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renatedagmarmilada · 1 year

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the Cohen’s of Golders Green and the Mankovitz’s of Finchley?? they tell me...

FORTY NINE THIEVES

you know, said Jacob Cohen,

the present jew at the lab (You are blocked now)

note --not all jews are dishonest one scientist in America asked to help the lab upon inspecting their intentTHE replied to them: no, it is too much like Camp 5 Camp 5 was the experimental section of Auschwitz

I feel that Jews have one disadvantage they seem to expect to see some sign

from and of those who are evil a sign about evil present and don't yet after two thousand years realise that evil can be silent and sunny as clear as gas

do you know how charming some of the most evil people of the world really were

or Black Magic which we Christians understand well the lab St Barths began this trial with sexual filth over Synagogue services with sexual filth over Mass with the same dirt of Protestant services something they called a 'debasement programme' which a woman psychiatrist put on for them Pardon me you real ladies, but I have learnt that some english ladies are no ladies, not even women in truth and I am not talking about sex about which I have a fairly relaxed attitude as long as it is consenting adults and no kids after all, we all have our obsessions mine being writing and painting- but evil uses sexuality in a nasty, spiteful way they also used debasement at my University lectures and twenty four hours of the day in every part of my life

I coped by turning off which I do constantly in life, to think about a line

even though they must know that as the sun rose and it shone and apples blossomed people died daily in their great horror they call the Holocaust as did ours.. some of the greatest evils have no outward signs

as this evil at present rampant on this little isle of rocks called plainly 'the Trial'

so Anna of the lab St Barths Research, you call that an experiment having her house broken into all her paintings and writings stolen and the most nostalgic things she has and also the homes of her aged mother robbed of anything good thieves jumping into her bedroom window to steal Christmas money Care assistants who steal silk cloths from China and the houses of her relatives robbed of the books she has written and sent Just a by-line of the experiments answered the evil bossess

so Anna of the lab St Barths Research how many thieves have you created?

It wasn't just me all the staff sent thieves into her home the Indian, the Pakistanis, the Germans, the We give them permission to hack into anything if it is hers to take out her poems to use as their own to change her computer folders to syphon money from all her bank accounts to change her power bills to huge ones it is a total experimet of all crimes by us

actually forty nine we have created forty nine new thieves

and the torture continues sensing the gum for three years now over the tv programme the actors said ''shredded fragments of skin continue'' all is included in the tv and said so nothing needs saying as all has been said by the evil lab of all evils

stop shouting about the jewish dead will you, the real truth will come out with all that shouting

The real truth is in plenty of books in plenty of literature for students I never knew students get passes and think so little before I myself went to Uni They are told to repeat and all they do is repeat Monkeys are taught to repeat so don't look to academia to give answers maybe just the few who are thinkers

The truth just needs translating with the head not with film-plastic emotion and nostalgia

In literature I learnt that sentimentality is a second class emotion It is so... though Anna of the lab St Barths Research actually did have an evil smell but that was down to Chemistry too much protein meat mixed with fags and sex in the afternoon with Ministers and civil servants cause a whiff which caused her to use activation not just of cancer cells of victims but also of the smell cells in their brains

so it has gone so far you lock on and can do -- ought--

Amerca said: anything is possible now! Believe them, they are many things but not generally liars as the Brits their forefathers were and still are. The lab uses tuned neighbours to do the thieving no matter where we live it makes the victim feel isolated as in Nazi and Communism no one can seems to be trustworthy and they get extra people on their machine to play with at will..

a dying Empire writhing for new life?

DEFLECTING

Spinning their daily attrocities they like to pretend is a sort of science pressing the gut causes air to be pressed out comes from one jewess worker of the lab who, as her bloke was licking down below let out a great blast of wind in his face for which she was given all my poetry to publish as her own jewish work I hate to say it but jewish work is dodgy dodgy man real dodgy

with victims on the screen and the lab friends too done by satelite and other stuff they surround the victim on the screen surrounding means all those around the victim are also on the screen making the means to mess humanity even wider also activating the senses and bodies of those around so it works like this as I sit next to a pupil working or stand next to someon they put over the other persons smell to me, intensified they don't know and we all have smells then the other person is given any smell intensified this is done by activating their smell senses remote of course from the lab so they then think I stink though I bath daily and change clothes daily it is one of the things done to destroy my reputation which is good as I am a quiet person and a good teacher either way I lose If I tell them they smell they hate me then they think I smell of what ever has been activated but don't want to tell me Once activating the other persons brain whether they get cancer or not depends upon whether they have the cancer gene dodgy man real dodgy

but as this group has activated Royals her own lovers kept rigid at the Ministries and anyone else at all so sure is she of never getting caught with the total power given her misused by her constantly that she does as she pleases she does not do any good for the good dodgy man real dodgy

the Minister Arnold had the smelliest feet ever so lately they have activated feet smells then a new product will come over the tv for smelly feet and smelly feet will be included in some programmes it is called circling and is crude and nasty.. Anna should know as, did he, we don't know took his shoes off in their love den at the office as he took her rear regularly (I gave that lot my body in any way they desired so I deserve to get what ever I want) with the civil servant lovers floating near by dodgy man real dodgy

from whence cometh the file of lies? each member of the staff and that circle had their nasties put onto the file then that file had to be translated onto the machine that machine then had to remote put my body on for each nasty somehow which the sadists of the lab call testing it thoroughly but shouted the Americans it had all already been tested thoroughly if more humanely over here and put under cover as unworkable in the slow destruction of lives and work dodgy man real dodgy

'We, our system, destroy the spirit as well as bodies and lives don't forget, though few know who we are -as the media dwells on the past without the truth deflecting on what is going on now and here saving the lab any embarrassment or bother though we are the same system which killed in the concentration camps they all blanch at so regularly and never check out properly the war trials are long done why do those trials go on and on the the new ones not start on the toys brought back from Belsen developed in the American way added to in the British way and used in the jewish way... dodgy man real dodgy

photos of dead bodies, any dead bodies always do the trick and the media plays for the lab also used by the system some raised some played as the lab makes excuses we do this depravity for the Queen we do this horror for the Prince we do this torture for the country we destroy this talented family for the Ministry actually it is because the lab were all due to go down for at least seven years each this was one way out and everyone fell for it, can you believe saved the Ministries being found out.. dodgy man real dodgy

we the lab, raise our failures to great height for our future as we the lab, kill those with true talent without a sigh any excuse will do any stupidity by our stupid is qualifying for each act any lie on the file of lies acceptable as reason by our idiots this is the underground mental health group anything goes with our group besides her rump there are no rules and no restrictions research is without any restrictions to save themselves cleverly worked out by that jewish Minister Arnold and the civil servant lovers of the bossess dodgy man real dodgy

any and how many attrocities now, my sadists Steven former boss had asked dare anyone count now? does Edwina really think that we think she doesn't know what fools they must think we are but then it doesn't matter as long as the lab don't get the prison sentences due to them in government playing with them. In some countries we would hang them immediately said some of the paid guests here they play footsie at the Ministries.. dodgy man real dodgy.

HANK THE YANK

said Hank the Yank thought Gus it's truth

said Tex you are seriously dodgy Anna of the lab St Barths in London

seriously dodgy, proper dodgy please help us, just this once

so we all had a roll in her hay but you really are seriously dodgy Anna

we'll go down for a long stretch if you don't help

just this once open pandora's box

and mayhem was started the good destroyed with every evil

decade after decade without relent every misfortune and ail possible

and brought on high by the lab St Barths every failure and all 'sexual women'

not in my words but those of others every whore who wanted to come on high

putting my brain and work and person onto the lab machine used so often

and giving new ideas per remote to all the failures the country had who whore

it is not often I predict but so has begun the end of the beginning

though they think they have flags flying now and the box still has its lid open

said the bossess Anna of the most evil lab ever as they track and monitor they call their thieving and torture

given permission by the old lecher of the Health Ministry There is no doubt that we will pay a price for all this one day

but I am here now so I rise I would destroy the whole country for my own prize

as the Ministries lie and cheat the people of the whole land and create a new model of depravity

for this country to follow from henceforth Hank and Gus shook heads and Kit groaned from over the Pond

YODREL BANK AND EMLEY MOOR

It's all going through the most powerful receivers the whole world over for twenty four years now

every word I write and say the BBC Directors watch as it makes its way over our two big receivers

tonights cook programme had some copiers of my work look alikes..every programme has copier llok alikes

all the programmes have parts of my life each one has parts of my work every one has some selection of my study and creativity

which is why they started this horror. they copied that is what happened before, the lab gave away my work to mates

Even Buckingham Palace picked them up the Military in America and others hospitals are finely tuned receivers

so Royals were given my paintings to copy and some Royals were given my work to use

The New York lab, mostly jews, got jewish friends together as the whole system is run by jews here and there

and decided they would use everyone they would use REAL Nazis and Jewish hating Muslims to destroy us who had saved jews

and there was absolutely no need one man said I thought it was just some programme

but being Brits they had to make sure that all would be dead who might be involved

so Kaspar and Kissinger gave them their blessings did we help their cousins I wonder for this death sentence? but tonight Emma look-alike of four books of my work, cooked

and Lucinda sends my art work to Marks and Sparks got a gold has a look alike on an Italian advert

that was to spoil your love for Italy of your gt grandmother Bertodi and they asked an Italian painter to copy your work now the lab bossess is looking for a collector

to collect all the copies she has sponsored of my work she never ends with her crimes

a nation of Pirates they were a nation of Pirates they remain a nation though drowing still continuing to Pirate from the helpless

TALL STORIES FOR SMALL FOLK

write this one out said she bossess of the lab St Barths, Anna

but this is about her life she wrote it at Sheffield University English degree and all have read it there..and forgotten

Makes no difference, most of what we have copied came from Sheffield University work of hers of some sort or another, degrees and Writers groups

It tells her story of New Zealand as she stood one morning on Auckland's steps over looking the green of greens

the tale she wove from the Museum out of the maori carved boats she had seen of the lists of dead on the board above

a tale of the Maoris she had met and made friends of her delight of that place she so loved of Princesses and warriors

of how she sighed with the one drooping tree on top of One Tree Hill following a three-legged dog to the top

I cannot copy that one Then write another round it.... and now write:

There is a great disruptive force in the world. We put these women into severe stress then put men in their way when they seek stability

I, Anna, of the Mental Health group, now have total power and Francene the copyist of your work I didn't know how much power I had..............

EMAILS AND LETTERS

It was Reinhardt one of the germans paid to come and experiment on Brits who told us how to connect your computer to the lab

we changed your spellings in your emails none of us are language experts and took things out of your letters to use in our stories and added rubbish of our own

we wanted you to be seen as some sort of oaf with big ideas

will she come out of this alive no, we will sit on her till death as we are her mother with occassional respite from the torture

death is meaningless to us now here at the lab St Barths Research

Micheal talking now press their organs like this so that is what the great West has created I feel sick at what is being done

we take each thing and place in turn all of us twenty four and more and destroy it for you and yours nothing will remain of your work or words

The Chinese will do it all our way or no way at all and our young teacher lasses are all on our screen

You are abused beyond all hope and redemption yet still you keep your head? My own father walked about with his uniform in Bratislava after he deserted the german army

and laughingly saluted german soldiers in sloppy uniform as he went shopping with his black haired, black eyed wife

no one caught him out, he kept his head to the end a jew who was lying cut him down after the war years after the war ended- we do not lose our heads

I keep to the Ten Commandments and though I am not a good Christian

I do not attend Church regularly merely because it is too far nor do I pray with fervour as I ought and question things too much because the lab St Barths used all religious services I attended for their debasement programme which was sick and filthy (similar to Black Magic I noted, filth and bad smells)

we at the lab are not religious was their answer odd the only good doctor I ever had here was very religious I trawl regularly through the confessional rules if in my bed in the silence of my room

It is hopeless in the England of the Royal problems I could not lie in the confessional if asked difficult questions

nothing is sacred to the lab St Barths even listening in surgeries and it is permitted to make confession this way as I am not given work in this country, orders of the lab so I have to find my own private employment

and as was said in Pakistan by the good Sister about the Catholic Schools also many a good Muslim has paid for this Christian family's lives

Maybe I am wrong, maybe it is arrogant and yes I do fear these people are maniacs and sadists who do not think properly but I cannot do more than stick to what the nuns have taught me these rules for mankind are eternal and leave my soul free...

asked the americans watching now you have used the little family to the full, what now with them?

answered the rotten apple lab as they are called by some in Gov.: please go elsewhere somewhere new, then we can put that country onto our screen in a sort of legality and we can rule and subdue them in our diverse way...

FLASHPOINTS

got it now, 'course, got it- added the new researcher- they are testing everything absolutely everything and anything

and Mugabe is a flash point too so reverse psychology reversing all the wrong doings done to tune...

INTENSIFYING AND ACTIVATING

I loved the London of my area the East End is full of characters and this happened whilst living in Plashet Road my house was number thirty nine, there in Upton Park

one day after returning from teaching at the East Ham College or from East London Uni I bought the usual buns at the High street to take to my friend Goo

Goo was an elderly cockney who had kids and grandkids but no one ever visited him so I used to go and visit regularly

I like Goo though he was getting on I get on well with Cockneys on the whole though when first I came to London from Yorkshire I was shocked at how openly honest they were

he told great tales, loved chatting and telling me he'd been a prisoner in Germany and spoke some German and often sang a song and had learnt German beer songs in the camp

told me how he'd been the British POW who went with the german soldier in the mornings taking the Beer waggon to Pilsner to load up every Friday nightfall, they both sang their way home drunk as Lords

but when he died his grandkids were in that house in a flash though they didn't even visit him in hospital but that's how the brits live I've found

I took the cakes, he made the tea he'd even take me down to Woolwich in his car though I wasn't sure about his driving and told me all East London's history

The lab staff St Barths being psychi lunatics themselves these so called quacks often put on little set ups which got mixed up with the ordinary folk around but being lunatics they still continue this practice

so as I wandered down to Goo's with two cream eclairs three men, I had realised that was a call sign stood talking outside Plashet Road Harrods a few doors down called that 'cause we reckoned he was that expensive

said one in a loud voice to the other: you don't think I'd be scared to go into her house and pinch her used knickers from the wash bin so we can intensify the smell and so they did

knickers were pinched regularly, almost two decades later Plashet road 'Harrods' has gone to live in France 'cause he couldn't stand what they did to the old town and Patrick over the way has been chased out by the council

and still they activate smells from the lab it works like this, their idiot RMN's and 'students' have to smell the intensified smell then as I sit teaching, talking or what ever

they activate the smell sensors of those around me so that they think I smell to destroy my standing in the community How did this come about? Dan one of the New York Research group can't tell you if Anna bossess had him for a lover too, probably

it is the mental health lunatics by the way supposedly having trials Dan had been out all night on the ladies and with the drink and stank like a pole cat by morning's light so that went onto the file of lies along with the M.P.

who has little boys and visits them, known by all I still love Plashet Road to death and visit at times and my heart sings to be there and then weeps it's no longer my home though all have gone except one...

oh and I don't smell I bath far too often what weird minds these mental health doctor peoples have

GERMAN LOYALTY?

said the axe man of the lab this jewish family from Redbridge -yes, we lost everything to save jews back then- whose wife is the liberal synagogue congregant and stole my refugee stories printed with the labs guarantees and help as jewish stories and whose daughter uses my art to be an 'artist' oh woe is when we gave all we had to jews in their need from Hitler which they now copy

Israelies were asked to come to the lab you can get six hundred but turned the offer down

(the second drunken yob calling himself a fine artist they gave my work to now put over the tv you have made me an artist I even sketch now-- so, the lab has put you onto their machine wonder if you will get the cancer your work isn't worth a farthing man)

said the axe man from Redbridge who should wear a black uniform with skull and cross bones he would have been far better than most of those he is naturally sadistic not just the result of the grinding into the muck of Germany by the allies put over yesterday

(we cannot release the advancements until they have been tested said the lab St Barths lying swine it has been tested to death but they like to keep the power for the gov and themselves so I use the must easy to use language to explain)

We have noted just how loyal the germans have been to you harranguing you at the university though you continually state their case for them they have robbed you more their banks happily complying with our requests for cheating and thieving kicked you more their 'researchers' not questioning anything and now that we asked them those we paid hurry back to the lab St Barths with undue haste to perform the last tortures on you and yours for us..

Auschwitz lives on....

THE TWENTY FOUR

twenty four were asked into the lab each had to rob each was given work to copy as their own (will you please burn the work you copied to ensure only the lab has the only copy)

WE HAVE NOT TO TAKE YOU (that is me to you) SERIOUSLY THIS WAS OUR FIRST ORDER WITH WHICH WE MUST TUNE EVERYBODY WHICH WE USE FOR EVERY ACTION NOTHING YOU SAY MUST BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY NO COMPLAINT MUST BE LISTENED TO WE DO NOT ROB YOU THOUGH WE DO WE HAVE TO SAY YOU GAVE US ALL WE HAVE TO SAY YOUR OLD MOTHER GAVE US ALL WE DO NOT TORTURE YOU THOUGH WE DO WE MUST SAY YOU ARE TOO SENSITIVE DR MEYER SAID WE DO NOT DESTORY YOU THOUGH WE DO IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY WE ARE BACKED BY THE GOVERNMENT

ISN'T PSYCHOLOGY A USEFUL TOOL A FILE OF STRAIGHT LIES AND THAT IS ALL IT TAKES TO COVER ALL OUR CRIMES FEED EVERYONE LIES THEN PRETEND WE ARE HELPING THE VICTIM

MAKES YOU WONDER JUST HOW OFTEN THE BRITS HAVE USED LESSER VARIATIONS INCLUDING WITH THE PRINCESS DEAR, DO COME INTO THE LAB SEE WHAT I HAVE FOR YOU BIT THIS GOLDEN APPLE...

each had to repeat each torture time and again each had to destroy a little part of the nation time and again each had to cause havoc time and again

Pandora's box at St Barths research american research had tested it all put it under covers too calous to use the british added to it making it monstrous so monstrous no one would believe it from the sweet, smiling faces

I for one do not believe people who are too sweet or who smile too much and now the Muslims are not happy with the deal they have got out of it and the old witch, bossess Anna still sits there handing out horror and terror...

IF YOU GO TO AMERICA WITH ALL YOUR FAMILY THINKING YOU ARE GOING FOR SAFETY FROM US THE LAB THEY ARE GOING TO KEEP YOU IN A SORT OF PRISON FOR US JUST A DIFFERENT SORT OF PRISON.....

THE WORLD BANKING SYSTEM

we have a problem we have used the world banking system to syphon off her savings anything invested the lab Pakstanis have taken off at source they will each be given a private pension from Britain for their crimes

no problem we will never admit we have used the world banking system what the world doesn't know can not pain the world just keep telling the lies and more different lies till there are so many lies spinning about the spin will be safe

the lab has had fifty conspiracy theory stories written by its stooges all failures now turned to writers and their very own painters (do you remember the paintings which Hitler had commissioned during the Third Reich I do, I studied modern German History identical to what happens here only with added british cunning and nasty Pakistani thieving and torture they took a thousand each out of the old ladies accounts

those old refugees were asked her to rebuild us they have outlived their use for us so we had found a new use following our system's leader Mengele from back then in the camps

the world banking system can be used by us when ever we wish we follow no rules we are a private lab law does not apply to us....

CURRY’S

Curry's aims to keep down not just now but always....their t.v.

another circle another take-off

Edwina Curry had been in the lab: is this true what her poem says-

but yes, she has studied at many Universities many of the historians have said it too

so it is all to keep them down and out and how many other lies

now it was the B.B.C. itself which had informed me of a great deal infact, but of Churchill making this law

any lie, however evil could be said or made into film about the germans for the war effort

so Curry's the electrical appliances shop put on an ad tonight about their t.v's

and tomorrow there will be some sort of newspaper report and it keeps on circling and circling

and you are supposed to not notice, I just bow my head or I am supposed to not notice and you don't notice

but we've had all this before, all of it.. had it all before, different dictator, same procedure...

I could write up the circles, the spins and their sins I have seen and noted and at times, even laughed at, ironically

THE NATION

as sitting by the window teaching mathematics to a young pupil a muslim born over here by the way perusing the mosque built onto the methodist church over the way across from the massive, empty C. of E.

three cars sped by this is the call sign of the lab St Barths Research

they put over this message The nation will never be told what we have done the nation has been told what we have done but has not realised that they have been told and you and those like you, the nation does not listen to

who made the decision about the Princess and the machine at the lab of extremes Anna, lab bossess herself

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introvertguide · 3 years

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Influential Directors of the Silent Film Era

Upon hearing that I am a fan of silent era film, people will ask if I have a favorite actor or movie from the time period. However, when I am asked about my favorites from other fans of silent film, it tends to involve my favorite director. This is because silent film actors had to over gesticulate and performed in an unrealistic way and could not use their tone or words to convey emotion. The directors also did not have a way to review as they shot and would have to use editing skills and strategic cover shots to make sure that everything was done properly and come out the way they imagined it. It was up to the director to be creative and they were forced to be innovative and create ways to convey their vision. Luckily for many average or poor directors of the time, audiences were easily impressed. However, today's more demanding and sophisticated audiences can look back at some of the genius behind the films of silent era Hollywood.

Alice Guy-Blache: Matrimony's Speed Limit (1913) and The Fairy of the Cabbages (1896)

Art director of the film studio The Solax Company, the largest pre-Hollywood movie studio, and camera operator for the France based Gaumont Studio headed up by Louis Lemiere, this woman was a director before any kind of gender expectations were even established. She was a pioneer of the use of audio recordings in conjunction with images and the first filmmaker to systematically develop narrative filming. Guy-Blanche didn't just record an image but used editing and juxtaposition to reveal a story behind the moving pictures. In 1914, when Hollywood studios hired almost exclusively upper class white men as directors, she famously said that there was nothing involved in the staging of a movie that a woman could not do just as easily as a man.

Charlie Chaplin: The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1923), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940)

It is unfortunate that many people today think of Chaplin as silly or for screwball comedy when, in fact, he was a great satirist of the time. He created his comedy through the eyes of the lower economic class that suffered indignities over which they had no control. He traversed the world as his "Tramp" character who found his fortune by being amiable and lucky. The idea that a good attitude and a turn of luck could result in happiness was all that many Americans had during the World Wars and the Great Depression. He played the part of the sad clown and he was eventually kicked out of the country for poking fun at American society. Today he is beloved for his work, but he was more infamous than famous during a large part of his life.

Buster Keaton: Sherlock Jr. (1924), The General (1926), and The Cameraman (1928).

That man that performed the most dangerous of stunts with a deadpan expression, Buster Keaton was a great actor, athlete, stuntman, writer, producer, and director. It is amazing that you could get so much emotion out of a silent actor who does not emote, but Keaton managed to do it. He was also never afraid to go big, often putting his own well being at risk to capture a good shot. Not as well known for his cinematography or editing as many of the other directors of the time, he instead captured performances that were amazing no matter how they were filmed. Famous stunts include the side of a house falling down around him, standing on the front of a moving train, sitting on the side rail of a moving train, and grabbing on to a speeding car with one hand to hitch a ride. If you like films by Jackie Chan, know that he models his films after the work of Buster Keaton: high action and high comedy.

Cecil B. Demille: The Cheat (1915), Male and Female (1919), and The Ten Commandments (1923)

Known as the father of the Hollywood motion picture industry, Demille was the first director to make a real box office hit. He is likely best known for making The Ten Commandments in 1923 and then remaking it again in 1956. If not that, he was also known for his scandalous dramas that depicted women in the nude. This was pre-Code silent film so the rules about what could be shown had not been established. Demille made 30 large production successful films in the silent era and was the most famous director of the time which gave him a lot of freedom. His trademarks were Roman orgies, battles with large wild animals, and large bath scenes. His films are not what most modern film watchers think of when they are considering silent films. That famous quote from the movie Sunset Boulevard in 1950 in which the fading silent actress says "All right, Mr. Demille. I'm ready for my close-up," is referring to this director.

D.W. Griffith: Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916)

Griffith started making films in 1908 and put out just about everything that he recorded. He made 482 films between 1908 and 1914, although most of these were shorts. His most famous film today is absolutely Birth of a Nation and it is one of the most outlandishly racist films of the time. The depiction of black Americans as evil and the Klu Klux Klan as heroes who are protecting the nation didn't even really go over well at that time. Some believe that his follow up the next year called Intolerance was an apology, but the film actually addresses religious and class intolerance and avoids the topic of racism. At the time, Griffith films were known for the massive sets and casts of thousands of extras, but today he is known for his racist social commentary.

Sergei Eisenstein: Battleship Potemkin (1925)

This eccentric Russian director was a pioneer of film theory and the use of montage to show the passage of time. His reputation at the time would probably be similar to Tim Burton or maybe David Lynch. He had a very specific strange style that made his films different from any others. The film Battleship Potemkin is considered to be one of the best movies of all time as rated by Sight and Sound, and generally considered as a great experimental film that found fame in Hollywood as well as Russia.

F.W. Murnau: Nosferatu (1922), Faust (1926), and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

I think that most people would know the bald-headed long-nailed vampire Nosferatu that was a silent era phenomena. It was so iconic that the German film studio that produced the movie was sued by the estate of Bram Stoker and had to close. Faust was his last big budget German film and has an iconic shot of the demon Mephisto raining plague down on a town that was the inspiration for the Demon Mountain in Fantasia (1940). Also, Sunrise is considered one of the best movies of all time by the AFI and by Sight and Sound as well as my favorite silent film. Fun facts: 1) more of Murnau's films have been lost then are still watchable and 2) he died in a car wreck at only 40 when he hired a car to drive up the California coast and the driver was only 14.

Erich von Stroheim: Greed (1924)

Maker of very strange German Expressionist films, Stroheim films are often listed as Horror or Mystery even though he considered himself a dramatic film maker. His most famous movie Greed was supposed to be amazing with an 8 hour run time but it was cut drastically to the point that it makes no sense and was both critically and publicly panned when an extremely abridged version was released in the U.S. Over half the film was lost and a complete version no longer exists. Besides this film, Stroheim was even better known for being the butler in the film Sunset Boulevard as a former director who retired to be with an aging silent film star. He also made a movie called Between Two Women (1937) that told the story of a female burn victim that was inspired by the story of his wife being burned in an explosion in a shop on the actual Sunset Boulevard.

Victor Fleming: The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Gone With the Wind (1939)

Although not known for his silent films, Fleming did get his start during the silent era. He was a cinematographer for D.W. Griffith and then Fleming directed his first film in 1919. Most of his silent films were swashbuckling action movies with Douglas Fairbanks or formulaic westerns. He is the only director to have two films on the AFI top 10 and they happened to have come out the same year.

Hal Roach: Lonesome Luke films starring Harold Lloyd, Our Gang shorts, Laurel and Hardy shorts, and Of Mice and Men (1939)

It is not really fair to put Hal Roach in the silent era directors because he was influential at the time but he had a 75 year career. He was a producer and film studio head and even had a studio named after himself. His biggest contribution to the silent era was his production of Harold Lloyd short comedies and he continued to produce films in the early talkies including Laurel and Hardy shorts, Our Gang shorts, and Wil Rogers films. Roach was the inspiration for the film Sullivan's Travels, in which a famous director who only did frivolous comedies goes out into the world to find inspiration to find a serious drama. Roach did direct a single serious drama, Of Mice and Men, but it came out in 1939 and was buried underneath the works of Victor Fleming. The wealthy cigar smoking studio head that many people think of when they picture a film studio suit is based on this guy. The man would not quit and stayed in the business into his 90s and lived to the ripe old age of 100.

#directors #silent films #old Hollywood #1920s #introvert #introverts #influential

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p1harmonyofficial · 3 years

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[📰] P1Harmony May Be New to K-Pop, But They're Beauty Experts

By Devon Abelman

"Pots-and-pans music" is what Keeho, the leader of P1Harmony, lovingly calls the K-pop group's songs. They're loud, explosive, and essentially caffeine mainlined through your eardrums — all in the best way possible, of course.

"Because our music is so strong, we try to portray that in our hair and makeup as well," Keeho continues. "For me, my hair is all slicked back for our new song, 'Scared,' and our makeup is a lot darker than [for our debut single,] 'Siren.'"

In fact, Jongseob, P1Harmony's youngest member, adds their strikingly different hair colors, like Theo's whimsical light pink, Intak's sleek jet black, and Keeho's enigmatic navy blue, balance each other out and express the range of emotions portrayed in their lyrics and melodies.

But this is just a basic overview of P1Harmony and the intense aesthetic they've been building for the past six months since debuting in October 2020. In advance of the release of their new EP, Disharmony: Break Out, today, April 20, I sat down with the rookie K-pop group via Zoom to get a deeper look at each member, their individual relationships to beauty, and how they are choosing to present themselves now that they are on the world's stage.

Keeho

When I ask Keeho which P1Harmony song fits his personality best, he replies, "You can't really fit me in a box like that. There are various characters I can be." The 19-year-old from Canada even wears many hats throughout our interview. Not only is Keeho the group's official leader, but he's also their unofficial translator, color commentator, and storyteller — he truly has an aside or anecdote to share about everything.

The first tale Keeho tells dates back to second grade, when he begged his mom to let him get blonde streaks in his hair. "I was that kid in class," he remarks.

Then, Keeho delves into how his family introduced him to the wonders of beauty growing up. His mom, in particular, made him "do a five-, six-step skin-care routine," he recalls. Every morning before school, he'd splash his face with warm water ("must be warm water, so you open up the pores") and wash up with cleansing foam. Then, he'd rinse it off with cold water ("so you close them"). Although this isn't scientifically true, I'm glad this worked for him.

When layering on his serums and creams, "the first one you need to do is the most liquidy one and the last one you need to do is the one that is not liquidy at all," Keeho recalls his mom instructing him — a fact I confirm for him. Also, she'd tell him to never rub his skin-care products on, only pat.

Last but not least, Keeho would (and still does) reach for sunscreen — "always sunscreen," he emphasizes. "My mom said, 'If you don't put it on, you're going to age like a raisin.'"

Keeho's older sister, on the other hand, brought him into the world of makeup by employing him as her guinea pig for testing out new looks. "I would let my sister put makeup on me all the time," Keeho says, mentioning Halloween as a common occasion for her artistry. They even playfully filmed YouTube beauty tutorials and challenges together.

One aspect of beauty Keeho has yet to try is a manicure, but he's ready to dive into that realm. "I think it would be fun," he says. A$AP Rocky's eye nail art that he showed off front row at Prada back in October 2019 is Keeho's major inspiration.

Intak

Another unofficial title Keeho has taken on within P1Harmony is hairstylist. Intak, the group's 17-year-old charismatic rapper and star dancer, credits him for his hair-care routine. "I learned how to use hair serum to volumize my hair when I go out," Intak says. Keeho goes on to explain that they both have incredibly dry hair, so he recommended his favorite moisturizing products to Intak and told him to rake them through his hair while it's still wet and only slightly towel-dried. Intak was so pleased with the result that he went out and bought the same products that day.

Although he has kept his hair black throughout his career so far, Intak is quick to share he's very experimental with beauty. For performances in the past, he's adorned his eyes with bloody scratch-like liner and ultra-sooty smoky eyes. Plus, you're about to see some cheek art on him and dramatically flushed cheeks.

Unlike Keeho, Intak didn't get into skin care until after debuting. "I've started visiting the dermatologist frequently," he says. "They gave me a set [of products] that includes [everything I need]." His favorite is a mask infused with avocado and peppermint, like the Tonymoly I'm Real Avocado Mask Sheet or Skinfood's Pear Mint Food Mask, which quenches his dehydrated skin.

Jiung

Spoken like a true Libra, Jiung is the first to mention he enjoys expressing himself through beauty and fashion. "[They are] really important things," the 19-year-old explains in English. "I always try to learn how to express myself that way. So the more I know, the more I can do."

However, when I ask Jiung what kinds of looks he feels the most confident in, he laughs before taking time to think about it. (In the meantime, Keeho shares he knows what he, personally, is least confident in: T-shirts, due to his long arms.) "This is hard," Jiung groans. I must say his short honey-blonde hair — a look he's always been curious about trying — is definitely bringing out a particularly magnetic side of him, as seen in the P-side track video for "If You Call Me."

When he was younger, Jiung dabbled in all different kinds of haircuts, colors, and perms, he lists off. The latter of which he looks forward to trying out again now as a K-pop star.

When the members were just trainees, Keeho helps Jiung recount a time when he wanted to fill in his eyebrows. "He did not how to do it at all," Keeho says. "He got a Sharpie and started coloring in his eyebrows. It was devastating, to say the least, for the people who had to see it."

"It was art," Jiung interjects. Now, he proudly declares he has a proper brow powder.

Theo

Theo, P1Harmony's straightforward vocalist, is admittedly a sneakerhead. He strictly wears Jordans, according to Keeho's translation. Air Jordan 1s are Theo's favorite style, but he can't pick a color that he's the biggest fan of. He can tell you what he feels least confident in, though: shorts and short-sleeved shirts. So if you barely see Theo in summery clothes, now you know why. (However, he doesn't offer up an exact explanation.)

Since elementary school, the now-19-year-old has permed and colored his hair every shade of ROYGBIV, including red, gray, and even blue for one summer break — all thanks to his mom, who is a hairstylist. This is a revelation even many of the other members weren't privy to, much to the chagrin of Keeho. "It's annoying me right now because his hair is healthy," he remarks. "My hair looks like a broom."

Knowing his hair is healthy comes as a shock to me, though, as Theo has gone from white-blonde to rosy-pink over the past six months. (Let's be real, that's a transformation few people's hair can handle.) He's also been able to grow out hair; it falls past his eyebrows and is starting to graze his shoulders in the back.

Honestly, Theo is ready for it to be short again, he shares. "I like my long hair, but I don't like it being in my face," he asserts. "I can't really maintain it. I bleached it so much that it flips in all different directions."

Soul

Before our interview officially started, the members and I exchanged weird facts about ourselves to get to know each other better beyond our beauty routines. Keeho revealed his left eyebrow has been twitching lately, and he needs to cuddle a body pillow to fall asleep. Intak has a freckle on his finger that his grandma often mistakes for dirt and tries to wipe off. Jiung had pet geckos, scorpions, and tarantulas growing up. Jongseob loves mint chocolate. Theo can't burp, and Soul enjoys petting insects.

But that's not the weirdest thing about him or any of the members. The strangest thing about the boys is that "Soul doesn't do anything at all [for his skin-care routine], and his skin is actually pretty good," Keeho says. (You can scroll through Soul's selfies on P1Harmony's Twitter to confirm this, but spoiler: His complexion is immaculate.)

Soul, 16, goes on to explain that his skin is incredibly dry and sensitive, so much so that even cleansing makes his face turn red and any bit of friction causes bumps to form. Needless to say, he's scared to put anything on his face. "I just do cleansing foam and leave it at that," Soul admits. Makeup isn't off the table, though. Soul is no stranger to subtle washes of pink shadow on his lids and fake eyebrow piercings made out of silver studs.

Although Soul is seemingly one of the shyest members and keeps to himself for most of the interview, he's an intense rockstar at heart. He favors P1Harmony's more aggressive, hard-hitting songs, like their new title song, "Scared."

Raise your hand if you'd like to see Soul with thick, black kohl or graphic blue liner and long, raven hair, perhaps paired with a studded leather jacket over a ripped-up T-shirt. OK, great; I'm not the only one. For now, we'll have to appreciate his bob-length ashy-blonde hair.

Jongseob

Other than his nuggets of knowledge about the way P1Harmony reflects their music in their hair and makeup, Jongseob mostly listens throughout the interview. Luckily, the 15-year-old rapper/songwriter did pipe up to share his skin-care routine.

First, Jongseob double-cleanses to remove his makeup, starting with cleansing oil and following up with a foam cleanser. Serum is slathered on next, then moisturizer. When his skin is feeling especially dry, Jongseob layers a gel cream on top as a sleeping mask — a tactic I'd never considered before. Typically, I reach for them in reverse order.

Jongseob's hair has also been through the wringer since P1Harmony's debut. Last October, he colored his hair lilac and gradually went darker shades of purple until it was an electric violet hue. Most recently, though, his dye job has been a fiery orange. Next, Jongseob says he wants to try gray with an ash tone.

And this is just the beginning of P1Harmony's journey through the mystical world of K-pop beauty. This time next year, they're sure to have experimented with even bolder, brighter, and more eccentric looks. For now, you can check out a teaser for their brand-new music video for "Scared" of their latest EP, Disharmony: Break Out, below.

#p1harmony #ot6 #t:news #era:disharmony : break out #210421

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rinnnyxr · 3 years

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I’m happy I’m sad I’m motivated I’m unmotivated I’m sick I’m taken I have a crush I’m in love I’m single I’m brokenhearted

I want to sleep I want to study I want to go out I want to stay home I have school today I have work today

I’m afraid of spiders I’m afraid of being alone I’m afraid of snakes I’m afraid of flying I’m afraid of failure I’m afraid of clowns

I took chemistry classes in high school I took math classes in high school I took English classes in high school I took geography classes in high school I took biology classes in high school I had gym in high school I took art classes in high school I took science classes in high school I took history classes in high school I took physics classes in high school I was in the theatre after school program in high school I had some sort of music classes in high school I had some sort of dance classes in high school

Bold the things you’ve never done.

I’ve never gone to Disney World. I’ve never been out of my home country. I’ve never kissed a stranger on the lips. I’ve never read a book over eight hundred pages. I’ve never painted a picture on a canvas. I’ve never sang in front of a large crowd by myself.

I’ve never had braces. I’ve never learned French. I’ve never had a fight with my dad. I’ve never updated my status through my phone. I’ve never used Nair. I’ve never cut my wrists. I’ve never wanted plastic surgery. I’ve never drank organic regular milk. I’ve never learned Chinese. I’ve never blew up a balloon. I’ve never changed a baby’s diaper. I’ve never lost my phone for good. I’ve never lost a friend through death. I’ve never met one of my grandparents. I’ve never met someone with my exact name. I’ve never dated someone with red hair. I’ve never put on eyeliner for myself. I’ve never took a dance class. I’ve never tried weed. I’ve never tried drugs. I’ve never cooked dinner for my family. I’ve never had anything besides my ears pierced. I’ve never had a tattoo. I’ve never went to the beach to tan. I’ve never kissed anyone on the lips that was younger than me. I’ve never dumped someone. I’ve never stepped in something nasty barefooted. I’ve never cheated on someone. I’ve never waxed anything on my body. I’ve never dyed my whole head a different color. I’ve never kissed anyone who was above the age of seventeen. I’ve never kissed in the rain. I’ve never gone a day without laughing. I’ve never got held back a grade. I’ve never stolen anything over twenty dollars.

Aries

Waiting until the last minute TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) Angry crying 4 am seamless Big flirt Hot yoga “Why are you so upset? I’m over it now” No filter Cutting in line at the store Skipping to the “good part” Ignoring the speed limit Tinder Shoplifting Exclamation points!!! Bad tattoos Caffeine addiction Toned AF Muay Thai “Don’t touch me” Breaking a bone Spelling errors Picking fights for no reason Lowkey really sensitive Skipping breakfast 7/24

Taurus Falling asleep on the subway Going barefoot Using hands as utensils Calling in sick Materialism Tree climbing Cuddling Controlling the aux Great British baking show “I deserve to treat myself” Aesthetics Spending the whole day in bed Anything that says “natural” on it Long-term relationships Expensive sheets Picnics in the park Essential oils Sex as exercise Tender Wearing the same outfit 3 days in a row Says a controversial opinion and then “I’m not going to argue” Calm, cool, and collected Silk everything 5 meals a day 7/24

Gemini Giving unqualified advice 50 different tangents “Prove it” Playing Devil’s advocate Can’t keep a secret Scamming Carrying a book around Arguing for fun Always knowing the latest gossip Adderall Spilling guts to the Uber driver Rationalizing emotions Lying to be more interesting Most active in the group chat Anxiety Telling the same story 10 times to perfect it Philosophy 1000 ideas per minute Sardonic sense of humor Full of interesting facts 23 best friends Internet memes Forgot how to cry Living a double life 4/24

Cancer Screenshots Same friends since high school Sleeps with a stuffed animal Vintage clothes Cries when yelled at Going home early Nesting Holding grudges Mood swings Drinking tea Supporting others’ chaos Social anxiety HGTV Super protective of loved ones Accidental emotional manipulation Cooking for friends Likes animals more than humans Meeting someone and immediately planning their whole lives together Empathizing with film protagonists Vivid childhood memories “Mi casa es tu casa” Serial monogamist Good emotional memory Big hugs 8/24

Leo Mid-day outfit changes Giving out compliments Taking an hour to get ready Accidentally flirting Making friends in the Uber pool Using a window as a mirror Passionate emotional outbursts Lowkey insecure Creating drama to avoid boredom Opening up after just meeting someone Going to the spa Needing to make opinions known Large but fragile ego Wanting recognition for your generosity Making a scene Pretending life is reality TV Giving really subjective advice Overdressed for the function Creative genius Social media as therapy Trying something and being instantly good at it Can’t take a joke Self-care Urge to stand out 7/24

Virgo Over-analyzing friendships Fact check Knowing a little about everything Helping people get their shit together Very specific tastes Fixing it or making it 10x worse Personal projects Health routines Pretending to have your shit together Repeating a task over and over until it’s perfect On good terms with your trash exes Stretching self too thin Stuck in negative thought cycles Noticing little things no one else notices Needs to quit like 3 things Nitpicking Self-sacrificing Hyperfocus Reading 3 books at once “Sorry for the late reply” Functioning on 3 hours of sleep Can’t turn brain off Neurotic Putting yourself last 17/24

Libra Fomo (fear of missing out) Saying yes to every opportunity A little bit of suck up Fear of being alone Flirting with everyone but your crush Tossing a coin to make big decisions Easily influenced Art films Strong sense of right and wrong Torn between being social and having much needed alone time New crush every day Going to museums Overthinking romantic relationships Truly admiring all your friends Adopting others’ hobbies and mannerisms Overdraft fees Showing up late or not showing up at all Avoiding conflicts at all costs Talking about past romances on the first date Gossipy but with good intentions Panicking when someone raises their voice Trying to see both sides Unable to end a bad relationship Pretending to hate drama 9/24

Scorpio Resting bitch face Keeping the right amount of secrets Has a “hit” list (either meaning) Needing to have control in relationships Knowing what you want and exactly how to get it Disappearing at parties Morbid thoughts Believes in “energy” Attractive Staring from across the room Stalking crush’s social media Fascination with cults Still in an emo phase Breaking hearts but sad about it Trust issues All black Existential angst Silently walking away from uninteresting conversations Chaotic emotions behind a calm mask Craving emotional intensity “What am I gonna gain from it?” Seeming intimidating, actually really sensitive Friendships of utility Loves crime 12/24

Sagittarius Losing interest and quitting anything that doesn’t come easily Giving opinions without being asked No inside voice Arguing as foreplay Backpacking trips Talking over people Stating opinions as facts Corny jokes Took one philosophy class and is basically Nietzsche now Always having the last word Using big words to sound smart Speaking more than one language Fueled by laughter Calling friends on their BS Asking for advice and then not taking it Needing to change activities every 30 minutes Telling it like it is Correcting people Unwaveringly optimistic Laugh can be heard from across the room Talking about a book after only reading the Wikipedia synopsis Learning a lot from travel Periodically getting rid of all your belongings Pulling out a party trick 9/24

Capricorn Fear of not living up to potential Overcommitting Anything ‘rustic’ Favorite song is the NPR jingle Has real, tangible goals Repressing trauma Always on time Slow and steady Minding your own business Prefers on one hangs to group hangs Work/life balance Putting more money into savings than you take out Acting 20 years older than you actually are Is prepared for the worst-case scenario Never asking for help Reading for fun Is actually normcore Taking care of business Taking things seriously Motivated by stress Minimalism Hanging out with the same 3 people Bashful around crush Holding friends to high standards 9/24

Aquarius Lowkey superstitious Obscure music David Lynch Weird makeup Self-given haircuts Bad at flirting Feeling like an alien Reding conspiracy theories on the internet Estranged from emotions Experimental poetry Martyr complex Being called a free spirit Abstract concepts Making plans and canceling them Intellectual superiority A little arrogant Loves an underdog Using a thesaurus Activism Fuck the rules Intentionally provocative Highly ethical Queer theory Niche knowledge base 1/24

Pisces Head in the clouds Misplacing keys Unofficially moving in with friends Easily overwhelmed Empathizing with plants Existential crisis #3 Really long showers Leaving clothes in a pile on the ground Using fantasies as an escape Romantic drama Need for constant validation Acts either 7 or 70 Incredibly active imagination Cripplingly self-aware Over-apologizing In love with 10 people at once Binge drinking Giving good advice but can’t apply it to yourself Secretly writes poetry Crying in the bathroom at work Can’t take criticism Mind reading #NoBoundaries Saying something deep out of nowhere 12/24

I am most like a Virgo (my actual sign)

You have an ex You don’t wear glasses You have blue/gray/green eyes

You’re pretty tall

You can drive a manual transmission car

You know how to change the oil

You know all about cars

You have a serious passion for photography

You’ve known your best friend since middle school You’re close friends with someone since elementary school You prefer Quiznos over Subway

You’re in a relationship You’ve had a rebound before You’ve been in a relationship for five years

You’ve cheated before

You’ve dated someone who was Asian You’ve dated someone who was Hispanic

You’ve dated someone of your own ethnicity You like to sleep a lot You were born in winter Your birthday is in February

You’re the oldest in your family

You have a younger sister You have a cat You don’t have step-parents You often work the night shifts at your job

You can play the drums

You know a lot about flowers

You’re allergic to shellfish

You like garlic You like a lot of cheese

You get real Christmas trees

You’ve been in a car accident before You’ve snuck people over to your house You’re part Hawaiian

You’re a Pisces

You have no tattoos You have no piercings You have brown hair You have a Steam account You don’t have a Twitter

You’re hardly on any networking sites

You have an XBox360 You don’t like Playstation products very much

You have relatives in Alaska and/or Hawaii

You have a Toshiba laptop

You love German Shepherds You love Welsh Corgis You are Republican

You are Methodist

Your room is rarely ever clean

You’ve drunk dialed someone

A nasty rumor has been spread about you You’re in college One of your parents was at one point enlisted in the military

You are close with your family You like paintballing

You don’t smoke You don’t do drugs

You have a habit of keeping things you borrowed longer than expected

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stories-sometimes · 4 years

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I’ve Made A Huge Mistake {12/12}

Peter Parker x Reader, Quentin Beck x Reader

Summary: Peter just wanted to enjoy his trip to Europe, maybe even confess his feelings to his best friends.But along came a mysterious new hero to ruin those plans. Peter and his class are aged up and in college.

Warnings: smut

Word Count: 1847

Main Masterlist

Series Masterlist

This is technically the last chapter, but I will be writing a few drabbles to go along with the series, if anyone has any requests.

Around a week later Peter and her were safely back in New York, laying together on his dorm room bed. Beck had been arrested and Fury and a legal team were working adamantly to form a case against him. They looked into him to find his past at Stark Industries, along with slowly revealing the team he worked with. William and Victoria had been arrested and were cooperating on a plea deal to uncover the full extent of Beck’s plans.

But for now, the pair were cuddling, comfortable in their pyjamas watching Ferris Bueller. The daisy necklace was still sat on her chest, the same place it had been she’d gotten it. Peter stared down at her, relieved she was safe. She looked more relaxed than she had been since London, simply caught up in the enjoyment of the film. Eventually, she felt his gaze, flicking her eyes up to meet his.

“What?” She smiled.

“I’m in love with you.” He confessed without thinking. Her face switched instantly, softening in a confused way.

“What?”

“I’m sorry, I, I shouldn’t have said that.” He backed away from her. He felt absolutely terrible, she was in a vulnerable position and Peter in no way wanted to take advantage of her. “You can tell me to fuck off if you want, or go away or anything. I’m just sorry.” He stood up, stressing over what he’d just done.

“Why would I tell you to go away? This is your dorm?”

“Cause I was one who just fucked everything up.”

“Do you mean it?”

“I-I,” He could make up some lie, some excuses, something to try to get him out of this situation. But he had to own up to his feelings like a man. “Yes.”

“Really?” “I’ve loved you since we were kids. I bought that necklace and I had this whole plan to tell you, but then-”

“Life got in the way.”

“Yeah.” He admitted, running his hands through his hair nervously. “I completely understand if you don’t feel the same way. And if you don’t, I don’t want anything to change. I still want to be your friend, and I-”

“Peter.” She cut him off, pulling his hands out of his hair, holding them in hers. “I love you too.”

“Wait really.” He replied shocked, cupping her face in his hands.

“Yes. I’ve loved you for so fucking long, but I was too scared to say anything. And then I thought you liked MJ.”

“You thought I liked MJ.”

“Yeah, you guys seemed really close and, you know. I got jealous.” She explained bashfully.

“We’re friends, I’ve never liked her like that. And you were jealous of me, seriously. I was always the one who was jealous of all the guys staring at you, not the other way around.”

“Are you really that blind? Do you actually not see how many girls fancy you?” Peter rolled his eyes, blushing slightly, “C’mon, you got that whole hot nerd thing going for you.”

“And you like that?”

“Absolutely, I always go for the annoyingly smart guys.” She joked, “And as much as I want to jump into this, but I can’t right now. I just got so caught up with Beck and that was a fucking mess. And I know if I throw myself into another relationship one of us will end up hurt. I’m sorry.”

“No, no. You gotta do what’s right for you. And I will wait, however long you need, for you to be ready.” She pulled him into a tight embrace, nestling her head in his neck.

“I love you, Peter Parker.”

Six weeks later the two of them sat in the court, waiting to be called to the witness stand. Peter felt ridiculous sitting in his Spiderman suit while everyone else was in formal suits. He held onto her hand to relax the both of them. Each sweating at the thought of seeing Beck for the first time since London. The man was soon dragged out into the room and the hearing began. Beck was being charged for a series of charges, from fraud to the destruction of the cities, right up to the deaths he caused through his malicious plans. She kept her head up, refusing to make eye contact with the older man trying to stare at her. For the most part, she blocked out what was going on during the hearing, not even realising she was being called up to the witness stand until Peter was shoving her up.

“Mr Beck, please describe your relationship with the witness.” The prosecutor asked.

“Well, we know each other very intimately.” He smirked. She clenched her jaw in response, trying to ignore his comment, knowing he was just trying to fuck with her. “We were involved in a romantic and sexual relationship while the two of us were in Europe.”

“And how do you respond?” The lawyer turned to ask her, “Were you complicit within this relationship?”

“Yes, everything was consensual.”

“And considering his character, why would you travel through Europe with him?”

“Because at the time I, like everyone else, believed his story. I got caught up with the idea I had of him.”

“And why did you stay with him after you found out his true character?”

“When I first found out I was alone with him in a foreign country with no way of getting home on my own. I was scared of what he’d do. And later he threatens to kill my friends if I didn’t comply with his plans. Beck was trying to blackmail me into staying with him.”

“And when did you figure out he was lying?”

“I was in a hotel room, unpacking our stuff, and I found illusion technology initially created for Stark Industries within his Mysterio suit. Then I realised the elementals were fake and if that was fake, I thought everything else would be.” A few more questions were asked before she was allowed to sit back down.

“The jury had spoken.” The judge announced a few hours later. “Finding Mr Beck guilty for all accused crimes and will be given three life sentences at a maximum-security prison with no opportunity for parole.” They said before smacking the gabble down. She watched Beck being assorted from the courtroom back to his holding cell. The experience was oddly therapeutic for her. With the truth out there and Beck behind bars, she could truly put this unfortunate chapter behind her. She and Peter made their way back to his dorm. Peter pulled off his mask before turning back to face her.

“We did it,” Peter said, hugging her, “It’s all over now.” She wrapped her arms around her neck, pulling back a few moments later. She traced her fingers over his cheeks, a dumb grin on her face. Within her mouth was on his. It was gentle, but with an underlying passion of years of built-up feelings.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Peter mumbled against her lips, “You sure about this, you’re definitely ready?”

“Yeah, like you said, it’s over.” She kissed him again, walking the two of them over to Peter’s bed, pulling him on top of her. She traced her tongue over his bottom lip. She moved her hand, tracing her nails down his chest and lightly grazing over his groin. Peter let out a gasp.

“So you wanna do it, do it?” He asked nervously.

“Yeah, if you wanna too.”

“Yes, yes. I really want this.” Peter nodded eagerly. He immediately pressed the spider logo on his chest to loosen his suit. She pushed the suit of his shoulders, pushing it off his body. And removing the tight material helped the growing strain in his underwear. Peter slowly unzipped her dress, she raised her hips slightly to help him shimmy the dress off. Peter looked at her body in complete awe. She raised to a sitting position, unclipping her bra and sliding it off before lying back down on the bed. Peter crawled back on top of her, gently kissing his lips, down to her neck and further down to reach her chest. He ghosted his finger over a nipple, flicking his eyes back up to her when he heard a soft moan. “God, I’ve dreamed about this for so long.” Peter whispered.

“I hope I live up to your expectations.”

“This is so much better.” He kissed further down her stomach, loving every inch of her body. He reached her panties, brushing over the lace. “Can I?”

“Please.” She let out breathily. He pulled the thin fabric down her legs, taking her calf in one hand to kiss back up towards her core. Experimentally, he flicked his tongue over her clit. She moaned, grasping at the bedsheets below. Pleased with the reaction, Peter went in again, more confidently. Her back arched as she snapped one hand from the bed to Peter’s curls. A coil built up before Peter finally tipped her over the edge.

“Fuck Peter, feels so good.” She moaned. Peter felt a surge of pride rush through his body. He’d just made the girl of his dreams cum. She pulled him back up, pushing his boxer’s waistband down. Peter helped, shrugging them off, groaning embarrassingly loudly when she wrapped her smaller hand around his cock. “I want you in me.” She whispered in his ear. And that had to be the sexiest thing Peter had ever heard. He pushed into her, bottoming out hastily. They both moaned, gripping onto one another for dear life. He pulled back out more slowly, then thrusting back in. He immediately set the pace, slow, deep and loving. It was the most passionate thing either of them had ever felt. Everything else was completely irrelevant. All that mattered was the two of them in the moment. They were completely immersed with each other. Soon they were both coming down from their highs, wrapping around each other’s bodies.

“I love you so fucking much.” She said.

“I love you too, more than you could possibly know.”

Everything was going perfectly, at least for that night. The next morning she reached over to check her phone, only to see her twitter blowing up.

“Peter, Peter.” She shook him awake.

“What’s going on.” He said, dazed.

“You’re trending on twitter.”

“It’s probably cause of the trial.”

“No, you’re trending, not Spiderman.” Peter shot up at that. They opened the app to see a final interview with Beck. Within it, he revealed Spiderman to be Peter. He dropped his head into his hands.

“I’ve made a huge mistake.” Peter sobbed into his hands.

“Hey, hey, hey.” She said, running her hands through his hair to try relax him, soothe his woes just a bit. “Why would you think this is your fault.”

“Cause I showed him who I was and I should have -” “We’re going to get through this.”

“You promise.” Peter said between panicked breaths.

“I promise. I’m gonna be right by your side and it’s going to be alright. You haven’t made a mistake.” She reassured him.

“Not with you.”

Taglist:

@cool-ontherun-world

@eleventhdoctorsangel

@chubby-tink

@eridanuswave

@squishychar1ie

@sincerely-cronch

@charmed-asylum

@lukesbabylon

@cutie1365

@smilexcaptainx

@tomhollandssecurityguard

#peter parker #peter parker x reader #peter parker imagine #peter parker x you #peter parker x original character #peter parker smut #quentin beck #quentin beck x you #quentin beck x reader #quentin beck imagine #marvel #ive made a huge mistake #spiderman #spiderman far from home #mysterio x reader #mysterio imagine #mysterio

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argylemikewheeler · 4 years

Text

June, 1990.

|| just a sweet little scene i thought of for will’s high school graduation day |

Will insisted it was embarrassing. Mike kept saying it was fine, that he was proud. Will was graduating from high school a year later than all of his friends. His senior year, their senior year, was derailed by debilitating panic attacks and panicking nightmares that kept Will out of school for five months. He had to repeat his senior year of high school, which meant he would be going to his high school graduation alone, his name being announced and reminding everyone of is own existence-- and failure.

“You look so handsome.” Mike said, leaning against the kitchen counter. Will had been standing in the living room trying to adjust his graduation robe for twenty minutes. He couldn’t tell if it was too short or if he was too tall. A lot had changed since he first got it.

“It’s a polyester blue robe.” Will sighed, letting his hands flop to his sides. “I can’t look good.” His mom made a quiet sound of disagreement as she fixed the hem.

“You look smart, baby.” She said softly.

“Yeah, like a real academic.” Mike pushed himself off the counter, crossing the floor to toward Will. “I’m so proud.”

“It’s just high school graduation. And it’s a year late.” Will said, letting his shoulders fall. “You don’t have to lie to me.”

“I’m not lying.” Mike said, placing a hand under Will’s chin. “You look great, Will. Very very handsome.”

“Michael.” Will blushed as his mother was still crouched by his feet.

“I’m not listening.” She said, placing a pin between her teeth. “I can start singing if you need.”

“No, it’s okay. Mike was just shutting up.” Will tried to shake the heat from his cheeks, ducking his head and pushing his hair out of his face. Mike stayed beside him, fixing his collared shirt and tie peeking out at the top of his robe.

Will remembered this exact moment when Mike was getting ready to graduate: all his friends huddled in the Wheeler’s living room fixing each other’s caps and collars. Will stood off to the side, watching El help fix Dustin’s cap right on his head and Mike redo his tie for a third time. His help was enlisted finally, Will getting to fiddle just under Mike’s chin for a safe, extended moment. Mrs. Wheeler was helping Max with her hairclips just behind them, but she wasn’t noticing. Will pressed the tie flat against Mike’s chest and told him he looked charming-- smartest in the class.

Now Mike was attempting to do the same without any ability to say the same about Will. He flunked experimental chemistry-- the easiest class, claimed his friends-- because all the test tubes, formulas, and equipment made something under Will’s skin crawl uncontrollably. He had his first full-blown panic attack the second week of his chemistry class. The precipitate of his experiment was... slimey and gooey and far too familiar. Will seized up and it was the beginning of an uncovered pit of trauma Will had to cope with as his full-time occupation.

He was not the smartest kid anymore. He was barely smart. He was just surviving-- and he had to be okay with that.

“Okay, there you go, honey. All fixed.” Joyce stood and stepped back, looking at Will. “Perfect. You look great, Will. I’m so proud of you.” She grinned and Will tried to not see it as a Mother’s Lie. He let Mike’s continued fiddling at his collar help. It always did.

“Okay! Films all in. Let’s get some pictures!” Jonathan came rushing out of his room. He nearly stumbled into Joyce, attention taken by his camera. “Will, you first.”

“Just me?” Will began picking at his cuticles. “I-I don’t want a bunch of just me.”

“We can take others, baby. You first though.” Joyce waved him against the wood paneling of the hallway opening.

Will stood awkwardly, his hands refusing to stay at his sides. He felt like he was already crossing that stage, every set of eyes watching him. Will could hear them: Zombieboy, stupid pathetic zombieboy. Had to be held back-- heard he started crying in gym class every week and they had to kick him out. Well, I heard he ran away again and missed too much school. Or, actually, I heard--

Will became too aware of his own body standing alone. “Okay, someone else now!”

“Mike, honey, you go ahead. I want to get my two favorite high school graduates in the same picture.” Joyce patted Mike’s back and sent him walking to Will.

“What about me?” Jonathan laughed, adjusting his lens. Mike threw the whole shot ratio off kilter as he towered next to Will.

“That’s who she’s talking about: you and Mike.” Will said. Everyone-- literally all three of them-- opened their mouths simultaneously to disagree. “I was kidding. I’m kidding.” Will wasn’t.

“You’re my favorite.” Mike said with a poke to Will’s shoulder. “Like, everything.”

"You have to say that.” Will shifted and made sure his shoulder had a foot of distance from Mike’s. “But... thank you. You’re my favorite too.”

They giggled, albeit awkwardly, looking at each other from a healthy distance apart. The clacking and fiddling of Jonathan’s camera made them instinctively keep to themselves. Evidence had become a social death sentence-- not to mention a possible real one if they weren’t careful. Zombieboy was already disliked for being “unusual” and “hanging around” boys too much. Having a sweet photo capturing the moment Mike proclaimed Will his “favorite everything” would’ve been a confirmation to both.

They smiled for the camera, but there was no flash.

“Well, stand next to each like you’re actually friends.” Jonathan sighed, lowering his camera. “It’s not going anywhere but here, guys. Stand closer together. You look so uncomfortable.”

Mike moved and placed his one hand on Will’s back and the other on his chest. Will let his own hand rest against Mike’s lower back. They’d almost gotten to be the same height their junior year, until Mike hit (somehow) another growth spurt and got another two inches on him. Will was dating a boy that was a perfect six feet tall but still somehow forgot and smacked his head on every door and lighting fixture.

And still, graduated high school before Will.

“Can you crouch or something?” Will teased, pretending to tilt his head all the way back to see Mike. “I don’t want to be in a shadow for my graduation photos.”

“I didn’t get any taller, Will.” Mike laughed, turning away from the camera. He smiled (down) at Will brighter than he would have expected. He was beaming. “Did you shrink? I think you shrunk. Mrs. Byers, he’s getting smaller!” Mike pretended to holler, wrapping his arms suddenly around Will’s waist. Will yelped and grabbed at Mike’s arm, hoping for extra support.

Jonathan’s camera flashed and Will’s graduation photo caught him being fondly attacked by Mike, both of them probably blurry and barely recognizable. It’d be perfect; a safe photo to have in his sketchpad.

“No no, take a nice one!” Joyce said, placing her hands on her hips with a laugh. “Boys, please.”

“He’s just so small!” Mike kept joking, twisting Will back and forth. He rested chin on the top of Will’s head and started laughing. It was the most beautiful sound Will could ever think to insult his height.

“Michael, put me down before Jonathan wastes all his film!” Will said, tapping Mike’s arm. “I want a nice one for you to take back to your dorm. Like the one from the beach two summers ago.”

“Oh, like that one?” Mike said, easing Will back down to his feet. “That’s my favorite picture of us.”

“So then let’s take another one.” Will insisted, smoothing his robe hurriedly. "Okay, sorry. We’re trying again.”

Jonathan lifted and adjusted his camera, crouching a little to get Will closer to the center of the shot than before. Mike reached for Will again, putting his arm around his shoulders. Mike’s hand gently gripped Will’s arm, pulling him into Mike’s side. Will placed his hand on Mike’s back and let his head fall to lean against Mike. They held the pose and the camera flashed.

“Hold still, I want to get this one again just in case.” Jonathan stand, adjusting the film.

Will waited until the last second, right before he could tell Jonathan was about to take the photo-- he always took a deep, even breath to steady his hands-- and turned his head to look at Mike, grinning. It was a short, impossible moment; it only lasted as long as the flash, before Mike turned toward Will as well to see what he was doing. Only a flash where Will was able to look at Mike all on his own.

It was incredible, really, how grateful Will was for every single bit of that moment: his family all around, excited and not at all disappointed in his educational delay; Mike there and somehow still proud of him; and the three of them all able to see Will be himself without a single slur being thrown around. He was in the safest place, getting to celebrate a moment everyone else took for granted.

“What are you looking at?” Mike asked, furrowing his eyebrows. “Shadow again?”

“No, just looking at you.”

“What about me?”

Will let his hand fall to his side, waiting for Mike’s to join it. “Thank you for coming. I know you probably had internship stuff or--”

“Hey? Would you stop it? Of course I would be here for this. My boyfriend is getting a degree.”

“It’s a high school diploma.”

“It’s an achievement.” Mike was stern but still gentle. “I’m really proud, but mostly just happy you’re okay. That you could do this.”

Throughout Will’s instability and harsh, volatile flashbacks, Mike was a firm constant. Every homework session that turned into Will clutching his chest as the wind was whisked out of him with just a simple word from their textbook; every date night that suddenly ended with Will crying so hard he was vomiting; every time Will was sure he was losing his mind. Will was never really alone-- Mike made sure of it.

“We’ve been together for five years. Did you think I’d just forget about the rest of our lives together-- because that’s this.” Mike took Will’s hand. “I see you get your diploma and then in another five years you see me get mine again.”

“You’ll be done in another three years, not five.”

“I’m being kind to myself and allowing some wiggle room.” Mike laughed, shaking his head. “Thermodynamics is about to kick my ass.”

“Sure beats retaking high school chemistry, I’m sure.” Will tugged Mike after him as he gathered his things; Jonathan and his mother had already silently started shuffling to the door, not wanting to interrupt them. “You’re going to do great, Mike. You’re smart.”

“Hey, this isn’t about me.” Mike grabbed his keys and wallet from the kitchen counter. “Today is only about you, okay?”

“Fine.” Will rolled his eyes and stood petulantly as Mike started for the front door. Mike bumped into him, cracking an endearing wonky smile and immediately kissing his cheek.

“Now, come on, I’m driving you, right?” Mike held out his hand again, asking for the company.

“Are you sure? You want people seeing your car at the high school? That’s a bit, conspicuous.”

“It’s gonna be worse when I start cheering when they call your name.”

“Michael, no.” Will said, grabbing Mike’s hand but hoping to discourage his grin. “You better not.”

“Oh, too late. Max is bringing the noise makers. Dustin’s got a sign-- and Lucas has the arm span to hoist it the highest.”

“I cannot believe you.”

“Hey! You said I was your favorite-- no takebacks!”

#byeler #byler #will byers x mike wheeler #stranger things writing #prompts #to post

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ofhoneyblood · 4 years

Text

BRYCE ATLAS WINSLOW

pronouns: HE , HIM , HIS

age: THIRTY - EIGHT

species: HUMAN

nationality: IRISH , ITALIAN , AMERICAN

sexuality: PANSEXUAL / DEMIROMANTIC

sign: AQUARIUS SUN , LIBRA MOON , VIRGO RISING

occupation: OWNER & BOUNCER @ RED HOT PUSSY LIQUORS

+ traits: INVITING. FAIR. FUNNY. OPEN-MINDED. TOLERANT.

-- traits: GUARDED. DETACHED. DESPERATE. SELF-DESTRUCTIVE.

faceclaim: MILO VENTIMIGLIA

soundscapes: HERE

aesthetic: HERE

yo yo you yo , it’s lydia ( yes , that’s my real name ) here with my noble beast bryce winslow ! i have had bryce as a muse longer than any other and it’s been literal years since i’ve written him so i’m extremely excited. this is the first time he will be milo though and i’m super hype to get things going ! i have headcanon after headcanon for him , so hit me up if you want to do something bc i am ready to do some shit !! again , i’m lydia ( or nary , nettle , snottie , etc. ) and i love a good name change , twenty five years old , pansexual demigirl ( she / her & / or they / them ) residing in the central timezone.

this is THIRTY-EIGHT year old BRYCE WINSLOW , the OWNER OF & BOUNCER AT RED HOT PUSSY LIQUORS BURLESQUE AND BOOZE who uses HE / HIM pronouns. he grew up in DUBLIN , IRELAND but came to pleasance in JULY 2006 ON HAPPENSTANCE AND TO RUN AWAY FROM HIS PAST and now enjoys spending his time at FOR KEEPS AND RED HOT PUSSY LIQUORS. BRYCE is written by LYDIA.

PERSONALITY

element: air ruling planet: uranus — planet of originality body part: ankles good day: communicative , original , open-minded , fair , logical , inviting , tolerant , funny bad day: guarded , detached , self-destructive , out-of-touch , irrational , desperate , lonely favorite things: dancing , teaching , team sports , anything with a cause or mission , independent films , working out , baths , animals , preserving plant life / flowers , reading least favorite things: injustice , drama queens , feeling isolated , owing money or favors , having to choose just one thing , personal questions , gossip , cigarette smoke secret wish: to experience total freedom how to spot him: a cute smile lighting up a tired face , quirky movements , tired eyes , long legs , big hands , flannel , old beat up truck where you’ll find him: backpacking or hiking , protesting , coaching a team , revolutionizing the industry he works in , the gym , red hot pussy liquors , alone at home , working on a project , taking a walk by northwood lake keywords: friendliness , eccentricity , teamwork , humanitarianism , technology , groups , avant-garde

first thing to know about bryce winslow is that he’s a free-spirit that prizes individuality and plays well on a team. he has been known to do things his own way , moving on a path different from everyone else’s. some call him eccentric , others appreciate his cutting-edge originality and authentic style.

one of the many ways that the irishman is a paradox ? he’s highly individualistic , but also an amazing team player. he might look like the fresh-faced guy next door on the outside , but inside he marches to his own beat. naturally popular , as he’s vibrantly social and loves to be among people , telling jokes and introducing thought-provoking conversation topics.

people truly do make his world go round , and he can become friends with the most random strangers. can be a bit of an alien — a little “ out there ” in his approach to different things. not that he cares about offending anyone ! loves a good casual connection , bryce can disengage as quickly as he connects. in fact , platonic pals sometimes get better treatment than romantic partners.

while he can be a bit unsentimental on a one-on-one level , he can be moved to tears by the plight of animals , the environment or other social justice issues. yes , this big irishman is a bohemian at heart in some ways , but he also gets the job done. as a tenacious aquarius , he can be quite hardworking when he devotes himself to a goal.

a competitive ( and lesser-known ) type a streak can emerge when he really wants something. nothing turns him on like progress , especially in the name of his grander ideals ! playing hard to get REALLY works on him lol

philanthropic and objective , bryce is in a lot of ways innovative and avant-garde. from experimental electronic music to community-oriented living , there’s nothing that this man hasn’t or won’t explore. as someone who loves being a part of a good group or team , bringing people together is also one of his specialties.

intense bryce energy is cutting-edge , “ out there ” and even a little strange at times. a total nerd for all things futuristic , science fiction and wacky inventions. no topic is too cutting-edge with this irishman: extraterrestrials , stem cells , cloning , robots taking over the earth…yup , bryce will go there.

while he likes to influence rebellion and detaching from reality ( c’mon bryce , back to earth ! ) , he likes to help others see possibilities they wouldn’t otherwise. the essence of his true energy is: community-oriented , original , open-minded , fair , logical , humanitarian , connecting , and inviting.

the negative expression of bryce’s energy can be: guarded , detached , destructive , out-of-touch , irrational , and desperate. reluctant to express emotions — the irishman prefers rational reasoning and cool-headed logic to the messy tapestry of the human feelings.

one of his favorite authors is ayn rand , founder of the objectivist movement , and that’s pretty much all you need to know. objectivism has been a major influence on the libertarian movement , which has a real bryce flavor. it’s an organized system that also preserves individual freedom and limits government intervention. it’s very “ fringe ” and mainstream all at once , a fascinating paradox and something that really intrigues him.

playful gusts and a social butterfly whirlwind combines into a gale force of humanitarianism for all. bryce is a visionary , dreaming up quirky utopias and alternative realities that can shake up the status quo. emotional detachment , unpredictable energy and rebellion are major factors in the irishman’s personality. not going to lie , he can be “ type a “ and totally quirky all at the same time ??

a stabilizer — the one who sets up a solid goal or foundation then starts building. bryce can take the enthusiastic idea that someone else sparks and craft it into something real. he picks up the ball when another passes it , running the distance to the goal.

the trustworthy type who likes “ to-do ” lists and fancy titles. if a friend says , “ let’s go on vacation ! ” he’s already calling the travel agency , booking the tickets and hotel , and sending everyone a list of what to pack.

true believer in friendship and teamwork , so bryce tends to be more focused on a group than an individual. freedom is important to him , which is why he likes to keep things light on an interpersonal level. that way , he won’t feel bad about running off to the opposite corner of the world at a moment’s notice.

at times , this nomadic strategy backfires , leaving him lonely and disconnected. in truth , the irishman is uncomfortable with too much intimacy. this free spirit belongs to the world and feels off-balance giving his considerable energy to just one person.

while bryce’s friends get first-class treatment , family and lovers see a different side of him: moody , brooding , anxious and neurotic. he may pick one ( and only one ) person to open up to , getting attached to the point of obsession.

learning to accept and express his emotions would help him avoid the massive freak outs and anger flashes that come from pretending everything’s cool when it isn’t. bryce appreciates a quirky or eccentric twist , enjoying colorful characters and people with counter cultural personalities.

BIOGRAPHY

bryce atlas winslow was born into a very straight lace , play by the rules , catholic family. his father , matteo winslow , was an italian military man and his mother , deirdre winslow , was a cold irish homemaker. matteo was every bit the ‘ man of the family ’ and bryce grew up only answering to his father. deirdre would only every answer a question with ‘ ask yer da ’ or ‘ dija’ ask yer da ? ’

she was a mostly spineless , god fearing woman that was afraid of her own shadow and that’s what made her such a good puppet for matteo. bryce’s father was a stern , angry man that only grew angrier when drunk , no one dared put even a single toe out of line with him around.

( TW: implied child abuse ) with bryce being the first born and only son he was expected to be perfect , from a very young age he felt the pressures of that. it was like walking on eggshells , always afraid of making a mistake or displeasing his father. he did not have the fun , happy-go-lucky innocence a child should expect of their early years ; instead for bryce winslow there was not much more than discipline , hard work , and punishment.

for the most part , bryce succeeded at being the perfect son his father expected him to be — a robot more than an actual living boy. nothing more than a machine , a machine being bred for war.

it wasn’t until the beginning of his secondary school , when puberty and hormones began blossoming , that things became precarious. voice cracks , uneven patches of hair…. oh , and a sudden sexual desire for the same sex.

( TW: suicide ment. ) now , the winslows were catholic - extremely devout catholics - and bryce grew very self-loathing and afraid in this confusing time. he contemplated suicide , all because ‘ homosexuality was wrong ‘ and ‘ you go straight to hell ‘ if you engage in anything associated with it. it didn’t matter how good of a son you were , because ‘ man shall not lie with man. ‘ he kept it hidden for years , he also managed not to act on it until well into the last year of secondary school.

despite bryce’s fears and shame , when he was sixteen he fell in love for the first time. first loves can be explosive , dangerous even and this one was nothing short of just that. the boy kept his forbidden love a secret from everyone , his family and father above all others.

all good things must come to an end though or so they say , for the boys it came far sooner than later. matteo , bryce’s father , happened upon a note from the boy bryce was seeing , cian , and in said note was all sorts of information including a meeting spot. as you can imagine , matteo flew from the house in a drunken rage in search of his “ sinner “ of a son only to catch him red-handed.

( TW: assault , child abuse ) bryce managed to save cian from his father’s wrath , taking the brunt of the attack. cian watched as bryce was beaten , begging and screaming for the man to stop , that he was killing him. the drunken bigot was turning on the younger boy when bryce told him to leave and never come back , so that is what he did.

( TW: implied abuse ) to this day , he has never laid eyes on his young lover and that was probably for the best. after his father had tired himself out and satisfied his rage , he left his son there in the dirt and the beaten boy didn’t bother moving.

( TW: suicidal thoughts , conversion therapy ment. ) will to live depleted , too tired to go on , pain too much to endure — he just slept there until the next morning. he was awoken with a kick of dirt in the face , his father telling him that he was being sent to a ‘’ special ’’ facility where they would get rid of his ‘’ ailment. ’’

( TW: conversion therapy / facility ) time melded in the facility , but he estimated nearly a year of his life was wasted away in there. resistant and defiant for most of his time there , it wasn’t until his father visited him , the one and only time . that things changed.

( TW: suicide ment. , homophobia ) his father brought news that his mother had killed herself but this was a vicious lie , a last ditch effort to get bryce to change his ways and boy , did it work ! hardly a month later , the young man was discharged from the facility only to find his mother was indeed very much alive.

matteo up and moved his entire family to england after bryce got out of the facility. his father gave him nonsense about wanting to get away from the bad memories , starting over new , and ‘ lead not into temptation ‘ by sending him back to school with ‘ sinners ’ and ‘ sodomites. ‘

so , bryce finished out the remainder of his schooling in england and went straight into the forces as per his father’s wishes. sadly for him , he would never become what he so longed to be. he had just finished boot camp and life had just started to seem somewhat normal - if you can call anything the winslow’s had normal - when he lost it all.

( TW: eye injury ) the young man was honorably discharged after an accident that left him legally blind in one eye , when he returned home after his short stent in the defense forces there was no longer a place in the family for him. his father quite literally disowned him all for something he had no control over , a mere accident , but there was nothing more disappointing to matteo than a son that was ‘ kicked out ‘ of the forces.

( TW: gang ment. , human trafficking ) fast forward a year , bryce had found himself in a gang. this part of his background is the most unresolved seeing as it’s not part of his original backstory. long story short , he was involved with the gang until he was twenty three but it all became too much for him after his boss tried to involve him in human trafficking.

( TW: gang ment. , suicide , death ) when you join a gang you don’t usually do it thinking someday you might one day retire or quit said gang , but then as you get older you realize you’re not as tough as you thought. bryce was twenty-three when his mother finally really did ‘ commit suicide ‘ , the first time his father spoke to him since he returned home from the forces was only to blame him for her death.

( TW: death ment. , implied murder ) honestly , it was just the straw that broke the camels back. bryce wasn’t allowed at the funeral or anywhere near it , he’s almost certain his mother’s death wasn’t by her own hand or an accident but he’ll never truly know. after he was certain she was in the ground , bryce fled to america in the hopes of outrunning the gang and getting lost in the melting pot.

once in the land of opportunity , he got his hands on the cheapest ride he could find first and just started driving. it was well after his twenty-fourth birthday , right smack in the middle of a hot ass summer in ‘06 , that he found himself in pleasance of all places. he never had any intention at all to grow roots there , it simply happened.

other than that , the man busies himself with drying and preserving flowers , taking baths , working out , and playing with his dog. he parades around like this big , tough hard ass when in reality he’s quite the domestic goofball type.

ETC.

has a dog , it’s a beagle named shiloh literally

a big hobby of his is preserving flowers in his spare time , he keeps a small book of pressed flowers and plant life on him a lot of the time in the chance he comes across something he wants to preserve

can play guitar and doesn’t have a bad singing voice either

legally blind in one eye , but doesn’t wear his glasses often

has a younger sister that he does keep in contact with , but not very well ( WC ? )

a guilty pleasure of his is taking baths ; he enjoys adding bath salts , flowers , and other so-called ‘ feminine ‘ products like bath bombs , etc. to them and honestly takes one nearly every day

he was born and raised mostly in dublin , ireland and has a thick accent that only gets thicker when intoxicated or angry. he does use a lot of uncommon terminology to american’s ( yes , i own the feckin’ book of everything irish. . . it’s that serious ) but i’ll lyk in the tags what it means unless i forget

@phqextras

#DOSSIER.#phqintro #phqextras #am i doing this right ?#idk

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hockeylvr59 · 5 years

Text

Anything You Want || Paul Bissonnette and Tyler Seguin

Requested: [ ] yes [x] no

Authors Note: So I was in a total nsfw mood tonight and asked for some people to send me ideas. One of my group chats said I should definitely go with Bissonnette sex but suggested I add Seguin in there. I twisted their suggested prompt a little but anyway. It’s really dirty...so enjoy.

Warnings: smut, smut and more smut.Threesome. Oral sex, actual sex, anal sex. Oh and breeding kink/actual breeding (unprotected sex) because evidently I can’t control myself.

Word Count: 3,804

Dating Paul Bissonnette meant that your sex life was never something that could be described as boring or regular. Paul was older than you and certainly more experienced inside (and technically outside, hello airport sex) the bedroom. Still, he’d never made you feel comfortable, in fact, he was probably the best teacher you could ask for when it came to all things intimate.

When you’d first gotten together, things had been kept fairly tame, vanilla even, behind closed doors as you learned each other’s likes and dislikes, and what made each of you fall apart. Now that things were more serious as far as the relationship went, things inside the bedroom were shifting as well. One could say that you were very much in the experimental phase of things. Still, even now Paul still had the upper hand in experience and everything that was brought up was something he had tried before and had already decided whether it’s something he likes or not.

Unsurprisingly, Paul’s hard ‘no’s’ were things that you honestly had no desire to try and most of his ‘yes’s’ were things you were eager for as well. There honestly wasn’t much of a middle ground where there was something you wanted that he wasn’t the biggest fan of....except...shockingly, a threesome. Paul claimed that he had been there and done that before and that it was something that he felt like he’d grown out of. He hadn’t said it was something that would never happen, but it didn’t seem like something that would happen anytime soon, especially not without some prodding on your end.

That’s probably why Paul’s text tonight had caught you so off guard. You’d come to Toronto with him for a week of summer vacation while he filmed Biz does Ontario. While he filmed, you played tourist, got a massage, and just generally took some time out of your busy life to relax. Tonight he’d gone out to meet up with some buddies and you’d stayed in, curled up with a new book.

It was almost ten when your phone buzzed and setting your book aside as you finished a chapter, heat flooded your body.

Put on that black lingerie set and that dress you know I like and come to 70 Yorkville Ave.

His text was suggestive enough to tell you that he had something planned but too vague to tell you exactly what it was. Still, you knew by now that when Paul had something up his sleeve it was best to just play along. So you quickly changed into the requested attire, threw your hair up into a messy and somewhat sexy bun, and applied a smokey makeup look before grabbing your things, slipping into a pair of heels and heading out the door.

When you arrived at the lounge you looked around but didn’t spot Paul anywhere. Shooting him a text that you were there you made your way over to the bar and ordered yourself a glass of wine, your anticipation rising. Even sipping slowly, you’d finished your first glass of wine and you still hadn’t spotted your boyfriend. Just as you were about to text him again, a warm hand landed on your lower back and a voice called for the bartender to pour you another glass while ordering a beer for himself.

Your body had tensed at the touch and you quickly spun to tell whoever it was that had decided to get handsy off.

“Ex…” before you could even finish your first word your eyes met the cocky gaze of a certain Dallas Stars forward and you froze. The fact that Tyler Seguin was standing beside you with his hand on your lower back should have signaled exactly what your boyfriend had planned, however, your brain failed to put the pieces together quickly.

“I’m sorry...did you not want another?” The tone of his voice was almost patronizing and for a split second, you wanted to slap him.

“No...I...yes…” You stuttered out. “But I have a boyfriend.” Something about your words made Tyler laugh and after taking a sip of his beer he leaned closer and whispered in your ear.

“Well, I won’t tell him if you won’t.” When your body instinctively recoiled because the last thing you’d ever do was cheat on Paul, Tyler’s facial expressions cracked for a moment before leaning in close again. “Would you just play along?” Having felt his breath on your skin one moment and then having it be gone the next made you shiver and seeing Tyler looking away from the bar made you follow his gaze. What your eyes met was your boyfriend who had his normal sexy smirk on and who was clearly watching the two of you.

At that moment, you looked between Paul and Tyler and when you returned your gaze to the former he was clearly mouthing something to you, his body language more relaxed than it should be for someone else hitting on you. It was then that everything hit you at once...this was Paul’s plan. This was him giving in to what you wanted. A flush rose on your cheeks as you smiled at him sending him a short nod before turning your attention back to Tyler who smirked once more realizing that you were now in on the whole plan.

Grazing your fingers along the muscles of Tyler’s forearm you couldn’t help but imagine those arms pinning you down on the bed while he fucked you.

“So you like hitting on taken women.” You tease, sipping at your wine before purposely licking a drop of the liquid off of your lips. At your action, Tyler’s adam’s apple bobbed and there was a tick in his jaw as it tightened.

“I like hitting on attractive women.” He responded voice low, his body stepping half a step closer to your own, boxing you in against the bar. “And what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” It was then that you realized his hand was still pressed against your back as it dipped lower to rest just above your ass.

“And if I was supposed to meet him here…?” You whispered, your hand moving from his arm to graze for just a moment over his abs.

“Well then maybe he should join us.” The words were said in such a matter of fact manner that even though you knew that’s where this was headed, they still stole your breath for a moment. Heat was already pooling in your stomach when Tyler’s teeth grazed over your ear as he spoke. “I bed you’d like to be fucked from both ends.”

If you hadn’t been sitting you probably would have toppled over. You were about to look back for Paul wondering just how this was going to proceed when you felt a second hand land on your back and the scent of your boyfriend’s cologne filled your nose. Reaching for your class of wine you quickly finished it off, and as you set the empty glass back on the bar, you felt Paul’s breath against your other ear.

“You gonna be a good girl baby and let Tyler and I fuck you? I told him what a good girl you are but he said he’d have to see it to believe it.” You couldn’t help but nod, conscious thought starting to leave you, as the combination of the alcohol and heat of two huge male bodies surrounded you.

The next thing you know, the check has been paid and you’re being led out of the bar into an SUV. As you reach the vehicle, Tyler tosses Paul the keys and opens the backdoor for you before sliding inside with you.

“You know where you’re going man?” Tyler asks and when Paul nods and starts the car, Tyler’s attention turns to you. Out of habit, you buckle yourself up and Tyler and Paul exchange a quick look in the rearview mirror before they both do the same. “Guess it would put a damper on things if we were killed before the fun started,” Tyler muttered.

As soon as Paul pulled into the Toronto streets, Tyler’s hand falls to your thigh and slowly starts moving upward. The rough callouses of his fingers cause you to shiver and unconsciously you spread your legs wanting his touch higher and closer to your core. “That’s it baby. I know you want me.” Tyler breathes into your ear. For a moment, his hand moves up to cup your face and then he’s kissing you, his tongue quickly probing at your mouth for access. Needing to tease just a bit, you refuse access until Tyler’s hand returns to your body, slipping under your dress and finding your clit.

Your moan gives him what he wants and you can feel him smirking as you kiss passionately, his hand just resting against your inner thigh. When you finally need to breathe and pull back, Tyler’s eyes are dark and he pinches at the skin of your inner thigh. “So you’re gonna be a brat. Paul didn’t tell me that.” He mumbles, his mouth dropping to your neck to bite a mark deep into your skin. The pain of it sends a jolt through your body and you whine softly.

Before things can progress any farther, the car stops and you feel your seat belt slacken as Tyler’s fingers unlatch it before tugging you out of the car, causing you to stumble on your heels. Paul is behind you before you can regain your balance and his lips are pressed to the back of your neck. With Tyler’s hand in yours, he tugs you through the parking garage and into an elevator and it’s only once you’re inside that you feel a strong smack across your rear and you glance up to see that Paul’s eyes are dark as well.

“I thought I told you to be good for him.” He growls softly and you chew softly on your bottom lip, eyes downcast. You know he’s not actually angry and that his actions are just part of all of this so you play along.

“I’m sorry daddy...just wanted to ease into things.” You whisper. Before either man can respond further, the elevator has come to a stop and you see Paul toss Tyler his keys back so that he can lead you down the hall and into his Toronto apartment. Once the door opens both men kick off their shoes but Tyler glares at you when you move to slip off your own.

“Leave them.” He growls, taking his chance to smack at your ass firmly but gently. “Bedroom is the second door on the left. Take off your dress but leave everything else on and go kneel on the floor at the foot of the bed.” His voice is demanding and when you meet Paul’s gaze his eyes tell you to obey.

By the time they join you in the bedroom you’ve been kneeling on the floor for at least five minutes, nipples pebbled through the lingerie from the chill of Tyler’s air conditioning. You can feel their eyes raking over your body but Paul clears his throat when you attempt to look up at them so you cast your head down again awaiting further instruction.

When a hand brushes over the top of your head gently twice you take that as a signal to look up. When you do Tyler is standing nude in front of you, his hard cock bobbing between his thighs. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see that Paul is also nude and is laying on the bed, hands behind his head.

“Need to know if this mouth is as good as Biz claims.” Tyler declares, his fingers tangling in your hair after taking out your bun, to pull your mouth closer to him. Wetting your lips you first lick at the tip of Tyler’s cock, tasting the precum leaking from it before slowly sinking your mouth forward to take as much of him as you can without triggering your gag reflex. Working your mouth over him the same way Paul has taught you he likes, you try and gauge what works for Tyler and what doesn’t. When he groans as you hum around him you grin slightly, feeling his cock twitch. Seconds later he pulls you off of him and to your feet, clearly signaling that he’s not ready to cum yet.

“Paul you’re a fucking lucky bastard if she wears shit like this for you frequently.” Tyler declares, his hands running over the fabric of your lingerie.

“Don’t I know it.” Paul declares and when you look over at him, he’s stroking his cock causing another wave of moisture to flood your core.

“It’s too pretty to get cum all over so I say it’s time we get you out of it.” Tyler declares and with Paul’s nod of approval, Tyler’s hands tug the fabric off of you and finally takes your heels off along with it. “Much better.” Tyler declares as he kisses you, one hand tangling in your hair. After a moment, a warm sticky substance coats the skin of your stomach and you quickly realize that Tyler’s other hand had been jerking himself off so that he could cover you in his cum. As he cums down from his orgasm, Tyler pulls away from you panting. “Go blow your boyfriend while I eat you out.”

Nodding you take the few steps over to the bed, climbing onto it to kiss Paul’s stomach before wrapping your mouth around his hard cock. Blowing Tyler hadn’t been bad but there was something about making Paul fall apart that was just so much better. As you work Paul’s cock in the way you know he likes you can’t help but moan feeling Tyler’s mouth blowing at your pussy before sucking your clit between his lips. Receiving oral sex is one of your favorite sexual acts and it gets even better when Paul’s fingers reach down to caress your breasts, pinching and rubbing your nipples until their hard and aching and sending jolts to meet the actions of Tyler’s mouth.

You can tell that Paul is getting close, even though your mind has started to go fuzzy with the approach of your own orgasm. Still, you didn’t expect Paul’s hand to tug at your hair as his hips jolt up into your mouth pressing his cock deeper down your throat. You gag a bit before trying to relax your mouth around him, taking him as deep as you possibly can. The way he’s grunting and breathing heavily tells you he’s close and you nuzzle your nose against him. The moment Paul starts to spurt down your throat you feel two of Tyler’s fingers slip inside you as he bites gently at your clit and the feeling of all of it at once tears an orgasm from your body much sooner than you expected it.

Collapsed with your head on Paul’s thigh you try and catch your breath while Tyler’s fingers rub gently at your clit in a way that is almost too much but yet not enough. When he stops you whimper but then Paul is dragging your body further up the bed to kiss you gently, giving you the bit of care that he knows you need in the situation before going any further.

Breaking the kiss after a moment, you look down to where Tyler is standing at the foot of the bed, his cock already hard again.

“Do you want him to fuck you babe?” Paul questions softly because he would never force you into anything you didn’t want and oral sex is one thing but this is another.

“Yes…” You respond wanting to feel both men stretching you out to your max. Anal sex was something that you and Paul had been experimenting with and this seemed like the right time to take it to the next level.

“Condoms and lube?” Paul asked and when Tyler pointed to a bedside drawer, Paul grabbed both items, tossing the condom down to Tyler. “If you’re gonna fuck her you have to glove up.” He declared. Tyler complied quickly, sliding the condom over his dick before kneeling on the bed.

“How are we doing this?” He asked and as always you looked to Paul for guidance.

“She’ll ride you and I’ll fuck her from behind.” With that direction, Paul and Tyler switched spots for a moment, Paul stealing one more proper kiss before smacking at your ass. “Show him how good that pussy feels. Tight like a vice grip.”

With Tyler spread out on the bed, you moved to straddle him, his hands quickly moving to your hips to steady you.

“You ready?” He asked and when you nodded, he lined himself up with your hole before allowing you to slowly sink down on him. The way your body stretched around him made your toes curl and you paused for a moment needing to adjust. “Fuck…” Tyler grunted, his hips flexing beneath you, clearly desiring movement. Slowly you began to bounce on him, the friction building and curling inside you deliciously.

After a moment, Paul guided you to a stop again so that he could work first one but then two lubed fingers inside your ass. After that, you resumed your slow pace, fucking Tyler while Paul worked his fingers to spread you open, eventually adding a third finger, scissoring them all inside you.

“Paul please...I need you.” You moaned, wanting nothing more than to be surrounded by these men, filled and stretched so full. Gradually, you rocked your hips faster against Tyler, needing more of everything, but every so often a shudder would course through your body that would cause you to just grind your pelvis against his, curses spilling from his mouth.

“Seriously dude...just fuck her ass already. She’s killing me.” Tyler declared and after a moment you felt the heat of Paul’s body as he pressed against your back. With one more stretch of his fingers inside you, they slipped out and as Paul murmured for Tyler to help brace you, his fingers were slowly replaced by his cock.

For a moment you couldn’t breathe, the feeling of being stuffed full from both ends being too much. You knew that Tyler was aching for you to move but Paul held you still, letting you adjust to him and kissing your head while pressing his hand against your stomach. Both men were so large that you were certain they could feel each other pressed inside you and the knowledge of that pushed you even closer to orgasm. Paul must have felt your body relax enough to satisfy him because after a moment he started fucking down into you causing you to shift on Tyler’s cock. Thankfully the two men figured out how to best fuck you between them because things had just started and you were already boneless at the feeling.

All sense of time and space was lost to you as you let yourself be used by Paul and Tyler. You had no idea how long they had been fucking you for or how many times you’d already come when you felt Tyler tense under you before an obscene moan left his mouth and he was twitching inside of you. The way your body seemed to be fluttering around him signaled that you’d cum too but maybe you’d just been in a constant state of orgasm since they started fucking you.

Knowing Paul hadn’ cum yet you tried to weakly rock your body back against him but he had paused as Tyler came, just holding your body to him. Feeling his lips kiss down your back, you felt him slip out of you as well before flipping you over onto your back.

“You’ve been so good for us.” He whispered and Tyler quickly mumbled his affirmance of that statement. “But I think you should show Tyler just how good you are and let me cum inside you.”

For a split second your eyes went wide and then you were nodding frantically.

“Yes daddy, please cum inside me.” You’d tried to convince Paul to go bareback but he’d refused since you had stopped taking the pill, declaring that it wasn’t yet time to try for a baby. As Paul settled himself above you he chuckled, brushing a strand of hair from your face.

“I know baby. You’re so eager for daddy to knock you up. Want you to show Tyler just how good you take my seed, how much you want me to fill you up and make you mine. Because you are mine. Tonight was the only time I’m ever going to share you.” Tears were pooling in your eyes as Paul pressed inside you, your body molding to his like you were made to take his cock.

As Paul fucked himself inside you, Tyler’s fingers reached to play with your nipples once more.

“He’s right...you are such a good girl letting him fuck you until you’re nice and pregnant. He’s a lucky son of a bitch.” With Paul fucking so deep inside you, shifting your legs to wrap around him until he was buried to the hilt on each in stroke, and Tyler pinching and rubbing at your nipples, it wasn’t long until you were crying out as the most intense orgasm of your life rushed over you.

The walls of your pussy clenched down tight around Paul’s dick as he let go, milking him dry. With your body heaving, tears spilled from your eyes at the intensity of it all and you felt the bed shift as Paul leaned over to kiss you while still resting inside of you.

“Holy fuck Paul.” You eventually breathed, your hands reaching up to brush over his cheeks.

“Good huh?” He murmured.

“Fantastic. Though I’m not sure where that last part suddenly came from.” You whispered slightly concerned that he had only acted in the heat of the moment and would regret taking that risk. Seeing Tyler return with a wet washcloth, Paul finally slipped out of you, gently wiping you down.

“Like you didn’t know I planned to spend the rest of my life giving you whatever it is that you want.”

Paul had always done whatever it took to make you happy and tonight was no exception. Your first threesome had been fun and you definitely needed to thank Tyler but maybe Paul had been right. Now that it was out of your system you know that the only man you needed was the one you planned on spending the rest of your life with.

And you couldn’t wait to see what else there was to explore with him.

#paul bissonnette #paul bissonnette imagine #tyler seguin #tyler seguin imagine #dallas stars #dallas stars imagine #nhl imagine #nhl imagines #hockey imagine #hockey imagines #paul bissonnette nws #tyler seguin nws #former player #former player imagine #nws #lemon #020

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wings-of-indigo · 5 years

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So, Waitress is closing and Why I am Happy about that: An Exceedingly long essay Rant about Broadway

Look. Nobody's gonna read this, most likely, but it's 2 in the morning and my brain's been obsessing over Broadway (more than usual, anyway) since communing with my people at intensive this week. So, in the interest of getting some sleep before 8 hrs of dance and shitty high notes tomorrow, here goes.

I love classic, high-school-and-community standard musicals. I love new and experimental musicals. I love Disney film-to-stage musicals. I love institution musicals like Chorus Line, Cats, and Wicked; I even have a soft spot for Phantom. I am eagerly anticipating West Side Story next Christmas (seriously, I have a calander).

BUT.

As I said to one of my fellow dancers during post-class stretch (after noting his insane flexibilty and making yet another resolution to stretch more) I am Sick to GoDAMnEd DEATH of revivals, franchise adaptions, and restagings taking up the Broadway and greater theater markets.

I get why it's happening; I do. Musical theater, even shows that never make it out of Regional productions (Be More Chill, btw, I'm so proud of you bby :'-D ) are REALLY FREAKING EXPENSIVE, not just to stage, but also to develop. Broadway productions nowadays regularly go upwards of TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in costs.

Those costs are more and more frequently being met through funding by large groups of wealthy investors, who can expect basically little to no return on that investment. Only a select few shows that make it to the Great White Way do well enough to turn a profit (let alone the kinds of numbers that Hamilton, DEH, and Wicked continue to make), and more and more shows are closing in defict or once they break even. (Coincidentally, this is probably why we're seeing more and more straight plays on Broadway, especially in limited engagements. They're quicker, cheaper, and still have the same level of prestige.)

It makes sense then to assume that a show linked to an already successful property has a better chance of reaching that break-even mark, or perhaps generating a small return, than a more original idea. It's a surer bet, and we've seen it a lot these past few seasons. Anastasia, Beetlejuice, Pretty Woman, Moulin Rouge, Mean Girls... we get it. We promise. Investors want some security in an extremely and notoriously insecure market before they're willing to lay out the dough.

I get it. Everybody gets it.

And, to be fair, some of those shows are and continue to be GOOD. Tony nominees and award winners, even. But here's the problem: it's boring.

And not because I know how Act 2 ends without getting spoilers on tumblr. Unless they're younger than ten, the population of Broadway-and-musicals fans generally has a good handle on where a show's relevant plotlines are going. It's really not the wanting to know the end that keeps your butt in your overpriced red velvet seat and your eyes on the stage. It's the score, the words, occasionally the choreography, and most importantly the magicians on, off, and backstage bringing those things to life in a new and interesting way.

The antithesis of this, then, is having to watch slavish recreation of iconic scenes, lines, and characters from iconic films, presented Onstage! (TM), now with Bonus Songs! for your reconsumption. (Yes, Pretty Woman, I'm looking at you.)

Hey, I love Pretty Woman the Movie, slightly dodgy messages about feminity aside. I love it as a movie, and I really don't need to watch the knock off version of it, even if it comes in a shiny Broadway package.

Anastasia, and Beetlejuice, on the other hand, work extrodinarily well as musicals because they are NOT carbon copies of the original, somehow miraculously transplanted onto the stage.

Ironically, musicals based on original ideas are actually some of the most successful and well reviewed recent productions. Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, Come From Away, and Hadestown this season are all original works, and well, look at them. (Fishy, huh? Coincidence, I think the fuck not.)

Recently I got to see The Prom on Broadway, the day after I saw Pretty Woman. The contrast between shows and my enjoyment of them was well defined. I couldn't look away from The Prom, despite many of the major story beats being as obvious as our Cheeto-in-Chief's spray tan. I and the entire rest of the theater were completely engaged by what was going on onstage, both comedically and dramatically. At Pretty Woman, I found myself checking the Playbill to see how many songs were left for me to make it through and anxiously comparing the size of my thighs to the dancers onstage to pass the time (ah, pre pro Body Issues, welcome back! We all thought you'd retired!)

Three guesses which show I'd choose to see again.

When I read that Waitress was closing, the first thing I did was panic and start marking pre January weekends where I would both be free and possibly have disposable income (I've never gotten to see the show, and frankly I would like too). My second reaction was, yes, to mourn the closure of a wonderful show, but it was mixed with hopeful anticipation. Waitress had a good long time in the sun, and just like a well lived life, eventually it must and should end. It's better, in my humble student opinion, to live with memories and cast albums (and regional productions) than the stodgy life of a show that's jealously clung to its Broadway berth through the tourist-and-date-night trade (*cough*Phantom*cough*). It's sort of like your 40 something mother taking selfies in booty shorts in an effort to prove she's still 'hip' and in her twenties. Cringe.

Ephemera is the nature of live performance, and probably part of its allure. And just like in the natural world, old things have to end so that new things can become. Waitress closing is a vital part of this cycle.

Broadway has a limited number of theaters. That's a hard and absolute fact. Maybe a quarter of them are effectively taken off the market for new shows by productions apparently cursed with immortality. Waitress has just opened up another spot both physically and creatively for a new project- hopefully something we haven't seen before- and I hope to God, Satan, and Sondheim that it doesn't get filled with another franchise spinoff, celebrity jukebox musical, or -Lin Miranda forbid - yet another revival.

Why the revival hate, though? Aren't revivals an major way to revisit the landmark and important musicals of the past and bring them to a new audience?

Well, yes. They are, especially when they're staged and presented with the emphasis on letting the music and words speak for themselves and giving the actors leeway to work with the material, without the typical levels of Broadway Extra (TM) and creative meddling from the producers. (The recent Lincoln Center staging of A Chorus Line is a good example of the stripped down style I'm talking about.) But even if they have their place, once again, revivals (while valuable and cool and all that) are Something We've Already Seen.

Let's take Newsies for example. A show with a huge fan base (mostly teen, mostly girls) who I frequently see wishing for a revival.

Now, I am a raging Newsies fan. Newsies is the show that got me started on attempting to make a profession out of dance and theater. I can sing both the OBC and Live albums back to front. I may or may not have had embarrassing crushes on certain cast and characters that I will take to my grave (I'll never tell and you'll never know, mwahhaha). So, do I love and worship ever iteration of this show? Yes. Do I wish I had been able to see either the Natl Tour or Broadway productions? Hell yes, with all my heart. Do I wish the Gatelli choreography was in any way accessible for me to learn? More than I want Broadway tickets to cost less than my soul, kidney, and hypothetical but unlikely first born combined.

But do I want a Broadway revival? Hell FUCKING No.

It's over, it's done, and it lives on in reinterpretation in regional and junior productions. Good. That, to be quite honest, is where it should belong.

It doesn't need to be rehashed on the biggest stages, and to be frank, neither do most of the ultra popular revivals that have been happening. (Yes, Ali Stoker is awesome and deserves the world, but Broadway does not need Oklahoma. If you need to see it that bad, go find a high school production somewhere. I recommend the midwest.) Broadway does not need 1776 (even though I am looking forward to it). Broadway does not need a Sweeney Todd revival (even though I want one like I want ice cream after suffering through jazz class in an un-air-conditioned studio on a 90 degree afternoon with no breeze. Seriously, I might be making sacrifices at my altar to this cause in the back of my closet).

Broadway needs musicals that are at least nominally original, and if not, come from something obscure enough (Kinky Boots, Waitress, Newsies) that they can make their own way. Barring that, investors, writers, and directors, please have the courage and decency to take established content in a new direction. Please, I'm begging you. I'd honestly-and-truly much rather sit through something that didn't try to shove the better version of itself down my throat even as it bored and annoyed me to tears. If I'm going to pay $80+ to sit through two hours of something terrible (and less engaging than my dancer body image issues) at least let me get my money's worth in unique horribleness.

#broadway #newsies #hadestown #mean girls #anastasia the musical #musical theater #waitress #hamilton #beetlejuice #tony awards

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Best Thanksgiving Movies to Watch This Holiday Season

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This year marks a unique Thanksgiving, to be sure. With the pandemic carrying on, families and loved ones across the United States are testing out new ways to celebrate a national holiday that might be best described as food, football, and then, of course, more food. For some that means outdoor gatherings are the order of the day; for others it will mean the first time you might be cutting turkey while wearing a mask.

However you might wish to celebrate the holiday though, gathering with loved ones around a movie never goes out of style. For that reason, we’ve gathered the best Thanksgiving movies to choose from. Some of these films are truly beloved holiday classics, and others might be less obviously about Thanksgiving, even as they wear their affection for the holiday on their sleeves. And yet others still will offer the rare respite: a streak of cynicism for those who think Thanksgiving is for the birds. So pass the potatoes and enjoy a helping of good cinematic cheer below.

Addams Family Values (1991)

Addams Family Values might seem an unusual choice, but then everything about this one is unusual, right down to it being the rare comedy sequel that is superior to its predecessor. That success is in no small part due to the filmmakers realizing Christina Ricci, who made her big break playing the morbid Wednesday Addams, was devastating in her deadpan delivery.

Movies

How 1991’s The Addams Family Nearly Got Derailed

By Simon Brew

Movies

The Addams Family and Their Spooky New Jersey Origins

By Aaron Sagers

Thus Wednesday gets half the film to herself in this one, and we’re thankful for it. With Addams Family Values, she’s forced to endure the dreariness of summer camp and its middle class morality, right down to them holding a Thanksgiving pageant in July. Surrounded by smiling rich white kids who cast Wednesday as Pocahontas (who, it should be said, was not in New England or at the first Thanksgiving), Wednesday takes the opportunity to keep it real about Thanksgiving.

“My people will have pain and degradation,” Wednesday hisses in her last minute rewrite. “Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They say do not trust the Pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller. And for all these reasons I’ve decided to scalp you.”

The chaos that ensues is delightful. Happy Thanksgiving, folks!

Alice’s Restaurant

Alice’s Restaurant is an inadvertent Thanksgiving comedy directed by Arthur Penn, who re-envisioned Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow as counterculture antiheroes in his 1967 gangster classic, Bonnie and Clyde. Penn did the same with Arlo Guthrie, the son of folk hero Woody Guthrie, the committed anti-fascist who wrote “This Land is Our Land.” The film is based on Arlo Guthrie’s 1967 folk song “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” which was about Alice and a restaurant. The restaurant wasn’t called “Alice’s Restaurant.”

That’s just the name of the song, which is very talky, like the movie, which is also pretty violent and fairly drug-fueled. The film doesn’t start on Thanksgiving, but at an army recruitment center, where Arlo, playing himself, is trying to avoid the draft. Turns out he’s got no good reason to stay out of the war.

The Thanksgiving setting, however, gives the film its purpose, and main reason to be thankful. The main plot involves getting rid of some trash after a holiday dinner. Arlo and his friends load a couple months’ worth of garbage into their red VW microbus, along with “shovels, and rakes, and other implements of destruction,” and head to the city dump, which is closed for Thanksgiving. They’d never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving before, so with tears their eyes, they drive off to find another place to put the garbage.

It takes Arlo 18 minutes and 21 seconds to tell the plot in the song, in intermittent three-part harmony, but the gist is: he gets arrested for littering, and his criminal record keeps him out of the draft. With it, Penn turns Guthrie into one of the most mild-mannered antiheroes in counterculture cinema. He’s not moral enough to join the army, burn women, kids, houses, and villages because he’s a litterbug.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Perhaps not quite as iconic as the legendary A Charlie Brown Christmas or It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, the third Peanuts holiday special (and 10th Peanuts animated special overall) is still just as charming, wholesome, and satisfying as its predecessors. Once again written by Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz and directed by Bill Melendez, the show has been a November staple on TV for decades since first airing in 1973.

This time out, Charlie Brown (voiced by Todd Barbee) and his sister Sally (Hilary Momberger) are getting ready to go to their grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving when one by one, all their friends invite themselves over to his house—despite the fact that Charlie Brown can only make “cold cereal and maybe toast.” It all gets sorted out in the end, and it’s all the little jokes, the delightful voices, and the unforgettable music by Vince Guaraldi that makes this a perennial favorite.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

There isn’t so much as a mention of Thanksgiving in Wes Anderson’s stop motion masterpiece. Yet, somehow, it’s impossible to watch The Fantastic Mr. Fox and not have late autumn brought to mind. Is it the carefully chosen fall color palette that’s all sunsets and foliage? Is it the warm familial vibe of the Foxes and their neighbors that makes you miss big get-togethers? Is it the impeccably dressed cast of animal characters, all resplendent in corduroy, flannel, and tweed, quietly shaming you with their perfect sartorial choices? Or perhaps it’s simply their ravenous eating habits that puts you in the right frame of mind.

With little resemblance to the Roald Dahl book it’s based on, The Fantastic Mr. Fox is instead one of the most perfect encapsulations of Anderson’s eye for (some might say obsession with) the little details. And it’s those little details, even more than its fuzzy animal characters, that make this perhaps the coziest of the director’s efforts. Alternately exuberant and melancholy (just like the holiday itself), and with numerous scenes of beautifully plated gluttonous excess, it’s remarkable that this movie hasn’t already been adopted as an unofficial icon of the season. Let’s start that campaign right here, shall we?

Hannah and Her Sisters

The movie that won Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest Oscars, Hannah and Her Sisters is a story about family framed between two Thanksgivings and the year that connects them. With a meticulous insight about the highs and anxieties of upper-middle class life among Manhattan intellectuals, the film is really the travails of Hannah (Mia Farrow) and her sisters Holly (Dianne Wiest) and Lee (Barbara Hershey). There’s also the lust of Hannah’s husband Elliot (Caine), who pursues an affair with Lee, but the film is mostly told from the vantage of three women of varying ages struggling with how they see themselves and their lives in a year of New York living.

Writer-director Woody Allen is here too as a hanger-on in this family, who’s struggling with his own fears of death, but his and Elliot’s roles are ultimately as outside observers who arrive every Thanksgiving to watch the sisters and their parents renew their family ties… and close ranks.

Home for the Holidays

One that feels particularly timely as 2020 adults hole up in their childhood homes for Thanksgiving and beyond, director Jodie Foster’s underrated family gathering comedy wallows in the downsides of going home. The film stars Holly Hunter as a woman who’s lost her job and is growing apart from her teenage daughter (Claire Danes). But all of that pales in comparison to spending Thanksgiving with her parents (Anne Bancroft and Charles Durning), plus younger brother Robert Downey Jr.

The Best Thanksgiving TV Episodes

By Alec Bojalad

Movies

The Long History of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Thanksgiving

By Gavin Jasper

It’s a familiar setup, but Thanksgiving is a time of being with those you’re familiar with, whether you like it or not. Plus, as a comedy it also has the still vital message of counting your blessings.

The Ice Storm

Based on Rick Moody’s acclaimed 1994 novel, director Ang Lee’s (Brokeback Mountain) masterful adaptation is a scathing portrait of upper middle class suburban life in the early 1970s, when all the experimentation in the world with drugs, alcohol, and sex couldn’t quite stop anyone from feeling like their lives and society were unmoored.

Like other dramas that take place around Thanksgiving, there’s very little to actually be thankful for: the characters (played with flair by Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Tobey Maguire, and others) are all trapped in emotional black holes of their own making.

Similarly, all the decadence and crazy fashions/trends of that surreal decade can’t replace the feeling that something has gone dreadfully wrong. Lee–before he became obsessed with the latest camera technology–charts this all with patience, empathy, and precision.

Knives Out

Okay, so Rian Johnson’s brilliant little whodunit isn’t actually set on Thanksgiving, but it sure feels like it is and was released around the holiday on Nov. 27, 2019 (God, that feels like a century ago). So… close enough. And while the family gathering at the center of the story is for a patriarch’s birthday, it certainly resembles the kind of large family assembly many hold at Thanksgiving, right down to feeling like it could end in murder.

Movies

Knives Out and the Villainy of Privilege

By Kayti Burt

Movies

Knives Out: When Murder Makes You a Better Person

By Natalie Zutter

The murder in question, of course, is that of mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), and it’s up to gentleman detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) to figure out which of his many bickering, backbiting, scheming descendants might have had a hand in it. Perhaps Harlan’s nurse Marta (Ana de Armas) can help since the clan insists “she’s like part of the family.”

All that’s really missing is the turkey. The knives are out, in abundance.

The Last Waltz

Perhaps no title card in cinematic history deserves to be heeded more than the one which opens The Last Waltz: “This film should be played loud.”

Not just the greatest concert film ever made. Not only the greatest rock documentary of all time. The Last Waltz may lay claim to being the only movie of any stature literally filmed on Thanksgiving. Martin Scorsese shot The Band’s farewell concert on Thanksgiving Day, 1976, where the audience of 5,000 was served a literal Thanksgiving dinner in addition to an unforgettable night of music by some of the most legendary performers of the 20th century.

Culture

The Last Waltz: Martin Scorsese’s Ultimate Rock n’ Roll Movie

By Tony Sokol

Culture

New Deep Purple Album Whoosh! Coming in June

By Tony Sokol

But this is no mere concert film. Being treated to a document of such legendary musicians at the height of their powers would make this important enough, but when it’s shot, lit, and edited by Scorsese, and with The Band joined by towering guest stars like Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and many more, The Last Waltz becomes one of the most powerful musical statements ever committed to film. Scorsese breaks up the performances with members of The Band reflecting on their career, and even in these quieter moments, The Last Waltz radiates the power and danger of a life lived on the road, in seedy dives, and storied ballrooms.

When you’ve had your fill of football and family for the night, pour yourself a glass of something good and do exactly as that opening title card says.

Miracle on 34th Street

Yes, yes, technically speaking Miracle on 34th Street is a Christmas movie. But it is definitely worth noting that the film actually spends more screen time on the actual Thanksgiving holiday than Christmas Day. Indeed, the picture opens with the now legendary Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. In the ultimate stroke of product placement, Macy’s New York City shindig got nationwide attention on the big screen, even as the movie focuses on the department store hiring the wrong Santa Claus for its festivities.

Arriving drunk and disgraceful to Macy’s preparations, an inebriated mall Santa creates an opportunity for a man who calls himself Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) to step in. Kris is passing through, presumably doing some holiday shopping ahead of his own big day in December. But upon seeing his personage so besmirched, he demands to take Santa’s reins and in the process saves Thanksgiving. We also see how this affects the turkey time of the film’s central mother and daughter team, played by Maureen O’Hara and Natalie Wood.

Mistress America

Sometimes Thanksgiving can be quiet and intimate… and desperately needed. That’s the case of the end to Noah Baumbach’s effervescent Mistress America. A mostly successful attempt at emulating 1930s screwball comedy for literary millennials, Mistress America is a clever throwback set during autumn in New York City and, tellingly, a trip to the suburbs of Connecticut. But by movie’s end, protagonists Tracy (Lola Kirke) and Brooke (Greta Gerwig) find themselves alone and isolated in the big city on Thanksgiving. They also thus discover an excuse to reconcile after grievances drove them apart, breaking bread at a restaurant down the street. It’s downbeat, but emotionally cathartic for both the characters and film.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

As the late John Hughes’ masterpiece, Planes, Trains and Automobiles is the quintessential “get home in time for the holiday” tale. Steve Martin is Neal, a stressed-out marketing exec who picks up an accidental travel companion in Del (John Candy), a well-meaning but oafish shower curtain ring salesman. As the two struggle to get back to Chicago in time for Thanksgiving amidst a string of misadventures and transportation issues, an eventual friendship forms, leading to a moving conclusion.

Planes was a step forward for Hughes as he began to move away from teen comedies, and the movie’s balance of humor and heart was perfectly complemented by the dynamic comedic chemistry of Martin and Candy. The latter probably had his best role ever in Del Griffith, and it’s a tribute to both actors and Hughes that each lead character can be annoying yet is never unlikable.

Movies

Christmas Movies on Disney+ Streaming Guide

By David Crow

Movies

Christmas Movies: A Complete Holiday Streaming Guide

By Alec Bojalad

Hilarious and poignant, this mix of buddy picture and road movie is a near-perfect treat for the season—or any time.

Prisoners

We wouldn’t exactly call Prisoners ideal holiday viewing. It’s set at Thanksgiving and immediately afterwards, although there isn’t much cheer during most of the film’s harrowing 153 minutes. The movie opens with a Thanksgiving dinner involving two Pennsylvania families, a pleasant ritual that soon turns nightmarish when two little girls—one from each clan—go missing. From that point onward, the story becomes a downward psychological spiral in which the search for the girls takes a terrible toll on all caught in its wake.

The first Hollywood studio film directed by French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve (who has since gifted us with films like Sicario, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, and next year’s Dune), Prisoners is a brutal, emotionally complex thriller that maintains a high level of suspense and dread over its formidable running time.

Featuring excellent performances from Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Terrence Howard, and others, it may not be the kind of cheery escapism we often seek out at the holidays. But it will leave you deeply thankful for the good things in your own life.

Rocky and Rocky II

“To you it’s Thanksgiving, to me it’s Thursday,” Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) tells Adrian Pennino (Talia Shire) as they hit the streets for their first date in Rocky. That date wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the tougher than tough love of Adrian’s brother Paulie (Burt Young). He gave them no alternative but to go out when he tossed the Thanksgiving turkey his sister slaved over all day out the side door. What followed was one of the best first date scenes in film.

It doesn’t seem like Rocky and Adrian have a lot to be thankful for. She says her daddy told her to develop her brains because she’d never get by on her looks. Rocky says he’s so dumb he couldn’t hope to be anything else but a fighter, which is halfway to being a bum.

While the scenes surrounding the ice skating rink date aren’t only some of the most romantic sequences captured on celluloid, they culminate in one of hottest. This is all before Rocky is even approached to fight the heavyweight champ of the world. The battered underdog Rocky stays on his feet until the final bell, and an almost equally bashed Apollo Creed, who barely held onto his title belt, swears he never wants a rematch.

Culture

Could Rocky Balboa Really Have Gone the Distance?

By Tony Sokol

Movies

The Top 10 Carl Weathers Movie and TV roles

By Wil Jones

Apollo takes that rematch when he defends his title in Rocky II. The fight is set for Thanksgiving Day, and Rocky knocks the stuffing out of that turkey, and laps up the gravy. Many of the Rocky movies, including Creed, opened on Thanksgiving weekends, and are perfect “date movies.” The main bouts may focus on two fighters, but the love stories, starting with the one between Rocky and Adrian, are tenderer than the bird Paulie tossed in the alley.

Spider-Man

The original Spider-Man really is a superhero movie for all seasons. With its romantic and old-fashioned photography of New York City in the spring and autumn, the picture runs the calendar’s gamut in its storytelling of the webslinger’s first year on the job. But it also pivots on a rather eventful Thanksgiving dinner.

Movies

Why Spider-Man 2’s Train Fight is Superhero Cinema’s Greatest Action Scene

By Mark Harrison

Movies

Sam Raimi Spider-Man Trilogy Writer David Koepp Reveals Original Plans

By Joseph Baxter

Fresh off Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) refusing to team up with the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), and after a blow up at a not-Macy’s Day Parade in Times Square, the pair’s alter-egos unwittingly meet up for Thanksgiving in Peter Parker’s apartment. It’s a swanky bachelor pad he shares with Harry Osborn (James Franco). But even with Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) and Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) there to give it some holiday warmth, things get frosty when Dafoe’s patriarchal Norman realizes the kid passing him the cranberries is his mortal enemy. Awkward.

And yes, nearly 20 years later this strangely does feel like a holiday movie, doesn’t it?

ThanksKilling

This film is terrible. An exploitative C-cheapie horror where a turkey possessed by a demon with a smart mouth hunts and murders coeds. But if that’s your jam… well, it exists.

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letterboxd · 4 years

Photo

Life in Film: Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers & Kathleen Hepburn.

“We didn’t want it to be about the one-take, so we were actually kind of hesitant to speak about it before we released the film, because it wasn’t a gimmick.” The co-writers and directors of Canadian break-out feature The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (now streaming on Netflix) talk single-take filmmaking, Indigenous representation, and identifying with Edward Scissorhands, as they answer our life-in-film questionnaire.

New Canadian feature film The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, which landed well at Berlin and TIFF and was picked up by Ava DuVernay’s Array Releasing, follows two Indigenous women with very different stories who come into each other’s lives on one fateful afternoon in Vancouver.

When Áila (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) encounters the pregnant Rosie (Violet Nelson), bruised and barefoot on a damp footpath attempting to evade her abusive boyfriend, Áila whisks her away to her apartment and encourages her to seek help. But Rosie is paralyzed by a dearth of realistic options.

Tailfeathers, who also co-wrote and co-directed the film, is Blackfoot from the Kainai First Nation (Blood Reserve) as well as Sámi from northern Norway. Nelson is a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation (Kingcome Inlet, Quatsino).

With cinematographer Norm Li (who filmed Beyond the Black Rainbow) shooting in real time over a series of extra-long takes on Super 16mm, The Body Remembers… is designed to appear mostly as a single-take film. The supposedly hidden cuts are “impossible to spot”, writes Sean Baker. “This is absolutely not ‘just a gimmick’,” agrees Olivier Lemay. “The feature-length shot worked wonders at taking us on this real-time journey with the characters that became uncomfortably immersive.” The result is a grounded and intimate portrait of two unique members of a group vastly under-represented in cinema. “It feels based deeply in character and never exploitative,” writes Milly Gribben.

Sitting down with Tailfeathers (who goes by ‘Máijá’) and her co-writer and co-director Kathleen Hepburn, we wanted to know more about their filmmaking technique, and the films that have inspired them.

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (Áila) and Violet Nelson (Rosie) in ‘The Body Remembers…’.

What was the impetus for telling this story? Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: The film is inspired by an experience that I had in East Vancouver, where the film takes place. Like in the film, I encountered a young woman who had just fled her abusive partner and she was literally standing barefoot in the rain and was very pregnant. I spent a few hours with her and it was a transformative experience. Sometimes we are lucky enough to have these encounters with strangers that fundamentally alter us. I carried that experience with me for a number of years wondering what to do with it, wanting to honor her story, and just kind of was left with the question of what happened to her because I never saw her again. Ultimately, I decided I wanted to turn it into a feature film and honor her experience and our experience and what happened in that short time we’d spent together.

Most of my experience with directing has been through documentary, and then my experience with narrative film has been through acting. Knowing that I wanted to make a feature in real time, having never made a narrative feature before, I figured it would be a good opportunity to collaborate with someone with more experience. And the way that I learned as a filmmaker has always been through collaboration. Kathleen has been a friend for a number of years and I so deeply admire her work and just her as a person. Her feature debut Never Steady, Never Still, it’s a phenomenal film. I reached out to Kathleen and proposed the idea of co-writing and co-directing and doing this together and that’s how it happened. Kathleen, how did you respond to Máijá’s proposal? Kathleen Hepburn: It was a very immediate response. She told me what had happened in the real life experience. It just felt like such an important, rich story, very complex and also artistically quite challenging to tell a real-time story. We decided to do it in one continuous take. It felt like a really wonderful honor to be a part of this project and an amazing challenge that I was really excited to participate in.

Co-writer, co-director and actor Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers.

This film is putting characters on screen that haven’t seen a lot of representation. Was that part of the motivation? E-MT: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the two women you see in the film are so familiar to me as an Indigenous woman. I know these women, so in so many ways they’re by no means unconventional. They’re just very real people who exist who, like you said, haven’t been represented on screen very often.

In terms of Indigenous cinema and Indigenous representation, there’s this long history of misrepresentation and people who aren’t Indigenous telling our stories and getting it fundamentally wrong. This was an opportunity to explore a very simple story that embodies all of these larger themes in such a nuanced way. It was an opportunity to speak about issues of class and various forms of privilege that exist within the Indigenous community based on lived experience. It was also an opportunity to, yeah, explore these larger systems of oppression that impact Indigenous in very different ways on a daily basis in Canada. There’s so much richness to both of these characters and so many opportunities to explore these larger themes through their lived experience on screen.

Although this breaks a lot of new ground, were there cinematic precedents that you had in mind? KH: One film we looked at in the writing process was Frozen River. In terms of style and tone, we were also looking at Andrea Arnold, Fish Tank. Wendy and Lucy, Kelly Reichardt’s film. But in terms of representation…

E-MT: I think Frozen River kind of set a precedent in terms of Misty Upham. She’s also Blackfoot. I’m a Blackfoot. She passed away very tragically, but seeing a woman like her on screen in a film that American audiences gravitated towards was pretty transcendent. Knowing that a character like that could hold space on screen in a way that drew American audiences in, I think kind of set maybe a bit of a precedent for this. Because we wanted Rosie’s character to be raw and real and vulnerable. When we found Violet Nelson, she embodied all of that and we wanted to present the world with a complicated individual who you would believe the world has not been kind to. Violet was all those things and she just delivered such an incredible performance and she was kind of like the light of our film. She carried so much of the film.

What precedents did you have in mind when you were thinking about shooting these long, real-time takes? E-MT: There were a lot of things to consider. One thing I think that was obviously most important for the process was supporting Violet’s performance, and coming from an acting background I really appreciate the rehearsal process, especially with theater. You get to sit with the work and be with it for weeks before you go to the stage. There’s a really incredible momentum that builds and being able to do the performance from beginning to end in one go on stage.

And there’s kind of this palpable energy that builds also with the audience because it’s an experience you’re all having. We wanted to bring that energy and that process into the film. We rehearsed for four weeks, and also rehearsed with our crew for five days and carefully choreographed everything. Our cinematographer, Norm Li, and the rest of our crew, were all just fully on board for this wildly experimental challenge.

KH: I mean, obviously we were inspired by films like Victoria, but I think for us, we didn’t want it to be about the one-take, so we were actually kind of hesitant to speak about it before we released the film because it wasn’t a gimmick. It was more to give the audience the same emotional experience as the actors.

We’d like to ask you about your life in film. What movie made you want to become a filmmaker? E-MT: I think for me it was Alanis Obomsawin’s Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance. It’s kind of her most seminal work. She’s the grandmother of Indigenous cinema in Canada and also kind of around the world. She’s Abenaki, she’s 85 years old and she’s still making films. She just had a film at TIFF. She’s made over 50 films. Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance is about the Oka crisis that happened in the early ’90s in Canada. It’s one of the most important works of cinema in Canada, and just knowing that an Indigenous woman made that film, that still is so incredibly important. I think that was the one that kind of motivated me to make movies.

KH: I think In the Mood for Love was probably the film where I was actually like, “Oh, okay, this is what filmmaking is like and can be like”.

Kathleen Hepburn, the co-writer and co-director of ‘The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open’.

What’s your go to comfort movie? E-MT: I could watch Moonlight over and over and over and over again. I don’t know if it’s a comfort movie, but there’s just something so splendid and beautiful about that experience and I actually crave watching that film. I probably watch it once a month. I’ll just sit down and watch a section of it.

KH: This is a more recent film, but one that I just loved so much is Toni Erdmann. Just everything about it is so inspiring. It’s hilarious and heartbreaking. But I don’t watch it once a month.

What movie, or movie scene, makes you cry the hardest? KH: Oh, I know this one. My Girl. When Macaulay Culkin dies, the funeral scene. “He needs his glasses. He needs his glasses.”

E-MT: God, that’s going to make me cry.

As a teenager, what movie, or movie character did you feel closest to? E-MT: For sure, Now and Then. That was something I connected with, but that’s when it was twelve years old or something.

KH: I was a tomboy growing up, so there was an Elijah Wood film called The War. For some reason, that one always stuck with me. I don’t know. I wanted to be those little boys, I think.

E-MT: Edward Scissorhands. I so connected with Edward. It’s just such a wild, bizarre, beautiful story of this outsider, but no, I’m not a fan of Johnny Depp now.

What film do you have fond memories of watching with your parents? E-MT: Oh man. Growing up we didn’t have a lot of money, but something that my parents always did was take us to the cinema and my dad, especially. On the weekends we would go and see double bills, sometimes not paying for the second movie. My dad was such an action movie guy. I grew up going to action movies with my dad. I remember, actually, my mom is the biggest Jackie Chan fan. Rumble in the Bronx, I think, holds a special place in my heart. It’s set in the Bronx, obviously, but it’s shot in Vancouver.

Then there was this Canadian TV show called North of 60, which was set in the north in Canada in this Indigenous community. It was kind of this show that we tuned into every week. I would say Tina Keeper, she’s an actress and also she’s a producer now, but she played a cop, an Indigenous woman. For me as a young person seeing her on screen was pretty transformative because she was an Indigenous woman who held a position of power and was a real person and was complex and beautiful and not framed within this overwhelming trauma that you often see Indigenous people framed within. That was pretty important just for me as in terms of representation, and then also for our family, we just tuned in every weekend. I don’t know if it’s even a good show. I can hear the theme song in my head. It was a CBC show.

Violet Nelson plays Rosie in ‘The Body Remembers…’.

What filmmaker, living or dead, do you envy or admire the most? E-MT: Right now, Tasha Hubbard. She’s a Cree filmmaker from Saskatchewan and she made a documentary film called nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up. It was about the murder of Colten Boushie, a young Cree man who was murdered by a white farmer named Gerald Stanley. Gerald walked away from all charges and is a free man, and the film is winning all sorts of awards across Canada and it’s so brave.

Tasha grew up with a white family, she was adopted. She grew up in this white farming community and she’s an Indigenous person who has experienced both of those realities. Racism on the prairies in Canada is very prevalent and in-your-face and violent. As a person who comes from the prairies—and I have an intimate knowledge of that reality—just the courage that Tasha took to make that film and to fully invest herself in such a challenging process. Yeah, there’s no words to sort of describe the respect that I have for her and what she’s done.

If you were forced to remake any classic, which one would you choose? E-MT: Well, this isn’t a classic, but one film that I’ve watched recently that just blew my mind is Happy as Lazzaro, the Italian film. It has such a high level of understanding about the world and the complexities of society, but it’s also just this beautiful film that tricks you into coming to an understanding that you don’t realize you’re having as you go through the film. I don’t have that sort of mind that can handle that kind of structural complexity.

‘The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open’ is the fourth acquisition of 2019 for Ava DuVernay’s Array Releasing, after acclaimed Ghanaian gem ‘The Burial of Kojo’, Hepi Mita’s documentary about his trailblazing Māori filmmaker mother, ‘Merata’, and Tribeca Film Festival award-winner ‘Burning Cane’ by nineteen-year-old Phillip Youmans. All are streaming on Netflix. ‘The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open’ is now in select theaters in New York, Los Angeles and Detroit.

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sylleboi · 4 years

Text

𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖈 𝖇𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖆𝖑 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘𝖚𝖒𝖒𝖊𝖗 𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖏𝖊𝖈𝖙 - 𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖌𝖊 𝖔𝖓𝖊 | 02/06/20

There are two types of textures;- Implied texture is basically texture that appears to be there, but it’s an illusion.- Actual texture is texture that exists and can be felt by touch.So I have been falling behind with what we as a class have been doing online on Moodle, making it feel increasingly difficult to approach it and get things done since it feels like things just keep piling up, but I have decided to give it a shot and just go for it!

The following message/messages were left for us on the Moodle forum;

“Hi guys,

Thanks to those that attended the Zoom meeting this week. Well done.

If you are committed to progressing next year I will need to see the following:

- Post a reply to this thread to show you are checking in with Moodle

- Interact with a least 1 of the summer school activities

- Attendance at ALL subsequent Zoom classes.

- A Conscientious and studious approach to the summer project

The time line for what happens next in terms of your studies will be as follows:

Tuesday 26th May - Summer project posted to Moodle and emailed directly to college emails (This will give you a chance to read/obtain equipment/purchase core text)

Monday 1st June - Zoom Lecture - Reviewing the brief and discussing research activities and practical tasks. Q & A

Monday 8th June - Zoom show & tell - Discussing progress so far / issues / findings / examples / Work in Progress

Monday 15th June - Zoom Break out groups / Smaller discussions

Please if you are in contact with any of your classmates/peers who have not be interacting can you please encourage them to do so, the longer we abstain from learning the harder it will be when we do get back to the 'New normal'.

Happy Wednesday!”

- Post a reply to this thread to show you are checking in with Moodle

I posted a short reply to show that I am active on Moodle.

- Interact with a least 1 of the summer school activities

I am yet to do this, but will be attempting my best to catch up.

- Attendance at ALL subsequent Zoom classes.

I have already failed this, but will attend the Zoom classes schedule ahead.

- A Conscientious and studious approach to the summer project

I will be working towards living up to this over the next few weeks as we work on the Summer School Project.

“Hi guys,

Hope you had as good bank holiday, here is the Summer project as promised. 'Comic Book Confidential' is a project that will allow us to start thinking about the type of work we will create in our 2nd year as well as addressing the theoretical and academic ideas we will need to start thinking abound discussing in detail when we return.

This week, I want you to do the following:

- Read the brief thoroughly and write down any questions you may have

- Order your core text book, Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art'

- Obtain any of the necessary equipment if you do not currently have this

Please ensure you start your research from Stage 1, and begin to write notes for the questions; as I will be asking you to relay your new knowledge next Monday (1st June) in our first Zoom lecture/discussion. I will forward an invite in a separate email and on moodle. I look forward to working with you guys on this, it will be a good one.

Best Regards,

David Dixon”

𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖈 𝖇𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖆𝖑

The brief;

“Hi guys,

Thank you everyone who joined us yesterday for the launch of our Comic Book Confidential Summer Project, there was a great turn out.

I have attached the PDF of the presentation for you to look at and use as a resource.

Please begin stage 1 and make sure for next week you have your viewfinder made and you are able to talk about either a comic book of your choosing or answer some of the questions of stage 1 with clarity.

Any question please post to here and I will answer as soon as possible.

Cheers

DD”

I missed this zoom call, but got some notes and insight to what was talked about during the call from a peer.

This brief is the first surrounding the topic of sequence art/comics that we have done as a class. Comics can be described as being a “sequence through illustration”; a series of images, sometimes with no dialogue showing an action or conveying a space of time in just a few panels, like glimpses of a film, showing key moments to portray the meaning of the sequence.

On another note, we are allowed to animate the project if we want to.

For this brief/project, we are required to put some form of narrative together, based off of our own personal experiences with the 2020 lockdown, making it a personal project to each of us. It is also required to be non verbal.

During the process of making our comic sequence, a short film showing the process from start to finish.

AIMS:

Make at least 5 comic book pages with at least three panels per page

Build a narrative exploring the ideas of isolation and coming out of lockdown

Understand how to create the passing of time

Explore the basic characteristics of a comic, BASICS!

A series of juxtaposed images creating a narrative or a selection of images.

An aesthetic response to our viewer done using a selection of images in a deliberate sequence. - “Sequence art”

Can we link this back to year 1?

I did a workshop at the very beginning of the year (19/09/19) called Fragments/Clips. It focused on experimental editing and making something unconventional with what resources we were given, much like we are asked to do with this brief; creating comic strips from the resources we find within and around us.

𝕶𝖊𝖞 𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖘:

We can find our own if we like but the suggested artists are;

- Hokusai

- Aiden Koch

- Sam Elston - former student from our course that will be visiting us.

Can you define what a comic is in your own words?

Comics can be described as being a “sequence through illustration”; a series of images, sometimes with no dialogue showing an action or conveying a space of time in just a few panels, like glimpses of a film, showing key moments to portray the meaning of the sequence.

What are the characteristics of a non verbal comic?

The primary characteristic for non verbal comics is the lack of words used. Non verbal comics are told solely through illustrations that, when you “read” it, will come alive like an animation that doesn't move. An example of non verbal communication could be something as simple as a smile, often indicating happiness, or perhaps a lack of expression can indicate boredom or something of a much darker background, like contempt or bloodlust.

What different forms of comic can you find, and how are they different?

A number of comic genres pop into mind immediately; Science-fiction comics, Superhero comics, Fantasy comics, Teen comics (humour), Adult/Erotic comics, Manga etc. Comics can also come in many different types of mediums, some that I can think of being Webcomics, Graphic Novels and Comic books.

How do comics communicate their messages?

In comics, with both verbal and non verbal communication within them, the major selling point is the illustrative work. Each panel represents a time, with each gap between the panels representing a passing of time. Much like glimpses of a sequence, put together in a harmonic composition with the goal to be compelling to ones eye. The message/messages that the artist want to portray can be executed through visual language; line, shape, form, texture, value and colour. All of these elements play into a successful comic strip.

I will give a simple example of each of these used to convey the same thing;

* Note that all of these will be left as examples and may look a little rough around the edges since they are just there to show the effects of visual language and nothing more.

Line:

Within visual language, line work is one of the most prominent and frequently used across all comic genres. In fact, the earliest comic that has been traced back to being from 1837 is made up of only line work, meaning no use of colours, values, textures etc.

It was called The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck and was originally published in several different languages across Europe, among them an English translation meant for the British in 1941.

For this first example, I have used only line work and included some shading using various hatching techniques (much like what has been used for the comic of The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck). This has resulted in a very classic feel of comics, made up by only blacks and whites.

I attempted to make this classic style transform into a more modern style by applying a few halftones on top, resulting in the following outcome:

As you can see, by applying these halftones as overlays, the piece successfully achieves the look of a manga/comic book/webcomic, rather than the previous classic style.

Shape:

By using shape in art, one can easily and effectively archive much with little. Shapes can be used in several different ways to convey different emotions. Because this ‘comic’ page is based on action and a narrative of climax, I chose to emphasise on sharp edges as they are commonly known to communicate danger. For example, I changed the smoke into fire and made it look much alike shattered pieces of glass, yet again to indicate it as being something dangerous to touch.

Each line is straight and rarely bends; creating some interesting shapes, squares, and triangles;

Form:

Form is most often describes and applied to something that is a three-dimensional subject, such as clay sculpting, although generally speaking, it is connected to things that are 3D, (three-dimensional) meaning there is an aspect of extra depth that you can’t normally archive with 2D. This is emphasised by light and dark values. (low and high contrast), otherwise known as shading.

For this example I attempted to make the line-art I had done earlier feel more real and lifelike by adding these different shades of grey.

Texture:

There are two types of textures;

- Implied texture is texture that appears to be there, but is really an illusion.

- Actual texture is texture that exists and can be felt physically by touch.

Since I am doing this digitally to speed up the process, I will be doing this by using the technique of implied texture.

For a long while now, I have been building up a collection of high quality scans and pictures of a large variety, based on the advice of my teacher when we were playing around with the visual language of texture in a past project. Out of these, I chose just a couple to play around with in Krita;

Now all that was left to do was to layer these on top of the artwork I had done earlier and have, as I mention before, a play around with them using different layer modes such as colour dodge, screen, overlay, soft light, hard light, multiply etc. I came up with a handful of different textured outcomes, but will be posting just a few of my favourites and put the rest into a gif;

The reason that I chose this one as being one of my favourites is due to how successful both the textures layered together translated so clearly and well. It gives a lovely look of it being aged as if it were torn out of an old comic book and scanned into a computer.

Now this one I am especially a big fan of! Although inverting the values got rid of the majority of the details within the art work, It doesn’t take away from the subjects and narrative, but the most compelling thing about it is how it strongly reminds me to the look of lino printing.

An example of a great artist I found that specialises in this medium of artwork is Valdis Baskirovs. I have chosen to compare their work to this comic strip in particular because their subjects are also most often animals, including canines.

Below are some examples of their work and work process doing lino printing:

Value:

Value is often described as a way of drawing with light, where value is based on how light or dark a given colour or hue is. Values can easier be understood once they are visualised on a scale or a gradient.

The scale above ranges from white to black, with a number of grey tones in between, but any hue/tone has a similar scale that goes from light to dark;

Different colours or values can be achieved by adding light or dark hues, in the case shown above, adding white to it to lighting it, or by darkening it with black.

Colour:

Last but not least, colour is an incredibly important part of visual language. It is used to convey a feeling, narrative or meaning within a given piece of artwork.

For this comic page, I have decided to go for a more cartoony and simplistic style, since that is what the line art communicates with it’s sharp and clear edges; but instead of just splashing any random colour on, I wanted to try and make it monochromiatic, meaning that all the colours have the same base tone, and therefor relate and harmonise with each other. The base tone for the example shown below is a muted orange-yellow.

I applied a layer of texture on top for two reasons; one being to make the piece feel more connected, but also for the reason being that this texture makes the page look like damaged or burnt paper, again to subconsciously communicate the fire being dangerous.

Can you list the similarities and differences between the three artists (Katsushika Hokusai, Aidan Koch & Sam Elston)

From looking at these three artists work side by side, I came to notice that they all seem able and confident in portraying more with less. Everything from line work and choice of colour is basic, simple, yet it still shines through as strong artwork. It feels like there is room to breathe due to the lack of business.

All of the three pieces of artworks shown below have the above in common. They feel light and minimalistic, using a variety of pastel colours and light values with the occasional dark black lines and/or splashes here and there.

I will be keeping this in mind for when I attempt drawing my own non verbal comics/sequences - the saying that less is more.

Example of the work of Katsushika Hokusai.

Example of the work of Aidan Koch.

Example of the work of Sam Elston.

- - -

𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖘 𝕸𝖆𝖘𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖊𝖑

Frans Masereel (1889–1972) is the creator of the wordless graphic novel “The Sun”, or “Le Soleil”. Frans was a Flemish painter and graphic artist whom worked primarily in France, completing over 20 wordless novel during his career, with his novel “Passionate Journey” or “Mon livre d'heures” from 1919, allegedly being his best work.

“The Sun”/“Le Soleil” Consists of 63 pages showing prints from woodcuttings, and is a contemporary retelling of the Greek myth of Icarus. Briefly explained, the protagonist of the novel continuously attempts to seek to the Sun by any means possible, but before he succeeds, he is sent plummeting back down to Earth.

𝕾𝖍𝖆𝖚𝖓 𝕿𝖆𝖓

Another artist that has added to the genre of wordless novels is Shaun Tan, which work we have studied for a past brief before. I will be talking more particularly about his graphic novel “The Arrival”, originally published in 2006, it is made up by 128 pages intricately drawn in pencil and later edited to fit the aesthetic and look off an old book.

After “reading” through this graphic novel, I was left thinking that this book is very touching and makes your mind wander off in thought.

It follows a man that cannot use words, thus the readers are experiencing everything as he is; silently. The protagonist, a man, leaves his wife and daughter to board a steamship to cross the ocean; all for the reason of building a better future for his family. - This book touches on the journeys that immigrant’s go through and experience on their travels. Although the reader clearly experiences the mans inner isolation, they also get to share his new found joys.

Below are some of the pages found within this book:

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lilydeerwrites · 5 years

Text

A Muggle Studies Moment: 2

The Gryffindor Common Room was buzzing with quiet activity as groups of students chatted softly over notes and books. It was that time of the year when exams were imminent. Lily and Remus were surrounded by books and papers. A floating teapot steamed as both students absently sipped tea. Remus had charmed it to stay warm and refill their cups as needed. Lily filed that knowledge away for later experimentation. They had started out on a sofa, but their notes and books began to spread out to the point that it became necessary to move down to the floor. Now, Peter was sprawled out behind them, occasionally asking for help with his Charms work.

The arrival of James and Sirius was heralded by the sound of running feet and laughter. When they entered the Common Room, several pairs of eyes gazed at them reproachfully.

“Oi, Padfoot ... why is it so quiet in here?” James whispered urgently.

Sirius shrugged. “Exams, I guess?”

“Exams?” James glanced at Remus, Lily, and Peter. “Exams. Yeah. I suppose I should probably ... do that.”

Sirius let himself flop inelegantly to the ground beside Remus, causing some of his notes to flutter. His teacup rattled indignantly.

Just when he was about to be annoyed, Sirius burrowed close, hugging his knee so awkwardly he had to chuckle instead. He gave the shaggy hair a gentle pat.

James looked as though he would very much like to do the same to Lily, but fortunately for him, thought better of it and sat beside Peter on the couch.

“Shove over a bit, would you, Pete? I suppose I should do a bit of review. Accio my Charms book!”

James’ book came hurtling down from the dorm in a manner very similar to its owner.

“What were you two off doing anyway?” Peter asked

James shrugged. “A bit of research. For Muggle Studies,” he said, a little too nonchalantly.

Lily cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “What sort of horrible Muggle-Magical hybrid did you two unleash? I haven’t forgotten when you charmed the outdated, terribly stereotypical Muggle outfits to have a walkabout.”

Sirius rolled onto his back, his proud smile at the memory so genuine it actually made Lily want to give him a pat on the head as well. Remus might be the werewolf, but sometimes, she thought privately, his boyfriend was positively canine.

“Those clothes were so stodgy. Like all of the Muggles are going about dressed like that! I know Muggle fashion and all I had to do was pay a bit of attention,” he said.

Lily nodded her agreement. Sirius could make a band t-shirt, ripped jeans, and a blazer look like he should be on a runway. Not that she would tell him that. His head was already big enough. He looked adoringly up at Remus, who blushed and let his arm rest across the other boy’s chest.

Instead, she said, “You do know that most Muggles don’t go about dressed like David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, right?”

Still grinning at the memory of stodgy old Muggle clothes having a stroll and then a waltz around the classroom, Sirius replied, “Only the cool ones.”

“Pads, your arse is on my Charms book. That can’t be comfortable,” Remus raised an eyebrow, then rolled his eyes. “Unless of course you’re actively trying to get me to reach for it. Attention hog.”

Sirius, who was once again wearing Remus’ oversized rust-colored jumper sighed happily. “I love how well you know me.”

Ever since Remus had given him the sweater when he had been hurt, Sirius found reason after reason to wear it. Remus had complained that when he wore the jumper it made him look shabby, but somehow made Sirius look artfully disheveled.

Her attention drifted to James, whose eyes flickered studiously across the pages of his Charms book. He hadn’t asked her out once since the incident around the holidays, and she was annoyed that this bothered her. Maybe he was embarrassed that she had seen him so upset? Sirius had been much worse off, and he didn’t seem awkward about it. If anything, he had started spending more time with her, gotten to know her, told her she was pretty, and thanked her a few dozen times for aiding in his rescue. Remus explained later that Sirius liked positive attention so much himself that he could go a bit overboard when he was trying to make someone feel good about themselves. She hadn’t minded.

She sighed, shut the book, and stretched her arms. “I need a moment. My brains are turning to mush.” She leaned back against the sofa, eyes closed, and felt the back of her head brush James’ knee. He tensed, but didn’t pull away.

Hmmm. Interesting. She decided to file the information away. Maybe he was over her? Embarrassed? Under orders from his friends to behave like a human being? If she asked the other Marauders, they would certainly tell James that she had asked, but maybe that wouldn’t be so bad?

She felt a wad of paper hit her face, then another. She opened her eyes to see the papery bird-creature Marlene had accidentally transfigured Lily’s essay into earlier in the year. The awful thing had been flapping about the Common Room ever since, letting out its mysteriously-appearing paper droppings at will. She had long since rewritten and turned in the essay, but the fact that she had not been able to stop the essay-bird was infuriating.

Peter had seen what happened, and he chortled gleefully. “That thing’s just had a dump on your forehead, Evans! I thought you and Marlene stopped it weeks ago.”

Lily sat up, glaring at the flappy, papery thing. “We put it in a bin, but it escaped. Marls dumped water on it yesterday, but it’s made a full recovery since. She swears she doesn’t know what went wrong to make it this way.”

Stirring his tea thoughtfully, Remus asked, “In some cultures, it’s good luck for a bird to have a poo on you.”

Lily raised an eyebrow at him and he hastily changed his direction. ”Have you asked McGonagall? I’d imagine she could stop the little pest.”

James laughed. “Can you imagine if she went after it in cat form? I’d pay to see that!”

Sirius was looking way too thoughtful, as though he was trying to engineer exactly how to have that happen. She envisioned his brain looking like a Rube Goldberg design on the inside. “Minnie could do it, that’s for sure.”

“The point is that it was my essay and I want to figure it out,” she said firmly. “It’s not hurting anyone. It’s just occasionally annoying. Rather like you lot, these days,” she said, her tone more affectionate than critical.

She stretched again, then pulled her book back into her lap. “What were you two up to earlier? What type of research were you doing?”

James turned a bit pink. “Nothing important. Not a prank, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said.

“Sirius?” Lily asked. “Anything you wish to tell me?”

He turned as pink as James. “Ah, well, you see ...”

James crossed his arms, scowling. “Traitor.”

“Look at her eyes, James! She’s giving me those sad baby animal eyes. You know I’m powerless here,” Sirius rationalized.

James glanced up at Lily and nodded. “Fine, then.”

“So ... James and I, we got rather ... interested in that episode of Muggle tell-o-vision we watched in class.”

She frowned. “The one with the doctors? The medical soap opera?”

“That’s the one. You see, I like a good story, and so does old Prongsy. When we were first years, Moony used to read out loud sometimes, just in the dorm, you know? Hard to sleep sometimes when you’re little and off alone the first time, right?”

Peter snorted. “First years? Moony still reads him to sleep sometimes - “

“Anyway, the point is that me and James, we got really sort of invested in knowing whether or not the surgery was successful.”

“What?” Lily watched them both, confused.

“Like, did Mr. Morris die? Did he live? How did his wife take it? Did he ever find out his son wasn’t really his? Did his brother find out? You can’t just show a bloke one chapter and not ever let him see the rest of the book!”

Sirius sounded so indignant she was torn between wanting to laugh out loud and hug him.

James took over. “I hate unresolved story lines. So, we sneaked into the lab to see if the Prof had more of it on the - the tape, was it? Are they tapes? Because I thought tapes were the new records?”

Looking thoroughly scandalized, Sirius protested, “Nothing will ever replace vinyl, Prongs. It’s not right.”

She laughed and caught Remus’ eye. His smile lit up his face, she suspected as much by the admission of story time as by their insatiable desire to find out how the unfortunate Mr. Morris had fared.

Trust serialized Muggle television drama to ensnare the minds of the most ridiculously curious members of Gryffindor House.

“Did you find it?” She asked.

They exchanged glances. “No ... but we did knock over the entire tell-o-vision catalog. We tried to put it right, but Filch was on the move, and we had to bolt,” Sirius explained.

“The films - those are the round ones, right? They were rolling about, and we had to go out the window and climb up to avoid being caught,” James finished.

Surprising even herself, Lily laughed out loud at their tale. The Muggle artifacts in the lab were just that - artifacts. Most of them were so old they were from her parents’ time rather than the current decade.

“First of all, it’s absolutely adorable that you’re so interested. Especially since shows like that are mostly watched by Muggle housewives with awfully boring lives. Secondly, my mum and my sister watch that soap opera, I believe. I can inquire over the summer and send you an owl, if you like.”

The hopefulness in their eyes was so ridiculous that Peter and Remus burst into guffaws as well.

Helplessly, Remus managed, “We’ve always said James was a bit mumsy. When his Quidditch kids get hurt, when one of us needs him - aww, don’t blush, Prongs. It’s actually very sweet. I mean it.”

James shook his head, joining in the laughter. “An owl would be great, Lily. We’ll both be at my place this year, so ... two birds one stone? Er ... okay, bad taste there, Potter. No killing, then.”

Lily smiled as sweetly as she could. “There’s only one bird on my kill list, and it’s the one that was formerly my essay.” She gestured with two fingers from her eyes and pointed at the roosting paper bird. “I’ve got my eyes on you!”

Sirius squinted at it from his position on the floor. “What if - no, it couldn’t ...”

“What?” She asked. “What if what?”

Hesitantly, he continued. “What if ... when it, well ... shits, it’s actually editing your essay? Have you unwrapped any of the droppings?”

She made a face. “No, I have not unwrapped the droppings. Ugh!”

James stood, bowed before her, and went to pick up some of the little balls of paper. He gave a small cry of disgust. “Why is it ... moist? Padfoot, help!”

“Can’t. ‘m comfortable. If I get up, I’ll die.”

“Drama, much?” Remus asked, dryly.

“Drama always,” Sirius sighed happily, hugging Remus’ knee even tighter.

James pushed on, peeling back the mushy paper bits, making a face the whole time.

With a monumental effort and a long sigh, Sirius pushed himself upright. “It doesn’t eat, mate. It can’t be that bad. You’ve spat parchment loogies twice that size and somehow didn’t get poisoned,” he said, taking a little paper ball into his hand as well. “Christ, it’s mushy! That’s quite distasteful.”

At that point, Peter joined in, picking an old one off of the end table next to the sofa. “You’re right, Pads. It’s ... damp.”

Remus sighed heavily. “As I’m out of synonyms for the word wet, I suppose this is up to me.”

He pulled out his wand, levitated the paper ball, and then cast a drying charm on it. “Remember? We’re magical?” He asked, sarcastically.

Remus unwrapped the now-dry ball of paper and read aloud, “Remove third paragraph, take the fourth sentence and use it as a thesis statement. Rework.”

“Well!” Lily fumed.

Sirius did the same and read his, “Must pare down. Far too long-winded.”

Peter read, “Too wordy. Please summarize Paragraph twenty.”

“Really!” She growled.

James looked at his, looked back up at Lily, and thought better of it, stuffing the paper ball into his pocket. “Um ... Lily? Were you and Marls partnered on this essay, by chance?”

“Yes, why?” She asked, expectantly.

She was finding herself most distracted by the way he rubbed at his arm when he was nervous. When had she noticed that he did that?

“Because,” he said, a little reluctantly. “I think she may have pranked you but good. There is no way this is accidental magic or a mistake. It’s bloody brilliant!”

“If Marlene did this, we’re missing out on a potentially amazing pranking resource! Where is she, anyway? Haven’t seen her all day.” Sirius stood on a chair, trying to gently scoop the paper bird into his hand. It flapped indignantly to a higher perch.

Moments later, all four Marauders were after the bird, shouting, laughing, and levitating furniture and one another. Remus tried an Accio on it, but it didn’t work.

James let out a low whistle. “Merlin, she’s good! What did you do to piss her off, anyway?”

Lily thought, but couldn’t come up with anything. She winced at the sight of Sirius, being levitated by Peter toward the overhead lamps.

“Steady on, Pete! Don’t drop me, mate!” He called as he reached for the essay-bird. His hands were about to close around it, when the door opened to admit Minerva McGonagall.

“It’s a bit noisier than usual in here. Is anything wr - “ She stopped, taking in the sight of Sirius mid-air, James on a chair, and Remus on the floor, still guarding their notes and books, and his floating teapot. “Mr. Black! You come right down here this moment! Mr. Pettigrew, put him down. Gently!” Admonished the Gryffindor Head of House.

When Sirius was safely on the floor, she asked calmly, “Could someone explain the wild rumpus I could hear through the wall in my study?”

Sirius grinned at her. “I knew you cared, Minnie.”

McGonagall ignored him, but there was no fire in her glare.

Lily and James started at the same time, “Well, Professor,” “You see, Professor, I - “

The essay-bird took its opportunity to swoop free of Sirius’ grasp, and dump a wet little paper ball on McGonagall’s head. Without a single moment of hesitation, she transformed into a cat, leapt into the air, and caught it in her teeth, giving it a little shake for good measure.

All of the students stared, but the Marauders and Lily were momentarily speechless. Professor McGonagall transformed quickly back into herself, removed the paper bird from her mouth quite daintily, and tucked it into the pocket of her robe.

“Was that the trouble, then?” She asked.

“Yes, Professor McGonagall,” Lily answered. “It - it used to be my old Charms essay. I had to rewrite, after, well ...” She gestured to the pocket area of the professor’s robe.

“An excellent essay you turned in, Miss Evans. It will be curious to have a look at the old one, if I can get it to unspell itself without destroying it.” She glanced around the room to where James and Sirius were still a bit star-struck from her heroic feline actions. “If everything is well, I shall return to my grading?”

Satisfied that her students were safe and much quieter, she left.

“Merlin,” James breathed. “That was brilliant!”

“It was like a prophecy. I wished for it, and it happened! Did someone slip me a luck potion or what?” Sirius exclaimed. “She just ... transformed ... already in the air and took it down, like a little tabby tiger for the kill!”

It took a few minutes for the excitement to die down, but as Lily returned to studying and drinking tea with Remus, she cast another surreptitious glance at James. Huh. Not hideous, a bit mumsy, and loves a good story. Who knew?

#marauders era #marauders fic #the marauders #james potter #sirius black #remus lupin #peter pettigrew #wolfstar #minerva mcgonagall #fanfiction #fic #marauders fanfiction

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ais-n · 6 years

Note

So what ideas did you have for Boyd in Fade regarding human experimentation? What were you willing to put him through? Also, would you be willing to go into detail on what happened to Boyd while he was with by Janus? I always wonder about the details and I love reading your answers regarding them. Thanks ais!

Something of an answer is below but I might someday be more specific. I ended up rambling quite a lot on a bit of a tangent, so I’m putting this behind a cut.

WARNING! Some vague spoilers are below. But mostly I talk about some aspects of human experimentation from WWII. Don’t read this post if that will upset you or freak you out.

Hi! I’m so sorry, I was going to answer this like a month ago but then I lost my enthusiasm for the topic and then doubted myself on if I should talk in depth about things I had thought about... I’m still not sure right now on how much I actually should say. Not like it’s a big deal but I’m dumb. I do have the other ask still available so if I can get my weird mind and heart back on track for going at length on the topic in the future I can totally just answer off that.

Do you ever get this way, where you’re super excited about something and you can go on about it, but then if you don’t do everything RIGHT THEN while you’re inspired, even days or sometimes even seconds later, that inspiration and excitement just completely fades? It’s so obnoxiousssss D:

Anyway so what I’ll say for now is my INITIAL idea involved that super asshole bullshit thing Unit 731 did where they tied people to posts at varying lengths away from a biochemical bomb they detonated in the center to release diseases and see how long it took people to develop symptoms and, sadly usually, eventually die... if not by the disease, then lots of times by the vivisection they performed without anaesthesia, sometimes just straight up taking out organs.

But then I was like, man that’s going to be hard to come back from so I probably shouldn’t do that.

There were people who lived through these things and were subjected to them repeatedly until they couldn’t live through it again. The entire thing is just so goddamn horrific, it’s out of control. But I kind of wanted to show how the road to hell can be paved with good intentions... the idea that just because you think you represent something “good” doesn’t mean you can’t become the same person or group you purported to fight against. In ICoS, Janus was as ruthless, if not sometimes more, than the Agency, but believed themselves not to be. They justified every terrible act by claiming the other side was more terrible first.

I felt that the atrocities committed during WWII, particularly those done in secret by the Japanese government who can sometimes be overlooked now as much more innocuous than they were, were reflective of the levels to which a group would go to gain superiority over a system which they felt was denying them the power they deserved. I fucking LOVE Japan and I love so much about Japanese culture, I love the Japanese language, I’ve never been to Japan but I want to go because I know from images and videos I would absolutely love the country - but they definitely have done some really awful things that for a very long time, they absolutely refused to acknowledge. They just kept acting like these things didn’t happen because it wasn’t convenient to talk about and because of many other factors, I’m sure.

But Unit 731 was fucking AWFUL, like at least as bad as the shit happening in the actual concentration camps, and yet everyone knows about the Nazis and how absolutely horrific the camps were, yet I had no idea about Unit 731 until I was in college and my Japanese film class or something else random like that covered it. That, and the rape of Nanking, and so much else. When we think of WWII, we think of so much of what happened in and directly around Germany, and we absolutely should. But there were also horrible things happening elsewhere, which were able to go more under the radar because of various circumstances, and which are under-acknowledged globally to this day.

Essentially, because the Nazis and Germany were at the center of attention in this case, it allowed for Unit 731 and Japan to fly under the radar except to the countries and people they were directly causing massive trauma and impact. Unit 731, after all, fancied itself a scientific endeavor, in the same way that Janus fancied itself a revolution. It isn’t that science or necessarily even revolution can’t be important topics to focus on... it’s the way it was done.

That was what made me think of Janus initially... because there were all these other groups out there who kept taking the attention of the Agency, while in the background Janus was building an empire that was, ultimately, founded in pain. They also were both fine with collateral damage... victims of Unit 731 were a mixture of innocent victims kidnapped and coerced into their “cause” while others were prisoners of war at the mercy of a self-contained system that practiced no empathy. Not just a lack of empathy, a clinical dehumanization and disregard of the victim down to the aspect of not even labeling them as people, but instead calling them ‘logs’ in reference to the fact that their headquarters was an old logging facility.

Janus was against the Agency because of many reasons (some of which were very valid points), but they allowed for innocent victims to be caught in the crossfire, then turned to coercing them into their control, and began experimentation on prisoners of war and others who they ultimately saw as a project, not a person. For both Unit 731 and Janus, the end goal was far more important than the journey. This was business, and in business people get hurt. That’s fine to them, because their business outweighs the worth of the people they roll into their fold as fodder for the cause. Same as the Agency, really, but the Agency had the control whereas Janus wanted to take it. Which, therefore, made Janus believe they were even more justified in going to greater lengths to seize that control, so it would be in the “right hands.”

So the short answer is that I was initially thinking I’d have Janus basically be willing to do just about anything Unit 731 did, but of course not all to one person because they would never survive it. And some things would be unnecessary to “test” in a more modern setting because science already knows the answer which it did not know at the time of Unit 731.

The trouble is that Unit 731 was the fucking worst, and people did not leave their care intact very often, if at all. All my original ideas could potentially work if done in just the right way, but most of them would have such lasting damage realistically that it was going to make it difficult to have him roll right back into being an agent in any sort of reasonable time. And if he came back without even a possibility of being an agent, I knew he wouldn’t last long at all.

So that’s what got me into thinking of other things that might be a bit more realistic for recovery, while still being awful and representative of the lengths to which humans believe they are justified in going just because they can. Ultimately, that got me thinking it might have to be more about the mind than the body. But also ultimately, that could almost be worse.

So that was the thought process that led to what went into the book. Feel free to ask me again in the future if you want about what more maybe happened in the part I didn’t write out in the book. When my brain isn’t being weird as hell I will probably be able to explore that topic more. I’ll leave the original ask untouched just in case, too.

Oh also btw, relatively recently Japan disclosed the names of thousands of Unit 731 members, which is a massive fucking step since for decades they refused to properly acknowledge Unit 731 even was a thing. So that’s a step in the right direction, at least, and an update I hadn’t known about on this topic until I googled it just now to check something else. Although, that article is a little misleading because it suggests the only victims were Chinese civilians and that isn’t the case. It was them, and a lot of other people from other countries, which I mention not to dismiss or discount the Chinese victims, but rather to recognize them, and add recognition to the other victims as well.

Anyway I rambled enough on this and didn’t even answer your question, I’m sorry... but if you do want an idea of what I was thinking when I first went into planning that whole arc, and if you have a strong mind and stomach, you can read into Unit 731 and get a good idea of the vibe of my initial imaginings. They were not happy vibes. They were incredibly fucked up.

#ask ais #icos #in the company of shadows #Anonymous

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