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bloompompom · 6 months

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Trending Now! Beloved, international pop sensation was spotted getting hot and heavy with the lead vocalist of Devil's Paradise, Eren Jaeger, at an after-party, sparking rumors of a secret fling. The unlikely couple has yet to comment publicly on the status of their relationship, but their scandal-worthy PDA alone implies they must know each other very well.

Ha! That couldn’t be any further from the truth.

♡ pairings: rockstar!eren jaeger x popstar!female reader, eren jaeger x historia reiss ♡ content: ~7.2k word count. enemies-to-lovers, jealousy, suggestive themes, lots of explicit language (they like f-bombs sorry), slut shaming, mentions of alcohol. reader discretion advised. ♡ previous chapter | next chapter | series masterlist

★ Chapter Four ★

One step forward, and a million steps back.

It felt like the world had started up again when the creative director clapped his hands, calling for a five-minute break. The resounding sound echoed through you as everyone began to buzz around like flies.

You blinked, hard, snapped from whatever trance you had to be in—the one that gave you that glossy, no-thoughts-behind-those-eyes look the camera loved.

You blinked again when an assistant shoved a hand in front of your face. He offered to help you to your feet, as you were still on the floor, looking more or less comparable to a prowling jungle cat. Or better yet, you felt like you had been spilled and splattered, just waiting for someone to come and clean you up.

You declined his hand, politely. He took you by the elbow anyway after one of your heels wobbled underneath you.

“I mean it: five minutes.” The director looked down at his wrist, checking a watch that wasn’t really there. “Four minutes and fifty-nine seconds now. Fifty-eight, fifty-seven—”

Cool silk hit your shoulders as another assistant draped a robe over you, pathetically thin for such a frigid studio. She even held the sleeves out for you, one at a time, ensuring you had to move as little as humanly possible, as if you were something made of glass. As if you would break.

You cinched the robe’s ties around your waist. When you finished, a water bottle landed in the palm of your right hand. The assistant that tossed it to you, the third one in the last thirty seconds, and reminded you to stay hydrated.

And yes, they were always this fussy over you. And when it came to photo shoots, they were always extra fussy. This one was for your upcoming single, so it had to be perfect.

Pieck was off by herself in the corner, her back turned to you. Curiously, you made your way over to her, cracking and twisting the bottle’s lid to take a sip as you went.

If you were to be honest, it was more than a sense of curiosity; the painfully optimistic part of you hoped she would allow you to have the rest of the day to yourself. It was your week of vocal rest, after all.

But, of course, there was never a break with Pieck. Even for those measly five minutes, you couldn’t power down your brain because you found her crouched over her iPad. Devil’s Paradise (Eren specifically) was on the screen. You could see it from feet away.

You had caught her doing this before, stalking the band like some obsessive fan girl. She called it studying, but you called it useless. ‘Eren is about as deep as a kiddie pool,’ you had told her. Shallow and superficial. Why try to keep digging when you could already see the bottom?

You let out a groan loud enough to catch her attention. “Can’t I go one day without seeing Eren’s stupid face?” Then you took another swig of water, felt it trickle its way down your throat, like it could wash the taste of his name off your tongue.

Pieck didn’t reply. She just returned to watching the live stream. You didn’t need to see her face to imagine her scowl vividly.

Devil’s Paradise, the band that came out of nowhere, the underdogs, who won their category’s Best Album Award, were now everywhere. You were sure this was the first of many, many performances they would have to do—tons of interviews, too.

Oh, the interviews. So. Many. Interviews.

Your eyes fell on Mikasa next, and your face softened. It was only slight, no greater than a flicker, because the camera soon panned to Eren beside her. She smiled brightly at him, and he returned it, looking just as sparkly. You tried to think if you’d ever seen him smile like that—that big—before. Only for the cameras, for your faux relationship, but you weren’t dumb enough to believe those flashy grins were genuine. But this smile was. It was the kind that made your eyes squint and your mouth open wide enough to let a laugh slip through your teeth; you could hear it when he sang. It bothered you.

“I don’t know how she’s friends with him,” you grunted, gesturing toward the screen. “Let alone how she puts up with him on the regular.”

Speaking of fan girls, there were more than plenty there. Cramped and piled atop one another, pushing and threatening to tip over the barrier around the stage just for the chance to touch Eren. You weren’t sure if it made you want to laugh or vomit in your mouth.

“All you do is complain about Eren.” Pieck looked at you from over her shoulder. “Eren this, Eren that. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were an old married couple.”

She knew that would get under your skin. Defensively, you sucked in a breath and complained, “Well, I don’t know why you have to watch this, and right now of all times.”

Simultaneously, you and Pieck said, “It’s literally my job.” She said the phrase all the time, and after the years spent together, she was easy enough to predict. Still, it made her huffy.

“Can’t you do it somewhere else?” You eased your voice. “Please.”

She opened her mouth to say ‘no,’ but before she could, your newest intern popped in. Pieck told you that partnering with a local college for an internship opportunity would look good for your image. Always with your image. But you could admit it was nice to have a fresh face around, even if her only job was to run and get your coffee.

“Levi Ackerman texted you,” she quietly interrupted.

You reluctantly flopped your hands in the air. “One day. Just one day. That’s all I ask.”

It was rather dramatic, and Pieck quickly consoled the frightened student. “It’s nothing you did.” She glowered at you. “She’s just in a mood. You can ignore her when she’s like this.”

Still hesitant, voice shaking—you almost felt bad about it—she briefly explained what you already knew. Eren had texted you last night requesting (demanding) the jacket you ‘stole’ because it was a rental. You were tired and brushed it off. But now, it was apparently Levi’s turn since it was his duty to return it, not Eren’s.

You waved it off with, “The jacket’s at my place, draped over the chair. You can’t miss it. It’s the only black thing there.” Otherwise, your living room was entirely white. Pristine.

“Oh, no,” Pieck interrupted, like she had another bright idea of hers locked, loaded, and ready to fire. “Don’t make the newbie do your dirty work.”

You wanted to correct her, but you couldn’t with said newbie standing right beside you.

“You should do it,” Pieck urged. “Maybe even post a photo of you two together or something. You know your name trends whenever you’re with him. It’s advertising for your new single.”

You grumbled, so low that it was practically incoherent, even to yourself. Just angry, childish noises.

“I thought you’d want to see your boyfriend.” Pieck’s urgent eyes jumped to the intern, then back to you. You were blowing your cover. The last thing you needed was for some college girl to go around spreading gossip and telling the world you were snotty to Eren. If anything, you’d prefer the opposite to leak. Maybe then you could finally dump him.

So, you smiled even though it physically hurt while you replied, “You’re right. It’s a nice excuse to spend some time with him.” You didn’t know which was worse, saying you wanted to see Eren or admitting Pieck was right. You sweetened the smile when you turned to the intern. “We’ve both just been so busy.”

She gave a wary smile of her own, but it was enough for you to believe she bought it. Pieck patted her back, then told her to run off before she could realize the truth: that you and Eren were not, in fact, dating, and it was more like you were uncordial acquaintances. At most.

In actuality—and this was something you’d never tell Pieck—the faux-lationship had been tolerable since the award show. You could at least hold a conversation, though limited to the same discussions you’d have with the stranger doing your nails. So—thoughtful pause—where did you say you were from? Oh, I have a friend from there. Like a toddler taking their first steps, it was fumbling and awkward, but you were still managing to get somewhere.

You returned home, pouted a bit because you desperately wanted to stay, then grabbed the jacket and tucked it beneath your arm. You hadn’t touched it since that night, after you slipped it from your shoulders and questioned why, in that moment, you wanted to take it with you. It was strange, like it didn’t belong, so you didn’t touch it.

You drove yourself to Eren’s place. You didn’t mind it, actually; not just the moment of solitude and silence, but the drive itself. You didn’t venture to this side of the city often. You had almost forgotten how beautiful it was. Ocean waves glimmered in streaks of sunlight. Lush greenery splattered the horizon with hues of summery pinks and yellows, every bloom fresh. And from Eren’s doorstep, there was only the wispy sound of palms tickling your ears. All of it stood in stark contrast to your life in the city.

You found his house easily enough thanks to Levi. He forwarded you the address, telling you he made sure the right people knew to expect you—at least, that was your interpretation of ‘no one should cause you any trouble.’ Which made it sound a whole lot like someone was going to cause you trouble, but you had a feeling Levi enjoyed being cryptic.

It was this loft-style home, constructed from stacked stone and clean, walnut-colored wood. When you said ‘loft-style,’ that didn’t mean it was small by any means, but it was still the right size for one. Frankly, you were shocked by it. You would have guessed he’d buy something more boastful after suddenly plunging head-first into fame.

You didn’t announce your arrival beforehand. You didn’t know you were supposed to. And as was the rightful consequence, Eren didn’t answer on your first knock. Or your second, for that matter.

“‘No one should cause you any trouble.’ Yeah, right,” you huffed.

The house had these giant windows on every wall, and still, you couldn’t peek inside because of their tint. Not that you were about to go through all that effort over a jacket.

When you knocked a third time, it was with the blunt of your fist. You waited out another impatient moment, then quickly realized that driving out here was useless. You couldn’t wait to tell Pieck that you were right.

Just before you turn away, a camera, smack in the center of the wall, caught your attention. You didn’t know how you missed it, but you debated going on as if you had, plopping the expensive jacket on the ground. After a pause, you decided to give Eren one last chance because you were a nice person. You pressed one of the buttons, then another, unsure of which would ring him.

The only thing you knew it did for certain was trigger a blinking red light, prompting you to ask, “Eren? Can you hear me?”

You announced yourself and displayed the jacket for the camera. Could he even see it? God, you felt silly. Frustrated, too. It seeped into your voice when you said, “I’m here with the jacket you needed so desperately.”

Finally, there was a sign of life.

“What?” It wasn’t accusatory, but disoriented. Eren’s voice sounded muffled through the microphone. Even so, you knew he was far too groggy for two o’clock in the afternoon. “Why are you here?”

“I said,” you stressed, “I have your jacket. The one you’ve been bothering me about. Tell me you haven’t forgotten already.”

“I didn’t mean you had to bring it, like, now.”

“Well, Levi did.” There was a long, long pause. “So, are you going to let me in?”

Eren didn’t reply. You couldn’t believe it—well, maybe you could, knowing him.

You darted a hand toward the button again. Before you could make contact, the quick swing of the door startled you. You jumped back as Eren made himself comfortable, leaning against the door with his arms folded across his chest. He looked like he had just rolled out of bed. You called him out for it.

“You look like crap.”

“I feel like it,” he replied, his voice as monotone as ever.

You believed him. Greeted by the afternoon sun, his fluttering eyes could hardly stay open. The feeling was almost visceral. Just by looking at him, you could practically feel a throbbing in your temples and the ‘I’m never drinking again’ wretch of your stomach. Thinking about it now, the last time you said those very words was the morning after you met Eren.

Still, he hadn’t snatched the jacket from you or slammed the door in your face (yet), so it couldn’t have been that awful. Perhaps you were a welcomed distraction to his wicked hangover.

“So,” you drawled, forcing the jacket into his hands, finally ridding yourself of the damn thing. “Here you go.”

Eren looked from the jacket to you.

“You really came all the way here just to give this back?” His eyebrow raised as he spoke. It matched the snide curl of his lip. “Huh. You ought to be more careful. Someone might get the impression you actually wanted to see me.”

“Good one,” you said, faking a laugh. “That definitely won’t be an issue.” You took a pace back, then another. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“You’re the one who begged me to let you in.”

You didn’t beg.

He caught you mid-spin, ready to flee down the steps and back to your car, off on your merry way.

“You don’t have to act shy about it. You’re allowed to check the place out, if you want. We are dating, after all.”

Sarcasm or not, you despised the sentence, and you definitely weren’t ‘acting.’ But despite how good it would feel to ignore him and strut back to your car, a part of you—a very, very small part—wanted to see the inside of his house, to learn what Eren Jaeger was about. Though you were already sure you had a pretty good idea.

Of course, you didn’t want to admit your curiosity; you couldn’t bear to say the words, ‘Sure, I’d like to come inside,’ let him hold the door open for you and everything. So after a short pause and a flagrant eye roll, you stepped past him, tossing back, “Maybe you’re the one who should be more careful. Someone might get the impression you actually like me.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” His face went dull again, so fast that you must have made up whatever brightness you thought was there. You frowned but continued inside anyway.

Eren excused himself to freshen up, and by that, you meant he said he’d be right back after you asked him if he had just woken up.

“Have you even brushed your teeth yet?” you playfully asked.

“No,” he said. Your nose wrinkled. “What? I wasn’t expecting company. I just told you: you woke me up.”

“You should really take that up with Levi then.”

Once you could no longer hear his footsteps, you used the brief interlude to poke your head around.

If you hadn’t seen the unweathered exterior, you would have thought the house was built years before it existed—walls with lots of character, black and white diner tile in the kitchen. Of course, like the outside, everything was crisp and brand new, down to every slick, black beam above your head.

It only made the punches of retro color bolder; you kept glancing over to the couch. Its pretty rust color caught your attention, the back of it neatly tufted though covered by a strewn shirt. None of the furniture appeared to be made within the last decade despite remaining in immaculate condition. Someone lacking a keen eye might glaze over it, but you recognized that none of this was easy to come by.

Both fittingly and stereotypically, Eren had some guitars displayed on the far wall. That was where he found you when he returned. You didn’t turn to look at him, only talking once you knew he was near.

“Do you actually write your own songs, or is that just another bullshit marking tactic?”

Eren chuckled. Despite the crunchy delivery, he could tell you searching for a legitimate answer. “Yes, I actually write them.”

“I wish I could do that,” you hummed. “My name’s always listed beside my co-writer, but really, I barely get any say. Maybe changing a word or two, but that’s it. That way, I can honestly say I helped, as if that even mattered.”

Was your team really that desperate to keep you in line? Eren couldn’t imagine that was something you requested—to sacrifice your income, your ownership to a co-writer… just to be called generic.

He had no idea what to say now.

Choosing to take the optimistic approach, he said, “Well, it seems to have worked out for you so far. I mean, you’ll probably perform at the Super Bowl someday, right?”

You laughed at that, no more than a huff through your nose. “Is that your measure of success?”

He shrugged innocently. “I mean…”

It was the definition a ten-year-old would give, but you supposed he had a point, even if it was rather boyish.

Whatever was happening between you right then was snuffed out. Silence ensued. You kept your eyes busying over the guitars to avoid the building tension.

Only when Eren spontaneously asked, “So, you don’t have a single song you’re passionate about? Or one that you’re proud of?” did you realize he was still stewing on your conversation.

“My dad always said passion projects were a waste of time,” you said, noting the wistfulness in your voice.

“Every one of our albums is a passion project.”

Your eyes flickered to him, thinking you had offended him and this was about to turn into another argument. He only continued.

“But I get it—the whole disappointed dad thing. My dad’s a doctor, so you can imagine how he felt when I told him I wanted to sing.” You chuckled a little at that. “But he gets it now, as much as he can. I’m not sure he would if I didn’t make something of myself. A parent’s love can be a bit conditional, can’t it?”

Eren’s words lingered in your mind. You tried to make sense of them, picking apart what he had shared with you and why. You let the sentiment hang heavy in the air. You didn’t allow it in. Your guard was as high as a watch tower, and you wouldn’t let him coax you into dropping it any time soon. You learned the hard way that he wasn’t the handle-with-care type. He liked to push his way in and mess up what wasn’t his. You bet he was also the guy who left hotel rooms in ruins, too, attributing it to his ‘rockstar lifestyle.’

You reached a hand toward one of the guitars, stopping short of touching it in case he was particular about them. When he didn’t stop you, you ran the tips of your fingers over the smooth wood.

He was still at your side when he asked, “Do you play?”

You didn’t know when he became such a conversationalist. After a longer than necessary pause, you decided to answer.

“More or less.”

Based on his pause, you realized your answer wasn’t going to cut it.

“I’ve been teaching myself. Only in my spare time, which, as you know, isn’t much.”

Before you even finished talking, Eren had started to take the guitar down from the wall.

“Show me what you can do.”

Your throat tightened. You scanned over his face. Once, then twice, and you couldn’t find any indication he was screwing with you.

You couldn’t remember the last time you even held a guitar; it had to be months ago. If Eren were to discover how rusty—no, how bad you were—he’d undoubtedly add it to his growing list of ways to embarrass you.

Your feet didn’t follow after him, but your eyes did. He made his way across the room, then expectantly turned to look at you.

“It’s fine. I couldn’t.” You were stumbling over your words, trying to think how to crawl out of this hole you had dug. “Besides, I’m not even supposed to be here. I should probably get—”

“Yeesh,” Eren remarked. “Do you always talk this much when you’re nervous?”

“I’m not nervous!” It was a half-lie. You stopped toying with your fingers and proved it to him (and yourself) by waltzing right on past him.

You sat on that pretty, vintage sofa—its fabric softer than you predicted—and waited for him to hand you the guitar. You didn’t let him lay the strap around your shoulder; you could manage that yourself.

“Good. Because it’s not like I’m gonna make fun of you.” He sounded just about as convincing as you did. A smirk dug into the corners of his cheeks. “Much.”

What did you say earlier?

Once you had adjusted the guitar comfortably in your lap, you slid your hand higher on the fretboard and felt the strings against the doughy tips of your fingers—a sensation you hadn’t experienced in a long while.

You looked up at Eren like you needed his permission. You stared at one another for a strange second, then eventually cleared your throat to ask, “What am I supposed to play?”

“I don’t know. Anything.”

That’s the problem—I don’t know ‘anything,’ at least not off the top of my head.

If your memory were a vault, you would have thought it had been raided and left barren, without even a penny left. Everything you had learned, everything you had taught yourself, vanished. You clammed up, the same way you did when someone asked about your favorite song or movie, and without fail, it was as if you had never consumed a piece of media in your life. How silly of you—able to sing for thousands upon thousands of people, but you couldn’t bring yourself to play the guitar in front of a single person.

You were shrinking by the second. Eren must have sensed it, too. You expected him to ridicule you, but he only added, “Just show me what notes you know.”

That brightness was back. The very same that you swore you saw earlier on his face, you now heard in his words. His voice lifted, like he had thrown in a dash of sugar to help the bitter, ho-humness go down easier. You wouldn’t call it gentle, he wasn’t capable of that, but he did seem genuine. Truthfully, he had seemed genuine—maybe authentic was a better word—from the moment you entered his house. You didn’t know how to feel now that you recognized it for what it was.

You sucked in a deep breath and told yourself you were only humoring him when you strummed a note. Another, too, as you learned the guitar, trying to remember how it was supposed to feel in your hands. It wasn’t like riding a bicycle, though; it felt entirely foreign.

Your discomfort bled through you and onto every note like ink to paper. Everything felt wrong, down to the way you held Eren’s guitar, as if you were afraid of it. The more rigid you were, the more delicate your touch, the worse it sounded.

Eren let his head fall to one side. “Okay, I know you can do better than that.”

Perhaps it was his attempt at encouraging you, but it had the opposite effect. Your face was stricken with heat, your voice bordering into the embarrassed, whiny territory when you admitted, “I’m scared I’m going to break it.”

“Why would it break?” He gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “C’mon, just play it.”

You brushed him off with a tiny ‘fine, fine’ and started to play what little you could recall. Then, surprisingly, it came back to you. Slowly, but it did—up until you tried to hit an F chord. You were actually trying this time, too, but it was less like a hit and more like a weak swing. Even when you were alone in your bedroom, you hadn’t nailed it yet, couldn’t get your fingers in the right spots, or make it sound right despite pressing down so hard it made your fingers sting. It would take time to build the finger dexterity and strength—time you didn’t have.

After another good try, Eren blurted out, “You have to do this,” like he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

He came in closer, not sitting on the couch but walking around the back of it. With eyes fixed on your hand placement, you didn’t need to look to know when he stood behind you, to feel it when he leaned in closer.

Eren touched you without an ounce of hesitation, no different than if he had done it a million times before. He took your hand into his and adjusted one of your fingers a little to the left. Then he wrapped his fingers over yours, pressing them down on the strings harder than you had. You didn’t feel it, as if your fingers were numb. In fact, it sort of felt like your entire body went numb.

“There,” Eren said. He didn’t take his hand off yours, maintaining the same amount of pressure as he instructed, “Now strum.”

It reminded you of when someone was so awful at dancing they’d have to stand on their partner’s shoes. But you did as you were told, and already it sounded cleaner than a moment ago. And the second time sounded even better. Eren’s hand was slow to leave yours, but when it did, the note still held.

Singing was second nature to you; you had done it since childhood. But learning a new skill as an adult was another beast. You couldn’t help but think how much better you’d be—how practicing would suck less—if you had someone to teach you. Just to help you jump through the beginner’s hurdles like this and get your feet off the ground.

Whatever! That didn’t matter now. You were delighted by the whole thing, so much so that you strummed and strummed, practicing your new riff as if Eren wasn’t there, not thinking anything of it when he came to sit by you. You were busy thinking about the guitar in your hands, how you wanted to spend the rest of the day with your guitar back home, if you could find it. You prayed it wasn’t Pieck texting you when you felt your phone buzz. You ignored it for now, already scheming ways you could sneak lessons into your schedule without her noticing.

You kept on playing, long after you thought you would. You went on, waiting for Eren to cut you off, but he never did. Once you realized you were still strumming away to your heart’s content, you finally stopped.

“That was better.” You heard the excitement growing in your voice. “That was totally better, right?”

Embarrassingly enough, Eren couldn’t give you an answer. And if you were to ask him what he was thinking about just then, he couldn’t tell you that either. He couldn’t remember a damn thing, not a note of it. He couldn’t even tell you if your finger placement was correct or not because your hand had already returned to your side.

A cold wave of panic rushed over him as he blanked on what to say. Whatever he told you besides ‘I don’t know’ would be a lie, so he just hoped he would say the right thing because he wasn’t sure what was going to come out, honestly.

“That was—that was good.”

His voice wavered, but you didn’t deem it worthy of another thought because you were too focused on your little win for the day. You couldn’t even suppress the grin on your face. That may have been the first compliment Eren had ever given you, if you were excluding the backhanded ones, which you were.

The thought skipped through your mind, and what followed was the same nausea you get on a rollercoaster, that whooshing feeling and all.

You couldn’t bear to look him in the face any longer, so you dropped your gaze and willed yourself calm. You tried to ignore how close the two of you were—how close you had been for some time now. You tried to look anywhere else, even tried not to be obvious about it, but you could only think of his knee against yours. You hadn’t noticed it before, and now it was the only thing you could feel.

When you met his eyes again, you found they were already staring back at you. You half expected him to pull back and crack some snide comment. You expected him to do anything besides the one thing you—way down deep inside you—really expected but couldn’t admit.

Your heart started to thump faster, louder, ringing in your ears. When your phone vibrated again, you didn’t hear it.

You couldn’t stand Eren. Everyone knew that already; you had drilled it into their heads dozens upon dozens of times. To even reiterate it now was redundant. But that didn’t cancel out your attraction to him. It didn’t work like that, unfortunately. You could deny it as much as you wanted—and you had at least three times in the last minute. Such passion-fueled emotions lived on the same spectrum. Both could exist at once, even if they were at odds with each other. Whether you liked it or not, lust wasn’t like a light switch; you couldn’t just flip it on and off whenever you wished—and yes, you were still working to accept that little, annoying fact.

Eren didn’t need to know that, though. He couldn’t because that would mean he won.

Why was it then that you couldn’t move or breathe? Why weren’t you recoiling back from him as if he were the pest you believed him to be? Your silence was deafening; you were sure it told him everything he needed to know.

Your brain was screaming at you, desperate to know what the hell you were doing, but your body—well, that was a completely different story. For once, the heat at the back of your neck was almost pleasant. It wasn’t fizzing with anger but burning a path down your spine. It kindled the crests of your cheeks with… excitement?

You gripped the neck of the guitar tighter.

Nothing about Eren had ever seemed so simple, but right then, he was. Simple and close and beautiful. No fuss, no antics, no bullshit. Just green eyes that melted from piercing to soft somewhere between when you picked up the guitar and now, you didn’t know when. Maybe that was him, beneath all his peacocking. The real Eren.

You went back to that night, when you first met. How could you not? You thought you had forgotten most of it (minus you-know-what), but you were flooded with the memory, the very same feeling eating away at you bit by bit.

It was different now; you weren’t rattling off sleazy flirts, and he wasn’t flexing, both literally and figuratively, but you could still feel the warmth of the firepit on your leg; how your suffocating dress and his hand on your thigh made your chest go tight. You could even remember how he tasted, the slurry of spirits on his breath. He’d taste different now, and you found yourself craving it without knowing it, yearning to discover what you had missed out on.

“Maybe you should get that,” Eren said, his voice all quiet now.

You blinked a few times, gathered yourself—blamed the concerning slip-up on your need for a vacation—but still had no clue as to what he was talking about. He must have read it on your face because you watched his eyes flit past you, to your buzzing phone. How long had it been doing that?

You swallowed down the thick feeling in your throat, only acknowledging Eren with a small nod before reaching for your phone behind you.

Mikasa had called; you just missed it. While you thought of a reason for her to call, you noticed she texted you a few times earlier. Big picture-wise, all of this was out of the ordinary but certainly not outlandish. But your opinion flipped, almost as quickly as your heart sank, when you saw a message from Jean—through Instagram. He wouldn’t have your phone number because, unlike Mikasa, if there was a reason for him to reach out to you, you couldn’t think of a single one.

You spent more time debating which to open first, the message from Mikasa or the one from Jean, than it would take to read them both. You went with Jean; it, understandably, piqued your interest more.

It was the wrong pick. The message only read, ‘Have you talked to Mikasa?’ Useless outside of sinking your heart even lower than before, like it had left your body entirely and splat on the floor.

Mikasa texted again. You swiped to open it.

You read her text chain backward, but out of convenience, you will recite them in chronological order:

Hey, is now a good time for me to call?

I need to tell you something important.

Insert missed call here.

Eren and Historia were out together last night. I thought you deserved to know, just in case it leaks.

Anger struck you like a shard of ice, leaving you frozen. You hadn’t flinched. You weren’t even sure if you had blinked yet. You just sat there, staring at your phone screen—Eren couldn’t see it from here. There was no need for a rash decision; you only needed a second to compose yourself before—

“What’s wrong?”

In any other circumstance, it would have been the polite question to raise. Two words, two syllables. That was all it took for you to snap.

Perhaps you should be grateful Eren was right beside you, within perfect strangling proximity. Screw your composure, it wasn’t the time for it. You might as well get the inevitable argument out of the way.

“What’s wrong?” you barked back. It teetered on a scoff or a laugh—something of the sort. “You’re seriously asking me what’s wrong like you don’t know. You were with Historia last night. People saw the two of you together.”

Eren got this brittle look on his face, his lips gone tight. Where you would expect him to lie, he only went silent. Somehow, that felt even worse. It was the coward’s way out.

You slithered out from beneath the strap and set the guitar on the cushion beside you. It didn’t need to become collateral damage. Unwilling to sit next to Eren for another second, you sprung to your feet and stood over him—looked down on him.

“One thing,” you seethed. “That was all I asked of you—”

Eren interrupted like the pedantic son of a bitch he was. “Technically, you asked two things of me.”

You continued as if it was nothing more than radio static. “You’re the reason I’m stuck in this mess, and you couldn’t be bothered to do this one tiny, little thing for me, could you?”

Then he laughed. He laughed!

“Because of me? You can’t be serious.” He sat himself a bit higher in his seat. He wouldn’t stand quite yet; he was trying to stay calmer, cooler, than you. It was another competition to him, but you could see through it. “I think we both know you were just as much a part of it as I was.”

You weren’t in the mood for splitting the blame, and you weren’t about to back down, either. He was the problem, not you. Right or not, you double-downed on your stance. You were emphatic about it, even as you paced around the room.

“If you weren’t you—if I had kissed anyone else—then it wouldn’t have mattered! I’m only here because I chose the worst possible person.”

Your logic was shaky at best, and Eren knew you knew it, too. You could tell by the way his eyes narrowed, trying to make sense of something nonsensical. He took a long breath, then stood from the couch. He didn’t come any closer, and he talked to you with his hands, palms to the floor. It reminded you of a hostage negotiator.

“Look, no one important saw. It’s not like we were out at an event. It was just a party.” He spoke like a hostage negotiator, too. But as he said the words, something must have clicked in his head. His demeanor changed, his voice sharp. “You said it yourself, you know. ‘Just don’t get caught with her in public.’”

You made this sound, one you couldn’t describe, through clenched teeth. It was some combination of a groan and a shriek. An exasperated, fed-up sound, with your hands curled like you wanted to wring him out.

You both knew that wasn’t how you meant it. What you were talking about was just the two of them, in the privacy of their own homes. Anyone at that party could have snapped a photo and sold the story for who knows how much cash. It wasn’t that unbelievable, considering the obvious.

You didn’t like your words being used against you. No, not just that, but twisted and manipulated. Rules bent but not broken, all so Eren could weasel his way out of it. That wouldn’t be happening.

There was nothing left to say that would be productive, but you weren’t finished with him yet. You still had this little ball of hate in you, festering, and you wanted to spew it at him.

“Are you even listening?” Eren asked.

He was across the room from you, over by the couch. You dragged your eyes back to him. When you did, you noticed that shirt again. It meant something to you this time; no longer thrown over the couch out of laziness but evidence of last night. Had Historia torn it off him in the throes of passion as they stumbled off to his bedroom? Or did they just fuck right there, where you were sitting minutes before?

“That’s why you look like shit then—you were up fucking Historia all night.” You weren’t even there, but you were trying to piece the night together as if you were. “Is she still here?”

Eren glared at you with this dead look behind his eyes. You could practically hear him say, ‘You can’t be serious.’ He didn’t need to utter a word.

Eren dropped back to the sofa, resting his elbows on his knees. “I don’t know why any of this matters. None of this is real.” He rubbed his hands over his eyes. “I want to be in this situation as much as you do. Believe me.”

Your jaw dropped. His lack of an answer said enough. But you wanted to hear him say it, so you repeated, “Is she still here?”

He didn’t lift his face from his hands, but it didn’t hide the mutter he gave under his breath. “You drive me fucking crazy.” He looked up, shook his head, and snorted like your question was ridiculous. “No, she’s not still here. She left last night.”

You sneered, “Fucked her, then kicked her out like the gentleman you are. That’ll really win her back, won’t it?”

Eren opened his mouth, presumably to defend himself, but he cut himself short. Then, to your surprise, his expression let up. And was that a smile you saw?

“Wait a minute.” He leaned in knowingly. “Are you jealous?”

You weren’t even going to entertain the thought. “No, I’m not fucking jealous!”

His eyebrow furrowed in delighted curiosity. “Really? Because it sort of seems like—”

“Stop trying to make this about you! I’m not jealous. I’m pissed off because you made a promise, then went and broke it. Now you can’t even apologize.”

How he spoke about this infuriated you. It was as if this was all just a big joke to him, like it was nothing to him—like you were nothing to him.

Eren sighed and stood up again. He took a few steps toward you before saying, “I’m sorry that I didn’t think a pinky promise actually meant something.” He looked pleased with himself, even crossed his arms. “Happy now?”

You wanted to yell back. Tell him how you would never go back on your word, even for someone as scummy as him. It wasn’t the pinky promise that mattered but the underlying mutual respect. Or lack thereof, you supposed. But to explain it to him would be futile. He wouldn’t understand, anyway. He wasn’t even worth the spent oxygen.

And there you had it: the Eren you remembered. The Eren you knew he was from the start.

“Well, you have your jacket back.” You barely had the voice to say it. You weren’t hurt. No, you wouldn’t let that happen. You just didn’t know what you were feeling, that was all. “There’s no reason for me to stay any longer.”

You wanted the last word. You at least deserved that, so you scampered out the door before Eren could say anything—before any tears could break your waterline.

Once you were back in your car, you were shaking in anger. It prickled through you like hot needles and made it hard to hold your phone still.

You indulged in social media as much as the next person, but you knew your limit, and you certainly knew where and what to avoid. Above all, you never read the comments on those exploitative, tabloid-y posts.

But you chose to throw yourself into the lion’s pit today. You needed to know what people were saying about Eren, about Historia—about you. You just had to.

Regarding the happy couple, there wasn’t anything new or egregious. You could sweat that off, at least. You only wished you could say the same about yourself.

You couldn’t even process what you were seeing because it only felt like a nightmare. All of these accounts, ones dedicated to Devil’s Paradise and Eren, his dumb face in profile picture after profile picture, relentlessly bashing you. It was all recent, too, within the day.

To think, this whole thing with Eren—the fake relationship, the fighting, the hurt—was to ‘save your image.’ To stop you from becoming the slut your team made you out to be. But you’d seen that word, amongst others, used against you more in the last few minutes than in your entire life. You saw enough to realize that none of this had been worth it.

♡ taglist: @daisynik7 @bejewelledd @lifesuckssomuchtbh @vanessani @intimacywithceline @6sakusa @softjaegerhours @akvrae @sundazedm1 @rinshoe @okaystopwhore @lem-hhn @brooks-lin @writing2live @ichijager13 @littlemochi @sveetnn @elliesbabygirl @sugurunicorn @utahimeow @batafuraikisu @arendizzle @blushblossomsblog @conniesbbymama @drugzforyou @tonysttank @butterfly-skinnylegend @heartstealer-law @mima0127 @shartnart1 @iwaizumiee @violetmatcha @luna4mnoon @wonupuppy @str4wberrylover @pompompurjin @bingbongbingbongsblog @josukesss @bomjug @my-wide-open-eyes @vlsquuu @0bruise @dudaoosstuff please let me know if i missed you or you'd like to be added/removed! tags are still acting up so i apologize if you didn't get notified! thanks for your patience with me with this chapter, and as always, thank you for reading ♡

#eren x reader #eren jaeger x reader #eren yeager x reader

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tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons · 1 month

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Appendix D: Some Pig/One More Final

The first three posts in this series are here.

Undertale was a slightly postmodern children's fantasy movie produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in the '80s. Noah Hathaway played the protagonist, Frisk, who went on a long quest to escape from a magical prison inside Mt. Ebott; Frisk's father had thrown them into the mountain, known to be full of monsters, in an attempt to kill them. However, it's suggested that as a human, Frisk is inherently more of a protagonist than a monster can be, and has a vague sort of magical power over them. Toriel's death, which Frisk accidentally causes early in the movie, is commonly listed as a Peak Sad Childhood Moment.

George Orwell wrote The Writing In The Web, a political fable about a cult started by a well-meaning spider. E. B. White wrote Snowball's Farm, a whimsical children's tale about a farm whose animals decide to take over.

Infamously, Emmanuel Goldstein's monologue fills dozens of pages, takes at least three hours to read aloud, and brings the plot of Ayn Rand's 1984 to a screeching halt.

Short story collections and anthologies often keep the same title, author, and spirit, it's just the stories that are swapped out. For example, classic episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone include A Wonderful Life, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Miracle On 34th Street, and The Sixth Sense. 1983's The Twilight Zone Movie includes segments based on classic episodes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (directed by John Landis and given anti-war themes), Cocoon, The Poltergeist, and In Search of the Twelve Monkeys (the original starred a young William Shatner). Candle Cove is an episode of Black Mirror.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a 1999 Ben Stiller comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes who theme themselves after public domain characters because they cannot afford licensing fees. The film was well-reviewed, but a box office bomb. It was actually the first film to use Smash Mouth's One Week - the One Week music video is actually cross promotion with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and it would remain the film most associated with the song until Dreamworks' Happily N'Ever After hit theaters two years later.

The Amazing Digital Circus was a virtual pet game and toy line that struck when the iron was hot on that niche, before being bought out by Hasbro and rebooted a few times in different forms and mediums. Lauren Faust created a long-running television cartoon of it that was a huge smash hit with fandom culture despite the show's clearly very young target audience. The property's canon is all very light kiddie fare; the scariest thing about The Amazing Digital Circus is that for a brief and touchy stretch of time in the early 2000s, it was owned by the Peoples Temple, which was seriously considering turning it into a recruiting platform.

Your cringe unpublished works that you gave up on were almost certainly swapped around with other people's cringe unpublished works that they gave up on. There's lots of upwards and downwards mobility to the scramble, but not usually that much. Exceptions are very rare - like a beggar suddenly being made king, or a god being reincarnated into an ant - but they do occasionally happen. For example, what you know as the land of Oz exists only in the head of a young Milwaukee stoner, who suddenly came up with the idea for an epic graphic novel one day in the 2010s while sitting on the bus, and spent a couple of years absolutely convinced she would eventually make it. (She cannot draw.) Conversely, L. Frank Baum's children's fantasy series, Enormia, which has been adapted and reimagined many times, most notably as audiences' introduction to color film, exists in your world only as a different Milwaukee stoner's overly elaborate backstory for his jerkoff sessions. This kind of thing is much more the exception than the rule, and even such exceptions are almost always much smaller in scope - an obscure stillborn project getting swapped around with an obscure out-of-print novel, or an obscure direct-to-video z-movie.

The True Detectives forum and its many schismatic spinoffs, all of which are devoted to discussing mystery fiction, host literally thousands of Wind fanfics. Many of the writers - perhaps most of them - have never actually read Wind, just other fanfiction of it; next to none of the fics are worth reading. Most Wind fics reuse the original protagonist, Rorschach, but treat him as a generically relatable blank slate. The most common fic format by far is the "altdunnit", a form of what-if scenario in which the mystery that sets off Wind's plot is different in some way.

Rorschach is held by a substantial portion of the fandom to be an egg (a trans woman who has not realized it yet). Wildbow has never endorsed this interpretation, and it doesn't seem to be much on his radar. In recent years, the trans Rorschach portion of the fandom has grown; they don't tend to look especially kindly on Warn, much of which Wildbow wrote as a response to fans (like those on the True Detectives forum) he felt had been too inclined to take Rorschach's side in Wind. Flame wars over Warn's content were constant throughout its serial publication, and made it easily the rockiest experience of Wildbow's writing career.

Some noteworthy and relevant podcasts include Jonathan Sims' The Dresden Files, the Ranged Touch Network's Scott Pilgrim Made The World, Doof Media's Winding Down (later Warning Down), and the McElroy family's The Adventure Zone (an actual play podcast which has currently had three major campaigns, two anthology series, and various one-shots). Film Reroll is still an actual play podcast that runs the basic setups of movies (and occasionally other media) as short tabletop campaigns; occasionally, their version of a movie will be much closer to ours than it is to the version of the movie in their own universe.

Xenobuddy was an early childhood public access show, originally created for the BBC in the late 1990s but later aired internationally. The title character is a small alien puppet who lives on a futuristic spaceship staffed by children (who speak a vague conlang akin to a dollar store Esperanto). At the end of every episode, it gets lost and is found, usually by (harmlessly) bursting out of one of the children. It was very popular with its target audience and much loathed by parents. Edgy ironic fanart depicting the titular Xenobuddy as some kind of dangerous parasite abounds.

Static is a supernatural slasher franchise created by Wes Craven, with the first film, also simply titled Static, released in 1984. The movies concern a group of gibbering neotenous ogre-fae who wake up in the modern day after a long sleep, incorporate televisions into their bodies, and start eating people by sucking them into hellish pocket dimensions. The Screen-Guts collectively are probably in the top five antagonists most people think of when they think of slasher horror.

Toby Fox's ROSEQUARTZ is especially known for its meta take on video game morality systems. The game has a mission-based structure; throughout it, the player is encouraged to take on a pacifist playstyle, championed by the player character's late mother, the title character. However, the Crystal Gems give the player enough autonomy that you are entirely able to take a much more violent tack; doing so has a rippling effect on the game's writing in countless immersively-integrated ways. If the player goes out of their way to be as murderous as possible - the so-called "genocide route" - the differences from the main route grow much more extreme, and rather than gaining allies, you start to lose them, as the Crystal Gems realize what you're doing and one by one turn against you. If you manage to shatter Garnet - it's the hardest and most iconic fight in the game, Megalovania is playing, her Future Vision gets used for all it's worth - then you use your knife to slash at the cosmos, erasing Earth, Homeworld, and everything else. This, Toby Fox is saying, is apparently all you want out of a video game - another toy to break.

Warner Bros still did Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, it's just that the Looney Tunes in question were Mickey Mouse and friends. They also still did a second one with LeBron James, which was, by God, somehow worse. They put Ms. Frizzle in it.

Walt Disney made his squeaky clean reputation on the back of adaptations of things like Rudyard Kipling's adventure novel The Call of Cthulhu, P. L. Travers' Thomas the Tank Engine, and Erich Kästner's feel-good coming-of-age kidnapping tale about the power of perseverance, Lolita, originally done with Hayley Mills and later remade with Lindsay Lohan.

Nabokov's extremely controversial literary classic that has defined the idea of the unreliable narrator is Father's Trap, from the perspective of a man who plots to obtain custody of both of his daughters for nefarious purposes. Most publishers ignored Nabokov's instructions not to depict the twins, Lisa and Lottie, on the cover. Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne have directed mediocre film adaptations, and songwriting team Lerner and Loewe did a musical that was a legendary flop.

The Japanese fashion movement is Gothic Pollyanna, after an otherwise-forgotten series of penny dreadfuls about a cute, cheery, rules-minded young girl who is, despite appearances, an insane criminal. Minor character Bonesaw in Alan Moore's Worm Turns also clearly hearkens back to the Pollyanna stock character.

The DEA was a prime-time soap opera about the ongoing "war on drugs"; it ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. Its plot focused on federal agents working at the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and especially partners Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez and their families. It is mostly remembered today for its downer ending (in which the treachery of late-show villain Walter White, or "Heisenberg", gets the leads killed, and he escapes from justice), and for its far-more-acclaimed spinoff series Better Call Saul, which also ran for eleven seasons from 1993 to 2004, functioning as a prequel, midquel, and sequel to The DEA.

Between The DEA and Better Call Saul, Kelsey Grammer played crooked lawyer Saul Goodman for twenty consecutive years of primetime TV, first as featured comic relief and later as a leading man. (He also guest-starred on the mostly-forgotten Mall Cop, establishing that it, too, was set in the world of The DEA and Better Call Saul.) Better Call Saul won more than a dozen Primetime Emmys. Peri Gilpin received several of these for her performance as Kim Wexler.

St. Elsewhere was a film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan in the late 1990s; it was highly acclaimed and successful, and established Shyamalan in the public eye as a skilled auteur with an affinity for twist endings. The film's final scene reveals that its main setting, St. Eligius Hospital, exists entirely within the imagination of an autistic boy, Tommy Westphall, as he gazes into a snowglobe. The so-called "Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis", which posits that this same twist applies to most of fiction due to a network of crossovers, was invented by a Saturday Night Live sketch shortly postdating the film's release, in which an amnesiac Charles McGill (from Better Call Saul) wakes up in St. Eligius, attended to by a cast of characters who are more concerned with their own nonexistence.

After rising to prominence as a writer, storyboarder, and composer for Pendleton Ward's Science Time (where she established the Summer/Jessica relationship that would come to define later seasons), Rebecca Sugar got to make her own cartoon, Henry Ichor. Set in a recently post-apocalyptic but strangely cheerful world, Henry Ichor concerns a young teenage boy who is conscripted as a mech pilot due to his rare and innate ability to link to the powerful Evangelion mecha. (His preferred Evangelion is eventually revealed to be a form of his late mother, the reason he can do this in the first place.) Henry turns out to be a vital asset in protecting humanity from the monstrous "Angels" that frequently threaten it, and is surprisingly emotionally mature for his age. However, the adults around him (especially his father, Gennady) frequently push him too far, especially considering his generally noncombative and pacifistic nature. There is much interpersonal drama and much singing about it, with a very vocally trained cast. After several seasons of slow buildup, the show was forced to suddenly rush to its ending in only a few (infamous) episodes after an arc where Henry had a romance with an Angel in male human form. Henry Ichor The Movie and an ensuing miniseries, End Of Henry Ichor, helped bring the show to a more thematically satisfying conclusion.

Although he has played a creative or consultant role in many animated projects, Alex Hirsch is best known for the one he was actually the showrunner for, Disney Channel's smash hit Sunnydale. Focusing on a small California town constantly plagued by supernatural threats, Sunnydale generally followed a simple monster-of-the-week format, but kept audiences on the hook with teases at a deeper underlying mystery. The show almost didn't get a season two, as Hirsch found working with Disney very tiring, but he was eventually persuaded; season two ran through the rest of Hirsch's ideas at a faster pace, and concluded the show with the leads graduating from Sunnydale High.

For a brief historical moment, Daron Nefcy's show, Ender vs. the Space Bug Army, looked like it would become the successor to Sunnydale, keeping Disney Television Animation prestigious after Sunnydale ended. However, though Ender drew in a big crowd, and lasted almost twice as long as Sunnydale, it was not ultimately as well-received. EvtSBA is a children's space opera, wearing its Starship Troopers (Joss Whedon) inspiration on its sleeve, but also clearly copying some (superficial) notes from Philip Pullman. Set in a future where mankind has come into violent conflict with bug-like aliens, the show follows unbearably smug boy supergenius Ender as he is sent to military school to prepare for interstellar warfare. The show has an extremely cutesy and hyperactive tone; typical filler episodes include the one (generally taken as meta about fandom drama) in which Ender's siblings' futuristic internet arguments prove instrumental to the survival of the human race. Later seasons get a bit more serious, but focus heavily on shipping. The show is infamous for its ending, in which Ender, for his final exam, destroys the Formics' home planet and releases a psychic signal that eradicates the Formic race. Although the show explicitly notes that this includes many individual Formics who we have previously known as sympathetic characters, it is nonetheless played as a happy ending in which a hostile colonial power is defeated. Ender has ended the war; he has beaten the Space Bug Army.

"Meugh-Neigh. 'Meugh' like the cat, 'neigh' like the horse." "Does it mean something?" "No answer; none at all."

Orson Scott Card is an extremely prolific author of speculative fiction. Although it isn't as close to his heart as the Steel Gear series, in which he got to flex his military sci-fi muscles and allegorically retell stories from his faith, he is undoubtedly best known for Ishtar's Curse. Initially a short story and later expanded into a full novel, the plot concerns young Princess Ishtar, or Star, heir to the heathen fairy kingdom of Meugh-Neigh. (In later novels, she changes her name to Bethlehem Diaz, or Beth.) Spoiled and destructive but magically talented, Star is sent to twentieth century Earth so she can develop the wits and the strength of character to be a viable wartime leader for her people - or at least so she can be kept out of the way. After several years of personal growth and magical misadventures with companions she met on Earth, a more grounded Star devises a spell to erase the magic that makes up the bodies of most of her throne's enemies. This plan works, and merges Meugh-Neigh into the Earth as a small and ordinary European country. However, though her subjects are eager to celebrate her for this, Star is devastated when she realizes that she has killed trillions of innocent spirits, and, seeking to atone, she takes on the title of Speaker for the Dead (also the title of the book's first sequel). Although it's frequently ranked highly in lists of fantasy novels of the twentieth century, Ishtar's Curse has received some harsh criticism, with the standard line being that Star is an idealized fantasy of a repentant Hitler figure, and that the text presents excessive justifications for her actions. The story has also been called a reactionary response to Wilde's The Little Mermaid. After more than twenty years, a film adaptation of Ishtar's Curse was released in 2009, starring Dakota Fanning, to mixed reviews. The box office took a further hit due to a boycott campaign, after Card's views on homosexuality (and, relatedly, his membership in the LDS Church) became widely known. In the end, it lost the studio a lot of money.

Hideaki Anno is best known for the classic smash hit anime he made for Studio Gainax, Einstein Goliath Nestorian, a psychologically intense deconstruction of martial arts shonen like Yoshiyuki Tomino's Dragon Ball. Einstein Goliath Nestorian concerns a mystery man known only as Saitama, who finds that he has become dissatisfied with life and alienated from the world after only three years of training have enabled him to easily surpass any physical challenge. The original series is known for its sudden, surreal, and clearly budget-driven ending, although this was quickly alleviated with a similarly surreal but more definitive finale movie. Although many Western anime fans often think of Einstein Goliath Nestorian as pretentious and ultra niche, it was actually a huge mainstream hit in Japan, with a colossal franchise of adaptations, merch, and spinoffs (notably including a series of Retrain films, which began as extremely close shot-for-shot remakes of the original series but wound up spiraling into a very different updated timeline).

Previously most noteworthy for his 2003 visual novel Oreimo, Gen Urobuchi was tapped by Shaft for their extremely successful and acclaimed anime Ohayou Hana!, hailed as a deceptively dark deconstruction of the teen idol genre. The plot concerns a girl, Saionji Mayuri, who leads a double life, being of little note at school, out of costume, but spending much of her time as #1 idol Hana. Her mental stability begins to deteriorate as she realizes that the adults in her life - especially her father, himself a former idol - have groomed her to serve as a drugged and hypnotized propaganda mouthpiece for a shadowy conspiracy. She winds up in the worst of both worlds as her ensuing breakdown, and her handlers' response to it, destroys both of her lives and brings ruin to those she cares about. In addition to the popularity of the actual anime, many of its songs became decontextualized J-Pop hits. The idol anime genre would then receive a glut of edgy lesser imitators, like Love Live: School Idol Project, Cheetah Girls, and magical girl fusion Symphogear. Although the original Ohayou Hana! was a self-contained twelve-episode story, it received a sequel movie shortly thereafter, Ohayou Hana! Rebel!, which ended on a cliffhanger that has still not been resolved over a decade later. The upcoming Ohayou Hana! MK Ultra! is expected to get things back on track. An abridged series originating on 4chan, focusing on cropped screencaps from Ohayou Hana!, called the title character "Miss Ohio", producing the memetic tagline "being Ohio is suffering".

Zack Snyder first came up with the idea for Madoka around 2000, a long time before he'd actually get to make it; he put the project on hold in 2006 to make his adaptation of Worm Turns. He developed the idea with his wife Deborah and a cowriter, Steve Shibuya. Inspired by the Disney Princess phenomenon, as well as Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Cure (one of the few anime that had already become a hit in the States), Snyder wanted to tell a coherent story about fights between magical girls who could make anything happen, who could make any fantastical world or visual appear. In Snyder's film, we follow Madoka Kaname, a teenager attending a Catholic school in Los Angeles. Madoka and her friends are approached by a strange young woman who goes only by "Mommy", and her animal companion (a CGI-ed up squirrel-cat thing), QB. They offer to make the teens into "magical girls", granting them one wish each in exchange for a life devoted to spiritual warfare. (Another mysterious new girl, Lilly, urges them not to take the deal in the strongest possible terms.) This turns out to be a scam; QB is pitting the magical girls against one another for his own reasons, and in the end, every magical girl and her wish gets corrupted. Despite much of the film's plot being a horrific bloodbath - the MPAA demanded a lot of cuts to get it down to a PG-13 rating - there is a happy ending; Madoka finally makes her own wish and uses it to topple QB's whole system. Madoka isn't often discussed nowadays but it was a major discourse bomb when it came out in 2010, alternately being called misogynistic Orientalist trash and a subversive feminist masterpiece. Snyder, for his part, often notes that QB is intended as an allegory for exploitative forces within the entertainment industry that treat young women as disposable resources with an expiration date; this is already clear to anyone who's watched the film, which is not exactly subtle in its symbolism. He also explains that the film sexualizes the girls in an effort to shame the audience, to get people to understand that they are objectifying the characters in the same way that QB does. The soundtrack's got a really cool ethereal cover of Nine Inch Nails' King Nothing on it, which is probably the most remembered part of the film today.

Selena Gomez became a star by playing Violet Parr on Disney Channel's superhero sitcom The Incredibles. While the show was initially a very throwaway villain-of-the-week affair whose leads had to keep their powers hidden from the public and their caped escapades secret from the government for self-explanatory comes-with-the-genre reasons, it would eventually unfold that the show was set in something of an X-Men-style dystopia where superheroism had been outlawed and supers oppressed by the government as a potential societal fifth column.

Brad Bird directed one of Pixar's most celebrated films, Wizards of Waverly Place; it was Pixar's first film with a predominantly human cast. Disney was hungry for a fantasy property after losing a bidding war for the Luz Noceda rights. It had strong populist anti-eugenic themes, with an elaborate wizarding hierarchy of antagonists who seek to remove the Russo family's magic as part of an effort to curb wizard overpopulation. The sequel came more than a decade later, and wasn't nearly as good.

In addition to Worm Turns, Alan Moore is notable for the heavily metafictional comic Pagemaster, about a boy, Richard, who finds a magical library that contains all stories that have ever been or could ever be told; he becomes lost and imperiled in assorted pieces of historically noteworthy literature (initially ones in the public domain, though later volumes would start using legally safe serial-numbers-filed-off versions of modern stories). The 2003 film, in which Sean Connery played the librarian in one of his last film roles, is widely regarded as a terrible, deeply-toned-down adaptation that didn't grasp the tone or themes of the original story at all; it only covered the first half of the first volume, in which Richard meets "genre spirits" who wish to sort all stories into rigid categories. In a later volume, Pagemaster Millennium, an aged Richard Tyler, who has since taken on the mantle of librarian himself, meets a teenage girl, heavily implied to be Luz Noceda, who has also become lost in the library. She has become corrupted by an eldritch book, or "Necronomicon", written by "the Wrong Author", heavily implied to be the devil (and/or Hugo Astley, an Aleister Crowley caricature from W. Somerset Maugham's The Winged Bull). Flushed with demonic power and enraged by what she's become, a monstrous Luz tears through the library in a blaze of hellfire, seeking to destroy all of literature and the world. It is only through the intervention of the Fat Controller - heavily implied to be God - that Luz is defeated; he mercifully erases her by hitting her with a train, and laments what she became.

#queued post #the scrambled timeline #I tinkered around with the ordering of these entries so much that I guess this is a scrambled post for the scrambled timeline #credit to hieronymous-botch for the Alex Hirsch's Sunnydale idea #credit to Lorelei for the Orson Scott Card's Steel Gear idea

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niuniente · 8 months

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Hey Niu~ Do you have any smaller wonders you'd recommend visiting in Japan

Sure!

OSAKA

If you go to Osaka around the end of a month, there's a monthly temple flea market in the Shitennoji temple yard. It's arranged on 21st and 22nd of each month, and regular people are selling there their old stuff, as well as booths selling vintage kimonos, yukatas, haoris etc., ceramics, decorations, lots of antique items, statues etc. Take a subway to Tennoji station, the temple is next it. Read more here!

In Osaka, near Tenma JR railwaystation, is a takoyaki shop owned by an 86 year old lady called Hiroko. She's been making takoyakis for 60 years in that shop. You might have seen this image set of Hiroko giving a piece of her mind about people complaining that her food is too yellow (if not, see it - it's hilarious!) Her shop is called たこ焼き寛子（ひろこ), Takoyaki Hiroko (Hiroko). The address is 5 Chome-6-3 Tenjinbashi, Kita Ward, Osaka, 530-0041, Japan. If you use subway, get off at Ogimatchi station to get to her store.

If you love toys and anime merch, there are two good spots for these in Osaka; one is the famous Den Den Town and other one is Kiddy Land in Umeda.

You can get to Den Den Town the easiest from Nipponbashi metro station. Just head towards south. You can also walk from Namba to Den Den Town as it's just right the next corner.

Kiddy Land is a bit harder to locate in the gigantic Hankyuu department store (which is like multiple building spreading across the whole Umeda) but you can get there the best from Umeda station. Kiddy Land has lots of toy stores, like Miffy, San-X, and a mixed store of everything cute, and also a Lego store. If you go out from the building from the door next to the Lego store, you can walk a few ten meters to a big Loft-store. It also has some merch, typically San-X and Sanrio and Disney stuff, but on the top floor of the same building there's an anime store. They sell lots of art books, replica swords and also special collectible statues like Japanese deities.

Special mentioning goes to the Namba Daiso (Namba Daiso Nansan-dori). It has 5 floors, all stuff with 100 yens. It's very near Namba metro station, easy to find! If you want to get super fancy and you've got a big budget, the Takashimaya department store is near this Daiso. You can find all kind of food items there, some with ridiculous prices. There's also Daimaru department store in Namba in close proximity - they sell fresh made taiyaki cakes in the bottom floor's food section.

KYOTO

Near Kyoto, you can find a small town of Arashiyama. It is the most well-known for its ancient wooden bridge and bamboo forests. People go just walk around into the bamboo forest. Many movies and TV series has been filmed in that forest. There's a direct train service to Arashiyama from Kyoto. Arashiyama is especially gorgeous at the end of November when the fall has arrived to Kansai area. It's apparently also super pretty during cherry flower season in spring. There are lots of temples in a small area, too, if you want to explore them.

(Here's the famous bridge).

In Kyoto, there's a design shop of SOU SOU. Now, SOU SOU makes and sells handmade tabi shoes, kimonos, yukatas, string bags, dishware, and wonderful print tabi socks but they also have their own, traditional Japanese café at their Kyoto store called Sou Sou Zaifu. You can get only coffee and matcha tea here - the order is hand made in order in front of you. It's very quiet and idyllic, intimate place. I accidentally went here to find shelter from a rain and it was so lovely. Even the shop itself is worth the visit, if you're interested in fashion and design! Read more here.

(Sou Sou Zaifu cafe. It seems the same guy is still working here. He was very friendly!)

TOKYO

If you travel in Tokyo, about 45 minutes by train from Tokyo is the city of Saitama. Saitama has a Sayama Hills at Tokorozama, which is also known as The Totoro Forest. Hayao Miyazaki has taken inspiration to Totoro from Sayama Hills. It was hard to find any information of this place in English (and even in Japanese!) in the past, but nowadays there's information in English. Read more here (with a Japanese map)

#japan #kyoto #tokyo #osaka #travel tips #travel guide #ask niu

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thankskenpenders · 7 months

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I haven't really been posting about the IDW comics on here recently - the ask box being off means I don't get asked for my Hot Takes every issue. But I am, of course, still keeping up with them. I've been really enjoying this period of shorter stories jumping between a wider variety of characters (including the return of backup stories, finally!!!), as well as the juicy melodrama of Mimic infiltrating the Diamond Cutters. Good stuff with lots of good character moments throughout. And the Amy special was very cute. And the 900th Adventure was fun, even if I did think it was let down a bit by ending on its weakest segment after how creative a lot of the middle segments were.

Unfortunately, despite looking forward to it, I found the new Halloween Special about the Chaotix pretty underwhelming. I'm curious if anyone feels the same way. (read more for spoilers)

It feels very... kiddy-ish? I know Sonic is always for kids, obviously, but the IDW comics have pushed dark and spooky stuff quite a bit between arcs like the Metal Virus and Scrapnik Island, so I guess it stands out that the actual Halloween issue is an extremely low-stakes story about stolen candy without even, like, a cool spooky robot or some ghosts or a haunted house or something. Before long we learn that the villains are just other random kids who came up with a scheme to steal candy. They get a very blunt moral about sharing and not taking things that don't belong to you, really cementing the feeling that it was written for a younger audience than most of the other IDW comics.

The Endless Summer special was also very light in tone and low in stakes, though (even if that issue also had some character development for Jewel that felt like it gave it a bit more meat). Similarly, that special lacked any villains, instead using the Babylon Rogues as a nuisance on the beach and having the heroes make peace with them by the end. So I kind of suspect that these seasonal one-shots are intentionally being written for a younger audience, especially younger kids who might not be following the rest of the comics but might be swayed to buy a one-shot with the words "Sonic" and "Halloween" on the cover. I do feel like new writer Mark Bouchard captured the characters' voices well, though - I really love the exchange between the Chaotix on the very first page - so I'm hoping they can come back and write some more Sonic stuff that lands better for me.

Oh wait no the actual worst thing about the Halloween special is that everyone else gets to have a fun costume (Tails gets an absolutely incredible line about his that I won't spoil)... but Sonic doesn't! No costume for Sonic! He doesn't even get a line about him "going as himself" or anything to acknowledge it or turn it into a joke. I can only assume corporate interfered here.

The main series issue that dropped simultaneously (#65) was very good, though. Many, many incredible Knuckles faces courtesy of Mauro. So it's hard to stay disappointed.

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nightmareentertainment · 4 months

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Finally had a discussion with a friend and I've landed on why I hated Hazbin Hotel (outside of the vivziepop situation) and after bingeing it hopping from dubious illegal website to even worse more illegal website, we've finally pinpointed it.

The fucking pacing is trash.

Okay so here's the pros of this series: The designs, art style, voice actors, concepts, themes, and motivations are cool as fuck. However. The pacing single handedly ruins at least half of the actual meat of the story- what were getting is kiddie-sized packages of episodes, stuff you'd see in kids shows where there's a problem that ultimately gets resolved in the next 20 minutes. It's, frankly- bad. It's bad.

Sir Pentious could have easily had an arc in which he exists as a spy, relaying (perhaps useless, considering the silliness of his character) information and team-rocket style fails to mess things up for the hotel. The arc could have included him slowly enjoying the place, fitting in, trusting others, and ultimately doubting the plot and having a gross, emotional moment when he's found out because he doesn't want to leave- that would've made Charlie' acceptance so much more impactful to the story. It would've made Sir Pentious a more interesting, full character rather than an extra who joined the gang.

Charlie and her dad could've been a series-drawn arc in which she tries to contact her father and fails repeatedly with the idea from the original episode of meeting Adam, trying to get to the higher-ups to get a REAL meeting, only for him to show up and talk down at her idea, we needed a BUILD UP for this episode. It feels flat and unpersonal.

Vaggie being an angel. Oh my god. I need to sit down. I cannot stress how forced this felt. No blatant hints? No cliff-hanger from a previous episode implying this? Idk, perhaps from the fucking FIRST EPISODE? would've been a REALLY COOL REVEAL if we had MORE of a BUILD UP.

The pacing, man. The pacing is getting me. It's getting my ass. It's bad. It had a lot of potential. Give me the pen. Let me- listen man. It just needs a little bit of writing. I got them. Let me handle it. PleasePleasePLEASE I could do it better.

Disclaimer: I have considered that the pacing may be due to budgeting or how to push the production out but I still think the show is objectively bad pacing-wise and genuinely I do not actually care enough on why it's so poorly managed. It had some interesting characters and plot lines that result could've gone somewhere. The music in alot of it is REALLY good. I enjoy the concepts for the characters. Pacing is bad. There's no room for theorizing and cliffhangers and baited breath it's just fast and quick and over its a massive let down bye its time for me to go to bed

#hazbin hotel #vivziepop neg #hazbin hotel criticism

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zzthekaiju · 15 days

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Best of the Reptiles in Media - 02 - Heart

Here we are again taking a look at some of my favorite scaly heroes. And this time, we go to the realm of animation. That golden frontier where anything is possible.

A lot of people have asked me what my favorite animated film is. And ever since 2016, I've had the definitive answer. It's a film from Japan staring who might be one of my favorite animated protagonists of all time. One that I wish was recognized by way more people than just the cult following his movie got.

You could say that this character...has a special place in my Heart.

And yes, that is his name. You'll learn to appreciate it.

Omae Umasou da na (You are Umasou) (2010) is an anime adaptation of a series of children's books revolving around a belligerent Tyrannosaurus Rex who ends up adopting a baby Ankylosaurus, with all the mishaps that implies. I'll admit, when I heard about this film for the first time, I wasn't sure what to think. Surely, this free film uploaded to Youtube wouldn't possibly--

It proceeded to rewrite my brain chemistry forever. It really is a great film. It's beautiful to look at, the animation is really action-packed and cute at the same time, it's got a gripping story (which I'll get into), and above all, it's main character is a martial arts-practicing Godzilla-looking T-Rex who engages in interspecies adoption. WHAT MORE COULD I HAVE ASKED FOR?!

But enough beating around the bush, why is Heart so compelling to me?

Let's start with an introduction. Heart is a Tyrannosaurus Rex from a prehistoric world whose lost egg winds up found and adopted by a kindly Maiasaura. Unfortunately, a carefree life of fun and peace with his mom and half-brother Light is brought to an end when he discovers his true nature as a "Big Jaw" (as in, carnivore). After running away out of fear of what he might do to his family, he grows up hardening both his soul and his combat skills so that he may survive the unforgiving badlands outside of the forest he grew up in (complete with training montage).

Then, as if life wasn't done throwing him curve balls, Heart is imprinted upon by a little baby Ankylosaurus he was just about to eat (complete with calling him the Japanese word for delicious, hence the name). Soon, Heart is caught between going with his true nature or taking a few cues from his own adoptive mother...

Design-wise, Heart isn't winning any accuracy contests, but then again, no creature here is. And it hardly matters, either. This dino manages to find a great balance between looking like the kind of character I'd want a plushie of (seriously, why haven't we gotten on to that) and one that conveys great ferocity and coolness. A major part of how that's conveyed is his expressions. This guy is a GOLDMINE of reaction faces for almost every occasion. So much so that, long ago on my Instagram page, I posted a compilation of faces that either cracked me up or just showed his facial range in general.

What's your favorite? Let me know in the notes/reblogs!

Anyway, then there's when he fights. And MAN, does it go hard! Heart doesn't exactly wear kiddie gloves when he's put in a combat situation, utilizing heavy kicks and deceptive agility as his opponents barely keep pace. We see him go up against sauropods and other Big Jaws, and really, I just need to show you these GIFs to sum up what it's like.

But that's not where Heart truly shines. It's his role in the narrative. You see, in most dino media aimed towards younger audiences, the big mean carnivore is the villain. This was most prevalent in works like The Land Before Time with Sharptooth, and the Carnotaurs from Disney's Dinosaur (both of which were the stuff of nightmares for little dino nerds like me). Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Giant theropod dinosaurs are indeed scary, so of course they make for good villains. But then you consider that most of these predators aren't hunting our adorable plant-munching protags because they're evil. It's just in their nature as predators. What are they gonna do? Go vegan?

And that's the troublesome crossroads Heart finds himself at. You could say this film offers a deconstruction of the "vicious meat-eating dinosaur" archetype. The Anti-Sharptooth, if you will. We're obviously meant to root for him because he's the protagonist and an altogether pleasant guy, but at the same time, both herbivore and carnivore are fully-sapient beings here, and Heart must feed.

The film does NOT restrain from showing him hunt down his prey, but it has the intelligence to show that this is not malice or even pleasure, it's simple survival instinct. He is a huge shade of grey in what would otherwise be a very black-and-white scenario in any other film. And it gets even harder for Heart when Umasou enters the picture.

For the record, almost all of Heart and Umasou's interactions are the definition of adorable. Little Umasou is such a little ball of sunshine both inside and out, and poor Heart just doesn't have the...well, heart...to either eat or abandon him. Seeing his exasperation while keeping him safe while also training him in the ways of fighting like an anime protagonist (complete with training montage) is all kinds of endearing and a testament to Heart's strength of character. Of course, it leads to the inevitable point where he has to let him go...but unlike the source material, it doesn't take. Umasou knows that he and his adoptive dad are as different as can be, but he doesn't care. He's his family, and vice versa, something Heart comes to accept whole-heartedly (I did it again, didn't I).

And with that, the ending to this amazing nature vs. nurture story is very bittersweet, starting with Heart and Umasou reuniting with the former's mom.

Actually, before I keep going, I just want you to know that this scene in which they finally see each other again made me go from "wow, great movie, ten out of ten" to "I NEED TO TALK TO MY MOM!!!" in less than a minute. Seriously, if you're looking to strengthen your maternal bonds, watch this movie and watch the magic happen.

Aaaaanyway, after a heated battle between Heart and the one implied to be his real dad, the truth remains that he can't stay. He's resigned himself to a life as an outcast, never being compatible with his parent and brother's kind while at the same time being shunned by his fellow Big Jaw for adopting food. Nevertheless, he leaves in high spirits, having mended what had for the longest time been a broken bond. That, and he doesn't have to be a straggler alone, anyhow.

Really, Heart is everything I love about a lot of protags in one big package. He's a reptile (a dinosaur no less), he's a badass, he's a nice guy, he rages against what he is in order to be WHO he wants to be, and he's undoubtedly dad of the year. I hope more people come to recognize and appreciate him as much as I do.

Also, he's heavily implied to be in a steady relationship with an adorable Elasmosaurus, so he's got that "interspecies romance" trope possibly going for him too! C'mon, fellow You are Umasou fans old and hopefully new, you can't tell me you don't see it too!

#best of the reptiles in media #ramblings #dinosaurs #you are umasou #heart

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papermoonloveslucy · 7 months

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Lucy in Beverly Hills

Part 1 ~ The Cast

Although thematically the shows created by Lucille Ball were worlds apart from the down-home humor at the Clampett Mansion, there were artistic and creative commonalities that are worth discussing.

"The Beverly Hillbillies" ran from 1962 to 1971, while "The Lucy Show" ran from 1962 to 1968, both on CBS TV. Interiors were filmed at General Service Studios, where "I Love Lucy" began filming until it moved to larger quarters.

Like Jed Clampett, Lucy Carmichael and Lucy Carter are single parents, raising teenage girls, a popular trope of the 1960s and '70s.

The Desilu sitcoms "I Love Lucy," "Make Room for Daddy," "The Andy Griffith Show," and "Gomer Pyle USMC" are all related shows with characters in common much in the same way the Henning sitocms, "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Petticoat Junction" and "Green Acres" were related. Interestingly, "The Beverly Hillbillies" was mentioned during two episodes of "The Danny Thomas Show", in 1963 and 1964.

Jed Clampett's fortune is made from striking oil. In the 1960 Broadway musical, Lucille Ball played a wildcatter looking to find black gold. On "I Love Lucy," new neighbors the O'Briens move from Texas, where they made their fortune in oil. Soon the Ricardos and Mertzes have dreams of riches from Texas tea.

Animal trainers Frank and Juanita Inn worked on both shows, as well as on "Here's Lucy."

Both shows went from black and white to color in October 1965. Although "The Lucy Show" had filmed its second season in color (1963-1964), CBS declined to air it in color.

Editor Dann Cahn (1963 to 1964), was also an editor for "I Love Lucy" and many Desilu shows.

Shared Casting

Their “Petticoat Junction” characters are in parentheses, followed by their Lucycom / Desilu credits.

Irene Ryan (Granny) performed with Lucille Ball on a May 3, 1949 episode of "The Bob Hope Radio Show." In 1963, Ryan and Ball both appeared on CBS specials featuring their TV shows.

Buddy Ebsen (Jed Clampett) appeared in a 1958 episode of "The Westinghouse-Desilu Playhouse" introduced by Desi Arnaz. He appeared with Lucille Ball on several CBS specials and numerous award shows.

Donna Douglas (Ellie Mae Clampett) performed in a 1960 episode of Desilu's helicopter series "Whirlybirds." She was seen with Lucille Ball on a 1963 CBS special "The Stars' Address".

Max Baer Jr. (Jethro Clampett) was seen with Lucille Ball on a 1963 CBS special "The Stars' Address".

Raymond Bailey (Millburn Drysdale) never acted opposite Lucille Ball, but was seen in episodes of Desilu's "The Whirlybirds," "The Untouchables," "The Ann Sothern Show" and "Westinghouse-Desilu Playhouse" introduced by Desi Arnaz.

The bankers of "The Lucy Show" (Theodore J. Mooney) and "The Beverly Hillbillies" (Millburn Drysdale) were remarkably similar: loud, quick-tempered, miserly, abusive to their secretaries, and willing to grovel and sacrifice their dignity to land a big account.

Stretch (Duke) the Clampett's lethargic bulldog, also played Thunderbolt on "Kiddie Parties, Inc." (1963) on "The Lucy Show." Stretch was one of Frank Inn's biggest stars.

Nancy Kulp (Miss Jane Hathaway) played the Cockney maid who teaches Lucy Ricardo ow to curtsy in "Lucy Meets the Queen" (1955). She also appeared in the Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz film Forever Darling, again playing a maid. Kulp returned to Desilu for a 1959 special with Milton Berle and Lucille Ball and a 1962 episode of “The Lucy Show” where she played Navy Officer Jane Corey.

Miss Jane's relationship to Mr. Drysdale was not dissimilar to Lucy Carmichael's relationship to her banker boss, Mr. Mooney.

Bea Benadaret (Cousin Pearl Bodine) first starred with Lucille Ball on her radio series “My Favorite Husband” (1948-1951), primarily as best friend Iris Atterbury. Benadaret was Ball’s first choice to play Ethel Mertz on “I Love Lucy,” but she was already contracted to play Blanche Morton on “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show”, another best friend character. Ball still managed to cast her as a one-off character, Miss Lewis, an elderly spinster, on season one of “I Love Lucy.”

Frank Wilcox (John Brewster) appeared with Lucille Ball in the films Her Husband’s Affairs (1947) and The Fuller Brush Girl (1950). He played Frank Spaulding, owner of the Connecticut house in "Lucy Wants To Move To The Country" (1957).

Elvia Allman (Elverna Bradshaw) was heard with Lucille Ball on “My Favorite Husband” before playing the strident Candy Factory Forewoman on “I Love Lucy.” Allman returned to the show as one of Minnie Finch’s neighbors in “Fan Magazine Interview” (1954) and prim magazine reporter Nancy Graham in “The Homecoming” (1955). She made two appearances on “The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour“ - first as Ida Thompson, Westfield’s PTA director, then as Milton Berle’s private secretary. Allman would also be seen on two episodes of “The Lucy Show" as a customer in a department store and the manager of an employment agency. Allman’s final screen appearance with Lucille Ball reunited her with Bob Hope: “Bringing Back Vaudeville” in 1971. For Desilu, Allman was seen on “December Bride” (1954-59), and “The Ann Sothern Show” (1958).

Milton Frome (Lawrence Chapman) played Sam, who Lucy Ricardo tried to fix up with Dorothy, in “The Matchmaker” (1954). He played Milton Berle's agent in a "Lucy Saves Milton Berle" (1965). He also played a waiter in a 1972 episode of “Here’s Lucy” starring Donny Osmond.

Ray Kellogg (Gate Guard / Police Officer) played the barking Assistant Director (“Roll ‘em!”) in “Ricky’s Screen Test” (1954) and later appeared in “Bullfight Dance” (1955). He was seen on 7 episodes of “The Lucy Show” and two episodes of “Here’s Lucy.” In many of his appearances he played policemen or guards, just as he does here.

Charles Lane (Foster Phinney / Homer Bedloe / Billy Hacker) appeared in 7 films with Lucille Ball between 1933 and 1949. He was also heard on her radio show "My Favorite Husband". On "I Love Lucy," he played 4 characters and 2 more on "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour." He was cast as banker Barnsdahl on "The Lucy Show," but was released after 4 episodes so that Ball could hire Gale Gordon. He went from Desilu to Hooterville with his role of Homer Bedloe on "Petticoat Junction," which he also plays on "The Beverly Hillbillies".

Phil Silvers (Shifty Shafer aka Honest John) gave Lucille Ball a cameo on his show "Sergeant Bilko" in 1959. In 1963, Ball and Silvers performed the classic ‘Slowly I Turn’ sketch for “CBS Opening Night.” In December 1966, Silvers guest-starred as Oliver Kasten in “Lucy and the Efficiency Expert”. A year later Ball and Silvers both had bit parts in the film A Guide for the Married Man (1967).

Roy Roberts (John Cushing / Judge) appeared with Lucille Ball in Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949). On “The Lucy Show” he first appeared as a Navy Admiral in “Lucy and the Submarine” before creating the role of Mr. Cheever, the president of Mr. Mooney’s bank, a recurring character he played through the end of the series. On “Here’s Lucy” he played the Superintendent of the Air Force Academy in season two’s two-part opener. He also played doctors in “Lucy and the Astronauts” (1971) and in "Lucy is N.G. as an R.N." (1973).

Shirley Mitchell (Opal Clampett) became friends with Lucille Ball in the late 1940s when she was featured in 4 episodes of “My Favorite Husband.” Mitchell reunited with Lucille Ball on “I Love Lucy” playing Marion Strong, member of the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League. She also played Mae Belle Jennings on "Petticoat Junction."

Joi Lansing (Gladys Flatt) first worked with Lucille Ball on “I Love Lucy” in “Desert Island” (1956) and returned to play Miss Long Neck in "Lucy Wants a Career" (1959). She did an episode of Desilu's "The Untouchables" and appeared for Desi Arnaz on an episode of "The Mothers-in-Law".

Alan Reed Jr. (Sheldon Epps / Buddy) is probably best remembered as the voice of Fred Flintstone, acting opposite Bea Benadaret (Cousin Pearl). He was heard with Lucille Ball on "My Favorite Husband" (1949). In 1963 he played a café owner in “Lucy Visits the White House”. In 1967, he made an appearance on the Desi Arnaz series “The Mothers-in-Law”.

Most of the principal cast of "The Flintstones" (1960-1966) appeared on "The Beverly Hillbillies": Bea Benadaret (Betty), Alan Reed Jr. (Fred), and Mel Blanc (Barney) all appeared on the show. Jean Vander Pyl did not act on "The Beverly Hillbillies," but did appear on its sister show "Petticoat Junction" and voiced Maw on the cartoon "The Hillbilly Bears" (1966). All four also worked with Lucille Ball on radio and/or television. There was also an episode of "The Flintstones" titled "The Bedrock Hillbillies" (above) featuring animated characters named Granny and Jethro Hatrock with voice talent Howard Morris, John Stephenson, and June Foray, all of whom also worked with Lucille Ball.

Richard Deacon (Dr. Klinger / Mr. Brubaker) made two guest star appearances on Desilu's “December Bride” in 1956 in one of which he played Desi Arnaz’s butler. It’s not surprising that he was cast as Tallulah Bankhead’s butler Winslow in “The Celebrity Next Door,” a 1957 episode of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour.” In 1963 he played Harvey Rittenhouse in the Ball / Hope film Critic’s Choice. In October 1964, Deacon and Lucille Ball both played themselves on “Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre: Have Girls, Will Travel”. He was employed again by Desi Sr. as a regular on “The Mothers-in-Law” (1968-69). He was seen on two episodes of "Here's Lucy."

Paul Winchell (Grandpa Winch) was just 40 years old when he donned old age make-up to play Grandpa Winch in "Home for Christmas" (S1;E13). Four years later he was aged again to play Doc Porter on a two-part episode of "The Lucy Show" set in a the small town of Bancroft.

Mary Wickes (Adaline Ashley) was one of Lucille Ball's best friends of screen. She appeared on "I Love Lucy," "The Lucy Show," and "Here's Lucy," in addition to many other TV specials alongside Ball. The 1967 episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies" Wickes appeared on was aired between two of her "Lucy Show" appearances and featured Gail Bonney, who was seen on "I Love Lucy" and "The Lucy Show."

Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor (Oliver and Lisa Douglas) ~ were visitors to Beverly Hills from Hooterville, but both stars were also favorites of Lucille Ball. Gabor appeared in two episodes of "Here's Lucy", one as herself, and Albert played himself in a 1973 episode. In 1950, he co-starred with Lucille Ball in The Fuller Brush Girl.

Star Casting

John Wayne made a cameo appearance on "The Beverly Hillbillies". When asked how he wanted to be paid, he is best remembered answering back with: "Give me a fifth of bourbon--that'll square it." Wayne appeared as himself on "I Love Lucy" (1955) and "The Lucy Show" (1966). His uncredited cameo on "The Indians Are Coming" (S5;E20) was aired in 1967.

Sammy Davis Jr. (Sergeant Patrick Muldoon) made two appearances on the series during November 1968 episodes set in NYC. Although he plays a character here (an Irish cop!), he played himself on "Here's Lucy" in September 1970. His first "Hillbillies" appearance also features Lucy's friend and co-star Phil Silvers as Shifty Shafer (aka Honest John), a recurring character that was seen in eight episodes.

Impressionist Rich Little played himself in the season nine opener of "The Beverly Hillbillies." Mr. Drysdale convinces him to impersonate President Richard Nixon over the telephone to fool Jed. Nixon was one of Little's most popular impressions. When he played himself on a 1971 episode of "Here's Lucy," Nixon wasn't mentioned, but he did do his impression of John Wayne (see above).

Hedda Hopper played herself in "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood" (S3;E4) in 1964, an episode named after her newspaper column and television specials, one of which featured Lucille Ball. That same 1960 special featured Gloria Swanson, who did a cameo as herself in a 1966 episode titled "The Gloria Swanson Story" (S5;E12). Curiously, Hopper played herself in a 1955 episode of "I Love Lucy" titled "The Hedda Hopper Story." An episode of "The Lucy Show" titled "Lucy and the Lost Star" was intended for Swanson, but the lost star eventually cast was Joan Crawford.

Robert Cummings appeared as himself in "The Race for Queen" (S2;E19) playing the celebrity judge of the Queen of Beverly Hills beauty contest. He was known as Bob Collins on "The Bob Cummings Show" (aka "Love That Bob!"), which ran from 1955 to 1959. The same year it ended he played himself on a 1959 episode of "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour" set in Japan. He reprised the character of Bob Collins on a 1972 episode of "Here’s Lucy” (above) and returned the following season for another episode as a different Bob. His sitcom had featured many of the same actors as "The Beverly Hillbillies" and various Lucycoms, but especially Joi Lansing, Nancy Kulp, and Elvia Allman. Cummings' appearance on "Hillbillies" is primarily attributable to the fact that BH creator Paul Henning produced "The Bob Cummings Show"!

Other Common Cast Members

Jack Bannon, Wally Cox, Peter Leeds, Bobs Watson, Lyle Talbot, Doris Packer Eleanor Audley, Maurice Marsac, Leon Ames, Jesse White, George Barrows, Herb Vigran, Jean Willes, Norman Leavitt, Leon Belasco, Burt Mustin, Iris Adrian, Foster Brooks, Ted Eccles, Robert Foulk, Tristram Coffin, Byron Foulger, Gil Perkins, Hal Taggart, Robert Cummings, Natalie Schaffer, Mel Blanc, John McGiver, Don Rickles, John Carradine, Jacques Bergerac, Hans Conried, Murvyn Vye, Bernie Kopell, Barbara Morrison, Phil Arnold, Ellen Corby, Robert Carson, Barry Kelley, William Newell, Lurene Tuttle, Karen Norris, Hayden Rorke, Benny Rubin, Helen Kleeb, Bill Quinn, Frank J. Scannell, Irwin Charrone, Gail Bonney, Fritz Feld, Norma Varden, Murray Pollack, Jil Jarmyn, Olan Soule, John Gallaudet, George N. Niese, Dick Winslow, Tommy Farrell, Cliff Norton, Robert Osborne, Nestor Paiva, Larry J. Blake, Hans Moebus, Norman Stevans, Monty O'Grady, Steve Carruthers, and Bert Stevens.

~ Stay Tuned for Part 2 : Episodes ~

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