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luveline · 3 months

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𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡? | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

you finally work up the courage to kiss Eddie for the first time and he can’t cope (even if he claims he can). 2k words. requested here

cw fem!reserved/shy!reader, first kiss, heavy kissing, mutual pining, eddie being a hot dork

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Some people (Steve) call Eddie your loser boyfriend, while other people (the girls at work) call him the rockstar.

You see both sides of him now.

“Sweetheart!” he calls, the passenger seat window rolled down, his voice strong where he shouts behind the wheel. The van bumps the curve, leaving a sanguine line of rust in its wake and a creak to make everybody on the sidewalk wince.

“Hello,” you call back.

The van hums. You wait for him to be at a definite stop before you approach, hands on the open window, leaning up so as to see him best. It’s not just a usual date night tonight, Eddie’s taking you to Indianapolis for a rock show, and he’s dressed the part. “Woah, you look cool,” you say, bravely, wondering if that’s the right thing to say. It’s undoubtedly true —he’s slicked his curls with mousse to define them and leave them pitch black in accordance with his eyeshadow, dark and tapped into his lash line. The top he wears is incredibly tight, carving the softer lines of his abs for anyone to see, and his black jacket is ripped in places to expose the ink of his tattoos. “Are they multiplying?”

“What?” he asks, grinning at you. “Are you getting in? It’s freezing!”

“Your tattoos,” you explain, opening the door and popping up into the van with one shoe on the step.

“Shit, you wanna see?”

You’re not scared of Eddie, you just like him. He doesn’t worry you, doesn’t pressure you, nothing nefarious about him. He’s pretty, he’s considerate, and he does stuff like this, peeling out of his jacket to flex his arm at you and show you the Saran wrapping around his bicep. “Like that one?” he asks.

He has nice arms, and they’re all the better for his painful obsession. His newest one is difficult to see well under the wrapping. He notices you squinting and moves it up, tape pulling his skin.

“Another bat?” you ask.

“Not cool?”

“So cool,” you disagree. This bat is unlike the others on his arm, which are small and simple in comparison. This one is heavily detailed and very dark, fangs in small triangles bared. The eyes aglow. The skin around it is red. “Did you get that today?”

“On a whim. Still wanna date me, or is it getting to be too much?”

You can’t answer him, and he knows that. You’re not very good at navigating intimate conversation or circumstance, though you like him, and he must know that too. Or he must really like you. Your dates have been chaste. Only last time could you work up the courage to take his hand, but when you had, he rewarded your courage with a drove of tenderness, fingers rubbing your knuckles and squeezing soft patterns for hours at the back of the movie theatre.

The drive to Indianapolis takes near enough an hour. Eddie puts you on map duty but doesn’t use it, ignoring your offer of directions on the insistence that he knows a shortcut and then rerouting when you get too lost. He tells you there are snacks for you in the centre console and laughs, endeared, when you pop the lid and smile at it all. You talk about the show, a band you’d never heard of but had wanted to see on the grounds of sharing his interests. That’s what couples do, right? They try to do things together. You have to put yourself out of your comfort zone, and you’re happy to try if it means you can do it with him.

“You nervous?” he asks, pulling into the parking garage outside of the venue, a towering, multi-story fiasco crammed with cars and motorbikes.

“No,” you say, not quite mumbling as you look down at your hands.

“Good, don’t be. I’m gonna look after you, we’re gonna have a great time. And then we can get takeout after?” You look up. He stretches his arm out to glance at his watch. “I would’ve taken you before, but good old Indianapolis keeps getting further away.” He smiles apologetically.

You laugh without meaning to. His smile ramps up a notch.

“I love when you laugh. You have such a cute laugh,” he says.

“I know you’re lying,” you say, still laughing anyways.

“I’m not lying, I love the way you laugh!” He shakes his head, curls falling away from his face as he flicks on the light on the car roof. “We have half an hour till doors open.”

“You don’t wanna line up?”

“It’s kind of overwhelming and I figured we’d stay near the back of the crowd for your first gig here, it gets pretty rowdy.” He says ‘pretty rowdy’ like a drag, nodding gently, eyes lit with mirth. You love it when he talks like that.

“We can go now, get further in. I can handle it.”

“It’s not about handling it, I want you to have a good time. Plus, they could ruin your nice dress.”

You meet his gaze all smiles like he is, but heat flickers in your chest and in your stomach, and you have to look away. It’s an impulse you’ve always given into. You’re reserved in the feelings department but trying not to be, Eddie deserves reciprocation, but it’s hard. Either way, he seems to understand this about you, and he hasn’t complained.

Still, a bedraggled silence falls. Nearly awkward, unsure of how to tread, you sit together in your separate seats listening to cars parking and doors opening, closing on either side of you, the headlights of the cars driving past glaringly bright, white flashing over your screwed palms.

“You okay?” he asks.

You’re sure Eddie wants to kiss you. Three nights ago at the movies, after an hour of languid hand holding, he’d looked at your lips no less than three times as he said good night. He told you he’d had an amazing time, and that he couldn’t wait to see you again. You’d said the same in earnest, and then he’d just walked away. All those stolen glances and he hadn’t made a move.

“Eddie… why…” You poke your tongue into your bottom lip momentarily, chewing it over. “Why haven’t we kissed yet?”

“Um–” He lets out a nervous giggle before roughly clearing his throat. You peek at him, watching intently as he takes his hair away from his face with two hands. “I’m just waiting on you, sweetheart. No pressure.” He laughs as he talks, a picture of panic, “You’re sort of shy about that stuff, you know? I didn’t wanna surprise you.”

“But you do want to kiss me?” you ask unsurely.

He puts his hand on your knee, the space between you suddenly smaller and warmer, the light like white glaze on his pupils, illuminating his finer details. He has a mole nestled under his eyelashes too small to see until now; it catches your attention. You stare at him too long.

“Of course I do,” he says, eyebrows pinching together in concern. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since I met you.”

You nod and snap your head back to your lap. Why does he have to be so nice? You wish you’d listened to Steve, even if he was joking, you shouldn’t have ever said yes to Eddie, because now you’re terrified you can’t kiss him and you’ll ruin everything…

“Hey, it’s fine. I’m not waiting for anything. You can take your time or you could never kiss me, and I won’t care. I swear. I mean, I really want you to kiss me but I’ll find a way to cope, I’m sure.” He takes his hand from your leg softly. “Do you want my jacket? It’s cold out, n’ we should probably start walking.”

You pull your head up slowly.

He reads your hesitant expression. “I’m in no rush,” he promises, head ever so slightly ducked to yours.

Okay, you think. Okay, I can do this. You hold your breath and start to lean in. He falters, a millisecond of misunderstanding, before he recognises what you’re doing and smiles. He reaches for your waist with enough care to give you a chance to change your mind, and when you’re close enough to feel his breath, his lashes shutter.

You follow suit, blind, with nothing but your intuition as you press your lips to his.

With a feeling like the hum of the engine under your hands, you bring your fingers to his soft cheek and hold him still. He breathes in harshly, touches you far from it, his palm slipping behind your back to pull you in. You lean into it; it feels natural to give in, to turn your head one way and part your lips, to have him kiss back with heat and surprising sweetness.

You feel unlike yourself in a good way, falling back to kiss forward again, a third time, trying to chase the lulling bliss of his lips. The stomach aching want. Your hand chases across his cheek and into the curls behind his ear, needing him closer but not expecting the sound it elicits. He sighs into your lips and you flinch back, startled by the sensation.

Eddie rubs your back with his index finger, unjudging as you drop your head to catch your breath.

“You okay?” he asks quietly. You can hear his affection. It’s palpable.

You nod, a dizzy weight collected in your forehead, thankful when his free hand catches your cheek and he turns your face gently to the side. “I got too hot,” you confess, only half of the truth.

“It was pretty hot.” He smiles at you like you’re the only person in the world, like you’ve a secret only he knows. “Want me to turn on the A/C?”

“No, I–” want to kiss you again, you think. You might even tell him so, but he starts to blow on your face, disrupting any thoughts you’d had earlier. He purses his lips and blows cold breath on your cheek, a tenderness in his gaze and the tip of his thumb where it rests just under your eye. “Oh.”

This might be the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for you. Your face feels precious in his careful hand, pretty under his longing look. You’re not scared when he encourages you back to his lips, your eyes quick to close, your hands across the gap of your seats to gather his shirt between tight fingers.

His kiss is a reflection of him. Loser, rockstar, he’s eager and his hands start to betray that, his kissing melty hot and addictive as the tip of his nose presses hard to yours. You turn your face to accommodate him better and that small action drives him crazy. He’s pulling you in, smiling into your mouth, making breathy sounds that’ll stick around in your head ten times as long as the tingles filling your chest as just kisses and kisses and doesn’t stop.

“M’sorry,” he says, pulling away, and then stealing another heavy, soft kiss like he couldn’t wait. “Sorry,” he apologises again, stroking the skin beside your eye to encourage you into opening them. “I’m not trying to get carried away. Just can’t believe you just kissed me.”

“No, it’s okay, I– I really wanted to.”

He kisses your cheek. You aren’t expecting it and you don’t know how to deal with it. It’s like kissing him has invigorated him, you’re a shot he knocked back, his excitement catching as he begs, “Close your eyes again, sweetheart, just one more–”

You raise your chin and he practically gasps, immediately pressing a last chaste kiss to your burning lips.

“I’m not always like this,” he promises, leaning away, his fingertips falling from your face to trace down your neck, your shoulder. “You’re just so fucking pretty I lost my mind. I’m on best behaviour from now on, swears.”

He raises his hand up in a scout’s honour.

You breathe out happily. “Thank you.”

“Oh my god. Quick, we better get out of this van before I lose my mind.” He shakes his head. “You’re insane. I have such a crush on you, holy fuck,” —he turns away from you and gets out of the van— “Jesus.”

You pull down the sun visor to check your reflection in the mirror. You look thoroughly kissed, eyes aglow with it.

“Fuck!” Eddie swears. You beam at yourself as he wraps on the window. “Come on, sweetheart! I have a concert to pretend to pay attention to.”

You slink out of your seat, brave enough to try for another kiss so long as it doesn’t kill him dead right here in the parking lot.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

please like/reblog or comment if you enjoyed! I love knowing what you think and it means so much to me/ inspires me to write even more!!! <3 but of course I hope you enjoyed reading regardless :D

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson x you #stranger things fic #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson fic #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x fem!reader #stranger things #stranger things fanfiction #eddie munson lives

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81folklore · 8 months

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helpless - GR63

pairings: george russell x hamilton!ensemble!reader (fc: ella kora)

summary: george ends his softlaunch with a cast member of hamilton on the westend

authors note: sorry for not posting in forever but ive had no motivation and i cant find the want to finish some of my drafts so have a brand new smau thats been BREWING in my brain ever since i saw hamilton the other week. its literally one my favorite musicals so you know i had to incorporate my two interests, you dont need to have seen hamilton or know about the story for this!

important: rg63 is george’s private instagram

masterlist

georgerussell63

liked by alex_albon, yourusername and 366,450 others

water, sports and sunsets☀️

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user7 shirtless george is back!!

user10 hes so…

user45 THE SOFTLAUNCH HAS TO END SOON RIGHT😭😭

user12 i miss when george wouldnt make me feel single every post😔

yourusername oh myyy🫠

yourusername

liked by jakeh_j, lilymhe and 235 others

smiles (mostly) all round this summer☀️

tagged: rg63 and jakeh_j

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rg63 miss you darling🤍

yourusername miss you too love💜

jakeh_j dinner soon?

yourusername yes!! g is coming to a show soon so we can do it then :)

jakeh_j sounds good👍

user6 cant wait to see you in hamilton!

yourfriend cutie🫶

georgerussell63 and alex_albon have added to their stories

yourusername ahhh cant wait to see you all💜

f1updates

liked by user72, user1 and 2367 others

george, alex and lily with fans today in london

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user1 im the one in the third photo, they were in a rush as they had to go to the theatre but they were all so sweet and took the time to sign a hat i had!

user10 was anyone else with them?

user1 there wasnt! i dont think george was with his girlfriend but she could’ve been waiting for them somewhere else☺️

user72 idk why them going to the theatre together is funny but it is😭

user5 right?? it feels so random😭

user53 i can’t believe they watched hamilton before me

georgerussell63

liked by alex_albon, yourusername and 872,426 others

i have been with you since the beginning of your incredible journey of living out your dream of being in the west end. i know how much getting this part in hamilton meant to you and getting to see you on stage brings me so much joy, forever proud of you darling🤍

tagged yourusername

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yourusername george☹️i will love you forever and ever thank you soso much for being by my side💜

yourusername you have no idea how happy it makes me to know you are in the crowd

alex_albon thanks for being my friend so lily can see her favorite musical😁

georgerussell63 yeah no worries man👊

yourusername alex i hope you know its me she loves to see, not hamilton🤨

alex_albon your wrong.

lilymhe shes very much correct🫶

user7 WHAT IS HAPPENING

user5 HARD LAUNCH HARD LAUNCH

user25 WAKE UP GEORGE POSTED HER AHHHH user6

user6 OMG I LITERALLY SAW HER THE OTHER DAY😭

user10 this is so cute (im sobbing)

user8 wow the highway is such a good place to stargaze!!

user83 i cannot cope why is this so🫠🫠

lewishamilton 💜💜

yourusername

liked by georgerussell63, lilymhe and 6273 others

i look into your eyes and the skys the limit. georgie my love for you is timeless, each day i think about how lucky i am to have you by my side and how lucky i am to get to be the one to love you. you have changed the way i view the world and myself and my life will always be better now youve entered it, and no matter what this chapter in our lives will stick with me forever and always💜

tagged georgerussell63

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georgerussell63 i am so grateful you have come into my life

georgerussell63 i love you so much darling

yourusername i will never stop loving you🫶

lilymhe when will i get posts like this☹️

yourusername yours is next lovely🤭

alex_albon babe?? i post you all the time

lilymhe and yet you havent used a lyric from hamilton🤨

user16 oh i love them so much😭

user45 my😭love😭for😭you😭is😭timeless😭

user12 hahhaa im so happy for you😭😭

jakej_h i hate people in love

yourusername you love us really😁

user9 MY HEART CANNOT TAKE THIS

user7 OH MY GOD GEORGE LOOKS SO GOOD🫠

liked by yourusername and others

user101 george is so boyfriend🤭

user62 that first picture😮‍💨

user99 they are so in love😭

#george russell x reader #f1 x reader #f1 instagram au #f1 smau #f1 social media au #formula 1 insta au #formula 1 social media au #social media au #george russell imagine #george russell smau #george russell

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camatchoum · 4 months

Text

Not so dramatic, after all

Willy Wonka x reader

Request : Hi I have a request for a wonkaxreader!! Could the reader really be into theatre like all they ever want to do is perform but once they get an audition and it goes horrible and they are crushed?? @macmonster09

Summary : You have your biggest audition today for a play that you love, but you are incredibly nervous. A certain chocolatier tries to help you with that, but it's doesn't really go well.

Words : 4.0k

Warnings: angst, fluff.

My masterlist

Today is the day. Today, you have THE big audition. The one that is going to change your life forever.

Since you are a little kid, you want to work in theatres. Your grandpa took you to see Romeo and Juliet when you were only five, and from that moment, you knew you wanted this to be your life. He always used to say that he knew Shakespeare. He was one of his best friends. When you were little, you believed him, but as you got older, you knew he was kidding, but you always laughed. You loved your grandpa so much, and you thank him every day for giving you the love of the theatre. You hope that one day he will watch you perform on the biggest stage of the world. You know he is not there anymore, not on earth anyway, but you always thought that he was watching you from the stars.

Today, you have an audition for the new play of your town's theatre : Romeo and Juliet. You were always too afraid to actually go to an audition. Well, you always walk to the theatre but then get back home at the last minute. But when you saw the title, you knew it was a sign from your grandpa. You had to pass the audition this time.

You are on your way to the audition. You are incredibly nervous. You have a strong grip on your bag as you are running. It is snowing outside, so normally you would have walked to be careful. But you were so overwhelmed with stress that you got out of your house late. So now you have to run.

You run inside the Galaries Gourmet, the theatre being on the other side. You curse when you see all the people in the way, and they don't seem to be moving. You try to slip through the crowd, repeating sorry's without caring if the person you push actually heard you. You need to go on the other side. You are moving forward with your goal, the only thing going on in your mind.

It was really the only thing you could think of because you didn't see a cane going right into your chest, causing you to fall with a scream. The man with the cane immediately stops what he is saying with a gasp and goes at your rescue.

"Oh no, I'm so sorry. Miss, are you okay?" The man asks you as you try to stand up again, but you slip and end into his arms. When you look up, you see that this man is probably your age, with curly brown hair beneath is high hat. He also wears a big purple coat. That is an interesting choice of colour. You blink when you see the man's lips move.

"I-I'm sorry what?" You stutter, and you can feel your cheeks burning. You are clearly embarrassed, and on top of that, this man is really good-looking. You are afraid you were passing for a dumb girl, but he only chuckles.

"I asked you if you were okay? I'm sorry I didn't see that you were in the way. I should be more careful with the cane." He says sweetly before he looks at you, and his eyes widen. He immediately let you go, and you can see his cheeks turn a little bit red. "I-I-I'm sorry it was just a re-reflex." He stutters too, thinking he was in the wrong here.

"No, don't worry about it. If you didn't catch me, I would have probably fallen again, so I'm actually glad you did it." You day, causing him to smile. "Thank you..."

"OH, I'm Willy Wonka, chocolatier. Would you like to try some..."

"I'm Y/n. I would love to but I don't have this kind of money." You say sadly.

"Nonsense miss Y/n. This one is free." He hands you a chocolate. You are about to take it when you remember a tiny detail. Your eyes widen.

"Oh my god, I need to go." You take your bag that was still on the floor before you start to run.

"Wait! You forgot to taste my chocolate!" You hear Willy Wonka scream before you see him running right next to you.

"I'm sorry, I really need to go." You don't stop running, Willy, neither.

"Where are you going?"

"I have an important audition today at the theatre, and I'm already late. I'm so nervous I could puke right now."

"I have the best thing to give you for that." Willy says with his eyes full of joy.

"What is it?"

"Can we stop running first. I'm not exactly an athletic guy."

You decide to stop. You aren't an athlete anyway, so that is actually better. You both catch your breath before looking at each other. You are both taking big breaths. This made you both chuckle.

"Ok, so what is it? An advice?" You ask.

"I have much better." He says so excited. He takes his suitcase and opens it. You see a lot of colourful vials that seem to have something special inside each of them. You watch as he starts to mix the content of a few vials before he pushes on a few buttons. His suitcase starts to make a lot of weird noises. You are wondering if this is a good idea. What if he is trying to poison you? Maybe you should escape while he wasn't looking. You still have to go after all, and you don't want to die.

But before you could think about getting away anymore, Willy stands up with a big smile. You think it can reach the stars.

"I present to you the Never Sad Chocolate. I'll find a better name later. A chocolate with a drop of a double rainbow, a point of glitter because glitters make you happy. And just a heart full of Belgian milk chocolate because chocolate alone makes you happy." He says with such excitement while putting the famous chocolate in your hand. "I promise you that you'll couldn't even think of being sad after eating this."

You eye him suspiciously, but his eyes are so full of light that you decide to eat it. You pop the chocolate in your mouth, and it is ultra delicious. You can feel happiness flow inside your veins and full filling your heart. And before you know it, the corners of your lips start to go up. You are smiling so much that it hurts. It's like all your stress washed away.

"Oh my god, that's so good. I feel so good." You say with excitement too. "Thank you so much, Mr Wonka."

"Please, call me Willy. And it was nothing, really. I'm happy you appreciate it."

"Well, I still have to hurry, so I should go now. But thank you so much, I feel so happy!!!!" You beam causing Willy to chuckle. You start to walk in the direction of the theatre.

"Come tell me how it happened!" Willy calls to you.

"Promise!" You scream back.

With your new confidence, you walk with determination to your audition. You are going to break it. When you arrive, you tell your name to the woman at the front desk and then wait for your turn. You aren't feeling anywhere near nervous at the moment. You are just patiently waiting, rehearsing in your head how you are going to act and all.

"Y/n Y/l/n" a woman calls out your name. You stand up and walk to the centre of the stage before looking at the three judges before you. "We are ready to see what you have to show us." The woman says. "Good luck."

You thank her before going to your position. You start to act one of the happy scenes in Romeo and Juliet. You are doing really well. The judges are impressed with the way you act and the way you adapted the role to suit yourself. They think that you are a one of kind artist who could mesmerised the audience. They are all falling for your charms. When you finish the scene, you are proud of yourself. Proud for doing it. You hope your grandpa would be proud of you. You turn to hear what the judges have to say.

"That was the best audition I ever saw in my entire life, Miss Y/l/n. Your smile is so contagious that we couldn't stop smiling." A judge says. You are so happy right now.

"Thank you so much." You answer.

"We would like to see you act a sad scene because this role doesn't only represent the happy side of the story. Whichever you would like. We really want to see the tears and the desperation on your face. Got it?" Another judge says.

"Okay no problem."

You go back in position. You started to think about sad things. Normally, it helps a lot when you want to make tears, but right now, it's like you can't even think of one bad thing in your life. You push this aside. It's okay, you tell yourself. You start to act, trying to put as much sadness in your voice. You try to transfer your desperation to the judges, but all that is escaping your mouth is a joyful voice. The lines are sad, but the way you act, it's like you couldn't even care. You try again and again, and again, before taking your hands, putting them on your cheeks to try to stop smiling. You can't. You just can't. Every time you push your cheeks down, they go up immediately. You can't stop smiling.

The judges are starting to eye you like you are a weirdo. One of them starts to cough a little to stop the awkwardness of the situation.

"I think we are going to stop here, miss Y/l/n." One of the judges says. "I'm sorry, but if you are not capable of acting on a sad scene, then we can not give you the role."

"I agree with him. Your happiness was really beautiful to watch, but this one scene. That was a disaster." The second one says.

"Yeah, try to work on this part, but right now, we can't accept this." The third one finishes.

You are still smiling. Of course you are. You say a small thank you before you grab your bag and run out. As you are walking to the Gallerie Gourmet, you feel your cheeks going down. The tears finally start to fall. Why now?! You don't know what happened. You know how to act sadness, you've done it a lot of times in your room. What you don't know is why you just couldn't stop smiling. Of course, they wouldn't give you the part with the way you acted like you were living in the ocean with a beautiful mermaid tail. It was like you were having a glittery rainbow spilling out of you.

A rainbow... with glitters... a felling of cosiness only brought by chocolate...

I promise you that you can't even think of being sad after eating this.

Willy the freaking chocolatier Wonka.

When the realisation hit you, you arrive inside the Galeries Gourmet. You can see a crowd from where you are and you know exactly who is at the centre of it. You walk angrily to the curly boy before you tap on his shoulder, causing him to turn around.

"Y/n!!! How did it go?" Willy asks with excitement. He knows it was something important to you. But his smile drops when he looks into your eyes. Don't get him wrong, when he met you earlier, he was mesmerised by the beauty of them. But right now, when he looks into these two perfect diamonds, all he can see are puffy red eyes full of tears.

"Not so well if you want to know." You answer him angrily.

"Oh. Why is that? My chocolate didn't work?" He stretches his neck. He is a little uncomfortable with the way you are talking to him. It is like it is his fault that something went wrong.

"This. Is. Your. Fault!" You stab him in his chest with your finger.

"What?! How?!" He exclaims. He doesn't want to be the reason for your pretty face to be angry. Wait, what?

"This is all because of your stupid chocolate! I couldn't even act like I was sad!"

"Oh, so it did work. I was afraid for a moment that I had to review the recipe of this one. So that's great, actually? I told you you couldn't be sad because of it." He says with a smile. You calm down immediately. He is so innocent you don't even know why you are trying to yell at him.

"Yeah, well, think for a moment. If I can't act sadness, how can I get a role where you have to be sad from time to time?" You take your bag before leaving in the direction of your house.

When he sees you leave, that's when it hits him. Willy didn't understand at first how the fact that his chocolate worked was the problem. But now he does. He feels so bad for ruining your audition. It must have been something really important to you from the way you are crying. When people begin to ask him for help to buy his chocolates, he is brought back but not really either. He is not this joyful man anymore. He is just a ghost. He can't stop thinking about you. Not that it changes really because when you left for your audition, you were all his mind could think of. He couldn't even think of chocolate, and THAT is new. He doesn't know how he is feeling with you, but he does know that he wants to see a smile on your face. He wants to be the one to put a smile on your face, not be the reason why you are so sad.

He decides from that moment that he is going to be the one who fixes everything. He first goes to the theater, then he goes in the direction he sees you leave. Yes, he left his travel shop like that, but not before he heard Noodle yelling at him to come back so she must know that he left and that she has to take care of it. He wants to run so that he has a better chance to catch you, but he stops at the fountain when he sees a curdle up figure. It is you. You are probably crying. He approaches quietly before sitting down next to you.

"What do you want?" You sob, breaking his heart.

"I want to say how sorry I am. I understand now how it is my fault that your audition didn't go well." You don't look up at him. "What's in your hand?" He asks when he sees you fidgeting with something.

"It's.. it's something from my grandpa." You hand it to him. He takes it.

"A ticket?"

"Yeah. Romeo and Juliet. It's the first play I ever saw. My grandpa took me with him, and I instantly fell in love with the theatre world. I passed the audition today for the same play to make my grandpa proud." You sob again. You take the ticket back from his hands. "I guess he will not be proud of me after what happened."

"That's nonsense. I'm sure he will be proud of you at the end of the day."

"He will not. Don't you understand? This audition was my chance to do what I love for a living. It was my only opportunity to show people the beauty of theatre while doing the thing I love the most. It was my dream. My whole life is over now."

"My mom used to say that a dream is the start of great ideas. You can achieve anything if it starts with a dream." He says sweetly, a tiny smile on his face. He missed her so much.

"That's beautiful. She is very wise."

"Yeah, she was."

"I'm sorry. My grandpa used to say that he would watch me from the start when I broke the dramatic world." You chuckles sadly. This brought Willy back from the nostalgic place in his head. He smiles and stands up abruptly. You look up at him curiously.

"And you are going to break it today." He gives you his hand. "Come with me, I have a surprise for you."

"What do you mean?"

"Just trust me, please." You give him a look. "I know, the last time you trusted me, I ruined everything. But this time I promise you are going to love it." You ponder for a moment before you take his hand.

You both start to walk in the opposite way from your house, returning back to the Galeries Gourmet and the theatre. You feel your cheeks burning when you remember that his hand is still in yours. But you don't say anything in fear that he will take it back. Not so long after you arrive at the theatre and before going inside, Willy moves so that he is in front of you. From that moment, you can observe his green eyes. They are really pretty.

"What are we doing here?" You ask.

"I may or may not have convinced the judges to give you another chance." He answers with a giddy smile.

"You are kidding, right?" You begin to smile too. "They let you do that?"

"No. At first, no." He zones out a little. Like he was thinking how he was crushed when they said no to his request. "They didn't believe me. But, I gave them each the same chocolate that I gave you, and when they saw the effects from it, they decided that you deserved another chance."

"Oh my god. Thank you, thank you, thank you." You say with excitement and hug him. You can't stop smiling, and you are glad it's not from his chocolate this time.

"As much as I like this, we really need to go inside. I told them we would be back in five, and it's already been like twenty minutes." He really doesn't want to let you go. Having you in his arms brings him a new feeling that he already felt like it is intoxicating. But if he doesn't let you go right now, you will still be sad. He doesn't want that.

"Oh my god! Why didn't you tell me earlier?!" You scream with joy before you take his hand and go inside.

When you are inside, you fast walk until you are in front of the judges again. You both excuse yourselves for the wait. You give your bag to Willy before going on the stage while he goes sit on a red velvet seat behind the judges.

"So miss Y/l/n, here we go again." One of the judges starts to say with a smile. "We were all really impressed with your acting earlier. The happiness part, obviously."

"What he means is that we are very eager to watch you again." A second judge says. "Since Mr Wonka explained to us what happened, we want to see more of you."

"Thank you for this new chance. I appreciate it greatly." You say before you go into your world.

You prepare yourself, but the stress starts to eat you again. You open your eyes to see Willy giving you thumbs-up. You smile be he can see that you ate still nervous so he points to the ceiling. You are confused, but look anyway. What you see is a fake sky full of starts. The stars. Your grandpa. You look back at Willy with tears in your eyes. You aren't filling sadness but with happiness. Your grandpa is with you right now, taking all your stress with him.

And so you start to act the sad scene. You are fully crying but not to the point where nobody can hear what you are saying. To Willy's eyes, you are perfect. He is so enhanced with the way you move, the way you act, the way your lips move. If someone were to punch him in the face right now, he wouldn't even do something about it. He wouldn't move his eyes from your figure. He doesn't even know when it stops until he hears the judges applause. He immediately stands up and claps hard his hands, too. It's so hard that one of the judges coughs a little to make him stop. He excuses himself in embarrassment, but when he sees you chuckle, his smile doesn't go down. But right now he wants to hear the resulst. He feels like he can't contain his nervousness. He really wants you to get the part.

"I can say Miss Y/l/n that this is one of the best acting I ever saw. We really could feel the desperation and all the emotions."

"I think we can all agree that you are very talented and we can't pass that. We can't take the risk of having such talent getting away from the scenes."

"Miss Y/l/n, we have the pleasure to tell you that you got the part."

You are exploiting with joy. You start to cry happy tears again. You try to thank the judges, but nobody can understand what you are saying. And clearly, nobody cares. They all have an idea of how you must feel right now. You freaking got the main part in a Romeo and Juliet play!

You get off the stage to shake hands with the judges, thanking them again before you go to Willy. You both walk to the door, and right when you are outside, Willy takes you in his arms, spinning you around.

He can't contain his happiness and you neither. He finally puts you down but doesn't let you go out of his arms.

"I'm so proud of you! You were so perfect. You are so talented." He says with a big smile.

"Thank you. I couldn't have done it without you."

"You do know I'm the one that ruined it, right?" He says, and you both chuckles.

"Maybe at first. But you got out of your way to give me another chance. Nobody would have done that for me." You say, and he blushes slightly.

"When you'll become famous, I hope you'll remember me."

"I don't think I'll ever forget you." His heart stops for a moment.

"You'll come perform at my shop?" He looks into your sparkly eyes.

"Of course, it will be my favourite stage to perform on with the best public."

"I don't think I want to let you go."

"Then don't."

You take him back into your arms, not wanting to let go of him either. You want him to be in your life forever.

And that's when Willy knows that you are not getting away anytime soon. And he can't wait to pass all this time with you. He couldn't be happier. He wants you to be in his life forever.

--------

And that's it guys. Hope you enjoyed. I love the movie so much it is now one of my happy place I think.

#timothée chalamet x reader #timothée chalamet #timothée chalamet fanfic #timothée chalamet imagine #timothée chalamet x y/n #timothée chalamet x you #willy wonka x reader #willy wonka #willy wonka fanfic

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indestructibleheart · 3 months

Text

Hi, fam! Okay, so I'm going to be out at an appointment tomorrow morning, so I'm kicking this off a little bit early. It's technically Wednesday in several timezones and very nearly Wednesday in mine. I'm... also a bit eager to share this, ngl.

I know that I've shared a lot of angst lately, but I swear that's not all I'm doing. 😅 In fact, the actor/playwright AU decided to wallop me in the face out of nowhere after sitting in my WIP folder for months. I'm really excited about it, so I'm gonna share the first scene!

(Also, those of you who have been to New York with me will recognize my favorite brunch spot in this scene lmao.)

---

You probably didn't even know I was in the room, but I noticed you straight away. You were talking with your friends, happy and animated and fully alive—a person living in dimensions I couldn’t access—and so beautiful. Your hair was longer then. You were the center of attention, but you weren’t afraid. You had a yellow ipê-amarelo in your pocket. I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen; I'd better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire.

INT. MOM'S KITCHEN & BAR - HELL'S KITCHEN - LATE MORNING

"I'm telling y'all," Alex is saying, punctuating with dangerously large bites of his pancake burrito. "The dude's a dick."

It's been two hours since the nightmare audition, but Alex has been on this tirade since June and Nora first slid into the retro diner chairs across from him (at least forty-five minutes ago).

They're at Mom's: a restaurant-bar in midtown that can only be described as millennial nostalgia incarnate. The trio fell in love with it two years back—post-karaoke, stumbling in right before closing—when Alex saw God in their Fruity Pebble pancakes. Since then, it's been his favorite place to eat his feelings.

Mom's is just really fucking comforting in general, honestly; whether it's the televisions cycling through episodes of 'Rugrats,' 'Dexter's Laboratory,' and 'Hey, Arnold!' or the rainbow straws and Lisa-Frank-looking menus, Alex can't be sure. It doesn't hurt that they've made friends with several of the waitstaff, including an eccentric bartender, Pez, whose pink hair and painted nails fit right in with the decor.

Today, it's the combination of breakfast sausage, bacon, eggs and cheese wrapped up in a syrup-soaked pancake that's really doing something for him. It could also be the margarita the size of his face, which Pez placed in front of him before making himself uncharacteristically scarce. But it's fine. He's probably just busy.

Alex won't admit it out loud, but what really helps is having June and Nora here to talk to… even though Nora is scrolling on her phone.

"I'm sorry," June says. She pokes an ice cube with her straw, and Alex watches as it bobs around her mimosa like a buoy. "That sounds like it sucked, but if he's really that rude… maybe you didn't want to work with him anyway."

Nora doesn't look up as she pops a home fry into her mouth.

"Several sources say he's difficult to work with," she adds, evidently reading about Henry on the internet. "Though, in his defense, his dad did just die, like, three years ago… and there was that whole thing when he came out after. Remember?"

Alex does remember. Henry's grandmother, Mary Mountchristen, runs a pretty major company that used to own half the theatres on the West End. When Henry came out last year, she tried blacklisting his shows from her properties to punish him—which totally backfired when it got around. At least a dozen other queer writers and producers started talking about how they were also denied the space, and Mary was stoned on the streets of the theatre district. Like, metaphorically.

Alex, Nora, and June had just moved to New York, but between June's position at Newsday and both Alex and Nora on the audition circuit, it was all anyone in their new circles could talk about. They were some of the first to know when the Mountchristens were bought out of their properties and Henry moved to the States.

This show is the first of Henry's being produced here—and it's autobiographical, which Alex has to admit is pretty fucking baller. So, yeah, Nora's not wrong. He has reason to be standoffish. Still, it doesn't explain why Alex was only halfway through his audition monologue when Henry abruptly stood up and exited stage left as if pursued by a bear.

He shoves another forkful into his mouth. "It's just, like, they're the only people who let me into the room," he says, barely finishing chewing. "Nobody wants to take me seriously, and I really thought this was my shot, you know?"

June and Nora both know Alex is having a hard time landing serious roles after growing up on a sitcom—Nora more than most, as his former co-star. What they don't know is that losing this role, specifically, feels like a kick to the stomach. From the moment Alex saw the script, he wanted to be a part of it. He can't even explain why, and now he'll never figure it out. Henry wouldn't give him a chance.

"It wasn't your only shot, and you know it." Nora fixes him with a look. "Seriously, I get it—I do—but it's just one play, buddy."

June nods. "Something will happen for you, baby brother."

At that, Alex finally groans. "Okay, calling me baby brother doesn't help me feel better about the entertainment industry infantili—"

"—itty bitty, teeny weeny—"

Alex throws a home fry at her face.

It bounces off her forehead and into the giant gauntlet holding her mimosa with a very unappetizing splash. Just as Alex throws his hands into the air with a victorious whoop, his phone buzzes on the table.

A glance is all it takes for him to see that it's his agent, Zahra.

"Damn," he says, deflating. There goes that upswing. "You answer it."

June balks. "Me?"

"I don't need to hear how fucking badly it went. Trust me, I got the message." Alex blinks innocently, like he's six years old again, asking her to lie to their mom about that broken vase. "Please, Bug? Besides, Zahra actually likes you."

"Everyone likes me." June rolls her eyes, but she caves—answering the phone with a haughty, "Alex Claremont-Diaz's office," before breaking into a smile. "Yeah, Z. It's me… No, Alex is feeling a little sensitive today."

(He throws another home fry at her. This one misses.)

To her credit, June's face remains totally blank as Zahra no doubt tells her how Alex insulted Henry Fox's name and all of his inbred ancestors just by showing up, or whatever—which is extremely annoying and unhelpful—but, once she says goodbye and sets the phone back down on the table, her face breaks out into a grin.

"Guess you didn't suck too bad," she says. "They want you for the part."

He doesn't know if it's Nora throwing herself at him or the shock that knocks him onto the floor.

Tagging some lovelies. If you haven't been tagged and you want to be, consider this your tag!

@anchoredarchangel, @barbiediaz, @cha-melodius, @cricketnationrise, @guillermosfamiliar, @hgejfmw-hgejhsf, @hippolotamus, @inexplicablymine, @jettestar, @junebugclaremontdiaz, @kiwiana-writes, @lizzie-bennetdarcy, @missgeevious, @mulderscully, @myheartalivewrites, @ninzied, @nontoxic-writes, @notspecialbabe, @priincebutt, @rmd-writes, @rosedavid, @three-drink-amy, @treluna4, @vanillahigh00, @welcometololaland, @orchidscript, @ships-to-sail, @stereopticons

#wip:snippet #m:wip #fic: breaking character

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cowgurrrl · 1 year

Text

Blueberry Pancakes

Pairing: rockstar!joel miller x actress!fem reader

Summary: The morning after [4.5k]

Author’s note: thank you for being patient also I was going to write more of the spicy spice but I got lazy so this is what you get lol fic named after this song

Warnings: 18+ MINORS DNI, June putting her theatre minor and knowledge of NYC to work, Joel being needy, ✨opening up emotionally✨, smut (oral f receiving), we’re coming to the end of our time in NYC :(

Joel pressing kisses to your face is the first thing you feel when you wake up. You lazily reach for him, not even bothering to open your eyes, as you wrap your arms around his neck and hold him. "Good morning," he mumbles, his voice thick with sleep, and you hum. You smile and open your eyes to see him, messy hair and all, bathed in sunlight. Tattoos previously hidden by his shirt are now on full display, and your fingers drop to trace the inky lines. He kisses your nose and tucks some hair behind your ear. "I ordered us room service."

"Did you get me a bagel?"

"No, 'm a complete idiot," he says sarcastically, and you laugh. "What d'you have scheduled for today?"

"I have to make an appearance on the Tonight Show, but other than that, I'm free all day. Why?" You ask, and he smiles before ducking his head into your neck and kissing you more. Maybe it's because you never let yourself notice, or he didn't let you see, but Joel Miller is incredibly affectionate. You'd be an idiot not to let him worship you like you're the one who hung the moon and the stars.

"Because my sound mixing guy said he doesn't need me to come in, so I have," kiss. "The whole," kiss. "Day," kiss. "Off." He lifts his head to kiss your lips again but is interrupted by a knock at the door. He sighs, and you laugh, already pushing him off you so you can open the door.

"I love how you're acting like you're not the one who ordered it," you say as you grab his Lakers shirt from the top of his suitcase, the hem of it hitting the tops of your thighs, and open the door to grab the two plates covered with a tin dish at your door. Joel sits up to watch you close the door behind you and set the dishes down on the table. "What?" You question his lingering eyes, and he shrugs.

"You look ridiculously hot wearin' my clothes."

"You just like it because you know I'm not wearing any underwear."

"I mean, that's not entirely wrong." He gets out of bed to pull on a pair of boxers from his bag and pads over to you, rubbing sleep from his eye. He's a sight to behold like this. All tan skin, hard muscle, and delicate black lines adorning his body. He wraps his arm around your waist and rests his chin on your shoulder as you pull out your phone and take a picture of the beautiful breakfast spread. You post a vague Instagram story in which you can clearly see the two plates in front of you and the slightest peek of Joel's hand in the frame. "D'you like causin' chaos, or am I a bad influence?"

"It's a little fun to watch them freak out." You admit, and he laughs. He presses a quick kiss to your jaw before releasing you to pull your chair out for you. You sit down and flip your phone face down on the table as Melanie texts you a screenshot of your post with a thumbs-up emoji. She can wait.

You and Joel eat the breakfast he ordered for you and talk. You tell him about coordinating with the cast of Red Dirt Girl for the premiere and show him a picture of you and Lilly together on set. He explains how sound mixing works and why he wanted to come all the way out to New York to work with this one guy when there are plenty of other sound mixers in Los Angeles. "I've worked with him a long time," he tells you. "I don't trust anyone else." You talk about wanting to visit the places you loved when you lived in the city. It's been years since you've been able to come back and just have fun. You're secretly really excited to show him your old stomping grounds.

"Can I ask you somethin'?" Joel asks as you take a sip of coffee.

"Go for it."

"Before last night, when's the last time you had sex with someone?" There's no malice or amusement in his voice. He's genuinely curious. You sigh and stare into your mug.

"A year ago. Maybe longer."

"Wow."

"What?"

"Nothin'. I just can't believe that."

"Why? It's not like I've been dating since I came to LA. I work all the time. I'm never home, and when I am, it's not like I'm doing anything exciting." You say, and he shrugs.

"You're a beautiful woman. Smart. Funny. Not to mention rich and famous," he says, and you laugh. "I thought men would be climbin' over each other to be with you."

"Men are also intimidated by a woman who makes more money or works more than they do."

"Why do you work so much?" He asks. "People obviously like you if they keep hirin' you. Realistically, you could take a year-long break and just relax for the first time in God knows how long."

"I've always worked a lot. In college, I worked two different jobs, and when I graduated, I took almost every role or position I was offered because I couldn't afford not to. I think it was a way to keep me moving, keep my mind off of my family back home or the lives my friends were starting without me. Because I was in the city and so far away, it felt easy for them to forget about me. But they can't forget about me if I'm making new movies or shows or doing interviews."

"Is that somethin' you're afraid of? Being forgotten?" He asks, and you nod. You're not sure why you're divulging this much information to him so early in the day. You blame the way he looks at you.

"It's why I bite my tongue or play into the celebrity antics or sign a contract to date a rockstar," you say, and he smiles. "If I'm always giving them something to talk about, they can't throw me away." He reaches for your hand across the table, and a little shock passes from his fingers to yours.

"Well, you, my dear, are anythin' but forgettable,"

"Thanks,"

"'M serious. Those people would be fuckin' idiots to let you pass 'em by, and I'm sorry nobody's told you that." He says, squeezing your hand like he's trying to press the words into your skin. You bite the inside of your cheek as your brain catches up to what he's saying, tears pricking in your eyes embarrassingly fast. You stand, cross to his chair, and straddle him, wrapping your arms around his neck. His hands rest on your bare thighs, his thumbs tracing patterns there.

"Where've you been hiding this whole time?" You ask quietly, like if you say it too loud, the reverie will break, and everything will go back to the way it was before you came to New York.

"Could ask you the same thing." He whispers, and you smile. You lean down and kiss him, slow in your movements. You play with the curls at the nape of his neck and just relish in the feeling of his lips on yours. It's dizzying how his stubble scratches against your skin, the hair already coming back in even though he just shaved the other day. He trails his hands upwards until he barely grazes your inner thighs, and you put your hands on his wrists to stop him.

"As much as I would love to do that again," you say against his lips. "I've got a list of places to visit today, and we can't do that if you keep getting handsy."

"A list? You're so official." He asks, and you hum as you slide off his lap. You plant your feet and move toward the bathroom, but he snags your hand before you can get far and keeps you close for another second before letting it go. You can't suppress the giddy smile on your face as you start your skincare routine and plan an outfit in your head. The hotel room is quiet, and both of you are comfortable enough to slip into domestic silence as you get ready for the day. Or, at least, you would've been if you hadn't moved closer to the mirror to put sunscreen on and noticed the mark on your neck.

"Joel Miller!" You shout. He appears in the doorway a second later with a confused look on his face. "Are you a fucking teenager? Look at this!" You point at the hickey bruising your skin, and he smirks.

"I don't remember you tryna stop me."

"You're a menace."

"Yeah, yeah." He says as he reaches around you to grab something, smacking your ass and running before you can get payback, and you laugh. You call a ceasefire long enough to get dressed, but you do steal one of his white button-ups and pair it with jeans. When you come out of the bathroom with the tiniest bit of makeup on, wearing his shirt, he plays at his knees, giving out.

"You're gonna kill me," he groans. You laugh and shove him out of the way to grab your bag.

"You're dramatic," you say as he kisses your cheek. You grab his hand and all but drag him out of the hotel room, sneakily leaving money on the nightstand for the poor housekeeping staff who has to wash the sheets while you're out. You expect him to drop your hand once you're out on the streets, but he doesn't; if anything, he walks closer to you and wraps his arm around your neck to kiss your temple while you wait at a crosswalk. One of the things you love about New York is how easy it is to blend in among the massive amounts of people rushing from one place to another. Nobody gives you or Joel a second glance, and if they do, you're already several steps ahead of them, and it's too late for them to say anything.

"Did you live around here?" Joel asks as you turn down 2nd Avenue, and you laugh.

"I was way too broke to live anywhere near the Upper East Side. I lived in a three-story walk-up in Hell's Kitchen with four other girls from NYU."

"How far's that?"

"Hell's Kitchen?"

"Yeah." He says, and you look up at the street signs to figure out where you are.

"Well, we're on 2nd and 83rd, and I lived on 9th and 51st, so a really long walk from here, but we could cut through Central Park or take the subway. Or, if you really want to be LA about it, we could get an Uber," you say, and he nods. "What do you wanna do?"

"It's been a really long time since I was in Central Park," he says, looking down at you and squeezing your hand. "Wanna give me a tour?" You smile and begin guiding him through the familiar route. You tell him little bits of history that you remember from the various times you went on sight-seeing tours with friends and family, pointing out the roof of the Dakota and telling him that Yoko Ono still lives there once it comes into view. Joel tells you what Sarah and Ellie are up to today as you cross the street into Central Park. Apparently, Sarah and Ellie are spending a girl's day at the Los Angeles Zoo and then getting dinner with Joel's brother later. He lights up and shows you a picture of the girls smiling together in front of the zoo signage. He shoots back a picture of the park, and you watch him type out a dorky dad message about making good decisions.

Central Park is gorgeous this time of year. The flowers are starting to sprout into a rainbow of colors as the last bits of bitter cold finally disappear. Somebody's playing music at Strawberry Fields like they always are, but Joel being Joel, stops and listens to the young guitarist with tattoos painting her arms. You lean on him, holding his bicep, as you stand there and listen to him hum along to the song. You stay there for as long as possible, ignoring sideways glances and growing whispers, and clap when she finishes singing. Joel drops two hundred dollar bills in her open case before disappearing with you down the path, away from lingering eyes and tilted iPhone cameras.

You take him on a bit of detour but, thankfully, find the path emptier and quieter than most. The birds chirp and swoop low over your head as they gather materials for their nests. The sun shines through the trees the way the movies make it seem like it always does, and it just feels easy. Joel slides his hand into your back pocket as you listen to him ramble about how important it is to support young artists because they get so discouraged. You think he could probably talk about this exact subject for hours until you stumble out of the path and into the decades-old theatre. He pauses, taking in the sight of all the seats and the skyline peeking out behind the trees, and you smile at his reaction. You walk him down to the front of the stage and turn him around to look at the entire theatre. Even though you've been here hundreds of times and seen pictures of your friends here, the magnitude of Delacorte Theatre never ceases to take your breath away.

"I used to do Shakespeare in the Park here." You say, running your hand over the smooth surface of the stage.

"Really?" He asks, and you hum. "You like it?"

"Loved it. I remember every second."

"I never did understand what those plays were about."

"Didn't you read Shakespeare in school?" You ask, and he laughs, shaking his head.

"I'm from Texas, and I had a baby before a degree. Do you think I read Shakespeare?" He says, humor in his tone, and you have to fight the instinct to ask about Sarah and how he ended up a single father at twenty-two.

"You should try it. It's really not that hard once you understand the rhythm and everything." You say instead, and he furrows his eyebrows at you.

"What d'you mean?"

"It's kinda like a song. You speak the words in iambic pentameter and give them meaning as you say them. Every sentence should be a revelation like you've never had the thought before, even if you've read it a million times."

"Iambic what?" He asks, and you laugh.

"Here," you say, facing him. You put his hand over your heart, your own hand resting on his wrist, and give him a second to adjust to the beating. "Feel it?" You ask, and he nods. "That ba bum ba bum ba bum is how you stress the syllables." You take a deep breath and recall an old monologue from the depths of your brain. Then, surrounded by the ghosts of your past and the thousands of people who've ever walked the stage, you fill Delacorte with words older than the city itself. You keep yourself in time with the steady pulse in Joel's wrist and do your best to make every breath count. After years of auditions and callbacks and no after no after no, this, performing for him, is the scariest thing you've ever done. He stares at you once you're done repeating Helena's lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and his jaw moves as he thinks.

"What's it mean to you? Not what the books tell you it should mean." He asks quietly.

"It's her admitting her faults. She's saying, "I know I fucked up, and I'm sorry. I can't take back what I've done, and I hurt you, but I love you, and because I love you, I'm letting you go." She's trying to say goodbye. Give their friendship meaning even when Hermia is furious at her," you say, and he nods. "The last person I dated was in that show with me. He played Oberon and was a complete asshole, but he broke my heart. Said I'd never make it in the industry. He actually broke up with me on closing night. This is the first time I've been back since." You say. He doesn't ask why you're telling him this or question the story. He just pulls you close and hugs you. He rubs your back and presses his lips to the crown of your head, and for just a second, New York City quiets down.

"Fuck that guy," Joel says against your hair, and you laugh as you look up at him.

"Yeah, fuck that guy." You agree. Then, just as quickly as the smile took over his face, he turns pensive again.

"Thank you for showin' me this."

"You're welcome."

You linger in the theatre for a few more minutes, reflecting on the journey your career has taken, before continuing your trek through Central Park. You walk past the children's playground where yuppie moms or their nannies watch over the screaming kids climbing the jungle gyms. Joel tells you about the time Ellie broke her arm because she was dared to climb as high as she could on the play structure. She was ten.

"Cried the whole way to the hospital." He shakes his head.

"You or Ellie?"

"Are you kiddin'? Of course, it was me," he says, and you have to stop in the middle of the sidewalk from laughing so hard. "I can't believe you're laughin' at me! My baby girl was hurt!"

"Aw, you're tearing up now!" You say as you swipe your thumbs underneath his eyes. "Oh, honey." You giggle as you kiss his cheek, resting your hands on his face.

"Yeah, you should feel bad for makin' me cry."

"You're just a big softie."

"For them? Always." He says like it's the easiest thing in the world. It stops you in your tracks. You know countless men with children who never tell their kids how much they love them or even show up for them. But here's Joel Miller crying about an accident that happened four years ago because of how much he loves his daughters.

"Sarah and Ellie are really lucky to have you as their dad." You tell him, and you swear, more tears glisten in his eyes for just a moment. He clears his throat and turns to kiss the inside of your wrist.

"Thank you." He says, and you nod. He tucks you under his arm, and you guys finally cross the street out of Central Park.

Once you're close enough, you take Joel to your favorite pizza place in Hell's Kitchen, where you can still get a slice bigger than your head for a dollar. He's only slightly surprised at how fast the man behind the counter talks, but you chalk it up to him being in California for so long, where every syllable has to last three seconds longer. You miss New York, you realize, as you walk through the streets with him. It's an ache so deep in your heart that it makes you wonder why you ever left. But then you pass the building where you auditioned for an off off off off Broadway play and got called back, but when you showed up, the casting director just looked up and went, "Who are you?" That's enough to make you remember.

Still, as you take him by your old apartment building, the restaurant you waitressed at until the day before you left for Los Angeles, and the subway station where you jumped the turnstiles too many times to count because you didn't have enough money for the train fare, you think you want to retrace every step you've ever taken on this earth just to make new memories with him. With Joel, everything is made fresh and exciting again because you've never gotten to experience these things with him by your side.

A dangerous and stupid thought wiggles its way into your brain as you take the subway back to the Upper East Side, his body stabilizing yours as the car jolts forward and shakes, even though you're way more accustomed to the train's movements than him. You shoo it away before it becomes anything more, chalking it up to nostalgia and vulnerability. But when the subway emerges from the depths of the dirty, underground station and chugs its way through the elevated track, sunshine beaming into the cars and making Joel's eyes look like halos, it returns.

"What?" He asks, and you shake your head. "You're starin'."

"Maybe I just like looking at you."

"Weirdo."

"Weirdo." You copy his deep tone, and he gives you a look. The subway doors open at your stop, and you and Joel tumble out of the car. He trusts you to guide him through the crowd and out of the station, holding his hand as he walks behind you. Traffic has picked up now that the work day is over, and you and Joel have to run between cars to make it to the hotel resulting in getting tagged in a picture of you and Joel running through the street with the caption, "What the fuck just happened!!!" As you approach the hotel doors, a group of young girls' eyes widen when they see you and Joel together. Joel notices and offers a very quick hello before ducking inside the hotel lobby, a chorus of excited voices echoing behind you.

When you make it up to your hotel room, you sigh and fight the urge to crawl back into bed, your walk through the many neighborhoods finally catching up with you. A garment bag hangs in the open closet, and you unzip it to find the Cinderella blue dress your stylist got for you to wear tonight. It's short and has little flowers embroidered in the skirt, and you smile at how cute it is. "What time d'you have to be at the studio?" Joel asks, basically reading your mind as he comes up behind you to look at the dress.

"Couple hours. I need to take a shower and get ready soon." You say, turning to face him, and he smirks.

"Want some company?"

"Sure."

"Wait, really?" He asks, and you laugh as you move into the bathroom, kicking your shoes and socks off by the sink. You turn on the shower and start unbuttoning your shirt when you notice him still standing by the closet.

"Oh, my God, you're like a teenage boy. Yes, but hurry up!" You say, and he almost immediately pulls his shirt over his head and rushes into the bathroom with you. He's on you in a second, his hands flying to the button of your jeans, and you smile against him. "I really did mean just shower." You're half-joking, and he seems to realize it because he hums and pushes your pants down.

"Course, let me just help you outta these," he says, dropping to his knees in front of you. Your breath hitches in your throat at the sight of him before you, guiding your legs out of the denim, but when he presses gentle kisses up your knee, you know you're done for. He takes his time, nipping and licking at the skin of your thighs like nothing else matters. He carefully guides your leg over his shoulder as he traces the fabric of your panties, his lips ghosting over you. Your hand lands in his hair as you stare down at him, his big hands reaching back and palming at your ass. He presses a gentle kiss to your clit, and you let out a shaky breath. "Still wanna take a shower instead?"

"You're an asshole." You say, and he hums smugly against your pussy, smirking as he finally tugs your underwear down and slides one deft finger through your wetness. You're dripping from his teasing, and you don't even have the heart to be embarrassed about it.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you like it when I'm an asshole," he says. For half a second, you think he'll make you beg like he did last night, but then, without warning, he leans forward and licks hungrily into you. His mouth is hot and slow as he tastes you for the first time, all but moaning as you coat his tongue. He licks broad stripes through you, his nose bumping against your clit every time, and you shiver despite the sweat forming on the back of your neck. You grip his hair between your fingers and gasp when he slips two fingers into your pussy. You're still a little sore, but he gives you a second to adjust, focusing all his attention on devouring you like a man starved. "You taste so fuckin' good, baby. Been thinkin' 'bout this since you stole that fuckin' cigarette from me." He mumbles, his stubble scraping the inside of your thighs perfectly.

"I thought, oh fuck," you moan as he starts moving his fingers inside of you, the drag of them making you see stars. "Thought you hated me."

"I thought you hated me," he says, moving to kiss your inner thigh and look up at you. The muscles in his forearms flex as his fingers curl, and you whine. His mouth is back on you, drawing tight circles into your clit with his tongue, and dark eyes hold your gaze. Everything around you melts, the water hitting the tile behind you becoming nothing more than white noise as pleasure swims through your veins. "But we just had to figure each other out. Huh, pretty girl?" You clench around his fingers, and he chuckles lowly. "I knew you liked it when I called you that. Did you go home and touch yourself after I dropped you off? I would've come inside to help you, you poor thing." He makes a sympathetic sound, the vibration making you buck your hips.

You can't even formulate a response as his fingers stroke at your walls, grazing that spongy part inside you enough to make you throw your head back. He sucks your clit between his lips and hums against you again. You moan his name over and over again, the sound of your voice echoing around you. Your hands move from his hair to his shoulders, and you hold onto him for dear life. "If you let me fall, I will never fucking forgive you." You manage, and he laughs.

"I've got you, sweetheart." He says as he wraps his other hand around your waist, pressing you closer to his mouth. His fingers pump in and out of you steadily, and he licks at your clit again, the slightest scrape of his teeth making you shout as you come. He doesn't let up. The filthy sound of his fingers fucking you through your orgasm mix with your shaky moans, and you have to literally pull him away by his hair for him to stop.

"You're gonna kill me." You breathe as he stands and kisses you.

"You're dramatic."

#one for the money two for the show #rockstar!joel miller #the last of us au #the last of us x reader #the last of us fluff #the last of us smut #joel the last of us #joel tlou #tlou x reader #tlou smut #tlou fluff #tlou au #joel miller x reader #joel miller fluff #joel miller x female reader

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appleflavoredkitkats · 11 months

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don't support here lies love the musical as it comes to bway

my post on here lies love is getting rounds and while i still stand by everything i said on that post, my grievances with the musical has Grown in the last couple of weeks of me researching about it. granted, i still need to do more— i want to do an essay on it in the future because i would hate for it to run on broadway for long, but because that takes time, i thought, at least, i would need to make a post detailing what i find wrong about this musical. even if it's not the most comprehensive, i want more people to be informed about it as soon as possible.

so, have this. ramblings at 5am. i'll try my best to gather sources, but information i have regarding the marcoses comes from a lot of non-digital resources like classes, museums, and physical books. in this case, i recommend the following resources to learn more about who the marcos family is and what they did:

"the kingmaker" by lauren greenfield. native filipinos can watch this free on youtube, but if you aren't from the ph i recommend using a vpn to access it or find a pirated version somewhere else

online martial law museum

if you can buy it, "some are smarter than others" by ricardo manapat, a book detailing marcos' crony capitalism and all his faults

i'd also like to preface: i am not a saint. i am not a historian nor the smartest person who can detail everything marcos did when he was born. i'm trying to do my best with what i know, and i am down to learn more if others want to chime in.

lastly, here's a fresher on the names of people involved, because it can be confusing:

ferdinand marcos — i will try my best calling him ferdinand but most people, including myself, often call him just "marcos" despite the fact that they technically all are marcoses. he was the president from 1965-1986

imelda marcos — i will refer to her as imelda. wife to ferdinand and contributed a lot to his reign of terror. she is still alive today.

bong bong marcos — son of ferdinand and imelda. his name is often shorted to bbm, which i will use. he is currently the present of the philippines

ninoy aquino — marcos' main rival who he indirectly murdered. not a perfect guy tho, just the lesser evil. i will just call him ninoy

now, onto the real deal:

thesis statement, so this can be easy to follow: despite the intentions of the musical being anti-marcos, much of how it is written and presented will inevitably become propaganda to brighten the image of the marcoses. by putting imelda in the forefront, making her entire character do what she does supposedly out of love, audiences will come out of the theatre sympathizing with her and her family. not only is this politically dangerous, but it is incredibly insensitive to native filipinos who have not only gone through the struggle of martial law, but also is suffering through bbm's presidency today.

[rest of the post under the cut]

despite what a lot of criticisms claim, the intentions of the musical is not to be pro-marcos. this is stated in their instagram post:

david bryne also stated these in an article from the guardian:

"The mindset of the Marcos regime and the mindset of disco music to me doesn’t seem all that distant. The hedonistic, escapist feeling of losing yourself and being transported to another world, like you feel on the dance floor and like you feel in a dance club, that’s a means to divorce yourself from the rest of the world, just as Imelda did.

When you’re dancing, you’re in this psychological and sonic bubble, in the same way that powerful people create a bubble around themselves. So I wanted to give an audience a taste of that feeling.

In the first half, when the play is dealing with her childhood, her upbringing and her meeting with Ferdinand Marcos, it’s meant to get the audience to empathise with her and understand what’s driving her and then they’ll understand how that manifests later on."

so, it seems promising: an anti-marcos musical that will make audiences dislike empathizing with her. initially, i really liked the concept of audiences being lost with the music similar to how the marcoses were able to play a lot of their supporters.

but, and a big but, 1.) there's a lot to pick apart from these statements, and 2.) i fucking despise how they presented imelda in the musical.

let's discuss the first point: the instagram post details that the intent of the musical is to dispel disinformation created about the marcoses. first thing's first, if this truly was a musical that aims to educate, then broadway is probably the worst way to do it. while the west and native filipinos could share the award of most misinformed about the marcoses, native filipinos are the ones most affected by it. we just suffered a terrible election last year with constant speculation and reports of vote buying. i've heard accounts from people from the province that bbm would send representatives to bribe those in poverty to ensure a vote. we are suffering in the worst education crisis, with the most corrupt politicians you can think of.

so, if this musical aims to educate, the fact that you can only access it by viewing it live on broadway is incredibly... backwards. how are you opting to dispel information when those most affected can't even access it?

what's worse is the statement that says that modern history of the philippines cannot be told without the usa. it is such a patronizing, surface-level statement that gets my blood boiling. it is true that our histories and present-day contexts are intertwined, especially since the filipino diaspora in the usa is incredibly huge, but that's because this is all a product of american colonization + imperialism. stating like the philippines owes the usa to retell our native stories mirrors much of the savior complex-esque sentiments the usa had when they colonized us.

now, onto bryne's statement. the main problem i have with it is him insinuating that imelda is a victim of circumstance. he wants us the audience "empathize" with her and understand her downfall. this is common rhetoric uninformed people, even filipinos, used to excuse imelda's contributions. that she was supposedly "poor", that marcos put her through hell. but genuinely, and i cannot emphasize this enough, imelda was an absolute ass on her own accord.

no, she did not grow up poor. her wikipedia even states that she grew up in a wealthy family, born into the romualdez political dynasty. my history professor even claimed that she attempted bribing the mayor when she lost one of her beauty pageants. despite the repetitive "i'm doing this for love!" bullshit the musical regurgitates, imelda did not even marry marcos out of love. in ricardo manapat's book, he details how marcos attempted to swoon imelda by showing her his vault of money (of course, possibly stolen). she was enraptured by marcos the moment she saw his WEALTH.

i want to emphasize: imelda is not fucking stupid. much of what marcos did to the philippines was thanks to her. i would recommend watching the kingmaker documentary for all the details, but just know she is still alive and incredibly wealthy. she is well-known for her absolute gaudiness and all of that comes from her money-centric mindset. she does not give a shit about love.

here's some accounts by ricardo manapat from his book. on imelda falling in love with marcos (btw, she had a fiance at the time and didn't tell him she was marrying marcos until said fiance found out on the damn newspaper):

imelda being aware of the wealth she accumulates in politics:

on this note, i'd love to discuss how historically inaccurate the musical is. i'd like to preface that i've only listened to the only available version of the musical which is the 2013 version on spotify. this could have changed, but either way, the general tone of the narrative already reads to me as extremely incorrect, anyway. i'd also love to detail every discrepancy of each song, but again, i'll save that for a future essay.

in general, the musical's plotline follows imelda, a "humble and poor" girl from leyte who grows up and marries ferdinand. she repeatedly expresses she's doing this all out of love. thus, the musical insinuates that imelda is merely a victim of circumstance, and that she didn't become evil on her own accord. and yet, from what i've presented so far, she was very much aware! she was not passive. you have to understand, SHE was the reason both men and women had equal opportunities to become corrupt in our government.

what marcos did was also imelda's fault. the genocide and displacement of indigenous people, the mass torture and murder of journalists and politicians, the stealing of companies and mass wealth, the mass delivery of non-native animals to the philippines. she condoned all that. yes, marcos cheated on her, but she also used that as a means to manipulate him into doing whatever she wanted. they are both horrible people.

speaking of, marcos' song in the musical was also really bad. he could be written as lying for all we know, but his "fear" of japanese soldiers invading the philippines is also up for debate. there is speculation of the marcoses collaborating with japanese troops, which also led to the murder of marcos' father's political rival.

and while i don't know if there's actual dialogue outside of the songs, i don't think this musical actually informs us much of the marcos' faults. the songs, which will be the most accessible thing to native filipinos, express nothing but generic descriptions of what characters feel about certain situations. it's hard to understand or know what these people are actually doing because it's just so vague and ambiguous. how are you supposed to inform when none of the music details, well, anything? the information given is so minimal that i pray, at least, the musical would have more explicit scenes about marcos' atrocities.

and that's my main problem with the musical. with how much they spend sympathizing with imelda in the first act, i don't think everything the marcoses have done can be encapsulated in the second. of course, i'm not asking to give me a detailed rundown of everything they did, but let's be honest, this musical was never about dispelling disinformation. if it was, then they wouldn't spend an entire act and a half sucking imelda's dick. it's not about educating audiences about martial law. it's about humanizing imelda, with martial law and the marcoses' atrocities as a second priority. it makes me sick to my stomach seeing how pure imelda is presented when travelling to meet other world leaders, or how she's seen as the person who insisted that ninoy move away from the philippines.

it was never about education or re-information. in the end, these were such pretentious and performative statements to defend a historically inaccurate musical.

and tbh, that's just the tip of the iceberg of why i hate this musical. another thing is that, holy shit is it obvious that it's written by two white people. they mispronounce "tacloban" (should be tacLOban not tacloBAN). these characters are also just... not distinctly filipino? they're so white in mannerisms. i need more insulting humor, more grit. in fairness, the richer you are in the philippines the more connected you are to western culture, but i would have loved to see that disaparity more in the songwriting. they really peaked (/s) when they wrote these lyrics:

this is... awful, in a cringey what the hell manner. i hope they changed it for the bway production, because this was blatant evidence that the songwriters barely took the time to understand our culture before writing.

if you don't understand what it says, "titi mo" (the correct spelling is tite but i digress) means "your dick". i think imelda is trying to call marcos a dick, but they literally translated dick in tagalog. but tite isn't an insult, it literally refers to a penis. "mo" is the equivalent of "your" which also makes ZERO sense. the lyric literally goes "how can a your penis run the country?", like WHAT.

so you know, maybe there's a reason why many filipinos fucking despise this show on twitter. we are insulted for good reason. they are sensationalizing and glamorizing our suffering for their own gain. we native filipinos and other filipino diaspora who can't access the show have nothing to gain. here lies love is profiting from our struggles that we are still recovering from and experiencing today. imagine if you made a musical about hitler explaining he is a victim of circumstance to disco music. insensitive, isn't it? i'd love to ask the cast of here lies love if they'd ever show the musical to living survivors and families of victims of martial law.

and what's worse, because of course it gets worse, misinformation like this is what boosts the reputation of corrupt politicians in the first place. manapat quotes what leonard saffir wrote about how marcos built his reputation in new york via a biography filled with disinformation. the excerpt is too long but it's quoted from this article by the new york times. and now we are living in an era of another musical based on imelda being shown in new york — time is a flat fucking circle.

what sickens me is that this musical is possibly a lot of americans' first exposure to the marcoses, and what will they think? imelda is just a poor girl, imelda is just a victim, imelda is blah blah blah. that will be stamped in their head. even if some filipinos have come out of this musical dreadful that they sympathized with imelda, not everyone is gonna have the same experience.

^ this an excerpt from one of theatermania's articles. dictators have feelings too, i guess!

objectively, there is nuance when it comes to anyone. but the problem is, we cannot afford to consider nuance in politics. we cannot sympathize with imelda right now when people are dying of poverty under the marcoses' hand. the marcoses are very much alive, very much in power, and very much willing to lend their offspring to other positions of power. they turned the entirety of ilocos into a bunch of marcos dicksuckers, and i'm afraid that this musical can make a ton of their audiences be oblivious to the true extents of the marcos' atrocities. i'm already seeing people on tiktok say that there's nothing wrong about this musical, or that this can exist when miss saigon and evita exist (which in on itself are problematic beliefs, because they are glamorizing other country's sufferings too).

i am privileged enough to be educated about marcos, and while there is much to be done in terms of disability and lgbtqia+ rights, i am lucky to be less impacted by the marcoses compared to other people. but there are hundreds of thousands of filipinos severely affected by marcos. what's worse, is that there are plenty extremely uneducated that they are unaware that marcos is directly contributing to their suffering. my history professor told us that other countries are using the philippines as their model for successful disinformation campaigns. in this era of disinformation, we cannot afford to disinform even more. as sad as it is, the usa has a lot of power and control over the philippines (and the world, tbh), so one wrong step into the wrong direction and we're fucked. this musical fails the message it attempts to preach and i cannot imagine how much more people are going to spread misinformation about the philippines like they did during the 2022 elections.

to end off, i'd like to mention to everyone that imelda marcos has actually listened to the musical. in this new york times article, she says, "i'm flattered, i can't believe it!". i don't know what to tell you— if imelda herself says she likes the musical you claim to be anti-marcos, then what does that say about the musical?

i guess i'll end with, i am willing to change opinions once i see how the musical is being executed. if they emphasize the atrocities done by marcos and give proper information about the timeline of events, then i can be more lenient. but if i still see any attempts woobifying imelda, then i stand by what i say. this musical is insensitive, disrespectful, and just fucking hurtful.

#here lies love #imelda marcos #ferdinand marcos #bongbong marcos

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dukeofriven · 10 months

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So I haven't watched Spy Kids for probably 20 years? It came out in 2001, I never saw in theatres, but my stepbrother had it on VHS. I remember watching it several times when my step-mum and father first started dating but never after they moved into a house together, which I think cannot have been any later than 2003. The podcast How Did This Get Made just got me to watch 2004's Sleepover staring Spy Kids' Alex Vega, and it had me going 'man, I should rewatch Spy Kids, a film I used to love—hell I should watch all the Spy Kids movies because I've only ever seen the first and Robert Rodriguez is a director whose work I want to dive into' and since its 2023, with a little bit of effort I can easily do that. (Also, I always thought, based on a vague knowledge of their similar poster design, that Spy Kids 3D and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl were the same movie, but apparently not! Also, Sharkboy et al. had a 2021 sequel? That was popular? And is getting its own sequel? Will have to investigate.) Thoughts on the opening ten minutes of my Spy Kids rewatch:

This production logo is so ugly it causes me physical pain. I hate this boy with his Kate Moss arms (Miraculous Ladybug arms, for you youngsters out there), his ugly beanie, and unbearable smirk.

Also, the telecine weave on the production logos is very noticeable, they're bouncing all over the place and it got me idly musing as to when more modern image stabilization techniques simply took that away. Not that we really noticed in 2001 because even with auto-tracking, gate-weave and other playback artifacts were just accepted as a given on your eight hundred pound convex CRT TV with 480 Ps of resolution that output enough radiation to kill grandma with a Jeopardy marathon. Do young people know about VHS tracking, auto or otherwise? Does the above paragraph make any sense to them at all? Do they know the pleasures of laying your hand on a still-warm television screen and having your whole body shiver as the static discharge runs through your unresistant flesh? Kids today with their big pants and their blue-tooth hula-hoops and their fancy PSPs just can't understand.

The opening shot of the movie is so under-exposed (or, more likely, over-exposed and then over-corrected in post) that Rodiguez's 'written and directed' credit is unreadable. You can see its blur to the right of the red 'FILM' there. It's so bad I thought there was something wrong with my copy so I... uh... found a new copy with a larger file size and it turns out that, nope, it actually just looks like that. Even in fancy 1080p this is just a terrible ærial shot. There's some fantastic shots and cuts in this film so to open with such a stinker is bizarre. Was it bad coverage that day, only one good shot in the can, did somebody fuck-up the film in the lab? I am curious.

Carla Gugino is so cute in this movie it's criminal. Not to be a lesbian but oh my god oh my fucking god. 12 year-old me was all about Carmen but adult me just wants 90 straight minutes of Carla Gugino in casualwear wandering around her lovely home smiling coyly. I would buy a BluRay player to own that movie on BluRay. I'd not picked-up that she played the mom on The Haunting of Hill House because she had long styled hair instead of this absolutely flawless textured pixie cut. 10/10, no notes.

I would like to spend an hour talking about the incredible tilework in that bathroom and nothing but the incredible tilework in that bathroom. I will update you if the film has any further shots of the incredible tilework in that bathroom but I fear it does not. As as an aside, kind of furious that this film was not more influential in the field of home decor. Two decades of effing shiplap and cold grey suburban blandness—what if we'd given up on bloated cookie cutter micro-mcmansion shitboxes and instead gone all-in on brightly coloured Andalusian rough plaster and stonework? What if we all had great tilework in our bathrooms, like the kitchen sink in Howl's Moving Castle?

You know what I mean, you depraved tile nerds.

I don't want you to think Antonio Banderas is not also a total smokeshow in this movie. Because boy howdy. He's a goddamn hunk.

There's a four-second long shot of Banderas flicking this ring box along the coping of the Eiffel Tower balustrade, and all I can think of how hard it was to get to get that box to stay in a straight line, how completely frictionless the box must be (did he shellac it?), and if his marriage prospects would have been ruined had it—in all rational likelihood—gone flying off the railing and smashed into the Champs de Mars.

You know you're in for a rollicking good time when the helicopter perfectly slices-off the stone heads of the two statues, but it's the padre giving the benediction while attack choppers go roaring over head that gives you chills.

A particular shout-out to this lovely unnamed bridesmaid on the left here who not only takes 'putting a parachute on the bride' in stride but looks gleeful and fabulous doing it. Where's her movie?

In 2001 we really thought computers were going to be cool and fun instead of machines that sold our personal lives to corporations and gave children crippling anxiety disorders.

Carla Gugino has a track built into the floor so that her vanity-computer chair can slide backwards across the room so she can have face-to-face chats with her husband. From this we learn two things: 1) she does this so often she's automated it for maximum efficiency, and 2) Banderos, in an ordinary desk chair, never attempts (or knows better than to attempt?) the reverse. To be continued?

#spy kids #spy kids rewatch #antonio banderas #carla gugino #robert rodriguez #alexa vega #shiplap #interior design #andalusia #tile work #howl's moving castle #miraculous ladybug #telecine #films #weddings #spies #kate moss

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putnamcapital · 7 months

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Deep dive wondering about Sara's backstory (CW: drug / alcohol abuse) (Part 2)

CW Drug & Alcohol abuse by a parent

This is part 2 of a post about trying to figure out Sara's motivations and actions and how they are influenced by being raised in a home with a drug/alcohol dependent parent. Feedback / thoughts very much welcome.

Watching: Frida Argento is an incredible actor, and people often talk about how expressive she is with her eyes. This is partly her, and partly her character: Sara sees EVERYTHING. There are numerous points in the story line where it is literally only us, the viewer, and Sara, who know everything. She sees August upload the video, she sees Stella’s crush on Fredrika, she sees Wille hold Simon’s little finger in the movie theatre, she sees through Simon’s smile the morning after when they’re waiting for class to start. The only thing she doesn’t know in the gun scene at the end of S2 is that Simon gave August the drugs to sell. I could go on. She is -literally- the eyes on this world. And she says almost nothing, until she decides to confront someone (i.e. asking Stella about her crush / asking Simon why he didn’t sleep at home). This is a kind of vigilance you learn when your home is unstable and unpredictable. You learn to watch everyone for clues as to What Is Really Going On Here, so that you might have some hope of anticipating when all hell will break loose. People with drug and alcohol problems are sober a lot of the time, and they might even have various modes of being drunk or high. You learn to put a lot of store in feeling you might be able to predict when the mood will change. If you’re a kid, trying to read these signs gives you a feeling of power in a situation where you are utterly powerless. Everything - the way someone’s lips narrow, a clench of the jaw, the music they’re playing, anything - it becomes a possible sign of the atmosphere being about the change for the worse. Vigilance becomes a way of trying to experience safety. And for Sara, the fact that she does see so much ends up giving her a trump card - the ability to turn August in - in other words, the power she never had at home to finally do something about the bad actor.

Attachment: Sara was bullied at Marieberg. She knows she’s different, and she believes people don’t like her. When Felice does allow her into this secret garden called friendship, she is elated, but also insecure. For example, she gets worried when Felice and Wille become closer in S2, and asks Felice to reassure her about whether they are ‘besties’ still, and Felice says, oh you silly goose, a person can have more than one bestie. But for Sara, the love she shares with others feels intrinsically insecure and conditional: as in, people love her because of a certain tacit deal they’ve struck. This is why she is not just angry when Felice condones selling Rousseau - she is far deeply hurt, it is a betrayal of the highest order, she says she doesn’t even know who Felice is really. It all suggests a world where Sara didn’t experience love as unconditional - instead it was transactional. It’s the kind of backwards-emotional-math that kids can do to try to explain a situation that hurts but is the only thing you know — Dad is drunk again today, it must be something I did wrong; Dad is not drunk today, it must be something I did right; if Dad is drunk he’s not really him and he can’t love me as a parent; ergo, my behavior is the token that gets exchanged back and forth between us that can turn love on or off. Love is never there all the time, it can be withheld based on conduct, and people can be so radically not themselves that it makes the love they profess fake.

Her relationship with August: I think Sara unconsciously falls for August because he is a copy of her father, and she is using him to work out the trauma and disempowerment of growing up with Micke. August is a better version of Micke and, even better, one Sara believes she can control and help. As an additional extra-credit, it turns out he really loves her - in his fucked up way - which is more than Sara believes about her own father. Like Micke, August is drug-dependent. But unlike Micke, he seems to be successful and, until she gets to know him, he seems to have his shit together. It seems like he is powerful: after all, he gets her what she wants - a place at Manor House. Sara is initially uncomfortable about the pills - she confronts August about it. But then August assures her that it’s “only when he needs to perform” and that’s probably all she dreamt of hearing from her father when she was a child. August is the fairy tale prince: an addict who in fact has it under control, an addict who can actually love her. And unlike her father, he is an addict she can help (overcoming a lifetime of powerlessness for her). In fact, the thing that actually kickstarts their relationship is her getting off (literally) on the high of being able to help August when he was having a panic attack. Then, when everything goes overboard, she explains her actions in the way she learned at home: she says she was in love, and she didn’t really know what she was doing, she was not in her right mind … she was, in other words, … drunk / high … but on love. And this explanation is somehow a mitigation for her actions. She can’t be blamed for something she can’t control - which most addicts believe at some point.

#sara eriksson #simon eriksson #young royals #young royals analysis #micke eriksson #alcohol abuse #substance abuse

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thatgirlonstage · 1 month

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Sometimes I get overwhelmed by how ephemeral most art is. Even outside willful capitalist greed that pulls shows and films from streaming (or refuses to even release them in the first place) and refuses to make video game consoles backwards compatible—even with the best will and effort to preservation in the world—paints and dyes and fabrics fade and degrade over time. Stone and metal statues get worn down. Colors aren’t perfectly replicable on new monitors or with new ingredients. DVDs and CDs and records get scratched. Files lose data. Film gets worn out. Things can’t be copied with complete fidelity to their original — brushstrokes or colors or sound quality will have shifted, even with the most careful effort, even if you are using the same medium (and if you can’t use the same medium, eg digitizing something originally on film, you will inevitably lose some things you can’t get back. Fuzziness and timbre and color quality that artists knew they were working with and whether they leaned into it or worked around it they expected it to be there and their absence will inevitably be felt). Plain text is essentially the only thing that can at least theoretically be copied without any loss of information, but even that is only in theory! Typos and misprints and errors plague any copy. Debates rage over whether something in an older version was an error corrected in a later edition or an intentional choice that got revised for whatever multitude of possible reasons. I haven’t even touched art that is by its very nature ephemeral from the start — live performance and installations made of living plants and art where the whole purpose is watching something fall apart.

Idk. I am desperately and fiercely in favor of all efforts at preservation of art while also being painfully aware of how impossible it is to preserve anything forever. Go to the theatre and feel with your whole heart how incredible it is to witness something that will only be done exactly like this just once, just today, just right this moment, and then it will be gone forever, whether its alterations are obvious or almost imperceptible they will be there. Then expand that feeling to everything you touch and feel at once lucky and heartbroken.

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jgroffdaily · 2 months

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youtube

Video from the red carpet at the world premiere of 'A Nice Indian Boy' and the full Q&A after the screening. Highlights:

Karan Soni at 1.34 is asked what it was like working opposite Jonathan:

"It was incredible. We had met once before. We had a dinner about a year before we started filming when we didn't know if the movie was going to happen. It was with Roshan, my partner, and we just had this four hour dinner and we were like, oh man, if we get to hang out with him and make this movie it would be perfect. It ended up being exactly that.

We got along really well. I'm joking, but it's kind of true, but I keep saying Jonathan is like Roshan and my third, emotionally, if not sexually. So we are an emotional throuple. We really became very close. He's on Broadway right now so he can't be here today but we are excited to watch the movie with him too at some point."

Sas Goldberg at 10.46 says she plays a very close friend of Jonathan:

"I'm friends with Jonathan in real life before this, so this was sort of like a little bit of a summer camp moment shooting this up in Vancouver."

In the Q&A after the film, a guest around 26.47 talks about Jonathan singing an Indian song during key moment and director Roshan Sethi responds:

"Jonathan Groff is very sad he couldn't be here because he is singing on Broadway. Jonathan singing [spoiler] is... I did not see that coming. Something about that song. That didn't happen exactly as scripted but Jonathan really committed to it in a way that only a theatre kid could."

[Host asks if Jonathan was the first person considered and how Jonathan got involved]

Roshan: "He was the first and only. We approached him shortly after I came on board and Karan came on board. We sent him 'Seven Days'. He really loved 'Seven Days' and Karan is the star of 'Seven Days' so he said 'That guy is obviously straight but could he play gay?'I am Karan's romantic partner so I was like 'He is gay. Like, he's gay.' But then we ended up getting him on board very shortly after.

We made the movie and it was just a magical experience with him, in particular. He is on Merrily We Roll Along on Broadway now and Jonathan is so committed to his performances in general that he has not missed a single night or performance of that show. Many of the other people in the cast have but he hasn't missed a single one. So I think that says a lot about Jonathan."

#jonathan groff #karan soni #roshan sethi #a nice indian boy #zarna garg #sas goldberg #Youtube

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quietpagan · 3 months

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Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and yes I'm late, so sue me

I wasn't going to watch any of the PiB movies but I heard 'Death' was a character, so

First two minutes: It's GORGEOUS and here's an entire post of me freaking out over the visual mastery of this film

If I'd seen this in theatres today I'd get kicked out for gasping so much

I can't even

The animation style is so beautiful I'm gasping out loud and had to stop three minutes in to begin this post, it's wild. The particles - !

LOOK AT THE TEXTURE OF THE LEATHER HAT. THE ANIMATORS ARE FLEXING AND THEY ARE FLEXING HARD.

Every single frame of this film is a goddamn work of art. Look at the stars on the wooden ceiling. Look at the lighting.

Even the reflection in the glass, holy shit

They need to stop flexing before I have a frickin heart attack here

Also thank you for putting actual blood and not just a reddish cut, actual dripping blood, thank you :)

This is such a love letter to animation and art and I'm here for it

The scene transitions are absolute *chef's kiss*

THEY ACTUALLY *BEEPED* OUT A SWEAR WORD it's a third of the way through and this is my new favorite movie

Each glitter particle glistens in its own moment, I cannot

I feel like a lot of modern movies have some weird fear of putting genuine color into a film. WELL NOT HERE FOLKS. ABSOLUTE PSYCHODELIC COLOR EXPLOSIONS THROUGHOUT.

What the fuck, that escalated quickly

SIR WHAT ARE YOUR QUALIFICATIONS?

THe dog has a potty mouth and every swear word is BEEP'd out and he swore a LOT

I love how all of the characters just rant the fuck off in Spanish when they get mad

I didn't see the other Puss movies but Softpaws?? Was declawed at some point?? That's so mean?? that's literally amputations omg her poor hands

And she left Puss at the altar at the same time that HE left HER at the altar, these assholes deserve each other at this point because absolutely nobody else will put up with either of them on a serious level

except for the dog, who deserves the world. LOOK AT HIM

Kitty wasn't going to wait for a egocentric asshat to put down his ego for her, YOU GO GIRL

somebody put the puppy in a sock and tried to drown him omg

he has the saddest backstory but he's just happy to have his life and his friends, whereas Puss had nine lives and didn't appreciate any of them, okay, I get it now

The dog actually calmed Puss down from a panic attack and you could hear his heartbeat calming and it was really sweet

The framing of this film is fantastic. Also, Death? Actual Death? The thing that Puss wasn't aware he was afraid of or even needed to be afraid of yet was running from his entire life? Such an incredible villain

I can't concentrate on anything else about the movie because everything is just so goddamn pretty.

The movements and the visuals are just a little bit choppy and a little unfinished, making every still look like a painting. It's so stylized and wonderfully so

jesus christ what a visual callback

Okay movie's done and I can talk now

THE CAT LADY i love her <3

I appreciate that Goldilocks finally accepted her family but it's okay to want other things, I think, as long as you're not taking for granted what you currently have. That said, they're definitely going to have to talk it out because stuff like that doesn't just go away with a quip and a new business plan

One that note, the fucking cricket was hilarious. John Mulaney's character was a riot and I appreciate the cricket giving up on him as a bad job.

I was worried about Death's defeat being a bit of a cop-out but it wasn't. Death was angry that Puss was given so many lives and appreciated exactly none of them, thinking himself invincible forever, not understanding consequences because they never really applied to him, so they decided to cheat and take his last one early. But Puss accepted his mortality and began to appreciate his last life properly, so Death let him live it. It was done well.

I don't really like the 'tough girl no trust femme fatale love interest' thing, I think it's tired and overwrought, so Kitty wasn't my favorite, but I liked her anyway. And I liked that she's able to poor-little-meow-meow Puss when he least expects it.

The doctor scene where we went through each of Puss's lives was storyboarded so beautifully, even the title cards were gorgeous

the fight scenes are so pretty

I can't do anything besides gush over how fucking pretty this film was, I'm useless

Anyway watch the film, it's just a masterpiece and the music was fantastic and I loved the whole thing

#puss in boots #puss in boots the last wish #dreamworks puss in boots #dreamworks the last wish

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angie-words · 25 days

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CW: mention of being overwhelmed, swearing

Today was a bit of a rollercoaster

Took my dad to watch Nye at the National Theatre. I bought the tickets back in November and we've been looking forward to it. Dad's an old Labour party member, through-and-through Socialist, with Aneurin Bevan being one of his absolute heroes. He even got to see him speak, in person, when he was just a child.

He's also a fan of Michael Sheen's work like me (well, not quite like me... We just appreciate him in different ways...)

Anyway, long complicated journey to get there because of the trains being messed up. We arrive to find that unfortunately Sheen is unwell and unable to perform. Some friends found out he'd also not been able to perform yesterday or do stage doors for a few nights, apparently.

These things happen, got to let it roll off you like water off something's back, right?

The problem is that I don't do great with change at the best of times so I was terrified I was going to get overwhelmed and ruin the day. Bear in mind that we were actually meant to go in March but had to change the tickets due to a family event being put in place after I had already booked the tickets (that's... that's a whole other complicated thing)

And then my dad, who this entire trip has really been all for, must have seen the look on my face. He softly said, "oh, it's ok. No need to feel despondent! I'm sure it will be lovely anyway." It was just such a sweet thing to hear that I sort of compartmentalised and reminded myself that, whilst seeing Sheen pretend to be a deer on stage would have been a highlight (yes, that happens in the play), this was his day out.

You know what? It was lovely. The understudy, Lee Mengo, was fantastic. The play was beautiful and funny; it reminded me why the NHS is so vital, and how criminal it is that it's been undermined and under-funded for so long.

I asked dad afterwards if he enjoyed it. He thought it was wonderful, timely and made him remember what a titan Bevan had been (as well as what a cunt Churchill was - dad's words but also mine).

I let my friends in discord know and they were incredibly sweet and supportive. One of them has even volunteered to come see it with me next week as they haven't seen the play. Even better: it's going to be a sensory-adapted performance, so I'm intrigued about what that looks like. I also really want to see it again because I'm dying to see Michael Sheen live, and how his performance differs.

Hopefully he's feeling better soon. I'm honestly astounded at the workload actors maintain over several weeks in shows like these so it shouldn't be a massive surprise that people get ill.

Just feeling very grateful for having wonderful family, friends, and a partner who gave me a massive hug when I got home

#nye michael sheen #national theatre #Michael Sheen #personal #autistic things #actually autistic #theatre

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miasiegert · 2 months

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Day 2, and one workshop photo of MY work

Before I say ANYTHING, hello to Wichita folk from Chaz. :) He was shocked (and delighted) at how much people enjoyed the show and we absolutely are brainstorming things for the future. So a huge thank you for the support and kindness. It meant a ton to him (and obviously me and David as well!)

Day 2 was a roller coaster... for ME!

I'm very suspicious because everything is going so well. Too well. Things never go this well. So I decided it was time to start really stoning some costume pieces that I hadn't before while David got supplies.

Then I got a phone call, never a good sign, from David asking me could I get the padlock open for the gate.

Padlock? What Padlock?

There are no concrete answers, only a guess... but it's believed that people who share a lot to store their boats left and padlocked the gate behind them so I was TRAPPED in the costume shop (which is a completely different building/drive away from the theatre) all alone with no food and had been the entire day while David couldn't get me.

Some chaos to get a key and get out, and David decided to go to the night time run through for notes. Chaz told me to take tonight off because I went through ND hell as there was a loud beeping noise nonstop and I had to turn my headphones up louder than normal (I usually watch a show in the background--today was "Power Book III: Raising Kanan" from Starz) so it hurt then the panic of being alone and trapped.

Anyway, what I *Did* realize was that I absolutely can share a wip of Bedazzling more of the Reba!Suit because that is my costume, that has been seen onstage before, there is no actor in it, no full costume, and it's MY original design.

Way back, we had very cheap acrylic rhinestones because we were too poor for better ones. Now, we're mixing in preciosa and swarovski with some crystal and glass ones. We have not removed the acrylics YET because a lot is carefully plotted fill ins and until I have enough time to REALLY thoroughly do it, I don't want to remove any sparkle.

So, for your pleasure (or not, Idk, maybe you don't care) this is the epaulets and belt for the Gumbie Tap Suit that's my design. If you notice a few interesting things with the waistband/tail, that is because it's got four strong snaps for the waist. There's stretch but not as much as some of our other specialty fabric, and different tappers prefer different tightness. We're hoping to add some snaps as this Jenny is between sizes and really wants a snatched waist (she didn't want to take the costume off--never seen anyone so happy before!)

I will be adding gold, yellow, and orange to it. I added purple to Misto in two shades and some AB crystals.

I forgot if I said this or not but I was requested to rhinestone Misto's shoes for his song number. I can't wait to show people pictures. I'm pretty sure there will be video. The last time I saw a very flippity Misto was my first pro production where an INCREDIBLE cheerleader/gymnast/hiphop dancer was cast. It was incredible to watch. This choreo is really fun and Misto's actor's manner actually does come across as shy and aloof at first... then super excited and happy. METHOD ACTING OR JUST HYPED ABOUT COSTUMES??? The world may never know.

I think people will REALLY like Rumple and Mungo a LOT. Cassandra is FANTASTIC.

Also anyone here have Starz? I need to gush over "P-Valley" and cry over "Hightown" s3 with someone! "Raising Kanan" is good but not hitting me in the feels the same way.

#cats musical #cats the musical #cats musical cosplay #cats musical suncoast broadway theatre

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brainrotgobrr · 5 months

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so…i finished the indigo disk…

you know, honestly, on the surface - i adored this dlc. i had such a fun time exploring kitakami and blueberry academy, i was intrigued by the plot, and i absolutely fell in love with a whole new cast of well developed characters. its not perfect, of course, but is anything really?

as i finished the dlc, the credits rolling, a toby fox remixed version of an ed sheeran song playing, all i could think about was how important of a game pokémon scarlet and violet means to me.

a year ago, when this game came out, i was a completely different person than who i am today. which sounds incredibly dramatic, but it’s true. a lot can change in a year. and it did for me. when i’ve been at my lowest of lows, this game, this fucking franchise - is always what i turn to when i need something to cheer me up. and i don’t know what it is. maybe it’s the cute creatures. maybe it’s the escapism. maybe it’s because video games are fun. maybe it’s because we all fancy the idea of being some child prodigy who changes the world. but these games connected to me on a personal level, and they did to so many others as well. watching serena do performances in the gen 6 anime made me want to perform too, which led to my love of theatre and me realizing what i want to do for the rest of my life (again, sounds dramatic, but watching the silly showcases made me want to be on stage). roleplaying as pokémon trainers outside in the woods by my elementary school helped to spark my love of storytelling. watching youtube videos about pokemon made me interested in making videos myself and learning about editing and research and recording. a lot of my biggest passions in life stem from pokemon, whether i realized it then or not.

and there was something about this game, watching these kids, kids just like me, struggling to live their lives and find their places and live up to who they want to be, that connected with me. deep inside, i am a child finding my way, just like the kids in this game, just like every kid, young and old, who ever played these games! i’m still on my treasure hunt, still unsure of where my path will be, and so is kieran. and so is carmine. and so is nemona and arven and penny, and so is every character in this franchise and every person in the world. we all are trying to find our own hidden treasure.

maybe im rambling. maybe im being overly dramatic (i am). but god, this dlc reminded me of just how much growth i have experienced from when the base game came out to the indigo disk. and im going go keep growing, and keep changing and developing as a person, and pokemon’s still gonna be here, inspiring kids to do it all over again.

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jcbbby · 1 year

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thank you @quinnsbower for this idea! xoxo <3 I wrote this as if Henry maybe defeated Eleven, or if Eleven peaced tf out after escaping with him following the massacre.

I'm sorry it's kind of short, and lowkey the beginning is ASS and probably too much description. I think it gains traction halfway through lol. hopefully this is otherwise nice to read!

***

The news channels were running wild. It was unusual to see such chaos being broadcast, since Hawkins had always been a sleepy town. Nothing ever happened here. Apparently there was some tragedy down at Hawkins Lab. Not much was known yet, but the news anchor had mentioned a coroner was there and no one was being allowed in to the building. You sat on the couch watching it unfold.

The scenes from outside the lab were bleak. Countless stretchers covered in white sheets were being wheeled out. A bruised and bloodied man in a three piece suit stood to the side, speaking to the police. The anchorwoman mentioned that the man was Dr. Martin Brenner, the director of the lab. A press conference was said to begin any moment, before cutting to the live feed from outside the lab.

"Good afternoon. I am here to discuss details of the events that happened here at Hawkins International Laboratory earlier today. From what we have gathered, a male employee went on a gruesome rampage throughout the building. The number of casualties has not yet been determined, but there are a significant amount. It is believed that our main suspect is a 6 foot male with blonde hair and blue eyes, last known to be wearing a white shirt and white pants. A tattoo with the digits 001 can be seen on his left wrist. We would like the public to be aware that he is considered armed and dangerous. If you see him, do not approach. Call 911 immediately. This is all we have at this time, thank you." The police officer left the microphone and turned back to Dr. Brenner and a few other police officers.

An image of a young man, with wavy blonde hair and blue eyes was put up on the screen. The image looked like it was from some sort of identification badge. You felt slightly guilty for it, but you couldn't help but find him attractive. And those eyes were gorgeous, you couldn't deny it, there was something about them...You wondered what was going on behind them.

The following day, most people were still on edge. The culprit had still not been found. You went on about your day, going to work at the local movie theatre, which was much quieter than usual for a Saturday. After you shift had finished and you changed out of your work uniform, you headed back home, walking your usual route through a wooded area. You liked the woods, it was peaceful and gave you quiet space for introspection, as well as seclusion. You often spent time in the woods after work smoking or drinking to unwind a little. Something your mother certainly wouldn't approve of.

Sitting on a fallen log, you dropped your bag next to you, fumbling around for your flask and the book you were currently reading. You took a swig, wincing as it slid down your throat with a soft burn. From behind you, you heard movement and twigs snap. You whipped your head towards the source of the sound. Nothing.

"...Hello?" You called out. No answer.

Against your better judgement, you slowly got up, walking deeper into the wood. Your heartrate increased, feeling like you weren't alone. Suddenly, you felt an incredible force. It lifted you off the ground, pinning you to a tree. You shrieked, terrified and confused. Then, out of the shade, he emerged. Blonde, dressed in white, covered in blood. His arm was outstretched in front of him, out at you. Was he holding you like this without touching you? You couldn't contain your panicked whimpers and pleading.

"Quiet." He growled, his voice warm and deep.

"P-p-please...I was just walking home. Please..." You cried.

He tilted his head slowly, his eyes dark and cold. He looked you up and down, analyzing. He noticed the flask, still clutched in your hand.

"Give me the flask, and I'll let you go. You never saw me." He hissed.

"It's yours, it's yours. I never saw you, I promise!"

He slowly lowered you back to the ground. You collapsed to your knees, quivering with fear and trying to steady your breathing. He approached you with heavy footsteps and took the flask from your hand. Without a word or reaction, he unscrewed the top and chugged its contents. You cautiously stood up, brushing the dirt from your knees. You stared at him.

"Y-You're...him, aren't you?" You breathed. "From that lab?"

He threw the empty flask off to the side, stepping menacingly toward you. "What if I am?"

You stood frozen. "I...I just...why did you...?" You asked, your voice not able to go above a whisper.

He was now inches from you. He was so intimidating, but so handsome. His eyes stared deeply into yours. They held such anger and hatred, but you felt as though you could see the human beneath that. A sad, hurt, frightened human who just wanted to be free. It sent a shock through your chest.

"They thought they could control me...they thought they could make the rules." His eyes narrowed. "They imprisoned me. Physically, mentally...in their own pathetic, selfish world." He spat. "Now..."

Your breath hitched as he reached to your hair, carefully removing a leaf that had stuck between the strands before letting it fall to the ground.

"...you never saw me." He glared and turned to walk deeper into the woods.

Watching him disappear into the trees, you continued to breathe deeply and try to make sense of what just happened. You wanted to follow him. You wanted...to help him? Without a second thought, you started after him, forgetting your belongings still sitting on the tree. When you caught up with him, he had come to a small stream. He had started removing his white button up, leaving him in a plain white t-shirt. He bent down, splashing the water on to his face, using the inside of his button up, free from the blood stains, to scrub the old, dried blood from his face. He put his hands back in the water, bringing them back up to run them through his hair, slicking it back. You stared, finding him almost angelic. Graceful and enchanting. Though knowing what he had done, he was far from an angel. Perhaps a fallen angel.

You adjusted your stance and under your feet, leaves crunched. The man snapped his neck in your direction, looking surprised to see you. He stood up and lowered his head, staring at you through his eyebrows.

"I thought I made myself clear." He growled.

You swallowed. "I..I uh..."

"Would you like to join the others? Do you want to be like them?" He began to walk toward you like a lion stalking prey.

"N-no...I just...I wanted-" You stuttered.

"What? You wanted what?" He was now flush against you, staring down at you.

"I...don't know." You felt tears welling up as you whimpered softly, buzzing in his overwhelming presence. "I don't know. I want to help."

He reached a hand up to wipe a tear from you cheek. "Oh you poor, sweet thing...no one can help me."

You didn't reply, you didn't know what you were getting yourself into. He stared into you deeply for a moment as you felt your body tense. His eyes almost had you hypnotized. Looking you up and down once, he took a step back.

"What's your name?" He asked, suddenly taking a more friendly tone.

"Y/N" You squeaked out.

"I'm Henry." He smiled wickedly. "So Y/N, how did you think you could help me?"

"I'm not sure...you just seem...like a lost soul."

"Lost?" He scowled. "No, I know exactly who I am."

"...so tell me, then. That's what I want." You suddenly felt a wave of bravery. "I want to know: who are you?"

He smirked, bending down to bring his lips to your ear. "I'm a god of this world." He whispered.

You shivered as his warm breath gently brushed across your earlobe. He pulled back, stepping backward, still grinning wickedly at you. He raised his arm out in front of him. Suddenly, your feet rose from the ground again. You gasped as you felt yourself drifting closer to him, until you were face to face, meeting him at his height.

"You may not be able to help me, but every god needs someone to worship him." His voice was gruff, he reached up to cup your cheek. "Would you do that?"

Your breath was heavy. It was like he had you in a trance. "Yes. Yes I will." You breathed.

"Good." He leered at you, stroking your cheek with his thumb. "Good girl."

#henry creel #001 stranger things #001 x reader #henry creel x reader #stranger things fic #jamie campbell bower #jamie bower

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