#you know the crazy thing is that i never liked book version of Louis. i always liked lestat. even though he's an evil girl sometimes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

love-and-bubbles · 2 years

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Hello. Good news today is that I managed to negotiate with one of my assessors an extension for a due date about my research for the entire cohort for three days and some still complain why only three, like get losts. It’s not mine of the assessors problem you didn’t do you work. Anyways, procrastination is my one of enemy as a perfectionist.

Not being complicated, rebellious and a headache really just makes your life easier and less stress really. I personally do not see the point of acting out as a response to puberty but then again, I am pretty easy going with things. How many siblings have you got? I’m glad you found the courage to leave you town, I think it’s daunting for the first time bit once you fet the feel of it, tou’d come to realise how good it actually feels to be able to go our on your own akd dow things wothout restrictions and thinking of other people’s opinion about your choices. I think you not noticing about doing it is your automatic response, who you are, your innate characteristic. Oh yes, i love this little corner. it’s away from the stressful people in my real social media account whee they’re just competing on posting their entire life story in it.

I am happy that you’re in that point in your life now. I know it was not a hard process to get through. Finding yourself, your preferences on things, likes and dislikes really takes time and experience, and as you grow older, you become wiser and knows things in ways youre 15 years old self wished to have known better. I think just thinking when times get tough, that hey i’ve come this far. I think it’s worth celebrating is an important essence in life.

With films, we are the same on action film ones. They’re all the same, like hallmark and nicholas sparks ones. I absolutely cannot stand romance films, heterosexual romance films. I’ve had enough of them. I think watching Titanic, The Notebook and Grease were the worst ways of wasting my time that I have ever done. I cannot watch horror though, they’re just too much for my sanity. I prefer dramas where there’s actually dialogues with good actors who can actually act and show emotions.

We made progress, but we are also going backwards. It’s all about influence, politics and the amount of money that dictate the prominence of these attitudes in the society.

You’re Hob then. I’d be Dream. Because why not. 😆 What I am trying to say is that, it’s damming to think about that when all of the generations who gets to actually know us, won’t even remember us many centuries from now when we’re dead. Like, relatives will probably remember our name but not our full existence and every we have experienced and done. Like you said, you never get to see how it continues and gone. If I were to live forever, I would absolutely go crazy in life and be rich and have so much freedom to move around.

Getting up on our beds is one of the hardest things to do when we actually think about it, and a friend once told me that being able to get through out of the door is the first step of being an adult. We are so different with how we deal with our depressive moments. You’re more mental, I am more physical. I also just get bored of being on that depressive state i’d just tell myself to suck it up and actually do something that does not make me in this more depressive state.

I think two of us is one of those song that you don’t sing every night because it’s so emotionally demanding.

The thing is, we are heroes, villians, or just complete stranger to so many people. We are known by many in their own versions of us. And we would never know which versions of us they actually know us of. It’s interesting to think about.

You have ordered many versions of FITF? damn wow, that’s amazing, and louis continues becoming a multimillionaire. Lmao. Anyways, I haven’t ordered anything and I actually have no merch on my care. how poor haha. I have srarted collecting books from op shops and never read them. A friend always gets aggravated by that fact.

Have I read any of your fics?

We sure have different like reactions to the book. I have no problem with the plot and all that. I just did not like how it was written. I think Marion is a great representation of how discrimination and homophobic individuals’ get away with their actions even until today. Like they just get away with it and they do not suffer in a way that queer suffers you know? Like, they act and that’s just it. they act. they do not recieved any consequences for their actions and attitudes. I just ended up pissed with marion so much after reading that book, I wanted to set her on fire myself.

Your fashion style is much more creative than mine. A lot of combinations and love that goes into it. I love how flexible you’re describing your aesthetic to me, it has so much freedom. My little heart beat when I saw the words dresses and heels. I think they’re just beautiful, I would wear heels wherever I go if I could. I certainly have found my style but I am constantly exploring though. I might go into this kind; this , this and this. something along the lines of like business pants. I think they look good. I want to get into them when I have time because they’re so elegant. I absolutely do not like baggy pants or oversize clothing like hoodies unless they’re like for house clothes only. My figure is thin, and small and also I am not the tallest thereofre baggy like pants would not look flattering on me. I agree,what we like on others does not necessarily means we like it for ourseves.

*puts ‘needs to help beautiful stranger to increase spice tolerance, in vegan style of course, tho meat for me’* also overthink wether vegans can eat spicy ~.~

Reading your explanation of what being genderfluid is, reminds me of this clip, it’s sooo wide, massive and vast on its own someone like me who is not genderfluid can never be fully understand the identity. I think that’s what gender is, like the entire essence and beauty of it, it’s not just one set thing, it changes, it moulds, it’s personal and different to every individual. Like now you’re feminine man and masculine woman, if we follow traditional roles, they’re contradictory. because how can a man be feminine when they’re supposed to be masculine all the time? But it’s not that all the time, should not be as it limits you on your self expression as well. I can never fully grasp and understand genderfluidity, and that’s facts. But you can because that’s who you are, it’s a personal thing and it’s constantly in the works and growing with you. In almost but never the same way, that you cannot understand my identity as my identity is mine. Am I making sense? I think you are pretty and handsome and all the synonyms too. Your mind is beautiful. Like I can try to understand but never really fully feel its weight.

I think clothes should be a free for all type of thing. Like no sex because it’s a matter of the person’s preferences and just fitting what would fit the person’s body you know? Obviously, I won’t be buying size 12 jeans when I am size 6. It just won’t fit at all. I won’t look like a hanger. It’s just, oh you’re confident wearing a dress? sure, here’s a bunch in this rack, i think red would look good on you type of thing.

One thing I know though is that, we as individuals, are constantly developing and discovering ourselves. It is a never ending lessons and learning process of who we are. And we find out who we actually are, it’s just a matter of how we nurture that. You seem to have already find yourself and that’s good.

My aesthetic is basic. When I say barbie is just is because I literally wear dresses all the time and I couldn’t find a word for it. But basically, these types, this , this , this , this Except winter, I get so lazy in winter my outfit would just consist of vans shoes, tight skinny jeans, a grey sweater (the same nike i always wear because its comfy as) and a black thick coat. It fits my mood and black is good colour. No pastel colours I’m afraid, my grandma had told me when she saw me closet and the rack of dresses that they’re all so dark, I should be wearing nonblack clothing because i am young, non-married (can you believe I was about to say unmated???? wtf. ) woman. Which fair mama, she’s such a darling. Anyways. Also no full face make up, my face would go absolutely crazy with acne if I do put some, I loveeee coloured like red lipsticks though, I wear mascara, some eyeliner and one colour on my eyelids only. That’s the extent of my make up. My hair is nothing special, but I am thinking of getting a wolf cut and also, my nails are always short because it’s not recommended to have one on my line of career.

My gift for you has gone into completely different writing style it is giving me a whiplash. I am excited to give you this so this is not my responsibility anymore.

Wow that’s great news! Kudos to you for taking that on for everyone. Hope that relaxes your schedule a bit as well.

Yeah, I was never a drama queen, and I just don’t get drama for the sake of drama. My life is exciting enough without it so no need, thank you. I am rebelling a little more now but more in the sense of I am speaking my mind and I stand up for the things I believe in. The other day I made my entire extended family listen to my take on homelessness after someone made a throwaway comment about it.

Uuuuhh it’s quite a nice concept to proper celebrate how far one has come. I think it helps in many ways, especially to appreciate and love oneself.

The concept of wasting time keeps coming up with you. I find it so interesting because we are so different but similar about this. For me it is like I want to live a long life so I can do everything I want, and you don’t want to spend you time doing what you deem nonsense so you can do everything you want instead. I don’t think I believe in the idea of wasting time. I can find purpose in everything somehow. But maybe I should rethink that, because I am also great a procrastinating on the things I want to get done to start a more fulfilled and happy life again.

I shall call you Dream then. And I will happily meet with you once every hundred years in one of your mansions around the world and eat good food with you because I will probably not be rich just live in my tiny house at the edge of the forest or in someone’s attic. I’d have connections to the theatre and would get to see shows for free and I would spend my time on the streets and in the libraries learning about the world. And I would look fabulous.

Yes yes yes… I make Louis richer, Harry too. dadum. For someone who hasn’t bought a single piece of clothing in years (I am striving off swaps shops and hand downs, that way I always have to get creative and redefine myself anew), I really spend all my money on ‘silly’ things at the moment. But I am really proud of that because I never considered doing things or spending money on things purely because I want to is a good enough reason. Back in the day I needed to rationalize everything always, but now I discovered what it means to let loose sometimes and how freeing it can be. So now I just allow myself to be happy without judgement. And if that is a bunch of the same vinyl then so it is. I can always still sell it later when it arrives and it doesn’t make me feel better to have more (I do suspect that but we will see :D). It’s the first thing I bought not because I needed it but because I wanted it (physical things that is). Well, all my vinyls are but I only started buying them this spring. I have 9 so far. And I will only buy those where I know I love the entire album and it is the kind of album I want to listen to on vinyl. I have this list on my phone and it is really rather short. And then my brain short circuited when FITF came out but the deluxe LP does have 2 more songs and on the regular LP the songs are in a different order so it TOTALLY makes sense to have at least 2 versions…

No you haven’t read any of my fics, because a) I never finish them and b) I never publish them, mainly because of a). The only person who ever read them is my sis. She loves them but she is also heavily biased. The fic I wrote for the gifting is probably the biggest crack fic I’ve ever written but now it will be the first for me to put out there and it is such a me move. Not actually starting with something I am proud of. But the longer fic is also coming, and I start to quite like it.

Your reaction to Marion shows how big your sense for justice is. I just don’t see any of them as faultless. I didn’t end up liking any of the characters which kinda shows me that they’re somewhat real and not idolized. Also that time periods perspective was so well described through her view. But then I am very excited for the movie because I believe we will see a lot more of Toms struggle and his perspective. And then Harry playing Tom is like some kind of fever dream coming true. I love queer cinema and I find it hilarious how you get bored with heterosexual couples. I mean if the story is good I don’t mind. I am pan and genderfluid after all and I could end up in a relationship that would look hetero from the outside, sometimes, even though it would never be that. But yeah the media I consume is like 80% queer at this point.

I love the style. Business trousers are very sexy in an elegant way. I also love turtlenecks and all that French jazz and I get how you love heels especially when you are petite and I love that kinda powerwalk feel they give me. People hear you coming and it’s kinda like ‘I am here and I am not apologizing for it’. And they look sweet so…

Vegans can definitely eat spicy. Very much so. Loads of Indian food for example is vegan (and even more if they use vegetable oil instead of ghee).

Now… nobody ever compared my gender to an Indiana Jones movie before. But then I guess my gender would be somewhere between Cate Blanchett and Harrison Ford. Kidding of course. I think I get what you mean by it being personal and complex and only really understandable for when you experience it. Even I don’t understand myself. When I have a very strong gender day in any direction it is sometimes hard for me to imagine that I could ever feel different. Especially in the beginning of trying to understand what is going on I was freaking out like ‘I must be transgender’ but then I would never want to lose my assigned at birth identity either and for a long time it felt like I had to choose. Ig this is why I cried first listening and watching the as it was mv, because that’s what it felt like to me a bit. Now it is vastly overplayed but it will always have a special place in my heart for that. What you wrote about gender is very very beautiful. And I do agree 100% with what you say about fashion and clothes and also how finding ourselves and discovering who we are is a never ending journey. I personally love that journey even if it is hard sometimes. As a very wise friend of mine once said: “You don’t find what you are looking for, you find what is already there.”

Oh gods I could talk about fashion and style and personal aesthetics all day. I find it fascinating to discover people’s reasons behind their choices. I love the style summer like winter and I have to say that black is indeed a good colour, Dream. You had me laughing at the un-mated. I think it is much more applicable to what we are actually looking for. If you could choose would you actually prefer living in a/b/o AU? Rather mate than marry. A solid sweater print. Make-up is like art to me. I am terrible at it but when someone knows what they’re doing it’s incredible. I love a good red lipstick and some dark eyes. And wolf cut, yes! if you feel like it I’d say go for it.

This is longer than some fics on ao3…

Okay so what is your dream, Dream? Like how would you picture a nice evening in your future?

Your gift will be gladly adopted by me. :>

#hugging strangers #actually needed to get work done so it took me forever to come back to this

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miserablesme · 3 years

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The Les Miserables Changelog Part 1: Barbican Previews

Hello everyone! I'm starting out a blog which will look at my favorite musical, Les Miserables, and will discuss the various changes it has gone through over time (musically and lyrically). As it turns out, a LOT of edits have been made over the years so this will doubtless be a series with several parts.

This first part may well be the most difficult and will almost certainly be the most incomplete, as previews can be a time of extensive editing and experimentation. At least for the first few weeks or so, it's perfectly possible any one day of previews will be slightly different than any other day. However, I only have access to two audios from the Barbican Theatre previews of Les Miserables, meaning it's likely that lyrical variants exist which I have no way of hearing.

I am aware of the existence of a third audio which is fairly early in the run of previews, as the tape's master has told me that Gavroche's death scene is in its original form (I'll clarify that later). However, that tape has never been traded, and has sadly only been listened to by its master. I am also aware of a video proshot of the Barbican era that exists in the Royal Shakespeare Company library, but currently have no access to it. I plan to inquire about whether I can look at it sometime (though I'm not sure a blog like this is "official" enough to warrant it for research purposes). As such, this comparison only entails the two widely circulated audios from the Barbican run.

Now that we've gotten that cleared up, let's get started!

First, let's look at the opening "Work Song". In the earlier recording I have (let's call it R1), the beginning music (the same tune used, for instance, at the opening of "At the End of the Day" and "One Day More" and for Marius and Cosette's meeting in "The Robbery") stops. Then, a few moments later, the more familiar opening that leads directly into the prologue begins. By the time of the later recording I have (let's call it R2), the scores have been combined so that the first tune directly transitions into the second one.

Meanwhile, in R1 there is a sequence of lines that goes as follows:

I've done no wrong

Sweet Jesus, hear my prayer

Look down, look down

Sweet Jesus doesn't care

I killed a man

He tried to steal my wife

Look down, look down

She wasn't worth your life

I know she'll wait

I know that she'll be true

Look down, look down

She's long forgotten you

Most fans of the musical recognize the middle sequence of lines ("I killed a man" through "She wasn't worth your life") as no longer being lines in the show (for good reason, as we'll get into in a later edition of this blog). However, R2 keeps the lines. Instead, it deletes the third sequence ("I know she'll wait" through "She's long forgotten you"). I have no idea if this lasted only a few performances or made it all the way to the end of the Barbican run, or somewhere in between.

During "On Parole", specifically after Valjean is underpaid for his labor and sings about his frustration, R1 uses a variation of the "Work Song" theme which, to my recollection, is heard nowhere else in the musical. It can be heard here. By R2, it was switched to an in-tune version of the number with a unique opening. The musical retains that version to this day, but in case you can't recall it you can hear it here.

Minus an unintentional line flub in "At the End of the Day" in R2, the two Barbican recordings seem to use the same libretto and score from this point until "The Runaway Cart". At this point, R1 has a rather extensive scene leading up to Valjean saving Fauchelevent, which goes approximately as follows (the dialog is difficult to make out):

(VALJEAN)

Is there anyone here who will rescue the man?

Who will help me to shoulder the weight of the cart?

I will pay any man thirty louis d’or more

I will do it myself if there’s no one who will

We can’t let him die like that down in the street

Can you all watch him die and do nothing at all?

(FAUCHELEVENT)

Don’t approach me, Monsieur Mayor

The cart’s not gonna be holding

Not my poor mother would care if I should die

(TOWNSPEOPLE)

Don't go near him, Monsieur Mayor

There's nothing at all you can do

The old man's a goner for sure

Leave him alone

Most of that dialog is deleted in R2, so that it goes directly from "Who will help me to shoulder the weight of the cart" to "Don't go near him, Monsieur Mayor". I really like the idea of the original version; it seems reasonable that Valjean, having become a more trusted man, would expect the townspeople to help him. It's more meaningful that Valjean is good enough to do what's right when there's more time to establish that no one else is. Having said that, the original version did take quite a while and didn't really contain any relevant information that wasn't in the final version. I think the cut version as heard in R2 is a good compromise and retains the general mood and pacing to make Valjean's ultimate action satisfying (something that can't be said of later cuts, as will be discussed in a future edition of this blog).

Additionally, at the end of the number Javert refers to "the mark upon his skin" in R1 and "the brand upon his skin in R2 (as well as literally every subsequent performance since then to my knowledge). I have no idea if the "mark" line was a minor flub or was actually the original lyric.

"Who Am I?" is an interesting one. The musical content is identical in R1 and R2, but in R1 after his high note, Valjean shouts "You know where to find me!" with emotion so dramatic it sits right on the border between awesome and campy. By contrast, Valjean is totally silent after his high note in R2. Neither version would see its final day just yet, although the latter certainly has become more traditional over time. More on that in future editions.

From this point until "Master of the House" everything is the same between the two recordings. Roger Allam even comes in slightly late in both "Confrontation" scenes (making his line "-jean, at last...")! However, in the opening to "Master of the House" the following lines occur in R1:

(THENARDIER)

My band of soaks, my den of dissolutes

My dirty jokes, my always pissed as newts

My sons of whores

Spend their lives in my inn

Homing pigeons flying in

They fly through my doors

And their money's good as yours

(CUSTOMERS)

Ain't got a clue what he put into his stew

Must've scraped it off the street

Hell, what a wine

Châteauneuf de Turpentine

Must've pressed it with his feet

Landlord over here

Where's the bloody man

One more for the road

One more slug of gin

Just one more or my old man is gonna do me in

All of those lines would be scrapped in R2. Personally I prefer this shortened variant than the one that would occur much later. Sure, some fun moments get lost, but nothing that actually adds any substance or characterization to the musical (unlike the later cut, which I'll discuss in a later edition of this blog). Some have speculated that this is simply lost dialog due to a tape flip of degrading, given that future performances would retain those lines. However, there is firsthand confirmation that the cuts were in fact part of the performance. To quote Trevor Nunn on page 87 of 1990's The Complete Book of Les Miserables (a page which elaborates that "the cost of overtime incurred after three hours could be crippling at a time when Les Miserables was still trying to find an audience"):

"Cameron wanted major cuts, which would have reduced its length to two and a half hours. I resisted, refusing to discuss things on those terms... Some of the other proposed cuts - like the removal of the "Master of the House" scene-setting preamble - were tried out in previews and then restored as the scenes would not work without them."

From a historical perspective that quote is invaluable. As will be brought up in a later blog post (notice a pattern today?) the musical would in fact be cut much later to avoid overtime charges. When people like myself have expressed the opinion that these cuts come at the expense of artistic integrity, I've seen others defend them by claiming that the overtime costs never were relevant to Cameron and the gang until Broadway sales began to go down, and that if they were taken into account the musical may well be in its shortened form from the beginning. However, this quote proves that argument to be false. Right from day one, the crew was aware that retaining a >3 hour runtime would come with severe financial costs, but this was deemed a worthy sacrifice in order to tell the story they wanted told. Indeed, it sounds like Cameron Mackintosh was waiting quite some time to enact his infamous cuts! (Cameron Mackintosh valuing profit above art?! Crazy, right??)

But I digress. Going back to the musical, the "Waltz of Treachery" number is mostly the same. However, after Valjean's "It won't take you too long to forget" line, R1 has over a minute of wordless vamping which leads right into the rather awkwardly-placed "Stars" song. By contrast, in R2 this vamping (which is still a minute long, mind you) leads into a humming duet between Little Cosette and Valjean, similar to the duet right before the number. A nice little bookend that makes the scene feel all the more resolved. (Much later this duet reprise would ironically be scrapped again, though!) The remaining segment of R1's vamping now plays after this sequence in R2.

Minus some unintentional missed lines at the beginning of "Stars" in R1, the recordings seem to follow the same libretto right up until "One Day More". Here, R1 uses the following lines:

(EPONINE)

One more day with him not caring

(MARIUS and COSETTE)

Was there ever love so true?

(EPONINE)

What a life I might have known

(MARIUS and COSETTE)

I was born to be with you

However, by R2 this scene is in its current form:

(EPONINE)

One more day with him not caring

(MARIUS and COSETTE)

I was born to be with you

(EPONINE)

What a life I might have known

(MARIUS and COSETTE)

And I swear I will be true

And that closes act one! Going on to the second act, the opening barricade scene has a few changes. First off, following the opening notes, R1 features a rather odd tune bearing resemblance to "Do You Hear the People Sing" (which can be heard here) before transitioning to a more true-to-form instrumental reprise of "Do You Hear the People Sing?" By contrast, R2 goes straight from the opening notes to the true-to-form reprise.

Next, Enjolras proclaims "Have faith in yourself and do not be afraid" in R1, while in R2 he instead states "Every man to his duty and don't be afraid". It's unknown if this was an intentional libretto change or if it simply reflects a flub during R1. A later sequence uses the "Have faith in yourself" line, meaning he may have just sung the wrong line for that particular scene.

Finally, R1 includes the following sequence (at least I think this is how it goes, since the lyrics are a little hard to hear):

(PROUVAIRE)

And the people will fight

(GRANTAIRE)

And join with you

Who gives a speech in the square

Fortunately, R2 uses a much less clunky (though still somewhat so) sequence:

(PROUVAIRE)

And the people will fight

(GRANTAIRE)

And so they might

Some will bark, some will bite

This isn't quite its current form ("dogs" and "fleas" will soon respectively replace the two usages of "some"), but it's pretty darn close.

I've heard that the very first Barbican preview(s?) didn't have a finalized opening to "On My Own". Sadly there is no known audio record of this, so I cannot comment on what exactly it began as. As such, the next major change takes place during Gavroche's death scene. This honestly is probably the biggest of all the changes between the two recordings. R1 uses the following death scene (in the tune of "Look Down" right up until the "So never kick a dog" verse, which is in the tune of "Little People"):

How do you do, my name’s Gavroche

These are my people, here’s my patch

Not much to look at, nothing posh

Nothing that you’d call up to scratch

Some fool, I bet, whose brains are made of fat

Picks up a gun and shoots me down

Nobody told him who he’s shooting at

He doesn’t know who runs this town

Life’s like that

There’s some folk

Missed the joke

That’s three, that’s three

That one has done for me

Too fast, too fast

They’ve got Gavroche at last

So never kick a dog

Because he’s just a pup

You better run for cover when the pup grows...

By contrast, R2 uses a much shorter variant which is set entirely to the tune of "Little People":

And little people know

When little people fight

We may look easy picking but we've got some bite

So never kick a dog

Because he's just a pup

You'd better run for cover when the pup grows up

And we'll fight like twenty armies and we won't give...

This is much closer to its current form, although the last two lines are inverted (we'll get to that in a later edition).

We now fast-forward to "Dog Eats Dog", which while recognizable is very different from the number we know today. The chorus of R1 claims that "It's a dirty great sewer that's crawling with rats", which R2 changes it to "stinking great sewer" instead. I'd definitely say the revised lyric better captures Thenardier's and the sewer's grossness.

Additionally, regarding Marius' ring, Thenardier originally exclaims that he "didn't mean to waste it, that would really be a crime". By R2, the line changes to "wouldn't want to waste it", which I'd say makes a lot more sense.

"Javert's Suicide" has changed a lot. R1 features the following remarks following "Vengeance was his and he gave me back my life":

Damned if I live in this caper of grace

Damned if I live in the debt of Valjean

I'll spit his pity right back in his face

Is this the law or has sanity gone?

(I'm a little unsure as to how accurate the final line is.)

By R2, the lines have been replaced with the current ones:

Damned if I live in the debt of a thief

Damned if I yield at the end of the chase

I am the law and the law is not mocked

I'll spit his pity right back in his face

In R1, the "Where's the new world, now the fighting's done" line is absent, and there is nothing but instrumentals in the segment where it is usually sung. By contrast, it is sung as usual in R2. My guess is that an actress simply forgot her line in R1 and it was always supposed to be there, though I can't say for sure.

The final change occurs at the wedding scene. The singing which opens the number is repeated in R1. By contrast, R2 has it sung once and then done with, as it currently is (and as it should be in my opinion, since the music isn't particularly pretty and contributes nothing to the plot).

Later in the same scene, R1 includes approximately this exchange (again, it's quite hard to make out the exact lyrics):

(THENARDIER)

I was there

Never fear

Even got me this fine souvenir

He was there

Her old dad

*indecipherable* and fleecing this lad

Robbed the dead

That's his way

(MME. THENARDIER)

That's worth five hundred any old day

(MARIUS)

I know this...

By R2, everything between "He was there" and "Any old day" were removed, which makes sense given that they essentially just rehash what was already said.

Finally, there's a subtle difference in the epilogue, specifically during the "Do You Hear the People Sing?" reprise. In R1, the ensemble sings "They will live again in glory in the garden of the Lord". R2 replaces the word "glory" with "freedom", and that word remains the one used to this day. I suppose "freedom" is more appropriate for the context of peace and prosperity. To many, I'd guess that "glory" conjures imagery of knights, battles, and the like; just the kind of violence that the characters wish to move away from! I have no idea if this was why the writers changed the lyric, but it's my hypothesis.

Towards the end of the show, the chorus in R1 sings "Even the darkest moon will end and the sun will rise". By R2, this is changed to "the darkest night". Makes more sense to me, since moons aren't known for being particularly dark!

And that just about sums this part up! If I missed anything feel free to let me know, as my goal is to create a changelog as thorough and complete as possible. I plan on making more parts in the near future covering all the changes that have been made in the show up until this day (discounting concerts). Any feedback and constructive criticism is very much appreciated.

As a side note, both for this project and my own enjoyment, I want as complete a collection of Les Miserables audios as possible. I already have most of what's commonly circulated, but if you have any audios or videos you know are rare, I'd love it if you DMed me!

Until the turntable puts me at the forefront again, good-bye...

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duhragonball · 3 years

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Disinterpretation

I finally finished the Sarah Z video about “pro vs. anti”. It’s pretty long, and I ended up watching it in chunks over several days, but I think it’s worth watching, especially if you’re sort of partially connected to online fandom, but not enough to be aware of all the lingo.

As I expected, the whole thing was vague and confusing because the people involved in the conflict made it vague and confusing. In theory, the full terms would be “pro-shipping” and “anti-shipping”, but it seems like it’s more about particular kinds of ships that could be considered controversial. But that’s a slippery slope, and apparently the whole conflict mutated into both sides deciding that every hypothetical relationship between fictional characters is either equally valid or equally dangerous.

Long story short, it’s just purity culture, which was what everyone on Tumblr was calling it around 2012. But now, if you’re a sane person who genuinely asks: “Who gives a fuck about Voltron?”, these people will jump your ass and accuse you of being on the side of their enemies. “Children have died over the importance of Lotor/Hagger! Your callous indifference proves that you yourself must have murdered children!”

I think what Sarah Z really hit upon in this video was that media consumption has become so ingrained in our culture that people feel like it has to go hand-in-hand with our morality. That is, it’s not enough for me to watch Star Trek, I have to justify Star Trek as evidence that I’m a good person. Maybe this is where the expression “guilty pleasure” comes from. Conversely, it’s not enough for me to not watch Dr. Who, I have to somehow convince everyone that Dr. Who was invented by the devil.

I’m pretty sure the Reylo ship has a lot to do with this, since it’s kind of understood to be a dark, problematic concept, and fans either embrace its flaws or recoil in horror because of them. Star Wars itself is a dumb story about space wizards, so people try to give the debate more weight by linking it to freedom of self expression and/or enabling real world harm. Suddenly it’s not enough to just think two actors would look cute making out instead of fighting. Now it’s this battlefield for the soul of civilization or something.

I grew up in the 80′s, when “concerned parents” and grifters would accuse the Smurfs and metal bands of promoting satanism and witchcraft. I used to hear stories of teens going out into the woods in the middle of the night to do occult stuff, and all I could ever think about was: “Why would anyone bother wandering out in the woods in the middle of the night?” Which is why “concerned parents” turned their attention to things that were closer to home, like Saturday morning cartoons. It had nothing to do with the content; it was just about finding a safe, accessible target for their hysteria. Some people want to go on a crusade without leaving the house, so they pick a fight with Papa Smurf instead of confronting the real evils in the world. Even as a kid, I knew this was a con, because I’d watched the show for myself and knew it was too saccharine to be threat to anyone.

The pro/anti folks have tried to disguise this with a lot of terminology. I wondered why they seemed to reluctant to use the full terms “pro-shipper” and “anti-shipper”, and it’s probably a couple of things. First, the word “shipper” is basically an admission that this is pointless bullshit that doesn’t matter, and they’d like to avoid that connotation. Second, they seem to have decided that this goes beyond shipping itself, into practically anything else they want it to involve. It’s all part of the con, which is to make you believe that it’s “us vs. them”, and you can be part of “us” by curating specific attitudes about Steven Universe.

Seriously, “about Steven Universe” is such an incredible punchline. You can make anything funnier by adding those three words to the end of a sentence. “Do not interact if you blog about Steven Universe.” “Hey, what’s up, YouTube, this is SSJ3RyokoLover69, and this is going to be kind of a serious video about Steven Universe.” “Mrs. Johnson, the results of your biopsy are in, and I have some bad news about Steven Universe.” It’s a fucking kids show. “Oh no, all the characters look like the characters in all the other kids shows!” Yeah, that’s because it’s a kids show. Marvin looks like Garfield, this isn’t new.

The common denominator here seems to be that both sides try to wrap themselves in the flag of vulnerable groups: impressionable minors, trauma survivors, harassment victims, etc. The “pros” want to protect those people so that they can feel free to explore weird subject matter on their own terms, and the “antis” want to protect the same people from being exposed to weird subject matter that they might not want to see. It’s all about establishing a moral high ground. Back in the day, it was called “sanctimony”.

But people get roped into this, because at their core, people want approval, and this stupid conflict offers them a sense of community. As long as you support the cause, whatever it may be, you’ll have this online friend network that appears to support anything you do. But if you deviate from their norm, you’ll be cast out. Does this sound familiar?

To use a more familiar example, I still sometimes find people clamoring about Gochi vs. Vegebul. I’ve never understood this, because both ships were canon, and I never saw much direct evidence of a war between them, but people would still talk about how crazy the Vegebul shippers were, and how crazy the Gochi shippers were, and it was like some huge thing going on just over the hills. It’s the same idea, since the idea that you could like both or neither never seems to occur to anyone involved. I never gave a shit, because I used to see the same dumb agendas in the Harry Potter fandom.

Okay, so let me take you back. It’s 2005 through 2011, and I’m hateblogging all seven Harry Potter novels, because fuck you, that’s why. The funny thing I encountered was that occasionally fans seemed to want to pretend like my bashing of certain characters was proving them right somehow. They were like “See? He hates Ron Weasley too! That proves that Seamus Finnegan is the coolest guy ever.” The Slytherin stans would do this all the time, because I would constantly take the piss out of the Gryffindor characters for being self-important dopes. I think they just liked hearing it from an outside perspective. But I had to keep reminding them all that I hated all of them. Every character from Harry Potter sucks ass. Voldemort was my favorite, but only because he was the one guy who wanted to kill all of the others. But he sucks too because he failed.

And the shippers were the same way. I’d say something shitty about Ron, because Ron sucks, and some smartass Joss Whedon fan would be like “Yes! Boost the signal! That is why Harry/Hermione is the best ship!” And I’d be like “No, Harry and Hermione suck at least as bad as Ron does. They’re all terrible and I hate them.” I really do think there was some sort of Stockholm Syndrome going on with Harry Potter books, where everyone secretly knows they suck, but the fans sort of latch on to one or two characters and go like “Well, he’s not as shitty as the rest.” Like finding spaghetti in the trash and picking out the meatball with the least amount of lint on it. Then you’d go and start a flamewar with some other starving person over whether your meatball is shittier than theirs. This is what people mean when they say to read another book.

Anyway, the big thing I picked up from Sarah Z’s video is “disinterpretation”, a term coined by MSNBC columnis Zeeshan Aleem. The Twitter thread is worth a read, but the short version is that he once remarked that a Julia Louis-Dreyfus routine wasn’t very good, and someone got mad at him for insinuating that women are incapable of being funny. They just took his dissatisfaction with one performance by one comedian as being a universal condemnation of women comedians in general. And this sort of thing is all over the internet. Everyone sees what they want to see and then they take it as permission to overreact.

I ran into this myself a while back, because someone saw who I interacted with on Twitter and decided that they’re all bad guys and if I have any interaction with them, then that makes me a bad guy too. At the time I tried to play it cool, but the more I think about it, the more it ticks me off. And over the course of that conversation, it was said that I don’t talk about myself much, and that’s kind of funny, because all I ever do on social media is write long-ass blog posts like this one. I don’t expect anyone to memorize them, or even read them all the way through, but when I write all this stuff and someone goes out of their way to say they don’t know anything about me, the message is that they just didn’t pay attention to what I was saying, and they didn’t bother to try.

So I’m a little jaded from that, because I got called out for a bunch of stuff I didn’t even do or say, and apparently that’s just a thing that happens. People will reject you for completely arbitrary reasons, not because of anything you actually said or did, and you’re left thinking you made some terrible mistake. Except, no, I’ve seen it happen to other people, people a lore more conscientious than I am, and if they can’t satisfy the bullshit purity standards, then I never stood a chance. If the game is rigged so I can’t win, then I’m not going to play.

And it’s that same condition that probably draws people into these online holy wars, because if you declare yourself for the pro or anti side, at least then you’ll have a posse backing you up. Only they don’t support you, they support your willingness to support them. Once your commitment to their agenda wavers, even in the slightest, they will turn against you.

Sarah Z suggests that both sides of the war drop the pro and anti terms, since they lost all meaning long ago. But that just invites a new set of useless terms to perpetuate the same cycle. Her more useful advice is for fandom people to broaden their horizons. She got a lot of flak for tweeting “Go outside” once, but the ironic thing is that it’s sound advice. I had lunch with my mom yesterday and it was just nice getting away from things for a while. People need to do that more often, and unfortunately it feels like it’s harder to do than ever before.

But “go outside” isn’t just a literal thing. It can mean going beyond your usual haunts, reading the same books, watching the same shows, rehashing the same conversations. I think the reason this stuff always revolves around “shipping” is because there seems to be this deep-seated compulsion to pair fictional characters off like this, and for a lot of folks it’s the only way they can consume a story, so they do. And they do it lot, and there’s a lot of them, and they do it the same way every time, and lo and behold the same old conflicts start up. So maybe “go outside” should mean “go outside of that cycle once in a while.” Just a thought.

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crocodilenialledfics · 4 years

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You’re all I need (the air I breathe)

Two - in which Niall and Stella study, plans are made, and secrets are not shared

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The love-at-first-sight, falling-too-fast, uni au that will make your heart ache (in a good way)

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“Is this seat taken?” A voice asked from across the table.

Stella sat up, blinking as she adjusted to something other than the fine print of Faulkner. It was Niall. Stella smiled, shaking her head.

“Faulkner,” he commented, sitting down across from her. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fallen asleep reading his stuff.”

“William just rolled over in his grave,” Stella laughed, eyebrows raising. “You can’t talk about him like that.”

“I would say I didn’t mean it, but it’d be a lie,” Niall chuckled, pulling his book bag onto his lap. “I’m glad I ran into you. I wanted to ask you a favor- well I guess it’s not really a favor. A proposition, maybe- that didn’t sound like the right word either.”

“What is it?” Stella laughed, amused by his ramblings.

“Well I’m in this art history class and I’m really not doing too well. The exams are really hard but our professor has given us extra credit opportunities,” he explained. “We can go to the museum and write a reflective paper. Was wondering if you wanted to come with me. I figured museums were right up your alley.”

“They are,” Stella nodded. Smiling she said, “I would love to go with you.”

“Aces,” Niall grinned. “We can go whenever you’re free.”

“What about this weekend?” Stella asked. “I work here in the evenings the next few days.”

“Saturday?” Niall asked.

“Sounds good,” she nodded.

Stella tried to fight the smile off of her face but the longer that Niall had his on his face, the harder it got. Until Niall laughed, looking away. Stella’s cheeks ached.

The next few moments Niall got situated with his books in front of him. Stella read a little bit from her book but it was decided that Niall was a distraction.

“You know anything about impressionist art?” Niall asked, eyes focused on the book in front of him.

“I’m afraid not,” Stella mumbled, leaning on the table.

“Me either,” he mumbled back, lifting his head to look at her. “I have an exam tomorrow. Think I’m gonna fail it.”

“With that mindset, probably,” Stella agreed with a curt nod.

Niall laughed, a loud one, much louder than probably what’s acceptable in a library. Stella couldn’t help her own laugh, one of surprise at the volume of his.

“We’re in the library,” Stella emphasized, laughing along with him.

Niall shook his head, containing his laughter. “Stop being funny, then.”

“Stop laughing like a crazy person,” Stella retorted, challenging him with her eyes.

It was unfair, the chemistry they had. Stella thought it was a waste. Niall started telling her about the classes he was taking, asking about hers. It was the boring kind of conversation she had every time she met someone knew but listening to Niall was riveting. Maybe the most interesting thing she’d ever heard.

Only when Niall’s stomach growled so loud that the walls nearly shook, did they leave. No homework was done. Niall didn’t study. He left knowing less about impressionists than he did when he walked in. That was all thanks to Stella and her infectious smile.

Stella stood in the food line beside Niall, looking over the dinner options. It looked only half appealing. They’d been in uni for nearly a month and she felt like she’s eaten everything a million times.

Niall got pasta while Stella got a quesadilla. They sat across from each other at a table in the back and Niall told her what it was really like living with Louis.

“He wakes me up all the time,” Niall told her. “Middle of the night he’s kicked his shoe halfway across the room, fallen over before making it into bed. When he’s high, he’s absolutely useless.”

Stella was amused at that, nodding, she’d known him well enough to know first hand what a terror he was. Niall wasn’t complaining though. Louis was easygoing, didn’t care about much.

“I talked to Nadia,” Niall told her, voice a bit rough. He cleared his throat.

“How’d that go?” Stella asked, trying to sound concerned but not eager despite the way she felt.

“She uh...” Niall trailed off, holding her gaze. “She’s moved on. Of sorts. Has a new... boyfriend- or at least someone that she wants to be her boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Stella murmured. “I’m really sorry. Is that what you wanted to happen?”

“No,” Niall chuckled, shaking his head. “Like. I guess on some level I knew it’d happen. Just didn’t think it’d be so soon.”

“I bet,” Stella agreed, watching him closely. They’d only talked about it a couple weeks ago. It wasn’t that long ago.

“I didn’t really feel anything,” he admitted. “Maybe just guilty that I didn’t feel anything. I don’t know. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, of course,” she nodded. “A three year relationship ending is kind of a big deal, I’d think. A part of your life is over and another one is starting.”

“I guess,” he agreed with a nod. “Truthfully I thought I’d be the one to end it. I respected her too much to get invested in someone else while we were still together-ish.”

“Right,” Stella nodded. “Were you planning on breaking up with her or was your heart still in it?”

“I don’t know,” he laughed, shrugging. “I have no idea what I was going to do. What I wanted. What I felt. No idea.”

“Well that’s okay,” Stella chuckled. “You can’t name every single feeling or thought.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“This other person...” Stella began slowly. “You’re still thinking about them?”

Niall nodded, looking away, “I think that’s why I didn’t know anything- still don’t know anything. Can’t really read her.”

Stella hummed, declining to comment. Her curiosity got the best of her. She felt guilty for asking, though she wanted to know more. Everything about what he was thinking.

“Anyways,” Niall chuckled, checking the time. “We should get going. I still have to fuckin study. You did nothing to help me.”

“I have to read ten chapters for class tomorrow,” Stella argued, laughing. “But all you wanted to talk about was how you thought all the artists were visually impaired and didn’t know it.”

“It’s logical,” Niall argued with a smile.

“Glasses were invented in the 1300’s,” Stella told him.

“And what was the quality of glasses in the 1800’s?” He asked.

“I don’t know,” Stella shrugged, standing up.

“Wow so there’s something that Stella doesn’t know,” he murmured, standing up too. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“I don’t know lots of things,” Stella sighed, shouldering her bag.

“Like?”

“Like...” she trailed off, thinking it over. “I don’t know what happens to fish when water freezes. And I don’t know why there’s the temperature and then the real feel temperature.”

“All very good questions,” Niall agreed. “I don’t know the answer to either of them.”

“I also don’t know who this mystery person is that you just can’t stop thinking about,” Stella added on, tactfully at that.

Niall laughed, nodding, “that’s a secret.”

“Well maybe I have a person that I can’t stop thinking about too,” Stella shrugged, adjusting her bag on her shoulders.

“Who?” Niall asked, head tilting to the side.

“Oh it’s a secret,” Stella laughed as they began to walk outside.

“Ha ha,” he deadpanned. “You just made it up to get back at me.”

“I didn’t,” Stella shook her head. “There is a person that I can’t stop thinking about.”

“One day I’ll get you to spill,” Niall told her, very confidently. Stella believed him, too.

“Only if you tell me yours,” Stella said with a shrug as if the thought didn’t make her want to vomit anyways. It was a very stupid deal.

“Is it Zayn?” He asked.

“I’m not saying,” Stella laughed, shaking her head. “My lips are sealed.”

“Fine,” he mumbled, eying her skeptically.

“Besides,” Stella murmured, looking up at him. “I’ve got my person and you’ve got yours.”

Stella and Niall stood side by side, eyes on Renoir’s La Grenouillère. Niall’s face was scrunched up and Stella tried her best not to laugh but she did, hand over her mouth.

“What?” Niall laughed. “I’m trying to look at this painting.”

“Well why are you squinting?” Stella asked, eyebrows furrowing.

“It’s blurry like,” he laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

“And squinting would make it more blurry, right?” Stella asked, looking back to the painting.

“I don’t know,” he laughed, slouching. “Help me.”

“So just look at it,” Stella told him, voice soft. “Think about what you see. How it makes you feel.”

“I just don’t know,” he repeated, shaking his head. “They’re having a party.”

“Yeah,” Stella nodded.

“Is that right?”

“There’s no right answer to impressionist art,” Stella told him, turning to face him. “That’s the point. They’re open ended, like. That’s why they’re blurry so there isn’t any specific details, you can imagine or feel your own.”

“Fuck,” Niall whispered. “I got a whole section wrong on my exam.”

“Jesus,” Stella laughed, shaking her head. “Okay let’s keep going. Maybe there’ll be one you can... feel.”

“I like history,” Niall muttered. “Where there’s just facts. That-that this is what happened and you don’t have to imagine your own version of events.”

Stella shook her head as they continued walking down the row of art hanging on the walls. She could admire the beauty in art. Literature and art went hand in hand. History went along with them too, Stella just didn’t want to be the person to tell him that.

They stopped in front of Monet’s Sunrise. Niall let out a disgruntled sigh, rubbing his eyes, “This is quite literally a mess I..”

“It’s a sunset,” Stella told him, pointing toward the setting sun.

“Stella, I have to tell you something,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “I’m like colorblind. I have trouble with the greens and blues and yellows.”

“Niall,” Stella laughed, rubbing her head.

“I didn’t think it’d be a problem but since impressionist art is erm...” he trailed off, looking up respectfully. “Blurry?”

“I think that this effects your ability to write a reflective piece on art, wouldn’t you think?” Stella asked, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, eyes trailing over the paintings in front of him. “Can you help me? I’m so desperate, Stel. This impressionist shit is so hard. One bad grade and I lose my scholarship. I’ll have to go back to London and get a fuckin’ job the last thing I want is to-“

“Okay,” Stella cut him off with a gentle laugh. “I’ll help you. You’re doing all the writing, though. And you have to try.”

“I will,” he nodded. “You have no idea how much this means to me. I really appreciate it. I’ll buy you lunch. And coffee. And dinner!”

“That’s really not necessary,” Stella laughed, nodding toward the next painting. They began walking. “But of course, I’ll take you up on it.”

They must have stood in front of twenty different paintings. It was an obvious struggle, but Niall tried. With Stella’s help he’d settled on the one he’d write about. It was Les Déjeuner sur l’herb. A non complicated piece by Édouard Manet about eating lunch in the grass.

Niall and Stella found themselves on the futon in his room, two coffees between them and lunch on the way. Niall had his laptop on his lap, eyebrows scrunched up as he worked on his reflective piece.

Stella was there for what seemed like moral support, and maybe possibly revisions. She zoned out looking at the ceiling, thinking about how romantic museums really are. She thought about how she’d love to be kissed in front of Les Printemps by Pierre-August Cot. Or to hold hands in front of The Kiss by Auguste Rodin.

“Okay,” Niall said, pulling Stella from her thoughts. “I think I’m almost finished. What do you think?”

Niall passed her the laptop. She set it on her lap, sitting up. Stella read his work carefully, admiring his writers voice. It was detailed for the length of it. Surely, an extra credit worthy piece.

“It looks good,” Stella told him with a nod, looking up at him.

“You think it should be longer?”

“No it’s a good size,” Stella shook her head. “Especially because you’re just writing a one piece reflection. If you were comparing two paintings, or reflecting on Manet’s work as a whole it’d be a bit longer.”

“Okay,” Niall nodded, letting out a sigh. He looked up at her, taking the laptop back. “You know we’re doing this once every unit, you know.”

Stella laughed, shaking her head. Niall’s phone rang as he smiled, sitting up. He answered it, already standing up. He slipped his shoes on, grabbing his wallet off the table. “I’ll be right back,” he mouthed, nodding to the door.

Stella nodded, slouching down on the futon. She took a sip of coffee as the door closed behind him. The door swung right back open and Louis walked in, a grin on his face, “Stella Bella. What’s going on here?”

“Helping Niall with some homework,” Stella chuckled, looking up at him.

Louis sat down beside her, shoulders bumping into hers. “Tomorrow we’re all going to Whitworth to play a bit of footie. Like everyone’s coming. You should too.”

“Is veda going?”

“Yeah.”

“Zayn?”

“Yeah.”

“Niall?”

“Yeah.”

“Heather?”

“Stella don’t worry about it,” Louis laughed.

“Just tell me so I’m prepared.”

“By prepared I hope you mean you’ll leave your cat claws at home,” Louis chuckled. “She’s coming.”

“Great,” she mumbled, shaking her head.

“She’s bringing Liam, Danielle, and this new girl Eleanor. I guess she’s like incredible looking. And smart and funny and- just play nice, okay?” Louis nearly begged, sitting up.

“I always play nice with everyone except fuckin’ Heather,” Stella mumbled almost begrudgingly.

Louis went over to his desk, pulling out some books to shove into his book bag. “I’m going to the library to work on this math shit with Veda.”

“Have fun,” Stella mumbled.

“Yeah you have fun too, Stella,” Louis grinned, walking toward her. “Have I told you recently how much Niall just loves you.”

“Go away,” Stella laughed, putting her foot out to nudge him away.

“We’ll talk later,” he promised with a wink, hearing for the door. “Hands stay above the waist, you hear me? No funny business on my futon.”

“Fuck off,” Stella shot back, shaking her head as he walked out. It made her cheeks flush, just the mention of that. She didn’t think about it, or didn’t have the time to because Niall came back with their food.

He set the pizza down on the table in front of them, sitting down on the futon beside her. He sighed, turning the tv on. “What do you wanna watch?”

“Anything,” Stella shrugged, sitting up. She opened the box, picking up a slice for herself.

“Thanks again for helping me,” Niall told her as the Netflix logo appeared on the screen. “It means a lot.”

“Of course,” Stella smiled, watching him grab his own slice of pizza.

“You ever need help with history, let me know,” Niall told her, flashing her a smile as he sat back.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Stella nodded, eyes lingering on him a bit longer than necessary. She wanted to take him all in, the smile on his face, the way his eyes shined. Niall let her, holding her gaze. Stella was beginning to feel that there was something unspoken between them. She was dying for Niall to say it.

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margridarnauds · 3 years

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margrid arnaud das music-i mean marie antoinette das musical for that ask meme

LET’S GO

Top 5 favourite characters: Margrid, Orléans, Louis, Marie, Fersen

Other characters you like: Lamballe, the kids, Robespierre, Danton, Immortal Marat

Least favourite characters: Hébert, Bertin, Hébert, Leonard, Jacques Réne Hébert, Drouet, Hébert...

Otps: Margrid/Orléans, Marie/Louis....I COULD ship Margrid/Lamballe and Margrid/La Motte but let’s be real I’m not going to, Marie/Orléans in a very specific way (namely Bitter Ex Friends)

Notps: Hébert/Margrid, Fersen/Margrid, Hébert/Orléans

Favourite friendships: Fersen & Margrid, Lamballe & Antoinette, Orléans & Lamballe (not canon to the musical, but was a historical Thing), Orléans & Margrid when I’m not actively shipping them.

Favourite family: Marie’s family, especially her dynamic with Margrid (LET ! MARGRID ! BE ! THE WEIRD! AUNT!) and Louis’ odd dynamic with Orléans. Really, MA is just the story of one very, very dysfunctional family.

Favourite season/book/movie: 2018 Toho Production.

Favourite quotes: .....showing myself for the Orléans Stan I am: “Oh, cowards, tremble and sleep!” Mitsuo Yoshihara’s delivery SELLS it. Honorable mention: “Just the smallest of sparks is sufficient to set dry grass into an inferno - I just need to promise them a new world where they can live in.”

That and the from the final song, the entire cast: “Can we change the world for ourselves? What can we do to break the chains of violence? What is equality? When will people finally learn from the past? Will revenge ever end? That answer can only be yielded by ourselves!”

Best musical moment: There are some REALLY good moments in this musical - Margrid calling the wrath of God down on the aristocrats during “Blinded by the Light of a Thousand Candles”, the reprise of “Blinded” when the poor join in with Margrid, the entirety of “I Am The Best”, the key change in the Korean version of “Kill the Snakes”, the part during the March to Versailles when the other women join in for the first time to tell Margrid they aren’t going, Fersen’s low note during his first love song with Antoinette, the bit during “The Only Thing I ever Did Right” when Fersen comes in for the first time and he and Antoinette duet, the bit during The Jacobin Club when the entire Jacobin Club steps out together and swears to bring down Antoinette, the bit during “Eyes of Hatred” when Margrid and Antoinette’s voices blend PERFECTLY, the bit during the trial when the crowd begins to apply pressure to Antoinette while Margrid realizes how fucked up things have gotten.

Moment that made you fangirl/boy the hardest: I was trying to not be predictable.....but look. I lose my shit every time we get to “I Am The Best”. Because they really DID give Orléans the single best song in the musical and expected us NOT to stan. That and when he takes his final bow, because he gets a reprise of the song WITH electric guitars because, yes, he’s an extra bitch.

When it really disappointed you: The 2021 Toho. I could devote an entire post to how that production disappointed me, even outside of my personal ships, but like. It was a disappointment from beginning to end and I’m actually happy that it’s out of Tokyo now.

Saddest moment: Margrid sobbing after Antoinette’s death and then having to wipe the tears off her face to meet the tribunal. And then the look on her face at the end....

Most well done character death: Marie’s - Literally the entire musical has been leading up to this and the scene itself makes a wonderful use of callbacks and musical cues to give it this sense of TENSION throughout the entire thing, which builds off of that earlier scene where Hébert confronts Margrid. We know that Antoinette is going to die - There’s no way of avoiding it, but we still are wondering what’s going to happen. What’s Margrid going to do? Is she going to risk a life of security for the sake of the woman she’s started to feel sympathy for? Are these two women ever going to come to terms with one another, with the answer being yes as Antoinette by calls Margrid by her name instead of “the girl” and Margrid gives that last, dangerous bow.

Favourite cast member: I’m not generally big on following individual cast members, but PROBABLY Sonim?

Character you wish was still alive: I. Might have toyed with a few ways of keeping Marie alive in the past.

One thing you hope really happens: Really, really hoping the upcoming Korean production is good. Like, that’s the extent of my ambition after the last Toho.

Most shocking twist: Lamballe’s Death. I have NEVER seen anyone come in prepared for it in over 2 years of streaming. *I* was shocked when I saw it because I literally never expected a Japanese depiction of Marie Antoinette to get into the September Massacres, especially do THAT extent. And it really is the point where, suddenly, you realize that NO ONE is safe. Up until this point, no one’s died. The Royal Family’s imprisoned, but there’s a certain romanticism you can find in the situation, the idea that, hey, now they’re a happy, nuclear family. Then, the show distracts you with that discussion between Marie and Margrid so that they it can SLAM the knife into your back. And, from that point, no one’s safe. Literally anyone in the cast can die, to the point where people do, genuinely fear for Margrid’s safety by the end. It’s probably one of the single best twists I’ve seen in musical theatre, because it sets the stage for the last twenty minutes brilliantly.

When did you start watching/reading?: You know? It had to have been back in 2013. A subber that I liked had JUST finished Rebecca das Musical and had moved on to Marie Antoinette, and I thought “Well! Kunze and Levay came out with a Mar’ie Antoinette musical? I’ve got to see this, it’s going to be good!”

Spoiler alert: It was not good. I made it twenty minutes in, got to the brothel scene, and never looked back. Which means that, actually, I only BARELY missed Orléans’ song.

Favourite location: Antoinette’s bedroom - Those crazy sons of bitches REALLY replicated Antoinette’s ACTUAL BED to use.

Trope you wish they would stop using: Stop trying to make Fersen/Margrid happen, it’s not going to happen. In general, there’s this idea that Margrid MUST be totally, absolutely loveless, and I don’t really see it. I’ll be the last to say she hasn’t had a hard life, but there’s this need to ISOLATE her that I just don’t really vibe with. I’m not even saying in an inherently romantic sense (in canon...I wouldn’t actually WANT to see, say, her and Orléans making out on-stage), but just in terms of having genuine connections.

One thing this show/book/film does better than others: It really does a wonderful job as far as developing two separate female characters - Which shouldn’t be THAT HARD, given you have plenty of musicals about multiple guys all the time, and yet SOMEHOW....

Also, Margrid in particular is phenomenal, as a character. It’s definitely not uncommon for people to go in for Marie and end up really, really attached to Margrid and her development.

Funniest moments: Hébert nearly getting hit with a door, Margrid peaking under her ball gown while it’s on the rack and Orléans dragging her away, the Stars and Stripes Gown....

Couple you would like to see: .....Orléans/Margrid. I know that I say I don’t want them to actually be CANON canon but also I would NOT complain if they did. Especially after the 2021 Toho production, it’s what I deserve.

Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: Park Hye Na as Korean!Margrid would kill me, I know it.

Favourite outfit: Besides Orléans’ 2018 coat (4ever in our hearts), special props to Antoinette’s golden gown in the opening. WHAT a character introduction.

Favourite item: Margrid’s little knapsack she keeps on her.

Do you own anything related to this show/book/film?: I own a ballpoint pen and a program from the 2021 Toho run - One of these days, I keep meaning to buy the German libretto so that I can translate it.

Most boring plotline: BERTIN AND LEONARD. (But, in all fairness........look, they’re annoying, but also, when they’re gone, you do miss them, because that’s when shit gets fucked.)

Most laughably bad moment: The entire 2006 Toho Cast exists just to be one very long laughably bad moment. That and, tbh, the German. Special props to the Brothel Scene.

Most layered character: Margrid. Marie is ALSO a very layered, complex character, but Margrid gets special props because, off the top of my head, I can’t REALLY think of another female protagonist, in a musical, like her. Not saying they don’t EXIST, but I’m saying I haven’t personally seen them.

Most one dimensional character: ...2006 Orléans. He Who We Don’t Discuss.

Scariest moment: See above for Lamballe.

Grossest moment: Hébert's final confrontation scene with Margrid.

Best looking male: Kim Jun Hyun’s Orléans. *Wow*.

Best looking female: Jang Eun Ah’s Margrid. Once again. *Wow.*

Who you’re crushing on (if any): ...both Orléans and Margrid. Predictably.

Favourite cast moment: Furukawa Yuta pranking Mitsuo Yoshihara by giving him “poisonous” things for his birthday, because “You are Duke d’Orleans and I am Fersen. You are poisonous and I am passive aggressive.”

Most beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise): The ball at Versailles. One of the most STUNNING scenes I’ve ever seen. Whoever did the lighting deserves all the accolades in the world for creating a scene that’s surreal, seductive, and gorgeous

Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you: Not an ERROR, but I’m really, really interested in the story of Jeanette Arnaud, because this woman really haunts Margrid’s entire life but there’s so LITTLE we know about her and Margrid’s feelings about her. How long did her affair with the Emperor last? Did she always know he was the emperor during their affair, or did they meet under different circumstances? Fersen was clearly able to figure out that she was a mistress of his, so how public was the affair? And, if it was that public, does it mean that she was a servant, or was she, at the very least, middle class? How did he find out her mother’s identity? Why didn’t Orléans double-check himself? Does Margrid have any living grandparents or uncles/aunts? How old was Margrid when she died? Did she die before or after Margrid was kicked out by the nuns? (In the German, it’s very clearly the former, but who knows?)

I feel like there’s a really, really dark, tragic tale underneath all this about a young woman who ended up paying the ultimate price for falling in love with someone above her station, but it’s one that’s kept to literally only a few sentences.

At what point did you fall in love with this show/book: Probably about.....five or ten minutes into the Toho, with the Palais Royal scene. I knew, from the time I saw Furukawa Yuta on stage as Fersen, that they’d changed things around, and then seeing the changes that were made, I was able to go “Oh! It’s good now!” I feel like the moment where I REALLY fell in love was “I Am The Best” because that had been a scene I’d been REALLY concerned about from the German and then Mitsuo Yoshihara casually came in there and owned it.

#lochley

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warriorbarnes · 3 years

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📓

Hey, here’s a fun new game. Put “📓” or some other version of a book emoji into my inbox and I’ll explain the plot of a fanfiction that I haven’t written but daydream about.

this got stupid long, so putting it under a read more

okay so i had this one idea for a deancas case fic once, and i had it all planned out but then i never actually got around to writing anything BUT:

the general idea was this: sam, dean and newly-ish human cas (set in a sort of vague s9-ish canon) work a case in a small town just outside of st. louis. because cas is newly human, and because dean is an idiot who worries too much, dean is reluctant to let cas work the case with them. obviously this pisses cas off, and there's a weird kind of tension between them whilst they're working the case.

now, the case is: a bunch of people have gone missing, and a few dead bodies have turned up with "strange markings". everything points to it being some kind of ritual sacrifice, but the thing is they can't make sense of any of the markings. lucky for them, the university of st. louis just so happens to have a professor of ancient languages (or something idk) working there, and so dean suggests that cas should go see if he can help. he plays it off like cas should do it bc a) cas is and ancient creature and knows more about ancient languages than him and sam and b) it'll be a snooze-fest and isn't interested in talking to some boring old professor. the truth is c) he want's cas as far away from the action as possible because he doesn't want him getting hurt, but he obviously doesn't tell anyone this.

so cas goes off to meet with this professor, whilst sam and dean keep working the case. cas and the professor (professor anderson) figure out the markings, and blah blah the case gets solved.

after, they go out to a bar to celebrate. while they're there, dean spots cas talking to a guy. here is an excerpt that i actually wrote:

“What’s up?” Sam asks, looking at him. But Dean’s not paying attention, because over at the bar Cas is talking to some guy. Which, that’s not really that weird, people talk to people all the time, but Cas is – Cas is smiling. It’s not a big smile, it’s small, and almost shy, but it’s not a smile Dean is used to seeing directed at strangers. There’s something weird forming in Dean’s stomach, a feeling that he doesn’t want to spend too much time thinking about.

The guy is tall – not Sam tall, but taller than Cas, and probably taller than Dean as well. He’s – well, he’s kind of hot, actually. For a guy. Not that Dean spends a lot of time thinking about what makes a guy hot, of course. But this guy kind of looks like that one actor – the one that plays Kirk in the Star Trek reboot that Dean never remembers the name of. Chris something.

yes he looks like chris pine. yes chris pine is the best chris, but let's move on.

you can probably tell where this is going: dean goes up to interrupt them, bc once again he is: an idiot. turns out this is professor anderson ("please, call me josh"), and that he and cas are getting along! they're getting along really well! dean's not crazy about it! but he can't say anything, because he doesn't understand why he hates it so much. cas actually ends up leaving with this guy, which puts dean in an even worse mood, which means he spends even more time being an ass to cas the next morning.

this is about as far as i got in making a coherent plot, but from there i was planning on doing a thing where cas talked about josh a lot, even went to visit him a few times in between hunts. dean grows increasingly jealous, obviously, because that's just fun. and then they end up back in st. louis after a case again, and cas says he's going to grab a drink with josh. at first dean just wallows in his own jealous rage, before he decides he's going out too! he ends up going to a bar, and who's the first person he sees when he walks in? it's professor josh! he's about to get out of there quick, bc he does not want to spend the entire night watching cas on a date with his stupid professor boyfriend, but then another guy comes up to professor josh and kisses him! the audacity! so dean goes up to him, starts telling him what a piece of crap he is for standing cas up like this, how cas deserves better, and then suddenly cas is there behind him, furrowed brows and tilted head, all "dean? what are you doing here?"

LONG story short (lmao this is not short at all SORRY), cas wasn't dating josh, they were just friends (they HAD slept together that first night, bc cas deserves to get laid<3 but after that they'd just been friends). this third guy is josh's new boyfriend. cas tells all of this to dean outside the bar, in what turns into an argument (bc most of their conversations do these days) and then. somehow they end up kissing. idk how, but it's probably very dramatic and brought on by cas saying something cliché like, "dean, why do you even care about who i'm dating or not?!" and dean not knowing how to answer, so he just kisses him instead. it surprises both of them! that's it, that's all. this was so long god. rip to this fic tho, it would've been great<3

#castiel-kline #thank you sm for the ask!!#hadn't thought abt this idea in ages and now i kind of want to write it again..... hm #will say. my motivation for writing this was: a) i love jealous dean and b) i love it when cas gets a boyfriend. it's what he deserves<3

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phoenix43song · 4 years

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My Reviews and Thoughts on Little Women and the Many Adaptations

To start off I have been reading the Little Women series since I was 8 I think, and I’ve been watching the 1994 version since I was 6. It wasn’t until recently that I finally watched the 1949 and the modern 2018 adaptations ( I watched the BBC/PBS mini series last year, and I do re-watch it every now and then). I still have to watch the 1933 version, which I plan to do when I find the time. I have also been re-reading the books because I am excited for Greta Gerwig’s adaptation even though I am not a fan of some of the stuff she’s been saying about a couple of the characters (but some of my fears have been relieved! Yeah!). In this long post I will post my thoughts on the novel(s) themselves, Louisa, and the adaptations that I have seen.

I will start with the one I am very familiar with: the 1994 version! I have loved this movie since the first time I watched it. It’s a tradition to watch it multiple of times around the Christmas season with my mom, and every now and then I will watch it whenever I feel like it. Since I graduated as a theatre and film student watching films and analyzing characters, their world, decisions, the themes and motifs have been really eye opening. I’ve been devouring books since I was a kid, trying to write my own novels, and I’ve made a couple of short films. When it comes to adapting a screenplay from a book there are a lot of decisions to be made: what to keep, what to cut, what to condense, does the order of things need to be changed, and what original creative content can we put in? 1994 is a really, really good adaptation of the novel, with some minor flaws, a questionable original content decision, and how the screenwriter and director put Louisa into Jo. The cinematography and music is gorgeous, the house looks lived in, and the whole atmosphere screams late American 19h century.

The acting, for the most part, is right on character and Winona did such a great job as Jo! Trini did wonderful a Meg and I liked how we got more of Meg because she’s important too. Claire Danes was a fabulous Beth (though she looks older than 14; I always thought she was 16 or 17...), while Kirsten did a fun, spoiled Amy...but she did ham it up a bit too much at times. Samantha...I did not like one bit as older Amy. Laurie was great in the first 2/3 of the movie but once he hit Europe I didn’t like how they [tried] to develop his character. His romance with Amy fell flat, which I was sad to see. Gabriel was a really good Fritz...I just didn’t like how they made them date while Jo was in New York. I understand it because the proposal at the end of the movie makes it really romantic, but the whole purpose of Jo/Fritz and Jo falling in love was that she was blind to it: she falling in love with a man. They start off as boarding house neighbors, then student/teacher, which quickly turns into friendship of equals, and it’s not until Jo is at home missing Fritz that she begins to realize her feelings. And when Fritz comes to court Jo she blushes! Despite this I’m a sucker for romance and still love Jo/Fritz despite my feelings on the adaptation choices. Marmee and Aunt March were on point and I loved how the actresses were their characters.

Now moving onto the 2017 mini series. I like this adaptation, and have watched it a few times, but there are things that just bug me and drive me crazy, and moments that I love. This is the only adaptation that does not have have Jo’s plays or the Pickwick society. I hate this and it was a poor adaptation choice in my opinion. This series really should have been at least 6 episodes and not the measly 3 that it was. Despite this the series did include moments from the book that either haven’t been adapted before, or it was just mentioned. I love how we see Beth get the courage to go to Mr. Lawerence to play the piano and their relationship. They really should have gotten a young Amy and an older looking Beth: the girls look the same age from episode 1 to 3, which especially doesn’t work for Amy. Maya did a good Jo and it’s actually impressive for her first screen role, but she did lack some of Jo’s qualities (she is way better as Robin in Stranger Things). Emily did a good job as Marmee. Anne was another really great Beth, and I have to say her freckles seem to give the character substance. Kate’s Amy was good but like Elizabeth Taylor in the 1949 version, she was not believable as young Amy. (I’ve heard Florence Pugh is amazing and a scene stealer but even if she can act like young Amy (and based on the clips she can), her womanly body will not let her be believable).

I like how Beth’s kittens made a lot of screen time (I love kittens!) and how they did the Hummel’s house: it was just like how the book described it. All of those little children did a great job at looking hungry, cold, and scared. Makes me wonder about Mrs. Hummel’s husband (I need to find that part and re-read it). I loved how the included Camp Laurie, Cousin Flo, and Laurie trying to kiss Jo. The wedding between Meg and John Brooke was sweet, esp Aunt March giving her the pearls. I crack each time I see Aunt March’s parrot (was that in the book? Man I haven’t gotten far into my re-reading of the whole book; it’s been awhile), and how we got to see how close Jo and Beth are. They tried their best in portraying Amy/Laurie, and Mark Stanley as Fritz: he was Fritz from the book! (He looks a lot younger without that bushy beard though; that’s the one thing about Fritz I can’t stand haha). It’s too bad that Jo/Fritz was so rushed in episode 3: their relationship and Fritz was barely developed. (Though they did include a lot from the book like the Weekly Volcano and Jo’s poem that brought Fritz to her). Laurie in general was not Laurie; maybe in the Laurie who wants to play all the time but that’s it. Not Laurie.

Now onto the 1949 version. I fell in love with this adaptation, flaws and all. It was very charming, had some great acting, however a lot happened off screen, some characters/moments were rushed, and I can’t believe June was 31 years old! And that Elizabeth Taylor was pregnant. It doesn’t bother me that they made Beth the youngest because Margaret did such a fabulous job as Beth. I loved all other scenes, her relationship with Jo and Mr. Lawerence in particular. This is the only version I’ve seen where the sisters buy Marmee gifts with their 1 dollar bill, and I liked how it was a surprise and quite moment. The actress who played Marmee was amazing and Aunt March cracked me up. I didn’t care for Laurie in this version either. And like I said with the 2017 mini series: they really needed to have an actress play young Amy. Elizabeth did a really good job, don’t get me wrong, but she definitely seemed way older. The hot Italian actor as Fritz was sure an interesting choice. I wish they would’ve just made Fritz Italian and just changed his name slightly (I believe Greta made Fritz French in her version since Louis Garrel is French), and I also wish he could’ve been in the movie more! Since he was close in age to June I just wanted to see them on screen more. Yes he doesn’t look one bit like Fritz in the book, and call me shallow, but I honestly don’t care in this version. Back then - and sadly to this day - Hollywood cares about looks. That’s why I love Mark Stanly as Fritz in the 2017 because he physically is Fritz. But still...anyways I am going slightly off topic.

So. The 2018 modern adaptation. This should have either been a Hallmark movie or a Netflix movie. This movie should have never been released theatrically and that’s why it bombed horrible. I mean it bombed horribly in a lot of aspects and areas, but it does have some great scenes! It’s all in the detail. They have their castle’s in the sky for one. All of Jo’s plays and the Pickwick society and how it changed to be of a platoon. I just love the attic scenes in this movie. I also love how Jo is writing fantasy stories and a fantasy novel and it’s sad that she can’t be taken seriously because there are great fantasy novelists! Tolkien, JK Rowling, G RR Martin for example. That really bothered me. I do like how Fritz is an actual professor at a university and becomes Jo’s editor and mentor, how that develops into friendship, but to me the romance aspect of their relationship falls flat somewhat. I like how they had a younger Amy and an older Amy, but I honestly got confused at first because there were younger versions of all the sisters (and it’s unbelievable that three of them would look the same with the 13 year gap). This version did a flashback style so it will be interesting to see how Greta did hers. The editing for this movie was all over the place and chaotic. I didn’t like Lucas as Laurie one bit, I get how they would go to parties but I hated those scenes (it was a good wake up call for Meg though). Beth fell short in this movie and so did Amy to an extent. You don’t really get to know John Brooke, or even their Marmee all that much. And really, Marmee? In a modern adaptation they should’ve just stuck with Mom. I did like how Jo buzzed her hair off in support of Beth (there is a good graphic novel that came out recently that’s set in the modern world and there are few similar choices. There’s also a book called Meg and Jo - Amy and Beth will come out later next year - that makes some interesting choices to say the least when adapting the novel into modern times. Anyways...), and how they had their father over seas in the army. I honestly need to watch this movie again to really critique it, but I honestly think it could’ve been a great movie...the script needed more rewrites, it needed a director who knew what they were doing, a better editor, and honestly some better actors. The potential was there, it has it moments, but it fell.

To conclude this rather blog like post (and kudos to all who have read the whole thing) I will take just a little bit on my views on Louisa herself and Greta’s version. Louisa didn’t want to write a book for children, and when she did she wrote a semi-autobiographical novel that she leaves on a cliff hanger. In my mind she meant to continue the story, but she wanted to see what the reader’s thought. She did put the story out of her mind for awhile, until the book had to go into reprints and she got hounded with fan mail and fans in general. Yes she didn’t want Jo to marry because she herself never did (from what I’ve read she did have one sided crushes and probably a few second romances that didn’t last long, but she also never saw herself as desirable; she comes across to be as maybe being aromatic asexual, demisexual, or bi). She was a bit of Germanophile, along with Europe in general, and that’s why from the first few pages of LW there’s German everywhere. Which this means that Friedrich Bhaer was probably planned in one way or another. Louisa never wanted Jo to be with Laurie because they were close like siblings and loved each other that way. Laurie thought himself in love with Jo, but Jo does bring up good points: they would quarrel and end up being unhappy because he honestly didn’t like her scribbling. Amy makes Laurie grow up and those two match each other perfectly. Fritz is a perfect match for Jo because he treats her like an equal, he helps with her writing, and she gets to be apart of a society she loves.

I have been relieved from my fears (for the most part) about how Fritz will be portrayed and the Jo/Fritz romance. We do meet him right away since we start in the present before going back and forth between past and present until the timelines match up. Greta is the only person to adapt the New Year’s Dance, which I am really excited to see. I haven’t been told if Fritz’s nephews are mentioned or seen. I know he gives her advice, but not if he teaches her his language (which I assume to be French in this version), that they do get into a fight, and that he comes to court her at her house. I was worried the umbrella proposal scene was going to be changed, but I’ve been told it’s in and it’s romantic. And then there’s Amy/Laurie! I am so glad that this relationship seems to be fully developed. I can’t wait to see everyone as their character and how Greta did the back and forth.

I am worried though about a few things: how if one isn’t familiar with the story they get confused at first with the back and forth, some of the costume choices, the acting in certain scenes, some scenes or moment being cut or condensed for time because this is a movie not a mini series, and I just wish that Fritz - Louis - could’ve been in the trailers more with more promotion. I understand why...at least Louis understands his character. Greta mentioned something that Fritz basically had to be a prize to be won and oh boy: no one is a prize to be won. And putting a lot of Louisa into Jo...I’m worried about that. Sure the 1994 version had a Louisa quote that Jo’s says about voting, but this seems like it might be too hammered in. I guess once I see the film I will finally know (and write my review and thoughts), because I can read all the critic reviews, interviews, Q and A’s I want but it’s up to me on whether or not I’ll like it or love, and I sure hope I’ll love it.

The is the end. Thanks for reading. Let me know your thoughts.

#little women

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ruminativerabbi · 5 years

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Sri Lanka, Paris

Passover and Easter are unrelated festivals that derive from different traditions, but that’s not how it seems to many in the Christian world. That most of the world calls Easter by a name related to Pesach (cf. French “Pâques” or Danish “Påske”) is part of it. As surely also is the assumption, widely believed yet almost definitely not historically correct, that the Last Supper described in the Gospels was a Passover seder or some version of a seder. (For an exhaustive consideration of every aspect of that issue, which apparently remains a delicate one even today in some circles, click here.) Even the use of the word “passion” to describe the suffering of Jesus provided some fuel for this particular fire, at least in antiquity, since the Greek word for “to suffer,” pascho, is phonically almost identical to Pascha, the name for Passover in the spoken Aramaic of ancient Jewish times.

Given the proximity of the festivals this year and in light of the above, I would like to write this week specifically about two events that have befallen the Christian world just recently and explain how they appear to someone reading the news through Jewish eyeglasses.

First, Sri Lanka. The numbers keep rising. First, “more than 100” dead, then “more than 200,” now, as I write on Wednesday, a minimal figure of 321—minimal in the sense that many of those hurt in the explosions—more than 500 in their own right—are not expected to survive and only haven’t succumbed to their wounds yet. It’s far away. It’s not a country Americans think of daily. No one on the radio, including the BBC World Service, seems to know whether the first word in the country’s name is pronounced “shree,” or “sree.” (In all fairness to the Brits, when they seized the place and unilaterally made it part of their empire, they called it Ceylon, which name everybody knew how to pronounce.) And yet…the sense of familiarity and shared humanity that incidents like this bring in their terrible wake seemed to overwhelm the rest of the details. Most Americans, I’m sure, couldn’t even say easily what language they speak in Sri Lanka or what the capital city is, let alone whether a majority of the citizens are Buddhist, Hindu, or something else entirely. Indeed, it felt at first like a terribly bad thing that had happened to other people. But then, just as the extent of the carnage was becoming known came the even more startling detail that the attacks on the three churches and four hotels were apparently planned as a kind of response to the assault on the two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in the course of which fifty Muslim worshipers were murdered. And with that single detail everything changed.

The single ideational concept that justifies terrorism in the mind of the terrorist is the ultimate fungibility of human life. Since I’ve been dealing in SAT words these last few weeks, I’ll add another: fungibility is the principle according to which things are deemed solely to have ascribed, not intrinsic, value. Paper money is the easiest example to seize: if I lend you five dollars on Monday and you come back on Tuesday to return the five dollars to me, I can’t sue you in court because the five-dollar bill you returned to me is not the same five-dollar bill I lent to you. But this is not so because it would make no sense to borrow money you were not planning to spend. It’s true because money in our culture is deemed fully fungible and, as a result, the paper bills we use as currency are supposed to have as their sole value the sum they represent, the sum ascribed to them by law. As a result every single five-dollar bill is deemed the equivalent of every other one and you can’t complain if you deposit a fiver in the bank one day and then receive a different bill from the bank the next day when you show up to withdraw your money.

This principle also applies to the eggs you borrow from a neighbor or the cup of sugar, but ethical people would never apply it to human life. To justify terror, however, is to do exactly that and willingly to ignore the fact that none of those people in church on Easter morning in Sri Lanka was responsible for the massacre in New Zealand and thus to feel justified in opening fire because you consider Christians to be as fungible as five-dollar bills and the shooter in Christchurch was presumed at least in some sense to have been a Christian. And that underlying notion makes it a humanitarian issue, not a Sri Lankan one or even a Christian one. This perverse line of logic is not unknown to Americans and it is certainly not unknown to Israelis: when someone is irritated by some or another Israeli policy and chooses to express that pique by blowing up a discotheque despite the fact that none of the young people on the dance floor was responsible for the policy in question—that too is an example of treating human life fungibly.

As a result, attempting to wave away events like this weekend’s horror in Sri Lanka as nothing more than the violent crime of an insane person is to miss the point: if the government is right to consider credible the statement by the Islamic State’s Amaq News Agency tying the Sri Lankan bombings to the shooting in Christchurch, then the principled effort to eradicate terrorist groups and to banish their nation-state sponsors from the forum of nations is not only a practical response, but a deeply moral one. There are, of course, crazy people in the world who do crazy things. We Americans have had lots of examples of that in these last several decades! But terror is not craziness at all: by resting on the ideational foundation that considers all human life truly to be fungible and thus devoid of intrinsic value, terrorism comes to represent the ultimate devaluation of God’s greatest gift. As we approach the end of Passover and prepare to commemorate the destruction of Pharaoh’s armies in the sea, we should all take a moment to reflect on a deep, if unsettling, scriptural truth: violence undertaken to dominate or to oppress is wrong and fully sinful, but acting forcefully to combat evil is both ethically justifiable and, speaking morally, wholly right. Americans know this. Israelis certainly know it and so do New Zealanders. And now Sri Lankans have had the same lesson brutally brought to their own doorstep.

I brought a whole different set of emotions to my contemplation of the fire that destroyed such a significant part of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. It is, arguably, one of the most stunning pieces of Gothic architecture in the world and is surely one of the world’s truly great cathedrals. It took a hundred years to build. (Work was undertaken in 1160, but the project only drew to its conclusion a full century later in 1260.) There’s no reason for that specific detail to confound—work on St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue began in 1892 and the project still isn’t anywhere near finished—yet it somehow feels challenging nevertheless to think of a project spanning that much time and involving that many people. And all of it happening so long ago, and in an age without power tools, bulldozers, or electricity! For Jewish onlookers, on the other hand, the cathedral shimmers in a slightly different light.

For the Jews of France, the twelfth century was a terrible time. When work on the cathedral was still in its third decade, King Philip II expelled the Jews of France from his territory, apparently without the slightest interest in knowing or caring where they went once they left. When work on the cathedral was about halfway done, a council convened by Pope Innocent III—called the Third Lateran Council because it met at Rome’s Lateran Palace—disqualified Jews across Europe from holding public office, required Jews (and Muslims too) to wear distinctive dress so that they could not be mistaken in the street for Christians, and banned Jews from almost every profitable profession except pawnbroking and the sale of old clothes. But it wasn’t solely their economic lives that were under attack, but their intellectual lives as well: on March 3, 1240, when Notre Dame was a mere twenty years away from completion, church officials burst into synagogues across France—March 3 was a Shabbat in 1240—and carted off entire Jewish libraries. Eventually the king of France, Louis IX—who is recognized as a saint both in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, and who is the St. Louis after whom the city in Missouri is named—insisted that the Talmud itself be put on trial. The ancient work was defended by a quartet of able rabbis, but the verdict was a foregone conclusion and then, on a day that lives on in infamy as one of the pre-Shoah world’s most outrageous acts of violent anti-Semitism, twenty-four cartloads of books—some 10,000 volumes, including irreplaceable works that would be considered of inestimable value today—all twenty-four cartloads of books were burnt in public on the Place de Grève, now called the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, just across the river from…Notre Dame de Paris.

Notre Dame itself features one of the most hateful of all anti-Semitic symbols on its front façade, where are depicted Synagoga and Ecclesia (“Church”) as a pair of very different women, the one (Synagoga, of course) dressed in rags, a snake covering her eyes, a broken scepter in her hand, and the tablets of the law slipping from her grasp, and the other, Ecclesia, depicted as a proud, attractive woman standing fully erect while carrying a wine chalice in one hand and a staff with a cross at its top in the other. The insult couldn’t be more clearly put. Nor has it lost its punch over the centuries: even though the statues were destroyed during the Revolution, they were both were restored and replaced during the nineteenth century. They’re still there too, inviting any eagle-eyed visitor to learn the lesson they were set in place to teach: that Judaism is defunct, dead, and disgraced, whereas Christianity is triumphantly and gloriously dominant.

So when I look at Notre Dame and feel the same pang of regret all civilized people surely do when a world-class work of architecture is damaged, I also recall the world that gave birth to Notre Dame and its harshness, its cruelty, its violence and its deeply engrained prejudice against Jews and against Judaism. And I think of poor Synagoga as well, and wonder what she would have to say if she were somehow able to shove the serpent aside and open her stony eyes onto the world. Would the fact that she’s still on display all these centuries later surprise her? And what would she have to say to the thirteen million visitors who walk by her on their way into France’s most famous cathedral? Would the resurgence of anti-Semitism in France surprise her? Would the existence of an independent Israel? Would anything? Those are the questions that the fire at Notre Dame prompts me to ponder on these coming final days of Pesach.

#Notre Dame de Paris #Sri Lanka #Christchurch #Synagoga et Ecclesia

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soundofseventeen · 5 years

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Everything You Are (Yoon Jeonghan)

I am...the worst. I’m literally so busy with everything in my life that I’m AWOL on most of my social media and I haven’t responded to anything or anyone. I’m iffy about this but I needed to post. And a happy birthday to our ever wonderful Kim Mingyu! Credits to owners for the gifs. -Bee

Word count: approximately 5100

Inspired by: Everything You Are

March 31st: present day

“So,” Mingyu said in the midst of slurping his noodles, “what are we doing for the greatest day in the world?” The hotness burned his mouth, but that only prompted him to shove more inside than he could (literally) chew. He almost choked when he locked eyes with Minghao, who only stared at him in confusion.

Jihoon shook his head. “The greatest days in the world are those that don’t require alarm clocks and we won’t be getting those anytime soon.” He swiped a piece Soonyoung’s fish with his fingers, playing with it and then eating it before telling Wonwoo to high five him, which his elder declined and moved away. (Not that stopped him from throwing lettuce.)

“April has great days...earth day, Easter Day, April Fools Day, Arbor Day...Mingyu sunbaenim’s day.” He shrugged. “You know, just to name a few.”

“Those don’t sound like fun though.” Seungkwan.

“No one asked you.”

“Then why are you asking?”

“Are you really gonna brush off my special day?” He placed his chopsticks on the bowl when half of his brothers nodded, sticking out his lower lips in a pout. “But oh, we had to take the maknae to out to a movie and give him this fancy dinner and buy him everything he pointed at.” He ruffled Chan’s hair affectionately and rested his head on said boy’s shoulder.

“Did you have anything in mind?” Joshua.

“We haven’t done a proper birthday in awhile. And we haven’t really talked to any of our other friends besides when we bump into them at the shows, so I was thinking we invite them all and just hang out. Maybe bust out a cake, a piñata.” He counted his fingers as he ticked off his plans. “And either get some takeout or pizza. Oh! And we can hire strippers!” At that, he had everyone’s attention.

“Why the hell…” Minghao shook his head. “Never mind.”

“It’ll be funny to throw them off.” He slammed his hand down in front of Jeonghan who sat across from him.

He jumped, clearly not expecting to be acknowledged by the dongsaeng. “What?”

“Can you invite Y/N?”

“Y/N?”

“Yeah. You remember Y/N, don’t you? The best friend you swore you never had? The one you kept away from us for a long ass time? The one who’s currently somewhere in South America since your last update? How long ago was it that we hung out?”

Jeonghan swallowed subtly. “Oh that Y/N. I’ll see what I can do.” He offered his best version of his mischievous smile. “It has been a while, hasn’t it?” Give or take six months if you don’t count birthdays. “But do you really want that?”

“Hyung, I don’t ask for anything except for clean dishes and rooms. I can’t even remember the last time we had a conversation that didn’t start and end with ‘I miss you’, and that’s just on Instagram!” He rubbed his eyes, “We were all friends too, not just you two.” Mingyu’d mumbled that last part so lowly, anyone would’ve missed it if they weren’t paying attention. But they didn’t know you didn’t speak anymore.

April 6th: three years ago

“Dinosaurs?” Seungcheol asked in disbelief as he saw Jeonghan’s choice in balloons. “You’re getting a grown-ass man balloons in the shape of a dinosaur?”

“It’s his birthday,” Jeonghan shrugged. “You know better than to deny Mingyu anything…”

“You binge-watch The Land Before Time one time-”

“No, apparently it was the Disney movie Dinosaur.”

“Disney did not do a dinosaur movie. I would remember...I had a phase until I was 11!” Though the T-Rex sticker on his phone was a subtle reminder of his younger days in Daegu that he never quite outgrew it.

“If I’m gonna have to fight you on this, at least get me a soda and a bag of chips.” He pulled out his phone, typed in the movie in question and watched Seungcheol’s face scrunch up in disbelief in amusement. “Pay for lunch too while you’re at it.” Jeonghan then turned his attention to the person at the register. “Hi, how are you today?”

“Hi, I’m good. How are you?”

“Another day in paradise. I have a question. Are these all you have?”

“Yeah, a few others came in about-” A quick look at the clock, estimating a time, “maybe 20 minutes ago, and took just about everything. Are dinosaurs like a thing here?”

“Not that I know of.” Jeonghan found himself squinting his eyes. “Are you new here?” He asked when he realized he didn’t recognize you.

“Overall, yeah. I’m not too crazy about switching jobs but I need to survive, especially when I don’t get enough. C’est la vie, you know?”

No, he wouldn’t. The Louis Vuitton wallet in his pocket confirmed it. He watched as you blew up the foil balloons and rang up everything. He didn’t miss the way your eyes widened slightly when he saw the designer logo on the leather material nor when he handed you his American Express card Joshua convinced him to get when they were in America. “Thank you,” he finally said when he signed his name on the receipt.

“Thank you. Have a nice day.”

Not one to make impulsive decisions, he surprised himself by scribbling some information on a scrap of paper and handing it to you. “This is an address from where we work. I don’t know if they’re looking for anyone, but if you tell them Jeonghan sent you, they’ll find you something.” His angelic charms hadn’t failed him yet, and he’d be damned if this started now. “Don’t hesitate to call me, uh-”

“Y/N.”

“Y/N.” He could feel Seungcheol tugging on his sleeves. “Well, it was nice to meet you.”

“Same here. Thanks for this, really.”

“We’ve been there and done that. It’s no problem.”

*April 2nd: present day

Mingyu’s constant question of, “Have you called? Have you called? Have you called?” played like a broken record inside his head throughout the day, irritating him more than he cared to admit, the longer he thought about it. He hadn’t bothered trying because he knew it would go straight to voicemail and it’s not like Mingyu would find out if he didn’t. You wouldn’t have broken your evading streak...well, besides calling for a happy birthday...scratch that, Mingyu would have Jeonghan’s head for that. It was late when he got home, Seokmin’s King Arthur rehearsal taking up more time than he thought it would. He had already flopped into bed, granted, the yellow toothbrush dangling dangerously from his lips as he tried not to gag from the baking soda when he saw his phone light up with a notification. You had uploaded a video from your time on your tour. Jeonghan found himself shaking his head, feeling a smile forming. Who would’ve thought you were gonna end up as a famous YouTuber when you’d struggled with jobs in the past.

He loved seeing how happy you’ve been looking, despite the fact you’d never smile the same way again. He laughed at your introduction, eating whatever you scrambled together at that moment, rambling a bit and then diving into your story, not even realizing he was dialing your number at three am, foam dripping into his sheets and hoping for once in your life, you’d pick up. With every passing ring, he felt nervous. He figured it’d play a key role in where you stood at the moment. Just when he was about to give up, he heard someone pick up, his heart pounding with anticipation on how this could go.

“Hello?”

Jeonghan swore it took you four days to actually show up to Pledis Entertainment studios, and his charismatic streak lived to see another day. And because you were recommended by him, the head of said Pledis only saw it fair that you become an assistant to not just him, but the entire group. It scared you for the first few weeks, what with learning their names to figuring out who spoke which language to who was in charge, you considered yourself lucky that you didn’t crack under the pressure. It wasn’t because they looked much too perfect to be real (though it was a factor), but because your world flipped upside down when you realized Seventeen were kpop idols, not part of the staff.

The boys were friendly, thankfully enough. Seungkwan, Seokmin, and Soonyoung were obviously the ones who welcomed you the fastest and the ones who spoke for everyone else when it came to opinions and the ones who made sure the rest had an ounce of energy to get through the dance or song or whatever required physical exertion. Hansol, Wonwoo, and Jihoon eyed you dubiously at first as if waiting for you to expose yourself as a sasaeng or someone who worked for a sleazy tabloid magazine. They watched your every move whether on break or on call and had Jeonghan not confirmed the story of him reaching out to you, they would’ve continued to give you the cold shoulder until you quit. Once you gained their trust, everything simultaneously fell together and apart.

For starters, any requests made had to go through the ‘95 line. It wasn’t necessarily ice cream for dinner stuff, but if so and so could come in late the next day because they wanted breakfast. Four books and a game console were always required in their dressing room when they were scheduled to perform. They could never decide on what they wanted to snack on before they were due on stage, so you’d find yourself running back and forth to satisfy their cravings. (Though you did notice that vocal unit had a soft spot for gummies.)

Because you were still getting used to the boys’ hectic schedule, they left you in the hands of the Nu’est boys while they attended KCon in the late summer. While it meant learning the names of more boys, you preferred that over fucking things up because of jet lag and possibly getting fired for not being able to follow instructions. (Though the vibe was different than what you were used to, you were glad you treated you just as well as Seventeen. The only difference was that they used your respected honorific instead of just “Y/N” and you were home a little after midnight as opposed to two, three am.)

It was the ongoing prank war between Jonghyun, and Jeonghan that got the ball rolling between you and Jeonghan. Jeonghan had texted you to see if you could swipe Jonghyun’s water bottle and replace it with vodka he had smuggled into Jihoon’s locker and to send him the reaction when he drank it and in return, he’d bring you back something from the (not so) great Los Angeles. Instead, he found himself sending you pictures of Six Flags Magic Mountain, and the famous Santa Monica Beach and how beautiful the ocean looked from above the Ferris Wheel and began looking forward to your text messages and your overall company while you were on opposite ends of the world. He realized how much he missed having someone to talk to that wasn’t the 12 boys he loved and how it had been a while since he felt attracted to someone, felt wanted.

Upon coming home, you surprised each of them with a single balloon and new speakers for when they practiced a new choreography and they treated you to a late late-night dinner and a million stories. (Jonghyun got Jeonghan back the following day by shoving all the baby powder he could manage on the inside of Jeonghan’s towel.)

Jeonghan managed to keep your flirtationship inconspicuous, both on the clock and off although the fact that everyone played a part in treating you special (because one on one things became a common affair.) No one really had a second thought when you started carpooling with him because you lived in the same neighborhood and nobody said anything when he asked you to help him bring all the cup holders containing coffee and tea. And nobody had any questions when you and Jeonghan would smile at your phones during their practice break. (That was mostly due to the fact that he sent links to everyone in their group chat.) He’d wink at you when everyone was watching and playing it off as you being their favorite assistant.

The first time he kissed you was on Halloween during a party hosted by Pledis. It could’ve been the fact that it was a day no one was themselves or because the vibe was stress free but all you knew was that one minute you were fighting over the last can of beer and the next, he had you pressed against the counter and shuddering from the way your hands tangled in his hair. He remembered admitting that he had wanted to do that for a while. He would’ve leaned in again, but he heard someone coming in and he stole the can from you and skipped away, bumping into one of the boys but he forgot who. From then on, he’d kiss you whenever he felt like it, always making sure that no one was around. He liked the feeling of sneaking around, knowing that while recording was going on in one room, he’d be in the broom closet next door with you, fighting for air and grasping at whatever you could. And it was an unspoken thing to never mention what you had going on, which you naïvely agreed to because it was Yoon Jeonghan, the angel and the boy whom you couldn’t say no to.

Jeonghan knew it was reckless and irresponsible what you were doing but he couldn’t stop. It felt different than he was used to. He had someone at the palm of his hand. He felt something for you and he had planned to pursue it as long as possible, although that plan was short-lived.

April 3rd: present day

Why Jeonghan had picked to meet you by the street vendor who sold snow cones, he didn’t know, but it would’ve been better than looking like he was sneaking around. He sipped on his sofa, letting the fizziness calm his nerves. He couldn’t believe you agreed to meet with him. While he waited, he took pictures with the lucky Carats who found him completely by chance and even Jonghyun, who he hadn’t had the chance to say a proper hello to since...it felt like forever ago due to increasing demand of kpop and how they rarely saw each other outside of Pledis because of it. Their war was no longer a counted thing, but they enjoyed pulling their pranks here and there for the sake of nostalgia. (The matching scars on their pinkie fingers being a subtle sign of their idiocy.)

He didn’t know how long he waited, but it was worth it when you tapped his shoulder, waiting for him to respond. He knew seeing you would be a shock, but he didn’t expect for his vocabulary to fly out at the window and stare at you dumbfounded, nor for his first reaction to just reach out and grab you in a hug.

He missed this so much. He was a fool to think he could’ve fucked with your mind and expect you to be okay with it. He lived with the regret of lying to you when he said he wasn’t in love you everyday and when you hugged him back, he swore he saw his future flash before him. You pulled away first, expecting him to say something. “Hi.”

“You called me up at three am just to tell me that. Now, what is it?”

“I miss you.” Well, not the greatest start, but it’s something.

“I miss you all too. How is everyone? Congrats on the comeback by the way. You guys doing great.” You broke eye contact with him, peering past him.

He waved off your praise. “We’re all good thanks. I just wanted to talk to you about Mingyu. He, ah-” He scratched the back of his head. “He just wanted you to know that he’s having a party on Saturday and he’d love for you to stop by.” And he would too. Maybe, he’d be able to talk to you then.

“Saturday?” You racked your brain to see if you had any commitments for the day, coming up short. “I don’t think I’m doing anything, but I’m not sure I should go,” you admitted. Talking to Jeonghan always brought out your honest side, even when it was best to lie, like now. But the irony was that Jeonghan was the master of deception. You’d know. You’d fallen under his spell one too many times to not know him.

“Why?”

You shook your head. “Jeonghan, hhhhhh, never mind. You wouldn’t understand. I’ll see.”

“Wait.” He stepped closer to you, taking off your scarf and readjusting it so it’d look right. “There.” He was close, really close like he could smell the winter mint chewing gum you had in your mouth. If he really wanted to, he could steal a kiss, something he hasn’t done in so long. So he went for it.

Only instead of getting caught up in the moment like you were used to, you stopped him. “I can’t do this again.”

“Why? You afraid your boyfriend’s gonna see you?”

“As a matter of fact, he will, and I’d appreciate me doing myself a favor and not fucking this up too. Goodbye Jeonghan. I have to go; excuse me.”

Late December: three years ago

Jeonghan loved to admit it and he would always say it: he enjoyed watching you stress over birthdays because everything seemed inadequate due to their lavish lifestyle. But he expressed his appreciation from the homemade card and a new phone case and he saw the appreciation in the boys’ eyes when they opened theirs. And once he saw how you were fretting over Joshua (because “what the hell do you give an American boy who sings show tunes and eats his soup with a fork?”) he gave you clues as to what his best friend out on several wishlists. Once you figured out what to get him, you ordered it and the day it was to come, you invited Jeonghan to your place after they were done for the night to get his opinion.

And one moment you were showing him a thing of the Hollywood sign and the next, you were a tangled mess of limbs on the couch and Jeonghan knew he had crossed the line. Even worse was his realization that all he wanted was a friendship with you. So he ghosted you that night and gave you the excuse that Soonyoung needed everyone in the practice early. (Which wasn’t true, of course, because performance unit were recording their song while the remaining two basically had a free day.) From there began the end. Suddenly, he felt that everything you did had an ulterior motive to wanting an actual relationship and he started feeling annoyed with your presence and gave you the cold shoulder.

You knew everything that had happened before that was a mistake but it didn’t stop you from trying for more. Your feelings for Jeonghan ran deep and you would’ve sworn you had fallen in love but you bottled it up, letting him take the lead. The way he ignored you broke your heart and you weren’t as cheerful, nor did you treat the boys to anything like before. Your quieter than usual manner worried them, once Seungcheol going as far as asking if you wanted to see a doctor before they had to leave for the airport, which you declined, blaming your mattress for lack of sleep. You bid them a fun trip and to let you if they needed anything done while they were away.

While away for three months, Jeonghan texted you on occasion, mostly for business (and once in a while to fulfill his pranks) and how to handle some personal affairs. Again the distance made him miss you so he tried to keep you close, but he couldn’t; not when you eagerly replied to him and sent him photo after photo of irrelevant things, once again thinking you could regain what you had. He didn’t really blame you since he was the one who initiated your affair (if you could even call it that) but he knew if he continued to go down that road, the basis of your friendship would go up in flames. So he began looking for companionship in the wrong places, self-destructing himself in a way, not that he told you any of this. As far as you were concerned, he went straight to bed after a long day. He did, however, try to set you up with the pizza girl who delivered to Pledis but when that backfired, you yelled yourself to the point where Jonghyun sent you home until you could talk without killing yourself. (Seventeen still left you with Nu’est at this point because they liked how you worked with them, and it didn’t seem right to let you go with them when Nu’est was just as busy.)

When they came home it was only for a month before they were needed in Japan for promotional purposes and they left you once again. Jeonghan had only vaguely talked about his actions, but still felt guilty and tried to make it up to you while he was gone. The plus side was that he got to know you on a deeper level and understood the way you were and promised to help you help others because he saw it’s when you were your happiest. The long calls started again and it felt like old times. The downside was that no matter how much you opened up to him, he never did, so he never told you about his love interest who was nothing like you and let you believe something could happen when he came back home. True to his word, when he came home, he decided the fastest and easiest way to help people was to start your own YouTube channel and he readily provided the audience.

Two months into your unofficial commitment, YouTube’s management contacted you about being interested in making a career out of it and once you expressed your interest, they wrote down your information and told you they’d be in touch. You burst through the doors to Pledis that day, ready to shout from the rooftops about that, smoke all but visible behind you as you ran to Seventeen’s wing, and when you threw the doors open, there was Jeonghan in the middle of a tonsil hockey game with someone you’ve never seen and it was all you could do to not make a sound and just walk away quietly. You managed to sneak out of the building unseen and call Seungcheol that you came down with something and wouldn’t make it.

For three days, you stayed in bed, not eating or drinking anything, just crying your heart out for letting him lead you on. You would’ve gone the whole week like that, had one of your friends not forged a note from the doctor they worked with saying you needed bed rest and when you came back, they jumped at you, wanting to know why you didn’t say anything about being sick sooner, and you thanked your higher power at how oblivious they could be. And then Jeonghan had the audacity to stoke your hair, playfully telling you you looked like shit and you visibly flinched away from his touch, blaming it on a nonexistent headache. And suddenly your good news didn’t seem so good when you told them and bless Seungkwan’s heart when he asked if it meant you were quitting which you nodded sadly, and that meant a party for everyone.

That party was held the following month, in which your heart felt heavier than the day prior because of how Jeonghan acted like nothing had happened, and you suppressing everything. The boys bought liquor and alcohol like it was the end of the world and you used that opportunity to drink the image away. Not your brightest idea you’ll admit since you ended up hooking up with Joshua when he tried telling you that you had too much to drink and you begging him to make you forget.

And that was only the beginning of your own self-destruction, falling deeper in the rabbit hole, the closer your days as Seventeen’s assistant ended and the closer you became an influencer. The bags under your eyes never faded, feeling more sluggish by the day. You had only coffee in your system, not being to stomach food. Your headache never went away and you couldn’t stop crying. Everything hurt; there was no remedy for your pain.

Naturally, you worried everyone until Jeonghan confronted you and didn’t let you leave until you told him what the hell happened. He pushed you to your limit, finally telling him everything you felt, everything you saw, how nothing seemed to matter, to which he yelled at you, words feeling like venom as he spewed his own thoughts and piercing deeper into your heart and disintegrating parts of your soul. He cared about you, but not in that way. You were a wonderful person but you weren’t his type. He wished he could change everything but he was happy who he was with. He regretted everything because he was afraid this would happen.

You quit the next day but that wasn’t the last time you saw Jeonghan. He didn’t last much longer with his fling and his first reaction to the split was to call you, even though you had to work on your first ever video where you worked with introductions and whatnot. You had the faint naïve hope for reconciliation each time he called you up when something went wrong, each time ignoring the fact you were nothing more than an emotionally unstable human blinded by your love and him taking advantage of that. On Halloween of that year, you quit him cold turkey after sleeping with him one last time, realizing that he was nothing more than someone who fed off your energy and you couldn’t keep living like that, not when you had so much to offer the world and knowing you had a younger audience watching your movements.

It took time but you finally managed to get him out of your system.

You didn’t hate him. How could you when he not only made you but was a friend when you needed him? You wished him nothing but the best because at one point he was the best to you though it took a while to admit you were angry. It took you some time but you dedicated a special video for your situation, not mentioning his name for the sake of his image.

April 6th: present day

During that time, Jeonghan learned just exactly what he lost, and his mistake was meeting you again after those six months. He had grown up and he had hoped you would see past it and give him one more chance. He was lonely; he knew that now. All he wanted was for you to hold him one more time. He remained skeptical about you having a boyfriend though. You never mentioned it to anyone, so he chalked it up to you lying.

He didn’t expect you to show up tonight. He didn’t expect to stop singing his duet with the birthday boy to open the door and you forcing a smile on your face when you saw him. Jeonghan couldn’t even say hello because in that moment tipsy Mingyu came to the rescue and hugged the hell out of you, scolding you for hiding away and not even bother to check in on them and then enveloping you in a bone-crushing hug, swinging you back and forth and actually hearing your bones crack at his strength and laughing like his night couldn’t get any better. Everyone surrounded you, asking questions and catching up and you enjoying yourself, gossiping with Pristin and BlackPink, playing musical chairs with Monsta X, swapping stories with BTS and complaining to Seventeen when Nu’est was arriving because you were here for them. It was everything you needed: a fun night catching up with old friends.

Eventually, you ended up in the kitchen, looking for a water bottle to soothe your throat, coughing in an attempt to catch your breath from laughing so hard and bumping into Jeonghan, who was serving himself a slice of cake. “Great night?” He asked you, motioning for you a take a piece which you accepted.

“The best. I missed everyone. It felt like old times.”

He had to agree. “The only difference is we’re not hiding away, eager to rip each other’s clothes off.”

“And it’ll stay like that.” You wrinkled your nose at his words. You’d never felt awkward around him, but now knowing everything was different, you didn’t know what to say. He knew you well, and at one time you, him. He put his hand over yours as if he knew what you were thinking and you retracted it just as fast. “I-”

“Are you sure you have a boyfriend? The words were out before he could even stop himself. “Or are you just giving me an excuse?”

“Yeah, I do. And I’d appreciate you not doing this anymore. I’m not who I used to be.”

“I love who you used to be.”

“I don’t. You made me hate myself.”

“I’m sorry.” He had never apologized for causing you grief before tonight.

“Y/N! You made it after all!” The familiar voice of Jonghyun filled the room.

“It’s for the one and only Kim Mingyu. I wouldn’t dare.”

“Well my love, you look perfect. I’m sorry I’m late.” He kissed your hair, his eyes widening in pleasant surprise when he saw you weren’t alone. “Jeonghan-ssi! I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything.”

He wanted to call out his seonbae for his latest prank, wanted to tell him he got him good. But judging from the way he pulled his arm around your waist, he knew it wasn’t. The cake in his mouth felt dry and found himself choking when he tried to swallow as you left with him.

He took shots the rest of the night, each time he saw you laughing at his words, every time he saw the look in your eyes, every time he shamelessly kissed you, feeling disgusted with himself because he wasn't courageous enough to do it when he had the chance.

He lost his lover and his friend from his actions.

Behind his truth lied everything you are; he knew that too little, too late.

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missytearex · 6 years

Text

Happy 1D fanworks appreciation day! I thought I would celebrate by sharing my ultimate favourites. So, in no particular order, here we go!

Vanguard by catholicschoolgirl | @catholicschoolgirl --- 40k, Zarry

“But you've been thinking about me,” Harry said. “You've been thinking about me, and now you know that I've been thinking about you. Since before we even met, I've wanted you.”

Zayn smiled wryly, feeling cynical all of a sudden. “And it's that easy?”

Harry nodded. “It should be. People try to make it hard, but I've gotta believe it's that easy. It's everything else about this damn world that's hard.”

This one absolutely destroyed me. It’s set in the 60′s during the Vietnam war. I was completely transported there. Do yourself a favour and have a listen to the fanmix as well. It really adds to the immersion.

there's no fair in farewell by we_are_the_same | @so-why-let-your-voice-be-tamed --- 218k, Larry

When Harry and Louis, two Cupids who have been bringing people together for decades, are tasked with making Soulmates Liam and Zayn fall in love, it proves to be much harder than expected. But maybe, just maybe, that isn’t such a bad thing after all.

This was the first WIP I’ve let myself read in years, and guys, it paid off! I have such a soft spot for it, as I was reading along while it was being posted. Take note that it is complete now! It’s just such an original story. I laughed, I cried, I yelled in capslock. Go read this right now, if you haven’t yet!

Under All Circumstances by lazy_daze | @dazy-laze --- 38k, OT5

When Liam decides to sign up for an online dating website, his main worry is how scary it is to finally have the chance to go out with a boy; he’s definitely not anticipating having to deal with the website glitch that sets him up on a blind date with not just one boy, but four at the same time.

Somehow, the date goes well – so well that the other four convince Liam that they all need to do it again, and for some crazy reason Liam agrees. Maybe it’s because he really likes these loud, ridiculous, frankly gorgeous boys.

But it’s stupid, isn’t it? No matter how good it feels, how much fun Liam has, and how lucky he feels that all these people want to kiss him – five people can’t all go out at the same time. Five-way relationships don’t happen, there’s no way they can all make this work. He’s sure of it.

I can’t emphasize enough how much I love this fic. It’s OT5 with feels, which is one of my favourite things ever, and there is not nearly enough of it in this world.

Walk That Mile by purpledaisy | @daisyharry --- 149k, Larry

Harry stares at him, the line of his jaw standing out scarily. “I wanted to get the most out of this trip so I planned it carefully.” His voice is low and steady and somehow that’s worse than when he was yelling. “So far, you’ve put your sticky fingers on everything I’ve tried to do.”

“Sticky fingers?” Louis repeats, offended. “Are you saying it’s my fault you got stung by a bee? Had you been alone you would have gotten halfway to the Dotty Diner and ran the car off the road because of an allergic reaction, so don’t go blaming me.”

“Polk-A-Dot Drive In,” Harry spits before getting out of the car. He slams the door shut with a deafening reverb and Louis rolls his eyes. - A Route 66 AU where falling in love was never part of the plan.

Larry roadtrip AU! I can only imagine how much research must have gone into writing something like this. Pair that with a brilliant writing style and amazing characterizations and, holy shit, you’ve got one incredible story!

Little Lion Man by Writcraft | @writsgrimmyblog --- 123k, Tomlinshaw

It’s his final year at Hogwarts, and Louis can’t wait to leave for good. He hates being in Gryffindor and he can’t even enjoy a smoke with the Slytherins now his best mate Zayn’s fucked off to Durmstrang. Louis would be completely miserable if not for WWN and Nick Grimshaw. The same Nick Grimshaw Louis has been listening to for years, ever since Nick’s early days on Potterwatch. As Louis tries to negotiate coming of age, sexuality, first times, homophobia in the wizarding world and his growing feelings for Nick, a new evil emerges which puts Louis and Nick in serious danger. Peace can only last for so long and Louis is about to learn exactly how brave he can be as he finds himself fighting for his life, his friends and everything he’s ever loved.

This author is an absolute legend among the HP community, and I feel so blessed that they gave us this epic coming-of-age freakin novel of a Tomlinshaw fic. Because that’s what it is. A novel. Reading it feels like reading a Harry Potter book, with added smut. Plus, I have such a soft spot for Tomlinshaw. A must read.

Let It Be Lightning by alexenglish | @queerlyalex --- 41k, OT5

Niall Horan made a choice when he enlisted with the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. Leave his family and try to make a difference. He started out as a Jaeger Tech, elbow-deep in the greasy guts of the machines that were supposed to save the world, but here he is, five years later, fresh out of the Ranger Academy with another choice to make:

Assemble a team of Rangers able to pilot two or more Jaegers at any given moment. Interchangeable partnerships, all Drift Compatible with each other. The implications of pulling off this project are astronomical, but at the end of the day, Niall's just worried about how many people are going to end up inside his head.

If you’re looking for a little diversity, look no further! This one features non-binary!harry, trans-male!louis and asexual!liam all in one damn place! And everyone is connected through Niall! I mean, that pushes so many of my buttons, I don’t even know where to start!

you came into my life by disgruntledkittenface | @disgruntledkittenface --- 57k, Larry

They stand around talking for a minute and then Jonathan starts to ramble, “Has there ever been, like, an unrequited gay love story in here? Like a Brokeback Mountain moment where, like, someone just fell in love and they didn’t mean to?”

Louis feels bile rise in his throat as Jonathan’s eyes sparkle, pleading for a yes. He manages to look around and see thoughtful looks on his coworkers’ faces before their heads shake no.

“Not here,” Liam says finally.

When the Queer Eye cast and crew sweep into Louis’ small town and fire station to make over his best friend and coworker Liam, Louis’ carefully constructed walls start to fall down and he has to face his fears – and the only guy he’s ever been able to see a future with.

I’ve talked about this one before, and to be honest, I probably won’t ever stop talking about it. It’s a story about Louis’ inner struggles and the people that give him the courage to finally come out of the closet. Every which way you turn, there’s a character love and adore. I will definitely be reading this one again some time in the near future.

I Only Come Alive Under the Moonlight by remivel | @remivel --- 54k, Lilo

Louis knew he hadn't seen action in months, but this was just the universe making fun of him, he was sure of it. Because when he woke up in the middle of the night, he discovered that his new dog was missing, and standing in its place was a very confused, very fit... and very naked man.

Or a romantic comedy with a furry twist. Liam turns into a dog at night, Louis tries to help him get back to normal-- and ends up falling in love somewhere along the way.

It’s a rom-com, guys! And I actually laughed out loud. Imagine Louis waking up to find a naked Liam in the kitchen. And Liam having no idea how he got there, or even who he is. It’s so fun to join their weird little bubble for a while. I could’ve easily read another 50k words of this.

Replay, Darling by lazy_daze | @dazy-laze --- 1k, Lilo

Really, really schmoopy Lilo 'Replay' fic for which I blame onedirectionundergod and the fact that there can never been enough 'Replay' schmoop. (Or porn - oh man, please - but this is version: schmoop.) Thank you to checkthemargins for the title help! <3

This one really is sickly-sweet, but that’s just how I like ‘em! I know it’s short, but my love for Lilo and the whole replay thing makes it one of my favourites.

Easy As All That (Go Around A Time Or Two) by sunsetmog --- 84k, Lilo

Sometimes the hardest part of growing up is figuring out who you are in the first place.

Or: The one where Liam and Louis only kiss when they're on nights out, when it's secret, when there's no one around to see them. If no one knows you're having a sexuality crisis, that means it isn't happening, right?

Or, or: Liam accidentally turns Louis' world upside down.

A high school sixth form AU.

Lilo having a sexuality crisis! I don’t know what more you need me to say, really. When I think about Lilo, this is the fic I think about.

Heart Skips A Beat by harriet_vane --- 27k, Zarry

Harry always kisses everyone, until he starts something he can't finish. (A university AU in which no one goes to class. I am noticing a trend.)

Harry’s characterization is the whole reason I love this fic so much. He absolutely has no freakin idea how to deal with his crush and goes about it all wrong. It’s endearing as much as it is face-palm inducing.

I Could Paint You By Numbers, and Color You In by YinAndYangOnIce --- 12k, Ziall

based off this thing i wrote, basically Niall has a secret admirer and everyone is an idiot

I prefer my Ziall to be of the fluffy variety and this one does not disappoint! It makes me smile like an absolute idiot, which is why you should read it.

Not Happening by scottmcniceass --- 52k, Ziam

Zayn and Liam are roommates. They hate each other. (Most of the time.)

This was the first Ziam I have ever read and boy did it set the bar high. If you’re into enemies to lovers, as I am, drop everything and read this.

#28th appreciation #one direction #1d #mine #fic rec #my recs #my lists

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nbhd-daily · 6 years

Text

Jesse Rutherford’s Blonde Ambition

After seeing success as the lead singer of standout band The Neighbourhood, the 26-year-old So-Cal native decided it was time to try things on his own. &, Rutherford's first solo album, perfectly embodies the personality of the man who was born to be blonde. It's funny, poppy, loose yet precise, and more than anything, honest.

office met with Rutherford at his hotel in New York City a day before his flight back to California to perform in front of a sold out crowd alongside the band that helped him find his voice. Rutherford was open and reflective. He's as transparent as you'd hope any musician would be. He knows the key to success as a musician is being your best and most honest self at all times, all while making great music.

Interview by Khufu Najee

Photos by Mitchell Connell

I want to start off by saying I love the album.

Thank you.

I was in LA with my girlfriend when I first heard it and on that same morning, I actually dyed my hair blonde.

Yo (laughs). That’s sick.

True story.

So cool. It looks great, by the way.

Thank you, man. But that leads me to my first question. "Born To Be Blonde." What was the inspiration for that song? I know you were very specific about starting the album with that song. What went into that thought process?

The general statement just kinda means be whoever you wanna be. It’s just kind of a twist on how to say that or my particular way of saying it. I felt like it was a chance for me to be as stupid and as smart as I am — or as I think I might be — all in one go. I don’t know. It just kind of happened. It was a poem. It was a poem that I wrote while The Neighbourhood was recording our Wiped Out album. It was just a poem. I wrote it one day and or one night. I don’t even remember. I just know it was during that process cause I was blonde at that point and I was really psyched about it. It was just the way it made me feel I guess. Wrote it down. Maybe 75% of it came from that initial poem. The last 25% — the bridge and shit — was written in the studio as I was recording it. But I tried doing it a couple times. It was going to be a Neighbourhood song a long time ago. Nothing ever happened to it.

It’s very interesting how often I hear a good portion of songs that we hear on someone’s new album are actually old.

Yep. And that comes with age and with time. It’s crazy you say that cause I’ve thought about that a lot recently too and it’s given me a new hope with writing music because I probably have hundreds of songs that are not released and now I know sometimes I can go back in the fucking Rolodex. Oh okay. Wrote it in 2013. It’s 2018. Now they're ready for it. That’s how it goes sometimes.

You have to be ready to let it go.

You have to be on time. You can’t be early in this game. That doesn’t get you anywhere. At least from my experience. I feel like there have been moments where I’ve been like well I did that first and then something else happens and someone else does it. And maybe they did it at a better time. Maybe they had it more refined. Maybe it was better than the version I had. Or the type of song. Or the type of sound. Sometimes you gotta wait for the right time.

The 2014 mixtape with the band. Two features I want to ask about. You had Gerald and Kossisko. Two really good friends of mine.

Oh, you grew up in the bay?

Yeah, man.

Dope.

So, I’m curious. How did the Bay Area connection come about?

(Laughs).

It's always a good answer when they laugh before answering.

Well, Kossisko, 100s at the time, that was through our friend Matthew. Kirk, who has a label now, runs it with Matthew’s partner label.

What’s the label?

Bad Habits.

Okay.

And Matthew, he’s like my LA homie. He’s like my first LA friend. When I was like 19 trying to rap and putting my shit on the internet, he was the first dude from the city — cause I’m from the suburbs outside the city — he was like the first dude from the city to be like, yo, you’re tight, come hang out with me and my friends. And those friends ended up being 4e, who helped me produce the mixtape and then helping The Neighbourhood do our Wiped Out album. It was a long process. That was, you know, six or seven years ago. It was a while ago. I met Kossisko through him.

He’s a good dude, man.

Yeah, dude. He’s smooth too.

Staying on collaborations, on that same mixtape, you had Danny Seth. And I noticed on this new album, you had MD$, both of whom are big on the music scene in London. How did that connection come about?

Danny was also through Matthew.

Of course he was. Danny lived in LA for a bit, yeah?

Yeah, and Matthew was fucking with him for a minute. I could give you Matthew's number if you want (laughs). He’s in with everyone.

Collabs are important. How did you go about choosing who to work with on this album?

Well, I met Dylan Brady, who produced the majority of the project. I think I was playing a show and Kirk came out. Kirk met with Dylan. I think we were in St. Louis, where Dylan is from and he just walked in and I saw him. I know this may sound very surface but I basically just judged a book by the cover. Like, clothing and how you present yourself, matters. Dylan walked in and he just had this steez that I’d never seen before and I was like there’s something about this guy. Then I ended up hearing his music and it was so ambitious and unique and at the time I was trying to figure out how to find my own lane and find my own sound and do my solo thing. So we got in the studio together, we had a week in Paramount in LA, five days, and we ended up doing seven songs, and about four or five ended up on the record. It was a solid week for sure. He’s a great producer. He can really do anything. He’s unlike anyone I’ve ever seen before. He’s a fucking machine, dude. He’s nonstop. Dylan kinda kicked it off. We started with this sound. I worked with Daytrip a couple times before when they were back in LA and we did a couple records but nothing that was my favorite. They were amazing doing what they do but I wasn’t pleased with what I was doing on the songs.

The mind of a perfectionist, man.

Right? But then they randomly sent me a 30-pack and I was like this is fun. So I went through them, picked ten that I liked, recorded on about four or five really quickly and two of them ended up being on the album. MD$, that was just another random session when they were in LA.

MD$ is fire, dude. That’s good music.

They make really good music.

London, for the most part, is known for Grime Rap. When you think rap in London, you think grime. But what they do isn’t grime. It’s so dope and so different.

Very musical.

Very musical. Absolutely. I really want to meet the dude.

He’s a mystery. You never saw him?

No.

He’s cool. He has a swag to him for sure.

How old were you when you decided on music?

I started playing drums when I was in the eighth grade. High school came around and I met this guy who became my buddy. I grew up in a suburb where it’s like hard core punk kinda shit and I just wanted to be a part of that. But my balls took forever to drop and finally when they did I started singing. Voice is still pretty high so they only dropped so far (laughs). But I would say around 17 is when I took it seriously.

And around that age is when you knew this was what you were going to do with your life?

Yeah. Especially once I stopped doing hard core and started making really bad pop rap. I had to start somewhere though (laughs). I’ve never really thought twice about thinking twice. This is all I’ve ever done. And luckily it’s worked. It’s always felt so good. It’s the only thing I’ve ever felt natural at. I’m not that great at video games. I’m not that great at fucking school, all the cliche shit that everybody says.

Knowing what you know now, what would you tell that younger self?

Don’t get those tattoos on your right arm (laughs). Save that real estate because you’re going to want some other shit some day. Maybe don’t get any of the tattoos so early. But 17 year old me, looking at 26 year old me, with like neck tattoos and shit, would be like "yo this guy is so sick what the fuck.” I know that really surface level but I think the boxes you in. If I’m in the whitely tatted lane, then okay. I did it to myself. Other than that, just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s working.

Are you familiar with the word synesthesia?

No.

It’s basically a condition, although I don’t know why they call it that cause it almost gives it a bad connotation. But, Lorde has it, Frank Ocean, few other artists. Basically, you can taste, smell, see colors, in ways other people can’t. It’s amazing.

Me and my team talk about that all time time. We try to relate things to colors when it comes to Neighbourhood music and my own music. We try and connect songs to seasons. Some songs always seem to fit with certain seasons. Day or night. That’s a big one.

Very true. I have music I only listen to at night time. Or when the sun isn’t shining.

That’s the struggle of being asked to play a festival, when you make night music, but they give you the noon slot. How do you like the sun, yo? Yeah, this dark ass song is going to sound great while this bright ass sun is turning my pasty skin bright red.

What color would you say your music is?

I feel like I have to just say rainbow because it has to be the opposite of rainbow because The Neighbourhood has always done the black and white thing. But I don’t know. I really do like yellow. I think yellow is a really cool color. And it doesn’t even have to be bright yellow. Just a nice warm yellow that kinda has some warmth to it.

I’m not going to ask you who your musical inspirations are cause I think that shit is corny as fuck but I am curious where do you draw inspiration from? Are you the kind of dude who has a movie playing on silent in the studio at all times?

No. I’m terrible at watching movies. I need to start watching more. I just started on Apocalypse Now.

Started. Didn’t finish?

Not yet. I’m about half-way through. It's a slow process for me. But inspiration… It’s funny cause I do like Spongebob (laughs) but I feel like a sponge. I just absorb a lot of shit around me. Sometimes I can’t even pinpoint it. It’s just like shit that’s coming at me. Between the different styles and sounds of music that I like and what’s fucking constantly stewing in my head. I just feel like I can do all these different types of music, so I need to do it. And sometimes I fail. And sometimes I think, from what I’ve seen from the internet and from what fans tell me, I think I nail it sometimes. With this project especially, the title alone, just using &. Calling it that left it open to anything. Cause you can’t just have that and nothing else. There has to be something before and something after and you know that. So that alone it’s just like, I’m a sucker for that kind of shit. I just love hooks. I want everything to be a hook. A photo, to a fucking pair of shoes, the title of something, hooks only. I did a book two years ago I called that. It’s a collection of photos I took with my friend, ended up turning it into a book. I’ve always called that book the Bible of Jesse. In that book, there’s no words. All pictures. Just me wearing a whole bunch of shit. It’s all over the place. But that’s how I felt. That’s who I am. I think a lot of people are like that. Especially young people. With the internet how are you just gonna be one thing in this shit?

You have to do everything. It’s the norm now.

You have to. Remember when Drake came out. And he was singing and rapping? People were confused. But now? You can’t not do that (laughs). It’s all that. Which is great. It’s fucking incredible. I feel like now more than ever music is ready for me. You know what I mean? And I’m ready for it. I don’t feel old, I just feel grown enough to just be like, oh yeah I can do all this shit. I’ve been doing this shit for years. It’s just about catching the right moment and knowing what to do. Last time I caught the moment I didn’t know how to hold onto it. I never know how it’s gonna work anymore. I never know what song is going to work. You said you love Barbie and Ken. I was terrified to put the song out because it’s so, so opposite to the character of Jesse Rutherford from The Neighbourhood is known for.

Well, that’s what a solo project should do, innit? Show that other side?

I think so. I hope so.

#the nbhd #the neighbourhood #jesse rutherford #office magazine

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imaginetonyandbucky · 6 years

Note

‘we’re on a roadtrip with some friends and we have to share a hotel room and there’s only one bed and a whole lot of sexual tension’ AU Would be nice if it was smutty. Steve and Sam totally set them up. Later Bucky and Tony realise they are both fools since they've been in love with each other since the beginning of their acquaintance.

A/N: I went way overboard on my first run at this prompt - that version is going up on AO3.

So Open Up, I’m Climbin’ In

“You know, Sam,” Tony groused, “just because Rhodey deputized you as my new best friend when he deployed doesn’t mean you have to drag me along on all your shenanigans.”

“C’mon, Tony,” Sam pled. “Just see what they have to say.”

“You hardly know these guys and you wanna get stuck driving three quarters of the way across the country with them?”

“Steve was my partner on that group project from hell in my Structural Integrity class last semester,” Sam responded. “We bonded through adversity. I kinda feel like I owe the guy.”

“But Bruce and I are at an important place in our project.” Tony knew he was making excuses, but he had a bit of an ulterior motive.

Bruce Banner, Tony’s ‘science bro’ was a pre-med major with a focus on neurobiology; it had been his idea to explore the possibility of developing an external neural interface to control an upper limb prosthetic. This would allow for less expensive prosthetics to be produced.

Bruce reached out to Tony for his programming and electronics skills, and they’d managed to talk a couple of their professors into supporting the effort. The fact that Stark Industries had made quite a large donation to the school recently certainly didn’t hurt; thanks to this act of quasi-nepotism, Tony and Bruce were able to score a private lab area and even offer compensation to their test subjects. Enter J.B. Barnes, a fellow student who was missing the lower two-thirds of his left arm due to a car accident the previous year.

[more under the cut]

Tony found himself making excuses to hang out in the lab, because Barnes was absolutely gorgeous. Long, dark hair, a strong jawline, legs that went on for days, and stunning blue-grey eyes. Sure, he had a bit of a Resting Murder Face going on, and he didn’t talk much; which was a shame, since Tony could have listened to that smoky baritone read an error log and still probably pop a boner. The day he walked in the lab to see a shirtless Barnes – Bruce was measuring his residual limb in order to start building the prosthetic – was one Tony still replayed in his mind.

So it was a hell of a shock to walk into the diner where he and Sam had agreed to meet Rogers and his friend and see a familiar face: Rogers’ pal was none other than Barnes. Apparently the two of them had known each other since they were kids and had always wanted to go see the Grand Canyon. Rogers – a shrimpy, artsy type – did most of the talking, while Tony wondered what he’d done to piss off Lady Fate lately.

“Me ‘n Buck were never much for the crazy Spring Break beach vacations, but figured this would be kind of a last hurrah before we graduate and start our careers.” Rogers explained. “Figure with another driver or two, we can actually make the trip without killing ourselves or each other. So, are you guys in?”

Tony had never done anything like this before – his family vacations had involved exotic locations and having every wish catered to – but it sounded like an adventure to him and having Barnes as a travel companion was a definite bonus. Sam was up for it as well, so they hashed out a basic route and other logistics. And just a few days later, they were piling into Rogers’ car and getting on the road.

They had to average about six hundred miles a day to get there and back within the nine and a half days they had available to them, so there wasn’t much time for sightseeing. They hit a couple of landmarks along the route – Niagara Falls and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis were the highlights on the way out, and Sam had lobbied hard to stop at the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio on the way back. But the majority of the trip was spent in the car and in close quarters.

While Tony had loaded his tablet up with movies and books, he found himself being pulled out of his shell, mostly by Sam but also by his other travel mates as they talked to pass the time. Bucky and Steve were Brooklyn boys, born and bred and Sam was happy to talk about growing up in Baltimore with his extended family.

Tony was probably the most reticent, as just about anything he said would come out sounding like he was a spoiled brat. After all, the name Stark was emblazoned on skyscrapers on both coasts, and he’d grown up in a mansion with servants at his (well, his parents’) beck and call. But he had a few innocuous anecdotes he felt comfortable sharing, and was able to hold up his end of the conversation well enough.

One bit of surprisingly pleasant news was that Barnes was both gay and single; he’d recently broken up with his boyfriend, who sounded like a real asshole. Tony knew a little something about that; after a disastrous attempt at a romantic Valentine’s Day the month before – romance and Ty Stone apparently being polar opposites – Tony had given his own boyfriend the boot.

He and Bucky – Tony had finally accepted the idea that a grown man was going by the name ‘Bucky’ – also found themselves bonding over a love of science fiction, arguing good-naturedly about the best novels by the Golden Age writers vs the New Wave and more modern writers.

Both of them had been inspired by their reading to pursue their majors - civil engineering for Bucky and mechanical engineering and computer programming for Tony.

“In fact,” Tony said, “the computer on Star Trek and Mike in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress got me interested in the idea of artificial intelligences. I’m working on something along those lines myself. Remind me to show you Dum-E when we get back.”

“You named an artificial intelligence Dummy?” Bucky laughed and shook his head. “Better let Banner have the naming rights on the rig you guys are working on.”

Tony bristled for a moment, then realized Bucky was just teasing him; apparently they’d reached that point in their burgeoning friendship. “It stands for Digital Mechanical Entity,” he explained. “He’s a robot with a learning algorithm. Has independent control of his arm and camera. I’m working on voice commands at the moment.”

“Sounds impressive. Maybe I could meet Dum-E sometime.” Bucky smiled, and Tony felt his heart skip a beat. Thankfully, Sam interrupted with the announcement of an impending pit stop, and Tony worked to regain his equilibrium.

“You’ve got a thing for Bucky, don’tcha, Tones?” Sam murmured as they stood together contemplating their junk food options. Steve and Bucky were checking out, having already restocked.

“No! Well, not really. Maybe?” Yes, the guy was practically sex on legs, and they were getting along pretty well now that they’d found they had had interests in common. However, Tony didn’t want to put that possible friendship in jeopardy by hitting on the guy and making the rest of the trip awkward. “But nothing’s gonna happen. He’s way out of my league.”

“Uh-huh.” Sam crossed his arms and looked unimpressed.

“Just drop it, Samwise. I don’t want to ruin the party.”

They made it to the Grand Canyon on Tuesday around noon and spent a few hours exploring the park, with plans to stay the night in Flagstaff before heading back home Bucky made a suggestion to visit the Lowell Observatory that evening. Tony was game, but – after exchanging a mysterious look – their companions demurred. Sam had called ahead to the hotel and booked the last two rooms, saying that they’d have the front desk hold a key for them. Tony had been sharing a room with Sam up to this point in the trip, but supposed he could keep his developing crush on Bucky under wraps for one night.

The Observatory tour was entertaining and informative; they even got to take a peek through the Pluto Discovery Telescope. As they walked back to the car, Tony reflected on how nice it was to spend time with someone who liked the same things he did. It was almost as if they’d been out on a date together or something. Not that Tony had a lot of experience with that.

The two of them stopped to grab a bite to eat on the way back to the hotel and lost track of time; it was almost eleven o’clock by the time he and Bucky got back to the hotel. The front desk clerk slid the room keycard over once they’d identified themselves. “Have a lovely evening, gentlemen. Breakfast runs until ten in the morning.”

“Son of a bitch - I bet Sam did this on purpose!” Tony fumed, looking around as he stepped in the room which contained a single king-sized bed. Quickly assessing his options, he added “Listen, I’ll grab the bedspread and curl up in the chair or something.”

“Nah, that’s okay.” Bucky replied, giving Tony an assessing look. “But why do you say this was on purpose?”

Tony felt his cheeks heating as he replied, “Sam seems to think I’ve got the hots for you.” He hadn’t intended to be quite so blunt, but the long travel days must’ve gotten to him.

Instead of laughing, or looking annoyed or disgusted, Bucky stepped right into Tony’s personal space. “Well, do ya?” His question was unexpectedly soft, and somehow hopeful.

Tony, at a loss for words, simply nodded slightly. “Good. ‘Cause the feeling’s mutual,” Bucky purred, tilting his head down to capture Tony’s lips in an exploratory kiss. His exhaustion evaporated as the kiss moved from something cautious and unsure to confident and insistent.

Tony opened his mouth eagerly to Bucky’s questing tongue, reaching out to pull him closer, to feel that magnificent chest pressing against his. Bucky threaded his fingers through Tony’s hair to hold his head at the perfect angle, deepening the kiss.

A hot rush of want ran through Tony’s veins as he realized Bucky was walking him backwards towards the bed, licking and nipping at his neck and collarbone. Tony wondered for a moment if they were jumping into the physical aspect too soon; but then again, the time they’d spent together easily equalled four or five dates, and wasn’t that usually the ‘make it or break it’ point? But despite the pounding of his pulse and the heat and press of Bucky’s hardon against his leg, Tony wanted to clarify something; make sure things didn’t go too far too fast.

“Just so you know, I wasn’t planning on getting laid on this trip, so I’m fresh out of condoms and lube.”

“Same here,” Bucky replied with a rueful grin, panting slightly. “But I can think of a coupla other things we could do. I’ve been told I give good head – wanna find out for yourself, darlin?”

Tony’s knees went weak, as much at the unexpected endearment as the offer itself. “Sure, as long as I can return the favor, sunshine.”

Bucky grinned and tugged at the waistband of Tony’s jeans. “Drop ‘em.”

Tony was eager to comply; hastily pushing the covers back to sit on the edge of the bed. He grabbed a pillow for Bucky to kneel on before stripping out of his jeans and briefs. Trembling with anticipation, Tony couldn’t hold back a moan as Bucky sank to his knees and ran his hand up Tony’s thigh.

“I figured you’d be a vocal kinda guy,” Bucky smirked. “S’always good to be appreciated.” He wrapped his hand around Tony’s cock, giving it a few firm strokes before flicking his tongue against the tip. That wrung a gasp from Tony, his hands flying out to grab blindly at Bucky’s shoulders.

“God, yes, more,” he begged, as Bucky began sucking his dick. Bucky hadn’t been exaggerating as to his skills; those plush, sinful lips and talented tongue were taking Tony apart. The brush of Bucky’s long hair against his thighs combined with the slow circles his thumb was rubbing into Tony’s hipbone just added to the sensory overload. He could feel the orgasm building in his system as Bucky bobbed up and down, taking practically all of Tony’s cock into his hot, wet mouth.

“M’ getting close, sweetheart,” Tony gasped. “Where do you want me to come?” He figured it was only polite to ask.

Bucky pulled off for a moment, squeezing the base of Tony’s cock tight. “Wanna taste ya, sugar. Suck every last drop outta you.”

The dirty talk combined with Bucky swallowing Tony to the root was his undoing; Tony came hard, his keen of pleasure probably waking the neighbors. Bucky gentled him through the aftershocks; but instead of the lassitude he’d expected after such a strong climax, Tony felt energized, hungry to give Bucky the same pleasure he’d just received.

“Allow me to join in the choir singing your praises,” Tony said, responding to Bucky’s questioning look. “How and where do you want me to go down on you, hot stuff?”

“It’s not gonna take long,” Bucky admitted. “Might as well get in bed, so’s we can fall asleep after.” He stood and shimmied out of his jeans with more grace than Tony would have expected. He paused before taking off his shirt, and gave Tony a raised eyebrow. Tony realized he was still wearing his AC/DC concert tee.

Tony skinned the shirt over his head before he could reconsider; his scars were nothing compared to what Bucky had gone through. When he caught the brief widening of his companion’s eyes, he explained. “Heart murmur. Had to repair a valve or two, no biggie.” It was easy to minimize now, a year or so after the fact. “But enough about me. Time to focus on you, sweetheart.”

Bucky finished undressing – a simple flesh-colored sock covered his stump – and stretched out on the bed, an anticipatory grin on his face. His cock was hard and throbbing; apparently he got turned on by giving head. Good to know. Tony prowled up Bucky’s body, claiming a hard, fierce kiss before moving down to nuzzle at his neck, sucking marks across Bucky’s collarbone. His hands roamed restlessly over his partner’s body, tweaking a nipple here, reaching under to grab a handful of ass there, doing any and everything that seemed to drive Bucky even further into the throes of passion.

Bucky wasn’t exactly a quiet bedmate either; an almost continuous stream of gasps and moans pushing from his lips as he rutted shamelessly against Tony, leaving smears of precome on their skin. “C’mon, darlin,” he begged, “need to feel your mouth on my dick. Show me just what kind of a cocksucker you are.”

Bucky was both longer and thicker than what Tony was used to – which, admittedly, was only Ty, and one anonymous mutual handjob outside a club late one night – , but ‘adapt and overcome’ wasn’t Tony’s motto for nothing. He wrapped his fingers tightly around the base of Bucky’s cock, stroking up and down as he licked and sucked, swirling his tongue around the tip, alternating hollowing out his cheeks and pressing Bucky’s cock hard against the roof of his mouth.

Bucky touched the back of Tony’s head. “Can I? Promise I won’t push or hold ya down or nothin’.” Tony hummed his assent, and Bucky carded his fingers through Tony’s hair as he continued bobbing up and down. “Wanna come down your throat, sugar. Is that okay?”

Tony responded by going as deep as he could, then coming back up with a grin. “Toldja I’d return the favor.” He took a breath, then swallowed down as much of Bucky’s cock as he could, fighting his gag reflex. Bucky was true to his word; even as he came; shaking and shuddering with a low, staccato moan, he didn’t hold Tony down or push him even deeper. Tony looked up to see a sleepy, satisfied expression on Bucky’s face as he murmured “C’mere, darlin’.”

“So, in all that paperwork I filled out for your project,” Bucky drawled, as they got settled into a comfortable, spooning position, “I don’t recall nothing about a ban on fraternization. Is that right?”

“As far as I can remember. I’ll check with Bruce in the morning.” Tony tried not to read too much into Bucky’s question, but fell asleep with a hopeful heart that whatever was going on between them could grow into something more than a one night stand.

“This,” Tony declared as he looked around the table, “is the best birthday ever. Thank you.” He felt tears of joy stinging his eyes as he leaned over and blew out the candles on his cake. What a contrast from the year before, when it had been just him and Rhodey and a stale cupcake from the dorm vending machine. Or even just a few months earlier, before that crazy road trip, when he spent his weekends in front of his computer instead of spending time with people he cared about, and who cared about him.

Sam had made the cake from his momma’s recipe, and once it was cut and passed around, out came the gifts. Bruce had bought him a gigantic coffee mug, and Bruce’s girlfriend Betty, who Tony had only met a couple of times, had knit him a scarf. Steve presented Tony with a sketch of his favorite building on campus, and Rhodey – whose presence was gift enough in Tony’s opinion – gave him a vintage physics book dated 1898, the same year the electron was discovered.

Bucky had given Tony his present over breakfast – a bronze bracelet depicting the astrological symbols of Pluto and Charon. Inside, it was inscribed “I am your moon, you are my moon.” It was a perfect reminder of their visit to Lowell Observatory and the events of that night; they’d both gotten a little misty eyed when Tony opened the box.

Now, Bucky was sitting right next to Tony, his right arm wrapped casually around Tony’s waist as he slowly ate using the latest iteration of the prosthetic in a real-life test. Tony wasn’t sure what he was prouder of; the work that he and Bruce had put into creating the prosthetic and the interface, or the work Bucky had put in to learn how to use it. Regardless, he found himself cheering internally each time another bite of cake was successfully consumed.

“Wanna try feeding me a bit, sunshine?”

Bucky looked over at Tony’s empty plate. “Uh-huh - you’re just anglin’ to get more cake, aren’tcha?” But he focused his attention and maneuvered the fork over in front of Tony, only to smear the frosting on his nose. “Oops! Sorry, sweetheart,” Bucky apologized, but he couldn’t keep a straight face for long as he leaned in to lick the errant icing off

“Fine motor control test complete.” Bruce commented dryly, as the rest of the table dissolved in laughter. Tony hadn’t needed to make a birthday wish this year; he had everything he wanted right here.

#winteriron #tony x bucky #tony stark #bucky barnes #college au #road trip #eventual smut #prompts #polizwrites #Anonymous

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secretradiobrooklyn · 4 years

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HALLOWEEN RADIO | 10.31.20

Secret Radio | Halloween special 10.31.20 | Hear it here.

Artwork by Paige, Liner notes by Evan except * means Paige

1. Sam the Sham - “Little Red Riding Hood” *

I had to make the case to Evan that this was a Halloween song, but I justify with the fact that 1.) this song uses the phrase “spooky ol’ woods” and 2.) many years ago, Sleepy Kitty played a festival on Cherokee Street that wasn’t a Halloween show but it happened to be the Saturday before Halloween. Recognizing our responsibility, we scrambled to throw together costumes and realized that if we just got a wolf mask and paws we already had everything in our wardrobes to throw together the Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs LP cover drawing of Red and the wolf. Evan says he doesn’t like Halloween but it’s only because once he commits, he commits completely. One of my favorite moments of the night was spotting Evan that night, several hours after our set in the afternoon, having a completely serious and sincere conversation with a friend – wolf nose and paws still intact. This was pre iPhone days, but I tracked down an image and I’m gonna put it on our fake radio insta. Thus, Little Red Riding Hood is in fact a Halloween song.

2. Roky Erickson - “I Walked with a Zombie”

Every year, reliably, Paige’s dad Ned tells us we should cover “I Walked with a Zombie,” and each year we somehow don’t do it. So this live version of the song is for him, just in case this is the closest we ever get.

Halloween tag

3. Steve Martin - Little Shop of Horrors soundtrack - “Dentist!”

Sure, an alarmingly large and hungry, sharp-toothed plant is scary. But is it as terrifying as a dentist who delights in the pain he inflicts? “I thrill when I drill a bicuspid” — shiver!

4. Hocus Pocus soundtrack - “Sarah’s Theme”

Our definition of a good Halloween movie is way less horrifying than it is lightly spooky, so “Hocus Pocus” is just about ideal for our purposes. This is the sound of Paige’s delighted Halloween youth… though we also just watched it again. Holds up!

5. The Beatles - “Mr. Moonlight”

Paige pointed out that this is essentially a religious song to the moon — a song of praise, devotion, and submission to a greater power.

6. Quasi - “Ghost vs. Vampire”

I know that Quasi has had a long and illustrious career, but my fandom is frozen at this pinnacle of mystical bummerness. I learned so much about being creatively sad from Sam Coomes.

7. Rocky Horror Picture Show - “Sweet Transvestite”

8. The Velvet Underground - “The Gift”

Didn’t realize this was a Halloween song until tonight. If Hitchcock is proper Halloween, which I vote a definite yes, then “The Gift” is ultra Halloween.

9. Bauhaus - “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”

I feel like I have to say psychic hello to my friend Joseph Grady, who first introduced me not just to the coolness of Peter Murphy but to the allure of vampires generally. I wore my nails and my coats long. We talked about what the vampires were up to that night. We had some truly perfect nights together.

10. The Bitter Tears - “Murdered at the Bar”

An invaluable prize from being in a certain scene in a certain set of years in Chicago with the School of the Art Institute crowd — grad and undergrad. We all loved this song, and 15 or so years later, “we all” turns out to be a very specific and much-loved crew of people I miss and love. Except for Chris Shea, who I love and get to hang out with here in the city. This song is for him especially.

11. Phantom of the Opera - Korean cast - “Point of No Return”

We had this epiphany accidentally. As I recall, we watched the movie version of “Phantom,” and I was distinctly not impressed, but then Paige put on the French-Canadian version and we were both fascinated by how different it was. That led us into Phantom Internationalé, wherein we just looked up versions from all over the world. It is amazing: each version is both militantly like and distinctly unique from the others. The Korean Phantom emerges as the most singular from among the versions we heard, and “Point of No Return” an emotional height.

Meet Me in St. Louis - “Tootie the Horrible”

One of the greatest Halloween scenes in the history of cinema in our book.

12. Donovan - “Season of the Witch”

13. “The Dweller of the Cave” * I Found this tape at my parents’ house this summer while we were delayed in Illinois between March and whenever the van got fixed and we drove back. Rediscovering this tape may be why you’re listening to this whole fake radio spooktacular tonight. Hi to Stewart and Jill.

14. Science Fiction Double Feature *

15. Dr. Who Theme Song*

16. Red Dwarf Theme Song*

The previous 3 songs were woven into a medley for Sleepy Kitty’s KMNR Freaker’s Ball. It’s one of life’s great pleasures for a band to play Freaker’s Ball, we literally wound around a wooded road to find some Elk’s Lodge or something full of college kids DECKED THE HECK OUT in EPIC COSTUMES ready to freakin’ get down. Never have I been closer to being the band in the prom scene of a 90s movie than at a Freaker’s Ball. We met some rad folks through the KMNR scene, and if I’ve ever told you about my custom vocal pedals, Colin of CroyTone Audio was one of those rad folks we met one of those magical nights. Also, raise your hand if your love Red Dwarf!

17. Ghostbusters

Paige: “I had this reflector, this flat reflector that was some scrap of something that Ned got from Honeywell. I would play Ghostbusters, and I was like: ‘This is a ghost trap.’ It was SO REAL to me. It was this flat reflector, like a bike reflector, and I would like, like, set traps. And I’d be like, ‘Don’t move my ghost trap!’ I would set the ghost trap, and it was like fishing for ghosts. But that was me playing. I would, like, wait. …I don’t know if it worked or not.”

“I’m not sure if this is me imagining this or not, but I’m pretty sure there was a day where I was like, ‘I feel like this trap’s not working.’ But I also feel like I was like, ‘But how would I know? They could be all inside. This is either full — or empty.’”

Vertigo soundtrack

18. The Fall - “Frightened”

“I don’t wanna dance, I wanna go home” — Fri-dund!

19. Goblin - “Zombi” Title Theme

20. Karen Elson - “The Ghost Who Walks”

I think we got this record at Third Man Records when we were playing in Nashville. Sean’s new residence!

Paige: “Karen Elson is tall, beautiful, an interesting musician, AND she has red hair. That’s crazy. What are the chances that you would have all of those things? Talk about a blue moon!”

21. Eartha Kitt - “I Want to Be Evil”

“The only etchings I’ve seen have been behind glass.”

22. Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts - “The Pigeon”

“Old skies you flapped through are no more.”

We would like to give a heartfelt hello to Yona Schimmel, mostly out of reach for now. We mourn every missed knish.

23. Scott Walker - “The Seventh Seal”

Paige didn’t know this was a movie, she thought this was just a cool song about a guy playing chess with death.

24. Groovie Ghoulies - “(She’s My) Vampire Girl”

I love that he puts two Bazooka Joe jokes right in the middle of the song.

25. Black Sabbath - “Paranoid”

Sometimes you need priests to summon spirits.

26. Fantasia - “A Night on Bald Mountain”

This is a song that seriously disturbed Paige when she was young. She thought that they did this whole demon thing every single Saturday. For me, it made such an impression that, when each of my young friends and I improvised who we were — “I’m Darth Vader!” “I’m a Cylon Raider!” my take was “I’m Night on Bald Mountain”! And I would open my arms wide and pretend that I was an entire sharp mountaintop transforming into a giant demon with wings, and I would always be the biggest and baddest and scariest creature of all, no matter what they thought. Bald Mountain beats Batman every time.

29. “Jump in the Fire”

Or as I say whenever the occasion warrants: “Jump in the show-AHH!”

28. Rogers & Hammerstein “Pore Jud Is Daid”

29. Barry Adamson - “Something Wicked This Way Comes”

I cannot recall what brought this album to my ears… I suspect it was something I got in my inbox when I worked at The Rocket. This whole album is full of heavy musical grooves and heavy mental movement. It’s a rare pleasure in

30. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I Put a Spell on You”

This is straight-up one of my favorite recordings of anyone ever. And when I eventually saw it enacted in “Stranger than Paradise,” I was blown away by how fundamentally Eastern European it sounds. Every sound he makes with his voice creates new characters.

31. The Shining, “Midnight, the Stars & You”

Happy halloween my friends, I wish we were all at an otherwordly dance together.

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beautyindisguise00 · 4 years

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WHAT’S THE BIGGEST SURPRISE YOU’VE EVER HAD?

Friday night October 16 2020 @5:50pm

1. WHERE ARE YOU FROM? Wisconsin

2. WHERE DO YOU LIVE AND FOR HOW LONG? i’ve been in wisconsin my whole life of 24 years. lived in my hometown all the way til i moved to college. after i finished college i decided to stay in the town i went to college in for work purposes

3. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT WHERE YOU LIVE? the different options around town of where to shop, eat, and other fun things to do

4. WHAT DID YOU LOVE THE MOST ABOUT THE TOWN YOU GREW UP IN? the lake. i love the fact that the lake was only a 5 minute drive and i was able to go there whenever i wanted. but also, the memories of the town.

5. DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS? not anymore

6. WHAT WAS YOUR 1ST PET’S NAME? thumperlina for my big fat brown bunny

7. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE SEASON? fall

8. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE? i watch a lot of movies so i dont really have a favorite

9. FAVORITE MOVIE IN THE PAST 5 YEARS? avengers infinity war. avengars endgame, crazy rich asians, knives out, and maleficent 1 and 2

10. WHAT’S A MOVIE THAT YOU LAUGHED THE HARDEST DURING? ouf, i dont remember

11. WHAT’S A MOVIE YOU CRIED THE HARDEST DURING? avengars, crazy rich, and also while you were sleeping but that’s a drama

12. WHAT’S THE BEST-ANIMATED MOVIE EVER CREATED? the good dinosaur

13. FAVORITE TV SHOW? my two all-time favorites are one tree hill and the office

14. FAVORITE TV SHOW THAT IS CURRENTLY ON? chicago pd and fire

15. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE RESTAURANT? olive garden?

16. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE FOOD? chicken alfredo, really good sushi, fried rice, curry

17. LEAST FAVORITE FOOD? any seafood --> shrimp, oysters, clams

18. WHAT TOPPINGS DO YOU GET ON YOUR PIZZA? pineapple and ham. hahaha yes, im that kind of person

19. FAVORITE BEVERAGE? coffee, strawberry lemondae

20. FAVORITE DESSERT? cheesecake or red velvet cake

21. IS THERE A DESSERT YOU DON’T LIKE? pumpkin pie

22. CAKE OR PIE? cake!

23. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? mackinaw island fudge, mint chocolate chip, strawberry cheesecake

24. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE CONDIMENT? honey mustard

25. WHAT DO YOU GET FOR BRUNCH? crepes with nutella and strawberries

26. IT’S 4 AM ON A SATURDAY NIGHT, WHAT DO YOU EAT? fried noodles with two poached eggs

27. WHAT ONE THING DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR FRIDGE AT ANY GIVEN TIME? eggs

28. WEIRDEST THING YOU’VE EVER EATEN? duck and this one indian thing i dont remember

29. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BAND? one direction and tenth avenue north

30. FAVORITE SOLO ARTIST? liam payne, harry styles, niall horan, louis tomlinson, zayn malik. hahaha and ed sheeran, halsey,

31. FAVORITE NONLIVING MUSICIAN? --

32. FAVORITE LYRICS? “and if the whole world was watching, i’d still dance with you” “baby im falling. head over heels. looking for ways to let you know just how i feel”

33. FAVORITE SONG OF ALL TIME? theres no way i could choose

34. FAVORITE ALBUM? again ^^

35. WHAT’S THE LAST SONG YOU LISTENED TO? currently singing like to the “while you were sleeping” ost right now “it’s you” by henry

36. IF YOUR LIFE WERE A SONG WHAT WOULD THE TITLE BE? beauty in disguise

37. WHAT SONG WOULD YOU PROBABLY BE CAUGHT DANCING ALONE TO? any of my current favorites right now

38. IF YOU COULD SING A DUET WITH SOMEBODY WHO WOULD IT BE? halsey. that would be so cool

39. IF YOU COULD MASTER ONE INSTRUMENT WHAT WOULD IT BE? guitar

40. WHAT IS YOUR GO-TO KARAOKE SONG? ugh, i hate karaoke

41. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU CURRENTLY READING OR THE LAST BOOK YOU READ? probably back when i was rereading one of the “to all the boys i’ve loved” trilogy

42. WHAT’S A BOOK THAT YOU PLAN ON READING? prayer by tim keller. i just ordered it online and it should be coming in on monday

43. WHAT’S A BOOK THAT YOU READ BECAUSE EVERYONE ELSE WAS READING IT? twilight series. haha

44. WHAT’S A BOOK THAT YOU READ IN SCHOOL THAT POSITIVELY SHAPED YOU? mhmm...i dont remember. not that it posititive shaped me but the great gatsby was really interesting. also, when i was student teaching, i read number the stars with my kids and it was a great historical fiction book to read

45. WHAT’S A BOOK IN SCHOOL THAT YOU HATED? i didnt hate it, but there was this one book we read in ap lit and as a project, my friends made the movie version of it

46. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK? to all the boys trilogies

47. WHAT’S A BOOK YOU WISH YOU HAD WRITTEN? ^^

48. DARK CHOCOLATE OR MILK CHOCOLATE? i like both but if i had to choose, then dark

49. UNDERWATER OR OUTER SPACE? underwater like in a submarine or something were i knew i was safe

50. DOGS OR CATS? dogs for sure

51. KITTENS OR PUPPIES? ohh, puppies of course

52. DOLPHINS OR KOALAS? dolphins! i really wanted to swim with dolphins when i was in florida but it didnt work out in our schedule

53. BIRD WATCHING OR WHALE WATCHING? whale watching

54. WHAT IS YOUR SPIRIT ANIMAL? i dont really know. probably a sea otter. haha theyre so chill and they stick around with their peeps

55. TO BE OR NOT TO BE? aint that the question to be answered

56. IPHONE OR ANDROID? iphone

57. TWITTER OR INSTAGRAM? insta

58. VINE OR SNAPCHAT? snap. i never had a vine but i remember watching a few vines. well i guess tik tok is the new vine now

59. WHO SHOULD EVERYONE BE FOLLOWING RIGHT NOW? Jesus. haha kidding not kidding

60. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE APP? WEBSITE? probably youtube

61. WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL? psych

62. WHAT WAS YOUR BEST SUBJECT IN SCHOOL? psych and math

63. WHAT WAS YOUR WORST SUBJECT IN SCHOOL? ap lit

64. WHAT SUBJECT WOULD YOU TEACH IN SCHOOL? psych or a lower level math class

65. WHAT IS ONE THING YOU WISH YOU KNEW IN HIGH SCHOOL? enjoy what you love doing as much as you can

66. WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE YOURSELF AT 13? girl, be confident. you are beautiful. you are smart. and you are enough. dont worry about what others think and dont worry about the future because i got you.

67. HOW TALL ARE YOU? 5′0

68. WHO IS YOUR FASHION ICON? eh, no one really

69. WHAT’S YOU FAVORITE FASHION TREND? well since right now is fall, i really like long cardigan with cute booties

70. WHAT ARE 3 THINGS YOU ALWAYS HAVE IN YOUR BAG (BESIDES PHONE AND WALLET)? phone charger, hand sanitizer, and a mask. haha oh covid days

71. WHAT IS A CURRENT TREND YOU HOPE DOESN’T EXIST IN 100 HUNDRED YEARS? masks

72. WHAT’S YOUR MUST HAVE FASHION ACCESSORY? eyebrows done? haha my clothing fashion is pretty simple so i dont really have accessories but maybe a watch i guess

73. HEELS OR FLATS? depends. on a day to day then flats but for special occasions then heels

74. DIAMONDS OR PEARLS? eh, i guess i like both

75. BLOW-DRY OR AIR-DRY? usually air dry unless i need to be ready asap

76. WHAT COLOR DRESS DID YOU WEAR TO PROM? i didnt really attend my high school dances. my first and last hs dance was homecoming and that was only because i was on the homecoming court. i wore a red strapless dress

77. FAVORITE COCKTAIL? sex on the beach, mimosas, strawberry daiquiris, margaritas

78. WHAT DO YOU USUALLY ORDER AT STARBUCKS? white chocolate mocha. either hot or iced depending on the weather

79. COFFEE OR TEA? coffee. i tried to drink more tea but i always resort back to coffee. haha

80. HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR COFFEE? i usually make my coffee at home. i just put in a mocha or caramel kcup then add in creamer. some days i’ll add in half and half or some chocolate/caramel syrup

81. WHO IS A PERSON YOU WANT TO HAVE COFFEE WITH? megan markle. odd but why not

82. WHAT HISTORICAL FIGURE DO YOU WANT TO HAVE COFFEE WITH? general vang pao

83. IF YOU COULD LIVE IN ANY HISTORICAL DECADE, WHAT WOULD IT BE AND WHERE? probably the 90s

84. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE COUNTRY TO VISIT? havent left mine yet. haha

85. WHAT’S THE LAST COUNTRY YOU VISITED? my own. haha

86. WHAT’S A COUNTRY YOU WISH TO VISIT? somewhere in the east. maybe like france or italy or korea or taiwan

87. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE STATE TO VISIT? florida

88. WHAT’S THE LAST STATE YOU VISITED? michigan

89. WHAT’S A STATE YOU WISH TO VISIT? colorado, new york, california

90. WHAT’S THE BEST VACATION SPOT? bora bora! ouuu someday for me i hope!

91. WHERE DOES ONE GO ON A PERFECT ROAD TRIP? honestly, anywhere. just gather your friends, pack up, stock up, and drive

92. FAVORITE CITY? right now, probably orlando

93. PILATES OR YOGA? i like both but if i had to choose then yoga

94. JOGGING OR SWIMMING? swimming!

95. FAVORITE WAY TO WORKOUT? ugh, at home

96. LEAST FAVORITE WAY TO WORKOUT? at the gym lifting weight. i always feel so awkward

97. BEST WAY TO DECOMPRESS? shower, then dinner and movie in bed with a glass of wine

98. WHAT’S THE BEST FIRST DATE IDEA? dinner and a drive to a fun spot

99. WHAT’S LOVE? genuine love towards someone regardless of their flaws, always

100. MAJOR TURN ON? neck kisses, vlines, touching

101. MAJOR TURN OFF? bad hygiene, rudeness, cockiness

102. WHAT’S THE WEIRDEST THING A GUY HAS DONE OR SAID TO TRY AND IMPRESS YOU? stalk my facebook and screen shot my old posts and send them to me OR ignoring my non-subtle hints that i have a boyfriend and do not want to hangout alone to “netflix and chill”

103. WHAT’S THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT SOMEONE WHEN YOU MEET THEM? their smile and personality and how they made me feel

104. DO YOU BELIEVE IN LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT? nah

105. BEST GIFT YOU EVER RECEIVED? im not really a big gift person but my mom gave me a micheal kors winter jacket

106. LAST GIFT YOU GAVE A FRIEND? i bought some baby shower gifts to my boyfriend’s brother and sister-in-law’s baby, baby Grace :)

107. BEST GIFT TO GET FOR SOMEONE? like a generic gift? probably wine or a watch depending on the occasion

108. WHAT’S THE BIGGEST SURPRISE YOU’VE EVER HAD? my boyfriend coming to visit me last christmas because i was so stress out and i thought we were suppose to meet up around christmas but he had his own plans that i was not aware of which then made me even more stress when i found out his plans but overall it was a very nice surprise and definitely helped me destress afterwards

109. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE COLOR? white

110. LEAST FAVORITE COLOR? probably brown

111. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE TYPE OF FLOWER? i dont think i have one

112. WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE COMEDIAN? dont have one either

113. WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE ACTION STAR? chris evans, tom holland

114. BEST SUPERHERO CREATED? captain america

115. IF YOU HAD ONE SUPERPOWER WHAT WOULD IT BE? to teleport

116. WHAT’S YOUR KRYPTONITE? too much snow. haha

117. BIGGEST PHOBIA? deep waters and heights

118. FAVORITE DISNEY MOVIE? dont have one

119. FAVORITE DISNEY CHARACTER? ^^

120. FAVORITE HOLIDAY? christmas

121. WHAT’S YOUR BEST HALLOWEEN COSTUME? a dead bride. haha

122. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE PLOT-TWIST? whenever my favorite characters in a tv show gets killed off

123. IF YOU COULD DO A FLASH-MOB WHERE WOULD IT BE? new york, like how cliche and iconic that would be

124. WHAT’S THE COOLEST THING IN YOUR BEDROOM? my pineapple lamp

125. IF YOU GOT A TATTOO WHERE WOULD IT BE? probably on my side or somewhere on my arm

126. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE CURSE WORD? shiiiiiiiiiit

127. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOARD GAME? exploding kittens not really a board game but close enough

#beautyindisguise00 #gettoknowme #q&a #survey #questionnaire

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