in the neck for bigger studios.

[5:46] But the truth is

[5:47] many more factors caused this recession than the Paramount decrees alone.

[5:49] Ultimately in terms of affordable access to quality entertainment,

[5:53] audiences benefited from the changes.

[5:56] And as far as independent producers were concerned

[5:58] the decision was a distinct victory toward restoring free enterprise.

[6:03] The number of independent producers went from

[6:05] just 70 in 1946 to 170 in 1957.

[6:10] Life magazine called it “a phenomenon and a revolution”

[6:12] and then you know, TV happened.

[6:24] In 1939 the Allied Theater Owners of New Jersey sent a letter to the president of RKO

[6:28] after the company supplied a trailer for Gunga Din for some television tests in Los Angeles.

[6:33] It said,

[6:34] “You can readily understand that if

[6:37] our patrons are able to see a picture

[6:38] such as Gunga Din on their television sets at home,

[6:40] they are not likely to come into the theater.”

[6:43] In 1939.

[6:45] When TVs looked like this.

[6:46] In other words, studios were keenly aware

[6:49] of the threat posed by television

[6:51] very early on in the medium’s development.

[6:53] And frankly they were right to be worried.

[6:55] The thing most often cited as the

[6:58] predominant cause of declining theater

[6:59] revenues was television.

[7:01] The satisfied demand for entertainment by means

[7:04] other than that of conventional theater exhibition.

[7:06] It made the business of being entertained

[7:08] cheaper and easier,

[7:10] which as we established,

[7:12] people like.

[7:13] Plus convenience had a greater value in

[7:15] a post-war America that was experiencing

[7:17] tremendous social, and economic change.

[7:20] The Baby Boom started.

[7:23] Higher disposable income meant new hobbies.

[7:26] The expensive highway system massively grew suburban areas.

[7:29] People were busier and farther away.

[7:32] Movies had to be big,

[7:34] worth the time and trouble to get people out of the house.

[7:36] As Patty Calistro put it,

[7:38] “More appealing than the mediocre movie was curling up on the sofa

[7:41] with a bowl of homemade popcorn and watching a 30 minute escapade with Lucy and Ricky Ricardo.”

[7:47] We all get this logic.

[7:48] Most of us still exercise this logic.

[7:51] At a certain point,

[7:52] studios had to contend to this new reality

[7:55] and it became a game of survival.

[7:57] In addition to utilizing its advanced technologies and focusing on making less but better films,

[8:02] the studios began a delicate balancing act.

[8:06] How do you invest just enough to make money off of something so readily suited to your product

[8:11] but not sabotage traditional theater exhibition and ticket sales in the process?

[8:16] Many studios invested in networks.

[8:17] Paramount, for example, owned stations in LA

[8:20] that syndicated programming to over 40 stations.

[8:23] Studios also dabbled in original programming,

[8:25] birthing the TV movie and shows like Disneyland,

[8:28] which was essentially an hour-long advertisement for Disney properties.

[8:32] As for traditional movies

[8:34] studios knew pretty early on that they wouldn’t allow new films to air on television.

[8:38] But they understood both a network demand for programming

[8:41] especially for non-prime time slots

[8:44] and the audience demand for content they knew they’d like.

[8:47] So rather than letting their libraries of old films gather dust in a vault somewhere,

[8:51] studios sold their pre-1948 film libraries as [the] first syndication.

[8:57] Suddenly films no one had seen in years

[8:59] became available to the public.

[9:00] It didn’t make theaters mad,

[9:02] it made studios money, and most importantly, in my opinion,

[9:06] kept film history alive.

[9:07] I can’t tell you how many old interviews I’ve watched where stars talked about new audiences

[9:11] discovering their work on television.

[9:14] Access to these films helped

[9:15] develop America’s shared cultural vocabulary

[9:18] and fuels Golden Age nostalgia.

[9:20] How we think about film exhibition has only continued to expand

[9:23] since television became commonplace in American society.

[9:27] And out understanding of where and when we can watch things grows,

[9:30] so does the value of convenience.

[9:31] Cable, pay-per-view, the video store,

[9:34] all have thrived because they offer choices.

[9:36] Personalized programming.

[9:39] And studios have kept up.

[9:41] Although hesitant at first to embrace video technology and video stores because they feared losses in revenue,

[9:46] they learned that the afterlife of films could extend to the developing home video sphere.

[9:52] By 1989 there were over 30,000 video stores in the U.S.

[9:56] And revenue for home video superseded traditional box office.

[10:00] Stores like Blockbuster allowed people to explore their own tastes,

[10:04] revisit favorites on their own terms,

[10:06] and meet people who could recommend new and interesting things.

[10:09] And then someone had an idea.

[10:11] What if you could get all that

[10:12] but never leave your house?

[10:19] In 1950, TV offered entertainment by other means.

[10:23] In 2019 streaming services offer on-demand entertainment by other means.

[10:30] You may recall that vintage Netflix had no original programming at all.

[10:34] The premise of the business was essentially that

[10:36] late fees at Blockbuster was pretty annoying.

[10:38] So for a monthly fee, they would send you any DVD you want in the mail

[10:42] and your life would be a whole lot easier.

[10:44] It wasn’t until 2007 that the company adopted a streaming model

[10:47] and not until 2013 that it premiered its first original show,

[10:51] House of Cards, starring

[10:52] Robin Wright only.

[10:54] Since then streaming services and original programming generally have exploded,

[10:59] nearly killing video stores in the process.

[11:01] In 2013

[11:02] Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy

[11:04] and just under six thousand video stores remain down from thirty thousand.

[11:09] Netflix and Amazon on the other hand

[11:10] are billion-dollar companies

[11:12] with shows and films that have won numerous major awards.

[11:15] And yeah okay,

[11:17] the awards conversation is for another day.

[11:18] But all this is a pretty good hint that people really like watching things this way.

[11:23] It’s given us an entirely new cultural vocabulary.

[11:27] And studios have definitely noticed.

[11:30] Like I said at the beginning of this video,

[11:31] a new streaming platform seems to pop up every day.

[11:34] Apple, Disney, Sundance, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, HBO Now,

[11:39] Sling, Shutter, The Criterion Channel,

[11:41] DirecTV Now, CBS All Access,

[11:43] and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

[11:45] Personalized on-demand streaming to a device in your pocket

[11:49] is the best possible thing audiences could hope for in terms of convenient entertainment,

[11:53] at least until we all have chips in our brains.

[11:56] Studio-owned streaming platforms are the best possible thing studios could ask for

[12:00] in terms of profit,

[12:02] at least that’s what they’re betting.

[12:03] Why?

[12:05] Because they’re eliminating the middleman.

[12:07] Take Disney for example.

[12:09] In 2017 Disney ended it contract with Netflix

[12:12] with the intention of starting its own streaming platform,

[12:14] Disney+,

[12:15] which will launch later this year.

[12:17] Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and the Disney Vault

[12:20] will all have a new home

[12:21] and pesky Netflix won’t be taking a cut of Uncle Walt’s money.

[12:24] In other words

[12:25] studios are exercising pre-Paramount logic.

[12:28] They can maximize profits by

[12:30] becoming their own exhibitors,

[12:32] except now it’s an app and not a physical theater.

[12:36] It may have taken a couple of decades

[12:37] but they sure did figure out how to sidestep hat one.

[12:40] So even though there are more

[12:41] options than ever when it comes to how,

[12:43] where, and what we watch,

[12:45] the number of choices can feel ironically limited.

[12:47] It’s a pretty basic economic principle that

[12:49] people have a finite income

[12:51] and will limit spending on any given thing

[12:53 based on that income.

[12:55] How many streaming services can a person reasonably pay for,

[12:58] much less keep up with?

[13:00] Now I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing.

[13:02] Lord knows I love a good streaming service.

[13:05] It genuinely took me forever to write this video

[13:08] because I kept getting distracted by the 90′s sitcom, Cybill,

[13:11] now streaming on Amazon Prime.

[13:13] I’ve watched every single season of Grace and Frankie

[13:15] in its entirety the day it came out.

[13:17] That would never have been possible at

[13:19] literally any other time in history

[13:21] and I love that.

[13:23] But the reality of the streaming service, conglomerate-driven world is that

[13:27] audiences don’t have as much control over their personal libraries as they want you to believe you do.

[13:32] Content can be easily withheld

[13:33] more often than not purposely

[13:35] overprotected to the point that it’s unavailable.

[13:38] Take for example FilmStruck.

[13:39] Formerly the home of indie, foreign, and classic films,

[13:43] the service was shut down by Warner Media

[13:45] after the company’s merger with AT&T.

[13:47] AT&T called FilmStruck “largely a niche service.”

[13:51] And despite protests from prominent filmmakers and

[13:53] widely circulated petitions,

[13:55] it failed to see any growth opportunity for the service.

[13:58] So that was it, it was gone.

[13:59] It was a pretty stark realization that

[14:01] streaming does not

[14:02] equal access

[14:03] and our standards of

[14:05] accessibility has changed

[14:07] since streaming platforms became a thing.

[14:09] It’s no longer satisfying to just happen upon

[14:11] a movie you like playing live on TV.

[14:13] There is an expectation of digital availability

[14:17] and that’s where exclusivity created by so many platforms can feel frustrating.

[14:22] Will I need to subscribe to Disney+ to watch Mary Poppins?

[14:25] Will I ever be able to convince

[14:26] one person to subscribe to CBS All Access

[14:30] just so that they can watch The Good Fight, the greatest show on television?

[14:33] As you may have gathered

[14:34] I like watching movies. A LOT.

[14:37] And it’s important to me to know

[14:38] where I can access interesting stuff.

[14:40] Undoubtedly

[14:41] streaming services offer

[14:43] an unprecedented amount of control over what we watch.

[14:45] They can be pretty great,

[14:47] they can also be pretty frustrating.

[14:49] Some people will say that owning physical media is the answer.

[14:51] Those people have never lived in a New York City apartment

[14:55] with no storage space.

[14:56] And considering the pace of technology these days,

[14:59] who can say how long it’ll be before we’re all replacing our blu-rays?

[15:02] Because that’s this goes.

[15:04] We’re constantly recalibrating our viewing habits to match new technology.

[15:07] Thankfully though with more platforms

[15:09] more artists are given opportunities

[15:12] they may not have had under a

[15:13] traditional studios’ leadership.

[15:15] Ultimately if we want to watch good stuff,

[15:18] if we want a vibrant film industry,

[15:19] we’re in good shape.

[15:21] By the way the Department of Justice recently announced

[15:24] that it will revise the Paramount decrees to determine

[15:27] whether or not we still need them,

[15:29] even though lawsuits regarding exhibition and traditional theaters are

[15:32] literally still happening.

[15:34] So keep an eye out.

[15:36] You never know what's just around the corner at your local

[15:37] Disney-owned AMC.

[15:42] Hi everyone.

[15:43] Thank you for watching this video, especially if

[15:44] you normally tune in to this channel for

[15:46] Oscar content.

[15:48] I promise we’ll be back to

[15:49] regular programming soon.

[15:51] In the meantime I just wanted to let you all know that I

[15:53] have updated my Patreon page to have

[15:57] some cool new perks on there.

[15:59] Be sure to check it out and thank you so much

[16:01] again for watching this video.

YouTube Channel: Be Kind Rewind

Video Description:

There are more places to watch movies than ever! In this video, I outline how we got to this point, from Supreme Court decisions, to the rise of television, streaming services, and beyond!

My good friend Olivia helped me out with animations for this video. Check her out: olivia-kingsley.com

Music from Epidemic Sound.

Find me on Twitter @bkrewind Find me on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/bkrewind

Disclaimer and preface: None of the videos I transcribe belong to me. They belong to the content creators and the crew behind the videos.

My transcripts may not be 100% as I am not a professional. I'm just someone who wants to provide video transcripts for people to understand and enjoy these videos.

For this video, I focused on the speaker. If there are any corrections you would like me to make, let me know in the comment section of the post.

Personal Notes: Hi everyone!

This took a while, like usual. I’ve been recently trying to adjust going back to work due to being knocked out by COVID back in June so the last two weeks or so were me trying to recover and rest.

I’m also trying hard not to melt from this summer heat. 😭

I was gonna add the links to the articles Be Kind Rewind used for this video but I’m a bit out of it right now LOL

I’ll probably add them in later through the comment section.

If you like this video or any other video from Be Kind Rewind, please support them by watching her videos on the YouTube platform and through other means by her.

Until next time, bye!

P.S. This is your friendly reminder to drink some water.

P.P.S. Timestamps for chapters/sections of this video are down below.

1:25 The Studio System

6:17 Television

10:15 Streaming

#be kind rewind #movies #movie theatre #the studio system #television #streaming #CCKN transcripts

0 notes

otomes-world · 2 years

Note

Hello!

Congratulations on nearing 1k, I hope you can achieve new milestone later, like 2k.

I love your content honestly, it gave me the smile, chills and fun when i read them, i have a really great memory fot each post you make.

You make me smile when i'm having a bad day so thank you!

Btw this the request i want to make hehe ↓

I'm not shocked really, hehe cause i ahve a dream once about them.

and here, have my virtual hug!

I hope you have a wonderful day

(ღˇ◡ˇ*)♡

Thanks a lot! I am very pleased to know that you liked my work so much, honestly. Let me send you virtual hugs too (つ≧▽≦)つ

yandere!Deuce Spade x you x yandere!Ace Trappola

Many wondered how you with Ace and Deuce got along. You would be surprised if your trio could answer this question. If you were asked personally, you would say: this was how the circumstances developed. Another explanation was slow to come to your mind. The way you were approached by Trappola in the main square in front of the college, the way you met Spade in the room of mirrors - everything was pure luck, thanks to which you became the most famous trio.

You had time to fully realize what personalities made up the majority of the students, so most of the time you hung out with the duo of the first years. You dined together, went to classes, sometimes arranged sleepovers with watching films that they brought. You knew little about the culture of this world, completely relying on your friends in this regard.

The weekend had come, and you decided to arrange another joint evening. This time they brought some comedy CDs and a couple of horror films. You didn't mind, but you knew that Deuce didn't particularly like scary movies. So the idea to bring it was entirely Ace's. You sometimes wondered if he had set himself a daily task. As if he had not once teased a friend, then his day would not have gone as well as it could. Trappola liked to do the same with you, but you often answered to him. This was probably why in your company the egg lover got the most.

That evening you were especially tired, so you did not remember half of the film, as well as did not make out the voices of your friends, who, judging by the intonations, were arguing about something as usual. You propped your head on your hand and with sleepy eyes tried to follow what was happening on the screen, but without success. You no longer remembered who the main character was or what the story was about.

"Name, listen-.. Name?" Ace turned to you, but you heard his voice through the fallen veil, but the next `tsk` clearly. "Fell asleep. How could I come to like you."

"A-ace, you!.."

Before you finally drifted off to sleep, you heard Deuce's nervous voice and then shushing from redhaired.

You woke up feeling unable to move, as well as how uncomfortable it was for you to sit. Somehow freeing your hands, you raised them to your eyes and rubbed them, chasing away the remnants of sleep. When you were finally able to look around, you found that the TV had been turned off a long time ago, and friends decided to use you as a pillow. Trappola grabbed your waist, burying his head in you, and Spade, who slid down, did the same with your legs.

Feeling like a caterpillar in some kind of cocoon, you took a deep breath and screamed as loudly as your still unawakened vocal cords would allow, "Good morning!"

At the sound of your voice, the first years immediately flinched, instinctively letting go, which you took advantage of, standing up and moving further away. Although they themselves were not yet fully awake, the way they sent each other eloquent glances made you suspicious. However, neither the first nor the second had a word about the previous night. You frowned, but went to the stairs to the bathroom, making a note in your head to carefully examine your face in the mirror for inscriptions and drawings.

#yandere ace trappola #twst ace #ace trappola x reader #ace trappola #twisted wonderland #twst oneshot #twst #twst fic #twisted wonderland x reader #yandere twisted wonderland #twst deuce #deuce spade #deuce x reader #yandere deuce spade #1k followers event

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just-another-blog-of-fluff · 3 years

Text

Familiar - Part 3

Word count: 5450

Warnings: Nothing major - a bit of anxiety brain (I have a tendency to insert that part of myself in my fics sometimes 😅), romance, a blossoming relationship

By popular demand, the series continues! The basis for this part comes from a prompt by a lovely anon requesting a dance beneath the stars.

The series will continue in part 4, including another prompt by another lovely anon 😊

Read first: Part 1 | Part 2

Three whole weeks. It had been three entire weeks since Tom had left, travelling to make appearances with the other cast members of the Marvel movies at various conventions across the country.

You hadn’t realized just how much you would miss him, but your heart was aching. Nothing between the pair of you was official, but you’d been seeing each other now for a few months, and during that time you met up at LEAST two or three times a week, even if it were just for coffee before work in the morning. This was the first time since you’d started seeing each other that he had to be away for a prolonged period of time, and you were feeling pretty lonely without his company.

It wasn’t like you didn’t get to talk to him. He video chatted with you every night, usually from one of the various hotel rooms he stayed in while he was bouncing from state to state. It always made you a little jealous, looking around at the gorgeous rooms he was staying in all by himself. Tom always gave you a virtual tour of the room and assured you someday you’d be able to join him and see what it’s like to stay in such a lavish hotel suite.

Tonight, he was a little later than usual with his video call. You sat cross-legged on your bed with your laptop open on the bedspread in front of you, waiting patiently for the notification that Tom was trying to get ahold of you. While you waited, you continued working on another one of your film projects, periodically switching windows to check your notifications. After a while of waiting, you changed into your pajamas and crawled back into bed, setting your laptop on top of your legs after sliding under the covers and leaning your head against the headboard. You closed your eyes, figuring it would only be for a few minutes.

“Are you awake there, love?”

“Hmm… what?” Rubbing your eyes, you glanced at your open laptop screen to find your video chat open, Tom’s handsome face smiling back at you on the screen. “Oh, hey!” You sat up a little, voice raspy with the remnants of sleep.

“I’m so sorry I’m late, darling. I must say, you look adorable half-asleep like that though.”

“Tom… shh!” you blushed, covering your face with your hands.

“I know, I know. How dare I complement you?” You lowered your hands so you could see his smiling face again. He was in the same room he’d been in the night before, their last night before they packed up and travelled to the next destination. “How was your day today?”

“Mm, same old, same old.” You grabbed your pillow and shoved it behind your head so you could sit up a bit more. “I miss you terribly.”

“I miss you too. Actually, that brings me to the next thing I wanted to talk to you about…”

“Oh? Do tell.” The look on his face was excited, but at the same time… nervous. Anxious. It wasn’t a very familiar look to you on Tom’s features. It made you deathly curious as to what he was about to say.

“So… alright.” He adjusted himself in his chair, sitting up a bit straighter. “What would you say to me if I told you I wanted to fly you out to LA so you can attend a cast party with me?”

You stared blankly at the screen for a moment, wondering if you had actually never woken, that you were actually dreaming up this entire conversation.

“Still with me, love?”

“Sorry! I’m awake! I just…”

Tom’s expression faded a bit, still maintaining his kind smile. “It’s alright if you don’t want to, I understand-“

“No! No, Tom, it’s not that. I want to, I do!”

“Great!” His eyes lit up again, smile broadening.

“It’s just…” You shifted awkwardly on your bed, trying to think of how best to explain your hesitation. “… Are you sure you want me to go with you to a cast party?”

“Of course I do! I did ask you just now, did I not?” he asked teasingly.

“I know but – I’m… me and… ordinary and… well you’re you and…”

Tom nodded slowly, realization dawning on him. “You think because you’re not a celebrity that I shouldn’t invite you, is that right?”

“Well… yeah, that sounds about right.”

“Ah, I wish I could hug you right now, darling.” Tom leaned forward a bit toward his webcam. “You don’t have to be a celebrity to go to a cast party.”

“Yeah, but… I don’t know, I just feel like I’ll be out of place, won’t I?”

“Of course not! You’ll be with me; I’ll introduce you to everyone, and I just know they’ll all love you. They’ll be so excited to finally meet my girlfriend.”

You paused, jaw hanging open just slightly, eyes wide. Tom cocked his head a bit at your expression.

“Are you alright, love? Is there a ghost behind me or something like that?”

“I’m your girlfriend?” You couldn’t help a tiny smile from tugging at your lips. Tom smiled brightly, chuckling.

“Well of course you are! Aren’t you?”

“You never asked me officially,” you teased, folding your arms defiantly. “You can’t just make these assumptions, Thomas.”

“Eheh, alright. Would you do me the honor of being my girlfriend, then?” Grinning like a giddy school child, you nodded. “Excellent! So, it’s settled, then. You’ll accept my invitation to come out to LA this weekend?”

“Well… I am off work all weekend… I suppose I can make a trip.”

“Wonderful! You’ve no idea how happy that makes me,” Tom gushed, beaming. “Alright, then. Don’t worry about a thing – I’ll take care of having you flown out here, you just pack a bag for the weekend, and I’ll see you soon.” You blew him a kiss before saying goodnight and shutting your laptop, placing it on your side table and shutting your lamp off to go to sleep.

Most anyone you knew would have been ecstatic at the opportunity to attend a cast party, and a Marvel cast party no less. But this was different. What if they didn’t like you? What if you said something completely awkward in front of everyone and Tom decided you just weren’t cut out for life dating a famous guy? You knew he’d never think something like that, but you couldn’t stop the anxious thoughts running through your mind.

Tom wasn’t kidding when he said he’d take care of everything, and days later you found yourself sitting on a plane on your way to LA. You were able to convince him you didn’t need first class, despite his arguing with you. Still, the sneak had ordered you a glass of champagne for the flight without telling you. The audacity.

After deboarding the plane, you picked up your bag from baggage claim and made your way to the arrivals pick-up location outside. Scanning the row of cars, you finally found someone standing with a sign bearing your name toward the middle of the line. Dragging your rolling bag behind you, you made your way down the sidewalk to meet your chauffer.

“Hi there, you’re here to pick me up?” you asked timidly, trying to lean around the sign so you could see the chauffer’s face. He swiftly lowered it, revealing familiar, beaming features. With a squeal, you dropped the handle of your bag and threw yourself into his arms. “Tom you trickster!”

“I couldn’t resist, love,” he laughed, squeezing you tight. Without loosening your hold around his waist, you tilted your head back to press a kiss to his lips.

“I’m so glad to see you. I missed you,” you sighed happily. He held you in his arms for a few moments, just enjoying the feeling of your body against his.

You got in the passenger’s seat of the car, and Tom pulled the car away from the airport to head to the hotel. The pair of you chatted about what you’d been up to the last few weeks apart while you watched the city scroll by outside the window. You hadn’t spent much time travelling, and you’d never been to California. The city was bustling; crowds of people walking everywhere you looked, going in and out of the many skyscraper buildings and shops lining the sidewalks.

“Are you excited for the cast party this evening?” Tom asked, glancing at you out of the corner of his eye.

“I am.”

“You don’t sound it. What’s going through that beautiful head of yours?”

You blushed, turning to look out your window to hide your face. “I guess I’m just thinking about how out of my league this is… I don’t know what to say, I don’t know how to act – I don’t even know what to wear… god, what am I going to wear? I…”

Tom cut your rant off with a firm hand on your knee. “Darling, you’re going to explode thinking all of those things at the same time. You just have to be the you I care for. Say what you would say normally. Act how you would act normally.” A small grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “And don’t worry about what to wear. I think we’ll figure something out.”

“Tom, you didn’t,” you swatted his knee playfully, and he responded by squeezing above your kneecap just to hear you squeak.

“I have every right to dote upon my girlfriend.”

You leaned back in your seat, a smile forcing its way onto your face at hearing the word. ‘My girlfriend.’ You weren’t sure you’d ever get used to hearing that.

Tom took your bag for you when you’d arrived at the hotel despite your protesting, leading you up to the suite he was staying in. The lobby itself was gorgeous – marble flooring, cathedral-height ceilings, and a huge crystal chandelier hanging over the center of the room. The white marble spanning the room was contrasted with greenery lining the walls, and a couple of tall indoor plants set in the middle of the room. Even the elevator was exquisite, with marble flooring continued inside and inset lights in the ceiling emitting a beautiful glow reflected in the mirrors on the walls.

You’d seen many of the suites Tom had stayed in via webcam over the last few weeks, but they paled in comparison to the one you entered through the elevator doors.

The door opened straight into the middle of the suite, a sitting area with plush white sofas and chairs around a wide screen TV above a stone fireplace. Huge floor-length windows offered a stunning view of the city. Adjoining the sitting room was a kitchen/dining area, which housed a mini bar and a small refrigerator.

“Holy hell,” you whispered under your breath.

“It’s a bit excessive sometimes, but I’m glad I at least get to share it with you this weekend.” Tom wrapped an arm around your waist to give you a loving squeeze as he observed you scanning the room in awe.

“God this is nicer than my apartment,” you joked, making your way into the bedroom.

If it were even possible, the bedroom was more dazzling than the main room. The whole room was flooded with sunlight through an entire wall of windows overlooking the city. A soft-looking king-sized bed sat facing the windows, and you couldn’t help but walk over and press a hand into the mattress to see if it was as plush as it looked. (In fact, it was.) There were black-out curtains draped in the corners of the wall of windows, presumably so you could actually get some sleep in the morning without being blinded.

Wandering into the adjoining bathroom, your jaw dropped. It had intricate marble floors and a marble vanity to match. A glass-walled standing shower stood in one corner of the room. But perhaps the most gorgeous part was the marble bathtub, standing beside another wall of windows overlooking the city. Normally you were more of a shower person, preferring to get in and get out quickly to start your day, but you might just consider making an exception for this breathtaking view.

You found Tom standing out on the balcony, his elbows propped on the railing while he gazed out over the city. Sneaking up quietly behind him, you slid your hands around his waist to hug him from behind. He startled a little, then relaxed and placed his hand over yours.

“For a moment I thought you were going to tickle me,” he chuckled.

“Oh? That could be arranged,” you teased, wriggling your fingers into his belly. He laughed, lacing his fingers through yours to prevent you from tickling him.

“Cheeky thing, you.” He turned around to face you, smiling before leaning down to press a chaste kiss to your lips. “Would you like to see what I’ve gotten for you to wear this evening?”

“Did you pick it out all by yourself?” you asked warily.

“Well, admittedly, I had a bit of help from your roommate,” he confessed with a sheepish smile. You breathed a small sigh of relief.

“Oh, good. She knows what I like.”

“Oh, and you’re worried I don’t?” He dug his fingers into your sides, making you double over and giggle.

“Noho that’s not what I meant!!” you insisted. He relented, reaching for your hand, and taking it to lead you back inside.

Tom took you into the bedroom, opening the closet and removing a black garment bag from inside, draping it across your outstretched arms.

“Go on, try it on,” he insisted. You brought it with you into the bathroom and shut the door, hanging it on the door of the shower and unzipping the bag to take a look inside. It was a sage green dress, with a neckline that appeared to be not overly showy but not excessively modest either. The top of the dress was a thin circular strap of green fabric meant to rest around your neck just above your collarbone. The strap was laced through two wider, tapered panels of fabric which composed the front of the dress, with a thin slit in between. You could tell even in the bag that it was more flowy at the bottom, which you were thankful for.

You removed it from the bag and pulled it on over your head, glancing at yourself in the mirror. Turning, you looked at the back of the dress, a V shape with two panels of fabric looped through the neckline strap and coming to a point at the small of your back. The dress was fitted at the waist and flowy from there, hanging to just around your knees. It was classy and gorgeous all at once, and you felt just the slightest boost of confidence seeing how well it fit your body.

Feeling a bit shy, you slowly opened the bathroom door and crept out into the bedroom to show Tom the dress. He was seated on the edge of the bed, waiting patiently for you to finish changing. When you stepped out, he stood up; his eyes gleaming as he smiled at the sight of you in the dress he’d selected (with help, you’d remind him).

“What do you think?” you asked timidly. He stepped toward you, taking your hand in his and lifting it over your head, motioning for you to turn. Giggling, you obliged, slowly twirling around to let him see the whole dress.

“Absolutely breathtaking,” he hummed, releasing your hand once you’d turned back to face him and wrapping an arm around your waist to pull you close. You felt your face heating up under his intense, adoring gaze.

“Thanks. You did good. And Noelle did too,” you laughed, allowing him to kiss you sweetly.

Tom changed into his cast party attire as well, a crisp black suit with a white dress shirt and a black tie. He looked great in anything he wore, but in a suit he was just so incredibly handsome. You made certain to tell him so when he’d stepped out in his party attire, earning a flustered smile and even the slightest tinge of red in his cheeks. The pair of you headed down to the lobby, your arm looped through his, ready to head out to the cast party.

The party was being held at Chris Evans’ home, which he’d graciously offered to host his castmates. Tom assured you it wasn’t going to be a terribly large group of people, but that most of the main cast was planning to attend. You could hear your heart pounding in your ears as you walked up the walkway from the car to the house, wondering once again if you’d fallen asleep and started dreaming all of this was happening.

The house wasn’t terribly gaudy from outside, but it was certainly expansive. You grasped Tom’s arm just a bit tighter as you approached the door. He paused briefly before knocking to look at you.

“They’re going to love you, I promise,” he assured. You nodded, unable to speak with the dryness in your mouth. With one last reassuring glance, he reached up and rapped his knuckles against the door. After a few moments, it swung open and Chris Evans appeared on the other side.

“Hey!” he greeted, pulling Tom into a hug with a pat on the back. “Good to see you!”

“Likewise!” Tom replied with a grin. Chris stepped back, his eyes landing on you.

“And look who it is! We finally get to meet the illusive girl who’s captured Tom’s heart!”

Your face flushed, a grin pulling at your lips. “Captured his heart, hmm?” You shot Tom a teasing look, and he smiled back sheepishly. Holding out a hand to shake Chris’s hand, you were surprised when he instead pulled you into a hug.

“Welcome! Go ahead to the backyard, the weather is perfect to be hanging out outside!” Chris sidestepped out of the way to allow you and Tom to come in, shutting the door behind you. Tom took your hand in his and led you further inside.

You quite liked Chris’s style, modern but rustic all at once. And surprisingly minimalist. He had beautiful hardwood floors throughout with dark exposed beams in the ceiling. You passed through the kitchen on your way outside, a relatively standard-sized wall of dark wood cabinets with white countertops and a matching kitchen island across from them in the center of the kitchen. Tom led you through to the backyard, which you could see was already filled with other cast members.

The yard was just as beautiful, with lush green grass bordering a stone patio area. There was a pool, but given the weather was starting to cool no one was using it. Still, the sunlight reflected off the still water nicely. There was a stone fire pit surrounded by upscale patio furniture, and a number of small black tables set out along the patio where guests stood mingling with their drinks and hors d’ oeuvres.

Taking note of the overwhelmed expression you were wearing, Tom leaned down to whisper to you.

“Would you like to get a drink first?”

“Yes, please.” Tom guided you to a table where there were glasses of wine set out, handing one to you before taking one for himself. He held the glass up to yours with a grin.

“Cheers to your first ever cast party.” He tapped his glass against yours, and you took a rather long sip, eyes flitting around to look at the other partygoers.

“Brother!” A booming voice from behind you made you turn suddenly, finding Chris Hemsworth standing there with a grin.

“Hehey!” Tom greeted him, accepting a brotherly hug from his costar. “Chris, I’d like you to meet my girlfriend.”

“Ah, yes! We’ve heard quite a bit about you. Lovely to actually meet you in person,” he exclaimed, shaking your hand heartily. A mischievous glint flashed in his eyes. “How is your friend doing?”

“My friend?” Realization dawned on you – he was referring to the first time you’d met, the day your friend had kissed him on the cheek after you’d dared her to do so. Grinning sheepishly, you laughed. “She’s uh, she’s great, thanks for asking! Ah… sorry about that whole thing.”

“Nonsense! You think she’s the first fan to ever try something like that? Believe me, I’ve been in much more uncomfortable situations.” You let out a slow breath of relief, glad that he truly wasn’t upset. Maybe sometime, you’d have to introduce him more formally to your friend. Now that would be a hell of a birthday present for her.

The three of you chatted for a bit, slowly sipping your wine while listening to funny stories from behind the scenes in the Thor movies. They clearly had developed a close bond with one another, having been in so many films together as costars. Seeing Tom’s face light up as they talked about their adventures made you feel as though you were finally getting to see into that part of his life a bit more clearly, and it only gave you more of a sense of closeness to him that he was comfortable sharing that with you, in addition to the more personal parts of his life.

Glancing across the patio, Tom suddenly grasped your elbow and urged you to come along with him to meet some other cast members. Some of the ladies of the cast were seated around the fire pit, gossiping, and laughing over drinks. Tom cleared his throat to make his presence known.

“Ladies – as promised, I’d like you to meet my girlfriend.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you!” Lizzie Olsen waved from where she sat across the fire pit.

“We’ve been teasing him for weeks that he must be making this person up, since he hasn’t let us meet you yet,” Scarlett added with a smirk. Tom laughed, shaking his head.

“They just don’t believe that someone would have stayed with me for this long.”

“What?? Oh, come on. You’re the sweetest guy I know, how could anyone think you’re not boyfriend material?” you asked with a grin, squeezing his hand.

“Oh boy. He’s got her under mind control or something. Better get her head checked,” Brie Larson teased.

“Seriously, though. He’s never been happier. We’re glad you’ve been so willing to tolerate him for this long,” Scarlett assured with a wink.

“I always wonder why I still talk to you ladies,” Tom sighed jokingly. He wrapped his arm around your waist, tugging you in the opposite direction. “Darling, let’s go find some of my real friends, hmm?”

“We love you!” Lizzie called after him as the pair of you retreated to the patio. “And nice to meet you Y/N!”

As the evening went on, you felt yourself relaxing a bit more, your confidence bolstered by the kind words everyone had for you. You knew it shouldn’t have surprised you how down-to-earth everyone was, given the way Tom was, but it was refreshing to feel like you could be accepted even if you weren’t a celebrity. Still, the thought nagged in the back of your mind that you were very out of your league in all of this.

When the sun began to set, Chris turned on the lights in the backyard and started some music for some background noise while the party was winding down a bit. You sat huddled against Tom’s side on a patio sofa in front of the fire pit, his arm draped lazily around your shoulders as the pair of you made conversation with Robert Downey Jr., Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Renner over the crackling flames. Robert was nearly as quirky as his character in the movies, but Sebastian was quite unlike Bucky in that he wasn't the stoic, dark person in real life that he played in the films. The three of them and Tom had you laughing at the smallest of jokes.

“Could I steal you away for a moment?” Tom asked, sliding his arm out from around your shoulders to take your hand. You nodded, allowing him to help you to your feet and lead you to a quieter corner of the yard.

“What is it?” you asked worriedly, unsure why he would want to pull you aside. Surely he must have realized how out of place you were in this environment. He must be preparing to tell you so in private so you wouldn’t get upset in front of the others…

“Dance with me.” It was more of a command than a question, but it wouldn’t have mattered. You’d have said yes in a heartbeat. You wrapped your arms around his neck, and he placed his hands against the small of your back, his palms warm against the bare skin showing there. He gazed into your eyes with a soft smile, nothing but pure adoration written on his face.

“You stole me away so you could dance with me?” you laughed. “You could do that anywhere, you know.”

“Yes, but I wanted a moment alone with you, love.”

The music was a bit too fast to be slow dancing to, but neither of you really cared. The sky had fallen into darkness with the sun having set below the horizon, only the pale light of the moon and stars and the faint glow of the backyard lights was there to illuminate your faces. You smiled up at Tom as you held his gaze, trying to hide the worry in your eyes.

“What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?” Ah. Always so perceptive.

“It’s just… I’m being silly, I know. But I can’t help but keep wondering how I got here,” you explained.

“I believe it was a car, actually.”

“Tom!” You laughed, shaking your head. “You know what I mean!”

“I don’t, actually. You are lovely, and kind, and wonderful, and intelligent, and everything I could ever ask for in a woman. Why do you not feel you belong here?”

Tears blurred your vision at his gentle words, your heart swelling in your chest. “Do you truly think all of those things of me?”

“Every word, love.” Tom pulled you in a little closer, and you leaned your head into his shoulder. “Now do you believe you belong here?”

“Mm… I’m still not sure,” you mumbled into his suit jacket. He laughed, and you felt the rumble of his voice through his chest against your forehead.

“Darling, I can’t understand you when you talk into my shoulder,” he teased, leaning back a bit to get a better look at you. You lifted your head, allowing him to press his forehead against yours. You could feel the gentle breath from his nose on your own.

“I said I’m still not sure,” you repeated, a bit louder this time. “I’m still just… me, and you’re… you.”

“Just you?” Tom sounded incredulous. “You’re not just anything.”

“But –“

“No, no buts. I’ll not hear another word out of you unless you’re agreeing with me,” he scolded teasingly.

“Tooom… but I-“

“That’s it.” He wrapped his arms tighter around your waist, scratching at the backs of your sides.

“AHH! Whahat is this fohor??” you shrieked, arching your back away from his touch. He squeezed you closer and pressed his forehead harder against yours to prevent you from backing away. You could only see his eyes in this position, which were full of amusement and mischief, not unlike his character. You could only imagine the vibrant, toothy smile that was likely stretched across his face.

“Well, I had to find a way to make you stop somehow. I think this is perfectly effective, don’t you?” His fingers crawled up your sides, your laughter pitching up the higher they travelled.

“NOHO TOHOM WAIT!” Your knees were buckling underneath you, muscles weakening under his ticklish touch. He held fast, though, keeping you standing upright even though it meant he needed to pull you flush against his chest in a bear hug. Your arms were still looped around his neck, and you wanted to pull them down but you were afraid you’d collapse from laughter if you didn’t hang on to him as your anchor.

“Wait? What am I waiting for?” His teasing was maddening, although you had very little time to think about it before his fingers found that awful spot on the backs of your ribs, making you screech and bury your face in his chest to muffle your laughter.

“MMMHMMHM MNOHOHO!”

“We’ve already been over this, darling – I can’t understand you when you speak into me.” Tom was laughing now too, amused to the core at your dramatic reaction to such gentle tickles. Curiously, he sped up the pace, digging his fingers deeper into the spaces between your ribs. You actually did collapse into him at that point, throwing all of your weight into his chest as you forced yourself to bring your arms down to protect yourself, pressing your palms into his chest. He’d never allow you to fall, though; holding you tightly against him while he continued to undo your resolve by evilly targeting your worst spot.

“PLEHEHEASE! I CAHAN’T!” You tilted your head back just enough so he could hear your plea clearly, your nerves on fire under his fingertips. Laughing, he slowed his fingers to a stop, allowing you to let out the residual giggles into his shoulder while he held you upright until you could regain your balance.

“You are the most precious thing,” Tom hummed, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head before carefully leaning you back onto your own feet. He lifted his hands to cup your face, his eyes reflecting the white light of the moon. “I need you to know… I love you.”

In that moment, you felt you could burst with elation. He loved you. He loved you. You may never understand how that could possibly have come to be, but he’d stated it as a fact, and so you had to believe it was true.

“I love you,” you replied, beaming. He ducked his head to press a long, passionate kiss to your lips, as if the more emotion he poured into that kiss, the more likely you were to finally take his word that you were worth it.

Hand in hand, you finally rejoined the rest of the party. As you approached the group, a couple people whooped and hollered at the pair of you.

“That was adorable!” Robert shouted.

“Wait, you guys were watching??” Your face was burning, but even still, you couldn’t hide the smile on your face.

“Couldn’t miss it! You’ve got an adorable laugh,” Sebastian teased.

Oh.

You hid your face in Tom’s shoulder so they wouldn’t see the vibrant colors blossoming in your face. You hadn’t even considered that people could hear you, although now you realized it was silly of you to think they couldn’t.

“I’ll take the blame for that. She’s just so charmingly ticklish, I can’t help myself sometimes.” Tom wrapped an arm around your shoulders and rubbed your arm with his palm comfortingly.

“Speak for yourself, Hiddleston.” Tom suddenly jumped when Lizzie poked his side, walking around from behind the pair of you to find a seat at the fire pit. He chuckled sheepishly.

“Alright, alright. Darling, take a seat and I’ll get you another drink,” he suggested, pressing a kiss to your cheek before heading off toward the drinks table. You took a seat beside Scarlett, keeping your eyes pointed down at the fire glowing in the stone fire pit to avoid looking at anyone to hide your flustered embarrassment. She leaned over toward you, whispering loudly enough for the group seated around the fire to hear.

“If you want to get him back – his feet are really ticklish.” She winked at you as you turned your head to look at her, smirking.

“Noted.”

By the time the party had ended, your stomach hurt from laughing at everyone’s jokes and funny stories, your eyelids were heavy with the exhaustion of the evening and your day of travel, and above all, your heart was light with the knowledge that Tom loved you. You both said your goodbyes, Tom promising that they’d all see you again before heading back to the hotel for the evening.

“See? That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?” he asked teasingly. You leaned your head against his shoulder in the back seat of the car, sighing contentedly.

“It was so much fun. Thanks for convincing me to come with you.”

“Anytime, love.”

You rested against his strong shoulder in comfortable silence for the remainder of the ride back, repeating the words over and over in your head. I love you. I love you. I love you. It still didn’t feel real. But, as the car pulled up to the hotel, and Tom gently took your hand in his to lead you inside, you decided that maybe, eventually, you’d convince yourself that it was.

Part 4

#sfw tickle fluff #ticklish!reader #tickle fluff #tickle prompts #tickle fic #marvel tickle #tom hiddleston x reader #ler!tom hiddleston #lee!reader

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starrynite7114 · 3 years

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Years Together (Sergio Ramos)

A/N: Here I am, back with my first football little one-shot, or multiple parts since this is based on a TikTok. Anyway, I wanted to do it on bae, Sergio Ramos. I love this man, I would sacrifice a whole lot of things for this man. I know I usually write Mayans, specifically Angel, but I wanted to branch out. Be on the lookout for Rio, Billy Russo and Bucky Barnes. Maybe even Lewis Tan, Sebastian Stan are on the horizon. Regardless, I hope you all enjoy what I write still. If you don’t read, totally understandable, I still love you all!

I will try to finish all my works in progress along with the requests I have! EZ should be next since I’m almost done with his, I just have to actually finish it.

Love you all!

Word Count: 1206

CREDITS TO THE GIF MAKER <3

You sat beside Sergio as he watched the next Marvel film in the series of chronological order for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So far, you two were at Iron Man II. Sergio has been either working out or watching film during the quarantine. La Liga was set to reconvene in two weeks and you were honestly excited. Though you couldn’t go to the matches, at least Sergio and the boys would be gracing your screens again.

You and Sergio have been together for nine years and in those ten years, you two have had two sons together, Sergio Jr. and Thiago. You two were set to get married this year, but with the pandemic happening, you thought it would be best to postpone the wedding till all your friends and family could safely participate.

With the pandemic happening, your work has been moved to a home setting. You actually didn’t mind holding meetings and working at home, it made things so much easier for you. You could take care of the boys, with Sergio’s help and also be able to stay safe. Sergio was holding Thiago, your three year old, while Junior, your five year old was nestled right beside you.

“Should we order dinner? Or are we cooking?” You questioned him.

“Pizza?” Sergio has been indulging due to the pandemic and it wasn’t like the calories were staying on him. Sergio worked out far too much for the calories to really make a dent to his ungodly body.

You ordered pizza through an app, letting Sergio pick the toppings. You all got your own personalized pizza that was the perfect size for one person. You also got some cheesy bread since your sons were a sucker for cheese and so were you.

You scrolled through TikTok as the movie began. TikTok has become an obsession you couldn’t drop. It was ridiculous, but the endless hours you spent on this app was dangerous. You even made an account. You’ve posted a few TikTok’s of you messing with Sergio, but nothing too insane as of yet. You did want to try one with Sergio, to see how he would react to this specific TikTok. There was a TikTok going around where the person gets the number of years together wrong and their partner reacts. There were a varying amount of reactions and you wanted to see what Sergio would say.

Setting up your phone to record him, you focused the camera on Sergio, who was enjoying some juice you made earlier in the day.

“Babe,” you called out.

“Hmm,” his eyes remained on the screen.

“You know what I find insane? My sister just texted me and told me that we’ve been together for seven years. That’s a long time huh?” You had to hold back your laughter. You didn’t think Sergio was paying attention since he’s been occupied by the Marvel Cinematic Universe since he finished his morning workout.

Sergio paused the movie and looked back at you. “Seven years? Who have you been dating for seven years?” He gave you an incredulous look. “We’ve been together for ten years, five months, three weeks, 5 days, and six hours.”

The details he uttered made you speechless. You knew how long you two were together by at least years and months, but he knew the weeks, days and hours?

“What?” You looked at him in disbelief. “You know all of that?”

“Yes, of course I do. I still don’t think you understand how long I waited for you to agree to go on a date with me.” Sergio shook his head. “Now, who the hell have you been dating for seven years. I can text our sister right now.”

You’ve known Sergio since childhood through your sister. He wasn’t much older than you, just by a few years. Your sister was never fond of the idea of you dating Sergio, so you kept him at arm's length, but after the 2010 World Cup, you changed your mind and said screw it. You went on one date with Sergio and the rest was history. You two were on and off, but Sergio never let too much time pass till he waved the white flag. He had a temper and you liked to push him. You two were volatile, but somehow, you two made it work. He loves fiercely and so do you. Sergio always knew you were the one, he always said it was the way you would ignore him that got him.

But you weren’t ignoring him, you just didn’t like him.

And the dislike eventually grew to fondness to friendship and then to love.

“Babe, it's a prank.” You stopped recording, saving the video as a draft and showing him where you got the idea from.

Sergio looked at you and shook his head. “You’re such damn trouble.” He chuckled, playing the movie once again. “I’m gonna have to start watching some videos, just so we can be at an even playing field.”

“Do you know the seconds too?”

“That’s pushing it.”

You had to laugh at that. “That’s pushing it?”

Sergio turned to you and kissed you. Junior let out a giggle along with your youngest son Thiago. “Babe, you’re the longest commitment I’ve had besides being in the Madrid team. So yes, I value and keep track of how long we’ve been together, pretty soon, I’ll be counting marriage years.”

“You know, we should just get married at a courthouse. All we need is your mom, my mom and there we go. Hell, we can even do it virtually.”

Sergio paused the movie again. “I want you to have your dream wedding.”

“I don’t have one, I just want to be married to you.”

Sergio chuckled and shook his head. “You know that’s what I want to, but I want us to be able to celebrate with our family and friends. To really enjoy the fact that we’ve annoyed them with our PDA for ten years.”

You laughed. “You’re such a dork.” You pushed his head. “Okay, we can wait. As long as I become Mrs. Ramos at the end.”

“Baby, there’s no way you won’t be Mrs. Ramos at the end. I told you three years in, it’s you and me.” Sergio squeezed your thigh. “Te queiro mi amor.” He kissed you again.

And it was true, Sergio had told you he was going to marry you some day on your third year anniversary. You brushed it off and said we’ll see next year. And each year after that, Sergio upped his game. Finally, on your eight year anniversary he proposed. It’s not like he didn’t want to do it earlier, but he knew for some reason you weren’t ready. A relationship was one thing but an engagement was another.

“Love you too.” You had your hand at the back of his neck, scratching it, a gesture Sergio absolutely adored.

You two watched the movie, mostly Sergio whole you browsed around TikTok. You started saving videos to do with Sergio. Another one you wanted to do was the ‘what three things would you take with you if we got divorced’?

But you would save that for next time.

Let the TikTok videos begin.

#Sergio Ramos #Sergioramos #sergio ramos imagines #sergio ramos fanfiction #sergio ramos imagine #sergio ramos fanfic #real madrid imagines #real madrid imagine #sergio ramos x reader

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ladymacbeth3759 · 3 years

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Analysis on Luca Guadagnino’s film (2) - Call Me By Your Name

This is really long, so please have patience while reading this. And because I translated it to English from my original language, there might be some mistakes.

Link to (1):

One of the most significant metaphor in this film is the greek statue. These sensual and ancient figures symbolize the nature of desire and physicality, and also represent the instinctive, irresistible love between Elio and Oliver. As an example, in the scene of cataloging the pictures of the statues, the words of Elio's father express these significance. Another scene also shows this metaphor very well. There is a scene in which the two have a little confrontation and after the subtle fight and jealousy, the camera shows the scene where they lift up the statue from the ocean. This scene can be interpreted as a metaphor that the desire became visible by bringing it above the surface as it began to be expressed as an emotion of jealousy. It means that the boundaries of emotions that were unclear until then have gradually became clearer. After the statue was brought up, the two call each other's names in a swimming scene. If there is a guideline in love, the first step will be recognizing each other's ‘existence’ (metaphysically speaking), and the last step will be taking a full look at each other's ‘existence’, the true self, a state of unity in which the other person becomes the other one, and vice versa, which is the idealistic idea of love. In that respect, it can be said that the two have already entered the stage of destined love. Following this, after making love for the first time, they call each other by their names.

In the next scene, the camera focuses on Elio sitting on a bench and reading a book, following the narration:

‘The Cosmic Fragments by Herclitus’

“The meaning of the river flowing is not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounter them twice but that some things stay the same only by changing.“

Human beings are existents that change from moment to moment, and human identity is what grows due to conflicting elements or events. One of the reasons ‘Call Me By Your Name’ is such a special movie is that it can be a movie about love but also can be a movie about growing up. In this scene, Oliver's voice specifically puts the contents of the book as a narration because probably he is the very ‘moment’, the very elicitor in Elio's life. Although it is not revealed through dialogue or narration in this film, Elio has a very important moment of choice. Before making his first love with Oliver, he continues to engage with Marzia. If we learn that some important moment will change ourselves forever, it will probably be confusing and we will try to stay in the stability that we’re standing on right now. So Elio looks forward to meet Oliver, but he also feels nervous that something might change in himself. Perhaps Oliver left the book in an attempt to share the voice of wisdom with Elio? Like a flowing river, humans will always change, and even in the moment of change, we will still be perfectly ‘ourselves’. Perhaps this is the most important narrative in growing into life.

In this film, there are many voices overlapping between scenes, which kind of reminds of the act of retracing memories through one’s mind. (When we sometimes try to remember various scenes from the past, some imagery or voices pop up first before continuing to the next scene.) Also when it is a scene that Elio's emotions are maximized, music is inserted, which can be seen as a hint that this was based on Elio's memories. And the scenes where the focus becomes blurry can also be the evidence of this assumption.

In an interview, director Luca said that the meaning of true love is to accept difference as itself. In other words, it can be said that true love is not distorting the other into an stereotyped image, but seeing the other’s true ‘self’ clearly. After the scene where Elio realizes his desire and makes a first kiss with Oliver, the camera captures the image of Elio, waiting for Oliver who is too cautious about love, who is trying so hard not to surrender. And the narration comes in the middle of this scene. 'Do I know you?' Elio asks himself if he ‘truly’ knows Oliver. Or Oliver truly knows him. Often in romance movies, looking into each other's eyes is considered a cliché. As it is said that the eye is the window to the soul, the act of looking at the eye is the final gesture of love, the gesture of wanting to understand other’s true soul (the existence, the idée-edea). This is realized when the two make love for the first time and change each other's names. What's interesting here is that it was Oliver, not Elio, who suggested this first. Even though the desire became visible, it was Elio who actively expressed it, and Oliver was the one who relatively rejected it and avoided it. Remind ourselves what Elio's father said at the very end of the movie. “Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot”. Oliver, who is older and probably has some experience with love, is actually being realistic avoiding Elio. The fact that Oliver’s wound from riding a bike became more festered after the first kiss with Elio suggests that the nature has discovered such a weakness (love for Elio) from Oliver. It is also understandable that Oliver, who has completely surrendered for the fatalistic love after this, wants a full understanding of the other. He understands how love can make a person helpless and lead to despair. When people don’t try to see each other as the complete ‘true self’ or accept difference as itself, relationships between people becomes inevitably distorted and tragic. He has rejected the love for Elio because of this fear (including practical reasons), but nature brought him down to a state of exposure. Therefore, asking each other to call as each other's names can be seen that Oliver finally accepted what he refused because he was too afraid of being hurt or hurting the other, and praying only for the complete love from now on.

There are two related scenes that are very interesting to see in this regard. There is a scene where Oliver deliberately dances closely with another woman in front of Elio's eyes, and the next day the two confront each other. At that time, in the scene passing through the door, the person who passes through first, that is, the person who leads, is Oliver. And after the two have made love for the first time (when Oliver is completely surrendered by nature of love), in an awkward atmosphere, Elio passes through the door before Oliver. Through these two scenes, we can see that the power dianamic, or superiority in this relationship has been completely reversed.

At a square with a monument commemorating the Battle of Piave, the camera takes a brief shot ascending towards the sky. This is the scene where Elio confesses his love to Oliver without saying that he loves him. In previous work of Luca, he used movements of camera to symbolically express relationships and emotions between characters. From that point of view, perhaps it can be seen as a symbol that Elio's desire has risen to its peak, and at the same time, the change in the relationship between the two begins to drive forward. And although it may be a coincidence, the camera takes a shot from top to bottom in the scene where the two go on a trip together, before the scene where Oliver has to leave. And after a moment of the descending camera movement, there is a scene where Oliver remembers the memories of the two at Piave Square while watching Elio, who fell asleep after making love at the hotel. Then he abruptly turns to the side as the news of the sudden breakup attacks(the sound of the train). And immediately after that, the sound overlappes the scene of the train station. It is as if the journey of the two's love was brought up by fate and then settled down again.

The timing of this film and the Battle of Piave are also closely related. Because the time where they are in is the summer of 1983, that is, the time of the AIDS wave. They are in a kind of virtual world that is closely connected with the reality around them, as if they were in the eyes of a typhoon. Like Elio, who confessed love while standing next to a statue that symbolizes the damages, death of the war(which can be interpreted as the AIDS situation where hundreds of people’s lives were at stake), the gap between the world in which the two are staying and the real world outside the shell is expressed very interestingly in this film.

Another interesting ‘connection’ in this movie is the scene where Elio watches Oliver dancing. There are only two scenes where Oliver dances based on the same song. Elio, enamored with jealousy in the first scene, drinks while watching Oliver, and in the second scene, this continues to Elio being drunk while watching Oliver, and after that he vomits. Personally, I think these two scenes symbolize the beginning and the end. It is the structure of continuation in the movie. Like a formal symbol where a love like drunkenness begins and ends.

It is no coincidence that Oliver is the only American in this film, and is set in the position of a student who stays only for the summer. This is because the symbol of the stranger who suddenly appeares in the landscape where everything else perfectly melts into the background means, that the essence of love is that the differences between two world eventually make contact with each other's eyes. Even the difference ‘itself’ is accepted without any distortion. That is the purpose and theme of this film. When I watch this movie, I sometimes think that what this movie is trying to say is completely different from the other typical queer movies. Other queer movies pay attention to the “queerness” of queer, but this movie rather pays attention to the “universality”. The universality of enjoying and appreciating love is shared from all kinds of people all over the world. Despite being a queer film set in the 80s, there are no obstacles between the two protagonists. It is a choice to only show the journey of love, that magical universality. I'm a pessimetic person, so naturally I’m kind of skeptical of this so-called ‘universality’ and ‘nature of love’ that a film like this presents. Can you really accept someone with its full self without any distortion? Isn't the first thing to be addressed is the anwser to the question of ‘what is the essence of human being?’. Human senses inevitably entail distortion, and the brain, where survival instinct and the reason are mixed, attempts to shrink and simplify the multi-layered and obscure nature of humans to a minimum. Isn't the existence of others inevitably bound to collide with another? As other reviews of mine will say, I'm skeptical, but I'm not hopeless. This is because I think that the state of struggling to try is perhaps the only goal that humans should have. Maybe Director Luca have different opinions from mine, but I see this movie as part of that attempt. This fantasy, fairy tale love story looks so perfect and ideal. The director's attempt to present it as some kind of a living experience is definitely admirable.

In the last scene, when the camera calmly captures Elio's face and the ending credit goes up, the lingering emotion we feel is quite unforgettable. That scene feels ike they are finally proclaiming that this magical experience was forever over. When Elio's mother calls out towards Elio, what Elio heard was the obituary of the one united person, someone, Elio and Oliver.

#call me by your name #cmbyn #luca guadagnino #timothee chalamet #armie hammer #film analysis #film #movies

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canmom · 2 years

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Toku Tuesday 39: Mamoru Oshii’s Avalon franchise

Waaay back on Animation Night 39, we watched perhaps the most renowned film of Mamoru Oshii: Ghost in the Shell, one of the decisive statements of the 90s realist movement of animation, Japanese cyberpunk, etc. etc. Well, this Toku Tuesday, we’ve reached that number... so it seems a great arbitrary reason to look into his live action films!

Mamoru Oshii is one of those major auteurs that the anime industry has a habit of producing, and I wrote about his career back on Animation Night 38. His animated films are known for near-future scifi heavy geopolitical themes, very deliberate pacing, desaturated palettes, and realist animation of both very austere emotionless humans and complex machinery - leaning on the talents of realist animators like Mitsuo Iso, Toshiyuki Inoue, and Hiroyuki Okiura who made their names working with Katsuhiro Otomo.

But he also made live action films! Quite a number of them in fact...

Oshii’s entry into live action film came in 1986, shortly after the release of the remarkable Angel’s Egg, with the Kerberos Saga, focusing on the gradual demise of an overtly Nazi-styled fascist military police unit in a future dystopian Japan which sided against the Nazis in WWII, and somehow still lost the war. This series opened with The Red Spectacles (1986) and spawned a pretty sprawling franchise including manga and a second live action prequel film, StrayDog: Kerberos Panzer Cop in 1991, but the best known entry in the series is actually not directed by Oshii - the anime film JinRoh: The Wolf Brigade (1999) which was directed by renowned realist animator Hiroyuki Okiura to Oshii’s script. (Much later, there would be a Korean live action remake of this film.)

I’ve had a certain curiosity towards this franchise. The first thing you see is immediately the overtly fashcore imagery that is clearly calling to mind SS uniforms; but though there are many readings out there, I never got the impression this (or the much more widely discussed JinRoh) is a fascist film. Alas, most of what I have been able to learn is a brief video by Youtube video essayist ‘Beyond Ghibli’, who is more interested in saying vaguely portentious things than really critically analysing. Since it’s almost impossible to find even in Japanese from the usual sources, that will have to be an investigation for another day.

Following StrayDog, Oshii returned to directing animation for most of the 90s largely with Production I.G., and this period saw some of his most renowned works, such as Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor 2, setting him up for international fame. Our first movie tonight, Avalon (2001), came right between Oshii’s two GitS movies, and also happened to coincide with a certain film heavily inspired by his work over Stateside. So it was a period when the idea of virtual reality was really in.

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Like almost everything Oshii directed (with the exception perhaps of the recent vampire comedy anime VladLove!), Avalon takes us to a dystopian near future and is full of military equipment. More unusually, the film is entirely in Polish - filmed in Poland with a Polish cast...

The film takes place in an elaborate virtual reality military simulator played using direct brain machine interfaces. Compared to Oshii’s animated films, which tend to favour a kind of showoffy level of austere, refined beauty, this film seems cheerfully low budget and honestly kind of goofy. It follows a player named Ash - yo @footsteps-on-the-dance-floor! - who makes a living playing the Avalon game, and her effort to discover a secret ‘no reset’ mission and what’s up with the game.

Visually, the film seems to make heavy use of almost monochrome colour filters to represent the limited simulated reality. Oshii used a technique of animating flat layers in the composite which he had a pithy name for, but I seem to have lost that reference. It was praised at the time for cinematography and I’m excited to see what Oshii does with the idea.

The film met... moderate success, I think; it got some awards in Europe. Oshii was not done with the concept, and returned to it in a couple of short films within two short film compilations, of which I can find only scant information, namely:

The movie was developed as a spiritual sequel to the Assault Girl: Hinako The Kentucky and Assault Girl 2 shorts Oshii directed as part of the Shin-Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden and Rebellion: The Killing Isle collections of short films respectively.

Perhaps at some point I’ll be able to track down a copy of these collections, since they all sound pretty fun.

Anyway, a little later in 2009, 8 years after Avalon, Oshii went ahead and expanded these concepts into a second film titled Assault Girls...

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In this case, the premise of Avalon is expanded out a bit: we now know the game is taking place in the aftermath of a nuclear war. The film sees a group of four skilled players hunting a boss monster in a subregion of the game; unlike Avalon it is in Japanese. The combination of limited but well designed CGI with Kenji Kawai’s choral soundtrack calls to mind Oshii’s wordless musical film Mezame no Hakobune (Open Your Mind), which came out in the intervening period, though I know not if it will be as trippy as that film! The poster, at least, certainly sets a tone.

We’ll be starting pretty promptly over at our usual place - https://twitch.tv/canmom ! Time permitting we may slip in an episode or two of Kamen Rider Revice - we must be terribly behind at this point...

(If we enjoy this, we can also look forward to Oshii’s film Garm Wars: The Last Druid, which seems to share a visual sensibility if not direct continuity. And I’m definitely curious to find out what is going on in Kerberos at some point.)

#toku tuesday

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snarktheater · 3 years

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Ready Player Two — Opening Cutscene & Chapter 0

Hello again.

It’s been a while. I haven’t been active on this blog since, fittingly enough, Ready Player One. I was going to do this sooner—even had an alarm set up and everything—but then, it turns out, I’m feeling so much negativity about the world in general that a book just pales in comparison.

Seriously, I had to scrap this post’s entire intro because it’s not even 2020 anymore as I write this. And you know, maybe that’s for the best. I’m not really in the mood for doom and gloom and bitching anymore. I uninstalled Twitter from my phone a while back, I’ve been doing good at my daily writing sprints, my biggest fanfic project concluded on a positive note from people I didn’t even realize had been following it for years.

So I don’t know what this is going to be like. My commentary, I mean; I’ve heard echoes of what the book is like, so I’m not expecting a surprise there.

The book opens right after the end of Ready Player One, in a “Cutscene” where Wade recounts to us what happened after he won Halliday’s contest. It also assumes you remember exactly who the main characters of the book are, which is a bold move for a sequel that came out almost a decade after the original.

Technically, I could just look up the details I’m fuzzy about. But also, I think it’s more authentic if I don’t. I trust my memory enough that if I’m wrong, it’ll be in subtle enough ways that it’ll almost be a private jokes between all of us. An “if you know, you know” sort of error system. And I don’t think there’s anything more true to the spirit of this book than that.

Shoto had flown back home to Japan to take over operations at GSS’s Hokkaido division.

So Wade starts his tenure with nepotism. Wasn’t Shoto really young? Why is he qualified to run anything?

Aech was enjoying an extended vacation in Senegal, a country she’d dreamed of visiting her whole life, because her ancestors had come from there.

You know what, I’m not touching “send the token black character back to Africa.” This isn’t my lane.

And Samantha had flown back to Vancouver to pack up her belongings and say goodbye to her grandmother, Evelyn.

Why is she saying goodbye? Why, she’s moving to Columbus to be with Wade, of course! It’s not like there was anything else in her life. Was there? And why isn’t she referred to as Art3mis? I’m pretty sure Wade found out all of their offline names in the last book, and the inconsistency mildly bothers me.

These three sentences are back to back, by the way. Someone—I forget who—once described Ready Player One as a book that’s fun to write a wiki about, because it’s got fun concepts to summarize about until you realize that all the emotional connective tissue you need to turn a list of things into a story is missing, and that’s roughly how this first page feels.

Hell, the first line of the book is Wade telling us he remained offline for nine whole days after winning the contest, but by the end of the second paragraph we’re already to him logging back into the OASIS to "distract himself from [his and Samantha’s] reunion.

I’ll give Ernest Cline one thing: it feels like he wrote this opening nine days after the first book and did about as much maturing as a teenage boy would do between the two books.

Way more time is spent describing Wade’s OASIS rig, or the in-game planet where the climax of the last book happened, than anything else in this introduction. He is immediately greeted by a crowd of adoring fans who have been waiting over a week for him to come back in the game, because they’re all grateful that our protagonist and his friends restored their avatars after they were annihilated by the Sixers.

You’d think the adoring fans would serve some kind of purpose, or that something would happen, but no. Wade immediately goes “ew, people” and teleports away, since he essentially has ultimate powers within the game. With a caveat: the powers are actually coming from the Robes of Anorak he’s wearing, and I’m mentioning that in the hopes that it will pay off sometime in the book’s future, assuming Cline at least learned to do that. But still, let’s not skip too fast the fact that we introduced that crowd of adoring fans for no other purpose than to tell us they’re out there, because it fits right in with the last book’s attempts at saying as little as humanly possible in as many words as possible.

Anyway, Wade went back into Anorak’s study, where he arbitrarily checks out the Easter Egg he got at the end of the last book, and finds an inscription on it. I was dreading another riddle, but no, it’s just straight-up instructions to a vault in the GSS archives, so Wade logs off and goes to check it out.

Of course Halliday had put [the archives] [on the 13th floor]. In one of his favorite TV shows, Max Headroom, Network 23’s hidden research-and-development lab was located on the thirteenth floor. And The Thirteenth Floor was also the title of an old sci-fi film about virtual reality, released in 1999, right on the heels of both The Matrix and eXistenZ.

I’m equally shocked that it took two whole pages (on my ereader) to get to the first slew of references, and that one of these references is from 1999. I didn’t know we were allowed to think of anything that isn’t the 80s. Speaking of which, I’ll spare you the whole paragraph, but the book does feel the need to explain why it’s vault 42.

Inside the vault, there’s another egg containing a super-fancy and advanced OASIS headset. The egg also has a video monitor that plays a video message from James Halliday shortly before his death.

But despite his condition, he hadn’t used his OASIS avatar to record this message like he had with Anorak’s Invitation. For some reason, he’d chosen to appear in the flesh this time, under the brutal, unforgiving light of reality.

That oh-so-important message? An infodump about the headset’s working. He called it an OASIS Neural Interface, ONI for short. It basically lets you experience the OASIS through all your senses with sensory input just like the real thing, you know, that thing Wade had to get a fancy suit and massive rig to do in the first book. And yes, Wade does spend a paragraph or two comparing it to other works of science fiction. Of course he does.

More importantly, it also records all the sensory input into a separate file, which can then be replayed over to re-experience said sensations, or live someone else’s experiences. Halliday tries to frame it as a tool to generate communication and empathy, seemingly all without acknowledging the potential creepiness of that. But hey. Who knows. Maybe that’s because this is the setup stage, and it’ll pay off eventually.

I also wondered about the name Halliday had chosen for his invention. I’d seen enough anime to know that oni was also a Japanese word for a giant horned demon from the pits of hell.

Add “reducing Japan to anime” to the list of things the book has failed to improve upon. By the way, the narration insisted on spelling out ONI letter by letter earlier, so it’s weird to make that link now. It’s also just kind of inelegant to just tell us “this is the symbolism behind the name”, but that’s just the sort of thing I’ve come to expect from this book.

Anyway, the reason Halliday kept this for his successor to find is he wants Wade to test out the technology and decide if humanity is ready for it. Why Halliday thinks the most glorified pop culture trivia / video game competition qualifies you for such a decision should be a problem, but sadly, a lot of billionaires have said and done a lot of dumb and eerily similar things in the past few years since I read Ready Player One, so actually, I can’t fault the book for that one. Tragically, our fates really are in the hands of people who should rightfully be cartoon villains.

To his credit, Wade does question Halliday’s motives in keeping this under wraps at all rather than releasing it himself. So hey, maybe it really is setting something up.

Wade goes back to his office with the ONI, and we’re treated with this lovely piece of narration:

I was grateful that Samantha wasn’t there. I didn’t want to give her the opportunity to talk me out of testing the ONI. Because I was worried she might try to, and if she did, she would’ve succeeded. (I’d recently discovered that when you’re madly in love with someone they can persuade you to do pretty much anything.)

There’s a lot to unpack about the implications this has for their relationship, but it’s way too early in the book for me to editorialize when one character hasn’t even been on the page yet. So I’ll just leave it here for the record. Hopefully you see the problem without me needing to point it out anyway. If not, feel free to hit my inbox.

So Wade, confident in the fact that Halliday would have warned him if there were any risks to using the ONI, decides to try it out. Even though he immediately follows up that statement with this:

According to the ONI documentation, forcibly removing the headset while it was in operation could severely damage the wearer’s brain and/or leave them in a permanent coma. So the titanium-reinforced safety bands made certain this couldn’t happen. I found this little detail comforting instead of unsettling. Riding in an automobile was risky, too, if you didn’t wear your seatbelt…

Wade. My dude. What the fuck is this simile. And why don’t you see that maybe a machine where you’re forcibly trapping yourself inside a virtual reality might be dangerous? Hell, when I said this was setting something up, I was expecting something vaguely interesting about the potential breach of privacy, or how you don’t need to literally walk in someone’s shoes to feel empathy for them, or anything substantial, but now I’m worried it’ll just end up as “man, sometimes science fiction machines will scramble your brain, isn’t that weird”?

Like, I don’t know, to me “it will put you in a coma” sounds like a good reason for Halliday not to release the ONI. Maybe we can still make it into a commentary on how corporations will sell stuff they know is directly harmful if it can make them a profit. Who knows.

The book waffles on about more risks, and the mechanics of how the ONI activates, and the warning disclaimer when it does turn on. Specifically, there’s a time limit of twelve consecutive hours, after which you’ll be automatically logged out, because yes, using the thing for too long can also cause brain damage.

Gregarious Simulation Systems will not be held responsible for any injuries caused by improper use of the OASIS Neural Interface.

See, now there’s the sort of thing that could be a source for commentary, but no, instead it’s thrown in there like it’s nothing and Wade glosses over the entire warning, and instead keep wondering why Halliday didn’t just release the ONI if even the safety disclaimers were in place.

By the way: this whole system has apparently gone through several independent human trials already, so I’m finding it hard to imagine that it’s actually a secret Halliday took to the grave as Wade says. Unless he also had everyone involved in those trials killed afterwards. Or maybe they all ended up with brain damage which rendered them incapable of talking about it.

And before you think I’m being unfair and maybe we’re supposed to understand that ourselves even if the protagonist doesn’t, I’ll remind you that the book didn’t trust its reader to know what the number 42 is a reference to, or what an oni is, even though I don’t think anyone in the target audience wouldn’t know about these two things.

There’s also the fact that, since this book came out, a video game did release with a scene intentionally designed to cause seizures, and it had countless fans flocking to defend it over that fact. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not assuming this book’s stance on whether your video game console causes brain damage and possibly coma is actually a bad thing, or just an acceptable risk.

Wade certainly seems to think so, since he agrees to the terms of service.

As the timestamp faded away, it was replaced by a short message, just three words long—the last thing I would see before I left the real world and entered the virtual one. But they weren’t the three words I was used to seeing. I—like every other ONI user to come—was greeted by a new message Halliday had created, to welcome those visitors who had adopted his new technology: READY PLAYER TWO

Well now that’s just silly.

And that’s our opening cutscene. And while this post is already long enough, I feel like I have to go on to chapter 0, because it feels like barely anything has happened so far. We didn’t even introduce any new character motivation or conflict, or a mystery to set the plot into motion, unless I’m supposed to think “why didn’t Halliday release this?” counts.

So Wade is back into the OASIS, and tells us about how much more real it all feels thanks to the ONI. I especially have to question how he can smell or taste anything—both of which he tells us he can. Like, who coded that? Did Halliday implement every single smell and taste himself, without anyone noticing? I hope you don’t need me to tell you that’s not typically how features are added to a large-scale video game.

If it feels like I’m nitpicking at the logic of the book, even though I always say I’m not very interested in that and would rather talk themes, it’s because I am, because there isn’t much else to discuss so far. Wade is happy about tasting virtual fruit. That’s the scene.

He tests out if he can feel pain, but no, the ONI reduces pain (a gunshot is translated as “a hard pinch”). On one hand, good, it would be a nightmare otherwise. On the other hand, I sort of hope there’s a setting for that in there, because otherwise, you just lost an entire clientele of kinksters.

This was it—the final, inevitable step in the evolution of videogames and virtual reality. The simulation had now become indistinguishable from real life.

Ah, now we have some juicy themes. Because if you think this is the inevitable final step in the evolution of video games, I invite you to look at literally any other art form, and what happened to them once hyperrealism became easy. Hint: they didn’t stop evolving, because it turns out realism isn’t the only goal one can achieve with art.

The realism discussion is not a new one in video games, mind you. In case you’re out of the loop: most of the big-budget blockbuster games (“AAA” as they’re known) are aiming for hyperrealism nowadays, and it results in development teams being forced to work in horrible conditions (known with the equally horrible euphemism of “crunch”). And, because it turns out that 1) humans working themselves to the bones isn’t healthy and 2) racing for realism with little to no vision besides it makes for poor creativity, a lot of these games come out as disappointments. Oh, there are hordes of Gamers™ who will defend them to the bitter end, but inevitably, in the months following release, the defense cools off while the criticism keeps on going, because the defense was a knee-jerk reaction born of a mix of people hyping themselves up for a game they hadn’t seen that much of yet, then attaching a part of their identity to liking that thing.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that this throwaway line feels like it comes from someone who is so out of touch as to accidentally support a world view that has in fact resulted in the biggest part of the industry stagnating artistically while growing more toxic for the people working in it. All the while, more and more independent games come out every year, proving that that realism is nowhere near the most important thing to making a game good, and that you can achieve much better results with a small team.

What I’m trying to say is: watch Jim Sterling’s channel, they’ve been bleeding out subscribers since they came out as nonbinary and make much better commentary on this topic than I could, and play Hades.

Back to the book, which sadly hasn’t become any more interesting since I decided to go on a tangent. Wade tests the ONI functions some more, all the while musing on how he knows Samantha would disapprove but that he doesn’t care, because what loving relationship doesn’t consist of that?

Among the functions, he tries the ONI files, the aforementioned recordings of someone else’s experiences. Specifically, a woman, which Wade tells us by telling us he suddenly has breasts, I suppose because Ernest Cline saw that subreddit about men writing women and went “I want a piece of that”. Oh, and also, those sample files were recorded from real people, in the real world. And yes, this goes exactly where you think it does.

SEX-M-F.oni, SEX-F-F.oni, and SEX-Nonbinary.oni

Look, I actually started writing a complaint about the boobs thing, and I deleted it, but now Cline is doing it on purpose. So, here goes: I saw a quote from this book on Twitter that looked like Cline attempting to make up for Wade’s casual transphobia in the first book. It wasn’t good, but it at least sounded like he was trying. So to immediately get this is…a lot? Let’s go for a lot.

I can almost excuse the use of “M” and “F”. You gotta name your files and you could excuse a non-exhaustive list. But…nonbinary? On one hand, I want to know what Cline means. On the other hand, I don’t think he can come up with an answer I’ll find satisfactory.

We are thankfully spared from finding out because Wade has just lost his virginity to Samantha a few days ago and he’s 1) not ready for this and 2) pretty sure this counts as cheating. You could make a case that this is more like porn, but I can see that this is more of a personal distinction anyway, and I can respect that one. Plus, you know. I don’t want to find out.

Wade logs off, and he can’t tell the difference between the OASIS with the ONI, and decides this will change the world. And then it’s back to the “how did he do it and keep it a secret”, even though Wade now finds out in the documentation that this had been in development for twenty-five years, basically since the OASIS launched. So it’s not really that it’s a secret, so much as there are a lot of people under very strict NDAs out there. Or, again, they’re all dead and/or otherwise incapacitated.

The ONI is the product of the Accessibility Research Lab, and Wade tells us about other stuff that the lab has produced using similar technology, mostly for medical purposes.

GSS patented each of the Accessibility Research Lab’s inventions, but Halliday never made any effort to profit from them. Instead, he set up a program to give these neuroprosthetic implants away, to any OASIS users who could benefit from them. GSS even subsidized the cost of their implant surgery.

Look, it’s nice that you want Halliday to be the good guy through and through, but it’s kind of hard to take any social commentary seriously when you think this is how a billionaire is made. Hell, even when he shut down the lab and fired its entire staff, he gave them a big enough severance package to set them for life. You know. Capitalism!

Hey, remember when Samantha said she was going to end world hunger if she won the contest, a thing billionaires right now could be doing, but aren’t, and she is now the co-owner of GSS? Yeah, I kind of hope the book remembers that too.

Speaking of the co-owners, the book just completely skips over the debate that our four main characters have over whether or not to release the ONI to the world. All we know is that they voted, and the vote goes in favor of releasing it. I mean, why have characters who could have opinions and feelings that could create a discussion? That might make us care about them! And who wants to care about characters in a story?

We put them on sale at the lowest possible price, to make sure as many people as possible could experience the OASIS Neural Interface for themselves.

What exactly is “the lowest possible price” here? Your company literally owns money. Like, OASIS money is real money. There is literally nothing stopping you from giving them away, especially because what you’re giving away is access to the platform you’re already running for a profit.

It’s almost like, even trying to make “good billionaires” out of its protagonists, the book can’t stop and actually make them significantly good.

Oh, I should mention. If you thought my Ready Player One review was angry at capitalism, wait until you see what the past couple years have done to me.

Anyway, once they his 7,777,777 simultaneous ONI users, a new riddle shows up on Halliday’s website. Because yep: our plot is apparently not about the implications of releasing the ONI, or any of the potential ideological discussions associated with that, it’s another riddle. Oh boy, do I wish I’d known that.

Seek the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul On the seven worlds where the Siren once played a role For each fragment my heir must pay a toll To once again make the Siren whole

I cannot wait to have the book give me just not enough information to solve the riddle until it’s solved by the book itself. That was so much fun the other…what was it, five times? Six times? Something like that. Wade already tells us the Siren might be Kira Morrow, because her alias was named after one of the sirens of Greek myth, so I can’t wait for that plot point to stick around. It was so fun to hear all about this man pining for another man’s wife the first time!

So this is the “Shard Riddle”. People are apparently convinced it was made by Wade and his crew as a publicity stunt, but of course, they know that that isn’t the case, and they also don’t know what that riddle is supposed to lead to. So, that’s great. We have a puzzle, and we also don’t know what the stakes are. All we know is that Wade wants to solve the puzzle essentially because it’s a challenge.

We skip over a year, and Wade tells us about how IOI collapses and gets absorbed by GSS because of the ONI’s launch. Remember IOI? They were the bad guys, so I guess we have to cheer?

GSS absorbed IOI and all of its assets, transforming us into an unstoppable megacorporation with a global monopoly on the world’s most popular entertainment, education, and communications platform.To celebrate, we released all of IOI’s indentured servants and forgave their outstanding debts.

On one hand: good for the slave. On the other hand: not gonna cheer for a monopoly, you guys.

Another year’s skip, and now 99% of the OASIS users are using the ONI, and yes, that includes trading their experiences with one another too. And I guess we’re still hand-waving any possible problems associated with that technology, because the technology is made so that all recordings must be shared and played through the OASIS.

This allowed us to weed out unsavory or illegal recordings before they could be shared with other users.

How? Do you know any of the problems associated with content moderations on the current platforms? I don’t know if I want to point to Youtube’s extremely faulty algorithm, Twitter’s complete apathy towards its Nazis, or Facebook doing moderation by making underpaid staff watch all potentially problematic content, which resulted in serious psychological damage to said staff.

You can’t just say that as if it solved everything. The chapter later says this is handled by an AI called “CenSoft”, and as an AI engineer myself, let me tell you: this is not going to work. Again: Youtube is the way it is for a reason.

It also let us maintain our monopoly on what was rapidly becoming the most popular form of entertainment in the history of the world.

And again, monopolies are totally a good thing as long as it’s in the right hands!

When I’m implying that the book does not care for any of these potential problems, I mean it. These enormous ethical issues are sidestepped in cold narratin, and we just keep going on introducing new slang that I hate, but have to quote so help you keep up.

“Sims” were recordings made inside the OASIS, and “Recs” were ONI recordings made in reality. Except that most kids no longer referred to it as “reality.” They called it “the Earl.” (A term derived from the initialism IRL.) And “Ito” was slang for “in the OASIS.” So Recs were recorded in the Earl, and Sims were created Ito.

There. You have been infodumped.

In the midst of all this (still extremely dry) exposition about how this changed media, we also get this tidbit:

You could take any drug, eat any kind of food, and have any kind of sex, without worrying about addiction, calories, or consequences.

Now, I was going to rant about this, but then, a page later, this happens and spares me the trouble:

I’d struggled with OASIS addiction before the ONI was released. Now logging on to the simulation was like mainlining some sort of chemically engineered superheroin.

So, you are aware that addiction isn’t just possible, but extremely facilitated by this. But sure, no worries! It’s perfectly safe! Because our protagonists are good.

Also, remember how the last book ended on a weak attempt at having a moral that maybe the real world is good, actually? Yeah, Wade tells us the ONI helps poor people live enjoyable lives in the OASIS. So. Fuck that message, I guess. It only applies if you’re the literal wealthiest man on Earth.

And me? All my dreams had come true. I’d gotten stupidly rich and absurdly famous. I’d fallen in love with my dream girl and she had fallen in love with me. Surely I was happy, right? Not so much, as this account will show.

Aside from the aforementioned returning OASIS affiction, there’s the Shard riddle that Wade is now obsessed with, to the point of offering a billion-dollar reward to anyone with information about the riddle’s answer.

I announced this reward with a stylized short film that I modeled after Anorak’s Invitation. I hoped it would seem like a lighthearted play on Halliday’s contest instead of a desperate cry for help. It seemed to work.

On one hand: good, Wade finally has a character flaw that the book actually acknowledges as a character flaw. I can work with that. On the other hand: this is all told to me in such a dispassionate that I am dreading how the book will handle this character flaw. Which is to say, I’m not expecting it to be very good.

(For a brief time, some of the younger, more idealistic shard hunters referred to themselves as “shunters” to differentiate themselves from their elder counterparts. But when everyone began to call them “sharters” instead, they changed their minds and started to call themselves gunters too. The moniker still fit. The Seven Shards were Easter eggs hidden by Halliday, and we were all hunting for them.)

Especially when this is something the narration feels is more important to tell me about.

Anyway, skip another year, and a gunter finally leads Wade to the First Shard. Solved that riddle, I guess. And wait, wasn’t part of why IOI was ~evil~ in the first book that they were paying people to find the Easter Egg for them? How is this any different, Wade?

And when I picked it up, I set in motion a series of events that would drastically alter the fate of the human race. As one of the only eyewitnesses to these historic events, I feel obligated to give my own written account of what occurred. So that future generations—if there are any—will have all the facts at their disposal when they decide how to judge my actions.

And that is the end of our chapter 0. And can I just say: what a mess already. I don’t think my snark can properly convey how utterly devoid of emotion this book’s writing is, and that alone is honestly more of a turn-off than anything else in the book so far. Even, knowing that I railed about it in the first book, I still feel newly unprepared for it. And it’s not like this double-prologue is making me hopeful that the book will show an ounce more critical thinking—or decent fucking humanity towards marginalized groups—as its predecessor.

So, that’s a lot to look forward to! For the sake of my sanity and schedule, don’t expect me to do such big posts every time. I’ll probably do one chapter a week from now on, if that. We’re in for a long ride, but I hope it’s worth it, at least.

#ready player two #ernest cline #st: ready player two #book reviews

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cinema-tv-etc · 3 years

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Anne Hathaway says she was the 9th choice for 'Devil Wears Prada' role One of the best roles on her resume, the iconic part wasn't intended for her... eight times over. Feb. 20, 2021 By Francesca Gariano

It’s hard to think of anyone but Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs from “The Devil Wears Prada,” but the actress recently revealed that she almost wasn’t! The 38-year-old actor made a virtual appearance during Friday’s episode of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” to give the contestants a pep talk ahead of their musical-theater challenge. Hathaway dropped some of her acting tips along with one of her career struggles involving her iconic role in “The Devil Wears Prada.” One contestant, Rosé, asked the actress if there were any roles she had to fight for, to which she replied, “How much time do you have? A lot of them”

"I will give you some tea, I was the ninth choice for ‘Devil Wears Prada,’” she said. "But I got it! Hang in there, never give up."

News that she wasn't the first choice is nothing new, but the fact that the list was so long before her is.

According to a 2016 article by Variety, Fox was looking for a bigger name to portray Andy and had their eye initially on Rachel McAdams following her success from “The Notebook” and “Mean Girls." McAdams reportedly declined the studio multiple times because she didn’t want to star in mainstream media.

In 2007, McAdams told Elle, "I'm not going to make movies just to make movies.”

"I have to be passionate about it," she added. "And at the same time, I can get very distracted when I'm working, and I like to get back to my life a lot."

Hathaway previously told Variety that she didn't have to audition, adding, "I had to be patient. I wasn't the first choice."

She recalled getting a call from her agent who broke the good news to her while she was with her friends at her place. “I was putting on a shirt,” she explained. “I had some buddies over. I remember running out in my living room, half dressed, screaming—I got ‘The Devil Wears Prada!’ I got ‘The Devil Wears Prada’!”

Finding their Andy wasn’t Fox’s only difficult casting decision. The role of Nigel, eventually portrayed by Stanley Tucci, wasn’t cast until 72 hours before his character was due on set. Another role that was difficult to fill was that of Emily, the senior assistant to Miranda Priestly.

The film's director, David Frankel, had considered over 100 actors for the role, but none seemed to fit. Emily Blunt was up for the leading role in “Eragon” at the time and was on the Fox lot. A casting agent had her read lines on tape for the role of Emily, choosing to do them in a British accent despite the character being American. Frankel loved the tape and found his Emily, eventually casting her after the other film passed on Blunt.

Maybe everything does happen for a reason. That's all.

https://www.today.com/popculture/anne-hathaway-was-9th-choice-devil-wears-prada-t209553

#Devil Wears Prada #Anne Hathaway

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blankdblank · 3 years

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It’s a Mother Flocking Puffin Pt 22

Use of Karliene: Walk with the Devil. Requested by @deepestfirefun.

…

‘Rest up, hope you’re feeling better. Been getting calls and messages all day yesterday and this morning to pass on that everyone will wait as long as necessary for their instruments to be repaired and returned. Your health is imperative.’ Bilbo’s message read loud and clear across your phone screen once you’d been given it from your bag that had kept it safe.

Along with that inquiries from Mal and thanks for saving her from that dagger notices from the social page you were instructed to make to display previews of your artwork for your illustration course to be tagged for the class and school for possible interest from future employers. The only public account you had with scores of messages of well wishes and compliments of the song you had been at the school to record.

Curious of how you did the clip was easily found on the same site your videos for the guys were posted on in the popular news category. The stilled image was you in the booth while the band outside readied to play the tune for you. And to the first note the camera steadied into a slightly better angle to come to rest as your voice came out in an accented Khuzdul flow sounding so awkward to you while others in the comments were praising the song you’d written for the popular fable a production company was currently filming. Snare taps to a drum beat kept the song going while the brass section readied for their role to the melody.

I've never claimed to be a good boy

That lad is long dead

'Cause I got stuck in the wars, Grace

Ones with bullets

And ones in my head

But you made it so

Easy to let go

Now I'm all alone

And the shots are deafening

A few lines in the footage flickered between you and a montage of sorts, reading a sort of fable linked to your lineage with Melkor’s death and inherited oath to bring down your family passed to the Avari.

So I walk with the Devil

My rivals best be careful

'Cause when you're already dead

There's no gun at your head

You're finally free

This one more of a fan video for your saving the day as slowed down enough to get stilled images of your fighting the Avari to when Smaug was released.

I shook hands with the Devil

Ah this town best be careful

'Cause when you're already dead

There's no rope for your neck

You're finally free

Yeah, I walk with the Devil

People fled while you ran from the courtyard. More stilled images flickered of the path to the Nursery until more flames destroyed that wing.

Do you remember that broken man

When you sang your song?

And how you put him back together, girl

With your voice and with your love

The shop came next up to the trio hoisting up the wind lance ending with the reduction of Smaug to rubies and gold.

'Cause you made it so

Easy to let go

Now I'm all alone

And the shots are deafening

The image of Thorin’s elated embrace of you afterwards was held for a good while with banners of wishes for long rules for their interim King and Queen.

So I walk with the the Devil

My rivals best be careful

Cause when you’re already dead

There’s no gun at your head

You’re finally free

The final part held a montage of clips from your videos on the progress for building your piano and repair job for the orchestra with words of hope to see what music you would bring into the world in the years to come.

I shook hands with the Devil

Ah this town best be careful

Cause when you’re already dead

There’s no rope for your neck

You’re finally free

The combination was a bit awkward of a match to go with the song but you simply took it as the culture variations at play that you simply didn’t see the tying features at not having grown up with their media they were used to. Still shockingly low on the pop culture references here down you scrolled realizing this was a fan video and not how this was put on the news. That footage was five times the length of this video due to the discussion of the anchors and a frozen image on one of the parts of you with what looked to be ice wings coming from your back used for another fan video titled Dragon vs Puffin Queen. Each video you saw continued the pattern of using various parts of the footage until you dipped to something else entirely. One focused solely on the song faces of Dwarves for the video you clicked on showed their shared plea for the production company to use the song you’d written for that fable in their upcoming film stirring a smirk out of you.

At your side you set the phone and again in your bag your hand dipped to fetch your notepad to continue working on a writing assignment formerly due in a week. Emails had been sent that the rest of the week the school was being cleaned with usable portions to continue housing classes while those in the destroyed wings would be moved to other courses. Among the few students on required bed rest and the parents understandably requiring some time off virtual courses were to be given for each applicable with written projects to be assigned weekly for the courses requiring physical attendance to have a grade to place until those lectures could be made up.

All the same you would do all you could to leave little extra stress for your Professors on top of the shift to not have to make up too many assignments. On the other hand however the Professors having heard from the news that the worst injuries you faced were cracked ribs assured you that there was no rush for you to hurry back to class before you were fully healed to not hurt yourself even more in returning before the month was up. Even after the Feast was set to take place to grant you more relaxation time even if your ribs and other troubles were healed by then.

Being with you was priority, though for his urge to stay curled up with you half an hour was what he set aside daily to work on the bunnies for you, maybe more if you had drifted off into a nap. Each day bringing him closer to the finished present he could give to you before the holiday break would come to tick off another marker to your courtship before meeting your clans in person. The first day went easily enough with small naps taken every so often between meals. With the second once you had finished off all your backed up work even a dig for an old needlework kit had taken up a few hours while Thorin had picked up some more loose ends to help carry the equal share of evening out from the fallout. Mainly the management of funds to be allocated to the building crews chosen for repairing the University and landscaping teams which should cover most of the issues for the remainder of the week minus the daily meetings.

A clever idea came from Balin’s wife in her time to bond with you while Dis sat for the official portrait for her, Vili and their children for that release at the end of the week when Thror and Niro would return home to the Palace. Propped on your legs rested on top of two pillows while you were being iced post stop by the Healers to stretch and massage out your still tight leg from hip to toe sat a tablet. With it you eyed the 3d model of the cottage you had chosen that she smirked relaxing that at least in your boredom some work to get more steps completed could be started, and the length of the task could take up ample time to get you through this healing bout of bed rest.

Easily the agreed furry foot stools and the forest green rug like in one of the studies you had seen with different color patterns were added. Tucked in the bedroom was a bed frame you wanted that by a peek into the boys’ room in the rental you shared Thorin might not be against using that frame for your marital bed. Blank boxy white furniture was settled where you wanted to fill spaces to be agreed upon later with the basic rooms first, starting with the living room. White furniture scooted around the room expanding and shrinking around the white rug before you turned your focus to the color of the walls, patterned wallpaper for a few rooms to be looked over by Thorin later surely as it wasn’t just going to be your home it’d be his too.

By the time you moved onto the dining room while your company was off to feed her little girl and put her down for a nap Thorin had come back and smiled ready to relax himself with an ice pack on his shoulder. Right up to your side with a gentle press of his lips to your cheek he wiggled closer, smile splitting wider in notice of what you were up to and the bashful grin on your face at being caught pressing forward on this step alone.

“Decorating to keep you busy?” He hummed gladly with eyes shifting to your face again, the blush on your face lured him inwards to steal another kiss on your cheek. “Let’s see what you have so far.”

“I have the stools we already agreed on, and I was thinking this rug, if those colors work.”

“That is a lovely rug,”

“And I did pick a bed frame like this, if you’d be good with that?”

“My beds have always been like this.” Hastily he wet his lips. “There is a style I imagined for the armchairs in our study and parlor guests won’t be using, just for us, it’s nice and deep,” his fingers on one hand found the style and settled one in place that with a tap of your own you added a second and switched between the colors tugging a smirk across his lips.

“Ooh, I like this grey one.” Once that was placed you said, “Maybe we should pick room colors and papers first.” Starting the task to coloring each room you could leaving the others blank for the time being with a symbolic giant crystal sculpture of Mumakil in the center of those rooms as a symbol to come back to later.

Kili grinned saying, “Now, I am on the camera, countdown, 5,” he hurried over and you giggled at his switching the camera on to record with the mini screen aimed at the three of you. You were tucked up in a plushy armchair with feet up on a furry foot rest with pillows rested behind your back fully warmed by the lit fireplace to your left, Fili was seated on one arm of the chair with Kili for the other. “2,” Back at your free side he came and smiled making you nip at your lip and grin through their usual sign in ready and comfortable for this video the guys thought would be a good check in for the public to say you are on the mend.

Lowly in Khuzdul they both said, “Welcome back to our little corner of the LonelyMountain. Today our salon doors are open to you.”

“ManeMan,” Fili said with a grin before Kili said, “And the GlitterGrizzly” Both bowed briefly making you glance down to shift your legs again, “At your service.” Their hands clapped and the pair settled a hand on the chair back behind your head smiling wider, “And today we are here again with our incredible model SnowBunny.”

In a soft giggle you waved with your now sling free arm glad to have some normal movement from that shoulder again and the pair each brought forward a set of measuring tapes, “Who is so kindly allowing us to measure her for a sketch while she relaxes by her lovely warm fire.”

Kili, “Already from our selection of candles she has chosen her favorite, a lovely warm cider scent.” With a smile he watched Fili play with and light the candle he set up on the mantle behind you.

Fili in sitting down again, “And now that we are assured our model is tucked nice and comfy in this large armchair with blanket, pillows and furry footrest we shall get to the measuring.” Through giggles you let them shift you subtly with tapes covering what was revealed above the blanket and just a long measure of the top of your legs and the tent your feet made on the stool. Each number was recorded on a notepad before the pair smiled moving to the stools set out they showed off smoothing their hands over them lifting the sketch pads and pencils waiting there for both on opposite sides of you to get started on the sketch. Halfway through to another exaggerated show of using their pencils to scale up a part of the sketches Sir Akdâmuthrab came over and climbed his way up onto your lap.

Kili, “Hey! I was almost done!”

Fili chuckled saying to the camera, “Introducing a little Burglar who is intent on stealing the focus of our SnowBunny.”

“Oh he can’t help it, nice and warm and he likes to cuddle since I can’t run away and wake him up,” you giggled out to the Princes who chuckled.

Kili leaned in saying, “Now to just wait for him to settle so I can get his markings right, him and his envious mustache and brows.”

Again you giggled out, “If he keeps up photo bombing we might have to pick him out a bowtie. Something fancy to wear.”

Fili, “Ooh, we could do that, stitch him up some options and have a try out for him to see which he likes.”

Exaggerated sketch sounds and taps on the pads came with your Burglar’s napping stretch granting them a second shot to get him added to the images that at the end they showed off. Once signed off the guys switched the video to edit while around you then posted it with a nice little message for a mini update from the Young Majesty from the Palace. The video had to be done today as the guys were meeting up with their team for a practice before the game this weekend taking them from your company and leaving you to Thorin’s watch once Thror and Niro return.

They were off while you slept soundly in a nap post lunch break, having been helped back to the comfortable mattress by the boys as walking was a bit rough on breathing easily for long distances past the occasional bathroom trip you could manage there and back again on your own.

Thror upon seeing Thorin tugged him into a tight hug, “How are you feeling?”

Niro promptly claimed her own hug widening his grin, “In any pain?”

“I am doing well, bit sore, but more for the massages and realignment from the Healers. Mostly just bruises and scrapes for me.”

Thror, “How is Jaqi? We saw the video the boys posted this morning. Quite early.”

“Jaqi is doing well, slept early, rough to say better or not, ribs are still troubling for her to walk or move too freely with just yet.”

Niro, “Are the Healers with her?”

Thorin shook his head, “No, resting right now, we just had lunch a bit ago.”

She looked over her grandson, “Are you resting?”

“Yes, I’ve been staying with Jaqi most nights unless it’s too late after things that have come up. I don’t want to wake her or make her shift by me joining her in her sleep to hurt her ribs. I am sleeping, just still tired.”

Thror, “Are you off to rest after we do the public hand off of the ring?”

Thorin nodded, “Small nap, then I would like to finish up the touches on the bunnies. Just a few tiny things to double check then it’s waiting until she is healed to have a walk or picnic at least.”

Thror patted him on the back, “That is a relief, come and we will handle this business and you will be demoted again to focus solely on our granddaughter.” Deepening the Prince’s smile on the joint turn from the garage where their jet had let them out to get inside the Palace walls.

All was still locked down on these grounds at least as it would stay out of respect for you to grant you ample protection and trust that you had all the time you needed to recover. While you had been resting the Emperor when not at your side had made a couple trips on the days you were meant to go into the shop to at the very least assure Bilbo that you were all holding up nicely, along with handling a few press updates with simple statements in passing. All that you were improving and following the Doctor’s instructions to continue doing so after a blow to the ribs. They were your main injury that none wished to rush you on as in their required sparring courses rib injuries were abundantly common and known to require a bit of babying to recover from no matter how irritating the bed laying could be. All in all the people were of good spirits knowing ample updates day to day after what could have gone so much worse for everyone involved.

Niro with a smile looped her arm into Thorin’s arm asking, “And what is this I hear about cottage decorations while on your bed rest?”

Thorin chuckled along with Thror, “A tablet was given to keep her distracted, mainly just wall colors and a few rooms down.”

Niro, “It is a start, once the mirrors are taken down off that pillar then we can get to painting and papering the cottage.”

“Put a little something together for you, my Yuula,” the Emperor said rolling you in the wheeled chair to your 3rd spare bedroom now turned into a mini workshop filled with a selection of the 8 double bases and 12 cellos sent from the orchestra the day prior. “I imagined the orchestra pieces might be wanted to complete first.”

Tearily you looked up at him smiling in his lean forward to give you a hug, “Thank you.”

“I know you just want to be productive, the boys helped me sneak these back, well, not much to sneaking, they are huge, but tagged and organized for you. Bilbo said the Violas come in a few days.”

And that was how your little bed rest rebellion began. Resting in your chair the 2 hours and 40 minutes for the bases went by smoothly. Followed by the first half of the cellos for 2 hours until your brunch came in to by followed by finishing off the cellos that were, via text to Bilbo, moved over in the system and to be taken back to the shop to notify the orchestra in a few days to not spoil the surprise. As if they had already been done and simply gotten shuffled down on the call to pick up list traded for the violas in their drop off. As it went the day of rebellion was followed by two mainly sleeping for the ease of the Healers and Durins only for you to wake to the first six of the 12 violas sent in at a time. Two hours was all it took and to avoid another slump like that again you spaced them out through the day before and after meals to grant you a shower and nap to be rested for supper with Thorin.

The Emperor was pleased to say the least that you were restless and somewhat calm, that your fighting spirit hadn’t taken an injury and sorrow or a deep depression had crept in to keep you wishing to stay in bed forever and never leave these palace walls again. Desserts were group affairs with breakfasts on occasion when you were up to be held together, each adding another tick mark to proof that you would be back to normal soon enough.

Tonight however with the shipment of Athelas plants from Gondor he had sent for the Emperor sat up next to you having helped you lay out on your side. With shirt tucked up revealing the painful black bruise of the handle surrounded by a sea or deep indigo bruises from your side branching onto your back matching those on your legs. Soft and tenderly his voice ebbed and flowed from wall to wall in the squeeze of his fingers around the wet cloth draining the excess warm water mingled with the essence of the ground Athelas blooms causing it to begin to glow. Barely touching the skin over your bruise his hand paused at the clench of your side feeling the heat already of the cloth and hand close to touching the painful spot. A healing bath was set to be drawn for you later today but this bruise and fractures had to be seen to first to ease your discomfort before you could soak in a hot bath preventing risks of losing your breath in the tub from the heat.

Down his hand moved to fold around the bruise as kindly as possible for the slow and steady smooth of the cloth down your ribs to spread the healing ointment. Faintly to his song your skin began to glow and between each stroke of the cloth he would remove it to drench it again to coat your skin some more. Every one showing signs that the bruises were lightening, with eyes shut you controlled your breath to grow accustomed to the uncomfortable feeling of the fractured ribs underneath his palm beginning to seal whole again from the painful crack outwards. The sight from the foot of the bed had Thorin’s hand smoothing comfortingly over your ankle and lower leg eyeing each inch of the astonishing bruise covering your torso. Curiously the boys had asked to watch the process and having heard your bruises would heal as well were glad to get your approval for their filming the process.

Black to Indigo the ribs began to give way to a tolerable purple growing fainter to an olive shade where he would guide your body onto your belly. Up to your shoulders the back of your shirt was eased up revealing the back of your front clasped razorback bra in a stand out nude shade he worked around guiding those indigo bruises around the small bandages he uncovered to smooth the ointment over. Those remaining scabs moistened soaking it all in to heal by morning adding to the stunning process relaxing those watching even more at the growing ease you found to move and breathe again.

Down into the now empty bowl the cloth was settled. And over your back the shirt was eased again for his guiding you to sit up cross legged for a series of easy stretches to test your limberness regained again widening your grin knowing that surely after the bath you’d be mostly back to normal after another day of continuing to rest as much as possible. The return to health was much anticipated though glad for more days of cuddles Thorin stayed close. In private as the boys went to watch and edit the footage down to update the people again who had caught sight of one of your bruises before on your leg when a massage was being given to it in a try to help speed it along. The comments almost all focused on how long it might take to have those indigo bruises to heal on your Hobbity self with others of Hobbit lineage sharing their own long battles with bruises.

The videos surely were seen by your clan, who had called Winge and calmed at the delivery on its way to aid in those lingering wounds paining them greatly. Again and again the footage of the attack was viewed by them watching their brave strong lost heir defeating a formidable foe and foiling the anticipated death toll tipped entirely onto the Avari. Aching to have this week over with wishing to have you greet them in this new kingdom you’d yet to travel to that they could show you all of the secrets they had learned in their stay. They could have come to visit but still clung to the fact they did not wish to overstep as if they had been there in your pained moments they would not have left your side until you were back to yourself again while sharing all you had missed and they had been compiling on personal lists for the decades of your absence sure to spill out of them. But it was just another week until you would arrive, having assured them in your video call times at the back end of Winge’s daily updates that you were still coming on time so they didn’t have to change the Feast of Starlight plans.

Two sock bunnies sat on your table along the wall while tucked in bed with Thorin on top of the covers beside you watched a film. One baby blue with white spots and a white t shirt complete with blue button paired with an identical bunny in grey and white. Much like for you in the past his speech shot right out of his mind and even sore still a tight hug on your part was met by his gentle embrace pleased to have received your adoration on his skills. One loving dinner had been prepared by him and all night he remained close to you with just a break to change to his flannels and return again to stretch out with you enjoying the film he’d chosen, smiling brightly all the while at your place nestled half against his chest using his shoulder as your pillow. In the morning he’d be off to another final wedding being held out in one of the Southern Dwarf Kingdoms that would keep him away a few days. You wouldn’t be sitting around moping, not with classes beginning this week to sit for and instruments to pretend you weren’t fixing.

“I’m telling you Amad I don’t know!” Kili huffed out plopping into a chair bedside his brother’s after having been standing so long to show off his mark dots on the shape of a clover on his wrist now in a darker shade of light gold hinting he’d touched his One.

Dis huffed as Vili said, “Well there has to be a hint on how many people you whacked your wrist into while Smaug was terrorizing the school.”

Kili blurted out, “Well what about Fili?! His mark is on his collarbone they’d have had to go under his shirt why isn’t he getting this grilling when he should no doubt know who touched him underneath his clothes! All I know is we were at the game and our marks lit up, so it’s someone that went to the game!”

Dis said, “No deflecting, we are working youngest to eldest. Now from the first sign Smaug was being let loose who did you come into contact with? As best you can remember. There are two clans to research and contact to begin courtship talks.”

Kili sighed and wet his lips looking at his wrist himself trying to remember. “We just came out of the orchestra session and we were in the breezeway, we saw the team, then dagger was thrown. Smaug came out and we grabbed,”

His eyes went wide as Fili’s did realizing who it might be, both groaning out rubbing their hands over their faces, “Mal.”

Dis looked them over asking, “Ok yes she is on the list we took note of on the security footage there is of this. Why the groan?”

Kili lowered his hands to say, “I grabbed her arm and Fi kept her head between us, when we went to the water I had to help him get her to let go of his shirt.”

Vili, “Ok, good candidate then, why the groan do you not like her?”

They both said, “You don’t date your friend’s friends! Bro Code! She’s Jaqi’s only friend outside the clan!”

Kili shook his head, “Can’t be her,” crossing his arms over his chest.

Fili did the same, “She’d never talk to us again.” His folded arms shifting his shirt to show the side of the pale blue jellyfish shaped dots of his mark once more of an off white than a legible shade of blue at all.

The parents relented and let the boys go with word given to Dwalin through his friendship with Bilbo to ask what clan she belonged to on her Dwarf side. A task leaving them less than satisfied as he said he paid no one to that ‘jumble of nonsense’ her father hailed from and had even himself broken free of to choose the more respectable Baggins clan and name for his own to get a fresh start from the life he rarely spoke of beyond a muttered curse. Leaving just one person to ask for any clue without approaching the young Dwobbit herself.

Pt 23

All –

@himoverflowers, @theincaprincess, @aspiringtranslator, @thegreyberet, @patanghill17, @jesgisborne, @curvestrology, @alishlieb, @jogregor, @armitageadoration, @fizzyxcustard, @lilith15000, @marvels-ghost, @catthefearless, @imjusthereforthereads, @c-s-stars, @otakumultimuse-hiddlewhore, @mariannetora, @shes-a-killer-kween, @ggbbhehe4455, @xxbyimm

Hobbit/LotR – @abiwim, @jotink78, @pastelhexmaniac

x Thorin – @evyiione, @deepestfirefun, @queenoferebor

X all Rich. A - @abiwim, @deepestfirefun, @thestorybookmistress

#thorin x oc #Bedrest #Decorating app #Busy Work #Repair Jobs #Emperor Winge #King Thror x Queen Niro #Dis x Vili #Fili #Kili #OC Mal #Who's the Mate?#Modern AU #the Hobbit

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