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shyanshippingsociety · 2 years

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Shyan Shipping Society Mod Fic Rec List - August 2022

hello and welcome to the august fic rec list! your mods ve, shade, cerys, juice, rowan, and nicole have gathered some of our favorite fics (and commentary) for your reading pleasure! enjoy!

Ve:

Modus Broperandi by strawberrymilano | E, 28K, complete

Shane’s never had a bro bone in his body. Except, lately… Lately, whenever he sees a bro, he falls into natural bro behavior.

It’s an out-of-body experience.

Ghost!Ryan AU.

I'll be upon you by the moonlight side by drunkkenobi | E, 22K, complete

“It’s weird, you know.”

“Weird” wasn’t the word Shane would’ve used. Terrifying, scary, awful, upsetting, grotesque, sure, but weird? Not high on his list.

“What do you mean?”

“Just that Sara would get bit by a wolf on a full moon.”

“Ryan.”

Shade:

hey boy, take a look at me by weakspots | E, 17K, complete

Ryan is 27, for Christ’s sake, and he’s not exactly hideous, so there’s really no reason to spend his money on a dude — a dude — whose face he’ll never see but whose livestreams he’s been jerking off to for roughly 4 months now. He should be going out and partying and fucking random chicks. Or a guy, whatever, just to get it out of his system and confirm to himself that he really is 100% straight.

Because he is. This is morbid curiosity, if anything.

Teacher's Pet by chapscher | E, 24K, complete

“You aren’t describing a teacher’s pet! You’re describing… I don't know the name for it. Someone who tries to seduce their teacher so they can get a better grade.” “Isn’t that a teacher’s pet?” “No!” _ Ryan is tired of losing every episode of Puppet History and asks Shane to tutor him. Shane obliges and tries to keep the tutoring session on track even as they distract each other.

Cerys:

The Hierophant by carrieonfighting | T, 94K, complete

“So kids, for the last week, we’ve been discussing the fundamentals of duelling.” Shane lounged easily against his desk, robes hanging open haphazardly. Ryan snorted to himself, sitting at the back of the huge room, and he saw Shane’s ear twitch.

“So today, now that I have a partner, it seems like a fantastic time to demonstrate!” He announced. It was Ryan’s turn to twitch. “Professor Bergara is your new Divination teacher, he’ll be starting his classes after the weekend. Please stand up, Professor.”

“E-excuse me?” Ryan said, turning terribly red.

In which Ryan sees the future and moves to Scotland, meets his hero and isn't impressed, hears strange noises in the night, and interrogates some ghosts. After all these years, the castle still keeps its secrets.

A Gentleman of Spirit by breathtaken | E, 21K, complete

Newly impoverished and grieving the loss of his father, Mr Shane Madej is only attending Lady Bergara’s ball at Walcot Hall so that he can write an anonymous report on it for one of the gossip columns. He isn’t expecting to find the Baronet of Walcot’s eldest son – as rich and handsome as he is eccentric – attempting to contact a spirit behind the coach house; he certainly isn’t expecting to fall in love.

Juice:

Do I have a crush? by Dippingmytoesindreams | T, 2K, complete

No, he does not. AKA, Buzzfeed Violet’s Crush series, but make it shyan

Oh, Ryan by VictoriaAGrey | T, 10K, complete

Ryan thinks the holiday season is going to be a predictable affair until Ned calls in a two year old debt Ryan owes him. Honoring that two year old debt sets into motion an avalanche of bad decisions and miscommunications that land Ryan at his parent's house on Christmas Day with a baby and a best friend pretending to be his boyfriend.

Did he also mention Shane's living with him?

Rowan:

tender violet blue by 2many2spirits | E, 7K, complete

“Why’d you do it this time?”

“You asked,” Shane says with a shrug, and the enormity of the statement hits Ryan in the chest with a two-second delay, almost knocking the air from his lungs. Ryan’s never prepared for the way Shane can deliver absolutely devastating blows in the most casual way. It’s one of his most charming qualities. “And you’re so small, I couldn’t let you get hit by a wave and pulled out to sea on my watch. Linda would kill me. I’d have to walk back to LA.”

or; the intricate ritual is skinny dipping

(no actual rituals happen)

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered Am I by colazitron | E, 17K, complete

Look, just because Ryan looks good dressed as Indiana Jones, or dressed in various other things, and just because Shane maybe has a feeling or two about it, doesn't mean it's a thing, okay? Shane's got this.

Or: 5 times Shane had a feeling about Ryan's outfit, +1 time he did something about it

Nicole:

Like Wildfire by makemadej | E, 20K, complete

“Is this gonna be a thing with you?” Ryan demands. “You can’t keep committing to stuff that no one else knows about! When people online say they want you to be more open and vulnerable, this is not what they mean.”

“I know!” Shane wails. “I fucked up.”

“Again,” Ryan points out, which is true but really not necessary.

(Or: the one where Shane accidentally tells Ryan's mom they're a couple and they commit to the bit)

Nicole’s Note: The first Shyan fic I ever read, which was my intro to the ship and the reason I joined the SSS!!

The Weird 'Verse by Little_Bunny | M, 169K, complete

It really started for a stupid reason, and that stupid reason was the Ohio State Penitentiary.

But then, things got set into motion, and before they knew it, the relationship between Ryan and Shane had changed in relatively subtle but hugely important ways. Ways that are a little weird. Ways that nobody had expected, although Sara had given her full, unwavering support.

Well... Maybe Curly had suspected something. But honestly, Curly got the gossip before God herself, so... That was nothing new.

Nicole’s Note: Queerplatonic Shyan/Shyanara with some of the best characterisation I’ve ever read!! You know a fic is good when you end up with tons of your own headcanons for the universe it’s set in

we hope you enjoy our recs! as always, leave comments and kudos on fics you like - those mean a lot to authors! and feel free to let us know if you have any recs!

- the mod team

#mod ve #fic finds #mod fic recs #shyan #buzzfeed unclean #buzzfeed after dark #shyan shipping society

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iamnotawomanimagod · 11 months

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EDIT UP TOP re: The Halsey's mom screenshot

the more I think about it and looked into it, the more I really think that that person wasn't even Nicole Frangipane. Their Facebook profile is friends with a Sevian profile that has 4 friends. Sevian actually has a somewhat public presence and would definitely have more followers than that. The "Nicole" page itself only has 54 friends and isn't posting any photos that aren't already available on other social media websites.

aka that shit is fake as fuck, there is no proof whatsoever that that's actually Halsey's mom and that means that's a "fan" spreading some awful shit about Halsey for no good reason.

that's even more reason to NOT share it and to let that shit die. which I'm gonna do, starting now.

okay original post below:

DON'T SHARE THE SCREENSHOT OF HALSEY'S MOM TALKING ABOUT HALSEY'S ADDICTION ISSUES. DON'T TAG H IN POSTS ABOUT IT. DON'T SPECULATE ON SHIT WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT.

Okay well now I'm seeing that screenshot all over the damn place, including from people who are trying to say that sharing it is wrong.

Honestly, it seems fake as fuck to me, and I'll go into why under the readmore, but for starters:

If that really is Halsey's mom (I have my doubts,) it is incredibly wrong for her to talk about Halsey's personal struggles and air her dirty laundry in a public space when she KNOWS her daughter has millions of eyes on her at all times. The things she has disclosed to that public forum should've remained private until if/when Halsey decided to talk about it. It's a huge betrayal and is made doubly worse by the fact that, if Halsey really has been committed, she cannot stop her mom from talking about her and might not even know that this information has gone public.

And finally, yes, here's the tea so more people don't go seeking out the screenshot, because I know curiosity is a bitch:

Halsey's mom (allegedly, again, I don't know if it was actually her) posted in a Facebook group for addiction/recovery that she's "worried her daughter has relapsed" because "she's lost so much weight, she's irritable, etc" (it's not like she's got a million health problems and is going through a breakup with the father of her child or anything, right???)

In a later post, "Nicole" claimed that H has been hospitalized after a Xanax OD. She also claimed that Halsey just left an abusive relationship, is pregnant with her second child, is in an ongoing custody battle with Alev, doesn't want him in her children's lives, and is still being hospitalized because of a manic-depressive episode.

Reasons I don't think that's actually her mom/I'll be VERY disappointed if it is:

1 - Halsey has spoken at length in public about her struggles with fertility. She would NEVER want her pregnancy announced in this way. If it's early enough, there's still a very good chance H will lose the baby. I doubt their mom doesn't know that. She's a really shitty mom if she decided to spread that.

2 - Halsey's mom has never done anything like this before, in my memory. She's no Dina Lohan. I've never seen her talk about her daughter in public or make statements on H's behalf before. Not even on social media.

3 - The picture "Nicole" claimed was sent to her by her daughter is a readily available selfie from H's instagram. Why would H send their mom a picture of herself that she already posted on her very public social media page?

4 - If they really were hospitalized/committed, and it was verifiable, gossip rags would be all over it by now.

So, in short, we have absolutely no proof that this is legitimately Halsey's mom, and even if it is, it was INCREDIBLY WRONG of her to post about these topics on a public forum.

It's okay to be worried/concerned for Halsey's wellbeing. It is NOT okay to support the spread of this incredibly personal information.

I'm honestly super hesitant to post about it at all, I feel like I am now contributing to the problem, but I would rather people read about it in a post about how wrong it is to spread it, not on the screenshot itself. Idk man. Whole situation's fucked.

#halsey

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nikkiiiscute · 3 months

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The Man that started it all. Chpt. I - Pt. I (WH HC writing)

Since it's NaNoWriMo, I ain't participating in the competition but I wanna write something anyways lmao

Hi, My name is Nicole "Nikki" Dorelaine (This is NOT my real name), I visited The Playfellow Exhibition to see how my late Grandpa made it so for but I never knew how much of a Terrible person he was and was never the kind man he was remembered to be.

"Aye Nickel, Ya done drawing Poppy?" said my Priya "Yeah, I feel like she's similar to you Priya, I mean Didn't ur grandaunt puppeteered Poppy?" I replied "Like, My grandaunt did share names, hair / feather color and personality. It's kinda like she IS Poppy" said Priya. For me, Poppy seems like an underrated character alongside that Caterpillar dunno his name guy, The tour guide led us to to "The Cast and Crew of Welcome Home!", Priya raised her hand up while jumping and whispering "Mememememe! Pls me!", So the tour guide asked her "Yes, You with the auburn hair?" She shouted out from the back of the small crowd gathering outside the Exhibit Doors "Yeah! I'm actually the Grandniece of Poppy Perdiz, The namesake and puppeteer of Poppy Partridge!" "Oh how wonderful! We have a person that knows a Cast member oooof The Show!" and there she goes strutting to the Exhibit Doors looking like she regretted her decision to do that. What became an Intro to Looking on who were the cast and crew, Became an Interview with my girlfriend, Wooo. After that outta the way, We got in and There was portraits of literally everybody who worked with Playfellow Workshop with Name, Role and If they're dead or alive after the awful Playfellow M4ss4cr3. I was bored by the time we got there and I just wanna go to The gift Shop already, I know full well that in one of those shelves has a Julie plush. "Hey Priya, I'mma stay here for a while, I wanna know more about these people and ur Grandaunt. I feel like she's the nicest woman in the world" I gave a smile as she got dragged away by the crowd and a sea of questions. I went through all the portraits and saw the VA and puppeteer of my fav rainbow monster, Julie. Apparently Grandpa during the humble beginnings of the show, based the characters off of his original crew which is now the cast members. While I'm looking through these wonderful people, I heard...whispers? It sounds just like the voice lines of the characters and I heard "Ah, this is the scumbag that murdered us for 'rEsEaRcH'" from what I think, Sally replied? A soft spoken male voice replied as I turned around to see the cast gathering around a portrait of my Legendary Grandpa while whispering and murmurs can be heard "Yes, I know him. He is Ronald Dorelaine" Before I even blinked, They swiftly turned around and stared at me, it gave me chills as their black eyes go to me. They're actually the cast but, Something... Feels off. It's like the aspects of the puppets were applied on these people There's 4 people that has colorful horn and tail, Theres one with four arms and legs, One mailman lookin guy hiding behind a person with a line around their neck and the most familiar to me was... Ms. Perdiz? "Wait! Aren't you guys the characters there?" I screamed out "I know you're Dorelaine's grandchild and I'm prayin' that you're not like him" said the mailman "What? Nonononono! I am absolutely NOT like him and why are you saying that he killed you? He would never" I spoke out in defense "That's an overused cliche that you would defend your secretly evil grandpa" replied the sunny girl and she speaks again "Take one look at us and what do you see? You see injuries that DID kill us and who else would do that for so called research? Yes, your obsessive grandfather" I didn't know this side of my grandpa, but this woman said it to my face, Then the woman that represented julie said to me "It's okay, That's how I- No, We felt this way when Dorelaine... You know what happened" as everyone there had disbelief as their reactions. I heard the door opened, It was Priya "Niiiiik! you've been there for so long! Thank me for buying that Julie plu-" It felt like her blood froze her in place as she drops the bags

To be Continued lmao

#welcome home #julie joyful #eddie dear #frank frankly #wally darling #welcome home theory #poppy partridge #sally starlet #barnaby b beagle #howdy pillar #nanowrimo #fiction writing #writerblr #am writing #original fiction #i am so tired

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pvccblog · 10 months

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QUESTIONS AND NUKES

Hello once again everyone! Wow, God is SO GOOD! We have fallen in love with this town and the opportunities here to connect with people have been outstanding. Both of our events today just about doubled in size and they were awesome! Honestly, we've stopped counting attendees because we are confident that God will bring who He wants.

Today's focus in Sports Camp was on knowing your opponent. Malia taught the lesson, continuing on with the life of Moses. One of the points that stuck out to me is that sometimes your biggest opponent can be yourself. That is so true! Thanks Malia for teaching it so we'll. She made it relatable for a wide range of ages and I think everyone got it.

We decided to eliminate volleyball because one girl was in it yesterday and she switched to basketball. There are lots of kids in basketball and four or so in football. It's been pretty fun. There are some real athletes out here!

After camp we went swimming at a pool club in Willows. Pastor Joe booked the whole pool for two hours and it was super fun. His family and another family from the church joined us. It was a great time! And btw - it was only about 97 degrees. That might sound hot, but that's 19 degrees cooler than the day we went to the lake!! Yep, that's right, it was 116 that day! The weather really had us concerned in the beginning, but it's really not bad now!

Speaking of great times - BARF Night was just the best! We certainly love our BARF Nights with tons of people, but there's also something special about having a group of less than 30, including our team. The interaction is much more personal and there's opportunity for friendships to form faster.

We played The Question Game tonight. The first time we played, Eva won! It came down to her and I and she schooled me. By the way, I'm not the type of guy to let the young people win, so it was legit.

We went outside and played Nuke 'Em again at the end of the night. It's definitely the favorite so far! The game was epic and seemed to last forever. We actually ended the night 30 minutes late!

In between the games, Marcus and Eva shared their stories. They were both very different, but each one was spot on!

When Marcus shares you cannot deny that it is from the heart. He is a young man who is serious about his faith. His relationship with God is so real. He shared boldly tonight, even about some hardships. I see him developing into a rock. He is a calm, steady leader that can be consistently relied upon. It's such a joy watching him grow up. Love you, Marcus.

Eva was also a joy. She shared boldly too, and man, she preached it! She challenged those in the crowd to choose Jesus over anything else on earth! This is Eva's first trip with us because in the past she wasn't really interested in coming. God did an amazing work in her heart several months ago and she fully committed her life to Him. Praise the Lord!

I already told you that Eva preached it, and to prove it let me tell you what Pastor Joe's son Sebastian said after she shared. I walked back up, and he looked at me and said "you're about to lose your job!" LOL! How cool is that?!?!

Way to go Eva! Nicole and I are honored to be a part of your life and growth!! We are praying that you remain in Him for life!!

Also, Bailey bought some Beanboozled Jelly Bellys at the factory the other day. If you don't know what those are - DON'T GET THEM!! They convinced me to play the game with them and I had the absolute joy of eating a jelly belly flavor titled something like "Used Band Aid".

AWFUL!!

In our family time tonight we challenged ourselves to take the conversations a little deeper. We are even discussing ways that we can help this happen. We will likely have a little more "hang out" time during BARF Night to allow relationships to develop. Please pray for God to open up doors for this to happen!

Thanks for your support!!

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twistedberri3z · 1 year

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Sims 4 Livestream

Hello, Fellow Simmers!!

(From Tumblr and YouTube!)

Here is a summary of the livestream of “The Sims 4 Infant Update & Growing Together Livestream” That is 2:34:53 in length. I thought I’d summarise it for people that don’t have time to watch it and some of my opinions!

I did watch the new Infant & Growing Together livestream with SimGuruMorgan, Scott & Nova (I think that’s them? Nova for me is confirmed, please correct me if I’m wrong)

(Edit from rewatching LS : SimGuru’s Frost, Graham, Morgan, Scott, Nova, Lakshmi : I missed this because I was late to the livestream last night because I did know it was going to happen but I never knew what time so I came in when they were messing around in CAS.)

Newborns

• I love the option to change the outfits.

• More interactions!

• The new bassinet

Infants

• I AM SO EXCITED FOR THEM THEY LOOK ADORABLE!

• before I go into more detail on this I do want to play with them first. (I will do another community post after I play with them I won’t produce a video straight away as I have school for both releases!)

• The traits look adorable.

• Portable Cribs, Cribs and Little Crib Beds look absolutely amazing!

• The outfits look so adorable.

• Play mats look awesome!

• Sensory toys seem like a good thing for infants to learn with!

• Feeding Options

Toddlers

• Not really much that I want to point out

• Baby Proofing is funny to see them break free

Children

• Picking on the little children

• New Aspirations

• Carrying the adult skills

Teens were not mentioned

Next Category : Gameplay of Infants (SimGuruGraham, Morgan, Nova, Lakshmi & Guests Steph)

• Six traits : Cautious, Sensitive, Calm, Intense, Wiggly, Sunny

• Age up is adorable!

• Base Game outfits? I hope they include some new outfits from Existing Packs!

• Baby helmets had me laughing

• Skin details look amazing

• Going in the bath looks so cute as they are in the carrier

• Moodlet for being cared for!

• First try baby food!

• Happy, Unhappy traits

• Highchair!!

• Children interactions with Infants

• Being awake too long (Realistic!)

• Play lullaby’s

I will eventually make a video on it even if it is late and I will make a CC family named the Lintons and you can change them up to your liking and it is for all to play with as I do not have any expansion packs on my laptop which is the place where I have my gallery. You will get sneak peeks from my community posts!

Next Category : CAS (SimGuruScott, Morgan, Nova & Guests Nicole, Steph)

• Growing together outfits! Like I had hoped for from the Infant Section. I will mention this again because I really hope they do some gameplay with the older packs that can use infants CPC (Cross-Pack-Compatibility) It has been confirmed that there will be CPC across the infants and growing together pack and releases.

• New outfits, Accessories for all age groups

• Skin Details (Base Game)

• The new hairs for all age groups

• Skin Details (Growing Together)

• Body Freckles

• Family Dynamics (In the section you can see Supportive, Jokesters, Difficult)

• Nova mentions family dynamic Distant

• New likes and dislikes category (Sim Characteristics & Conversation Topics)

• Up to 50 likes and dislikes

• Depending on sims interests they will either have good or bad compatibility

• Cross Pack Compatibility for Likes and Dislikes

•Nova mentions new pie menu for conversation topics

• 4 New Child Aspirations under multi skill (Playtime Captain, Slumber Party Animal, Mind and Body & Creative Genius)

Next Category : Growing Together Gameplay (SimGuruScott, Morgan, Nova & Guests Rach)

•World named San Sequoia, 3 Neighbourhoods AnchorPoint Wharf, Gilbert Gardens, Hopewell Hills

• Rach & Scott explains Ol Stumpy

• They explore Hopewell Hills

• Compatibility is explained (Good, Amazing, Bad, Awful)

• New pie menu so it is easier to find and talk

• Elders can give life lessons

• Family Dynamic Pop-Ups

• Cara is shown calling Delaney a plant sim and a toilet sniffer

• Kyle pop-up explained later

• Ages can gain quicker relationships with someone their age (E.g kids)

• Kyle rings to ask whether he can stay over a few days. You get two options (Uhhhhh. Sure? Why not! & Not today, Kyle. You got the wrong person. Sorry!)

• Sims can have temporary stays!

• New interactions (Share San Sequoia Secrets)

From what I can see is infants have the same lifespan setting as a toddler (7 days on normal lifespan & 3 on short but I have never personally played on long so I’m not sure how long that is!)

• Ask Temporarily Staying People for help

• New Baby Interactions

• Change a baby’s outfits.

• New quirks for sims.

• They can have 3 quirks per sim

• Tummy Time Interactions for infants with older sims

• Milestones in Simology Panel

• Different Milestones for different age groups

• More traits from self discovery

• Midlife Crisis

• Workplace Rivals

• Childrens can have high, low or neutral confidence and it depends on how their caregivers respond or how they do things (E.g falling off the monkey bars) they get a locked in trait when they age up and it will either be low or high self esteem that will carry throughout their life.

• Build a treehouse as a family they have to be a teen or older

• Decorate the tree house and lock it to only children, teens etc.

• Sims can relax, sleep and even woohoo in the treehouse and you can upgrade it so they can have a pole, slide, lights, bell

• Light colours can be changed on the treehouse.

• things can be put on the balcony of the treehouse (E.g toys and microscope)

• Sabotage & Befriend Work Rival

• Bike for children

• Children can learn how to ride a bike with or without help

• 6 Kids bikes and varients

• Loose teeth

• Kids can wiggle and Pull out loose teeth and if it comes out you can see a gap where the tooth fell or got pulled out

• Kids can place the tooth under the pillow and when they wake up they will get money and they will get a milestone and a certificate.

• There is keepsake boxes and you can designate them to a sim you can put stuff in it and ponder the meaning of family.

• Sims can pass on the keepsake box if they are close enough with another sim.

• sims can make friendship bracelets and it is an object in build mode that you can buy and create them with the object

• Sims can exchange friendship bracelets and they can wear them

• Under the affection category you can do a fist bump or under the malicious category you can demand the friendship bracelets back

• Sims have a diaper changing table and it works for infants and toddlers (Toddlers only work if they are not potty trained)

• Infants get a Milestone if getting their diaper changed goes wrong such as peeing and pooping on their caregiver.

• You can baby proof gates and toddlers have the interaction of “BREAK LOOSE!” They have a chance to get out and they get an energised moodlet if they succeed.

• 3 new events : Baby Shower, Slumber Party and Family Reunion

• As a reward for family reunions you can get photos of you family and put them in the frames.

That is all I really wanted to share with you!

Links are under this :

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=asyS-TKbckM (Live Stream from the sims team)

https://www.tumblr.com/sims4-lilshadow (Tumblr)

https://m.youtube.com/@TS4_SHADOW (Youtube)

After Speech

Hello Everyone!!!

I am going to make a family called the Linton family when both releases! I am super exited for both updates!

#sims 4 #sims 4 livestream

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houseofzoey · 1 year

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Characters

Zoey

For a book that was supposed to be all about showing Zoey slowly being corrupted by Old Magick, Zoey sure doesn't seem any different from usual.

I've talked about this numerous times already, but it's so central to Revealed that it bears repeating. Zoey had always been quick to anger, even over petty things. Zoey has always been selfish and self-aggrandizing. Zoey has always had a tendency to resort to threats and violence when she doesn't get her way. She enjoys frightening people, she enjoys shows of force, she enjoys knowing she's the strongest person in the room. She rarely ever shows true remorse after lashing out - if she regrets something, it's because people look poorly on her after. Not because she actually regrets hurting someone.

Every single scene of Zoey snapping or attacking people in this book mirrors or repeats her behaviour from past books. And that means that absolutely nothing that happens with her and the Seer Stone is new or shocking.

This series has never been good at developing Zoey as a character, but it's extra frustrating here because she very clearly is supposed to be undergoing a dramatic corruption. Her downfall is meant to mirror Neferet's rise to glory, and conceptually that's great, but in execution it's completely ineffective because Zoey has ALWAYS BEEN AWFUL. The incidents aren't big enough or extreme enough for me to believe she's being influenced by Old Magick and it's twisting her toward a darker nature.

I also think the penultimate book and Zoey's fall from grace is a great time to highlight how inconsistent and contradictory she is about being a Priestess. I already discussed that a bit in terms of her behaviour in Revealed specifically, but now I want to look back on the series as a whole.

She refers to herself as a High Priestess, shows confidence about becoming High Priestess, or is irritated by someone doubting/downplaying this title 31 times

Someone else calls her a High Priestess and she doesn't contradict them, in dialogue or narration 106 times

Someone else calls her a High Priestess and she denies it 5 times

She feels unworthy, not ready, or unqualified to be a High Priestess, or otherwise doubts she will attain this position, in narration or dialogue 24 times

She uses the title of High Priestess to intimidate others or get what she wants, or otherwise carries a sense of entitlement 4 times

She calls herself a queen or accepts being called queen 22 times

Feels unworthy of being called queen 7 times

Please note that these tallies are approximate and I did my best to exclude references to Zoey specifically as a High Priestess in training.

All told, Zoey has a positive relationship to being called High Priestess or queen over 160 times throughout the series, but denies or feels unfit/not ready for these titles about 36 times. Do you see how that wild of a discrepancy makes it seem like Zoey is just... whining?

Stevie Rae

There's a big deal made about Stevie Rae's role as Red High Priestess when Nicole comes begging for forgiveness, and that's... kind of all she does in this book.

So much of Stevie Rae's character and story revolves around Rephaim. From the moment she started narrating chapters, her subplot has been about Rephaim, with adjacent conflict with Dallas, and some lipservice to the idea that she is learning how fill her role as High Priestess. Since Rephaim doesn't have a subplot in this book (no chapters are in his perspective), neither does Stevie Rae.

That's not to say that nothing of significance happens to Stevie Rae in this book. Dallas does try to kill her. But this is ultimately not about her - rather, it's an excuse for Thanatos to finally do something about the violent, rogue vampyre at her school. And, more importantly, Dallas' subsequent execution gives Zoey an excuse to challenge Thanatos, which is supposed to be a turning point in her corruption.

Stevie Rae's role in this book is to be a victim and a vehicle to further the stories of other characters. Her last scene is less than 70% of the way into this book.

Aphrodite

Aphrodite’s big contribution to this book is having a vision of urgent concern, sensing she shouldn't mention it to anyone except Shaylin, and then organizing spying and information sharing so she can do... something when Zoey goes nuclear.

While Aphrodite is still more active than both Stevie Rae and Zoey in terms of her agency in the plot, her role in this book can largely be summed up as, "idk, let's wait and see what happens." Part of the problem is that her affinity is so passive - she only has visions when Nyx deems to send her one.

But, actually, her affinity isn't totally passive. Back in Burned, Thanatos taught Aphrodite how to harness her affinity connection to the Otherworld, allowing her to determine that both Zoey and Kalona's bodies were soulless and, later, to go on a spirit journey to the Otherworld to check on Zoey. She believes something is corrupting Zoey. Can she not at least try to sense if something has influenced or tainted Zoey's spirit?

Ultimately, because P.C. continually forgets that Aphrodite can consciously use her affinity instead of waiting for visions, Aphrodite mostly exists to deliver foreshadowing and offensive jokes. She tells us the plot hook when there otherwise isn't anything happening. If she hadn't had a vision about Zoey losing control of her temper, would anything meaningfully change? Maybe she wouldn't have asked Shaylin to spy and Zoey wouldn't have overheard that conversation, but that just means Zoey would have attacked someone else for a different reason. Ultimately, the vision itself doesn't matter.

Erin

Revealed concluded Erin's story. It was her final send off, her chance at redemption after slipping over to Darkness. It's the death of a character readers have journeyed alongside for ten entire books thus far. So what does this grand farewell look like?

Erin died in a random accident that had nothing to do with her, her choices, or her story.

Like, I still know nothing about Erin as a person. Who is her family? What was life like before she got Marked? What are her goals? Dreams? Fears? How did getting Marked change those dreams or compound those fears? Where in Oklahoma is she from? Is it nearby, or perhaps even Tulsa itself? Has she seen or heard her human friends since getting Marked? Does she miss them? Does she feel abandoned by them? I don't even know what classes she's in! Or which ones she genuinely enjoys!

And the thing is, having this kind of information would have made her falling out with Shaunee and subsequent shift toward Darkness more impactful. For example, if Erin enjoyed a close circle of friends with whom she shared passionate hobbies and that all vanished overnight when she was Marked, I could understand her 1) getting very attached and codependent to the first friend she made as a fledgling, and 2) feeling betrayed and angry when she and that friend had a major disagreement. Even her becoming emotionally closed off and cold would make sense as a defence mechanism. That would be a deeply sympathetic series of events for readers to see her react to.

But even then, her dying just doesn't... do anything. Not for her, anyway. It doesn't serve her character arc - even if she had the hypothetical arc I threw together above. The only reason she dies is to strengthen Neferet and give Dallas a reason to snap. She's a tool for other characters' narratives, while she herself remains an empty husk.

And though it isn't established or foreshadowed in any way during the original HoN series, it's worth pointing out that Erin was retroactively confirmed as bi. This makes her the second queer person unceremoniously killed off to serve other characters' narratives.

Shaunee

Even after Erin dies, Shaunee's story still revolves around her. And it's... pretty lackluster.

Shaunee and Erin make up as Erin dies. Shaunee lights Erin's funeral pyre. Shaunee and Dallas have a confrontation next to the burning pyre, essentially arguing about who loved Erin more. Shaunee shows up when Dallas is trying to kill Stevie Rae - which he does to avenge Erin. Even in her reluctance to trust Nicole, she's persuaded (in part) by comparisons to Erin and how Erin was never perfect.

Other than that, Shaunee does very little in this book. She talks about a fire ritual in Thanatos' class and participates in the circle to immolate Dallas after his execution. Her last appearance is just shy of the 80% mark.

Damien

Damien had a very minimal role in this book. Am I starting to sound like a broken record?

Like, he's in quite a few scenes, but he mostly participates in dialogue when necessary and is otherwise just kinda... around. You could honestly just remove him from this book and nothing would change. Par for the course.

Shaylin

There isn't much to say about Shaylin's involvement in the plot of Revealed - she's mostly there to do what Aphrodite asks and be able to read weirdly specific information from people's auras when the situation calls for it. But there certainly is a lot to say about how Shaylin is portrayed, particularly in her last scene.

With no build up or foreshadowing at all, Shaylin and Nicole kiss over 3/4 of the way through this book. They are now an endgame couple. We're to just accept that they are in love.

Knowing as much as I do about this author and her writing habits, I'm pretty sure P.C. decided Shaylin and Nicole would be a couple literally the moment it happened. She has said before that sometimes she plans a particular outcome for characters or relationships, but then something clicks while she's writing and the story goes a completely different direction. Stark was supposed to be Stevie Rae's love interest, but his death scene with Zoey in Untamed changed that. Stevie Rae was supposed to kill Rephaim, but the author found herself writing him with such humanity that she kept him alive, and he became Stevie Rae's love interest instead.

I want to be clear: This sort of thing happening during the writing process is fine. I've experienced it myself. If you're a pantser or a plantser, it's probably not unfamiliar to you. The problem arises when you don't do the necessary revisions and rewrites to make it actually make sense.

Before Shaylin and Nicole kiss, there's only a couple throwaway lines about them being close to each other. I can't tell if these were added in after the fact as an attempt at foreshadowing, or if they were there before P.C. decided to make them a couple but originally intended to show their growing friendship. I lean more toward the latter. It's always possible that it was lazy, half-assed build-up the author threw in, but the fact that it's so subtle makes me doubtful. Here's why:

When P.C. wants readers to clock a potential romance, she openly calls it out in the text. Either the narrator makes an extremely pointed observation about flirtation or closeness (especially if Zoey is narrating), or the characters exchange very obviously flirtatious dialogue, like we've seen with Aphrodite and Darius, Shaunee and Cole, Venus and Erik, etc. The only exception I can really think of is Damien and his love interests - but even then, it's clearly conveyed in the text that these two characters are gay and therefore a perfect match. We know Damien is gay from the moment he's introduced. When Jack shows up, Shaunee and Erin immediately point out that he gave himself the name of a gay man from a movie. When Adam arrives for the interview, Zoey and Stevie Rae immediately assume he's gay and start asking all kinds of invasive questions pressuring him to out himself.

But with Shaylin and Nicole? Nothing. There is no hint of attraction between them prior to this, and no indication that either girl might be queer. It literally comes out of nowhere. And I'm fully convinced that it did come out of nowhere - I don't think P.C. planned for this pairing to exist.

Kalona

Kalona continues being pestered and given orders by Erebus, and he continues pining for Nyx and having dramatic moments of connection with her. We also see him show true remorse for the first time - but not for the past that actually marks him as a villain. This makes for a very poor redemption arc.

His chapters are also largely unnecessary. His redemption arc has no effect on anything or anyone else. It's also not involved enough to count as a separate subplot since he just kinda narrates to himself about what he's thinking and feeling, so it isn't able to stand on its own. His scenes - especially those where he speaks to Erebus - come across as nonsequitor and end up being forgetable.

Stark and Aurox

Their part of the story is about each other, and more specifically about butting heads over Zoey. We've had this subplot so many times that it's honestly hilarious and pathetic that the author is still beating this dead horse.

We're told Stark is a bad boyfriend because he's jealous of Aurox and keeps being openly possessive and territorial of Zoey. But no one acknowledges the legitimacy of Stark's concern that Zoey might cheat on him, given that a) Zoey has a long, messy history of cheating on her boyfriends, b) Zoey getting with Stark literally involved cheating on Erik and Heath, both of whom she was already cheating on by virtue of being with the two of them, c) Aurox is the reincarnation of the boyfriend Zoey most frequently cheated with, and d) ZOEY ACTUALLY CHEATS ON STARK IN THIS BOOK. But the blame is never put on Zoey, even when she admits to Lenobia that she cheated. She's not a bad girlfriend because she's culturally permitted to date as many boys as she pleases, and their feelings don't matter.

Aurox carries on all of Heath's worst traits. We saw him sexually assault Becca previously, much as Heath did to Zoey repeatedly, and in Revealed we see him play the same card of dismissing Zoey when she says she can't be with him because she has a boyfriend. Aurox is marginally better because he finally relents the third time they have a conversation about it.

Neferet

Neferet's chapters consisted largely of flashbacks that screwed up the timeline, magic system, and general world-building. Neferet's actions as a villain don't make sense with aspects of vampyre culture that were discussed in this book.

Moreover, hugely significant moments in her backstory involve needless abuse against nameless indigenous people who have no logical reason to show up when and where they do. She doesn't strive to find information about Kalona and her dreams. It isn't her determination and cleverness that allow her to discover how to free him. It's happenstance and convenience. The Cherokee are wise, magical, and ultimately expendable for the sake of furthering a white woman's story.

And despite all the time dedicated to showing us key moments in Neferet's past and her descent to Darkness, I still have no idea what her goals and motives are, let alone how they came to be. Like, here's what I know about Neferet.

She hates humans because her human father raped her and she finds the minds of humans repulsive. But... she finds everyone's minds tedious. Everyone is either pathetic and needy, or duplicitous, or lecherous, or otherwise unlikeable. Humans, vampyres, men, women - everyone.

She hates Nyx because her cat died. But Neferet didn't try to use her affinity for cats to stop Chloe from charging or quell the big cat from attacking. Nor does she ever think about this cat again. In fact, she murders another cat without a hint of remorse.

Neferet wants to free Kalona because he promises her power and to walk the Earth side by side as gods. But when he actually emerged from underground, all she did initially was control the school she already controlled. It was only when they were ousted from Tulsa that she tried to convince the High Council that she was Nyx Incarnate - and that was only done so she could control vampyre society and start a war with humans. There was no aim to be worshipped by the council.

When she broke with Kalona and returned to the HoN, her plan was to sow chaos and discontent. But all she did was cause some mild confusion and mundane inconveniences on her campus.

At the end of this book, she comes out of reliving her past determined to be worshipped as a goddess. Seemingly by humans. Who she previously wanted to war with because she hates them.

How do these steps follow each other? What does any one part of her story have to do with the others? Why isn't her triumphant return to power about destroying Zoey and those who would oppose her?

#house of zoey #revealed #final thoughts

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hollands4s · 2 years

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[How could any Brandon stop my curiosity? Since he didn't tell me, I had to find out myself ...]

Ray: What ?! Again?! I have already been visited today! It seems I haven't seen you here before ... New girl or what?

Nicole: No ... I ... I mean, yes, I'm new ... But I'm not for that ...

Ray: Why then?

Nicole: I ... I already came here, the first time ... When you were sleeping ... But I didn't do anything ... I got scared and left ... But I decided to come back and find out what was happening ...

Ray: Am I some kind of joke? An exhibit in a museum ?!

Nicole: Not at all that you ... I just don't understand anything ... Why are you being locked up? ...

Ray: Why ?! I have to ask you this! You work here! Your employees did their best ... I experienced so much pain in this room ... My skin is about to begin to peel off from me because of the drugs that are injected here ... They are slowly and painfully killing me ... This is what is happening ... Now everything, are you satisfied? The tour is over!

Nicole: This is awful ... Why kill you? Maybe you can think of something? How can I stop this? ...

Ray: I don't know, how are you going to stop this? All alone? Get out of here is unrealistic! You think I didn't try? Wait, though ... Are you testing me, can I escape?

Nicole: What ?! Checking out? Me ... You know what, I'm risking my job by being in this room and talking to you! I was not allowed to come here, I am doing absolutely other things! And I really didn't know what was going on here! Therefore, I wanted to help you!

Ray: Okay, okay, just don't shout like that, or they might hear us ... You know, I almost believed you, but there is something else ... Come closer to the door, please ... I just want to be completely confident in what you say ...

#sims #sims 4 #sims 4 story #sims story #симс #симс 4 #симс 4 история #симс история

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taylors-karma · 2 years

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Ranking the BB24 Comics

I had fun ranking the zings so here are my bbcomics rankings from worst to best!

15. A-beer-ah: HUH? I know Ameerah wasn’t much more than a bitch who thought she was running the house for a few weeks, but Big Brother couldn’t come up with at least something somewhat related to her? This one just confused me like......yeah haha I guess it’s a name pun but do something that’s more her personality yk?

14. The Count of Monte Twisto: Maybe I’m not getting the reference here, but this one is just confusing me. What are all of the past bb seasons references doing here? If someone explains this to me I’ll move it but for now I’m just fucking lost 😭.

13. Old McDaniel: I guess it’s a name pun and pairing him with Nicole makes sense, but you have a whole ass Elvis impersonator who had a very distinct (awful) personality and you chose to give him something completely unrelated? Idk just seems like a waste to me tbh.

12. Mall-yssa: Completely uninspired, but this goes up higher because Alyssa herself is completely uninspired. The name pun is fine, and there’s not much else you could have done really. Meh.

11. Rug of War: I do think this one was creative and well done, but a) Muffin Man. You had it and decided to walk away from it. b) War is the complete opposite of Turner’s personality. This just feels insulting to me idk I would have been offended if I were Turner.

10. Shredded: It’s fine, just kinda basic and boring. Fitting for Joseph, but not much to it :/.

9. The Short Order Crook: It fits. It’s a chef theme, Nicole looks evil, killer food? Works for me.

8. The Pooch: Idk I just kinda like this one? It’s horrifying, but effective. They went with the joke everyone expected them to, the theme works, the costume works, it just suits his personality perfectly. Maybe I’m just glad they made him look ridiculous idk.

7. The Brazilian Waxer: This one was creative! Indy looks really good here and the power is cool and interesting. Good theme, good word play, I like it.

6. Sprainiac: It’s just way too fitting for Jasmine’s personality to not be rated higher. Let’s face it, her entire contribution to the house was her ankle and the muffins, both of which were included in the comic. Also Sprainiac is very accurate bc homegirl was definitely one when she was in the house.

5. Po-Taylor-Chip: The name is absolutely perfect. It’s game relevant, it’s great word play, and it fits Taylor��s interests and personality. I only wish Taylor looked a little more badass, but I guess that’s kinda hard when you have a chip-themed power lol. When I think about it, it definitely fits Taylor’s personality to just be chilling while beating the shit out of people lmao.

4. DJ-Snowtime: I really like this one, I can’t exactly explain it. It’s super creative to me with the reference of his DJ name and persona, and I love the tagline as well with “His beats are super chill”. It’s super clever and one of the best themed covers I’ve seen.

3. Britt-flea: Maybe I just like seeing houseguests get dragged but this one is way too accurate, and becomes even funnier whenever I see Brittany getting insecure about it. The best part is I don’t think she even realizes how accurate it is, with her following people around like a little flea and spreading shit around the house. It’s fucking hilarious and even more perfect that it fits in her name.

2. Copy Cat: I absolutely love this one. It fits Michael’s personality perfectly, with him being a whole crazy smart scientist dude who just makes a bunch of cat henchman to do his bidding? The reference to his cats is also in there, and the name and word play are good as well. Very nice job on this one.

1. Rep-Kyle: Like I said, I love seeing a motherfucker get dragged and when that motherfucker is KKKyle it’s even better. “Reptile Dysfunction” had me fucking losing it, and the design makes me lose it even more idc. Do him dirty Big Brother!

#bb24 #my thoughts #bb24 rankings #bb comics #bb comic rankings #some of these were really good #others not so much

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theinsatiables · 2 years

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The Joke's On Him

The New York of “Eyes Wide Shut” is a dream of New York—a sex dream about an emotionally and carnally wound-up young man who denies his animal essence, his wife’s, and almost everyone’s. It’s a comedy. Stanley Kubrick’s movies are comedies more often than not—coal-black; a tad goofy even when bloody and cruel; the kind where you aren’t sure if it’s appropriate to laugh, because the situations depicted are horrible and sad, the characters deluded.

To make a film like this work, you need one of two types of lead actors: the kind that is plausible as a brilliant and insightful person who trips on his own arrogance (like Malcolm McDowell’s Alex in “A Clockwork Orange,” Matthew Modine’s Pvt. Joker in “Full Metal Jacket,” and Humbert Humbert in “Lolita”); or the kind that reads as a bit of a dope to start with, and never stops being one. The latter category encompasses most of the human characters in “2001: A Space Odyssey”—first cavemen, then cavemen in spaceships, that legendary bone-to-orbit cut preparing us for the end sequence in which astronaut Dave Bowman evolves while gazing up in awe at the re-appeared monolith—and Ryan O’Neal as the title character of “Barry Lyndon,” a tragedy about a ridiculous and limited man who bleeds and suffers just like everyone, and is moving despite it all.

Tom Cruise’s Dr. Bill Harford in “Eyes Wide Shut” is the second kind of Kubrick hero. He’s is a bit of a dope but takes himself absolutely seriously, never looking inward, at least not as deeply as he should. An undercurrent of film noir runs through most if not all of Kubrick’s films. His first two features, the war fable “Fear and Desire” and the boxing potboiler “Killer’s Kiss,” were stylistically rooted in noir—“Fear and Desire,” like “Paths of Glory” and “Full Metal Jacket,” has terse, hardboiled narration, linking it to the most overtly noir-ish Kubrick film, his breakthrough “The Killing.” The film noir hero tends to be a smart, ambitious, horny guy who lets his horniness overwhelm his judgement. Dr. Bill is a cuckolded film noir patsy turned film noir hero, cheated upon not in fact, but in his own imagination. And, in noir hero fashion, he gets drawn into a sexual/criminal conspiracy, this one involving the procurement of young women for anonymous orgies with rich older men. He’s always one step behind the architects of the plan, whatever it is, and he's never quite smart enough or observant enough to prove he saw what he saw.

That’s Bill, a cinematic cousin of somebody like Fred MacMurray in “Double Indemnity” or William Hurt in “Body Heat,” but diminished and driving himself mad, a eunuch with blueballs, prowling city streets on on the knife-edge of Christmas, constantly taunted and humiliated, his heterosexuality and masculinity, indeed his essential carnality, questioned at every turn.

The doctor’s nighttime odyssey (like “2001,” this film is indebted to Homer) kicks off after he smokes pot with his gorgeous young wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) and she confesses a momentary craving for a sailor so powerful that she briefly considered throwing away her stable life just to have him. The revelation of the intensity of his wife’s sexual craving for someone other than him (fear and desire indeed) unmoors him from his comfortable existence and sends him careening around the city, where he encounters women who all seem to represent aspects of his wife, or his reductive view of her. They even have similar hair color. And if there are men in their lives—like Sidney Pollack’s Victor Ziegler, who calls Bill to deal with a young woman who overdosed on a speedball while in his company; or Rade Serbedjia’s Millich, the pathologically controlling and jealous costume shop proprietor who accuses Bill of wanting to have sex with his teenage daughter (Leelee Sobieski)— They mirror aspects of Bill. It’s surely no coincidence that the masks worn by the orgy participants are distinguished by their prominent (erect) Bills. Bill never actually strays, though. He keeps blundering into situations where sex seems imminent, and yet he couldn’t cheat on Alice even if he wanted to. He’s too bad to be good and too good to be bad.

It still seems amazing that Cruise, among the most controlling of modern stars, gave himself to Kubrick so completely, letting himself be cast in such a sexually fumbling, baseline-schmucky part, the sort Matthew Broderick might've played for more obvious laughs (Kubrick originally wanted Steve Martin as Bill). Cruise built his star image playing handsome, fearless, cocky, ultra-heterosexual young men who mastered whatever skill or job they'd decided to practice, be it piloting fighter jets, driving race cars, playing pool, bartending, practicing law, representing pro athletes, or being a secret agent. Offscreen, the actor was long suspected of being closeted—a rumor amplified by his hyper-controlling relationships with a succession of public-facing spouses who read, from afar, less as wives than wife-symbols—and he sued media outlets that implied he was anything other than a 100% USDA-inspected slab of lady-loving, corn-fed American beefcake (thus the infamous 2006 “South Park” “Tom won’t come out of the closet” scene).

So it was doubly startling for 1999 audiences to watch Cruise being swatted across the screen from one cringe-inducing psychosexual horror setpiece to the next, each enjoying its own version of a hearty pirate’s laugh at the idea of Cruise playing a butch straight man who dominates every room he’s in; and to witness his onscreen humiliation by homophobic frat boys. That same year, Cruise got an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor in “Magnolia,” playing a motivational speaker who admonishes his audience of baying young men to “respect the cock, tame the cunt.”

Cruise is a smart actor with often-excellent taste in material and collaborators; it’s inconcievable that he and his then-wife Kidman would submit themselves to over a year’s worth of grueling, repetitive shoots on Kubrick’s meticulously recreated New York sets in London without understanding what they were in for, at least partially. But what’s really important, from the standpoint of Cruise’s performance, is that he never seems as if he knows that the joke is on Bill. This doesn’t seem like the performance of an actor who has decided not to play his character as self-aware (like, say, Daniel Day-Lewis in “The Last of the Mohicans,” playing a character that Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman described as seeming completely free of 20th century neuroses) but rather a not-too-self-aware actor throwing himself into every scene as if bound and determined to somehow “win” them. This is surely a vestigial leftover of the way Cruise acts in most Tom Cruise films, strutting and bobbing through scenes, getting into trouble, then smiling or talking or flying or running or acrobatting his way out. It’s a mode he can’t entirely turn off, but can only tamp down or allow to be subverted (which is what I think is happening in this movie, and in a few other against-the-grain Cruise performances). It’s as if Cruise travels the full narrative length of Kubrick’s dream trail encrusted by scholarly and journalistic and critical footnotes that have accumulated on his filmography since "Risky Business." He’s the leading man as Christmas tree, festooned with lights and baubles.

What perfect casting/what a great performance/what’s the difference? Is there any? Maybe not. Sometimes great casting is what allows for a great performance. John Frankenheimer cast Laurence Harvey, a handsome hunk of wood, as the brainwashed assassin in the 1962 version of “The Manchurian Candidate,” and his inability to tune into his costars’ emotional wavelength works for the part; it translates as “repressed, tortured, closed off individual,” the type of guy who would be gobsmacked by an ordinary summer romance, to the point where it would constitute the core of a tragic backstory. Harvey’s inexpressiveness becomes a source of mirth when he’s put in the same frame with actors like Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury, or Akim Tamiroff, who get a predatory glint in their eye when they sense the possibility of stealing a scene. They know how to mess with people and have fun doing it, and poor, friendless Harvey is an irresistible target. and when Raymond expresses delight that he was, however momentarily, “lovable,“ you can practically see the quote marks around the word, and it’s as sad as it is hilarious.

Oliver Stone pulled off something similar when he cast Cruise as Ron Kovic in “Born on the Fourth of July,” a choice that Stone later said might’ve hurt the film at the American box office because nobody wanted to see the smirking flyboy from “Top Gun” castrated by a bullet, wheeling around with a catheter in his hand, cursing his mom and Richard Nixon. The star seeming not-entirely-in on—not the “joke,” exactly, but the vision of the movie—made Kovic’s dawning self-awareness of his participation in macho right-wing propaganda all the more effective. Kovic wanted to be like the guys on the recruiting poster, and now he couldn’t stand up and salute the lies anymore, and a lot of his friends were dead, along with untold numbers of Vietnamese. Al Pacino, who was cast in an aborted version “Born” a decade earlier, might not have been as effective as Cruise overall, because while Pacino is an altogether deeper actor, he’s so closely associated with men who have no illusions about how brutal and soul-draining American life and institutions can be. (Marvelous as his performance in “Serpico” is, it doesn’t start to take off until he’s in undercover cop mode, with that beard and long hair and beatnik/hippie energy. In the early scenes where he’s clean-shaven and idealistic, you just have to take Serpico's innocence on faith, because Al Pacino would never be that naive.)

Kubrick, no slouch at casting for affect, was especially good at filling lead male roles with actors who seemed to grasp the general outline of what the director was up to without radiating profound appreciation of the philosophical and cultural nuances. Ryan O’Neal in “Barry Lyndon” somehow works despite, or because of, seeming a bit stiff and anachronistic—out of his element in a lot of ways. His anxiety-verging-on-panic at not knowing whether he’s doing a good enough job for Kubrick fits perfectly with the character’s persistent insecurity and imposter syndrome. So does the shoddy Irish accent.

Decades later, Ben Affleck in “Gone Girl” pulled an “Eyes Wide Shut”—or maybe it’s more accurate to say that director David Fincher pulled it by casting him. “The baggage he comes with is most useful to this movie,” Fincher told Film Comment. “I was interested in him primarily because I needed someone who understood the stakes of the kind of public scrutiny that Nick is subjected to and the absurdity of trying to resist public opinion. Ben knows that, not conceptually, but by experience. When I first met with him, I said this is about a guy who gets his nuts in a vise in reel one and then the movie continues to tighten that vise for the next eight reels. And he was ready to play. It’s an easy thing for someone to say, 'Yeah, yeah, I’d love to be a part of that,' and then, on a daily basis, to ask: 'Really? Do I have to be that foolish? Do I have to step in it up to my knees?' Actors don’t like to be made the brunt of the joke. They go into acting to avoid that. Unlike comics, who are used to going face first into the ground.”

Fincher subsequently poked fun at Affleck, in DVD narration and interview comments delivered in such a deadpan-vicious way that you couldn't tell if Fincher was venting in the guise of a put-on or doing an elaborate comedic bit. Either way, the gist was that Affleck was convincing as an untrustworthy person because he was himself untrustworthy. "He has to do these things in the foreground where he takes out his phone and looks at it and he puts it away so his sister doesn’t see it," Fincher said. "There are people who do that and it’s too pointed. But Ben is very very subtle, and there’s a kind of indirectness to the way he can do those things. Probably because he’s so duplicitous." Thus does the inherent untrustworthiness of Ben Affleck as both actor and person (according to Fincher, whether he's kidding or serious) become the framework for the entire performance's believability. This is a guy whose performance as an innocent man is judged by the media and public and immediately found lacking, and the character proves to be so much dumber than his conniving, vengeful wife that when the final scene arrives, we laugh at how inevitable it was. A more subtle, likable, deep leading man might've have ruined everything. Fincher needed a meathead who was funny and had read a few books, and who seemed to have a sixth sense for how to hide a cell phone from his sister.

This is similar to the idea of Kubrick cuckolding Cruise with an anecdote and sending him all over New York in search of satisfaction and insight that never quite, er, comes (although there’s a hint of hope in that final scene). On top of that, Affleck is an actor who is effective within a narrow range but will never be thought of as a chameleonic or particularly delicate performer—somebody who can play the subtext without overwhelming the text, or who can seamlessly integrate the two so that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

That might be why Affleck disliked working with Terrence Malick, a highly improvisational filmmaker who deals in archetypes and symbols, and expects actors to devise a character while he’s devising the film that they’re in. Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt can do that; Affleck really can’t. The difference between Affleck and somebody like Pitt (or DiCaprio) is the difference between an old-fashioned square-jawed leading man-type, like Rock Hudson or Gary Cooper or Alan Ladd, who tried to stick to the words and hit the marks and color within the lines, and somebody like James Dean or Marlon Brando or Dennis Hopper, who treated every page as potential raw material for a collage they hadn’t thought up yet. That’s why Dean and Hudson played off each other so beautifully in “Giant”—Dean with his tormented Method affectations and odd expressions and voices, and Hudson playing the guy he’d been told to play, while often seeming puzzled or horrified by whatever Dean was doing opposite him, as if he’d been placed in the same room with a badger or wild boar and told “Now the two of you sit down and have a nice lunch while we film it.”

I like to think of Cruise in “Eyes Wide Shut” as Rock Hudson turned loose in a Stanley Kubrick neo-noir dream, and not just for the obvious reasons. He’s in there angrily and desperately trying to win something that cannot be won, explain things that can’t be explained, and regain dignity that was lost a long time ago and will never come back. He keeps flashing his doctor’s ID as if he’s a detective (another film noir staple) working a case, and people indulge him not because they truly regard the ID as authority but because Bill’s intensity is just so damned odd that they aren’t sure how else to react. It’s hilarious because Bill doesn’t know how ridiculous it all is, and how ridiculous he is. He’s a movie star who lacks the movie star’s prerogative. Only by surrendering to the flow and accepting defeat can he survive. Only his wife, an awesome force unlocked in one moment, can save him.

-Matt Zoller Seitz

#Tom Cruise #Stanley Kubrick #Eyes Wide Shut #Text #Film

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girl4music · 4 months

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Aw that was really cute. And sexy. I love how even with the intimate moments between them they always play the moments to the female gaze rather than the male gaze. It does make a difference to other WLW media.

And Dominique really does have a lovely voice.

Too right they should celebrate Nicole’s promotion to the Sheriff of Purgatory. It’s sweet that even through all the family cheer and the subsequent horror of the almost child massacre she remembers to celebrate that there’s at least one human hero around to help.

And that human hero happens to be her girlfriend.

Who saved Christmas by saving those kids and absolutely earning the right to be the Sheriff.

And this will hopefully settle those inner doubts that Waverly never considers her in all of what is going on. Whether she’s okay with it all. Not going just as crazy.

The only crazy that she seems to be is crazy in love.

Which I suppose in some ways can be just as scary.

So yeah, Waverly checking in on Nicole every now and then is certainly something I want to see more often.

#wynonna earp #if we make it through december #waverly earp #dominique provost chalkley #nicole haught #katherine barrell #I love you love you love you more each year #sheriff nicole haught #more to celebrate than just christmas #some of us are only human #and we need to be considered too

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finnlongman · 3 years

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There have been a lot of conversations happening on Twitter and Instagram recently about how harmful social media has become for authors, and YA authors in particular, and it's interesting that I haven't seen those same conversations happening on Tumblr. Maybe because I don't follow so many authors here, as this is largely my place to escape from publishing and all its drama -- it's easier to miss things here, if the specific people you follow aren't sharing it. Or maybe it's because Tumblr chased a lot of its authors away a few years ago, so isn't as directly implicated in the current wave of terribleness. 🤷🏻‍♂️

But it IS terrible. Callouts without context, pile-ons targeting anyone who has ever been associated with an author who is perceived as having done something bad, one-star troll reviews for books that aren't even out yet targeting marginalised authors, continual pressure to Perform Social Justice in a way that's suitable for external consumption (according to standards that are impossible to meet since they change daily), entitled fans harassing and targeting authors for months and then claiming powerlessness when they're called out for it despite the authors repeatedly explaining that it's triggering their PTSD...

(For that last one, see Tess Sharpe's experiences. Those readers claimed to be fans, and yet were so awful to her that she's now said she'll never talk about that book publicly again because it invited too much harassment. She repeatedly explained the impact they were having on her and yet they continued to use the "we're just joking" defence, even when it was extremely clear it wasn't funny to anyone.)

I see this as a big picture thing but I also see this firsthand from those in communities I'm in. I know authors who've decided never to return to certain worlds/series, even though they love it, because people online are so awful about it. I know people who got absolutely reamed out by social media for things they weren't even involved in, just because of their perceived connection to a target, and felt completely unable to defend themselves. Author friends have told me it's okay if I need to publicly disavow them to keep myself safe, which is mad. Every day there are more authors going 'updates only' or leaving Twitter entirely. People are afraid even to talk about how bad the harassment is for fear of making themselves targets -- and literally every newbie YA author that I know is afraid of putting a foot out of line because social media will wreck their career for it.

It sounds dramatic, and for people on the outside, maybe it seems like it's no big deal. But this is targeted, relentless harassment over the course of months or years, and this is affecting people's livelihood and income and opportunities as well as their mental health. Even those of my friends who are least bothered by what others think of them are afraid of making a mistake (or being perceived as making a mistake) that will result in their agent being forced to drop them or risk tainting their own reputation. I've heard people saying they're genuinely afraid to succeed because it'll make them a bigger target. After all, authors are generally alone in dealing with this -- they don't have PR teams or social media managers. If you harass an author online, 99 times out of 100, it's the author who will read it. And it's the author who will respond, and have their statement torn to shreds because nothing is ever good enough, so more and more people just stay silent and submit to whatever the internet wants to inflict on them.

It's messed up. So many of us joined Twitter to find writing communities and now they've become unbearable. My writing chat constantly talks about what we'll do when/if this happens to one of us. And it hits marginalised authors hardest, especially those who don't have supportive offline communities and who rely heavily on social media for friends and connections. It terrifies me, as someone hoping to make a career in writing, to think of putting myself in the line of fire like this, just by virtue of writing YA. I'm very isolated in real life, and rely heavily on social media for community and interaction. If I leave, or all my friends have to leave ... where do I go? What's left for us?

I hope this is just a temporary phase and that the internet becomes kinder again, because the alternative is that writers lose their communities and connections, and all the nice, kind readers lose their interactions with authors entirely. Or else everybody's mental health continues to deteriorate and good people quit writing altogether.

Anyway, if you haven't been following this, check out Nicole Brinkley's essay, "Did Twitter Break YA?" which kickstarted this current conversation, and Adrienne Young's Instagram Stories about this. Because this has been building for a while and authors have been talking about it in group chats for ages but it feels like only recently has anyone really felt like they can talk about it out loud. And this conversation needs to trigger change, because this current situation is hurting people, and it isn't sustainable.

#sorry for the long post #writing #ya fiction #booklr #writeblr #i already have one author friend i can only talk to by email #because she had to leave social media for her mental health #i don't want to lose more

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inkandpen22 · 3 years

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Permanent Chaos (4/?)

Pairing: MGK x Female!Reader

Word Count: 4k

Warnings: mild swearing

Part Summary: While Y/N is out shopping with Cara, news breaks that ties her with MGK.

Masterlist

Two days later...

Cara and I go out shopping and have lunch for a girl’s day. I have yet to talk about the other night with Sam. Cara hasn’t mentioned it and I have no plans to either. Cameras have followed us up and down Rodeo Drive. By this point, Cara and I are both used to it. Carrying my bags however, I doubt I look graceful for these videos their taking. Oh well, they have fifteen thousand more of me.

“CARA! EXCITED TO WALK IN THE CHANEL FASHION SHOW?”

Cara ignores the paparazzi and points out a dress in the window at Dolce and Gabbana. I request to go inside to try it on. I’m not sure where I’d wear it to, but that doesn’t really matter.

“Welcome ladies!” A woman in a black dress approaches. “Can I help you find anything in particular?”

I point over to the dress in the window, “could I see that in a size six please?”

She leaves us to go find the dress for me and we roam around a small section while she does. My phone rings and I see Nicole’s name pop up. My heart immediately begins to race. She doesn’t call me unless absolutely necessary, usually we text. I step away toward the corner to be discreet.

I answer the call hesitantly. “Nicole? What’s up?”

“I got a call from Stephanie,” she sounds agitated on the other end.

Stephanie is my publicist, she handles everything that Nicole can’t basically. They bicker a lot since they’re both so headstrong and constantly need control. It’s the classic good cop/bad cop scenario, yet I don’t know who’s who. These two cover every aspect of my career, God bless them.

“Oh no, sounds bad,” I grumble anxiously.

“Depends how you look at it,” she lightens her tone.

“What is it?” I press.

“Well…” she hesitates.

“Nicole!” I drag out her name.

“It’s all over social media, magazines and it will be on TMZ tonight,” she stammers. “I’m surprised you haven’t already heard if I’m being honest-”

“Nicole! What?” I rush her.

“An article about you and Colson Baker just dropped on some gossip sight,” she explains. “It says that you and Colson Baker are dating. Stephanie and I figured no one would believe it but it’s everywhere! They have videos and photos of you two leaving The Ivy plus talking by Sam’s car. If I didn’t know you, I would be convinced.”

My head hangs low as I rub my forehead, letting out a deep sigh. “Oh dear God.”

“We can handle it, don’t worry!” Nicole assures. “This story will be gone soon!”

“I need to go, talk to you later!” I hang up on Nicole right when the woman shows me the dress.

“I’ll take it” I attempt to hurry up the process.

Cara comes up next to me “don’t you think you should try it on first?”

“I’ll explain later but we need to go” I whisper to her and just like that, she’s hurry the woman along at the register.

I have the dress and exit the store in a rush. I must act cool, the paparazzi will take notice of my mood change.

“HOW’S COLSON, Y/N?”

“SEEING HIM TONIGHT?”

“HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN DATING?”

“HOW ARE GONNA HANDEL HIS FANS?”

“HAS HE MET THE FAMILY YET?”

“What’s going on?” Cara asks concerned.

“I’ll explain once we’re somewhere private,” I whisper so the cameras don’t pick up on it.

We speed walk to the car and I offer to drive since I made us cut the day short. Once we’re on the highway towards home Cara asks what the heck is going on.

“Why did they keep asking about Colson?”

I turn on the radio and Elvis Duran, along with his team, are discussing no other than me and Colson.

Danielle summarizes the article for the listeners. “The article says they’ve been dating for the past few months. They’re very happy but the relationship is still new. The pair has not yet met each other’s families but Colson is going on tour soon so maybe Y/N will join him and eventually meet the family. Throughout, there are tons of photos of the cute young couple leaving The Ivy Wednesday night. There’s even a link to a video showing them, what appears to be, having a deep conversation by Sam Merka’s car. If you watch the video, the two are clearly looking at each other very lovingly. I mean, he’s looking at her the way I look at a fresh pizza!”

The rest of the cast laughs and I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Actually, scratch that, I can believe it. I’m just pissed.

“If MGK and Y/N are officially an item, why did she leave with Sam Merka?” Elvis questions.

“I’m glad you asked! According to sources, they’ve been very close friends since the start of TSL. In fact, the duo have taken many vacations together along with their co-star Penelope Glass.”

Cara turns down the volume and looks to me with a steady expression. “Is it true?”

I narrow my gaze at her in bewilderment. “What? No! There’s no way in hell!”

“Okay, just checking,” she lets out a sigh of relief.

“Never ever!” I add and change the station.

Colson Baker is everything I despise in a person. I’ve never hated someone so fast as I’ve hated him. Us together as a couple is impossible. It’s completely irrational.

_________________________________________________________

Later in the afternoon, Stephanie sets up a meeting for us to meet with Colson and his publicist. I had to drag myself to her office. My Fridays aren’t well spent in an office building with enemies. In fact, my whole day could be tarnished by this incident. The meeting room we’re all ushered into is freezing and I’m still in my sundress from earlier. Cara and I were never able to get lunch so I’m starving on top of being cold. The photos of us play in a slideshow on the meeting room’s tv. An endless cycle of false advertisement is how I see the photos. The media is selling us as something completely far from the truth. On top of everything, I’m in a meeting with the one guy in all of Los Angeles I can’t stand. Death would be less painful than the current situation. I tune out the debate between Stephanie and Colson’s publicist. He told me his name but my brain is so numb from the temperature in here I can’t recall it.

“Y/N!” Stephanie calls my name and I search for her around the room until I find her in the doorway with Colson’s publicist.

“We’re going to go make a few phone calls. You two will stay here while we handle the press.” I nod “sounds good.”

I send her a weak smile to charm her out of an apology for zoning out. She huffs and escorts Colson’s guy to her office so they can talk on speaker privately. I stand up from my office chair and stroll over to the windows overlooking the courtyard. I watch the cars zoom by on the street and businessmen and women shuffle in and out of the Starbucks below.

“If it means anything, I’m sorry,” Colson says quietly behind me.

I nearly miss it, he speaks so quietly. I lean against the wall, crossing my arms as I face him.

“You’re sorry?” I shrug, not really seeing his blame. “Why? It’s not your doing.”

I return my gaze to the chaos below us. I watch as people with office jobs travel about. I wonder if they’ve heard of me? I wonder if they like me or think I’m a stuck up actress? I shouldn’t care what people think, but it’s easier said than done. When millions watch TSL every week, it’s hard to ignore the wondering.

“If I hadn’t walked you to the car none of this would be happening,” Colson reasons guiltily.

I shake my head, finding humor in the situation now. The paparazzi can make nothing into a months long romance. A brief conversation outside a restaurant and suddenly we’re meeting each other’s families.

“We were only walking to a car. How could either of us have predicted the amount of attention that would come of us walking?” I justify, not to ease his mind, but my own.

My flicker over to the tv, I examine the slideshow of us. Examining the photos I realize it wasn’t all in my head, the way in which Colson was gazing at me is a tad bit gawk-like. Images of us walking to the car while I’m answering the paparazzi’s questions depict Colson glancing at me with what seems to be such admiration. A picture of when Cara calls for Colson comes up and I’m stunned by how we look. Even I appear to be in awe of him in return. It’s evident Cara is speaking yet neither of us react. We were so caught up within on another.

“I have one question!” I blurt out suddenly with my arms crossed I walk back over to the table. Just one and then I wish to put all of today’s events to rest.” Colson perks up and hums for me to continue. I point over to the photos on the screen “why did you look at me the way you did?”

Turning his head, he reviews the photos blankly and I wait anxiously for some sort of reason. “I’m not looking at you in any particular way,” he disregards my accusations.

I chuckle, amused by his horrible way of lying. “Lies!”

He’s thrown off by my reaction and I storm over to the TV screen to point it out to him.

“It’s clear as day to the press, the public and now me included. You’re clearly lost in some kind of thought! You were there, so was I and our friends! Say all the lies you want but you’ll never convince anyone.”

His jaw clenches and he avoids my gaze. He leans back in his chair, staring out the windows. “Colson,” I sigh, slowly approaching the table. “Maybe the truth could help the lies disappear! If we’re honest then maybe the press will leave us alone!”

He shakes his head low, letting out a brief laugh. “I highly doubt that.”

I have a thousand questions but I’m aware none will go answered. He’s a lost cause. I’m in this alone I guess. Turning my back to him I return to my position by the window. Observing the worker bees swarming around the spaces below. The sound of Colson’s chair rolling back comes from behind me but I don’t even shift. Out of the corner of my eye, I see his figure in the reflection of the window beside me. My attention remains outside. He won’t give me the time of day so why should I treat him any better?

“You wanna know why I looked at you the way I did?” His presence hovers of me and he feels like a wall surrounding me.

“Please,” I mutter a subtle beg.

“I... I had this imagine of you in my head, pre-judgements. You’re supposed to be America’s Sweetheart, Little Miss Perfect! You told me you had been working for this for years, had drive and trails.” He confesses. “You’re not what I expected... It caught me by surprise is all.”

My eyebrows furrow close, “So you thought I was just some pretty face, goody-two-shoes, ditz? If it’s because my image, my past, you said so yourself it doesn’t matter!”

“No, no, that’s not it!” he runs his hand through his hair nervously.

Narrowing my eyes, I press further. “Why then?”

The door swings open and I straighten up before forcing a warm smile to my face. I step back from Colson before the person ever appears in the doorframe. One of Stephanie employees informs us that we’re free to go. Steph doesn’t want to keep me here all day and since I’m allowed to go Colson’s publicist is releasing him. I clasp my hand together, walking over to fetch my purse.

“Thank you so much!” I gush. “Have a good day and please tell Stephanie “thank you!””

The young intern eats up my pleasant expressions. “You too Miss Voss! Will do!”

The young woman shuts the door behind her and I return to the state I was in. Expressionless, I gather my belongings and Colson does the same. Checking my phone for any missed emails or calls I can tell he’s staring me down.

“Does it ever get tiring?” His tone is light, but I can hear the ounce of mockery beneath the surface.

My attention is locked on my phone as text after text pops up from Penelope. She’s more likely than not has seen all the articles and Twitter posts. I should call her and explain.

“Y/N!” Colson shout pulls my from my thoughts.

“Huh? Does it ever get tiring?” I restate his question back to him. “What exactly are we talking about?”

I slide my purse over my shoulder while stepping over to the door, leaving Colson behind. That is until he follows me.

“Your whole act.” He forces a fake smile and tosses imaginary hair over his shoulder. “The “happy go-lucky goody goody All-American girl?””

I scoff, eyeing him up and down. “You’re ridiculous. It’s not an act.”

I swing open the meeting room door, eager to leave here. My heels clink against the white shiny tiles on my walk to the elevators. After hitting the down button, I call up Blake now that I have some time to kill. She’s my oldest friend, I’m sure she sees right through all of the tabloids and is only checking in.

“Calling your boyfriend?” Colson mutters over my shoulder and I quickly move away.

“Don’t have one,” I answer plainly, waiting for Penelope to pick up.

He smirks and props himself up against the wall beside the elevator doors. I side eye him, all he does is smile all the time and he calls me out for acting so happy all the time.

“Can’t you find anyone else to annoy?”

He grins proudly, “sure I could. None would as entertaining as you though.”

“Geez,” I mumble under my breath.

I pace outside the elevators as I wait for one to arrive and for Penelope to answer. Classic of her to text me non-stop but not to answer when I call her back. The elevator doors open and I step inside, ready to get out of here. I hit the ground floor and Colson strolls in lazily not rushed at all. He checks the button and doesn’t add any. The doors shut then silence sits flat in the small space with us. My phone buzzes continuously, I check the name at the top of the screen.

“Frickin’ frackin’!” I clench my teeth together in a growl.

Colson’s eyes widen at my sudden explosion. Closing my eyes, I exhale to calm myself then bring the phone up to my ear. Smiling helps to fake enjoyment when talking to someone on the phone. Sometimes I can fool myself into thinking I’m not miserable during discussions.

“Finn!” I greet. “What’s new?”

My southern accent surfaces. I flip the switch whenever I speak to my family or friends back in South Carolina. I can’t have them thinking I’m not the same Y/N from Charleston. Colson eyes me with his eyebrows raised, surprised by my sudden transition. He makes fun of me in a whisper for my fake enthusiastic voice. I wack him on the arm and it only encourages him more.

“Hi ya Y/N, uh so ya prolly already know butcha face is everywhere along with this MGK fella...” Finn’s voice falters at the end.

I sigh and press my forehead to the wall. Finn asks me if any of what he has read is true and I instantly deny.

My tone goes timid, “who all knows?”

“Just us, Odelle, Greyson and Myself,” he assures.

A sense of relief rushes over me. I turn back around and Colson sends me a sympathetic look, it shocks me. Going from mockery to sympathy from him has my entire mood shifting.

“What ‘bout Momma or Daddy?” I ask, keeping eye contact with Colson.

“Nah, at least I don’t think they do,” Finn guesses. “I’m not entirely sure. Greyson is sayin’ they don’t. He’s the only one that’s home at the moment.”

“Heavens to Betsy,” I exhale deeply, looking up to the heavens. “Let’s hope to the high heavens they don’t. Thank you Finn.”

I go to hang up but he says one last thing. Bringing my phone back up to my ear I reply. “Sorry, missed that.”

My brother becomes stern on the other side, “do you and this guy spend tons of time together?”

I shift uncomfortably, preparing myself for the older brother advice I already see coming. “From time to time but I promise, we’re just friends.”

There’s a pause on his end, an unbearable pause. “I trust you Y/N,” Finn finally speaks. “It’s him I don’t trust. He’s not the best sort of guy. Ya’ll aint right for one another.”

I hope Colson can’t hear any of what Finn is saying. To keep him from becoming suspicious, I keep my replies indifferent. “Sure thing. Uh, talk ya later Finn.”

“Bye, talk to you soon.”

We hang up and I slip my phone into my purse.

Colson leans back onto the railing next to me. “Who was that?”

“My older brother, kinda overbearing,” I laugh nervously then bite my lip. My accent begins to subside again.

“I didn’t know you had a brother,” Colson remarks.

A faint smile appears across my lips thinking of my brothers. “I have two actually and an older sister. The order is Finn, Odelle, me then Greyson.”

Colson returns a kind and gentle smile. “That must’ve been nice to grow up with so many siblings.”

“It was.” I nod as memories flash across my mind. “Finn and Odelle were grouped together and so was me and Greyson since our age gaps are less.”

As we pass each level on the elevator there is a “ding.” Facing toward the doors again, I absentmindedly watch the numbers go down as we pass the levels. My mind wanders to the many memories I’ve made with my brothers and sister.

“Finn is about Sam’s age, so he likes to believe he’s almost a co-parent for me and Grey,” I describe with a pleased expression. “He’s the total opposite of Odelle.”

Colson genuinely shows interest, “how is she?”

“She’s a total wild card! We all joke that it’s every other kid. Finn and I are the rule followers. He was student body president, quarterback of the football team and still managed to graduate with honors. I’m nowhere near him on the perfect child spectrum but I’m supposed to be “America’s Sweetheart.” My parents eat that up. Then there’s Odelle, she’s the total opposite of Finn. My parents had to beg her to improve her grades so she could graduate. I remember being twelve, it was the middle of the night when I got up to get a drink. I went downstairs and saw her sneaking out of the backdoor. She made me promise not to tell our parents. I haven’t talked about it until today. There were days she’d fake being sick just to ditch school with her friends. By her senior year nothing had changed. She ended up graduating but my parents forced her to go to a college close to home so they could keep an eye on her. Her antics continued the entire time I was in high school. College for her was a playground. For some reason, I envied her. I still do. I suppose it’s because no one expects anything from her. She messes up, well, that’s Odelle for you. She causes trouble, just another day. For me, my parents have me up on a peddle stool. By the time I turned sixteen people out here started taking notice of me. When I reached seventeen the title of “America’s Sweetheart” popped up and from then on, I was longer a teenager. I had a role to play and an image to uphold. I could never make mistakes like Odelle. I have to be “perfect” constantly. Sometimes I feel like a doll, plastic. None of it is real.”

The bell rings for the floor. I comprehend the words escaping my mouth and snap back to reality. I revealed so much about myself while I was in that daze, private facts about myself that I’ve never spoken of before.

Straightening up and adjust my dress, I apologize. “I’m so sorry. I have no idea what came over me.” The doors slide open and I step out. “Good to see you Colson,” I rush out a farewell before speed walking towards the exit.

I mentally slap myself for all I confessed. If only Nicole found out, my head would be on a stick. My life, my background, every aspect of my being is supposed to be flawless. An All-American girl from South Carolina with a wholesome up brining is who I’m supposed to be. If word gets out that I’m not so perfect then… then I would be finished. My hand digs for my keys in my purse.

“Y/N! Wait up!” Colson jogs up next to me then steps in front of me, blocking my path.

“Colson, please....” I practically plead in a mutter, stepping around him.

He wraps his hand around my wrist, stopping me. “Let me buy you a drink!”

Workers around us walk around in multiple directions like zombies. I wonder if they’re taking notice. Hesitant, I narrow my gaze at me. The reason we’re in this mess is because we were seen with one another.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I admit and release myself from his grip.

I only make it a few feet before he’s in front of me again.

“Fine, no to a drink! How about we go get some coffee? Or tea? If you prefer tea!”

His chest rises and falls rapidly, his desperation is evident. The reason behind is desperation is still unknown to me, along with the reason he looked at me the way he did last night. Who is this mysterious man who stands before me? So many questions I wish to ask but I can’t get passed his eyes. Puddles of crystal blue settle on a white canvas. Confused beyond belief, for a reason unbeknownst to me, I accept. Could be my curiosity is getting the best of me.

“Coffee it is,” I give in to his request.

He grins ear to ear and steps to the side so we can leave side by side. “Unless of course you prefer we get tea!” he suggests, sounding a tad nervous.

Honestly I like both drinks but I prefer coffee. He holds the door for me and the bright sunlight of California weather strikes me.

“Nah, I normally drink a cold brew with a shot of espresso,” I describe.

He winces and pretends to gag. “Ew! That sounds horrible!”

“It gives you a boost in the morning! Nice and strong!” I laugh.

“You’re nasty!” He waves his hands in disgust.

“Eh, you’ve called me worse,” I laugh, unfazed by his insult.

He chuckles, “you’re not wrong.”

Our laughing dies down a little as we stroll over to the Starbucks. I peer up at him with a side eye. When our eyes meet we begin laughing again uncontrollably.

___________________________________

Masterlist

Tags: @canyoubuymetoast @bri-3530 @asil1652 @andstilltryingtofindmyself @nadia2021 @olafsidehoe @mgkobsessed @fairywriting101 @ferrell-cat @naylanae-0308 @tonystarkswife10 @alexsa56 @brocksbabyyy @stormrider505 @magnificenthumancopangel @sarcasticfangirlus @lilramencup95beech @missyviolet123 @skeleton-gxrl @glitterybearllamaflap @margaritaville20 @amoresixx @Thysagclub @hockeybabe87

#mgk smut #mgk imagine #mgk fanfic #mgk #mgk aesthetic #machine gun kelly #colson baker #colson #machine gun kelly fanfic #imagine #fanfic

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kittyprincessofcats · 2 years

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Worlds 2022 - Women’s SP

I’m late to everything again, but idc. Thoughts:

- My girl Mana did so well! I’m so glad her Olympic experience didn’t completely get her down. And it was probably the right choice to play it safe here and just go for a 2A. Congrats on a really nice SP!

- Tzu-Han Ting was really great and I really enjoyed her skate. And yeah, it definitely felt like they robbed her.

- I loved Olga Mikutina’s SP! The music, the choreography, the new costume, and just the vibes of the program were so cool! I’ve said before that I have a thing for goth programs, so yeah - this was right up my alley, loved it.

Also, skating aside for a second: Olga was born in Kharkiv in Ukraine and I can’t even imagine how hard it must have been to focus on training while her hometown is currently being bombed. She’s also been vocally protesting against the Russian invasion since it started (she and Severin Kiefer made the hearts with the Urkainian flag that somes skaters were wearing in solidarity).

- A few years later, the male announcer still hasn’t learned not to mispronounce “Nicole Schott” as “Nicole Schrott” and I wonder when someone is going to tell him that “Schrott” means garbage/junk in German and that he’s been announcing her as “Nicole Garbage” this entire time.

- Mariah getting a small medal is cursed, I hate it. They overscored her so badly here. I really don’t get what was supposed to be so great about that skate. (And seeing people say that they’re just overscoring other white skaters more when the Russians aren’t here... yeah, I can’t help but agree.)

- Haein was really lovely and her score seemed harsh.

- I still dig Karen’s SP (like I said - goth programs ftw). Glad she performed it better here, but what a shame about the popped Loop.

- Wakaba’s scores will never stop making me angry, huh? It’s awful how it’s always the same people who get robbed. I do agree with the negative GOE on the 2A (and with calling it as a 2A) and with the F(e) (I’d have maybe gone for F(!), but yeah) - but the score still seems way too harsh. The PCS in particular is an absolute joke. And it’s telling how the judges don’t always give proper edge calls to other people, but here they suddenly can.

- Kaori’s skate was great! I’ve got to say this Gladiator SP really grew on me - I wasn’t a fan at first, but now I really like it! I’m super happy for her and she really deserves the title after getting robbed of it last year and getting robbed of silver in 2019. Her reaction to the score in the Kiss and Cry was absolutely precious. That said... and I hate to say it, but I do think she was overscored. Not in comparison to how the Russians are scored these days of course, but in comparison to how other Japanese skaters - in this case Wakaba - are getting scored, it’s noticable that Kaori is the one who has the Fed’s support. I just wish JSF had the energy to politic for all their skaters like this.

- Alysa’s skate, to my own surprise, might have been my favourite of the bunch this time. That was just a really enjoyable performance to watch on a purely subjective “do I enjoy watching this” scale. I love the music and outfit and she really seemed to have fun with it. I wanted to hug them when they started crying afterwards. She’s really been through a lot this season. Also they should have definitely placed ahead of Mariah here and I don’t get how they didn’t. (Oh right... racism. Yikes.)

((Also, Alysa is just a really sweet and likable skater that I want to root for, you know? It’s pratially just their adorable and infectiously happy personality, partially that I just really respect seeing someone actually go from a quad jumping kid to a more mature skater who doesn’t just focus on jumps, and partially also that she’s been a sentimental favourite of mine ever since I witnessed a whole bunch of Russian fans vocally root against her at the Junior GPF 2019 in Turin - just because Alysa was Kamila’s biggest competition at the time and maybe because of some Cold War BS as well. If you’d sat in that audience and heard the way a bunch of adults started to loudly roar and cheer when a 13-year-old didn’t win, you’d have started to root for that 13-year-old skater out of principle, too.))

- Young’s skate was another candidate for my favourite program of the event - amazing! Idk why, but this was the most I’ve ever enjoyed watching her skate this SP. So far, I’ve preferred her FS this season while just feeling “meh” about the SP, but this time I loved it! And I’m not entirely sure if that’s because she skated it better than before, or just because I’m not as tense watching this as I was during the Olympics - probably both. But yeah, great skate - should have also definitely placed ahead of Mariah.

- Loena was great and it’s nice to see a small fed skater do so well here! And she’s definitely a fighter to do so well with an injury. And again - a precious reaction in the Kiss and Cry. That said, she was also scored too generously here. The most obvious example is the opening 3Lz3T-Combo: The landing was pretty shaky, but only J9 have this combo negative GOE (-1). Most even gave it +2. And while I admit I don’t always get edge calls right, the Lz in the combo looked like a pretty clear Flutz to me? Am I wrong there?

Conclusion: I will say that while I still have issues with the scoring (the racism was very obvious this time), this was still the most enjoyable women’s SP I’ve seen in a long time. You take out the Russians and suddenly you’ve got an interesting competition again - even so, the ISU still needs a reform because in the long run, no sport can exist without fairness.

#Figure skating #Worlds 2022 #World Figure skating championships 2022 #Olga Mikutina #Alysa Liu #Young You #Loena Hendrickx #Kaori Sakamoto #Wakaba Higuchi #Karen Chen #Haein Lee #Mana Kawabe #Tzu-Han Ting #Nicole Schott #Mariah Bell #long post

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ejzah · 3 years

Text

Prompt: Can you do a fanfic where the team go out to a karaoke bar. Everyone takes turns and they’re good, but they haven’t found the best singer yet and pretty soon it’s Deeks turn. Deeks is a little apprehensive, but his performance leaves everyone absolutely speechless and in complete awe by his unbelievable talent. Also the song I’m thinking, Unstoppable by Rascal Flatts.

A/N: This is once again very late. I’m placing it fairly early on in the series. Slightly AU as it occurs before Deeks reveals his “Touching Wood” days to Kensi.

***

Swoon Worthy

“Alright Kensi, it’s our turn,” Nell announced, trying to tug Kensi away from the table they were all grouped around. Two girls were walking off stage following a powerful rendition of “I Will Always Love You”.

“Oh no, I told you I’m not doing karaoke,” Kensi protested.

Deeks grinned, watching them argue about it for a few minutes. Bolstered by a few margaritas, Nell was holding her own.

“I can’t do it alone.”

“Yeah c’mon, Kensi,” Deeks encouraged her, grinning when she shot him a dark look.

“I need some girl power,” Nell insisted, again tugging futilely at her arm. Across the table, Sam and Callen were chuckling at her antics. They each had a beer and seemed more laid-back than usual.

“Fine,” Kensi sighed a few minutes later. “But I am not singing anything from a musical.

“Oh, this is going to be gold,” Callen chortled.

“Just wait until you hear our duet,” Eric said, nodding significantly as he sipped at a mojito. “It’s life changing.”

“I can’t wait,” Sam commented dryly.

Kensi and Nell made it on-stage to light applause as the first few notes of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” started. With Nell leading, they were a little off-pitch, but her enthusiasm made up for it. At first, Kensi held back, but about halfway through she lost some of her reservation.

They finished to several hoots cheers, which Nell accepted with a little bow. Deeks stood up and whistled loudly over everyone else, ignoring Kensi’s narrowed eyes.

“That was amazing,” he said once they were in hearing distance.

“Well, I’m glad you enjoyed it, because it’s never happening again,” she informed them all firmly.

“Aw c’mon, Kens,” Callen protested, tipping his bottle in her direction. “I think it was an inspired performance. I think we need an encore.”

“You keep talking like that and I’m cutting you off.” To prove his point, Sam swiped Callen’s drink when he set it down and held it at arm’s length.

“You just don’t appreciate nice things,” Nell decided, wedging herself between the two men. She patted squeezed their shoulders and winked while downing the rest of her peach margarita. She jerked her chin in Eric’s direction. “Let’s go and show them how it’s done.”

Without a word of argument, Eric stood and offered his arm to Nell. They looked slightly out of place with Eric in his khaki shorts and Nell affecting an almost regal stride as they approached the stage. It took them a couple minutes to find the song they wanted, and then another while they got into character.

“What is happening?” Deeks muttered, watching as Eric faced away from the room. Nell for her part seems to be working herself up to tears.

“Oh, don’t ask,” Kensi advised him as she took a long drink and sat next to him. “Just be glad that Eric found a new duet partner. Last time we went to a bar that had karaoke, he conned Sam into singing “Hakuna Matata” with him.”

Deeks snorted unexpectedly, wiping beer off his upper lip as he swiveled to stare at Sam in delight.

“You’re joking.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Sam grumbled, shifting uncomfortably.

“Oh, I definitely need a reprisal,” Deeks declared. It was always extremely enjoyable to tease Sam Hanna.

“I think you should go next, Deeks.” Crossing his arms, Sam smiled vindictively.

“If he sounds anything like he does in the shower, then I’m going to vote ‘no’,” Callen said, wincing. “It sounds like a damn bag of cats.”

Before Deeks could respond, the lights dimmed a little more and Nell sang the first line of “Come What May”. She wasn’t quite Nicole Kidman, but she managed to convey the song drama and romance of the song surprisingly well.

When it was his turn, Eric turned around melodramatically, and sang in a tortured voice. He crept closer to Nell, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her to his chest as they sang “I will love you until the end of time”.

“Ok, they’re not bad,” Kensi admitted. “Definitely better than Eric and Sam.”

Eric and Nell finished with her dropping into his arms on the final note, followed by enthusiastic if slightly confused applause.

“That was definitely our best performance,” Nell announced when they returned to the table. “Ok, who’s next?”

“Deeks was just talking about how much he loves karaoke,” Sam answered quickly.

“Well, I’m a little out of practice, but if you insist,” Deeks said, standing with a groan and shaking out his hair. He winked at Kensi, adding, “Try not to swoon.”

“In your dreams, Deeks,” she scoffed as he sauntered away, smiling over his shoulder. He picked up the mic, clearing his throat a couple times, but not looking ill at ease.

“So, uh, it’s be a while since I was up on a stage,” he told the audience with a disarming smile. “But I’m going to do my best. This is for my girl, Fern.”

Rolling her eyes, Kensi resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him. He dipped his head so his face was partially concealed by his hair. Kensi was certain she heard a couple people whispering about him. She had to admit he didn’t look half bad in his dark blue shirt and jeans that hugged-

Kensi gave herself a shake, hoping no one had noticed her lapse in attention.

“So, so you made a lot of mistakes, walked down the road a little sideways,” he sang, keeping his head low. Kensi didn’t immediately recognize the song, but she could tell it wasn’t Deeks’ first time. His voice was soft, slightly throaty, yet completely controlled.

“He’s really good,” Nell shouted in Kensi’s ear. She nodded, completely taken in by his performance.

Deeks belted out the chorus, exuding power with every word as he raised his head, drawing everyone in with a single look. He drew on the energy in the room, becoming more confident, his voice more electric.

He sang the final line to thunderous applause and Deeks nodded, looking mildly embarrassed but pleased by the attention. Nell greeted him when he was halfway to the table, hugging him tightly.

“That was amazing, Deeks! We totally need to do the next one together,” she told him. Deeks extricated his arms, grinning at her enthusiasm.

“Thanks, Nell, but I don’t think you really want to hear my version of “Hello Dolly”, he said as he sat next to Kensi again.

“Unbelievable.”

“What?” He shrugged innocently l, like he had no idea why she was regarding him through narrowed eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me you could sing?” she asked.

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me,” Deeks replied with a smug little grin.

“Oh, well, we are going to have a very long conversation tomorrow,” she informed him.

“And a repeat performance?” She gave him a once over, then looked away to hide her smile.

“Possibly.”

***

A/N: Truth be told, I’d never heard “Unstoppable”. I hope I did it justice.

Thanks for the prompt!

#ncis la fanfiction #marty deeks #kensi blye #sam and callen #Eric and Nell #Deeks can sing #anonymous prompt #ejzah fanfiction

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