#obviously this is a small amount of people but like i’ve seen people talk about how ten things i hate about you isnt enemies to lovers | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

positivexcellence · 2 months

Text

‘Walker’s Jared Padalecki Shares a Look at What’s to Come in Season 4

Collider: You’re four seasons into this TV series now, which isn’t the 15 seasons that Supernatural was on the air, but it’s a very respectable amount of time.

JARED PADALECKI: Thank you so much. Hopefully, we’ll have 40 more. But Season 4 is certainly bizarre and amazing and incredible, and I’m grateful and flattered and love the journey these characters have gone through.

What are you loving about Season 4 and about the Cordell Walker of Season 4? What are you most enjoying about this point of the journey?

PADALECKI: With Supernatural, we would flip between maybe the big bad guy and then the problems at home or with the brothers. But in the case of Walker, we will go from big bad guy to family stuff to bad guy of the week to family stuff. Just like life is, it gets big sometimes and it gets small sometimes, but there’s always some issue. And so, what I love about Season 4 is having a serial killer out there that is from our past and that haunted us back then and is sure to haunt us again this season, as The Jackal does, and also, there’s so much drama at home. Cordell has a daughter who’s a freshman in college and a son who’s a senior in high school. Mom and dad are trying to figure out what to do. His brother is trying to figure out what to do. It’s just that feeling that we all get, as humans and as adults, where it feels like, “Can’t just one part of my life calm down?” And sure as hell, it never does.

It feels like this show was originally brought back to television because there was a real hole in this type of programming at that time, and I’m glad the series is still on because it still feels like it’s really needed in that space.

PADALECKI: Agreed. What’s funny is that I grew up in Texas. I grew up in San Antonio. I’ve lived in Austin for 15 years. I grew up watching Walker, Texas Ranger with Sir Chuck Norris, himself, so that was a part of my childhood. For those who’ve seen the original and seen ours, this is obviously a very different show. I’m certainly a fan of action movies and action shows and action books and action stories, but I found myself, after 15 years on Supernatural, which was very much based in family as well, wanting something that anybody of any age could watch. I wanted something that wasn’t just about cutting off vampires’ heads, or killing God or the devil and everything in between, but was more like, “How can we make this as realistic as possible to what’s going on right now, and what has gone on in the past, and what is sure to go on in the future?” The commentary is oftentimes about how people have seen the original and love the re-imagining that we Walker put together. But more often than not, I love that I’ve had parents come up to me and talk about how Walker, though the situation is different because he’s a widower, is going through life and trying to figure out his kids while they’re changing, and he has to go to work because he has a job. There’s something universal about that struggle and that experience that seems to have really communicated and landed with people, no matter what their job is and what their family situation is.

Is it challenging to make this series with a shortened episode count, or does it feel like you can really just pack more into every episode?

PADALECKI: I get both. There’s a quote I heard one time about actors and writers and directors and producers and whatnot, and they used it in the form of an actor. They said, “If you give an actor three years to prepare, it’ll take three years. If you give him three months to prepare, it’ll take three months. If you give him three days, it’ll take three days. If you give him three minutes, it’ll take three minutes.” It’s one of those things where life imitates art. We’ve found such wonderful stuff, and kudos to our great writing team for making it possible, but it feels very like life. It feels very much like Cordell’s life would be. You find out sooner than you would’ve hoped, “Hey, this is coming up,” or “You’ve gotta do this or that.” While it’s certainly been different, if you could give me 30 days to do an episode, it’ll have its challenges. If you give me one day to do an episode, it’ll have its challenges. I think that goes from top to bottom, cast and crew alike. We’ve had a great time. Because of cross-boarding some episodes, we might be doing episodes one and two, and even if a character is only in episode two, since we will shoot two together, I still get to catch up with that human being during the filming, which is wonderful.

You’re kicking off this season with a lot of storylines happening for these characters. He’s stepped up his romance, his daughter is not coping well with things, and there’s a serial killer. I love that there’s really this balance where you have the romance and there are some good things on the horizon for the family, but then there’s also the dark and deadly aspect of a serial killer. What sort of balance will we see this season between the light and the dark? Will we get to a point where things get more dark and more intense, as things play out with The Jackal?

PADALECKI: You certainly will. Given what happened with the strikes, over the last 12 months, it didn’t make sense to do a direct pickup after Season 3. So much time has passed between the end of Season 3 and when Season 4 will air that it just didn’t make a lot of sense for our viewers and our lovely and wonderful loyal watchers. Kale [Culley] just turned 18 in May, and he’s almost my size now. If we picked up Season 4, episode one, directly after Season 3, the final episode, it wouldn’t make sense. You’d be like, “Oh, I guess August grew four inches overnight.” Our writers were very aware of that and tried to make every bit of that as real and human as possible. We certainly do see, as characters and as viewers, how this Jackal that haunted Captain James and Ranger Walker back in the day, five years ago, still has a stranglehold on them, and just how deep and dark they go while trying to keep all the other plates spinning in the other aspects of their lives.

It’s certainly never great to keep secrets from people you care about, especially when they’re big secrets. And on a TV series, those secrets are bound to come out, and likely at the worst possible time.

PADALECKI: Yep, that’s what our sadistic writers try to do. Teasing, teasing, teasing. No, they do it in such a wonderful way. Going back to before even the pilot, one of the things that Anna Fricke and I talked about before we’d even staffed the room and cast the characters and hired the crew was that we want this to be as real as possible. Although in a different arena, with Walker being a Texas Ranger and a widow, we want this to have universal problems and issues that every person goes through on different scales as they navigate this life.

Jensen Ackles directed an episode of the series. Do you think he’ll do that again?

PADALECKI: I sure hope so. Now and always, I will work with Jensen, wherever, whenever. He’s obviously a busy man. He’s got a wife and three kids of his own. He’s here, there, and everywhere. He’s been in Toronto, he’s been in Vancouver, and he’s been in New Mexico. He’s a very busy guy. He and I see each other a lot, obviously, with Supernatural conventions, and we text often. He certainly is up for it. It’s just like life and like Cordell Walker, trying to figure out when things will work out.

Do you see yourself directing an episode?

PADALECKI: Not to speak for Jensen, but to try to speak for Jensen, directing is something that he was always really passionate about, and producing is something that I was always really passionate about. I have a deep respect for directors, and the door is not closed. If the opportunity arises and I think, “Man, I really wanna direct,” then I will. But over 24 years in the industry, I’ve worked with so many talented directors who deserve the episode more than I do. Obviously, as the executive producer and the guy in the poster, I could probably make a phone call and say, “Hey, I want an episode,” and they might say, “Okay, you get one.” That’s not what Jensen did.

From day one, he was like, “Hey, I wanna direct some day.” That’s not where I was. And so, I don’t wanna take an episode away from a really deserving, talented director. I really love my job as an actor and as a storyteller, and as an executive producer, I help guide the storyline and help in the casting and help with the editing. So, I’m a pretty happy cat right now, where I stand. I love that puzzle. The director puts the puzzle pieces together. I like getting the puzzle pieces and figuring out how they can work even better. I think a lot of artists go, “Hey, I wanna guide this.” For me, I love the puzzle of acting and scene breakdown and story breakdown, and just trying to figure out how to make what’s already great on the page and great on the set, even better if I can.

You and Jensen Ackles have both talked about having interest in a possible revival of Supernatural. Is that something you’ve seriously considered doing? Have you had any real conversations about that, or are you just having conversations about having conversations?

PADALECKI: It’s not that I have seriously considered doing it, my single answer is yes. It’s timing. It’s availability. Jensen and I feel so strongly about our show that we had for 15 years together that we don’t wanna just do it just to do it. We don’t wanna go, “Hey, I have two weeks off in June. Let’s go ahead and shoot 10 pages a day, just so we can have some more content.” If and when Supernatural comes back, it’s going to be a labor of love, and we’re gonna put every hour in to make sure that it’s as true to the cannon and to the fandom and to the story and to the characters as possible. So, my short answer is it’s not a consideration, the answer is yes. I just don’t know when I’m available. I don’t know when he’s available. But again, my answer is yes.

Have you thought about all the different possibilities of what it could be, as far as whether you’d do a shortened season, whether you’d want to do a movie, or if none of it works, whether you’d do an animated series?

PADALECKI: Yeah. Honest to God, I don’t think about the medium in which it would air. I think about the story that I care about. If Jensen and I talk about where we would like to see Sam and Dean appear on screens again, and we think, “Cool, we like this, and we like this arc, and we like this conclusion,” then let’s do it. If they make it into a movie, great. If they make it into a limited series, great. If they make it into a flip book that’s available on Amazon, great. But at this point in time, I feel so protective of Supernatural that if the story’s fine, then I don’t care how it gets into the world.

Eric Kripke has also always made it known that he’d love to have you on The Boys anytime you were available. Would you like to make an appearance over there? Have you actually spoken to him about that? Would you even want to be in that world?

PADALECKI: Yeah, he has reached out to me and my response to him 90% of the time is, “Dude, I’m 41 now with three kids. I’m not 25 and working out three hours a day. I know you’re going to fucking make me get naked, so give me a heads up. I’m in, but let me get a nutritionist and a trainer and get in the hyperbaric chamber for eight months before you make me show up.” But yeah, it would obviously be a lot of fun to see Kripke again and to work on that show, which is a great show that I’m a fan of.

It certainly seems like a little wild break of fun.

PADALECKI: A little wild? Have you seen the show?!

Yes, and I love it very much. But I also have a sick sense of humor.

PADALECKI: I do, too. I love watching it, but imagine putting yourself in it. I’ve got kids. My mom and dad are still alive. I’ve got grandparents that are alive. I don’t know how to just unplug their electricity when the show airs.

collider

#jared padalecki #walker

41 notes · View notes

persesphonestears · 1 year

Text

Another tattoo

(Gif not mine :>)

A/N: So I have to make this a more than one part series because I wrote like way too much and I’m gonna die if I don’t post this already. Also so sorry it’s only Ghost in this post, but promise the second part will have the others!! I actually had so much fun writing this like omfg, I don’t have any piercings or tats for myself thanks to money problems atm but like actually I don’t know where I was going with that- uh anyway enjoy! I’m very tired. (looking at the amount now seems rlly small so sorry :/) ALSO I FUCKIN HATE THE NAME TOO LEAVE ME ALONE.

CW: He/they pronouns used for reader(? I might have ended up just using they/them), Reader has tattoos and piercings, I DONT THINK I USED Y/N LES GOO, I call ghost Simon when he isn't at work, Probably incorrect tattoo health procedures, Reader may be a little bland when first meeting Ghost(?), small mentions of gods(?)

Word count: 1342

Simon was finally let off for a break, given it’s only because Price knew he wasn’t keeping himself healthy or sleeping, so being the ‘dad’ boss he is, Simon was forced to take time off. While Simon wasn’t even close to being happy about having to not stay at base and having to make himself food and all the other human necessities, he’d been wanting a new tattoo for some time now. While maybe some of the privates would simply tattoo each other with pen ink, he’d rather die on the field than die from an infection from a more than likely shitty tattoo.

Walking through the somewhat dodgy looking part of his hometown, looking for a seemingly decent tattoo shop. While walking his eye was caught by the small little tattoo shop that looked clean and not all that dodgy. A small bell as the door opened rang as Simon stepped through, looking around at the walls he was impressed with the artwork that was displayed. He could hear faint 2000s rock music in the background of the shop, standing awkwardly waiting to see if anyone was actually here.

Turning around to walk out, he heard a small crash and a string of curses that followed.

Simon stopped and turned to see a short tattooed and pierced person walking out from the back of the shop. “Hi, sorry I was uh..” their talking trailed off as he looked down to see a fresh and unfinished tattoo on their leg. Unknown to Simon, the person in front of him was just very very happy that they weren’t able to be seen from the back, preferring not to be caught staring at the huge 6’4 man in their shop.

“Uh anyway, I’m guessing you don’t have an appointment cause I don’t have any till later tonight, but I take walk in’s, both for tats and piercings'' They rambled off as they walked around to the front desk checking through their computer, Simon watched them, surprised by the feeling of fluttering in his stomach. Pushing it away he cleared his throat “Uh yeah walk in, are you able to tat up my other forearm?” he was wearing a t-shirt under his hoodie, happy he wasn’t going to be taking his shirt off. “Mhm sure, I just need to ask a few questions and then get you to sign some consent forms, that cool?” He asked walking back around and sitting on one of the couch chairs at the front, taking a seat after them, Simon sat and agreed to the others' request.

“Cool, alright so first is which arm you want it on obviously and if you have any tattoos on your forearm already?” Simon answered with short and gruff answers “My right arm and no, my left is already tattooed(I think I can’t remember which arm of his is tatted).” “Right cool okay so I’m not gonna bother asking if you're of age because it's pretty obvious because holy shit you are probably the biggest and hottest man I’ve ever seen, but just read through these quick and sign ‘em” Thanking whatever gods there were for people not being able to read minds. Handing the forms to Simon he grabbed them and the pen from your hands, giving a quick read through signing where he had to. Putting them back on the desk, you grabbed them right back and skimmed through them, “Okay Simon, well what do you want?”.

—tiny time skip–

After setting everything up and placing the stencil of the sketch that you drew up (That Simon wouldn’t admit but absolutely adored) onto the gruff military man that was sitting in your chair. “Okay, you ready?” A simple nod was what you received in response. Instead of pushing you continued to go ahead and start his tattoo, not once deciding to ask about some of the many scars that graced his arms. Them seemingly adding onto your attraction for the stranger in your shop as he sat still and silent. Becoming; as you do when tattooing, engrossed in the soft buzzing, the hushed music of your playlist and the ink going into skin at your hand.

“How many do you ‘got?” The gruff voice from above me spoke as I continued to stab his skin. “Tats or piercings?” Responding with another question as I kept my focus on the shading, trying to not let the fact that this absolute 10/10 was asking you about yourself. Sure it was most likely to just make conversation but you could dream. “Both?” The voice behind the black surgical mask didn’t sound overly confident but even when peeking up at the man he was still only looking forward. “I stopped counting how many tats I got a while ago. As for my piercings uh..” cutting myself off to count in my head. “I’d say about 9, not counting my ears.” Feeling a cold gaze turn towards me I stiffen slightly.

“You only have 6 on your face.” (I chose to give reader a vertical labret, septum, both sides of the nose(like so you could use a chain), bridge, eyebrow :D) His voice replies, stifling my laugh “yeah I know I just don’t normally let people see my chest or just randomly show my stomach.” Giggling, I look up to see his ears turning a slight pink. “R-right sorry.” Trying not to laugh at a client, we continued to talk for a bit more before I suggested to put a movie on more to make it less uncomfortable for me with the awkward conversation. After picking a movie, he seemed to relax just a tad more, getting myself comfortable. I continued to finish up the art piece I was adding to someone's skin.

—another time skip because Ghost would get something edgy and big and I can’t keep writing silly awkwardness—

By the time you had finished and made sure to add some disinfectant and soothing cream to the skin before wrapping it up. You pat his shoulder smiling softly “you’re all done big guy”. Rising from the seat, he walked somehow (even though this man is huge) silently towards the front desk. Scanning his card and giving him the papers that explained how to look after his tattoo. “Thank you. You’re uhm. Very handsome- or uh pretty? I don’t know, can I just get your number?” Stumbling over his words brought a smile to your face. “Sure, I’d uh I’d actually really like it if you took my number” you ramble as you grab some scrap paper, quickly writing your personal number you hand it to him.

Seeing his eyes scrunch slightly, let you know he was smiling at you, and god almighty if the fact that this huge, scary, masked, stoic, man giving you a smile, that you couldn’t even see, wouldn’t make you swoon. Giving you a quick nod he walked out, the small bell above your door ringing in your ears as you watched him leave.

Giggling to yourself as you stupidly fist pumped the air and twirled around happily, not registering the sound of the bell being rung, indicating the opening of a door. What you did register was the once again gruff voice, clearing their throat as you turned back to look at the man who just left back in your shop. “Forgot ma’ cap.” Swiftly grabbing his hat back with what you could only assume was the smuggest look ever he turned back around. This time leaving you with a curt “Bye now, doll”

Leaving you red faced, in the middle of your own shop. Snapping out of it you groaned loudly before retreating to the floor, hidden by the desk. Cursing yourself for your stupid victory jig you did before even making sure that he wouldn’t come back for a bit. A buzz in your pocket distracted you from your internal dread, pulling out your phone and opening it to see a message from an unknown number. “That lil’ dance was very cute btw”.

A/N: *twerks cutely* ANYWAY

209 notes · View notes

stupid-sloot-headcanons · 8 months

Note

Hi there! Hoping that requests are opened. If not feel free to ignore this message. Btw you’re one of my fav yandere writers! So I’ve had Red hood on the mind recently and I can’t help but think about him like a set amount of years in the future just trying his best to give his darling a semi normal/domestic life. And just amping up the househusband role ya know? And darling kinda just being like “well it could be worse”/succumbing to Stockholm syndrome. You can choose if it’s fluff or smut. 🥰

Gonna go with Arkham Knight Jason since he's the prime wagyu beef-tier yandere fodder when we talk about Jason Todd lol

He never really imagined he could feel a sense of closure, but this is the closest he'd ever get to it. Joker is dead. He no longer wants to kill Bruce, and he's doing things on his own with his Darling safe and sound to come home to. And since he doesn't have a militia to command and do shit on a large scale, he can take longer breaks in between missions.

He's also seen how much Bruce has lost in that "crusade against crime" mindset. See, you have to be that relentless if you want to strike fear into criminals without killing them. But the Red Hood does that with every single kill, and laying low for a long while makes those same criminals feel a false sense of security. Then a few months later, he comes back to kill whoever is trying to take over the enterprise of the last guy he killed.

So he allows himself more opportunities to be with Darling and make up for all the time he lost. They're no longer held in his quarters in a stronghold, and Jason has plenty of fail-safes to keep them out of vengeful criminals' clutches. One of those is a tracker hidden in them, so small that they don't even feel it. And it's not able to show up on most scans without top tier tech or x-ray vision. So they get to go out more than ever

Still, Jason gets a prickle of anxiety whenever he comes home and doesn't hear them inside their home or the base he built. He only breathes when he checks the tracker and sees their location, and then sees the note they left saying where they were going.

He's glad that they're finally starting to adjust and aren't constantly trying to convince him to let them go or to stop killing people (even if they deserve it). He wishes it was just because they're not under as much stress compared to when the Arkham Knight kidnapped them, but...he knows it's also because they've been with him for so long that they're not resisting him as much. But he doesn't regret taking them and keeping them safe; he can live with them being manipulated by him, if it means they're together and Darling is safe.

He slowly starts to get into things he used to enjoy, and getting to watch movies or playing games with his Darling feels so...warm. It makes him think of a burnt out lightbulb that starts to flicker a little with some dim light. He gets to feel happiness again and feel like a real person.

Mundane domesticity is a comfort he never knew he wanted. Obviously it's not ALL he wants since he's still the Red Hood and is still a vigilante, but coming home to Darling and being with them gives him a reason to hope. If it weren't for that and for them, his only source of hope would be the thought of killing every single criminal in Gotham with his own hands. So now he has TWO hopes!

#.dc #.arkhamverse #.jason todd #yandere Jason Todd #yandere arkhamverse #.myshit

75 notes · View notes

maislovebot · 4 months

Note

hiii :3 so im in LOVE with your writing, and I wanted to req smthn if it's not too much!! basically what im thinkin is an atsushi x reader comfort/fluff fic where reader is insecure about themself/their body, and atsushi reassures them that they're beautiful and overall just tries his best to comfort them.

I don’t think there’s anything better than you!

I just realized I forgot to italicize any of the words😭 my apologies, but it’s fixed now!

Hey goat!! I’d love to write this, thank you so much for requesting it!! I’m so glad you like my work:) also the title is from dancing with my demons by eyedress

Contains: gn reader but they are referred to with words like gorgeous and beautiful, fluff, insecurity comfort, because it wasn’t said what the reader was insecure about I kinda danced around it, it’s overall pretty short because it’s hard to write a long fic with such a general prompt, I hope that’s okay!

Atsuhsi certainly wasn’t new to feeling insecure. He always felt as if he didn’t amount to much, but he only ever really thought these bad things about himself. He couldn’t even fathom how you of all people were insecure. You were, quite literally, the most gorgeous person he had ever seen. Everyone seemed to agree with him too! Dazai would constantly flirt with you and ask for a double suicide, and Kyouka always looked at you in awe. Atsushi wouldn’t even be surprised if some of the enemies found you gorgeous. This information used to make him feel jealous and even more insecure than he already was, but he’s grown used to all the constant remarks from everyone who saw you, or the looks of pure admiration from others.

So just how were you insecure?

Atsushi couldn’t understand it. You were breathtaking, and everyone around you seemed to agree. So just how is it that you curled up into his touch one day, after a long day of work, mumbling about how you didn’t feel attractive?

At first, it took a while to get it out of you. Atsushi could tell that something was wrong, but he just couldn’t tell what. He didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, or seem pushy, but he really wanted to know what was on your mind so he could fix it. Considering the type of person Atsushi is, he automatically assumed it was him you were upset at, although he didn’t really have any evidence to back that up. You obviously didn’t want him to think you were upset at him, as you knew it would eat at him constantly, so you mumbled some sort of reason behind how you were feeling. You didn’t want to lie to him, so you just told him how you were feeling so quietly that Atsushi struggled to tell what you were saying.

It took Atsushi a few moments to piece together what you were saying, and once he finally did, he gave a small gasp, before wordlessly holding your sides close, pulling you into his chest. He wasn’t sure how to word what he wanted to say. How could he possibly describe your beauty to you? You were beyond what words could comprehend. He really didn’t understand how you were feeling this way, but he knew simply telling you not to think those things wouldn’t work, and he struggled to word it anyways, so he decided to take things slow.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

You nodded.

“I do, but..it’s embarrassing to talk about,” you refused to look him in the eye.

“Why would it be?”

“I’m just—insecure in my body, it’s hard to talk about.”

You still weren’t looking at him.

“You don’t have to tell me, but please, just tell me what’s got you feeling this way?”

Atsushi didn’t want to sound pushy, and he was suddenly hit with an internal panic that he’s making you uncomfortable.

“If you want to, of course! You don’t have to tell me anything!” The way Atsushi was waving his arms around was almost comical, and you couldn’t help but let a giggle out.

You shake your head, resting your nose in the crook of his neck.

“No, it’s fine. It’s not really any specific thing, I’ve just been feeling awful lately.”

Atsushi looked down at you in surprise, running his hand through your hair.

“I don’t know how much weight my words have according to you, but I think you’re beautiful. You look perfect.”

Atsushi had hardly ever focused on looks practically his entire life, as he was struggling to even keep his head above water. So things like looks, and friends had to come second. He may not know much about beauty, but he certainly knows that you are beautiful. You’re the embodiment of it. He needed to make sure you knew that.

He wrapped his arms around your shoulders.

“Tell me, what are you insecure about?” he questioned.

“Do I have to say?”

“What? No, not if you don’t want to,” Atsushi paused, “but that just means I’m gonna have to focus on all of you.” Atsushi sat up, turning you into your back. He wasn’t above you by any means, but he did have his arms on either side of your body. You chuckled at his words, and looked him in the eyes for the first time that night and you were met with his eyes completely closed, but he had a big smile on his face. It didn’t have any teeth, but he was still emoting quite a lot. It melted your heart a little.

“You still haven’t changed out of your work clothes,” Atsushi noted.

“You haven’t either.”

“That can’t be comfortable, let’s change then we can come back to this!”

You giggled at how hyped he was, and you took his hand and stood up, walking over to your closet. Atsushi was right next to you, looking at his side of the closet, which in your opinion, was comically small compared to your side. Your “half”of the closet took up 85% of the entire thing, and most of Atsushi’s clothes were just socks and button up pants, along with one white suit the agency forced him to get.

Atsushi noticed how you were paying such close attention to the closet instead of just picking something out, so he just grabbed a pair of shorts and a shirt for you to rest in. Once he grabbed what he needed, he wordlessly walked to the bed to get changed, waiting for you to follow his lead. You left your haze, and hustled over to the bed to get changed next to Atsushi.

Once you were in more comfortable clothes, you laid in bed and Atsushi soon followed, yet again having you lay on your back while Atsushi sat up to look at you. He poked at your stomach, before leaving one small, chaste kiss to it.

“I really don’t know how you’re even insecure, you’re so beautiful.” Atsushi said.

He moved his face up to leave another kiss to your shoulder, and he kept leaving small, innocent kisses along your entire upper figure. He didn’t really go in any particular order, he just kissed wherever he happened to notice. Between every kiss he would give you one more compliment, and by the end you were smiling and giggling because he was acting so loving. This was what made him truly happy. Comforting you. Holding you close. Helping you make all your problems melt away. You deserve the best after all.

Once he was done, he wrapped the blankets around you, laying down next to you. The blankets were flush with your shoulders, and you were curling into Atsushi’s touch again like you were just a few minutes ago. Atsushi always loved when you got clingy. He was typically the clingy one, but after you had a long day, and you returned home, just wanting to hold Atsushi in his arms was one of his favorite parts of life in general. He loved taking care of you on those days because it made him feel like he had purpose, even if this only really happened after you’d had a bad day.

Atsushi could tell you didn’t really want to get into detail as to why you were feeling insecure, so he hoped that after a good night's sleep, and lots of cuddles and comfort, you’d be more open to the idea.

As all he really wanted to do was help you.

Wc - 1.2k

I hope you enjoyed, goat!! When I proofread this I was like giggling and kicking my feet tee hee

#bungou stray dogs #bsd x reader #bungou stray dogs x reader #bsd #nakajima atsushi #atsushi nakajima x reader #bsd atsushi #bungou stray dogs atsushi #atsushi x reader #atsushi nakajima #atushi nakajima

38 notes · View notes

girl4music · 10 months

Text

Angel: "What?"

Cordy: "What?"

Angel: "What do you want to say?"

Cordy: "Ah, me? Nothing. What makes you think I wanna..."

Angel: "'Cause I know you.”

Cordy: "Well, it's really… none of my business."

Angel: "And that always stops you?”

Cordy: “Actually, it is my business, *our* business, because we're trying to do a job here, and what affects you affects me, and anyway, I don't like to see you suffer more than you have to. I don't think you should blame yourself, or feel guilty for her death."

Angel: "I don't."

Cordy: "Good. Glad to hear it."

Angel: "I didn't even know who she was when I killed her."

Cordy: "Not her! Angel..."

Angel:

*After a beat*

“Oh... you… you want to talk about..."

Cordy: "She was the love of your life and she died.

*Angel sits down on the stairs, facing Cordy*

*Steps closer*

And you weren't there when it happened.

*Sits down next to him with a sigh*

You couldn't help her fight. You couldn't save her. You couldn't die with her."

*Angel doesn’t answer*

—————————————————————————

Cordy: "And how about you?"

Angel: "I'm o..."

Cordy: "And don't say 'okay.' Angel, please. I know you. Ever since you've come back from your grief trip I can tell that something's not right. And, and *obviously* it's not. Buffy's dead, and I don't mean to diminish that. I miss her too. I just wanna say… I know that James with all his Romeo and Juliet madness, opened up a lot of wounds for you, but you'll be okay."

Angel: "I am okay."

Cordy: "Then what's the problem?"

Angel: "That I'm okay. That losing Buffy didn't kill me. That I could deal with it. In all those years no one ever mattered. Not like she did. And now she's gone. Forever.”

Cordy: "And you're still here."

Angel: "Yeah. I just feel like I'm betraying her somehow."

Cordy: "No! If you were a loser, if you were some sick obsessed vampire, you'd go to a Snod demon, or whatever, and get your heart cut out. But you're not! You're a living, breathing... Well, living, anyway, good guy, whose still fighting and trying to help people, and that's not betraying her, that's honoring her."

Angel: "You think?"

Cordy: "I'm Cordelia. I don't think. I know. Okay?"

*Cordy gives him a big grin, which draws a small smile in response*

Angel: "Okay."

So I’m on to Season 3 of ‘Angel the Series’ and this first episode was dealing with the aftermath of Buffy’s death in Season 5 of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’. How it affects Angel and specifically how he keeps the grief of his loss to himself but Cordy can see through him.

But listen - Everything I’ve just quoted above showcases how much better of a relationship Angel has with Cordy over what he ever had with Buffy. All of THIS is what a RELATIONSHIP is. The way they just know each other that they can’t lie to one another. The way Cordy draws information out of Angel like no one else can and is so perceptive in figuring him out. The way he opens up to her with a minimum amount of prodding from her. The brick wall of non-communication that was Bangel is nowhere to be seen in Cangel. This entire conversation is about Buffy specifically and what Buffy means to Angel. Yet through it I can see that were it in reverse and it was Cordy that died and it was Buffy giving this speech….

There would honestly be nowhere near the breakthrough on revealing Angel’s emotions because they’re both one in the same when it comes to communication. They both hide away from each other in moments of being in need of someone to talk to. Maybe it’s just because they have more time and purpose to do significant character interaction in Angel’s own show when it comes to drawing out information from Angel’s psyche, but I just see so much more between Angel and Cordy - just friends - then I ever saw between apparent “love of their lives” Angel and Buffy. This level of intimate relation to one another is on the level of Spuffy or Tillow. This is what you’re supposed to have in a relationship where the people in it are actual partners. Honest and open communication. Buffy and Angel never had this… really ever. I mean I brought up the interaction and conversation they had in ‘Forever’ as the only time where I truly saw Bangel as genuinely relating to one another and this was well passed their heydays.

I really love what I’m seeing in this dynamic. This is what makes Angel - the character and the show - interesting to watch. He finally has someone who KNOWS him to the point where he cannot always brood away in silence and pretend like no one cares. Because that’s not interesting to watch. It’s just sad. Thank fuck Cordelia is in this show as a main character because not only is she better for it. But she makes HIM better for it as well! That’s precisely what was needed for either of them to be considered even half as interesting of a character to me as Willow or Spike. And okay - there’s still a lot to live up to there. But it’s a start! This is what I wanted to see in Bangel but I never could because they were so incompatible when it came to being each other’s sounding board. It was like they were trying but they were never breaking through that communication barrier between them so as much of a whirlwind romance that they had - that was written… there was just nothing holding it up other than all the physical intimacy that they shared. And that’s just shallow. There was no depth to it. Not like there is with Cangel. With what I can see in them.

#angel the series #hearthrob #cangel #angel #david boreanaz #cordelia chase #charisma carpenter #relationship #communication #dynamic #character representation #character development #meta

52 notes · View notes

a-student-out-of-time · 9 months

Text

PSA TIME WITH MOD BUBBLES

//I’ve talked a lot about DRDT, and that’s because I’m honestly so blown away by how good it is and how talented the dev is as a creator. At no point have I ever meant to imply that my interpretation of DRDT or the outcome of the story is the only correct one, I’ve only been speculating on it based on the evidence in the text.

//And while I complain a lot about works from creators like LINUJ, that’s only because of writing decisions that either diminish the work’s quality, damage the story and/or characters, or harm whatever messages it’s going for. Even then, I still try to see the good in works I critique and how I think they can be improved, because that's what constructive criticism should be about. My criticisms have never been intended as personal attacks and I’ve been trying to go out of my way to ensure they remain professional and constructive.

//I really don't have a bad word to say about the creator or the fangan itself. I actually want to talk about something else here.

//To be honest, I sympathize with their feelings. The amount of times I've seen posts from people in the fandom taking the piss out of my Switch Theory, mocking it, calling it stupid and me stupid by extension, and spreading misinformation about it? It's a lot. To say nothing about my work on this blog.

//As a small creator myself, I’ve had to develop a thicker skin when it comes to taking criticism or getting hate asks. Early ones I got were pretty harsh, and it did send me into a malaise for many days or weeks at a time, and I had to learn not to try writing when I didn’t feel up to it. Now I have the confidence to challenge bad faith arguments, and I have help from co-creators and friends to improve things.

//I say this because a lot of those asks and a lot of that negativity did affect me and I had to learn to not let it bother me. I still get sad and frustrated, but it’s not a creator-killing attitude for me anymore. That's not always the case every creator, unfortunately.

//Obviously I’m not talking about every single person in the fandom, but I just want to make this clear for fans of any work: please, for the love of all that is good and kind and decent, think about what you say about creators.

//I’m not talking about calling out creators for unrepentant bad behavior, you can and should do that. I’m talking about harassment, entitlement, and even just thoughtlessness commentary that goes into things said about small creators who work on passion projects, who aren’t making money off of it and who are just trying to do their best.

//It can be easy to think your comments, your criticisms, or even your attempts to be funny will be perceived how you perceive them, but not everyone will take them the same way. Your thought processes are not universal, and something small and innocuous to you can really hit a sore spot for someone else. Some people are more sensitive than others, and that’s something you really to keep in mind.

//This is especially true if you’re saying things about a creator themselves. There’s a difference between something like “here’s where I think the creator’s work could be improved” and “the creator is so X.” You can hurt them with the latter more than the former, because that feels very targeted and personalized. Even if it's not true, some people are much more self-conscious than others.

//At the same time, the response to this sort of thing is not and should NEVER be “let’s gang up on the person who said that and force them out of the fandom.” That’s unacceptable, no matter the circumstance. I’ve blocked people who've tried to have that attitude about critics of my own story because I will never endorse that behavior.

//This isn’t meant to be a call-out post, just a PSA on why you should exercise some compassion and thought, and don’t make unnecessary commentary about creators who work hard on projects like these for no money, or for people who say things without intending to be hurtful. We creators do it because we have something we want to share, and as bad as bullying can get, comments like that are worse in their own way.

//Even if you don't intend it to be hurtful, thoughtlessness can hurt worse than open cruelty. Please keep that in mind when talking about other people, especially people you either don’t know or only know from their work or one bad action. At the same time, someone making one bad comment is not an excuse for you to declare war on them.

//Above all, just be kind to people and show how much you appreciate their work. Even small comments have gotten me through periods of bad depression, and when people need time to work on their health before they feel ready to get back to working on their projects, respect that. We aren't content machines, we're just as human as the rest of you.

//Finally, to the DT dev, I don't know if you'll see this, but I've been where you are and also had to take time off for myself. I feel lucky that I have so many kind people in my life, and I sincerely hope you do too. Take all the time you need, and know you've got my wholehearted support when you do return.

#mod talks #a student out of time #drdt #danganronpa despair time #drdtappreciation

36 notes · View notes

autisticwho · 9 months

Text

i’ve reached a new level of autism where i’ve just turned doctor who characters trans in my head for no good reason; here it is!

rose tyler — non-binary, any + star/stars + wolf/wolfs

she would learn about more gender and pronouns and how different it is in other planets through travelling with the doctor and would experiment with they/them at first, but would still use she/her. then they’d use he/him & eventually learn about neopronouns + xenogenders and most likely would use star/stars & wolf/wolfs.

mickey smith — transfemme, she/her + they/them

(i’ve been vibing with mickey being transfemme & a butch lesbian for a minute) (i’m obsessed)

SO. i think mickey figured out she was trans early on, she just didn’t know what the feeling was. she saw rose & jackie shopping and was fascinated by it all. they thought dresses and skirts were pretty & was very upset when they got told she couldn’t wear it.

then she meets sally and everything changes. she knows what being trans is & she knows that those conversations are on the table. so, after a lot of research, mickey learns that’s who they are. (in my head they identify as demigirl, but are comfortable with the non-binary & trans labels too)

also small hc that mickey helped cleo with their coming out journey, since rose used to babysit her teehee

donna noble — agender, all pronouns

donna has way too much going on to worry about her gender, however after rose, donna learns some people just don’t really feel a connection with gender & don’t really “care” about gender, which resonates with him, so they adopt the agender label & welcome all pronouns, including neopronouns as well.

bill potts — genderfluid, any pronouns

this was possibly the first head canon that came to mind & it happened before i ever really thought about using the trans beam on any other character.

you see a character called bill potts and you go well that can’t be a cis person

i feel like bill has just always known they were genderfluid. she’s always known their gender fluctuates and he’s always been okay with it, once they found the label it filled them with an insane amount of gender euphoria (which only intensifies after learning the doctor & missy are trans too)

amy pond — transmasc, he/him & rory williams — transfemme, she/her + they/them

to me, amy and rory go on very similar journeys & they go on them together. amy figures out his gender through her kiss-o-gram jobs, he feels sexualised as he’s seen automatically as a woman and that makes him dysphoric. then he researches (as we’ve all done, why do we feel wrong in our bodies!!!!) and finds comfort in the transmasc label.

as for rory, it all starts when amy asks her to dress up as the doctor — she loves this person more than life itself, so of course she’s going to do it but something feels wrong. she wants to rip the clothes off and never think about the situation again; but then it starts happening with their regular clothes — it makes their skin itch and they do not like it. eventually they talk to amy (or rather he figures out somethings wrong with rory and convince him to talk), and the two have an honest conversation about what it all means. (obviously this changes nothing in their dynamic + relationship & they’re very supportive of each other)

#doctor who #amy pond #bill potts #donna noble #mickey smith #rory williams #rose tyler #autism is autisming #the t in tardis is for transgender #also also #the a in tardis stands for autism #mac.txt #i think i’ve forgotten someone #i shall add it later if i remember #enjoy <3

16 notes · View notes

justsomeoneunordinary · 1 year

Text

Why You Should Reblog Creative Work

Here’s the thing about tumblr and reblogs: A lot of tumblr olds will tell you how reblogging is the only way for a post—especially when it comes to creative work such as art, gifs, fics etc.—to be seen by other people in the first place, as tumblr doesn’t have an algorithm.

This is not quite true anymore. Tumblr does have an algorithm and it’s a pretty well working one, too. I actually do use the ‘For You’ page every now and then and it always shows me a few posts that absolutely are of my interest. Hell, it even shows me untagged posts, it even shows added commentary in reblogs that are relevant to my interest.

So, saying “a like does nothing on tumblr” isn’t true anymore. As I’ve already seen, you don’t even necessarily need to tag your posts anymore (text posts at least—I don’t believe it’d work with images) to reach your audience.

But, and there is a But, capital letters and all that jazz, tumblr is first and foremost a blogging website. You all have blogs, and when you post here you blog. The reblogging function is a deeply ingrained, essential feature of this site, and when bloggers stop using it, creators will stop creating. A lot of them have already stopped—it’s one of the reasons why I for example, as well as a lot of other writers I know, don’t post fics on here anymore and merely share a quick link to AO3.

This is a blogging website and people are killing it by not using it the way it’s supposed to be used. Yes, you can, technically still reach your audience even if you’re not being reblogged at all, but apart from the fact that a lot of tumblr olds don’t even look at the ‘For You’ page, nothing will spread creative work as fast as reblog chains will. Nothing will make sure your work will be seen at all, except when people reblog it.

Not to mention that the ‘For You’ page (or the ‘Based on Your Likes’ function which is mostly garbage unlike the ‘For You’ page tbh) will never be able to show you older work that could interest you too, and bring the creator joy by getting attention on something that’s already years old again. Only sharing the work and spreading the joy will work.

Also, because likes were pretty useless until recently, most tumblr users don’t see likes as in “hey, I liked this!” but more in a “I saw this” manner. Hell, that’s how I use the like button. Sure, I leave a like on things I do like (I wouldn’t leave it on a post I dislike, that makes no sense), but the like is mostly meant for me to remember I saw this already. To show appreciation I reblog/queue the post. Because that’s what reblogging to most of us means. It means “hey, I like this and I appreciate it and I want to share it so others see this amazing thing too!”

If you leave only a like and no reblog follows it eventually, to most of us it means “yeah, I liked this but not enough to have it on my own blog and share it with others”—and that’s discouraging as fuck. It’s like saying that the work we created isn’t good enough.

Obviously, you don’t have to reblog every art/gifs/fics/etc. you see if they don’t even interest you. But naturally, you wouldn’t leave a like on something you don’t like either, would you?

There’s, of course, also always this small portion of Big Artists who claim that reblogs aren’t that important and likes are just as appreciated, but those are usually the kind of artists who reach hundreds of reblogs, get lot of commentary on the work, kind asks and so on and so forth. Maybe once people stop interacting with their work they would change their tune, but as long as they don’t struggle with receiving appreciation for the creative work that took them hours and was created with passion and love, their opinion doesn’t really matter, as they’re in a huge minority with that view anyway.

(I am talking about creative work specifically here because honestly, no one gives a fuck if you reblog shitposts or not, as they don’t take even remotely the same amount of time as a single art piece does for example, and aren’t made with the same passion either. Ironically though, shitposts are the kind of posts that get the most reblogs anyway.)

At the end of the day, it’s really not that hard to reblog other people’s work. You don’t have to leave a comment in the tags/reblog either, as not everyone has the time and spoons to do so—I do promise you though that if you leave kind commentary underneath a creative work, you will make OP’s day—there’s even a quick reblog resp. a quick queue option on mobile and desktop, which takes you just as long to click as the like button. Literally just a second.

You can also always make (a) sideblog(s) for anything you don’t want to mix with the other things you post/reblog.

And it doesn’t matter if you have no followers or not many who would see the things you reblog either. OP doesn’t know that—all they do know is that someone appreciates the creative work they posted. And a reblog even with no commentary will always be more meaningful than a like.

Maybe it’s not important anymore on tumblr to get reblogs to reach an audience, but the reblogs are still necessary to keep the community alive. And by discarding the reblog function we’re effectively killing that community until there won’t be any creative work anymore and well… probably only memes and shitposts on here.

So instead of getting all prissily and calling creators “entitled” for asking for reblogs, as if it is such a hardship to click the button, you should maybe ask yourself why you’re so reluctant to reblog work that took hours to create in the first place, hm?

#tumblr culture #reblogging

32 notes · View notes

filmswithrem · 1 month

Text

a character analysis on amy march

and how greta gerwig changed the perception of one of the most disliked literary characters

when i first watched little women (2019), i wasn’t expecting a lot. i didn’t realize how much i’d fall in love with the story, or the characters. out of all the characters, i especially felt a connection with amy march. i felt so seen by her. as a 14 year old girl who would watch films as an escape, i had never felt so understood by a movie or character as much as i did then. it felt sort of uncomfortable how similar she was to me, as if i was watching another version of myself. i immediately started watching all kinds of videos about her as a character and little women as a whole, and quickly saw how much of a disliked character amy is.

it’s not uncommon for a young, female character to be hated on. but i’ve noticed that so much of the amy hate is so deeply rooted, and so personal. i understand it to an extent, people who see themselves in jo, or just anyone in general, probably felt an unbearable amount of anger when amy burned jo’s manuscripts. maybe this makes me a terrible person, but i understood amy’s perspective and almost rooted for her. i felt so much pain for jo but also sympathized with amy. especially when seeing the incident happen in gerwig’s adaptation, the whole situation feels more complex. there was obviously a more deeply rooted anger that amy had towards jo, her going to the play without amy just pushed her into finally reacting.

that’s one of the many reasons i love greta gerwig’s version of the story. while

the characters were already fleshed out and well written, she added some more complexity to them, especially compared to the other film adaptations. i could go on for hours talking about all the characters, but for this i’m specifically focusing on amy. when looking at the 1994 adaptation, with kirsten dunst as amy, there’s so many scenes that make her thr villain of the story. she never really grows as a person since all the situations from her childhood. i do also need to point out that in that film, the story mainly focuses on jo (played by winona ryder) and the three other march sisters are side characters. for the 2017 miniseries, i haven’t even finished watching it because i hated amy’s portrayal so much. kathryn newton is a great actress, i really liked her in other films, i just don’t think she was the right choice for amy march. the show also portrayed her as a villain, making her seem like such a terrible person. overall i didn’t like the show. i see a lot of positive reviews so i may need to give it another chance. gerwig’s version shows amy as an ambitious young girl who is looking to be loved, and wants to be noticed by people. whether that’s in society, for her talent, or in her family.

in little women (2019), amy, as well as all the march sisters, finally get the recognition they deserve. all the other adaptations focus mainly on jo and don’t really show much of the other sisters, or their relationships with each other. it’s such a big part of the story and is so overlooked in the other adaptations. jo and amy’s dynamic is one of my favorites. it’s so interesting to see how their relationship progresses throughout the years and how they learn from their mistakes. it’s so realistic and so painfully relatable. a quote that really stuck with me is towards the end of the film where amy gives jo advice. jo asks her “when did you become so wise”, and amy proceeeds to say “i always have been, you were just to busy noticing my faults.” i felt it so deeply, it showed how overlooked and amy was. being only seen as a bratty child rather than noticing all the good parts of her personality. there’s so many small scenes that make such a big impact in their dynamic. jo crying to amy after she cuts her hair was a big scene showing that they still love each other dearly even when having some sort of resentment towards each other. amy’s line when laurie tries to propose to her add so much depth to her character. “i have been second to jo my whole life in everything. and i will not be the person you settle for just because you cannot have her.” she’s constantly felt like she’s underneath jo’s shadow, even if jo isn’t intentionally trying to be above her. she’s constantly comparing herself to jo, but also looks up to her a lot. jo sees it as the opposite. when amy can’t make it to visit beth, jo makes a bitter remark on how “amy always got out of the hard parts in life”. she constantly felt as if amy had some special treatment compared to her.

amy constantly compares herself to other people throughout the story. when she’s first introduced in the film, it shows her painting a picture and looking over at the people painting around her. she tries to mimic the style they’re painting in. she’s desperately trying to fit in with the girls in her school and later with the upper class in Europe. in her iconic “i want to be great or nothing” scene, she talks about how she’s not good enough, and will never be good enough to be a “real” artist. the monologue that gerwig added in afterwards adds more perspective to her character and how women were treated at the time. she genuinely believes that she will never be as good or talented as the people around her. she thinks that no matter if she’s a woman or if she were a man, her artistic abilities are mediocre at best. from an outside perspective, as seen from laurie, it’s so frustrating that she can’t see how talented she is.

i think a lot of people tend to forget how young she is. in the book-burning sequence, she was only 12. hating on her character purely off that situation makes no sense, she was a child and has grown from her mistakes. it’s so evident in later scenes that she feels sorry for how she acted, and is trying to do better. watching other adaptations made me realize how greta gerwig’s film really does amy justice. she’s seen as a girl who’s grown from her mistakes as a kid rather than a girl who is always plotting against her sister. obviously everyone has different opinions, it’s ok to hate on whichever character you want. i decided to write this because she’s such a special character to me, especially in this adaptation. i always go back to this film, i love it more than anything.

#film #character analysis #greta gerwig #little women #little women 2019 #amy march #florence pugh

5 notes · View notes

tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 1 year

Text

Round-up of some more stand-up specials I’ve watched in the last month or so.

All the Adam Hills DVDs/specials – Live in the Suburbs (2006), Characterful (2008), Joymonger (2008), Inflatable (2011), Stands Up Live (2012), Happyism (2013), Clown Heart (2017)

I’ve mentioned this one a few times, but thought I’d include it in this round-up anyway. I’d previous watched a whole lot of his stand-up in clip form on YouTube, and I’d heard bits of his earlier stuff on old Radio 4 shows, but I’d never actually seen his full shows and I decided it’s time to change that.

Basically, they were very close to what I expected, to what you could expect if you know Adam Hills from TV but have never seen his stand-up in any form. Enthusiastic. Optimistic. Energetic. I think that is actually what he’s like; if it’s a character, then it’s one he’s been keeping up since at least 10 solid years before he got any major TV work. You know how with some comedians, you see or hear clips of them from before they were famous and you say, “Wow, I can’t believe they were so different back then”? I’ve found a number of old clips of Adam Hills, and he’s always been the same.

There are a few differences, obviously. It’s interesting to me that in his earlier stuff, he talked about hating applying the word “disabled” to himself, because he didn’t like being defined by what he can’t do. On The Last Leg these days, he easily identifies as a disabled person. I’m aware that there could be a very, very cynical reading of this that says he changed it for the TV job, but I think it’s at least as likely that his view of himself just evolved. I know lots of people, including myself, whose relationships to labels that could identify them change over time. And it does make sense that for perfectly non-cynical reasons, getting more work that brought him into contact with Paralympians and other impressive people who identify with the term “disabled” could have changed his mind about that.

Also, the stand-up does give him more room than a TV show to get into some details, and he goes a bit dark about some stuff. It mostly feels in character – the Adam Hills from TV is energetic and optimistic and mostly positive, but he also gets genuinely upset about horrible things in the news, so it doesn’t feel like something contrary to his generally positive persona if he shows that side in his stand-up too. There are only a few times when he gets so dark that it does start to feel incongruent, which isn’t a bad thing at all, just a bit unexpected. Particularly in the 2017 one when he touches a bit on a drinking problem and marriage struggles.

It's possible that Adam Hills is defined by passion more than by positivity, he brings that to the good stuff but also to the bad stuff. I think my favourite of his shows was the 2013 one, where he did this brilliantly. Still had the positive stuff, but got angry about things too, about big things and small things and things that seemed small but he talked around them until they became connected to bigger things, and managed to be consistently funny the entire time. I think in every show he was trying for some philosophical-ish stuff, which worked better at some points than at others, but I thought he nailed it in his 2013 one.

Another big thing that defines his stand-up is he does a huge amount of crowd work, which is obviously not surprising. Brings in a bunch of audience members at the beginning, then keeps going back to them throughout the show, makes them part of it, works his material around whatever he gets from them, usually ends up bringing at least a few people on stage at some point. If he weren’t already hosting a live TV show, I would watch this stand-up and say, “Why isn’t that guy hosting a live TV show? He clearly has the energy and stage presence to do it.”

The disability inclusiveness is also interesting. I’d read before about him having live sign language interpreters at his shows, and I’d seen some clips of that before, but I hadn’t realized just how much it affects the shows until I saw them in full. He incorporates it into his material and his improv, and it adds to the whole thing. He even lets deaf people heckle, announcing at the beginning that if you’re deaf and want to say something, just wave your arms to get the attention of the interpreter, sign your heckle at her, and she’ll relay it to Adam. It happened a few times – obviously he gets lots of disabled people in the crowd, including deaf people, including some who heckled via the interpreter, and he got into interpreted discussions with them. That was pretty cool.

I’ve written a bunch about this now, and having said all that, I’d say overall, none of these were among my favourite stand-up hours I’ve ever seen. None of them seemed groundbreaking or incredible. But they were all good, and at their best, they showed me sides of Adam Hills that I really like and think we haven’t seen in a while on TV. Some parts of all of them were very funny, some parts of all of them made good points and gave me stuff to think about, all of them felt joyful and exciting. He’s very, very good at what he does. What he does is not be the best stand-up comedian in the world, but it is be a strong stand-up comedian who was definitely born to host TV shows.

Oh, and in the 2012 one, which was filmed at the end of that year and when the very first parts of The Last Leg had only just happened, the camera sometimes cut away to Josh Widdicombe and Alex Brooker laughing together in the audience. Josh Widdicombe’s first two DVDs also cut to Alex Brooker laughing in the audience at times. So that’s kind of adorable.

All the Demitri Martin DVDs/specials (except If I, since I’d already seen that one) – These Are Jokes (2006), Person (2007), Standup Comedian (2012), Live at the Time (2015), The Overthinker (2018)

Again, I’d seen and heard a lot of him in clip form before, and I’d seen his 2004 show If I (which, to tie this into the previous bit, beat Adam Hills for a Perrier Award when they were both nominated in 2003), and I decided recently that I should really watch the rest of his full shows.

Again, it was pretty well exactly what I expected. In fact, “exactly what I expected” applies more to this than it does to the stuff about Adam Hills, because I don’t think Demitri Martin’s shows surprised me in any way. I mean, they’re creative and offbeat quirky comedy that would surprise someone who went in expecting a regular night at a comedy club, they’re just not surprising if you know anything about Demitri Martin. Which, again, isn’t a bad thing. I like what I know about Demitri Martin, I know Demitri Martin is funny, and he did not disappoint on that front.

If you don’t know what to expect from Demitri Martin, a quick summary is that Daniel Kitson once told us his friend had a competition to see who could write the most Demitri Martin-like joke, and he won with: “Never judge a book by its cover. Unless it’s a book about book covers, and it has a bad one.” Which is an excellent example, that is the most Demitri Martin-like joke I’ve ever heard, including all of Demitri Martin’s actual jokes. Now you know what to expect from him.

Demitri Martin is a lot of one-liners, some songs but the songs are mainly just a collection of one-liners with music in the background, and visual aids with graphs and charts and drawings. Almost aggressively quirky at times. So quirky that it would be annoying if he weren’t also funny, but luckily it is also funny. The biggest thing I learned from watching his full shows is he builds in callbacks surprisingly well for someone who mostly does otherwise disconnected one-liners, and that’s always fun. Because of his format I didn’t expect any callbacks, so I was delighted every time they happened.

I still have a few of them stuck in my head. “Saying, ‘I’m sorry’ is the same as saying, ‘I apologize.’ Unless you’re at a funeral.” “It’s weird the way finger puppet sounds okay as a noun.” Based on this sample of two, it appears that the ones I like best are the ones that take about a second to work out his point, and once you do work it out, it means something horrifying. And that tracks. They’re not all like that. I also liked: “I was walking in the park and this guy waved at me. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.’ I said, ‘I am.’ ” And: “I don’t find your kids nearly as interesting as you do. Which is how you want it, by the way.” I also enjoyed most of his charts.

It's good stuff. It’s repetitive after a while, but that’s more my fault than his, I don’t think he wrote these things with the intention of someone watching/listening to them all within a couple of days. It’s always clever and usually funny, and really impressive that he wrote that much stuff. Other comedians can draw out a story for ages; he has to come up with a lot of different angles to fill that time. Which would also explain why a few of them repeat material, but again, to be fair to him, they weren’t designed to all be consumed in a couple of days.

Having said all that, I still don’t think any of those other shows were as good as his first one, If I from 2004. Not because the others weren’t great, just because the 2004 one was very, very good. It’s on YouTube and I highly recommend it.

Shelf – Hair (2022)

I really, really enjoyed this one, though I’m probably biased by being exactly in their target demographic. I’m pretty sure it’s good no matter who you are, though. I’m almost sure of that. It’s smart and enthusiastic and scathing at times. It’s well structured and themed, which I always like.

This is one of the very few things I know about these people (I also heard them do twenty minutes of their slightly older material in the Edinburgh Unlocked audiobook from 2020), so I can’t say I know a lot about how their double act works, but from that experience I think it works really well. They’ve constructed complimentary niches that let them play off each other and fit everything they want to say into one person’s voice or the other, so it always works. I think that’s one thing that makes this one work so well overall – they do have something to say. It seems like they started from being really sure of what they wanted to say in this show, and then worked out how best to say it, instead of trying to come up with stuff to fill an hour.

I’ve now enjoyed enough musical comedy so I’ve stopped bothering to say “musical comedy is often not great, but [person I’m talking about at the moment who pulled out a guitar or whatever] is actually really good!”, and I’ve just acknowledged that musical comedy can be shit like everything else, but I don’t think it’s more likely to be shit than anything else. In this case, I rather liked that one member of the double act could do the music bits and the other couldn’t, because that meant they couldn’t rely on the music too much. There were enough songs to be funny, not so many that they took over the show.

Also, and this is where me being in their target demographic comes in, I think they managed to find a few tiny patches of new ground, or at least ground that hasn’t already been trampled into dust by hundreds of comedians before them. It’s not completely new, but it’s not a hugely common subject. It was mainly about the differences in the ways that people, mostly men, treat women they perceive as feminine versus women they perceive as masculine. And how little a change it can take to move from one of those categories to the other. They hit on some specifics of this experience that I haven’t heard talked about in comedy before, they said some things about it that I haven’t heard said before, and a lot of it resonated. So I might have laughed a bit more than someone would if this stuff didn’t all resonate with them, but I’m pretty sure a lot of it would be funny to anyone. I really like these people and I hope they film more stuff.

Andrew Maxwell – Showtime (2017)

I watched this one pretty much because I don’t much like Andrew Maxwell, and I couldn’t tell whether that was unfair or not. Last year I thought I didn’t much like John Robins, and then I watched one of his shows and it was amazing, and now I know I very much like John Robins, and had unfairly judged him for being a car crash on Mock the Week once and playing golf. I wondered if there was something similar with Andrew Maxwell, because I couldn’t really articulate why I didn’t like him, I just find him annoying when I see him on TV. And I had seen some clips of him doing stand-up on YouTube, and heard a few on Radio 4, and not hugely enjoyed them, but you can’t judge someone from clips alone.

This is absolutely ridiculous, but I think my bias may be influenced a bit by how often his name came up last year, when I was trying to find the meaning of the term “Chocolate Milk Gang”, so I kept looking up stuff about that. And I kept finding stories that didn’t quite explain the exact meaning of the name, but they’d explain why those comedians were grouped together under some name. These stories were about Edinburgh Festivals from the early 00s, when there was a divide between the comedians where always drinking and partying, and the comedians who stayed sober with Daniel Kitson because they were nerds. That was basically it, a number of articles framed things in weird, high school movie-esque terms like that. And in those stories, Andrew Maxwell was always named as one of the people on the “other side” of that, a counterpoint to the CMG comedians, the party animal that they were not.

For anyone who doesn’t know, I eventually learned that the Chocolate Milk Gang got its name because the “party animal” comedians called them that to make fun of them for drinking milkshakes instead of alcohol after late-night shows. Credit for coining that name has been given to Glenn Wool, not Andrew Maxwell, but Andrew Maxwell was also around, making fun of them for carrying bags around and not being alcoholics.

Now, I should be clear that obviously, it did not actually work like a high school in an 80s movie, with Andrew Maxwell pushing David O’Doherty into lockers. Even high school doesn’t genuinely work like 80s high school movies, so I’m pretty fucking sure the Edinburgh Fringe Festival circa 2002 didn’t work like that either. I’m pretty sure all of those people were actually friends and the stories they told about those differences were in good fun, and no one was meant to be painted as a villain. But I already found Andrew Maxwell mildly annoying on a few panel shows, so I think hearing him cast in that role in the CMG stories just solidified the bias in my mind, and I decided I didn’t like him.

I recently decided that is not a fair reason to dislike someone, and I know he does political comedy, and I’ve been complaining lately about there being not enough political comedy out there, so I may as well at least watch the stuff that exists. So I watched a full Andrew Maxwell show, in the spirit of properly giving him a chance. And… yeah, it’s not great. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen. But it’s not great.

I agreed the fuck out of it, as Stewart Lee says, and I did laugh, a bit. But not really enough, it just wasn’t that good. A lot of what he said was really obvious, stuff I’m sure was already hack even by 2017. Stuff I’d heard before, sometimes so often that I wondered how he got away with using it as material. He didn’t have much to say that was new or interesting. Stuff about how people from different places are different from each other. That sort of thing.

Some of it was good, and I know it isn’t really fair to judge an entire comedian by just one show. I liked some of the stuff he did about Islamophobia, he brought more of a personal touch to that issue (due to his wife being Muslim) that made it a little less like just repeating stuff I’d definitely seen on Reddit since long before 2017. So it wasn’t all bad. But it didn’t convince me that I was wrong to think Andrew Maxwell is not a comedian I like all that much.

I’m sure he’s a perfectly fine person, though. He’s like five feet tall, he could not possibly have gone around bullying David O’Doherty. That’s just a weird narrative that got written into some articles, I’m pretty sure no one was genuinely bullying David O’Doherty (except for that one McSavage guy, but I try not to think about him because one time I got so mad about him that I emailed Stuart Goldsmith about it and that was such a stupid thing to do, anyway it’s fine).

Tiff Stevenson – Mad Man (2015)

From there, I decided to jump further into my theme of taking comedians I don’t love, and giving them more of a chance. I’ve never disliked Tiff Stevenson, but I’ve found her a bit annoying at times. This is partly because she committed the sin of being on those early episodes of the post-John Oliver Bugle, while not being John Oliver. Like how for a while I disliked Matt Forde for the crime of not being Russell Howard, back when he first replaced Russell on the old radio show with Jon Richardson, and I had to remind myself that that is not reasonable cause to dislike a comedian. I’ve now gotten over that, and any animosity I have toward Matt Forde is founded in the perfectly legitimate grounds of him being a big fan of the Labour Party when it’s run by a war criminal but not when it’s run by a socialist.

Anyway. That is not the point here. The point is that Tiff Steveson may have suffered a little from my intensely averse reaction to any non-John Oliver version of The Bugle, which I did get over and in fact come to love that new version for what it is, but it took some time. Also, Tiff Stevenson does have a habit of doing that thing that annoys me, which is talking about being into fashion in a way that sort of says “All the women know what I’m talking about, am I right?” And one time on her own podcast, she did a very good interview with Andy Zaltzman, but I thought at times it sounded like she was trying to lead him into saying the post-Oliver version of The Bugle was better than the original version (he didn’t end up saying that, he just talked about how it had grown into something different and very good in its own way, which is true), but I didn’t like the sense that she was pushing him toward it.

So again, I had little biases for no properly good reason, and I decided to give her a chance by watching a full show. This time, I was pleasantly surprised. I thought this one was really good, not the best thing I’ve ever seen or anything, but really good. Some of the humour was uneven, but I thought almost all of the points were strong, and it had enough humour to make it worth it, even if that was spread out in a bit of a weird way.

I liked the theme she chose – the whole show was about how commercialism co-opts and ruins everything. It’s a bit of a specific theme, and she still managed to fit a wide range of topics into it, which I thought was well done. Again, I’m biased by the fact that I strongly agree with her theme, I find the branding and commercial co-opting and the social media-ization of everything in the world wildly depressing. But also, who doesn’t find that depressing? If you find those things depressing then you’ll connect to Tiff Stevenson’s theme, and if you don’t find those things depressing, you don’t have a fucking soul. It’s a pretty widely relatable theme.

There was one bit when she started talking about Iggy Azela and Jennifer Lopez, and I started thinking “Oh dear, I was just starting to like you and now you’re doing material about pop music stars?”, but then she actually made several good points and it was funny. She took on some difficult subjects and handled them well, I thought. It was unapologetically feminist without being a show focused entirely on feminism (not that that’s a bad thing at all – I don’t want to sound like one of those people who says “I like that she could be feminist without really hitting you over the head with how feminist she is, you know?”, because fuck those people, lots of great comedy shows are focused largely on feminism, this one just isn’t one of those), it was political in a way that mixed in personal stuff as well.

I think my favourite routine was near the end, stuff about clothing and identity and sub-cultures and rock music and getting lost in Australia. It made me like Tiff Stevenson. I’m glad I watched this one.

Aditi Mittal – Mother of Invention (2020)

After Tiff Stevenson, I decided to seek out shows by a couple more people whom I know from their guest appearances on The Bugle, starting with Aditi Mittal. She brings a different perspective than most comedians I’ve ever heard, as she lives in India. So when she talks about being Indian, it’s not from the perspective of an immigrant, it’s talking about what India is like (or what her corner of it is like, obviously it’s a massive country with a truly ridiculous number of people).

I really enjoyed this one, by the end. I thought all of it was good, but the second half was much better than the first. It started as an entertaining comedy show, the first half definitely made me laugh, but then it picked up steam, and by the end it was a beautiful picture of motherhood and symbolism and religion within culture and expectations within culture and the concept of “scared” and feminism and strength in the face of oppression and familial love. But it managed to be all those things while still being very, very much a comedy show. Some comedy shows blur genre boundaries, stop being funny for a while to take on tough topics, and I think that’s a perfectly acceptable and sometimes good thing to do. I’ve hugely enjoyed some comedy shows that do that. But this one didn’t – it never took a break from being funny for more than a minute or so, it never stopped seeming like comedy, but it worked those heavy topics in anyway. I thought it did that really, really well.

I thought she wove everything together really well, first making it seem like her bits were relatively unconnected, but as she neared the end she kept pulling in thread after thread. Everything had a point, and sometimes she undercut her earlier tone to make a point bigger than it initially seemed.

She talks about serious subjects in a lighthearted way, so lighthearted that the serious side sneaks up on you. Her anger comes through even though she doesn’t yell, her love for her family comes through even though she doesn’t get into flowery language, her fear comes thought even though she doesn’t cry, her passion and belief in her convictions comes though even though she doesn’t grandstand (and again, I like lots of comedy that yells and cries and uses flowery language and grandstands, but this one doesn’t, and it doesn’t need to). It’s really, really good.

Tom Ballard – The World Keeps Happening (2017)

I know Tom Ballard for being one of the most common guests of the post-Oliver era, probably the third most common one, after Alice Fraser and Nish Kumar. He also initially suffered from my bias against anyone committing the crime of not being John Oliver, but I got over it a little faster with him, I think because he was on often enough to develop a rapport relatively quickly. It also helped that he was clearly a fan of the original version of the show, could reference it easily just like Nish and Alice, and that endeared him to me.

I like Tom Ballard on The Bugle, and was interested to see what his stand-up is like. It was good, overall. Very good in parts. A little off in parts, but again, I don’t know if it was objectively off or just ran up against some of my biases. There were times when I found him almost aggressively “Millennial”, and for some reason that really annoys me. Millennial or gen Z people who play too hard into generational stereotypes, even when they’re doing it ironically. Especially when they’re doing it ironically, actually. I don’t quite know why that annoys me so much, but it does, and he did a bit of that. That annoyed me to varying degrees.

But otherwise, I enjoyed it. It was probably 60/40-ish of political to non-political material, with the political stuff being the majority. He mixed it together in ways that were mostly good but sometimes jarring – a couple of times I was really enjoying his political routines, and then he was suddenly off on a story about something else, and I couldn’t properly enjoy it because I wanted him to get back to the earlier routine.

There was some relatively explicit stuff about sex in there, which was only weird because I’m used to him from The Bugle, where he, you know, doesn’t say stuff like that. Or he does sometimes – The Bugle isn’t a purely clean podcast – but it’s more purely a joke, while when I hear it in a stand-up story, it sounds like something similar to that that probably actually happened in some form. It’s like hearing about the sex life of someone you only know from school or whatever – you’re not supposed to be up to those things.

Honestly, I think I’d enjoy this one more on a second watch. The first time, I was a bit jarred by the way he was a little different to who he is on The Bugle, a bigger personality, more personal, definitely more details of a sex life. I think all those things are entertaining, but my surprise at encountering them took away a bit from the enjoyment.

The political side of the show, as I hoped and expected, was great. All of it well done, angry and cathartic in all the right ways, ended with a routine about drugs that annoyed me way less than comedy routines about drugs normally do (I guess because it was also a routine about politics, and I do like those). He’s clearly passionate about all of it, particular some of the stuff that was personal to him, as he was a gay Australian in 2017, when the toxic language in the same-sex marriage debate had really heated up, and course he had material about that.

I felt like I could see what he was going for, and even when he didn’t seem to quite reach it, it was still good and I liked where he was going. I liked that he was willing to stay on the political topics for longer than the time it takes to give a platitude or two. He said some things besides the obvious. He got specific.

I’m interested to see his more recent show; I feel like he showed some unrealized potential in that 2017 show and I’d like to see how it developed. But even as it was, I enjoyed it.

Ali Brice – Bin Wondering (2019), I Tried To Be Funny But You Weren’t Looking (2022)

So, I went into these two with two opposite biases that I think may have canceled each other out, leaving me with a fairly accurate opinion. I was biased toward them because I really wanted to like them, and biased against it because I didn’t really expect to like it much. I watched them anyway, and I’m really glad I did. I hugely enjoyed both of these.

I didn’t expect to be that into them because I saw this guy described as a “character comedian”, and looking him up revealed language that you’d expect to describe a children’s birthday clown. I know there’s more to that sort of comedy than children’s parties, I know there’s a whole complex art to the offbeat wacky character comedy, but it’s not really a thing I know a lot about so I expected to maybe not really “get” it. Which is the same thing I said about “absurdist comedy” when I went into watching John-Luke Roberts, and I absolutely loved his stuff, so I should really stop assuming I’m not going to like comedy based on its sub-genre.

I get the impression that both these relatively recent shows might be a bit of a departure from the “wacky offbeat character comedy” stuff that I see described when I look him up (though I don’t really know that, as I didn’t find any of his shows besides these two); they both featured a bunch of narrative comedy about fairly heavy subjects. But they also both featured plenty of character/prop/sketch stuff, and I enjoyed all of it. The props and the costume and the weird gimmicks were funny. The heavy narrative stuff was… definitely not all funny, it wasn’t meant to be. But a lot of it was. He did well to find opportunities for funny bits even in the darkest bits of some pretty fucking dark stories; he got laughs out of me without even stepping out of the narrative, just by putting jokes into the middle of it.

I really liked both of these shows, especially the second one, I think, but both of them. Both had all these things I like in comedy – a good structure, coherent themes, callbacks and endings that give meaning to earlier bits and make the beginning make more sense. An easy and logical flow between the serious and silly, no matter how dark the serious got. Sometimes surprising us with silly in the middle of the serious, which made the silliness even funnier because you’re also laughing at the surprise. The props and the costumes and all of the other silliness just added to it.

Like I said, I wanted to like these ones, and I was so very pleased when I did. I laughed a lot in both of them, I also got hit with the darker parts in, I think, all the ways he intended. He connected with the audience (I mean, I guess I can only really speak for myself as one virtual audience member, but he seemed to be connecting in the room as well) really well in the short time, coming off as genuine and earnest all the way through, a style that could carry almost any material. He’d go from very silly to disarmingly honest in half a second.

It was smart, and heartfelt, and dark and scary but funny and hopeful, and it’s on NextUp Comedy and I really recommend it.

4 notes · View notes

scarytheglitch · 1 year

Text

So, it’s late, i’m tired, i haven’t posted on here in like forever, and i can’t sleep, so i think i’m going to write an essay about homestuck and the quadrants.

So, like, let me just start off saying that i wasn’t really there for the whole homestuck thing and only read the comic a couple of months ago, and haven’t really interacted with fan culture at all outside of lurking, so this all could have been said like 1000 times before and i’d have no clue. But with that precursor out of the way let’s begin.

I kind of love/hate the fact that andrew hussie somehow created fictional emotions that can actually somewhat translate into real life. Like, take for example Moirallegiance, which in my own personal interpretation is something akin to romance without the love, in that like you know this person very well, and you wouldn’t mind living together and being really personal and close together, even in some cases doing things that would be typically considered romantic, but you could never see yourself getting married or spending the rest of your lives together or doing stuff in the bedroom behind closed doors, any of that kind of stuff. It may just be me as like an ace-spectrum person, but i’ve known people who’ve described relationships that kind of way, and hell, I’ve probably felt it to some degree myself. We don’t really have a word for it as it’s not really “love” and it’s not exactly friendship either, maybe you could consider yourselves best friends, but i feel like even then it doesn’t feel quite right. The best way to describe it, in my eyes, is unironically Moirallegiance, though i’d never say that to like anyone ever. Next up i guess is Kismesissitude, which i often here described as just hate love, but it’s stated throughout most of the later acts of homestuck that it’s more than just that. It’s not just hating someone you’re dating because quite frankly most of that ends up in one way or another toxic or abusive, and while Kismesissitude certainly can be that, i don’t think that’s the best example of a “healthy” Kismesissitude. It’s not really seen in real life because Duh, but a lot of TV shows and stuff accidentally or perhaps not so accidentally perfectly replicate this type of relationship, which is perhaps because it is easy to do and it’s somewhat of a trope. As stated earlier however, most depictions of Kismesissitude are unhealthy relationships, though I don’t believe that Kismesissitude is inherently unhealthy, just hard to get right. It’s stated somewhere in one of the later acts that a proper and healthy kismesis should serve to better both parties of the relationship, and though i’m not sure if it was directly stated or not, i believe both parties should at least hold some semblance of respect for at least one aspect of the other. Take for example Cheetor and Rattrap from Transformers: beast wars, which i was dragged into watching by a friend and never really finished. During the run of the show we see Rattrap and Cheetor constantly antagonising each other basically every time they’re on screen together, but i don’t exactly think they hate each other and, spoilers for beast wars IG, but, when we see Rattrap die, cheetor is actually seen grieving him, and we see during the course of the show that they’re both actually improving the other in small ways, I believe they both held some amount of respect for each-other, and it’s unironically one of the healthiest depictions of Kismesissitude I’ve seen to date. Anyway, my point is that a healthy Kismesissitude isn’t just two people hatefucking, it’s more about some deeper emotional connection that serves to better both of the people in the relationship. That leaves auspectisim, and obviously love, but i’m not quite sure i understand enough about either to be able to talk fully on the subjects, so, yeah. If you made it this far through my sleep deprived essay about fictional homestuck relationships, like, thanks, i guess, i don’t really post like this ever it’s mostly just silly goofy shit, but who knows

#homestuck #kismesissitude #moirallegiance #andrew hussie #i think i’m going to go to bed now #essay #fucking is mentioned in here at least once if you’re into that kind of thing #homestuck quadrants #rant #do i have enough hastags yet #how do i make my post big i’d quite like to have followers

3 notes · View notes

dreamy625 · 2 years

Text

This rockstar life - 3.3 Birds of a feather

Words: 1458

Content: There’s some casual drinking in this one

-----------------------------

Jess orders two straight vodkas and two vodka tonics. She downs her shot the minute the glass hits the bar and motions Alice to do the same.

“Come on, I’ve only got two hours before I have to be back for the babysitter.”

Alice screws up her nose but does as she’s told, while Jess scouts out a table.

The minute they sit down Jess demands “Right, enough of the polite small talk, tell me about your man! How’s it going? Are you desperately in love?”

Alice puts both hands over her face, from behind which comes an ‘eeeeeeeeee’ noise.

“So, that’s a yes then?”

Alice lowers her hands until just her eyes are showing and nods vigorously. “Yes, so very much yes. It’s… oh god…” She flaps her hands, fanning her face, “I’ve never… loved anyone with such… abandonment… before. It’s kind of scary.” Noticing her cousin’s smirk and raised eyebrows she adds, “Oh I don’t mean… you know… well, maybe a bit… no I mean… without restraint. Oh god, that sounds dirty too!”

Jess is still grinning, quite enjoying Alice’s flustered attempts to avoid double entendres.

“I mean not being careful with it, not hiding what I feel, not playing any of those stupid games. Feeling all the feelings. You know that cliche ‘he has my whole heart’? Well he does, pathetic shrivelled thing that it is. I just… tied a bow round it and pushed it into his hands. Basically on our first date. It’s ridiculous. I’m ridiculous.”

“No, you’re happy.”

Alice smiles down at the table “I am happy. I’m… dizzy with it. But not crazy like I used to get. Dizzy but… tethered.”

“And does this heart-stealing boy feel the same about you?”

“I hope so. I think so. Maybe not so… dippy… as me, but he seems really… certain. He was pretty fast-forward from the start, no hesitation, even when I was still cautious. He gave me his house keys on our third date, and said he loved me on the fourth.”

“That is quite full-on.”

“Well, all of those dates were two or three days long, so it probably counts as a couple of months in normal romance land.”

Jess doesn’t look entirely convinced, and when she says ‘and now you live together’ it is almost a question (even though obviously, having initiated this get-together with a letter sent to the newly-shared home, she knows it to be true).

“Yup. I guess… six weeks? Officially. But really I went for the weekend after Christmas and never left, so it seems like longer.”

“Well I suppose it’s good that you’ve got something stable.”

Alice gives a wry smile, “Oh we’re very unstable. Individually and as a pair! But it feels… strangely safe. I trust him with my heart.”

“Very poetic.”

“I am a poet.”

“But do you really know him well enough, for that trust? In such a short amount of time?”

“I hope so. The way we started… in the hospital… I heard all the bad stuff right off.” Jess is leaning in looking extremely curious, but Alice knows those are not her secrets to tell. “If there was something worse that he was hiding from me, it would have to be that he killed someone! But I’ve seen all the good stuff too. He’s so gentle and funny and sweet, but not, like, too sweet. Not soppy.”

“Sticky sweet?”

Alice gives her A Look.

“What? I’ve been playing the album.”

“ANYWAY, he’s lovely and thoughtful and nice to me and so amazingly talented…”

“And cute?”

“SO cute!”

“And good in bed?”

Alice opens her mouth to reply and then catches herself and clamps her lips together. “Cheeky cow! I’m not telling you that!”

“You don’t need to, you’ve gone the same colour as that ketchup bottle!”

Alice puts her hands back over her face. “Stop cackling! People are looking at us.”

“So do you have pictures?”

“You know what he looks like, he’s in all those magazines.”

“Those are rockstar pictures, I want boyfriend pictures.”

“I’ve got some in my wallet.” She reaches for her bag.

“Are any of them naked?”

“Ew! No! Jesus. You’re such a nice girl and then you get one drink inside you…”

“Two.” corrects Jess, draining her glass and pointing questioningly in the direction of the bar.

“Sure, I’ll get them.”

When Alice gets back to the table, she takes a couple of photos out of her wallet.

“Now I’m only showing you these if you promise not to go all Dorien Green* again?”

Jess adopts a demure and innocent pose, so Alice passes over the pictures. One is Steve sitting on the bed in a bathrobe, absorbed in playing his guitar; the other is mostly just his face, smiling and squinting slightly at the smoke wafting from a cigarette held just out of shot. When Alice pictures Steve in her head, that is how he always appears - grinning and wreathed in smoke.

“He’s alright I suppose.”

“He’s beautiful. Give him back.”

She strokes the photo as she puts it back behind the plastic window. Jess shakes her head, but her expression is kinder than the gesture might suggest.

“So, fess up, did my mum tell you to come check up on me?”

Jess laughs “No, but my mum will actually combust with nosiness if I don’t tell her some of it! Which she might then report back to your mum. So if you’d like me to omit some of the juicier details?”

“Leave out the dizzy thing… and the hospital… and the poetry, and definitely the ketchup. Actually can you just say I’m happy and with a nice man and no more mental than I was before? And say I looked really fat.”

“Sure. It’s gonna take me so long to explain what heavy metal is that she’ll be bored before I even get to your bit anyway.”

“Oh, leave that part out too. Just say musician or something. Oh I don’t know. I don’t care. Just say whatever you like. My mum’s met him anyway. Or at least, cried at him while he stole her wayward and ungrateful daughter away from her. So the whole long hair and earrings thing isn’t going to be a shock to her.”

“Sounds like that was quite a scene?”

“It was pretty grim. Steve tried to be friendly but they were having none of it. Dad sulked. Mum wailed. The neighbours watched avidly like vultures. And I haven’t been back since. I miss Magda, but nothing else really.”

“You’re too old to live with your parents anyway. You’d go weird. Turn into one of those girls who knits and has gerbils.”

“Hey, I knit! No gerbils though.”

“Got out just in time. But seriously Ali, you are okay aren’t you? I know it’s romantic or whatever, but it has been really fast. And… I’ve been reading stuff… your sweet guy has some issues.”

“Don’t believe everything you read. Especially if it’s written by that arsehole from Kerrang. Of course he’s got problems, everyone’s got problems. But the music press make it out like he’s some… selfish hedonist, partying every night for the hell of it.” She does air quotes, “£1000 drink and drugs binge lands rocker in rehab” and rolls her eyes. “It’s not like that.”

“What is it like?”

Alice glances around warily, “He’s just… dealing with stuff… the best he can. Like all of us. I can’t really talk about it. Not here anyway.”

“It’s okay, I understand. I just worry about you… that you’ve been swept up in something that might be too much to handle…”

“Really, I’m fine. Don’t I look fine?”

“You look like Kensington Market* threw up on you, but sure, apart from that you look good. Are you eating?”

“Yes Mum.”

The mention of motherhood jolts Jess out of cousinly confidant mode and reminds her of her other responsibilities. She looks up at the clock over the bar, “Oh shit! I’m going to be late.That gum-chewing delinquent I left my firstborn with is going to want overtime.”

With a hurried hug and cries of ‘Love you’, ‘Love you best’, the two girls part, Jess dashing to the station and Alice walking back to Tube-less Chelsea and the house and person that have made it home.

(May 1990)

—-------------------

* Dorien Green is a character in the 90’s British sitcom ‘Birds of a feather’ who was an unashamed ‘cougar’

* Kensington Market was an old ramshackle shopping centre in London with small independent shops, in the 80’s and 90’s mostly catering to goths, punks, pagans, and other ‘alternative’ cultures. If you wanted a corset, blue hair, or a piece of metal poked through any part of your anatomy, you could get it at Kensington Market

#Steve Clark #steve clark fanfic #steve clark fanfiction #def leppard fanfic #def leppard fanfiction #This rockstar life fic

4 notes · View notes