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x-reader-theater · 3 years

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A Shakespearean Soliloquy in Two Parts

Relationship: Asexua!Spemcer Reid x Asexual!Male!Reader

Summary: “Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” William Shakespeare, Julius Ceaser

Warnings: Scool shooting, asexual Spencer Reid and reader, implied autism.

Word Count: 7520 words

A/N: To be frank, I meant to post this at like, three pm. Also Asexual Spencer Reid owns my ass and I will only write him as such. Please enjoy. Edited by the outstanding, amazing, show stopping @mystic-writes . I love you please forgive me for forgetting.

"Are you sure/That we are awake? It seems to me/That yet we sleep, we dream" –A Midsummer Night's Dream

"Hey, Shelly," you say with a smile at the small book store you are currently checking out in. "Good to see you again."

"You as well! Only one book this week?" Shelly asks and you nod.

"Yeah. I have too much work to do, so I can't focus on more than one book," you say.

She scans your book and you pay quickly. She hands you the book back and says with a smile, "Enjoy your book!"

You nod and turn around quickly, taking a step, before colliding with someone. The books in their hands go crashing to the floor, and you do as well, crying out as you land suddenly on your tailbone, and stars flash before your eyes.

"I am so sorry, I shouldn’t have been that close and I wasn't paying attention, and I should have been looking where I was going and-" you hold up a hand to silence the man who was speaking a mile a minute in front of you.

"Really, it's okay. It was my fault," you say, wincing as you try and get up.

The man holds out a hand out and you take it. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

He takes his hand back almost immediately once you're standing and you smile. "No, not really. Just bruised my tailbone," you say and the man sighs.

You lean down and pick up a couple of the books he was carrying, and when you go to the last book, his fingers brush yours. You look up and see your faces are inches from one another, and you feel your face heating up. You see him blush as well and you both pull your hands away. You stand up so he can grab the last book and you shove the books you're holding into his arms.

"Sorry again!" you say, not looking at him, and you leave because you can’t embarrass yourself any more.

It isn't until you're in your car that you realize you gave him your book as well.

"Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love." –Hamlet

You walk into the Alley Cat Café, a new café that just opened a block from your flat that also offered an area where you could hang out with adoptable cats. You never went in there because you would just adopt all of them and you didn't have the time for that right now.

You walk into the café and the little bell above the door jingles to signal your arrival. You walk up to the counter and order your regular, the Calico Chai, and pay before finding a seat near the back close to the window where you could watch the cats. Your order is called, and as you get up, you look over to a table, and see a very familiar man reading a book at a remarkable speed.

You distractedly grab your tea and go back to your table, gathering up your things before plopping yourself next to the man.

"Hello again!" you exclaim and he jumps, looking up from his reading to glare at whoever interrupted him.

When he locks eyes with you, however, his eyes widen. "Oh! Hello!" he exclaims and a small smile forms on his lips.

"I think I may have given you my book on Tuesday," you say sheepishly, and his eyes widen even more and his mouth drops open adorably.

He turns and fishes around in his bag, before turning back to you and holding out a book in both hands. "I've been carrying it around with me hoping to give it back to you," he says, blushing, and you grin, taking the book from his hands, your fingers brushing his.

"Well, thank you," you say, grabbing the large book.

"So, the complete works of Shakespeare, huh?" the man asks and you nod.

"Yeah. I've never actually owned a copy before," you say. "I've only taken it out from the library or borrowed it from friends. I actually wanted to major in Shakespearean studies in college before ultimately deciding to go another way." The man nods, and silence falls over you for a moment before you say, "You know, I never got your name."

"Oh! Doctor Spencer Reid," he says with a wave.

You wave back and say, "Doctor [Y/N] [L/N]."

"What's your doctorate in?" he asks, excited.

You reply, "Biological Anthropology. I teach it at Georgetown."

"That's where I got my PHD in Chemistry," Spencer says and you grin.

"Really? When was that?" you ask.

"Thirteen years, two months, six days, and seventeen hours ago," he says and you blink owlishly.

You think for a moment before saying, "You must have been really young when you got that."

He nods. "I was seventeen. It was my second PHD. I have three. One in mathematics, one in chemistry, and one in engineering. I also have five BAs."

You stare at him for a moment, not saying anything, before you whisper, "That's really impressive." You feel your cheeks heat up. "I didn't get my PHD until I was nearly 25."

"I have an IQ of 187, and eidetic memory, and can read 20,000 words a minute," he says and you smile.

"You're one of a kind, Spencer Reid," you say, holding your book to your chest. "That must have been a very lonely childhood though," you remark, and he looks away from you. He nods but doesn't say anything. "What do you do now?"

"I'm a profiler with the FBI in their behavioral analysis unit," he explains and you smile.

"Maybe I'll have you come in and lecture to one of my classes some time," you say and he smiles. "Though Biological Anthropology isn't very exciting to anyone but me…" you look away and scratch the back of your neck, but Spencer assuages your fears.

"Actually, I find it quite interesting. I read an article the other day about how work stress is actually de-evolving humans, causing their bones to actually lose density, causing them more physical pain and inability to do physical tasks, as well as loss of sleep, appetite, and more," he says, and you grin.

"But, the study was only on French individuals, and it could have different results based on where the study is done. Like, in Japan for example, there may be the same amount of stress but they handle it better because in their culture, work is just a part of life and you have to deal with stress. Or in America, where we have different ways of dealing with stress that may cloud the findings," you add, and he nods.

"That is true, though you'd have to factor that into the initial hypothesis and-"

Spencer is cut off by his phone ringing. He picks it up and the phone call ends quickly.

"I'm so sorry to have to do this, but I have to go to work. We have a case," he says and you nod in understanding.

"Of course. It was nice talking to you Spencer. I hope we can talk again some time!" you exclaim.

A small smile tugs at his lips and he says, "I do too, [Y/N]."

You stare at each other for a couple moments before he turns around and leaves the café. You sip your now cold tea and realize you didn't get Spencer's number.

“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt." –Measure for Measure

You sit at the bar and nurse your glass of water as the music and lights cause a headache to split at your temples. You groan and massage your head, but it doesn't do anything to relieve the pain. You take another sip of your water, and look up to see a familiar face looking down at you.

"Co-workers bring you here too?" Spencer asks and you smile and nod.

"Yeah. It's Fiona's birthday today and she wanted to go to a club," you say, and Spencer sits down next to you. "I got dragged along. And apparently I got a splitting headache too."

"Do you want any help with that?" Spencer asks and you look at him, questioningly. "Turn around."

You do as he asks, slowly, and you feel his fingers lightly resting on your neck. You wince as he presses into your spine right where your head and neck meet, but after thirty seconds he releases, and your headache dissipates. You grin and turn around.

"How did you know to do that?" you ask.

He shrugs. "I had chronic migraines when I was younger, and I read a book on pressure points once," he explains and you nod in understanding.

"Right. You're a genius," you say with a forced smile and he frowns. You sigh. "You just…" you put a hand on his cheek, and he stiffens for a moment before relaxing into your touch. "You make me feel inferior. Like I'm just never going to do as well as you."

Spencer grabs your hand lightly and squeezes it, putting it away from your face as he looks into your eyes. "Trust me, you have nothing to worry about. You're a doctor working at one of the best schools in the country," he says and you smile. He returns it. "And, don't compare yourself to me. I can read 20,000 words a minute. I'm a freak. You're more normal than I am."

"Spencer Reid, don't you ever say that again!" you exclaim, taking his other hand in your own. "You are not a freak!" He goes to protest but you take one of your hands from his grip and put it over his lips. "Nope. No arguing. What I say is final."

You pull your hand away and you see he's smiling. "Yes, Doctor," he says, his words dripping with sarcasm.

You grin, before gasping. He looks alarmed as you say, "Oh! I forgot!" he places his hands on your arms. "You didn't give me your number in the café!"

He sighs in what looks to be relief, before reaching into his pocket and taking out his wallet. "You want to see a magic trick?"

You nod and he grins an adorable smile that has you grinning as well. He holds up a business card, probably his business card, and moves his hands in front of his face, and when they cross back over, the card is gone.

"Oh come on! It's behind your hand! I know this trick," you say, and he raises an eyebrow.

He opens up his fingers and turns his hand around, showing it's nowhere to be seen. Your eyes go wide and your mouth drops slightly in awe.

"Hey, I think you have something in your hair… right there…" he says, pointing to your left ear, and you reach up before he can touch you.

You feel something, and when you pull it out in front of you, you see it's Spencer's business card.

You laugh and flip the card over, checking to see if it's real or not. But it very much is.

"Wow Spencer, that's amazing!" you exclaim and his cheeks flare red. You take out your phone and put his number in, calling it. He looks up at you and you place your phone to your ear. He picks up and you say with a smile, "There. Now you have my number too."

"This sounds very strange, can I hang up now?" Spencer says out loud, and it's repeated in your ear only moments after. You laugh and nod, and the two of you hang up your phones.

Almost immediately, his phone starts ringing again, and you put up your hands in innocence.

"JJ," he says into the receiver, pausing for a moment, before saying quickly, "I'll be right there." He hangs up his phone and places it in his pocket, before saying quickly. "Sorry, that was work. I really have to go."

You smile and nod. "You have a job to do. Go save some lives." He smiles and turns to leave, but you call out, "Spencer!" he turns around and you stand up, lean forward, and place a kiss on his cheek. "For good luck."

He grins and walks out of the club. You watch as a couple more people file out, and sit back in your seat and finish your water.

"Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change." –Romeo and Juliet

You're flipping through papers when you hear someone call out to you.

"[Y/N]!" they shout and looking up you see Spencer Reid walking down the hallway towards you, a messenger bag slung around his shoulder. He was wearing something similar to what he was wearing in the club only two nights ago.

"Case ended early?" you ask and he nods.

"Yeah. Child abduction. We had less than forty eight hours to get the child back alive since the family didn't report her missing until twenty four hours had passed," he says.

"And did you? Get the child back alive, I mean," you ask and he nods. You grin.

"Oh, good. So! What are you doing here? You didn't come just to see me, did you?"

Spencer blushes and you place a hand on his arm. "No, Doctor Priya Chopra wanted my help on an article she's going to write about fungal growth on skin and the potential benefits it could have, as well as any side effects it may cause," he says and you nod.

"Well, I can show you to her office! She's new so it wouldn't have updated on any maps yet," you say and Spencer nods.

He stops and you halt in front of him, turning as he says, "Oh! Do you want me to carry any of your papers?"

You smile and shake your head. "No, it's okay. I'll just have to walk back anyways. My office is in the other direction."

"Oh, I don't want you to have to go out of your way. I can probably find it on my own…" Spencer trails off, looking helplessly at the myriad of plain beige hallways.

You shake your head and bump your shoulder with his. "Really. It's not a big deal. I want to do this," you say with a smile. He smiles back and you lead him down a couple hallways, until you stop at a door with a nameplate that reads, 'Dr. Priya Chopra, PHD'.

"Well, this is your stop," you say, almost sad with a slight slump to your shoulders. "With that eidetic memory of yours, I don't think you need me to show you around anymore."

Spencer places a hand on the small of your back and points at the paperwork in your arms. "You look like you could use a little help. How about I come by after my talk with Doctor Chopra? I know where your office is," he says and you grin.

"I would love that, Spencer," you say, and watch him until he disappears behind Doctor Chopra's door.

"One may smile, and smile, and be a villain." –Hamlet

You hear a knock at your door and you look up from your work to see a familiar head pop out from behind the door. You grin and say, "Parker! It's good to see you again! Come in."

The young man with dark circles under his eyes slowly walks into your office, he wrings his hands out in front of him, and sits down in the chair across from yours. He slowly takes his backpack off and reaches in, pulling out a grey folder. The movements were slow and methodical, but you can see the young man's hands shaking slightly as he does so. Finally, he pulls out a stapled stack of papers and holds it out to you.

You take it carefully and frown, looking it over. It was one of his essays that you just gave back a couple days ago with a big red 'F' on the front.

"Why did you fail me?" Parker whispers and you sigh.

You lean back in your chair, folding your fingers on your stomach as you say, "Your essay is all over the place. There isn't a coherent theme or message in any of it. Also, you should really find someone to help edit your grammar at least. You have misspellings and incorrect comma usage all over the place, Parker." The man in question looks down away from you and you sigh again, this time louder and lean forward onto your desk. "How about this. Go to the writing center on campus, find someone to help plan out your essay, and if you do a good job, I'll bump up your score to at least a B, if not more if you do really well, okay?"

Parker looks up at you and gives you a toothy, forced smile, almost as if he doesn't smile much in his life, and says, "Thank you, Mr. [Y/N]."

You smile and nod, handing the paper back to him, and just as someone knocks at your door, he gets up.

Opening the door, Parker comes face to face with Doctor Gerard Holden, professor of microbiology at Georgetown, and the man looks shocked for a moment before steeling his expression and saying over Parker's shoulder, "Dr. [L/N], do you have a minute to talk?"

You smile and nod, before addressing Parker again. "Parker, I want to see that essay on my desk in a week and a half at the most. I hope to see some improvement."

Parker doesn't turn around but he nods and slides out of your office as quickly as he can without touching Dr. Holden. When Parker leaves, the older man walks into your office and closes the door behind him.

"That boy is very strange. I don't know how you put up with him. I've had to kick him out of class before for being disruptive and talking out of turn," he says and you sigh.

"He's a good kid and an even better student. I bet if you pushed him a little more, and actually called on him in class, he wouldn't interrupt so much," you say and the doctor in front of you is pale. "But, I hope you didn't come here to discuss our students."

The man shakes his head and goes into a lengthy question about having you guest lecture during one of his classes. You agree quickly and get the time and date and what you'll be covering before Dr. Holden opens the door to your office.

You see Parker standing on the other side of the door, and you know he heard everything you and Dr. Holden discussed about him.

"They do not love that do not show their love." –The two Gentlemen of Verona

It's a Saturday. You and Spencer are sitting in your apartment reading. Spencer's stack next to him is significantly smaller than yours, and whenever he finishes a book, he places it on your stack. Whenever you finish yours, you place your book on the ground and pick up whatever book Spencer just finished reading.

It's nice.

"If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die." –Twelfth Night

"Come on! I don't want us to miss this!" Spencer exclaims, grabbing your hand, and pulling you along as he runs through the small park.

"Wait! Spencer! I didn't know we were running! I would have brought my inhaler!" you exclaim as you try and keep pace.

Spencer doesn't stop though as he says, "It's not far, now come on!" The two of you continue to run through the trees, and eventually you come upon a clearing. There are a few couples there, but not actually as many as you would have expected. The thing that shocks you the most are the group of college age students all standing around with boxes in their hands.

"Spencer what-"

"Shh!"

You step closer to him, still holding his hand as the students all step up, and take the tops off the boxes. Light start flying out of the uncovered cardboard boxes and you realize that they're lightning bugs.

You gasp as a swarm flies towards you before dispersing into a hazy cloud of blinking yellow and green emanating from the lower abdomen. You reach out and the bugs fly away from your hand in streaks of light and you laugh. You turn, grinning at Spencer's face. He's looking right at you.

In the low glow, you can see Spencer's handsome features on display. His cheekbones are softer in the light, his auburn hair a deep brown and his hazel eyes reflecting spots of green back at you. You reach up and place a hand on his cheek. He looks beautiful.

"What is this?" you ask, breathless.

He smiles softly and you look down at his lips. They look inviting. "The biology majors at Howard under Professor Trudy study fireflies for a semester before releasing them here. Did you know that many fireflies do not produce light? Usually these species are diurnal, or day-flying, such as those in the genus Ellychnia. A few diurnal fireflies that inhabit primarily shadowy places, such as beneath tall plants or trees, are luminescent. One such genus is Lucidota. Non-bioluminescent fireflies use pheromones to signal mates. This is supported by the fact that some basal groups do not show bioluminescence and use chemical signaling, instead. Phosphaenus hemipterus has photic organs, yet is a diurnal firefly and displays large antennae and small eyes. These traits strongly suggest pheromones are used for sexual selection, while photic organs are used for warning signals."

You're silent for a minute before you say, "You said firefly."

Spencer frowns. "Huh?"

"You said firefly. People around here say 'Lightning bug,' which means you're not from around here. Where are you from?" you ask, and his frown subsides.

"Las Vegas," he says and you smile.

"You're a long way from home," you reply, looking around at the lightning bugs floating lazily around you, taking in their new environment. You look back at him and say, "I'm glad you're here Spencer. I'm glad I ran into you at the book shop. Literally," you say, laughing lightly.

"Me too," Spencer says with a small smile on his face.

You lean up and kiss him, quickly, before pulling back, not really giving him a chance to react. He stares at you, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open, before leaning in and capturing his lips in yours again. You lean against him, turning so your front is pressed against his, he places his hands on your hips and you thread yours through his hair and rest them on the back of his neck.

When you pull away, the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, but you're so lost in Spencer's eyes you hardly notice.

"I am not bound to please thee with my answers." –The Merchant of Venice

You jump as someone hits their bowl a little too hard with their spoon, causing a loud crashing noise it seems like only you can hear. You can feel your heart rate picking up as another person accidentally drops a glass on the floor, shattering it. Your eyes dart around as people talk loudly over one another, shouting to be heard over the low din of the restaurant.

"[Y/N]!"

You look up at Spencer sharply, your eyes going wide.

"Are you okay?" he asks, reaching a hand out. You nod but don't take his hand, instead picking at your nails underneath the table. "I was just talking about the underlying effects of corsetry in the modern era…" Spencer continues as if nothing is wrong but another loud crash causes you to jump and lose focus from him again.

You hear Spencer sigh and you look up at him, your cheeks flaming up. "Sorry…" you mutter.

"What's wrong?" he asks plainly.

"I-" you begin to say, but flinch as someone laughs loudly at a table nearby you. "I don't really like restaurants. They're too… loud."

Spencer looks at you with that blank stare for a moment before sighing in what you hope is of relief. "Same here. A co-worker of mine suggested I take you out to dinner and when I told him I don't like restaurants either, he just said you would," Spencer explains.

You frown. "Who did he think I was? We read books in your apartment all the time!"

Spencer looks away sheepishly and pulls his hands into his lap. "I haven't used pronouns for you, so he assumed you were a woman."

You snort. "Wouldn't be the first time." Spencer frowns at you. "I've dated a lot of bisexual men with straight colleagues. The co-workers always assume I'm a woman."

Spencer nods, and the two of you are silent once again in the loud restaurant. You flinch once more as something crashes together, and Spencer sighs.

"Do you want to go somewhere else?" he asks, almost begging.

You nod enthusiastically. "Yes. Please. We can go back to mine?" Your eyes widen at that. "Not for sex!" you exclaim and a few people look over at you. You blush in embarrassment and say, quieter, "I-I just meant to read or watch a documentary or something. I didn't mean to imply."

Spencer smiles softly. "It's okay. I didn't even realize. I'm not sexually attracted to people."

Your eyes widen and you grin. "Me neither!"

Spencer grins with you and the two of you hastily pay and make a quick exit out of the busy restaurant.

"God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another." –Hamlet

"Mr. [L/N]?"

You jump and look up from your work and see Parker standing in your office. You put a hand over your heart and laugh. "Parker! You scared me!"

"Sorry…" he says, not making eye contact.

You chuckle as you say, "I should put a bell on you…" you see Parker flush a deep red but you ignore it. "So, what can I do you for?"

Silently, still red and blushing, Parker pulls out a stapled stack of papers from his backpack and holds it out to you. You take it and see it's the revised version of his essay you failed last week.

"I did want you asked…" he says quietly and you quickly look over the first page.

You smile up at him, grateful. "Thank you, Parker. I'll get it back to you by the end of the week-"

"NO!" he shouts and you jump at that.

"Parker, I have a lot of work to do and-"

But he cuts you off again, shouting, "No! Get it done now!"

You sigh, knowing he's not going to relent, and you pinch the bridge of your nose. "Okay. How about this. How many classes do you have left today?"

"Two…" Parker says, and you almost miss it seeing as he's so quiet.

You nod. "Okay. How about I work on it while you're in class and you can come back after."

Parker nods and without another word, leaves your office. You sigh loudly and lean your head into your hands.

"I must be cruel only to be kind; Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind." –Hamlet

That night, you're sitting in Spencer's apartment, his head in your lap as you both read. You can't help but think of Parker, of hearing him yell for the first time since you met him. The boy was always so quiet, except in class where he was engaged and able to answer every question, even if his answers were a little all over the place.

"[Y/N]?" You hear Spencer ask and you look down at him, dazed.

"Huh?"

"You haven't even looked at your book for six minutes and twenty-seven seconds," Spencer says and you frown. You put your book face down next to you on the side table and rub your hands over your face. You feel hands at your wrists, and they tug slightly, pulling your hands away from your face. "What's going on?"

"Just a student of mine yelled at me today," you say. Spencer frowns and you lean down, kissing where his brow was furrowed. "It's okay. I've just never seen him even raise his voice above a whisper besides when we're in class. And even then he doesn't yell." You pause, and sit back up. Spencer sits up as well and lets go of your wrists, leaning into your side. "A lot of the students and faculty don't like him because he's disruptive in class, but I know he's a good student. He's driven and knows a lot. He just needs to be pushed in the right way." You sigh again and lean over to rest your head on Spencer's shoulder. "I told him that I would finish editing his essay by the end of the week but he yelled at me, telling me to finish it right then and there. I told him I would finish it by the end of the day. I knew he wasn't going to stop asking, so I made a compromise I thought he could live with."

You look up at Spencer's face and see him frowning. "How long has he been like this with you?"

You let out a huff of humorless laughter. "What, you jealous?" you ask, joking.

Some of the tension eases from Spencer's face but he doesn't stop frowning.

"No, I'm not jealous. I'm just cautious." He looks into your eyes as he says, "You should be too."

You sigh and lean down, kissing him. "I know. I will be. I just don't want to push him away. I think I'm the only friendly face he has around campus…"

Spencer nods, and opens his mouth as if to say something, but he closes it, and the two of you spend the rest of your evening in silence, unanswered questions lingering in the air between you.

"Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall." –Romeo and Juliet

"You okay?" you ask Spencer one night while you're sitting on your bed together, watching something on your laptop. Tonight you were trying to get him into Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but he seemed more distracted than normal.

He looks up at you, a glazed look in his eyes before sighing. "The case we finished today? It was a stalker case. This man was in love with this woman and we had to make her tell him she was in love with him to get him to let his guard down," Spencer explains and you turn to face him, not saying anything. "We shot him. In the end. He died while the woman was sobbing into her husband's arms." You reach out and place a hand near Spencer, not touching him. He reaches out and takes your hand, kissing it. "I just keep thinking about how she'll never feel safe around another man again."

"You did what you could and you saved her life, Spencer," you say quietly and he looks at you sadly. "I'm so proud of you."

"But what about the people we can't save?"

You sigh and kiss Spencer lightly. "You can't think about that. Think about the families you saved, the women, the children. You saved a life! That's amazing, Spencer."

Spencer smiles and nods but he doesn't look convinced. You just kiss him again and go back to watching Buffy.

"<i>For which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?</i>" –Much Ado About Nothing

You startle as a knock sounds at your door. You aren't expecting visitors. Spencer's out with work, and he said not to expect him back for a few days. It's only been two, and he can't have caught the guy that quickly already.

But when you open your door, Spencer is standing there, his eyes puffy and red, and before you can ask any questions, he's pushing himself into your arms. You stumble back and close the door before sinking to the floor, letting Spencer cry into your arms.

"Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, But Lust's effect is tempest after sun. Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain; Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done. Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies; Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies." –Venus and Adonis

"I love you," you say one evening while you're sitting on the couch, Spencer's head in your lap. You're running your fingers through his hair as you say this, making it fan out around his head like a halo of auburn curls.

He cracks an eye open at you and smiles. "Really?"

You roll your eyes. "Yes. I do. And I just thought I should say it," you say, and Spencer sits up, leaning in to kiss you. You put your hands on his cheeks and smile into the soft kiss.

He pulls away and says, "I want you to meet my mom."

Your eyes go wide and you open your mouth as if to say something, but nothing comes out. You frown before asking, "When?"

"I have some vacation time saved and we could wait until summer break!" Spencer exclaims, causing your frown to drop. "You're not teaching again until the second half of summer break, so we can see her then."

"I've never been to the west coast before…" you say, trailing off and looking away. Spencer goes to say something but you cut him off with a smile. "But, that's okay. I want to meet her."

Spencer grins and grabs your face, kissing you like his life depends on it. You laugh as he gets up and runs out of the living room, whooping with joy.

"I love you, Spencer Reid!" you shout.

"Love you too!" he shouts back.

"Lovers and madmen have such seething brains Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends." –A Midsummer Night's Dream

It's a week until the end of term, finals right around the corner, and you have been stuck in your office for most of the day. Most of the week actually. You gave your students the last few days off to study for their finals, and to finish their final essays for you while you finished editing the last of their work before you were bombarded with essays and tests.

Your phone rings on your desk, but you turn off the noise, groaning as the red light beeps incessantly. It's been doing that for the past half an hour. You even had to turn your mobile off and shove it into an unused drawer of your desk.

After another five minutes of the light beeping, you pick up your phone.

"WHAT!" you scream into the receiver.

"Uh, Dr. [L/N]?" you hear someone say quietly into the phone.

"You know, I'm very busy right now and I can't handle distractions so if you would just-"

"Someone's shooting up the school."

Your blood runs cold as a knock sounds at your door, and you watch the knob turning. You gulp as the voice on the other end of the line tries to get your attention, but you can't hear them. All you can hear is the creak of your door as it's slowly pushed open.

"Mr. [Y/N]!" You hear someone shout as they enter your office. It's Parker. And he's holding a gun. "I thought I heard you in here! Who are you talking to?"

You go to answer, but the words die in your throat.

"I- I don't actually know. They-they were calling to tell me about you," you say finally, hanging up the phone as the person yells on the other side of the line.

Parker closes your door and walks over to your desk with a happy smile on his face. "I came to get you, [Y/N]," he says, and you force a smile onto your face.

"Really?" you ask, hoping your nervousness doesn't give anything away.

He nods. "It's just you and me now! Forever!"

You gulp, but smile. "Uh huh…"

"The only thing left in our way is that whore who calls himself your boyfriend…" Parker says, and your smile drops.

"Spencer?" you can't help the wavering in your voice as you say his name.

Parker nods and places his hand against his chin. "Yes. Maybe you can call him? I'm sure he's already on his way over here."

You gulp, but nod. You pick up your desk phone and dial Spencer's number from memory. While your memory may not be anywhere close to as good as his, you forced yourself to memorize it in case it was an emergency.

After the first ring, the phone is picked up. "[Y/N]? Are you okay? I've tried calling you for the past twenty minutes and you haven't picked up!" Spencer exclaims on the other end of the line.

You take a deep breath before looking up at Parker, who's smiling expectantly at you. He nods. "Spencer, can you come to my office?"

"I'm outside. Is everything okay?" he asks.

"Tell him to leave his gun and vest outside," Parker whispers and you nod.

"You need to leave your gun and vest outside," you say, your voice shaking with every word.

"Oh!" Parker exclaims and leans forward. "And tell him if he doesn't do all that, I'm going to kill you."

You let out a sob and say into the phone, shaking, "If you don't do what's been asked, he's going to- he's going to kill me, oh!" you exclaim, another sob escaping your lips. You hear Spencer start to say something, but Parker puts a finger down on the plunger and you hear the dial tone in your ear. You slowly take the phone away from your ear and look at it shaking in your grip.

You watch absently as Parker's fingers brush yours, getting you to open your hand, and you let him take the phone, and put it back down on your desk.

You keep staring off into the middle distance, even as Parker's hand rests on your chin. He turns your head and your eyes lock onto his. You can see the simmering rage bubbling underneath the feigned love that he's projecting. It's probably not even conscious. You don't know if a man like him even <i>could</i> fall in love.

You hear a knock at your door and Parker moves away from you, but grabs your arm forcefully. Your hips push into the desk painfully and you let out a small whimper. Parker's hand on your arm relaxes slightly and he pulls you around your desk to stand next to him at his side, his gun pointed at the dark wooden door that is slowly opening.

You see Spencer slowly pushing the door open, his other hand raised to show he's unarmed.

"Stay there," Parker says, holding his gun level at Spencer's chest.

"Okay. Okay," Spencer says, putting his other hand up. "No one needs to get hurt."

Parker shakes his head. "No. No. They do. They're going to come in the way of us!"

Parker looks down at you and you look up at him, wide eyed. "No, they won't. No one can come in between us," you say, trying to keep your voice steady. "Spencer's right. No one needs to get hurt."

Parker closes his eyes and shakes his head again. "Spencer, Spencer… Why Spencer? Why him? Why not me?"

You grab his arm and say, "It is you, Parker! It will always be you!" you look over at Spencer, asking with your eyes if you're doing a good job, if this is what you should be doing. He gives you a miniscule nod. You remembered from before when you talked about guys like Parker. "I don't love Spencer. I love you."

Your heart breaks as you say this, but you know that Spencer knows it isn't true. Parker's the only one who needs to believe it.

"Say it," he says, before looking over at the man in question, "to him."

You gulp and look at Spencer, leaning more into Parker's side as you say, "Spencer, I don't love you. I never loved you. I'm in love with Parker. Nothing will be able to keep up apart."

"[Y/N]..." Spencer says, heartbreak evident on his face. Either he's a really good actor or he actually believes it. You sincerely hope it's the former.

Parker nods when you look at him, and grins. "Let's get out of here…" he says, holding out his hand. You take it gingerly and he pulls your back to his chest, still holding Spencer at gunpoint. He flicks the gun further into your office, and Spencer moves with his hands up, tears streaming from his face as he moves across from you in the room.

Parker backs up slowly through the room towards the door, his gun still pointed at Spencer. As soon as he steps out into the hallway, you hear the gunshot.

You feel Parker fall behind you, and you run back into your office, falling to the floor, and only then do you start crying. You sob loudly, and when you're pulled into a chest, you only cry harder.

You hear Spencer whispering to you, and you feel his tears on your hair, your neck as he says, "I can't lose you too. I can't. I just can't…"

You pull him closer, pulling your legs to your chest as you sob, "I love you. I love you so much. I didn't mean anything I said!"

"I know," he whispers, kissing your head. "I know."

"I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest." –Much Ado About Nothing

"I've never been to Vegas before!" you exclaim as you get off the plane. "Can we go to any casinos? I've never gambled before!"

Spencer chuckles as he grabs your hand, pulling you through the airport. "We'll see. I've been banned from a few, so I don't know if they'll let me in…" he says, trailing off and you laugh. "Did you know that what most people think of as Las Vegas is actually called Paradise? In the late 1940s, after the second world war was over, the city of Las Vegas actually banned gambling. The rich gamblers in town weren't happy with that so they created a town called Paradise and made gaming legal there. Well, it's not a town, but more like unincorporated land that doesn't follow Las Vegas' laws."

You grin and grab your bag when it comes around. While Spencer was talking, you had gone to the baggage claim and your bag had already been around once. While Spencer was used to traveling light, with only a go bag, you were not.

"I did not know that," you say, leaning up to kiss his cheek as he pulls out towards the exit.

You get the car he rented and you let him drive you to Bennington. He wanted to go back to the hotel for a night before seeing his mom, but you didn't want him to waste any more time. You would freshen up after.

You and Spencer are ushered through the sterilized, but still personable, halls of the sanitarium, and into a large room with a couple of other people in it. You see a blonde, short haired woman sitting on a couch and Spencer starts walking over to her.

When she sees him, her face lights up and she exclaims, "Spencer!"

"Hey mom," he says, giving her a wave. "I wanted to introduce you to someone."

She turns and looks you up and down, before wringing her hands out and looking at her son. "Is this the man you told me about in your letters?"

Your eyebrows raise at that and you ask Spencer, "You talked to her about me?" he looks at you, nervous, but you smile. "All good things, I hope." He grins and grabs your hand. You turn to Diana and hold out your hand. "Hi. I'm Dr. [Y/N] [L/N]. Spencer's told me so much about you. He really loves you."

She smiles and takes your hand lightly before letting go. "Yes, he's told me a lot about you too. He loves you too," she says, and you smile at him.

"And I love him," you reply.

"Journeys end in lovers' meeting; every wise man's son doth know" –Twelfth Night

#Spencer reid #spencer reid x male reader #spencer reid x you #spencer read x reader #diana reid #criminal minds #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds x y/n #spencer reid x y/n #my work #my writing

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plannedparenthood · 4 years

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COVID-19: No, We're Not All in This Together

The pandemic, the protests, and why racism endures as a public health crisis

By: Ylonda Gault

My daddy used to say: When America gets the sniffles, Black people catch pneumonia. My dad didn't invent the saying but he used it to explain everything from the war on drugs to the 1990s national recession. Even as a child I knew what he meant. In other words, the country's history of institutional racism and unjust policies make every part of Black life — including economic growth, fair housing, health care access and more — exponentially harder than it is for others. Today, as worldwide protests against police brutality continue and COVID-19 ravages the Black community, we see clearly that old sayings are so often repeated because they bear truth.

The pandemic, a danger for all, is lethal for Black people, who’ve died at a rate of 61.6 per 100,000 people, compared with 26.2 for whites. Yet, this peril is not new. We’ve been brutalized for generations. The murders of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and George Floyd, to name but a few, are only an extension of plantation overseer violence and Klan lynchings that have been hallmarks of our 400-year existence in America. In recent weeks, the streets have erupted because structural racism is — and has long been —the public health crisis that no masks, sanitizer, or social distancing can remedy.

With widespread mandated sheltering and business shutdowns, the serious and potentially deadly infection — caused by a virus for which there is no known cure, vaccine or treatment — has meant lost income or job loss for some and, for others, a huge inconvenience. But research shows that Black people are much more likely not only to get infected with COVID-19 — but to die from the disease because racism undergirds our health care systems, workplace policies, and the environment. — Indigenous and Latino communities are also more vulnerable.

That’s not because we are, as a race, doing something to cause infection. We’re not to blame. Nor is it because we’re unhealthy as a group, or because of something in our biology.

Why are Black communities hit hardest?

Institutional racism is the pre-existing condition that has left Black communities far more vulnerable to COVID-19 than others. While many think the racist barriers to Black people's rights and freedom came to a close with the end to enslavement, they have not only persisted — but grown more entrenched. From Jim Crow segregation, voting and housing discrimination, to heavy-handed policing, generation after generation of targeted bigotry has led to a lack of equity in health care, housing, education, and opportunity. For example, for Black people who work in the service sector; their jobs put them at greater risk of getting COVID-19 — as does the environment. These circumstances are not the result of bad luck or poor choices; they’re created by a long legacy of racist policies that have put Black people in harm's way and made our communities more at risk from the virus that causes COVID-19 than white people

Of course, chief among the risk factors is the barrier to health care access. Black people who work in low-wage jobs usually lack insurance, leading to delayed or bypassed essential health care services — because of the cost. We’re also more likely to live farther away from medical care and face language barriers. And Black people and other folks of color are distrustful of health care professionals because of historical mistreatment. The U.S medical establishment has a history of exploiting Black folks, Latinos, and Indigenous people by performing medical experiments on them without consent, and even stealing their dead bodies from the grave for research and profit.

Barriers to preventive health care — again, a primary outcome of structural racism in the U.S. — mean Black and Latinx communities also have higher rates of health issues like diabetes, heart disease, and lung disease. People with chronic health conditions such as heart disease and diabetes were hospitalized six times more often than otherwise healthy individuals infected with the coronavirus during the first four months of the pandemic, and they died 12 times more often, according to a new report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The public health disaster facing Black communities is the result of hundreds of years of U.S. policies that bolster white supremacy and marginalize Black people. But the pandemic is just a single symptom of the nation's public health disaster. What is being played out over the past few weeks, as people take to the streets to protest a national pattern of violent over-policing, is another.

Why protest during a pandemic?

Just as structural racism created fertile ground for COVID-19 to take root in the Black community, it has also helped plant the groundswell of pro-Black organizing across the country in the wake of George Floyd's murder May 25. Black people, for whom racial profiling and stop-and-frisk policies are a way of life, don't need a viral video to prove their realities; police have killed roughly 1,000 people a year since 2015, according to The Washington Post's real time police shooting data base. While many outside the Black community see the recent spate of killings at the hands of police as random and unrelated — "a few bad apples," so to speak — the pandemic and police brutality are two crises inextricably linked. Both are killing us. And both seem to be unrelenting.

It’s Shakespearean that as he lay dying — a white police officer nonchalantly kneeling on his throat, Floyd can be heard in a plaintive whisper: "I can't breathe."

Black America has long been suffocated by racist and dehumanizing policies. Certainly protests have erupted in the past, in response to the brutal murders of Black people by the police — notably, the 2014 murders of Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in St. Louis. But none have gripped the national and global attention of what is happening now. The volume and breadth of outrage is magnified — at least, in part — because the added dimension of COVID-19 deaths has created a perfect storm.

Unlike Ferguson demonstrations, for example, when protesters of late carry placards that read "Stop Killing Us," the statement has implications far broader than police violence. And the simple phrase, Black Lives Matter, hits different now, too. There will always be detractors and deniers who reflexively counter that “all lives matter.” But there’s a new resonance to the BLM phrase, and wider acceptance among white Americans of what it means to "matter" — and with it, a deeper awareness of the unjust conditions that disproportionately keep the rest of the world from understanding all the ways that Black lives matter.

#covid-19 #racism #public health #barriers #black community

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uomo-accattivante · 4 years

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I recently came across a bunch of press articles and photos about Oscar Isaac that are so old, they appear to be out-of-print and pre-date social media. Considering they were probably never digitally transcribed for internet access, I’m guessing that the majority of current fans have never seen this stuff.

Even though a lot of these digital scans are challenging to read because they are the original fuzzy news print, I think there some gems worth sharing with you guys. Over the next several weeks, I will transcribe and share those gems on this page. Hope you enjoy them!

Let’s start with this fantastic 2001 profile piece done before Oscar was accepted into Juilliard:

South Florida’s rising star isn’t just acting the part

By Christine Dolen - [email protected]

February 4, 2001

As fifth-graders at Westminster Christian School in Miami, Oscar Isaac and his classmates were asked to write a story as if they were animals on Noah’s Ark. Oscar turned in a seven-page play – with original music – from the perspective of a platypus. Then he starred in the production his teacher directed.

He hasn’t stopped expressing himself creatively since. Today, Isaac is one of South Florida’s busiest young theater actors, and certainly its hottest. And not just because he’s a slender five-feet nine-inches tall with an expressively handsome face and glistening brown eyes.

Since making his professional debut as a Cuban hustler in Sleepwalkers at Area Stage in July 1999, he has played an explosive Vietnam vet in Private Wars for Horizons Repertory, a pot-smoking slacker in This Is Our Youth at GableStage, another Cuban on the make in Praying With the Enemy at the Coconut Grove Playhouse, the entrancing narrator of Side Man at GableStage, a Havana-based writer in Arrivals and Departures for the new Oye Rep and, most recently, a young Fidel Castro in When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba at New York’s Cherry Lane Theater.

Beginning Wednesday, he’ll be juggling five roles in City Theatre’s annual Winter Shorts festival, first at the Colony Theatre in Miami Beach, then at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. But that is not all: During the two weeks he is doing Winter Shorts, he’ll also be playing dates with the punk-ska band The Blinking Underdogs (www.blinkingunderdogs.com), which features him as lead singer, guitarist and songwriter.

Oh, and he just got back from auditioning for New York’s prestigious Juilliard School of Drama.

All this for a guy a month shy of his 22nd birthday.

Sure, you could hate a guy who’s that talented, that charismatic, that transparently ambitious. But the people who have worked with Oscar Isaac don’t. On the contrary, they’re all sure he has it – that magical, can’t-be-taught thing that transforms an actor into a star.

Playwright Eduardo Machado, who put in a good word for Isaac at Juilliard, says “he does have that star quality that makes your eyes go to him. It’s great that someone with that talent still wants to train.”

“He has a star quality that’s rare in a young actor,” adds Joseph Adler, who directed him in Side Man and This Is Our Youth. “Without a doubt I expect to be hearing great things from him.”

‘I JUST LOVE CREATING’

Isaac, who also makes short films, can’t say exactly why he was attracted to acting. He just knows it makes him happier than anything, that it’s what he was meant to do. And he’s been doing it since he was a 4-year-old putting on plays in his family’s backyard with his sister Nicole.

“I just love creating, whether it’s music or films or a character on a stage. I love taking people for a ride,” he says. “In Side Man, every night I would love being that close to the audience. I felt like I was talking to 80 of my closest friends.

“I could feel what the audience was feeling.”

His powerful, mournful-yet-loving monologue near the end of the play, he said, “worked every night. I knew it would get them. I’d hear sniffles.

“But it had less to do with me than with the atmosphere [created by the playwright and director].”

You could understand if Isaac, surrounded as he is by praise and possibility, had an ego as burgeoning as his career. Instead, he channels the positive reinforcement into confidence about his work.

“He has such a charm and an ease onstage, but he’s very modest,” says New York-based actress Judith Delgado, who shared the stage with Isaac in Side Man. “He’s hungry. He’s got moxie. I was blown away by him.

“He saved me a couple of times. I went up [forgot a line] and that baby boy of mine came through. He’s a joy.”

FORGING HIS OWN PATH

The son of a Cuban-American father and a Guatemalan mother, Isaac was never a stellar student. But he found ways of turning routine assignments – like the Noah’s Ark story – into creative challenges.

His science reports were inevitably video documentaries underscored with punk music. He acted through middle and high school, though he had a falling out with his drama teacher at Santaluces Community High in Lantana over his misgivings about a character. When she refused to cast him in anything else, he got his English teacher to let him play the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors his senior year.

His skepticism about authority and love of playing the devil’s advocate have long made him resist doing things the usual way. His post-high school “training” consisted of one semester at Miami-Dade Community College’s South Campus (where he met his girlfriend, Maria Miranda), touring schools playing an abusive character in the Coconut Grove Playhouse’s Breaking the Cycle, and working as a transporter of bodies at Baptist Hospital, where he absorbed the drama of people in emotionally intense situations.

“It was the most magnificent dramatic institute I could’ve attended,” Isaac said. “I was able to observe the entire spectrum of human emotion, people under the most extreme duress. I was mesmerized watching the way people interacted with each other in such heightened situations.

“I learned everything about the human condition, and it was real and harsh and brutally honest.”

Yet even given his propensity for forging his own path, something nudged him another direction while he was in New York making his Off-Broadway debut in December. Walking by Juilliard one day, he impulsively went in to ask for an application. Though the application deadline had passed, Isaac persuaded Juilliard to accept his, noting in his application essay that most of the exceptional actors he admires had acquired “a brutally efficient technique” to enhance their talent by studying at places like Juilliard.

Though he won’t know whether he has been accepted until the end of this month, his audition last weekend went well, he says. He did monologues from Henry IV, Part I and Dancing at Lughnasa, adjusting his Shakespearean Hotspur to a more fiery temperature at the suggestion of Michael Kahn, head of Juilliard’s acting program – though not without arguing that Hotspur wouldn’t be speaking to the king that way.

Isaac, not surprisingly, loves a good debate.

Adler, GableStage’s artistic director and a man who is as liberal as Isaac once was conservative, savored the verbal jousting they did during rehearsals for Side Man.

“He knows exactly how to pull my chain,” Adler says with a laugh. “Intelligence is the cornerstone of all great actors, and he’s bright as hell.

“He has relentless ambition but with so much charm. He’s very hard to say no to. He has incredible raw talent and magnetism that is very rare in a young actor along with relentless energy, perseverance and ambition. I see his growth both onstage and off. He’s mature in both places.”

Part of his growth, of course, will necessarily involve dealing with the rejections that are part of any actor’s life. His career is still too new, his string of successes solid, so it’s anyone’s guess how failure will shape him. But director Michael John Garcés, who picked him for When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba after Isaac flew to New York at his own expense to compete with a pool of seasoned Manhattan actors for the role, believes his character will see him through.

“Oscar is realistic, but he’s so willing to go the whole nine yards,” Garcés says. “He didn’t go out when he was in the show here. His focus earned the respect of the other actors, some of whom have been working in New York for 30 years.

“He hasn’t had a lot of blows yet, when the career knocks the wind out of you. But he has talent, determination and focus, and if he has perseverance – my intuition is that he does have it – he could achieve a lot.”

FAMILY TIES

His father and namesake, Baptist Hospital intensive-care physician Oscar Isaac Hernandez, couldn’t be more proud. (Isaac doesn’t use the family surname in order to avoid, in his words, being “put in that Hispanic actor box.”)

“I’m ecstatic that he’s probably going to be going to the most prestigious drama school in the United States,” he says. “School will help him focus his energies and give him discipline. He’s got the raw material and the drive.”

Isaac’s mother, Maria, divorced from his father since 1992, is a kidney-transplant recipient who acknowledges that she’ll miss her son if he moves to New York. But, she adds, she wants him “to live out his dreams. He amazes me every day. He calls me every day. I’m very proud of him.”

Even the other guys in The Blinking Underdogs are fans of Isaac’s acting, though it could take him away from South Florida just as the band appears to be, Isaac says, on the brink of signing a recording deal (it has already put out its own CD, The Last Word, with songs, lead vocals and even cover photography by Isaac.

“Oscar’s the leader of the band, a great musician who amazes me and motivates us,” says sax player Keith Cooper. “I’ve been to see every one of his plays. He’s a phenomenal actor.

“I completely buy into his role in every play. As close as I am to him, I forget it’s Oscar.”

His South Florida theater colleagues credit that to Isaac’s insatiable desire to learn and grow.

Gail Garrisan, who is directing him in Donnie and One of the Great Ones for Winter Shorts, observes, “It’s not often that you find a young actor who is willing to listen and who doesn’t think he knows everything. He loves the work.

“He really brought the young man in Side Man to life. When I saw it in New York, it seemed to be the father’s play. When I saw it here, I felt it was his [Isaac’s] play.”

Oye Rep’s John Rodaz, whom Isaac calls “the best director I’ve ever worked with,” gave the actor his first important job in Sleepwalkers at Area Stage. They met when Isaac came to see Area’s production of Oleanna and the actor, knowing Rodaz ran the theater, introduced himself.

“He has so much energy and such a sparkling personality,” Rodaz says. “He knows how to move in the world. He seems to take advantage of every situation in a good way; he’s not a cold, calculating person who’ll stab you in the back.

“[But] he wants it so badly. Everything he does, he’s the leader. When I was 21, I was taking naps.”

Rodaz coached Isaac on his Juilliard monologues and found the experience energizing.

“I got chills just watching him. That happens so rarely. I was so exhilarated when I came home that I just had to go out and run. You just know he’s got all the tools.”

Christine Dolen is The Herald’s theater critic.

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#oscar isaac #vintage #juilliard #blinking underdogs #area stage company #john rodaz #gablestage #when it's cocktail time in cuba #side man #arrivals and departures #this is our youth #praying with the enemy #sleepwalkers #private wars #winter shorts #the miami herald

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newmusickarl · 3 years

Video

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Album & EP Recommendations

As there is a HUGE amount to cover this week, I’m trying something a bit different with some slightly snappier reviews and a genre inclusion so you can head straight for the recommendation that matches your musical preference. There’s at least one album from all the key genres this week too, so hopefully a little something for everyone. Without any further ado then, here’s what’s good:

Album of the Week: Comfort To Me by Amyl & The Sniffers (Punk/Rock)

My personal preference from this week is the rip-roaring sophomore album from Australia’s own Amyl & The Sniffers. Although I was already vaguely familiar with the band’s previous work, I was still not prepared for the full throttle, smashmouth, rifftastic contents of this utterly brilliant record. As a result, this one hit me like a lightning bolt, thanks to the furious energy of frontwoman Amy Taylor and the mind-melting guitar work throughout.

From the off, absolutely nothing is held back here, as Taylor’s punk vocals and razor-sharp lyrics hit you in the ear like haymakers. What’s most surprising though is how the shredding guitar riffs that are littered across this record manage to sound so astonishing and impressive, yet at the same time as if the band are not even trying at all. It’s completely hypnotising yet everything is made to sound so easy and natural thanks to the sheer rawness of the music.

This one also already plays out like a greatest hits record too, with Guided By Angels, Security, Hertz, Maggot and Capital five of the best pure punk rock tracks to emerge in the last five years. Concise, in-your-face and no moment spared, this is a rock record the kind of which rarely gets made anymore. Without a doubt, one of the best of the year for its genre.

Listen here

Hey What by Low (Experimental/Alternative)

They may be 13 albums and nearly 30 years into their career at this point, but American experimental rockers Low show no sign of slowing down at this point. Still relatively fresh off the back of their hugely acclaimed album Double Negative, which was widely seen as the Album of the Year in 2018, Low are back yet again with another sonic trip into the weird and wonderful.

Now I must admit although a lot of people adored Double Negative, I personally was always a bit indifferent towards it. I appreciated the sonic textures and the heartfelt moments, but it never completely resonated with me like I know it did for others – one that fell into the “easy to admire, hard to love” category. That is not the case with this new album however, as with Hey What they seem to have further refined what they started on that record, creating an album that’s just as impressive but possibly more accessible than its predecessor.

Opener White Horses picks up pretty much where they left off under a tidal wave of soaring vocals and stunning yet unsettling distortion. From there you’ll once again be checking your audio equipment hasn’t broken, as Low playfully mess around with musical conventions and gargantuan glitchy soundscapes to great effect. This also allows the slightly sparser tracks like All Night, Don’t Walk Away and particularly Days Like These, to emerge out of this masterfully produced cacophony as some of the most haunting and stirring moments.

They may not have won me over with the last one, but they certainly have now – an outstanding album that leaves a lasting impression.

Listen here

Star-crossed by Kacey Musgraves (Country/Pop)

Golden Hour was another hit with the critics in 2018 that, much like the Low album, didn’t quite capture me. But again, just like Low, I prefer this latest work from country-turned-pop singer, Kacey Musgraves. With Star-crossed, Musgraves aims to craft her own Shakespearean tragedy, with all the theatre and the drama that goes with it.

The title track opener perfectly sets the stage as the gentle plucking of the acoustic guitar is suddenly surrounded by soaring, multi-layered instrumentation. It is all hugely cinematic and from there on in, Musgraves weaves her tale of heartbreak with plenty of catchy hooks, polished production and solid, heartfelt songwriting. However, the best moments are arguably when Musgraves keeps it raw, such as on camera roll where she takes something as simple as finding old photos of a lost lover on a phone and relaying back to the listener the pain that moment can bring.

In a year that’s already seen some brilliant pop albums, Musgraves stakes her claim with a well-crafted record built on a tried and tested concept. It’s a successful outing with more than enough great tunes and interesting instrumentation (see the jazz flute on there is a light in particular) to keep you interested from beginning to end.

Listen here

Enjoy The View by We Were Promised Jetpacks (Alternative)

Scottish indie rockers We Were Promised Jetpacks also released their stunning fifth album this week. This one pulls at the heartstrings from the get-go as the gentle waltz of reflective opener that’s Not Me Anymore immediately locks you into the record and refuses to loosen its grip until the very last note. There’s plenty of spine-tingling moments throughout too, such as the melancholic riffs of All That Glittered, the haunting sparseness of What I Know Now and the uplifting melody of I Wish You Well.

Listen here

Back In Love City by The Vaccines (Indie)

A band well adept at writing killer hooks at this point, indie rockers The Vaccines have also returned with their fun fifth album this week. Not too much to say about this one other than if you are a fan of their previous efforts the chances are you’ll adore this one too, as their music continues to deliver big riffs and anthemic choruses aplenty, but with more refinement and polished craftmanship at this veteran stage in their career. Highlights include the ultra-catchy title-track and the galloping, Western-stylings of Paranormal Romance, which comes across a bit like their own version of Muse’s Knights of Cydonia.

Listen here

Mother by Cleo Sol (R&B/Soul)

Fresh off her high-profile collaborations with Little Simz and Sault, singer-songwriter Cleo Sol has once again stepped out on her own, this time exploring themes of motherhood. Gracious, compassionate and quite moving, it’s a stirring soul record where Cleo’s soft yet powerful vocals take centre stage against a backdrop of minimal instrumentation. If you need something peaceful and easy listening, you won’t go wrong with this one as Don’t Let Me Fall, Promises and We Need You offer up the most beautiful moments here.

Listen here

The Melodic Blue by Baby Keem (Hip Hop/Rap)

There is a lot of pressure that comes with being Kendrick Lamar’s cousin, however you wouldn’t know it listening to Baby Keem’s assured debut album. Although it is admittedly quite hit and miss (first two tracks trademark usa and pink panties ironically leave a lot to be desired), there are enough high points here to make this record worth your time. The collaborations with Kendrick (range brothers and family ties) both strike a chord while the Don Toliver (cocoa) and Travis Scott (durag activity) featuring tracks also dazzle. That said Keem is arguably at his best when he’s riding solo, such as on the heartfelt issues and the Kanye West Love Lockdown sampling, scars.

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I’ve Been Trying To Tell You by Saint Etienne (Ambient/Electronic)

Crafted over lockdown, this tenth studio album from the London trio is a gloriously understated dive into modern British history, 1997-2001 to be precise. By using evocative imagery and samples from the turn of the millennium, where R&B and bubblegum pop dominated the musical landscape, they have forged quite a dreamy ambient record. Wonderfully creative and a fairly chill listen, it’s a fascinating reflection on a time when the world seemed a lot less complex than it does today.

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The Blacklist by Metallica (Metal/Various)

And lastly on the albums front this week, I have been promoting the various Metallica covers released as part of the The Blacklist project for several weeks now, but now finally the full album has been revealed along with all the covers yet to be shared as individual releases.

At 53 songs long, the tribute to Metallica’s classic Black Album is certainly not one to run through in a single sitting, however there is plenty of fun covers here to dip into and explore. In case you haven’t seen, amongst those offering their own versions of these classic tracks are: Miley Cyrus & Elton John, Phoebe Bridgers, Dermot Kennedy, Weezer, Biffy Clyro, St. Vincent, Rina Sawayama, Sam Fender, Flatbush Zombies, Portugal The Man, IDLES, Cherry Glazerr and many, many more.

Listen here

Tracks of the Week

Beautiful James by Placebo

I’m also over the moon to say Placebo finally released their new single this week, their first since 2016’s Jesus’ Son. Beautiful James shows that Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal haven’t missed a step in their five-year hiatus, with this one centred on a typically instant chorus and some neon-soaked synths. A big welcome back to one of my all-time favourites!

Listen here

I Don’t Live Here Anymore by The War On Drugs

Although the first single from their forthcoming new album may have been more understated than normal, on this title track Adam Granduciel & Co. return to the soaring stadium-sized rock for which they are known. Undoubtedly one of their finest tracks to date, you’ll want to stick this one on repeat just so you can keep getting lost in those wonderfully atmospheric guitar riffs.

Listen here

Arcadia by Lana Del Rey

And finally, Lana continues the build towards her second album of 2021, Blue Banisters, with this latest single seeing her on typically vintage form as the song sounds as if it was pulled from another time. With distant horns and a gentle piano, it’s as stunning as any of her best recent work.

Listen here

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mimssides · 4 years

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Life on Crow Avenue: Part 15

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___

The brothers looked at each other. Who would possibly visit them at this hour? Remus got up from the chair and walked towards the door and pressed the button on the intercom.

“Hello?” he said as Roman approached behind him to listen who had come for them.

“Salutations. It is Logan Fojtík. Excuse the disturbance,” the voice on the other end said with this unmistakably clear but dry tone.

Remus couldn’t help but smile while Roman frowned.

“No problem Tie Clip! What brings you here?” Remus asked happily.

There was a short rustling before there came the answer: “Well, Remus I wanted to make sure how you were doing and I do have something which might be of interest for you. Also-”

“I am here too. Good evening, Remus,” interrupted a second voice at which Roman yelped in panic.

Remus turned around and at once recognized the voice. With a wide grin and his eyes on Roman Remus said into the intercom: “Hey, hey Jazz Man! You here to check on my bro?”

When the confirming ‘yes’ came Roman spun around his own axis and disappeared in the bathroom, to probably freshen himself up. Remus only rolled his eyes and told them to come up. It was a good thing that Patton had already managed to get someone to fix their door in the morning, otherwise He would have had to let them in through the shop and that was just straight up inconvenient.

With not much else to do Remus opened the door and leaned against the door frame, watching how the two men climbed the stairs. Both looked up to him and Remus gave them a lazy smile and a wave. Janus immediately looked back down to focus on his steps while Logan waved back and promptly took two steps at once. Within moments Logan had come up and Remus let him enter while still holding onto the doorknob.

After a short while Janus had joined them on top of the staircase and Remus waved him inside with the words: “Sorry for not having an elevator or something. These stairs really must be the bane of you.”

Janus raised his eyebrows and huffed a little out of breath.

“Thanks for the worrying but at least you’ve got railing on which I can hold on. Other places are even worse. And I know why my and Virgil’s flat is ground floor,” Janus said and then looked around the room for a moment.

He could not find Roman and looked back up at Remus. The latter tilted his head to the side, his black unruly hair sticking out to all sides and making him look somewhat dispersing the vibes of a Shakespearean fool.

“Not to say that I dislike your presence, but I wanted to talk with Roman? Where exactly is he?”

Remus snorted and led the two into the living room as he said: “Aah, you know he’s a prideful guy, and didn’t want you to see him dishevelled.”

“Dishevelled?” Logan asked concerned.

With a grand gesture Remus pointed at his own face, little traces of barely dried tears and sniffling still very visible.

“Yeah. Dishevelled. Just like me Big Brain. Or whatever you wanna call what I am. But anyway, Ro’s here and he’ll come back any second now.”

And just as he said that Roman emerged from the bathroom and greeted both Logan and Janus with a welcoming smile. The false happy tone twisted the knot in Janus’s stomach and he had to force himself to not let his discomfort show.

“Hello you two! How nice of you to come for a visit!” Roman said.

Logan just pulled up his eyebrows while Janus readjusted his weight on his legs so he could overplay his worry.

“I assume you feel better and have had a talk with Remus?” Logan simply said unimpressed by Roman’s fake upbeat demeanour.

The smile dropped and Roman’s shoulders slumped. It looked almost a little like a child who had broken an expensive vase while playing. Logan sighed and then tried a milder approach: “I must have come off insensitive. I apologize. Let me rephrase my former question: How are you feeling? Was the afternoon off a good distraction?”

Roman gulped and looked over to Remus for a split second and then relaxed a little. He was pretty sure he could answer those questions. A little timid, quite unlike him, Roman looked down to his feet and took a little breath.

“It’s alright. I’m feeling okay. And we probably shouldn’t have opened in the first place today but the afternoon off helped.”

Logan was about to ask a little more specifically what Roman meant, when Roman looked up looking a lot more comfortable than before.

Quick Roman sidestepped his brother to get closer to Janus, without breaking eye contact with Logan and said to him: “Thank you a lot for just going with what I was asking today. I know it couldn’t have been easy without knowing what was actually going on.”

“It is quite alright, Roman. Remus was kind enough to elaborate the situation,” Logan answered.

“That’s what I feared. Anyway, you said you wanted to discuss something with him?”

Logan simply nodded and then witnessed a wordless conversation between the brothers consisting of a look, the ghost of a nod and a shrug. With a frown he wanted to ask what this had been about, when Roman cut him off before he even started.

“Cool, then I’ll leave you to it. Janus, would you like to come with me? I have something I’d like to show you,” Roman said taking Janus’s free hand and catching the latter completely off guard.

Almost flustered Janus answered: “I don’t mind coming with you? Where are we-”

“Downstairs. Let me guide you,” Roman said and walked with Janus’s hand still in his towards the door and the two were gone a moment later.

Perplexed Logan looked after them until he heard Remus exhale and looked up to him. The slim man crossed his arms in front of him and had a dopy grin on his face. With a slight motion of his chin towards the table he seemed to invite him to sit down with him. Wordlessly, Logan complied and walked up to Remus so they could sit down together. Just in front of the table Remus took a step in front of him and pulled out a chair for him to sit down.

“Do you want to drink something?” Remus asked while Logan sat down.

Logan asked for some water and just moments later Remus had come back with bottle of water and a glass for himself and Logan. He filled both glasses with water and sat down. Casually he took a sip and eyed Logan before setting his glass down and giving him a short smile.

“He noticed that you were uncomfortable. That’s why he almost fled downstairs with Jazz Daddy.”

Logan ought to be surprised that Remus had been able to read through his silence so well but was just stunned by the nickname Remus had just used for Janus.

“Jazz Daddy?” Logan repeated bedazzled and Remus laughed a little.

“I’m sure Janus would hate it, which is why I say it. But anyway,” Remus said and played with the glass in his hand, “what did you want to about with me?”

Logan blinked a little surprised but caught himself and fished a paper out of his as always present purse. It was neatly folded and he slid it over the table towards Remus who took and unfolded it immediately. Logan watched his eyes rush over the paper and saw how he began to frown.

“It’s a list of therapists which are highly recommended,” Logan explained when Remus said nothing.

Remus looked up and quirked an eyebrow up and asked suspiciously: “By which side?”

“By my therapist.”

Logan had thought about that moment since he had sent her the requested list of relatively close-by and good therapists in the late hours of yesterday. The moment when he would reveal this information, he had kept close to his heart to someone who was barely an acquaintance.

Strangely enough it made him not as nervous as he had feared. Not at all. Especially, since he saw the obvious recognition in Remus’s eyes. The florist did not take this information for granted. It would be safe with him.

So, Logan smiled and said further while pointing towards the paper: “Her number is on the bottom. She said it was fine if you would call her if you required further information.”

Remus nodded in a fazed way and after a few moments he asked: “Do some of them work with neurodivergent people too?”

“I did not ask for that specific information, so I sadly don’t know. But I am positive that some of them do, as my therapist often has neurodivergent people as patients. Why do you ask?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve got ADHD. I was never diagnosed but It think I fit the general profile; losing my threat while talking, jumping around in stories, forgetting things very quickly, leg bouncing and other stims and Roman has it too, just even worse. And I am pretty sure that a lot of my problems come from that too or are at least influenced by it… so. It would probably be best if I went to a therapist who could deal with that, right?”

“That is a very good thought,” Logan agreed and folded his hands on the table. “I can ask her if she could point such therapists out for me, if you want to.”

“No, it’s fine. I can google them myself. Let’s not make your therapist hate me before she even heard my voice.”

Logan shook his head but grinned as Remus looked over the list again. He seemed to be interested. He asked questions. Maybe, this truly was helping him.

“Do you want to know anything else?” Logan asked and Remus nodded.

“Actually, what - what do I have to look for in a therapist? And how do I apply for one?”

Logan’s smile grew a little wider and patiently he started to explain the general process and rules Remus should know about, while the latter listened closely to the others clear and soothing voice

___

Roman had Janus brought down into the store and led outside into the backyard. Well, that was what Janus first had thought when Roman had walked to the backside of the building but then this door in the back led into a greenhouse. A magnificent greenhouse.

Flower boxes with Roses, Amazon Lilies, African Violets, Chinese Hibiscus and Orchids were orderly lined up, vines grew around the wooden pillars in the corners and the soft warm light of fairy lights enlightened the glasshouse when Roman had pressed the light switch. Everything was bathed in a dim but comfortable light and Janus could only watch in awe as his eyes wandered through the little outdoor structure. In the nearest left corner stood a little black metal table with matching chairs and Roman had offered Janus his arm to lead him there. Janus took the offer and soon was sitting on one of the chairs in this almost magical greenhouse. He watched as Roman walked towards a box near the table, opened it and realized that it was a mini fridge, and took out two cans of beer.

Quietly, Roman set one beer in front of Janus and sat down on the edge of one of the flower boxes, opening the beer left in his hand.

“You don’t have to of course, but I think I need one. And they’re alcohol free,” Roman said and held his beer up as if to say cheers.

Janus opened his beer and lifted it just like Roman did with the dry comment: “Don’t fright over me. I can hold my liquor.”

“That’s good because I can’t,” Roman laughed and took a sip. “I get tipsy very easily and I forget stuff very quickly, so, if you would remind me to not take another one if I were to try and get one? I’m not very comfortable with myself when I’ve got too much alcohol in my system.”

Janus rose an eyebrow but nodded before taking the first sip out of his beer. It wasn’t his beverage of choice but he had had far worse.

“This garden is beautiful Roman,” Janus said after a few moments and he heard the pleasant sound from Roman chuckle a little.

“I know, right? That’s what sealed the deal, actually. Remus always wanted something like this and that’s why we came here.”

“I should be grateful for this greenhouse then.”

Roman nodded lightly and looked around for a few moments. Janus studied him. Studied the how exhausted he was and how much more relaxed he seemed nevertheless while sitting down here. While having some distance to the mess that his life was right now.

“So, what did he tell you?”

Janus blinked. Roman was grinning and looked down to his beer can. Janus frowned and caught the mildly worried look from Roman. Only then it clicked in his head and he understood what Roman had wanted from.

“What Remus has told us about the two of you?” Janus asked carefully.

Roman nodded.

Janus sighed and drove over the brim of his hat.

“Yesterday night he told us how you fled from your parents’ house. And about the accident.”

Roman was grinning back down to the floor and nodded a little.

“I’m not even surprised,” Roman said after a few moments still not looking up but the grin clearly transferring in his tone. “He really needed to get that out. Did he also tell the part where I miraculously woke up after three days and wanted to walk around?”

Janus said nothing for a few seconds and Roman looked up. He seemed to be oddly relaxed.

“He did,” Janus confirmed while placing on of his hands on his cane to distract himself a little from the tension. “He also praised how you sacrificed everything for him to help him get proper hearing aids and learn sign language.”

“Figures. He always loved that part of the story. Where I’m the hero and not the guy who crashed the car.”

“… You seem to be oddly unaffected?” Janus said after Roman’s matter-of-factly comment.

Roman simply shrugged, back at staring down to the ground and answered: “Well, I don’t remember most of it. Like any of it. Before the crash; gone. And after I was pretty sedated for quite a bit so it’s all fuzzy. I’m sure he mentioned that.”

Janus despised this. He hated that Roman talked about something like this as if it was nothing more than a mediocre school trip from third grade. He hated that he didn’t get the sense from Roman that he was lying. He wanted Roman to be lying, wanted him to say how bad this had hurt him. And yet he didn’t. He just seemed fine in the soft light in this greenhouse and something turned and twisted in Janus’s stomach.

“He did, indeed,” Janus said reluctantly after a few seconds.

“You know what he didn’t tell you?”

Roman’s shoe scratched over the floor as he asked the question.

“What?”

Roman took a moment to catch his breath and Janus focused on the rapid changes of his mimic. But he was not fast enough to catch what it had been about, as Roman soon began to speak.

“When I woke up after the crash. In this bed, connected to all those fussy tubes and machines. I was … at ease. For the first time in months I was at ease when I woke up. Because for months I woke up every morning scared to death that our father would find out. That today was the day where he would throw us out of the house or hurt us even worse than he already did. And in this very moment when I opened my eyes, I knew that Remus had gotten us here. That he had executed the plan I set up. That he got me out, called the ambulance or whatever, because I would have been dead had it not been for him. I just knew I would have. And I knew he had stopped them form letting our parents get us. I knew. And I was right. They never got us. We were free, for the first time in years and I was so relieved.”

Janus just stared at Roman. Stared how he took a sip out of his beer and then finally looked up to him. With teary eyes but a smile which could not be fake.

“That’s why he’s my hero.”

Oh.

Just oh. And at once Janus understood where exactly he had seen that look before and made a note in the back of his mind to call and check on Latona one of these days.

Janus forced himself to smile a little and nodded at Roman. He understood. There was nothing for him to add, nothing to say more. Not now at least.

They sat there for a bit longer. The air was warm and the evening relatively quiet. Just like a summer Monday evening should be, they supposed. Janus let out a drawn-out breath and Roman watched him do so. They exchanged a grin.

“What else did Remus tell you? He said he told you stuff at today’s lunch?” Roman asked now in a rather suspicious tone.

Janus grinned. He knew how much elder siblings liked to embarrass the younger ones with stupid stories. For once he was not the victim of those tales though and as of now, he was quite happy with that.

With a smirk he retold the two tales of the museum trip and the fight Roman had gotten in and watched how Roman visibly cringed at all the details and eventually just buried his head in his hands. When Janus finished Roman let out a mockingly pained groan. Dramatically he threw his head back to which Janus could not help himself but laugh at.

Roman got up and flustered walked a few rounds around the flower boxes while mumbling quietly to himself.

“I can’t believe him!” Roman said after a while clearly not as mad as he wanted to be and turned to Janus. “Dares to tell me that I need to let go of the past and then tell such silly stories about me! Especially the tooth one! It’s terrible!”

“I wouldn’t say terrible,” Janus argued with a smirk, “more like amusing. At least in retrospect. I can understand that must have been terrifying the day it occurred.”

Roman nodded vehemently and gesticulated quite a bit before he sat down right where he stood on the cold floor criss-crossing his legs as soon as his bottom touched the floor.

“You have no idea!” Roman said and continued gesticulating agitatedly. “I was so sure I’d get expelled that day, which would have been a guarantee for me having to repeat this miserable school year. If it hadn’t been for Mamá who somehow managed to get me out of this mess I-”

Roman broke off. At once he looked terribly sad. Concerned Janus thought about standing up and getting to him, as Roman suddenly continued talking.

“I haven’t… I haven’t talked about my mother for so long…”

Janus waited. But nothing came. He stood up, let his cane lean against the table and walked the few steps towards Roman. He stretched out his hand for him. Roman looked up. He was perplexed. He had not seen him walking up to him.

“What is up with her? You can tell me.”

Roman hesitated for a moment. Then he took Janus’s hand. Just felt the warmth and the comfort in it. The little bit of trust he had been granted.

“Don’t tell Remus, but I miss her.”

Roman stood up and let Janus hold onto him as he led him back to the table.

“She wasn’t the best Mamá but she loved us. I know she did. She should have tried to speak up to our father, I know. But she was scared too. She was also a victim. I know it doesn’t excuse the abandonment. I get that. And she never came to look after us after we were gone. So, I know I shouldn’t be hoping anymore. I know. I just. I just…”

“You just miss her.”

They stood in front of the little table. Janus looked up to Roman, his eyes filled with understanding. And Roman felt himself relax. He let Janus sit down on the chair and sat down on the floor in front of him.

“Can I hold your hand?” Roman asked.

Janus smiled.

“Of course.”

And then Roman held his hand while sipping on his beer and eventually leaning his head against Janus’s good knee, while letting his thoughts run wild for a moment.

___

@varthandi

@sickeningly-deceitful

@sammy-is-obsessed / @exhaustedfander

@unoriginalgayboyalex

@alexisrealgay

@softie-sushi

@wolfs-feder

@just-a-neoclassical-painting

Tagged for this fic:

@frawkeye

@arodynamic-enby

@espepspes

@bullet-tothefeels

@fukindork

@shadeofadye

@magic-but-its-green

@croftersjam15

#sanders sides #remus sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #janus sanders #talk about parents #Life on Crow Avenue #mim writes #please reblog

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loving-barnes · 4 years

Text

Winter’s Song (3) - Bucky Barnes x reader x Loki

(A/N): I have posted this one a long time ago on my wattpad profile... so, here it is, finally. Part 3 for you, whom have not read it. Sorry for the massive delay.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader x Loki

Warnings: none

Words: 2170

PART 3

She was holding a book in hands while walking down the hall to the library. For today, the maids picked a silky green dress with a loose skirt that was floating behind her. Her hair was pinned in a complicated braid that took an hour to make. Some of the baby hairs and loose hair was beautifully framing her face. She felt that having her head buried in books was the best option for the day and no one would keep her away from them.

"Well, this is a pleasant surprise," a chuckle came behind her back. It belonged to Loki, who had been stalking her the whole time. "Green suits you well, my princess," he came to her side and reached for the book. "Let me help you with that."

Y/N turned from him, protecting the book. "I can manage, thank you, prince Loki," she sighed, continuing walking to her destination. "What brings you here, my prince?" she tried to remain polite, hoping he would leave her alone soon.

"Ah, you see, I've heard that you have a magnificent library in the castle, filled with books from different realms of all genres. So, I have asked to be shown this magical place of yours and to my luck, I found you on my way there."

Well, she wouldn't get rid of him at all. "I am on my way to the library," she cleared her throat, obviously being more annoyed than before. It was her special place; she was supposed to be there alone with books. That was not happening. "If you follow me, I can show you where it is situated," she said it with gritted teeth.

It seemed to please him a lot. "Finally, I will have the opportunity to spend some quality time with you, princess. I think I know everything about your two dull sisters. I am surprised that the King wants to marry those two first. But now, because I have the chance, I am more curious about you."

They came together to the library that was coated in wood and gold. Each shelf was filled with different kinds of books from different worlds that probably ever existed. Maybe it was not just nine realms – it was way more. "I am very sorry, my prince, but I am afraid I will not have the time for you, now. I have a lot of studying to do."

He smirked and kept going. "I believe one day off will not harm." Loki decided to follow her wherever she went. "I am surprised that you have such a passion for books," he kept talking when she picked three books about the history of Midgard. "I, myself, am a keen lover of books if I am truly honest with you. They keep my mind occupied and keep me relaxed."

She glanced at him, quickly thinking about his words. She felt the same way. "Interesting," she whispered, taking a seat in a golden armchair. It was her favourite spot in the room, right next to a massive window that had a view into the garden. "Have you read Midgardian poetry?"

"Mostly interested in the, I believe, European authors – if I am more specific, the regions as Britain and French are quite my favourite," he sat down on to the closest armchair. "The, so-called, Shakespearean era was surely a gift for those pathetic humans."

The way he talked about the people of Earth was not something she liked hearing. She respected every being in the entire universe if their intentions and heart were in the right place.

"Please, mind your words, my prince," she warned him calmly, eyes already focused on the book on her legs. "They are not pathetic. Just because we live here differently and you are a god, does not give you the right to talk like this about them."

He leaned back, scanning the princess with his eyes thoroughly. "Quite opposite than your sisters," he hummed. "While those two were happily shaming and humiliating every soul in the universe, you stand by all of them – shall I say, protect them even if it is just with your words."

"I would put my life for anyone worthy."

He rolled his eyes. "Worthy..."

This was going to be hell; she was sure of it. Before she could open her mouth and say something, the door to the library opened and a servant came inside.

"Your highnesses," he bowed. "The King has requested your presence in the grand hall, immediately."

Y/N closed the book and sighed, not excited for what was about to come. Every time her father would call her for something, it ended in a verbal fight or a punishment. She put the book on the armchair and went to the open door. Loki was immediately following her. He even offered his arm so he could accompany her. It would be very rude if she refused and so she had no other choice than to accept it.

In silence, they walked together to the grand hall. The ladies and noblemen were already there, enthusiastically waiting for the speech the king was about to give.

Y/N's eyes landed on her sisters that were draped over Thor's shoulders, both having heart eyes on faces and flirting with him simultaneously. Once they noticed their younger half-blood accompanied by the younger prince, those eyes were exchanged for rage and hate. Why they hated her so much, she would never know.

"Ah, since you are all here," Y/N's father started to talk, "I would like to inform you about the changes that will happen immediately." This didn't sound good. "The annual Royal Winter Ball will be happening in three days."

The whispers of shock echoed around the room. Y/N was horrified. This unexpected decision and the fact that the King had decided to set the ball earlier was not a good idea for many reasons. One of them included princess Y/N.

She let go of Loki's hand and took a step back. The words that were coming out of the King's mouth were becoming more muted, disappearing in the air and her ears started to ring. Why would the king decide to change the date of the Winter Ball?

"There are three more days for the princes to choose their brides. At the ball, they will announce their decisions and they will be engaged right after."

Y/N's eyes moved to the side, checking on out both sisters. They were whispering something to one-another, smirking under their noses. As if they had a plan for that day. How could they be so evil?

"Does it mean we can choose from any of your daughters?" Loki asked confidently while looking into the king's eyes.

Y/N's father slowly turned to her, swallowing visibly. With a sigh, he nodded. "Yes, all three of them are of age and thus you can choose which one you like."

Loki turned to Y/N, grinning. Her eyes widened and she took a step back. "No," she sighed. She couldn't get married to the princes. Her heart belonged to someone else and she would not stop loving him. Nothing would stop her from being with her soulmate; with someone that fully understood her - that was just like her.

"You can't," the queen grabbed her husband by his hand. She didn't want Y/N to be involved in this.

"I will not!" she shouted.

"Silence," he raised his voice. "My word is final."

The look of worry in the mother's eyes was scaring the princess. Y/N simply gulped, grabbed the fabric of her long skirt and bowed to the king. It was a simple gesture that said she obeyed the orders. After that, she turned around and started to walk away.

"Always obeying my orders," the king smiled, glad that he did not have to step in.

"Why are you doing this?" she queen whispered, trying not to be suspicious. "We had a deal – your two daughters will be betrothed to them, not Y/N. She is the youngest one."

"And as I said, she is of age," he growled. "I don't care that you don't want her to marry. It is up to the princes to decide."

"You could have said no," she sighed. "We both know that she can't get married."

"I do what I want, my dear."

When Y/N was far enough from everyone, her godmother ran towards her. She grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her into the kitchen where they could have some privacy. It was the perfect place for them to talk because none of the royals would ever visit the kitchen. Y/N's room was too far from them and, now, a dangerous place to talk.

When they came to the room, Y/N was surprised by the people that were inside waiting for her. Wanda and her beloved James were talking to the cooks, both having deep conversations until she arrived. The woman was holding a basket filled with what looked like a piece of fabric. "What is going on?" Y/N asked slowly, trying to stay calm.

"There is no time," the godmother said. "You have to leave the castle, now. You are in danger."

"There has to be some for an explanation," she was confused.

Wanda took out some clothes from the basket and threw it to her. "You need to change into these, and we will get you out of here before they lock you in your room until the ball. And honestly, we don't want that."

"Why?" she asked again while removing the beautiful dress from her body. Some of the maids that were present quickly helped her. They helped her with the corset and the ropes and ribbons. Y/N did not care that James was standing there, carefully watching as she revealed naked legs and arms.

"They want you dead," the godmother continued.

"Who?"

"Your sisters," said Wanda and started to destroy the braids the princess had. "And not just that. There is something darker happening in the castle."

She sighed annoyingly. "I have no idea what you are talking about. I do need more information to fully understand the situation. What is going on?"

Once her hair was loose, Wanda braided it into a simple tale and put a blue bandana over her head. After the last few touches, the princess turned into a simple young woman without a crown. When she saw a reflection in the mirror, she had to smile a little. It was a massive difference for her and she liked it.

The godmother put a blue cloak over her shoulders. "It's cold outside, princess. It has been snowing for the past two hours."

"I am not a princess," Y/N smiled at her, quickly taking the woman's hands into hers. "Not anymore." Then she turned to James. "Will you tell me what is happening once we are gone?"

One of the servants ran into the kitchen. Everyone turned their attention to him. "Prince Loki has decided to come here. You don't have much time. You need to go, now."

James came closer to Y/N and took her hand into his. "Of course, I will," he replied. He had to pull her with him, otherwise, she wouldn't be able to leave. The cooks brought them to a tiny door that served them for a fast passage to the supplies.

"Hurry," the godmother said, and she was quickly folding the dress into a messy ball. The other servant took them and threw them into the fireplace under the stove.

Y/N knew was she had to get to a safe place – and the safest one was when she was with the love of her life and the people she trusted.

James was ready to say something, but she pressed a finger against his lips, telling him to be silent. The halls were echoey and they could be simply exposed.

Wanda was walking behind them, just in case, someone would decide to follow them. She was ready to protect them, even kill if necessary. They all knew that once the royal family realises that the youngest one is missing; the real hell will only begin.

After a while, they appeared in the lower gardens of the castle, where the gardeners would take care of the fruits and vegetables. To their luck, no one was present there, so they were able to continue down the path to the castle barriers. Another person was waiting for them – Vision.

"I was getting worried," he said when they came closer. "Are you ready?" he asked.

Y/N leaned closer to James; bit terrified. Even though she was glad she escaped from her home, she was worried about what would happen next.

Vision had the power to create a portal that would take into the village where they lived. It was safer this way – no one would ever see them coming.

The sparkling golden portal brought them to James' house that was near the woods, farther from the village.

#Bucky Barnes #Loki #Bucky Barnes x reader #James Barnes #James Barnes x reader #Loki x reader #Thor #Bucky x reader x Loki #Bucky Barnes x reader x Loki #Winter's song #Bucky Barnes fanfiction #Loki fanfiction

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The 25 Best SNL Holiday Sketches

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The holidays are a special time around 30 Rock. While tourists flock to see the towering Christmas tree, the Saturday Night Live writers room is busy thinking of holiday sketches you’ll reminisce about as you put up the stockings for years to come. Some of SNL’s all-time great sketches illustrate the best of the holiday spirit or lack thereof as show’s biggest stars often shined the brightest just before the New Year.

From unlikely Santas to unorthodox gift-giving, we’re looking at 25 of our favorite Saturday Night Live holiday sketches. We’ll be going in chronological order here. There is a big dose of modern stuff in there, but what can I say? The show might be more miss than hit these days, but they really hit it out of the park year after year with the Christmas sketches.

Santi-Wrap (1976)

Very early in the show’s run, we get this classic where an adult woman (Laraine Newman) is all about sitting on Santa’s lap like when she was a little kid. The initial laugh is that before sitting down, she puts pieces of toilet paper on Santa’s leg for protection, like one would do in a public bathroom. Dan Aykroyd, her companion on this trip, seems shocked by this. Not that she’s trying to protect herself from germs, but because she’s not going far enough!

Suddenly, it turns out to be a commercial for Santi-Wrap, a festive and plasticky take on toilet seat covers. Not only do those two sell the product concept so well, but John Belushi as the mall Santa pushes it further by coming off as a complete disaster of a man who is probably riddled with disease.

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One of the show’s all-time best line deliveries is Belushi’s drunken, “Ho ho ho…” which has both defiant gusto and the sense that he’s seconds away from vomiting all over himself.

Mr. Robinson’s Christmas (1984)

Saturday Night Live has been a stepping stone to superstardom ever since Chevy Chase became a household name during its first season. In the 80s, Eddie Murphy’s recurring roles on SNL helped raise his profile as he eventually became one of, if not the biggest star of the decade. It was around Christmas time when Murphy’s spin on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood became one of the sketches that came to define his tenure at Studio 8H.

Mr. Robinson’s neighborhood isn’t quite as nice as Mister Rogers’ but at Christmas time you have to make the best with what you have. Mr. Robinson was able to do that with a chunk of lettuce and a headless doll and Murphy was able to make the most of every opportunity he had on SNL.

It’s a Wonderful Life: The Lost Ending (1986)

If you’ve seen the 1946 American Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful Life, odds are you’ve been inspired by its heart-warming ending. Thanks to SNL and host William Shatner, we now have footage of the “fabled” lost ending to Frank Capra’s Christmas epic and it’s anything but heartwarming. Rather than end the film with everyone coming to George Bailey’s aid in his time of need and celebrating his lifetime of selflessness and kindness, it decides to give Mr. Potter a fate more explicit than being doomed to failure and loneliness. Phil Hartman pops in as Uncle Billy and not only remembers what happened to the missing money, but knows exactly who has it!

Dana Carvey makes the sketch as a George Bailey hell-bent on revenge. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without seeing him give Mr. Potter a beat down alongside his bloodthirsty loved ones.

Master Thespian Plays Santa Claus (1987)

Jon Lovitz’s characters were usually very hammy by design. Whether he was a pathological liar or the Devil himself, he always went to 11. One of his better recurring characters was Master Thespian, a scene-chewing Shakespearean actor who takes himself and his roles far too seriously.

In this installment, he would be playing the role of a mall Santa Claus.

Thespian doesn’t seem to have heard of Santa, but he’s down for the part. Finding out that there’s no actual script, he improvises and figures out the character via making mistakes and getting scolded by the Macy’s manager (played by Phil Hartman, choosing to base his performance on Frank Nelson because why not). To his surprise, Santa Claus actually LIKES children! These are notes a performer needs to know, man!

Seeing him play off the kids and Hartman is a blast. Speaking of which, one of the better gags is a fart joke that somehow proves how great an actor Master Thespian truly is. THANK YOUUUUUU!

Hanukkah Harry (1989)

Santa Claus (Phil Hartman) is violently ill with the flu, so it seems Christmas might be cancelled. Luckily, there is one man capable of fulfilling his obligations through the same kind of holiday magic. Hanukkah Harry (Jon Lovitz), Santa’s Jewish counterpart, is called in to help.

At its core, it’s a lengthy sketch about Jewish jokes and how lame Hanukkah is outside of it lasting eight days. Springing off of that, it actually makes for a really good, if a little touching, holiday story. There are definite laughs in there, but what was created to be a parody hits a little too close and becomes a genuine gem celebrating both holidays and the spirit of togetherness.

“On Moishe! On Herschel! On Schlomo!”

Motivational Santa (1993)

What started as a pep talk for troubled teens turned into Chris Farley’s iconic recurring character. Matt Foley, the thrice-divorced, sweaty, overweight man who lived in a van down by the river, crashed into our living rooms in 1993 and remained a fixture on SNL until Farley was fired from the show in 1995.

Sometimes a sketch is so successful that the writers are almost forced to bring one or more of its characters around again and Matt Foley was no exception. In one of the funnier times Matt Foley returned, he was hired to spread Christmas cheer as a motivational mall Santa, offering up this gem:

“‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the van Your ol’ buddy Matt fell asleep on the can. His children were nestled two time zones away, With his first wife and her husband, in sunny L.A. Matt woke up and realized with a chill and a quiver That he was living in a van down by the river!“

Though many of the same jokes and physical gags are recycled, Farley’s effort, from the painfully high pitch of his voice to crashing down the chimney, earns the Motivational Santa a place in SNL Christmas lore.

Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah Song (1994)

Yes, we’ve heard Adam Sandler’s “The Hanukkah Song” a million times over, but we shouldn’t let that cloud our judgement. It’s one of the first clips that pops into your head when you think “SNL Holiday Sketches” and it will go down as a landmark moment when the history of “Weekend Update” is written 200 years from now. Sandler didn’t use his time to evoke images of being a Jew at Christmas, rather he chose to praise the Festival of Lights and name-drop all the famous people who celebrate it. Since debuting the song in 1994, Sandler’s updated it for his comedy albums and standup routine and given Jewish kids something other than “The Dreidel Song” to belt during during the holidays. Sandler’s clever, original moment is about as influential as it gets for any not-ready-for-prime time player.

It did lead to the movie Eight Crazy Nights, so it isn’t free from sin.

TV Funhouse: Fun with Real Audio (1997)

It’s rare for SNL to get poignant, but here’s a fantastic example. In this animated short, Jesus Christ returns to Earth and spends the first opening minutes being ignored and shoved into the background for disagreeing with televangelists who use his name to line their pockets with donations or to justify their hatred of homosexuals. These bits are, of course, animated over actual audio of said real life sociopaths. Jesus is able to give them their just desserts with his divine magic, but it bums him out.

Walking the city streets, unnoticed by the public at large, Jesus watches Christmas-themed TV through a store window and is disappointed with what he sees. That is, until he comes across Linus’ speech at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas and we get a final moment that’s adorable, uplifting, and pretty hilarious.

NPR’S Delicious Dish: Schweddy Balls (1998)

The dry, NPR-host banter between Ana Gasteyer’s Margaret Jo McCullen — who cheerfully admits that she leaves tap water and rice out for Santa because “Christmas foods really wreak havoc on the ol’ digestive system” — and Molly Shannon’s Teri Rialto as they discuss delectable Yuletide “balls” with Alec Baldwin’s Pete Schweddy is a can’t-miss skit. The trio makes monotone an art form, while remaining dedicated to the naivety of the characters involved. (In response to Alec Baldwin’s, “But the thing I most like to bring out this time of year are my balls,” their faces barely twitch.) It’s double entendre at its finest, and never fails to leave me in stitches.

Pete Schweddy returned in another episode where he introduced the women to his hotdogs, but having them show so much interest in putting his wiener in their mouths was a little too easy a joke to pull off.

I Wish It Was Christmas Today (2000-the heat death of the universe)

On one December episode, there was a short segment of Horatio Sanz, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan, and Tracy Morgan playing a catchy, albeit incredibly stupid song about Christmas being on the way. Sanz played a skinny guitar while singing, Fallon occasionally pressed an elephant noise button on the keyboard, Kattan held the keyboard while shaking his head, and Morgan danced with a look on his face like he got dragged on stage against his will. It was silly and would have probably been forgotten soon after.

Instead, they returned a week later and insisted on playing it again despite being explicitly told not to. Soon they would start playing it during non-December months to show Christmas’ superiority over other holidays. After Simon Cowell insulted the group, he sheepishly agreed that he wanted to join them and broke out some maracas. One year, when Sanz was the only one left in the cast, he replaced his buddies with Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, and Animal while Kermit the Frog danced in a way that you have to wonder if a Muppet is capable of snorting coke.

The song still gets brought out now and then, usually on Fallon’s show. It’s even been covered by Julian Casablancas and Cheap Trick of all people!

They did sing a completely different Christmas song one time, but nobody cared.

Glengarry Glen Elf: Christmas Motivation (2005)

Alec Baldwin seems to be the go-to host for classic Christmas sketches. Playing on his iconic Glengarry Glen Ross character Blake, Baldwin (in a way) reprises the role as 615-year-old “elf from the home office” sent to straighten out the subpar work of Santa’s elves. There couldn’t have been a more perfect break in character than when Baldwin says “Always Be Closing” instead of “Always Be Cobbling” as scripted. It’s a slip-up that makes for a perfect holiday sketch, full of deep-bellied laughs.

TV Funhouse: Christmastime for the Jews (2005)

Not only is the witty “Christmas for the Jews” written by comedy legend Robert Smigel, but it’s sung by David Letterman’s Christmas angel Darlene Love. In “Christmas for the Jews,” the characters see “Fiddler on the Roof,” grab an early dinner, and enjoy dreamland Daily Show reruns. It’s an intriguing and catchy look at the other side of the Christmas season, complete with a very Rankin-Bass animation style.

Digital Short: Dick in a Box (2006)

Justin Timberlake is one of the most entertaining, versatile hosts that SNL has been gifted. A member of their prestigious Five-Timers Club, “Dick in a Box” is Timberlake’s most memorable sketch, filled with skeevy, disgusting come-ons from Andy Samberg and Timberlake, which has been viewed just millions and millions of times. In 2006, Timberlake had already impressed critics and viewers alike with his acting range in Alpha Dog, but his comedic turns on SNL solidified him as an actor. Timberlake has done a lot of impressive things in his time as an entertainer, but there are few more enjoyable (or laughable) than “Dick in a Box.”

These two R&B weirdos would return later on to sleep with each other’s moms as reciprocated Mother’s Day presents and later swear that being in a two-guy/one-girl three-way isn’t considered gay.

John Malkovich Reads ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (2008)

As quipped by the man himself, no one emits Christmas spirit quite like John Malkovich. This admission yields the self-reflexive irony of Malkovich reading “The Night Before Christmas” to the children of SNL’s staff. Malkovich, pausing during his reading of the holiday classic, asks the children about the suicide rate rising during the holidays, talking about how shooting a home invader in California is “perfectly legal,” musing about how the tonnage of Santa’s sleigh and reindeer would (scientifically speaking) burst into flames, how in Portugal their version of Saint Nicholas steals children’s toes, as well as reciting the gem: “You know what they say about hopes; they’re what we cling to when reality has left us nothing else.” If you’re in a lighthearted Christmas mood, Malkovich’s monologue is certainly one to enjoy.

Stefon on Holiday Travel (2010)

Bill Hader was highly respected for his versatility and range during his time at SNL, but it was his improvisational skills that turned a Weekend Update bit into a must-see recurring segment. Stefon, likely the defining character for SNL during the 2010s thus far, informed New Yorkers and tourists alike of the city’s hottest nightclubs – with Hader almost always breaking down in laughter as his cue cards were frequently changed from the rehearsal to throw him off.

Stefon knew how to get weird and you can imagine he’d save some fun things for the a “classic New York holiday.” Make sure to check out the Lower, Lower East Side dump hosted by Tranderson Cooper or find a club with the right amount of Puerto Rican Screeches or Gay Aladdins. Just don’t run over the Human Parking Cones.

Stefon would return with more Christmastime insight three years later, where he’d discuss a club called [loud Tauntaun noises], founded by Jewish cartoon character Menorah the Explorer.

Under-Underground Crunkmas Karnival (2010)

Good God, I wish there were more Under-Underground Records sketches. As a parody of the Gathering of the Juggalos, we’d regularly see DJ Supersoak (Jason Sudeikis) and Lil Blaster (Nasim Pedrad) excitedly talk up huge concert events that are needlessly violent and inexplicable in their randomness. For instance, there’s the Crunkmas Karnival, which features such musical acts as Dump, Boys II Dicks, Scrotum Fire, and…Third Eye Blind for some reason.

It’s just a bunch of loud humor that goes back and forth between being stupidly hardcore and being meekly out of left field. Yes, you can go check out a “dong tug-of-war,” but you can also see a special 2D screening of the Owls of Ga’hoole or meet Spaceballs star Pizza the Hut. Not to mention the return of their most fondly remembered running gag, the endless undying and dying of Ass Dan.

This Christmas-based event will take place in February. Sounds about right.

Ornaments (2011)

Every now and then, SNL will do a sketch towards the end of the show where the guest will talk about whichever holiday is coming up and awkwardly go into one of the aspects of it, such as Easter eggs or Halloween candy. In this instance, it’s Steve Buscemi unloading a box of Christmas ornaments and commenting on each one. All the while, Kristen Wiig plays Sheila, his girlfriend who appears to be more than a little off and doesn’t quite grasp tree decorating.

Buscemi’s descriptions range from delightful non-humor to outlandish and disturbing. He might make an intentionally lame joke about one ornament before holding up another and matter-of-factly letting you know that, “I put this one up my butt.”

And somehow he’s still the straight man in this bit.

You’re a Rat Bastard Charlie Brown (2012)

This sketch is centered on Bill Hader playing Al Pacino, playing Charlie Brown. The rest of the cast turns out bang-up impressions as well: Jason Sudeikis playing Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Pigpen, Kate McKinnon as Edie Falco playing Lucy (as Charlie Brown’s drug peddling therapist, causing a holiday-blues Charlie to say, “Oh yeah…I want something to take me sky high!”), Martin Short playing Larry David playing Linus, Taran Killam doing Michael Keaton as Schroeder, and Cecily Strong as Fran Drescher as Charlie Brown’s mother, all performed in front of a baffled childhood audience.

For anyone who grew up watching Charlie Brown and Co., watching Bill Hader/Al Pacino/Charlie Brown unleash the expletive-laden “You’re gonna hold that f***ing football?!” towards Kate McKinnion/Edie Falco/Lucy, and saying, “Ow, you bitch!” after she pulls it away is absolutely to die for.

Jebidiah Atkinson on Holiday Movies (2013)

For a time, Taran Killam played Jebidiah Atkinson, a Weekend Update character based on how an old newspaper editorial was discovered that panned Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Atkinson, somehow still alive, would appear and read review snippets about other big speeches he hated.

One of his return appearances had him discuss holiday specials and movies. Every single one of them he hates. Every single one of them gets roasted. His vicious energy is so over-the-top that the good jokes land and the bad jokes still get a laugh from the misplaced confidence. Over these several minutes, he screams about how much of a depressing bore A Charlie Brown Christmas is, how the Grinch stole a half hour of his life, and how every time they play It’s a Wonderful Life, an angel blows its brains out.

This one is admittedly a bit dated with its biggest joke, where his distaste for Snoopy is so great that he wishes Family Guy killed him off instead of Brian. The horror from the audience still makes it worth it.

St. Joseph’s Christmas Mass Spectacular (2014)

Ah, Christmas Mass. The drum solo for every childhood during Christmas time. It’s uncomfortable and especially boring. Ergo, liven it up by framing it as a big, in-your-face event via what amounts to a monster truck rally commercial!

It’s a brilliant use of contrast. Take an event that is so mundane with so many familiar and shared experiences and treat it like it’s some extreme thing. The familiarity of the pastor making corny jokes that get the most minor of laughs is treated like a once-in-a-lifetime event. It shines a light on the weird tics of the prominent people you see at church and feels amazingly universal.

The SNL cast is fantastic here, but the MVP is Cecily Strong as the middle-age woman who is way into doing a reading in the loudest, most overly articulate speaking voice possible.

Sump’N Claus (2014)

Getting gifts from Santa Claus is great and all, but when you grow up, you realize how hard it truly is to be nice all year round. Luckily, there’s an alternative. Introduced via an extremely catchy song, we meet Sump’n Claus (Keenan Thompson), a pimp-like offshoot of Santa who not only used to work for St. Nick, but also appears to have some dirt on him.

Sump’n Claus sings several verses about people who have had breakdowns and would be thrown onto the naughty list. Sump’n Claus doesn’t care about that. You be you. Every December, he’ll still be there to hand you an envelope full of twenties and fifties. He’s the holiday mascot for adults, basically.

One of the highlights is how he mentions that Santa is not your friend as friends don’t watch you while you’re sleeping.

The Christmas Candle (2016)

Christmas has been saved by many different things: ghosts who see through time, an angel trying to earn his wings, a reindeer’s glowing nose, New Yorkers singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” and so on. Then again, sometimes you need a savior for something with lower stakes.

In the form of a mid-1990s all ladies group that gives me kind of a Celine Dion vibe, we’re given a wonderful song that starts with the tale of a woman who had to get a coworker a gift for Secret Santa. She found an old peach candle in her closet and just gave her that. The second verse is a similar situation where not only is a peach candle given as a throwaway gift to an acquaintance, but it’s THE SAME candle. Yes, somehow this one peach candle is re-gifted across the globe through latter December by women and gay men who couldn’t be bothered to put thought into their presents.

Truly a miracle.

First Impression (2018)

Beck Bennett plays a guy about to finally meet his girlfriend’s (Melissa Villaseñor) parents and he’s nervous as hell. She assures him that he’ll be fine, but he really wants to impress them. Sure enough, he tries to impress them in the weirdest way by hiding somewhere in the house and speaking in a high-pitched voice in order to dare them to find him. Her parents (Jason Momoa and Heidi Gardner) are notably confused, as is she.

It’s already a strange and silly bit, but Jason Momoa shifts it into gear by suddenly being COMPLETELY into it. Removing his jacket with purpose, Momoa excitedly starts searching the house for this guy. The fact that Momoa is playing an overweight 60-year-old man is enough of a novelty, but he brings this oddball zest to the role as he starts to literally tear the home to pieces in order to get a look at his daughter’s elusive boyfriend.

The boyfriend’s plans here are both overly complicated and half-baked, culminating in an ending that’s as happy as it’s inexplicable and off-putting.

North Pole News Report (2019)

When Eddie Murphy returned to SNL, there was much fanfare. A completely solid episode, it admittedly spent too much of its runtime revisiting his old recurring classics like Mr. Robinson, Gumby, and Velvet Jones. The final sketch of the night goes full blast with his manic energy as he plays an elf eyewitness on the elf news, screaming bloody murder about a horrible tragedy. Mikey Day is reporter Donny Chestnut, looking at the destruction of a toy factory. As he tries to make heads or tails of what’s going on, Murphy bursts onto the scene, screaming about a polar bear attacking the elves and eating them like Skittles. And just screaming in general.

The best line comes from the elf (who keeps declaring, “IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT MY NAME IS!”) bringing over one of the survivors, and noting that, “This white, teenage elf girl ran out here, straight up to me – a black elf in sweatpants – and asked me to keep her safe. That’s how bad it is!” Despite this elf being right about the situation, Donny Chestnut keeps trying to sideline him for being increasingly erratic about Santa’s potential role in the slaughter and what it means for Christmas. Even as he trips over some of his lines, Eddie Murphy is so damn precious here.

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!

December to Remember Car Commercial (2020)

It might be in bad form to include a sketch from this very year, but man, this joke is not only long overdue, but the acting is top notch. Heidi Gardner’s barely repressed rage is something special.

You’ve seen the commercial a million times. It’s Christmas morning and someone reveals a brand new car to a loved one. As part of Lexus’ December to Remember, Beck Bennett reveals a brand new Lexus with a giant bow to his wife (Gardner) and their son (Timothée Chalamet). What initially appears as shock turns out to be fury and confusion over what is a selfish and short-sighted decision. Buying a car is a huge deal and isn’t something you don’t tell your significant other. More than that, Bennett’s character hasn’t been employed for about a year and a half and has no way of affording such a thing. The thread is pulled away, unraveling both how much of an idiot he is and how doomed their family life happens to be.

Then neighbor Mikey Day shows up and it hits another level. Beck Bennett is the expert at playing guys with misplaced confidence who haven’t come close to thinking things through.

The post The 25 Best SNL Holiday Sketches appeared first on Den of Geek.

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ibroughtanarsenal · 4 years

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shakespearean

WHO: Roy and Jason (@thatsjasonfkntodd) WHERE: The hospital. WHEN: Backdated to April 29th, 2020. WHAT: Jason sneaks into the hospital like a fool.

JASON: As soon as Dick had sent that text, Jason had wanted to go to the hospital. On an ordinary day when everything wasn’t already upside down, he would have. But so far, all within just a few hours, he’d left a handful of bodies at the docks with Deathstroke, got roped into Kiteman and Joker’s scheme, and had his identity revealed with a god damned puppet. So as much as he wanted to go make sure Dick wasn’t just sugar coating everything to keep him away, he did not want to spend the rest of the day (or longer) being hauled in for some kind of interrogation.

After exercising an uncharacteristic amount of patience, he entered the hospital well after visiting hours and when the nursing staff would be making fewer rounds into patient rooms. It took hugging a few walls to get where he needed to go without being stopped, but he was eventually able to let himself into Roy’s room. It immediately reminded him how much he hated hospitals - the sterile smell, the cold, the glow and sound from machines. Hospital gowns also just had an uncanny way of making anyone wearing them look helpless, and he hated that the most.

Roy looked like he was sleeping, so Jason closed the door silently behind him and walked over to drag one of the chairs closer to the bed. “Probably can’t stay long,” he said in a low voice, not loud enough to wake him if he was actually asleep.

ROY: By the time the park was secure enough for EMS to get to them, Roy had been too out of it to give them much information other than his name. He barely remembered reaching the ambulance at all. The next time he was aware of his surroundings it was hours later. He woke up in the hospital, with Dick in the room, and over the next hour he asked more questions than he was able to answer.

Jason's identity was out. He couldn't remember the details about how it happened, just that it did, and that was the only thing that mattered. He wasn't expecting him to come to the hospital because of the possible risks involved. There wasn't much he could do but sleep. They'd given him something for the pain while he'd been out. He felt it immediately upon waking. The first thing he should have done was tell the nurses his history, he fucking told people that all the time, but the light, calm feeling felt good. He could just let himself have it for today.

He was drifting in and out when Jason's voice broke through the haze and Roy opened his eyes, confused. When he saw that he was actually there, he sat up on the elbow that wasn't bandaged, and thought the lights were much too bright in here. "You shouldn't be here." It was a damn relief to see him, though, after hearing how the day played out. JASON: He moved to the edge of the chair and sat up straighter. Just to do something with his hands, he caught the edge of the blanket they’d draped over Roy. Those things were always too rough in a place where comfort would’ve actually done some good. He didn’t even like looking at them. They were always some sickly pastel color.

“Yeah, yeah, already got that from Dick so don’t waste your breath. I was careful coming in.” The last thing he’d wanted to do was get caught before he even made it to the room. He’d have to face everything sooner or later, but he was fine with it being later. “I didn’t know if he was just feeding me bullshit to keep me from coming, but it doesn’t look like you’re dead.” ROY: "He told me what happened." At the... theater? Maybe? Roy didn't add that detail just in case he wasn't remembering it correctly. It didn't matter. What mattered was the people who'd be gunning for Jason now that he knew who - and where - he was. He didn't care so much about the local SCPD. Dick hadn't done anything. Not yet, anyway.

He snorted softly and let his arm rest on the plastic railing. "Shouldn't be here long. The whole thing... stupid. I was meeting some lawyer about a patient. Guy got both of us." It took him entirely off guard and he hadn't been prepared for a random gunman in the park. "Couldn't go out like that. Too anticlimactic." He closed his eyes, trying to focus, and took a deep breath. "What are you gonna do, Jaybird?" JASON: “Bleeding out from a shoulder wound would’ve been a real let down. I’d bring you back just so you could put on a better show.” He have a humorless little snort of laughter. While he was no stranger to joking about death, and it was usually even his first choice, right then he was in no mood to think about Roy getting killed. He hadn’t even been around. He’d been at the damn docks, fighting some idiot gang members. Dead ones, now, which was a much bigger problem for him than it had seemed like at the time,

Jason ran his free hand down his face and sat forward far enough that his forehead almost rested against Roy’s arm. “I’ll figure it out. Get my shit out of my apartment though, that’s for sure.” While he did have some added security there, it wasn’t nearly enough. Red Hood had been active for years and he’d pissed off a lot of people. Sometimes they managed to track him anyway, but with his name? His real name? He was going to have to come up with a much better strategy to avoid them. ROY: "Appreciate the sentiment." Roy had to joke about it after being with Foggy for the last couple hours. He tried to keep him distracted by asking him questions, but even that stopped working eventually. Not having his phone on him was the biggest annoyance. He thought he'd be at the park for ten, maybe fifteen minutes tops. As far as he knew it was still in the car where he'd left it. Plugged in, too, since he had the tendency to let it die for hours.

Frowning, he didn't ask if Jason were going to leave the city. Roy just assumed he would have to. It seemed like the safer option. He opened his eyes when he heard Jason move, watching him for a few seconds without speaking, but then he sighed quietly and moved his hand back just enough that the tips of his fingers brushed over Jason's temple. "Don't drag your feet. If I get out of here only for you to go in, I'll be pissed." He did wonder before if Jason's name was still legally useable, but it wasn't a question he'd ever asked. JASON: “Funerals suck, so I’d appreciate you keeping up the trend of not making me go to one.” He swallowed as he felt Roy’s hand and abruptly reached up to catch his fingers. Of course some kind of bullshit was going to happen right when he was trying to start over with something he wanted. Story of his life.

“I just need to get an actual safehouse together in the city. There are places. I wasn’t counting on needing one yet,” but he could do it. “Gotta figure out where to lay low until then.” Loathe as he was to admit that Dick was right about keeping a low profile, it was the only real option for a little while. He had an idea, but it made him want to throw up. It might be the best one. ROY: Roy laughed softly. "Deal." He definitely didn't plan on dying anytime soon, although he was well aware it was a difficult promise to keep in a city like this. When Jason caught his fingers he pressed the side of his hand, the touch oddly sobering. He didn't really want to joke about it anymore. Even though he did his best to write off Foggy's talk of death, it did make him think about the things he hadn't said.

"You want to stay here?" It wouldn't have mattered to him. Roy wasn't the type who got attached to jobs or apartments or cities. If Jason wanted to go then he would go, but he knew he could have his own reasons to stay. JASON: “I don’t know if I want to, but I’m not leaving while that fucking clown still thinks he can just pick us off like flies.” He’d already gone after Damian, and Steph had a run in with him, too. Jason wasn’t going to tuck tail and run just because Joker had decided to out him (and all the rest of them). Jason wasn’t letting him win.

More than that, and more than he was going to say, was that Roy was...settled. At least a little. He had the rehab clinic. He was doing alright. Jason both didn’t want to upend that or walk away from it when he’d just walked back into it. “I’m sticking around,” was all he ended up saying. ROY: Family dynamics were complicated. Roy knew that better than most. Oliver hadn't shown his face in his own city the entire time he'd been here, not that he expected him to, but having Dinah around again made him feel more attached than usual. It bothered him that Joker had the obsession with Bruce and anyone who'd ever sidekicked with him. There were a lot of targets, but Jason was the only one he'd ever killed. From what he'd heard from Dick, it seemed like Joker could have killed Damian and chose not to. It made him wonder what the endgame was supposed to be.

He finally nodded, frowning. "Okay, just..." There were a lot of things he wanted to advise him to do, remind him about, but Jason knew it all already and he'd be wasting his breath. It was hard to keep his thoughts straight. "Be careful," he finally said, his voice quiet. JASON: “Pft, me? I’m always careful. Jason Careful Todd.” An absolute lie, but what he didn’t plan on doing was dying again anytime soon. It hadn’t been a cakewalk the first time around and he wanted at least another decade or two before the sequel.

He shifted the hold that he had on Roy’s hand and turned his head to press his lips against the other’s palm. The whole day had been so fucked, and capping it off with Dick telling him Roy was shot had jarred him enough for some uncharacteristic sentimentality. “Just don’t get too comfortable in here. Whole place gives me hives and the windows don’t open.” ROY: "That's some bullshit." Roy didn't worry about Jason because he knew he was capable, but he wasn't dumb enough to think he was ever careful. Sometimes he got cocky. They were both a little guilty of that. It didn't help that the enhanced abilities Jason had from the Pit wouldn't be there to serve him.

He bit the tip of his tongue when he felt how Jason kissed his palm, his fingers moving against his jaw even in the few seconds his hand was there, and it was much harder not saying what he'd thought to say (not just now, but in the past). The words might sound slurred and he didn't want it to sound like that. "Guess that means you can't scale my wall like some tragic Shakespearean figure. Must be killing you." JASON: It was some bullshit, but he still didn't plan to be reckless. He wasn't incapable of laying low, it just wasn't his preferred method of...anything, really. Jason didn't run from problems if he couldn't plant himself right in front of them. This problem, though, was impossible to see the entire scope of on day one. He wasn't going to gamble with it.

He smirked, unable to help it. The day was too heavy. "With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these walls; For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do that dares love attempt." He let go of Roy's hand and pressed his palm against his own chest, reciting Romeo's words by rote. Why the fuck he remembered them rather than using that space for something more useful or that he cared about, he had no idea, but they were in there anyway. He just wanted to see the reaction. ROY: The situation was unpredictable. It made Roy feel a little better to know about the power dampeners, even though it was a strange thing to be happy about, because that left Jason as one of the most well-trained people in the city (and the rest of his family.) Maybe this was the best place to be for the time being.

The recitation made him open his eyes and he stared, unable to keep himself from smirking as his hand lowered back to the rail. "I would say I'm surprised you have that memorized, but I'd be lying." He remembered how much Jason liked books. Back when they shared the same space, Roy had even made a point of making room for some. He read from time to time, too, but rarely finished unless it really got his attention. "Careful, Jaybird. That almost sounded like a declaration of love." JASON: Being brought back by Talia and the Lazarus Pit had given him an edge over people in a lot of ways. He was a little faster, a little stronger, he could heal from things that probably would have killed him again, and being taken down a notch was going to be an adjustment if it was long term. Even with that, though, Jason had never let up on his training. He never slipped, never took a break, never let himself be less than in case that was the moment it would bite him in the ass. He’d spent most of his life comparing himself to other people and trying to stack up, and even though that wasn’t the driving factor anymore (not in the same way) he kept himself at a hundred percent in all the ways that counted in the field. All he needed was a roof with a little extra security for awhile.

“I’m full of surprises.” Whether that was supposed to be a response to him having the text memorized or the declaration of love, he didn’t bother to clarify. He wasn’t doing that in a hospital room with a bunch of monitors and Roy on fuck only knew what. Had they given him something? Did he let them? He didn’t ask. It definitely wasn’t the time for that, either. ROY: It was getting hard for Roy to keep his eyes open, even though he was doing his best to stay focused in the present. It wasn't like Jason could stay long and he hated missing out on that small window of time, especially because he wasn't sure when he'd be released. The doctors were optimistic about it, but it was still a shitty situation and he didn't want to deal with the recovery time. He especially didn't want to deal with his co-workers and the comments they'd make about getting back into the swing of things. They talked about things that were a little too personal and he didn't want the questions.

"I know it. One day I'll surprise you, just wait." Sometimes he thought the surprise wouldn't be necessarily a good one. That was something he kept to himself. "Tell me another one." Even though Roy was doing his best to stay focused, he was already feeling himself drifting back to sleep. The soft beeping the monitors did weren't exactly helping, either. JASON: “What, you want more Shakespeare?” Jason remembered bits and pieces more. Roy looked like he was on his way out, though, so he didn’t spend too long thinking about it. In all likelihood, he only had a couple of minutes before the nurses would start making their nightly rounds and he’d have to slip out.

He reached forward and idly straightened the corner of the blanket that covered Roy’s leg closest to him before reciting the next piece, with less gusto and mocking than the first time around. “I have night's cloak to hide me from their sight; And but thou love me, let them find me here: My life were better ended by their hate, Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.” Maybe now that it had served some purpose, he could dump it from his head and put something more useful there. ROY: "Yeah." Roy's voice was barely audible, but he knew he wanted Jason to keep talking so he had something in his head that wasn't machines.

Even though he tried to listen, it was difficult to understand the meaning behind the words when he was slipping into unconsciousness. It was something he would remember later with surprising clarity, however. By the time Jason finished speaking he was already asleep. JASON: Jason stayed about half a minute longer, until he was sure that Roy was well and truly out, before he got to his feet and pushed the chair back into place against the wall. He paused by the bed and pushed back an errant red curl before making his exit. Sure enough, he narrowly missed the night nurse heading toward his room.

#c: thatsjasonfkntodd #jason todd #roy harper

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tcm · 5 years

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The Barrymores by Susan King

It’s doubtful that contemporary acting students studying the Method approach to their craft study any of the feature films starring the Barrymore siblings: Lionel (1878-1954), Ethel (1879-1959) and John (1882-1942). Today, their acting is often considered dated with criticism of too much scene chewing and declamatory oratory. But I beg to differ. Sure, Lionel could serve up the ham, but he could be very effective. He earned a Best Actor Oscar for 1931’s A FREE SOUL and even received an Oscar nomination for Best Director for 1929’s MADAME X.

Lionel is memorable in the fantasy ON BORROWED TIME (’39), and his radio performance as Scrooge, which became an annual event, is flawless. And what would have IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (’46) have been without his delicious performance as the odious Mr. Potter? He even continued his career when his crippling arthritis confined him to a wheelchair. I’m hoping that by shining the spotlight on the trio, you’ll realize why they had such success on stage and screen.

The Barrymores were born with greasepaint in their veins. They were part of an acting dynasty, which continues to this today with John’s granddaughter Drew Barrymore, and all three worked on Broadway for several years. John’s performance of Hamlet in 1922 is the stuff of legends and among Ethel’s stage triumphs were 1901’s Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines and in Emlyn William’s lauded 1940 play The Corn is Green.

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Ethel. She was the subtlest of the Barrymores and didn’t really became a major film star until after John died in 1942. Ethel did make movies during the silent era as a young actress but was away from feature films for 13 years until a chance to work with her brothers in RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS (’32), which is part of TCM’s mini-Barrymore fest. Lionel always loved to one-up his younger siblings and he was in full form in this prestige drama as Rasputin. Still, RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS is a must-see because it’s the only chance to witness the siblings on film together.

Ethel returned to Broadway after RASPUTIN but was lured back to film for NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART (’44), in which she gives a haunting performance as the ailing mother of a n’er-do-well (an Oscar-nominated Cary Grant) in the drama written and directed by Clifford Odets. Though the film was a box office disaster, Ethel deservedly won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award.

Her film career took off with the Oscar. In fact, she went on to earn Supporting Actress Oscar nominations for THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (‘46), THE PARADINE CASE (‘47) and PINKY (’49). She appeared in her last film in 1957 with JOHNNY TROUBLE.

And then there was John. He had it all. He was breathtakingly handsome and was even nicknamed the “Great Profile” for his distinctive side profile. He possessed a sonorous voice that melted the hearts of women. His work in silent films—most notably in BEAU BRUMMEL (’24) and DON JUAN (’26)—was dashing, fun and often exquisitely touching. But he loved alcohol more than he loved acting. And though he gave some wonderful performances in the 1930s, despite the fact he had to have his lines written on a blackboard, Barrymore became a caricature of himself. Especially in his final film, PLAYMATES (’41), in which he plays himself coaching band leader Kay Kyser on how to become a Shakespearean actor.

When I interviewed actor Anthony Quinn for the L.A. Times in 1994, he told me that he kept John alive during the last two months of his life by “giving him my blood. I used to go see him in the hospital every day.” Quinn noted, “I knew Jack when he became an alcoholic and his career was going to hell. He had become a terribly disillusioned man. I used to hang around with him and writer Gene Fowler and W.C. Fields. We used to hang around John Dekker’s home on Bundy Drive. He was a painter. Jack would sit there and tell jokes and drink. He affected so many people. I just adored him.”

Thankfully, TCM is presenting several of John Barrymore’s best performances of the 1930s, most notably THE GREAT MAN VOTES (’39), for which The New York Times praised Barrymore’s performance as a widowed alcoholic with two young children as “engaging.”

By all reports, John remained sober throughout the shoot and director Garson Kanin had everyone refer to him as Mr. Barrymore to help uplift his spirits. According to IMDb.com though, some people on the crew who called him Jack resigned rather than call him Mr. Barrymore. Unfortunately, the film was not a success.

And if you love pre-Code films, you have to check out three offerings starring John and Lionel: the scrumptious 1932 caper flick ARSÈNE LUPINE with John turning on the charm; 1933’s all-star NIGHT FLIGHT and the classic DINNER AT EIGHT (’33), in which John gives a brave performance as a fading star with an alcohol problem. Make sure to get your hankies out for the last one.

#John Barrymore #Lionel Barrymore #Ethel Barrymore #The Barrymores #TCM #Susan King

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 5 years

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The Smartphone Society

The automobile was in many respects the defining commodity of the twentieth century. Its importance didn’t stem from technological virtuosity or the sophistication of the assembly line, but rather from an ability to reflect and shape society. The ways in which we produced, consumed, used, and regulated automobiles were a window into twentieth-century capitalism itself — a glimpse into how the social, political, and economic intersected and collided.Today, in a period characterized by financialization and globalization, where “information” is king, the idea of any commodity defining an era might seem quaint. But commodities are no less important today, and people’s relationships to them remain central to understanding society. If the automobile was fundamental to grasping the last century, the smartphone is the defining commodity of our era.People today spend a lot of time on their phones. They check them constantly throughout the day and keep them close to their bodies. They sleep next to them, bring them to the bathroom, and stare at them while they walk, eat, study, work, wait, and drive. Twenty percent of young adults even admit to checking their phones during sex.What does it mean that people seem to have a phone in their hand or pocket everywhere they go, all day long? To make sense of our purported collective phone addiction, we should follow the advice of Harry Braverman, and examine the “machine on the one side and social relations on the other, and the manner in which these two come together in society.”Hand MachinesApple insiders refer to FoxConn’s assembly city in Shenzhen as Mordor — J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth hellhole. As a spate of suicides in 2010 tragically revealed, the moniker is only a slight exaggeration of the factories in which young Chinese workers assemble iPhones. Apple’s supply chain links colonies of software engineers with hundreds of component suppliers in North America, Europe, and East Asia — Gorilla Glass from Kentucky, motion coprocessors from the Netherlands, camera chips from Taiwan, and transmit modules from Costa Rica funnel into dozens of assembly plants in China.Capitalism’s simultaneously creative and destructive tendencies spur constant changes in global production networks, and within these networks, new configurations of corporate and state power. In the old days, producer-driven supply chains, exemplified by industries like auto and steel, were dominant. People like Lee Iacocca and Boeing legend Bill Allen decided what to make, where to make it, and how much to sell it for.But as the economic and political contradictions of the postwar boom heightened in the 1960s and ’70s, more and more countries in the Global South adopted export-oriented strategies to achieve their development goals. A new type of supply chain emerged (particularly in light industries like apparel, toys, and electronics) in which retailers, rather than manufacturers, held the reins. In these buyer-driven models, companies like Nike, Liz Claiborne, and Walmart design goods, name their price to manufacturers, and often own little more in the way of production than their lucrative brands.Power and governance are located at multiple points in the smartphone chain, and production and design are deeply integrated at the global scale. But the new configurations of power tend to reinforce existing wealth hierarchies: poor and middle-income countries try desperately to move into more lucrative nodes through infrastructure development and trade deals, but upgrading opportunities are few and far between, and the global nature of production makes struggles by workers to improve conditions and wages extremely difficult.Congolese coltan miners are separated from Nokia executives by more than an ocean — they are divided by history and politics, by their country’s relationship to finance, and by decades-old development barriers, many of which are rooted in colonialism.The smartphone value chain is a useful map of global exploitation, trade politics, uneven development, and logistical prowess, but the deeper significance of the device lies elsewhere. To discover the more subtle shifts in accumulation that are illustrated and facilitated by the smartphone, we must turn from the process by which people use machines to create phones to the process by which we use the phone itself as a machine.Considering the phone as a machine is, in some respects, immediately intuitive. Indeed, the Chinese word for mobile phone is shouji, or “hand machine.” People often use their hand machines as they would any other tool, particularly in the workplace. Neoliberal demands for flexible, mobile, networked workers make them essential.Smartphones extend the workplace in space and time. Emails can be answered at breakfast, specs reviewed on the train home, and the next day’s meetings verified before lights out. The Internet becomes the place of work, with the office just a dot on the vast map of possible workspaces.The extension of the working day through smartphones has become so ubiquitous and pernicious that labor groups are fighting back. In France, unions and tech businesses signed an agreement in April 2014 recognizing 250,000 tech workers’ “right to disconnect” after a day’s work, and Germany is currently contemplating legislation that would prohibit after-work emails and phone calls. German Labor Minister Andrea Nahles told a German newspaper that it is “indisputable that there is a connection between permanent availability and psychological diseases.”Smartphones have also facilitated the creation of new types of work and new ways of accessing labor markets. In the “marketplace for odd jobs,” companies like TaskRabbit and Postmates have built their business models by tapping into the “distributed workforce” through smartphones.TaskRabbit connects people who would prefer to avoid the drudgery of doing their own chores with people desperate enough to do piecework odd jobs for pay. Those who want chores done, like the laundry or cleanup after their kid’s birthday party, link up with “taskers” using TaskRabbit’s mobile app.Taskers are expected to continuously monitor their phones for potential jobs (response time determines who gets a job); consumers can order or cancel a tasker on the go; and upon successfully completing the chore, the contractor can be paid directly through the phone.Postmates — the darling of the gig economy — is an up-and-comer in the business world, especially after Spark Capital pumped $16 million into it earlier this year. Postmates tracks its “couriers” in cities like Boston, San Francisco, and New York using a mobile app on their iPhones as they hustle to deliver artisanal tacos and sugar-free vanilla lattes to homes and offices. When a new job comes in, the app routes it to the closest courier, who must respond immediately and complete the task within an hour to get paid.The couriers, who are not recognized employees of Postmates, are less enthusiastic than Spark. They get $3.75 per delivery plus tips, and because they’re classified as independent contractors, are not protected by minimum wage laws.In this way, our hand machines fit seamlessly into the modern world of work. The smartphone facilitates contingent employment models and self-exploitation by linking workers to capitalists without the fixed costs and emotional investment of more traditional employment relations.But smartphones are more than a piece of technology for wage work — they have become a part of our identity. When we use our phones to text friends and lovers, post comments on Facebook, or scroll through our Twitter feeds, we’re not working — we’re relaxing, we’re having fun, we’re creating. Yet, collectively, through these little acts, we end up producing something unique and valuable: our selves.Selves for SaleErving Goffman, an influential American sociologist, was interested in the self and how individuals produce and perform their selves through social interaction. By his own admission, Goffman was a bit Shakespearean — for him “all the world is a stage.” He argued that social interactions can be thought of as performances, and that people’s performances vary depending on their audience.We enact these “front-stage” performances for people — acquaintances, coworkers, judgmental relatives — that we want to impress. Front-stage performances give the appearance that our actions “maintain and embody certain standards.” They convince the audience that we really are who we say we are: a responsible, intelligent, moral human being.But front-stage performances can be shaky and are often undermined by mistakes — people put their foot in their mouth, they misread social cues, they have a piece of spinach lodged in their teeth, or they get caught in a lie. Goffman was fascinated by how hard we work to perfect and maintain our front-stage performances and how often we fail at them.Smartphones are a godsend for the dramaturgical aspects of life. They enable us to manage the impressions we make on others with control-freak precision. Instead of talking to each other, we can send text messages, planning our witticisms and avoidance strategies in advance. We can display our impeccable taste on Pinterest, superior parenting skills on CafeMom, and burgeoning artistic talents on Instagram, all in real time.New York magazine recently ran a piece about the four most desirable people in New York City according to OKCupid. These individuals have crafted such attractive dating profiles that they are pummeled with attention and racy requests — their phones ping continually with messages from potential paramours. Tom, one of the chosen four, regularly tweaks his profile, subbing in new photos, and rewording his self-description. He has even used OKCupid’s MyBestFace profile-optimizing service.Tom says all this effort is necessary in our present “culture of likes.” Tom considers his OKCupid profile to be “an extension of himself”: “I want it to look good and clean so, like, I make it do crunches and shit.”The incredible reach of social media and people’s rapid adoption of it to produce and perform their selves are engendering the emergence of new technologically mediated rituals of interaction. Smartphones are now central to the way we “generate, maintain, repair, and renew as well as . . . contest or resist relationships.”Take texting rituals, which, with all their complex, unwritten rules, now play a commanding role in the relationship dynamics of most young adults. One need not deal in toxic nostalgia to admit that new, technologically mediated rituals are displacing or radically altering older conventions.Digitally maintaining, generating, and contesting relationships through smartphones is somewhat different from using phones to complete tasks associated with wage work. Individuals don’t get paid a wage for their Tinder profile or for uploading photos of their weekend adventures on Snapchat, but the selves and the rituals they produce are certainly for sale. Regardless of intention, when a person uses their smartphone to connect with people and the imagined digital community, the output of their labor of love is increasingly likely to be sold as a commodity.Companies like Facebook are pioneers in the enclosure and sale of digital selves. In 2013, Facebook had 945 million users who accessed the site through their smartphones. It made 89 percent of its revenue that year from advertising, half of which came from mobile advertising. Its entire architecture is designed to guide the mobile production of selves through a platform that makes those selves salable.That’s why it instituted its “real names” policy: “pretending to be anything or anyone isn’t allowed.” Facebook needs users to use legal names so it can easily match corporeal selves with digital selves, because data produced by and connected to an actual human is more profitable.Users of the dating site OKCupid agree to a similar exchange: “data for a date.” Third-party companies sit in the background of the site, scooping up users’ photos, political and religious views, and even the David Foster Wallace novels they profess to love. The data are then sold to advertisers, who create targeted, personalized ads.The pool of people who have access to OKCupid’s data is remarkably large — OkCupid, along with other companies like Match and Tinder, is owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, the sixth-largest online network in the world. Crafting a self on OKCupid may or may not yield love, but it definitely yields corporate profits.Awareness is spreading that our digital selves are now commodities. New School professor Laurel Ptak recently published a manifesto called “Wages for Facebook” and in March 2014, Paul Budnitz and Todd Berger created Ello, a fleetingly popular Facebook alternative.Ello proclaims: “We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce, and manipulate — but a place to connect, create, and celebrate life. You are not a product.” Ello promises not to sell your data to third-party advertisers, at least for now. It reserves the right to do so in the future.However, discussions of the peddling of digital selves by gray-market data companies and Silicon Valley giants are usually separate from conversations about increasingly exploitative working conditions or the burgeoning market for precarious, degrading work. But these are not separate phenomena — they are intricately linked, all pieces in the puzzle of modern capitalism.iCommodifyCapital must reproduce itself and generate new sources of profit over time and space. It must constantly create and reinforce the separation between wage laborers and owners of capital, increase the value it extracts from workers, and colonize new spheres of social life to create commodities. The system, and the relationships that comprise it, are constantly in motion.The expansion and reproduction of capital in everyday life and the colonization of new spheres of social life by capital are not always obvious. Thinking about the smartphone helps us put the pieces together because the device itself facilitates and undergirds new models of accumulation.The evolution of work over the past three decades has been characterized by a number of trends — the lengthening of the workday and workweek, the decline of real wages, the reduction or elimination of non-wage protections from the market (like fixed pensions or health and safety regulations), the proliferation of part-time work, and the decline of unions.At the same time, norms regarding the organization of work have also shifted. Temporary, project-oriented employment models are proliferating. Employers are no longer expected to provide job security or regular hours, and employees no longer expect those things.But the degradation of work is not a given. Increasing exploitation and immiseration are tendencies, not fixed outcomes ordained by the rules of capitalism. They are the result of battles lost by workers and won by capitalists.The ubiquitous use of smartphones to extend the workday and expand the market for shit jobs is a result of the weakness of both workers and working-class movements. The compulsion and willingness of increasing numbers of workers to engage with their employers through their phones normalizes and justifies the use of smartphones as a tool of exploitation, and solidifies constant availability as a requirement for earning a wage.Apart from the Great Recession, corporate profit rates have steadily climbed since the late eighties, and not only as a result of capital (and the state) rolling back the gains of the labor movement. The reach of global markets has widened and deepened, and the development of new commodities has grown apace.The expansion and reproduction of capital is dependent on the development of these new commodities, many of which emerge from capital’s incessant drive to enclose new spheres of social life for profit, or as political economist Massimo De Angelis says, to “put [these spheres] to work for [capital’s] priorities and drives.”The smartphone is central to this process. It provides a physical mechanism to allow constant access to our digital selves and opens a nearly uncharted frontier of commodification.Individuals don’t get paid in wages for creating and maintaining digital selves — they get paid in the satisfaction of participating in rituals, and the control afforded them over their social interactions. They get paid in the feeling of floating in the vast virtual connectivity, even as their hand machines mediate social bonds, helping people imagine togetherness while keeping them separate as distinct productive entities. The voluntary nature of these new rituals does not make them any less important, or less profitable for capital.Braverman said that “the capitalist finds in [the] infinitely malleable character of human labor the essential resource for the expansion of his capital.” The last thirty years of innovation demonstrate the truth of this statement, and the phone has emerged as one of the primary mechanisms to activate, access, and channel the malleability of human labor.Smartphones ensure that we are producing for more and more of our waking lives. They erase the boundary between work and leisure. Employers now have nearly unlimited access to their employees, and increasingly, holding even a low-paid, precarious job hinges on the ability to be always available and ready to work. At the same time, smartphones provide people constant mobile access to the digital commons and its gauzy ethos of connectivity, but only in exchange for their digital selves.Smartphones blur the line between production and consumption, between the social and the economic, between the pre-capitalist and the capitalist, ensuring that whether one uses their phone for work or pleasure, the outcome is increasingly the same — profit for capitalists.Does the arrival of the smartphone signify the Debordian moment in which the commodity has completed its “colonization of social life”? Is it true that not only is our relationship to commodities plain to see, but that “commodities are now all that there is to see?”This might seem a bit heavy-handed. Accessing social networks and digital connectivity through mobile phones undoubtedly has liberatory elements. Smartphones can help battle anomie and promote a sense of ambient awareness, while at the same time making it easier for people to generate and maintain real relationships.A shared connection through digital selves can also nourish resistance to the existing hierarchy of power whose internal mechanisms isolate and silence individuals. It’s impossible to imagine the protests sparked by Ferguson and police brutality without smartphones and social media. And ultimately, most people are not yet compelled to use smartphones for work, and they certainly aren’t required to perform their selves through technology. Most could throw their phones into the sea tomorrow if they wished.But they won’t. People love their hand machines. Communicating primarily through smartphones is fast becoming an accepted norm, and more and more rituals are becoming technologically mediated. Constant connection to the networks and information we call cyberspace is becoming central to identity. Why this is happening is a labyrinthine speculation.Is it, as media and technology expert Ken Hillis suggests, simply another way to “stave off the Void and the meaningless of existence?” Or, as novelist and professor Roxane Gay recently pondered, does our ability to manipulate our digital avatars provide a balm for our deep sense of impotence in the face of injustice and hate?Or — as tech guru Amber Case wonders — are we all turning into cyborgs?Probably not — but it depends on how you define cyborg. If a cyborg is a human who uses a piece of technology or a machine to restore lost functions or enhance her capacities and knowledge, then people have been cyborgs for a long time, and using a smartphone is no different than using a prosthetic arm, driving a car, or working on an assembly line.If you define a cyborg society as one in which human relationships are mediated and shaped by technology, then our society certainly seems to meet this criterion, and our phones play a starring role. But our relationships and rituals have long been mediated by technology. The rise of massive urban centers — hubs of connectivity and innovation — would not have been possible without railroads and cars.Machines, technology, networks, and information do not drive or organize society — people do. We make things and use things according to the existing web of social, economic, and political relationships and the balance of power.The smartphone, and the way it shapes and reflects existing social relations, is no more metaphysical than the Ford Rangers that once rolled off the assembly line in Edison, New Jersey. The smartphone is both a machine and a commodity. Its production is a map of global power, logistics, and exploitation. Its use shapes and reflects the perpetual confrontation between the totalizing drives of capital and the resistance of the rest of us.In the present moment, the need for capitalists to exploit and commodify is strengthened by the ways in which smartphones are produced and consumed, but capital’s gains are never secure and unassailable. They must be renewed and defended at every step. We have the power to contest and deny capital’s gains, and we should. Perhaps our phones will come in handy along the way.

#anti capitalism #anti technology #consumerism #mass society

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180abroad · 5 years

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Day 100: Welcome to York

Today, on our 100th day abroad, we finally went into town to start exploring York proper. It turned out to be a fun day filled with cobbled streets, chocolate, noodles, and football.

It was a sunny day with an almost cloudless pale-blue sky. As we entered the old town, we slipped into a stream of tourists making their way in as well. It was nice--enough people for the city to feel lively but not overwhelming.

We got a nice view of York Minster along the way. We would visit it another day, but for now we enjoyed gazing up at the soaring white-stone architecture. Our actual first stop was much more touristy: the York Chocolate Story.

The Chocolate Story was surprisingly fun and educational given the lukewarm reviews by Rick Steves and other travel guides. We were lead in a small group through a series of themed rooms, learning about the history of chocolate and its special connection to the city of York.

Standing in a hall made up to look like a Victorian street, our guide explained how it was only relatively recently that chocolate became a food. From its ancient Aztec origins, through its migration to early-modern Europe, and into the early 1800s, “chocolate” was a brewed beverage like coffee or tea.

It was only in the mid-1800s that an English Quaker named Joseph Fry discovered the secret to making “edible chocolate”--a novelty that took the continent by storm. In York, several entrepreneurial Quaker families developed their own chocolate empires, including Terry’s--of Chocolate Orange fame--and Rowntree’s--inventor of the Kit-Kat.

We got to taste a recreation of the original Rowntree’s chocolate bar recipe. There were bits of crushed cocoa nibs mixed into the chocolate, giving it a lumpy texture, and I don’t think any of us expected it to taste particularly great. But it was actually really good--dark but not bitter, and the nibs added a complex, roasted flavor. Not the best chocolate I’ve ever had, but almost certainly in the top half. It seems like the most important parts of chocolatiering were nailed down almost immediately, and everything since then has just been a matter of tweaking.

Next, we sat through a planetarium-style presentation on the Aztec roots of chocolate, including a sample of drinking chocolate prepared in the Aztec fashion: cold, spicy, and bitter.

After going through a couple more rooms dedicated to the various chocolate families of York--and more chocolate samples--we went downstairs to the chocolate “factory.”

As we took a crash course on the stages of chocolate production, we got to taste some cocoa nibs as well as some unsweetened 100% dark chocolate. The nibs were bitter but not bad. The unsweetened chocolate--which is just nibs that have been heated and compressed--was abominable. It was somehow horribly bitter and disgustingly bland at the same time, and the taste stuck to the inside of my mouth for minutes afterward. Jessica kind of liked it.

According to our guide, it’s actually quite hard to find 100% dark chocolate in stores. Only a small percentage of people like it, and chocolate companies just don’t think it’s worth the cost to make and distribute it.

A few years ago my dad found an image of a “Scotch wheel” showing all the flavor profiles of Scotch whisky. Jessica isn’t a big fan of Scotch (yet), but we finally found a wheel that we can all appreciate. The guides are also chocolatiers, so Jessica got to ask some advanced questions and generally talk shop with him while we waited for the last section of the visit to be ready.

The guided part of our tour finally over, it was time for us to make our own “chocolate lollies.” The chocolate of the day was Belgian white. Neither of us are big fans of white chocolate, but our guide insisted that we give it a try. Even people who don’t like white chocolate usually like Belgian white chocolate, he said. And he was right: it was really, really good. We each picked out a colored stick, then after he poured a circle of chocolate over one end, we got to sprinkle our choice of four toppings over it.

While we waited for our lollies to harden, we got to watch one of the other chocolatiers make a batch of chocolate truffles with a mango-cream filling. It was quite interesting, and Jessica was vindicated to learn that he too didn’t like eating chocolate despite loving to make it. (Though to be fair, Jessica does enjoy the occasional chocolate, while this guy gets violently ill from it.) We were a fairly small group, so we had to eat several truffles each. I mean, it would have been rude not to...

Our tickets to the Chocolate Story included a complimentary scoop of ice cream from the bar downstairs, but we decided to save it for later. For now, we had a date with some glass cats.

When we arrived at our flat, our host had left us a note telling us to come by the York Glass Shop for a free gift when we had time. We weren’t sure what to expect, but having enjoyed our visit to a glass shop in Bath, we were tantalized by the prospect of a running theme.

Our free gift was one of their glass cats, which came in black as well as birthstone colors. It was Jessica's turn to get a glass cat, so she picked out an aquamarine one. We also got some stained-glass bookmarks as presents for our moms.

With our glass gifts in hand, we walked around the rest of the Shambles, York's preserved medieval merchant street lined with tweed fashion boutiques, cheesy Viking stores, and everything in between.

For our first lunch out in this medieval city known for Vikings, roasts, and fried dough, we went to Wagamama, an Anglo-Japanese fusion chain. We had heard about it before, but we didn't actually know what it was. We enjoyed some yaki-soba, yaki-udon, and a plate of pulled pork gyoza. We laughed at the thought that this was probably meant to be exotic, but to us Californians it was practically a taste of home.

Our last big stop of the day was Clifford's Tower, the partially ruined stone keep that is all that remains of the old York Castle. If the Tower doesn't look quite like a typical English castle to you, you'd be right. It's design was inspired by French castles of the time. The chief architect is believed to be the Frenchman Henry de Reyns, who was also responsible for designing much of Westminster Abbey.

There wasn't a lot to see, but the view from the top was great.

In the lot below, a pop-up Shakespearean theater was being assembled. We checked, and unfortunately the first show was the day after we'd be leaving York.

Perhaps the most interesting story the castle had to tell--and certainly the most chilling--was about a pogrom that took place in 1190, when the castle was still made of wood. Anti-Semitism was erupting throughout the country in the wake of Richard the Lionheart's coronation and the start of the Third Crusade. When one such riot began in York, the entire Jewish community--around 150 men, women, and children--took refuge in the keep.

A bloodthirsty mob--including knights and commoners alike--assaulted the castle to try and drag them out. Rather than renounce their faith or allow themselves be torn apart by the mob, the people inside chose a third option. Before the last men took their own lives, they set the keep ablaze, turning it into a funeral pyre that would burn their remains before they could be desecrated by the rioters outside. There were no survivors.

Feeling it was high time for some more spirit-lifting chocolate, we headed back to the Shambles to claim our free ice cream and some hot cocoa.

Finally, we circled back to the Minster, where we saw a conspicuously lackadaisical statue of Emperor Constantine. York is unusual in that it was originally founded as a Roman military base--there was no preexisting local settlement in the area. Constantine was actually declared emperor in York, and the Minster was later built on the foundations of his military headquarters. Near the statue stands an ancient Roman pillar unearthed from the Minster’s foundations during a 20th-century retrofit.

Satisfied with everything we'd done that day, we headed home to watch the Poland vs. Senegal game of the World Cup. Poland played valiantly and scored two goals to Senegal’s one. Unfortunately, one of those two was an own goal, so Senegal took the win.

Next Post: York

Last Post: To York (Relax, Restock, and Reassess)

#180abroad #york #england #britain #castles #chocolate

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eatsless · 2 years

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my fin aid was a loooot more than expected????? omg???????? so um now treating myself to glossier and a new perfume, think im gonna get black opium because the scent profile looks perfect for me; black coffee, white flowers, vanilla. i want a new tobacco and vanilla perfume but this looks good too

also my new clothes i ordered should be here today so im finishing my sonnet, gonna put on my cute new dress once it arrives, and record myself reading my sonnet for my theatre class 😌

if anyone wants to see my sonnet lmk im close to done and i think its turning out really well?? popular themes for shakespearean sonnets are love, nostalgia and coming of age, so combing them all and making them sad to write about my relationship with my younger self and holy shit it's hard not to make it thoroughly depressing lmao

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katstrm · 4 years

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genderqueerness as seen in celebrities and pop culture

I am of the opinion that queerness is literally so much fun to learn and delve into. I think that there is a specific type of freedom that follows when you’re able to distance yourself from the gender binary and all the rules about how to live surrounding this binary.

In a theoretical vacuum bubble of a world, gender shouldn’t have an impact on how we go about conducting our lives. It shouldn’t affect what careers are available to you, or influence the expectations of how well you can fulfill the duties of said job. It shouldn’t affect how you’re compensated for doing said job. It shouldn’t affect who interacts with you, who makes up your friendships and general relationships, it shouldn’t affect how you’re served in a restaurant, it shouldn’t affect your commute as you walk down a busy sidewalk. Some could argue that the bare minimum aspects gender can reasonably influence is in how one chooses to dress and express themself, but I don’t think that should be true either. I personally feel like if we had to absolutely boil down why gender must exist, it would be to differentiate who out there qualifies as a potential partner under your sexual orientation. Being a queer person myself, I absolutely could care less how you choose to identify; if you so much as glance my way for more than 2 seconds at a time, I’ve already got a wedding dress and venue picked and invitations sent out. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with choosing to identify with your gender assigned at birth, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with challenging that either, because ultimately, the only person who has the final say in living our lives is yourself. I acknowledge that relationships and interpersonal communications definitely complicate that a little (read: a lot), but I feel that what I said still stands in the end. But that’s just me.

Alas, I am reminded again that despite what my ego tells me, the universe unfortunately does not revolve around me. People are treated differently because of their gender. The world and the systems that run it are often deeply biased, and unfortunately, gender plays heavily into that bias.

Let’s talk a little bit about that.

What is the gender binary? How does it relate to assigned sex and gender identity?

Gender is considerably nuanced and this article here from genderspectrum.org is a great place to start.

The gender binary is a system of social constructs used to classify and differentiate between traditional masculine and feminine qualities, aspects, persons, and more. This binary is what influences the numerous facets of life I described above. Examples of this binary can be seen in a range from active, dynamic practices such as the roles people are expected to fulfill in a society, to smaller, ‘insignificant’ details, like deciding which colors are acceptable to be worn and liked by someone.

Assigned sex is the determined label of a baby at birth, based upon the presence of a particular form of genitalia, and occasionally, hormone testing. Assigned sex may or may not later influence a person’s gender identity, which is the “internal experience and naming of our gender” (1). Gender identity shapes how we view ourselves, how we choose to dress, and how we act. Gender identities generally span across a spectrum, presenting somewhere between masc and femme.

Gender identity in pop culture

Queerness (as far as gender identity) has deep roots in cultural history. While it wasn’t necessarily accepted as a norm that could be adopted by the average citizen, the practice of dressing as the opposite gender for the sake of art (more specifically, in theatrical and religious representation) was perfectly normal in ancient Greece and Sumer (2).

The Greek god Dionysus. (3).

This continued on in Shakespearean times, where gender role reversal and cross-dressing were common plot devices in numerous works.

Actor Mark Rylance as Olivia, in a modern production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. (4).

Eventually, this practice evolved in more modern times with the 20th-century emergence of queens, who were queer men who presented themselves more effeminately with the use of make up, wigs, and feminine clothing. This practice itself further evolved into the underground LGBTQ+ ball scene (which was actually present as early as the 1920s, but rose to a certain prominence in the 1980s in cities like New York, Atlanta, Baltimore, and more).

It would be simplistic to say that at this point in history drag queens were born, because in reality they had always existed, but to varying degrees of societal acceptance. But in this period between the late 20th century and mid 2010s pop culture had come to accept this exploration of queer expression and blatant disregard for the rules of the gender binary, not without the help of high-profile queens like RuPaul and Divine (after whom Disney had actually designed the character Ursula after).

Drag queen RuPaul, shot by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue, May 2019. (5).

Drag queen Divine, and Ursula of Disney’s The Little Mermaid. (6).

In much more recent times, pop culture has seen a significant rise in the representation of genderqueer artists and celebrities. A number of celebrities come to mind as I write this, including Harry Styles, Jonathan Von Ness, Jaden and Willow Smith, Janelle Monáe, Kristen Stewart, and King Princess. These artists generally reject gendered standards in favor of more freedom in expressing themselves, whether it be with their personal appearance, or in the art they create.

Harry Styles for Beauty Papers #8. (7).

I’ve chosen to focus on pop-rock artist King Princess, affectionately referred to as Ms. King by fans, mostly because I deeply admire her music and her absolute chaos of an Instagram curation. I feel that I can relate to her, given how close we are in age and how we were raised consuming the same cultural content fed to baby Gen Xers throughout the 2000s. Her music and visuals challenge the seemingly-straight domination of pop music. She’s no stranger to controversial antics, of which she’s ironically avoided criticism, by willingly indulging in overt expressions of explicit queerness head-on, with zero shame.

King Princess by Ryan Duffin for Them. (8).

Ms. King is by no doubt an underrated star in the music scene, but she’s quick to acknowledge that her uncensored profession of self probably does have some detrimental effect on her success as an artist (9). But she’s not afraid of that. Conversely, it’s this roaring, vulgar lack of shame for being herself that’s what makes her so appealing to today’s generation of young people. She exemplifies the pure, unadulterated freedom for one to exist as they are. I’m confident in claiming that she’s definitely carved out space for queer artists to coexist in pop culture alongside “the straights.”

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toldnews-blog · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/united-states-of-america/should-these-clothes-be-saved/

Should These Clothes Be Saved?

It is possible that one of the more telling narratives of women’s lives in 20th-century America is housed in 50 metal storage lockers in a basement room in the theater department of a women’s college in Northampton, Mass. There, an anthropological road map traces the story from Gibson girls to the Western Front to the Dust Bowl to bringing home the bacon and onward.

To reach it, you descend a flight of stairs and pass through a cinder block corridor into a windowless space that is home to the unofficial Smith College Historic Clothing Collection: 3,000 dresses, suits, shoes, bags and accessories. They are crammed among costume racks and cardboard boxes, jammed together on padded hangers, stacked on shelves and squirreled away in any available nook and cranny.

Though the collection includes some designer names (Claire McCardell, Mary Quant) and some garments that belonged to famous people (Sylvia Plath’s Girl Scout uniform), the majority have unknown origins and may be stained, torn, mended and otherwise flawed in some way that reflects the exigencies of real life: families, responsibility, hardship.

They are the kinds of garments generally overlooked or dismissed by museums and collectors of dress, who tend to focus on fashion as an expression of elitism, artistry, aspiration.

Other colleges and universities maintain textile and apparel collections, including Drexel and Iowa State, but Smith’s focus on women’s clothing and, more specifically, on women’s “social uniforms” — clothing that signifies identity and functions as part of the archaeology of gender, complete with usage markers — sets it apart.

“It’s not about couture,” said Jan Glier Reeder, a fashion historian who was a curator of the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute show on Charles James in 2014. (She is also a Smith graduate.) “It’s about how we study the past in a very intimate way.”

How much is that actually worth? As the fate of the collection becomes a subject of debate within the college, it has stirred up uncomfortable questions about what constitutes “value” in the context of clothes, the liberal arts and the current conversation about how we talk about women’s history. Even at an institution like Smith: an esteemed women’s college and the alma mater of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan.

‘She looks at underarm stains and sees a clue’

In 1974, Catherine Smith, a graduate of the college and a costume designer, returned as a professor in the theater department. When she started sifting through the costumes used in productions, she discovered that many of them were historical garments donated by alumnae.

Ms. Smith, who goes by the name Kiki, began separating out those pieces that were too fragile or were potentially important — a 1895 traveling suit, for example — from the obvious costumes (Shakespearean monk’s robes).

It occurred to her, she said, that while such garments are generally not seen as valuable, when it comes to providing clues to what it meant to be a woman in 20th-century America, they may be worth their weight, if not in gold, at least in semiprecious gems.

“We have libraries of books, which are very valuable,” Ms. Smith said, noting that just as the college collects and preserves paintings and prints, as well as documents like diaries, yearbooks and letters, the clothes can be seen as “journals into women’s lives from the past.” “My sense is, that’s a very valuable commodity to save, and to have for the future.”

Yet, said Valerie Steele, the director and chief curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, historically clothes have not been seen as such.

“Old clothes in general are so tied to the body, and female bodies in particular, that they have not been valorized as objects, like paintings, which were seen as examples of male genius,” Ms. Steele said. “They were more like rags that had lived on past their time.” (The museum at F.I.T. sees its mission as collecting pieces that are “historically or aesthetically significant in the history of fashion.”)

Generally, when building costume collections, the most famous museums not dedicated purely to fashion or textiles — the Metropolitan, the Victoria and Albert — look to pieces defined as “exceptional” and “leading.” That is, garments or textiles that speak to the decorative arts, or moments of great historical significance, as opposed to the quotidian nature of everyday life.

But it is exactly the quotidian that attracted Ms. Smith, and it was the quotidian she began to look for as she started to build the collection, which she defines as “a liberal arts archive that advances the academic inquiry of women of diverse economic and social backgrounds through the study of their dress from the 19th century to today.”

In 1981, she spent nine months of a sabbatical at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute as a curatorial assistant to Stella Blum, then curator of costumes, to learn more about managing a collection.

Clothes come via donations from alumnae, as do most university collections, and are purchased at auction (including on sites like eBay). Ms. Smith funds much of the shopping herself and donates the garments she buys to the college.

As the collection has grown and gained a reputation, outsiders have also begun to contribute, such as one donor who, Ms. Smith said, had volunteered at a women’s rights law firm in the early 1970s and supported herself as a go-go dancer. She saved her off-hours outfit in part because of what it revealed about the complications of entering the working world, and it is now in the Smith collection.

Though material culture has been a part of different fields of study since the 19th century, it became a more formal discipline after World War II. (The Journal of Material Culture was founded in 1996.)

In an increasingly virtual world, the opportunity for students to physically connect with the past has become a powerful pedagogic tool. Most university dress collections would fall under this rubric, though few have embraced the worn to the extent of Ms. Smith’s.

“She looks at underarm stains and sees a clue,” Ms. Reeder said. “A museum looks for underarm stains, too, but as something that would disqualify a garment from a collection.”

The Smith collection includes multiple examples of a single type of garment — schoolteacher pinafores from the turn of the century, housedresses from the 1930s and aprons that range from the purely decorative silks of the mid-19th century to maids’ white serving aprons with matching cuffs.

Students can use them to try to puzzle out the differences in the lives of the women who wore them through, say, the fade pattern (had the dress been covered by an apron?), the mending, the seams.

There are World War I uniforms worn by the Smith students who went where the Red Cross would not; gingham sports ensembles, including shirt, skirt and shorts, from the late 1930s; 1940s maternity tops with a label that reads “Blessed Event”; a nun’s habit from the 1960s that was taken apart every year so the pieces could be washed and then resewn; Diane von Furstenberg wrap dresses from the 1970s; and stewardess uniforms from multiple airlines in the 1980s.

With the help of student interns, an online catalog is being created. (One student, Beth Pfalz, also originally saw the possibilities of the collection and gave it its name.)

The Smith collection is used by history, English, anthropology and even math classes. “To see patterns of wear is profoundly moving and telling,” Cornelia Pearsall, an English professor who uses some of the clothes in a seminar, said in a video on the collection.

Because Ms. Smith has other full-time responsibilities, however, and because there is no real display space for the collection, the number of classes that can have access to it during any given semester is limited.

‘It would take some guts’

Now the question is whether the collection can become more than one woman’s crusade. To do so, it would need funding and formal institutional acknowledgment. Ms. Smith, 69, is reluctant to retire without a resolution.

She has discussed the collection, its future and uses, with different provosts of the college over the years. “To put it politely, they were skeptical and worried about the long-term value,” she said.

Stacey Schmeidel, the director of media relations at Smith, wrote in an email: “We value the collection,” but noted that the school has “no plans to create a center or other sort of permanent home for it on campus at this time. If Smith were to think about investing in the collection in the future, it would require substantial fund-raising.”

Kathleen McCartney, the president of Smith, was not available for comment. Michael Thurston, the college’s new provost, will start his position in July.

One of the problems is that much of the collection’s worth is hard to quantify. It lies in notions about the value of honoring and studying the lives of unsung women, not in any specific dollar amount tied to the quality of a textile or the profile of the person who once wore it.

Clothing is also expensive to protect and display; it requires climate control and appropriate light and storage. Ms. Smith dreams of a dedicated space for the collection, and a dedicated curatorial position.

She estimates that a building or renovation would cost around $7.5 million; endowing a chair would add another $3 million or so. At a time when institutions of higher learning are undergoing budget cuts and are under increasing pressures to elevate the STEM disciplines, the math to save a dress collection doesn’t necessarily add up.

Especially given the historical prejudice against fashion as an area of substance. A 2011 article in the Clothing and Textiles Research Journal by a group of researchers at Iowa State University concluded that “textiles and clothing have traditionally been viewed as less important or of a lower status in museums and in academia.”

Ms. Smith saw opportunity when, in 2015, Smith began to solicit ideas for a new strategic plan, which includes a $100 million renovation of its library, with a design by the architect Maya Lin and the landscape architect Edwina von Gal. Ms. Smith submitted a proposal to include the dress collection in the library’s “special collections” section, but it was not included in the plan.

After an earlier professional assessment in 2011, a previous provost suggested that the collection be de-accessioned and moved to another institution — perhaps the nearby Historic Northampton museum, which is known for its costume and textile collection.

This makes a certain amount of sense, given that it already has facilities in place for handling clothes. But it also misses the distinction between a display tool and a study tool, which is the point of the collection.

Sonnet Stanfill, a Smith graduate who is the curator of 20th-century and contemporary fashion at the V & A and who has spoken at Smith at various symposiums on dress, was initially skeptical of the collection’s worth. But, she said, “it was seeing how the students from a variety of disciplines interacted with the garments that really convinced me of the collection’s importance.”

In the last few years, alumnae have gotten involved, saying that if any college should celebrate the history and information embedded in women’s clothing — if any college has the opportunity to change attitudes both internally and more broadly — it should be a school like Smith. And because there is a new provost, Mr. Thurston (a former board member of Historic Northampton), Ms. Smith is continuing her quest.

“For a women’s college to celebrate women’s clothing instead of somehow feeling it devalues the achievements of the college to study ordinary shmattes?” she said. “It would take some guts.”

#b b c news us #kusa news schedule #ThursdayMorning #us news ucla #usa news jerusalem #usa news pl

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