#a couple of doodles that i decided to make into a sequence of sorts and just...OOOOUGH.....THEM.....

[moldspicy]

~☕🌸

[roseisread]

My Year in Movies: Favorite Non-2018 Feature Films (Part 1)

I watched a LOT of movies this year. At last count, I had logged 229 features and 126 shorts; and that doesn’t count rewatches--only movies that were new to me.

I set a few challenges for myself as well this year. The first one was to watch at least one non-English language/US release per week--this exposed me to so much world cinema and some really amazing filmmakers. Anyone who avoids foreign films because “I don’t like subtitles” is really missing out, and I found myself craving these narratives from voices I don’t ordinarily get exposed to in my everyday life. 

Other personal challenges: Watching as many horror movies as possible in October (with horror defined pretty loosely so I could include entries from silent era and onward, as well as some comedy cult classics that have horror/thriller elements); participating in Noirvember (in addition to attending Noir City in Chicago); crossing off some major blindspots from my list (such as Bicycle Thieves, The Producers, Lethal Weapon, A Few Good Men, Grease, Home Alone 2, Brazil, and Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom); and trying to watch movies and short films from every decade that motion pictures have existed.

In 2019, I hope to do similar personal challenges with a focus on movies made by women, LGBTQ+, and people of color, in addition to filling in the gaps of my classical/canonical movie knowledge. 

OK, so that’s enough preamble. Let’s get to the list! For this list, I’m excluding movies that were released in 2018--that’s coming but this is for movies released before that. 

50. Linda Linda Linda (2005, directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita, country of origin: Japan)

High school girls recruit the Korean exchange student (Doona Bae, of Cloud Atlas and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) to join their rock band a few days before the school talent show. This is just a feel good film, recommended if you enjoyed the likes of Sing Street, We Are The Best!, and The Runaways. Unfortunately, it’s out of print in physical form; but last I checked someone had uploaded it to YouTube so you might want to get on that before it’s removed. You can watch the trailer here.

49. The Blue Dahlia (1946, directed by George Marshall, country of origin: US)

This film noir stars Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd, and like any good noir, it deals with dark subjects including murder, blackmail, political corruption, and PTSD. It’s been on my watchlist for a long time, and thanks to Noir City Chicago, I got to see it on the big screen at the Music Box Theatre. For small screen viewing, you can catch up with it via rental on Vudu, Amazon, iTunes... the usual suspects. 

48. Siren of the Tropics (1927, directed by Mario Nalpas and Henri Etievant, country of origin: France)

My dearly departed Filmstruck had a spotlight on the films of Josephine Baker, and this was among them. I fell in love instantly with the lively, beautiful Baker, here playing a woman named Papitou who deals with some super scummy dudes but manages to be herself in the face of all that nonsense. Silent films can sometimes be tougher to engage with for modern audiences, but this one flies by and contains some unexpectedly racy sequences for the time. Its racial politics don’t meet today’s cultural standards, but considering Baker’s parents were former slaves and their daughter went on to become the first woman of color to star in a major motion picture, this is still a landmark film worthy of our consideration. She broke down many barriers and contributed a great deal to both the entertainment world and the Civil Rights movement, and this serves as a nice entry point into her career. It’s available on DVD through Kino Lorber, and hopefully one day soon it’ll pop up on another streaming service that carries on the Filmstruck legacy.

47. I Don’t Feel At Home in This World Anymore (2017, directed by Macon Blair, country of origin: US)

Here’s a film that goes to some unexpected places. I had no idea what to expect from Macon Blair, who frequently appears in the movies of Jeremy Saulnier; but in his debut feature for Netflix, he pulled out all the stops. Hilarious, violent, and intense, with memorable performances from stars Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood, this is a movie about getting in over your head and just going for it anyway. I don’t want to tell you about the plot because it’s best discovered through watching--just go to your nearest device and add it to your Netflix queue. 

46. Song of the Sea (2014, directed by Tomm Moore, country of origin: Ireland)

Absolutely gorgeous animation from the team that previously brought us The Secret of Kells, and a touching story that combines family and mythology. I adored this one. Watch it on Netflix or rent on the usual streaming sources--for a preview, click here. 

45. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942, directed by Michael Curtiz, country of origin: US)

I always watch Independence Day on the Fourth of July; but in 2018, I decided to mix it up and cross this patriotic musical off the watchlist. I’d seen James Cagney’s gangster movies like White Heat and The Public Enemy, but seeing him sing and dance was a whole new joyous discovery. This movie is entertaining, funny, touching, and full of iconic sequences that other films would go on to borrow from. I absolutely loved it. Pretty sure I saw this on Filmstruck originally, but since that’s no longer possible you should be able to find it at your local public library or you can rent it for a couple bucks on Amazon, YouTube, iTunes, and the like. 

44. The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950, directed by Felix Feist, country of origin: US)

This tightly wound noir thriller pits brother against brother against the backdrop of 1950s San Francisco. Lee Cobb plays an aging bachelor and an accomplished police detective who falls for the wrong dame. His younger brother, played by John Dall (Gun Crazy, Rope), has just joined the police force and idolizes his older brother. Trouble strikes when the dame murders her no good husband and needs help from Cobb to cover it up. Naturally, Dall gets assigned to the case and as he begins to piece together the clues, he doesn’t like where they’re leading him. The climactic sequence is one of my favorite endings to a noir film, and I’ve seen a lot of them. Watch it for free if you have Amazon Prime; otherwise, there are a few versions uploaded to YouTube of varying quality or you could wait for it to pop up on TCM. 

43. Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003, directed by Thom Andersen, country of origin: US)

This documentary edits together clips from movies of every era that were filmed or set in Los Angeles, and explains through voiceover narration the significance of each location and the history of the motion pictures in LA. That’s it--very simple concept but also fascinating. I split this up over a couple nights because it’s pretty long, but if you’re a film fan or a Los Angeles native, this is well worth your time. The voiceover is kind of hilariously flat in its delivery--kind of a Steven Wright sound actually--but that sort of adds to the charm for me. Get a taste by watching the trailer, and then you can rent it on YouTube for $1.99.

42. A Simple Plan (1998, directed by Sam Raimi, country of origin: US)

It’s been almost two years since we lost Bill Paxton; I don’t know about you but I don’t think any other actor can really fill those shoes. This year I caught up with three films that showcased his talent: A Simple Plan, One False Move, and Frailty. He plays very different characters in each one but in many ways they all start off with a similar premise: Ordinary guy dreams of becoming more. What that “more” is for each character is what sets each film and performance apart, but Paxton provided a great canvas to paint these unique characters onto. He inhabited the ordinary man better than just about anyone. 

In this film, which I watched during Noirvember, Paxton plays Hank, a college-educated guy working a blue collar job in a small town, trying to make a better life for himself and his family. He’d like to get away from those small town roots, but his socially awkward brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) relies on him. Unfortunately, Jacob is often accompanied by the hard-drinking loose canon Lou (Brent Briscoe). When the unlikely trio discover a crashed plane in the woods containing a suitcase full of cash, they each have ideas for how to handle the situation. Of course things escalate from there, and the way the movie explores human nature and family ties set this story apart. Available for online rental on the usual platforms.

41. The Iron Giant (1999, directed by Brad Bird, country of origin: US)

Given my obsession with Vin Diesel in the early 2000s, it’s pretty shocking I never saw this movie til now--sure, he and his glorious muscles don’t appear on screen, but he does provide the voice of the title character after all. When the Iron Giant made a controversial cameo in this year’s film adaptation of Ready Player One, I decided it was time I saw the source material for myself. 

This gorgeously animated fable unfolds during the Cold War era, and features an ET-inspired story arc of a young boy befriending an unlikely being that the government is looking for. If you’ve never seen it, this is definitely a must-watch. Currently available on Netflix, but rentable on other platforms too.

40. The Unsuspected (1947, directed by Michael Curtiz, country of origin: US)

I adore Claude Rains, star of this film and supporting actor in Curtiz’s more famous work, Casablanca. Here, he plays the host and narrator of a popular radio show that revolves around tales of murder--basically the Law and Order: SVU of its day. We learn early on that he sometimes draws inspiration for his broadcasts from real life criminals. When people in his own life start dropping dead, the plot thickens and he finds himself at the center of the action. A very suspenseful and well-plotted film noir, which is available from the Warner Archive collection on DVD. I got to see it at Noir City Chicago, and loved every second of it. 

That’s all for this entry--stay tuned for part two of this list, posting soon! 

[thebrotherhoodofsleep]

Awakening The Zodiac (2017)

Between the murders which took place in the summer of 1968 and the 2007 release of David Fincher’s masterpiece ZODIAC, there were a handful of feature films inspired by the mystique of the still unidentified serial killer known as the Zodiac. This list includes the 1971 releases DIRTY HARRY and THE ZODIAC KILLER, both released to a public still on edge from the relatively recent murders and ongoing missives from the killer, as well as 2007’s CURSE OF THE ZODIAC, a straight-to-video mess that may well have gotten greenlit and rushed into production to confuse audiences looking for Fincher’s film.

After 2007, there is only one: AWAKENING THE ZODIAC, released in 2017 to an audience that wasn’t really ready to get hyped up about the Zodiac Killer – at least, not until a year later, when law enforcement’s success in using genealogy databases to catch the Golden State Killer reinvigorated the public’s hope that Zodiac, too, could be identified by ancestral DNA connections.

There are any number of reasons for the relative rarity of features about the Zodiac, even in our true crime obsessed moment, I’m sure – fears of exploiting the suffering of real life victims, the complete lack of information about who the killer was despite the copious theorizing – but a big one surely has to be that ZODIAC just casts too large of a shadow. It’s just too definitive, packs too much information into its nearly two hour run time, cycles through too many theories and creates such a distinctive atmosphere of paranoia and obsession that it would be a real challenge for any subsequent film about the Zodiac Killer to distinguish itself

AWAKENING THE ZODIAC takes on that challenge, asking: well, what if we simply try to duplicate that paranoiac pall, but we also add in some spooky film reels like SINISTER and some scary traps like SAW? But not too many, just like one scene of each?

The film early on addresses the potential for exploitation by positing that the Zodiac is responsible for all sorts of unsolved murders not only in California, but across the U.S., and focusing its attentions on these crimes. (This does, of course, raise the question of whether this movie really needed to be directly about, rather than “inspired by”, the Zodiac murders.) However, this isn’t really clear until later in the film, so during the opening scene which depicts the 1968 murder of a couple in their car, you may well think its depicting one of Zodiac’s canonical murders unless you happen to know that none of his documented victims were named Adam and Lula and none took place in Hunter’s Point.

Adam and Lula are dispatched with only the minor hitch of Lula stabbing Zodiac in the ankle with a knife – a detail that has no relevance as it does not affect the Zodiac’s gait later in the film – and after a brief credit sequence of a bespectacled man poring over reels of film, we flahs forward to what is presumably the present day. (There is no title to establish it, but the rest of the film takes place in Virginia in a year that has computers and cell phones.)

Here we meet Mick (Shane West of the Germs) and his wife Zoe (Leslie Bibb), a married couple doing their best to scrape by in their tiny trailer. Zoe’s had to go freelance since the salon she worked for closed, but she’s landing maybe a client a day. Mick owns a landscaping business, but it’s not particularly lucrative in a town that seems to be struggling overall. Mick doesn’t have any concrete plans to haul them out of their financial hole. Instead he dreams of striking it rich selling the contents of abandoned storage lockers with his partner Phil (Matt Craven), the eccentric vet who owns the local pawn shop.

Although he got his start with horror feature NOSTROM, writer/director Jonathan Wright has mostly spent the past decade at the helm of Hallmark romances with titles like LOVE, ROMANCE, & CHOCOLATE and CHRISTMAS JARS. It shows – in a good way! The one factor distinguishing AWAKENING THE ZODIAC from most exploitation thriller schlock is the surprising charm, humor, and affection shared by Zoe and Mick, despite their frequent and completely reasonable conflicts.

Zoe often feels the need to be the funkiller / adult in the room in response to her husband’s recklessness, but it’s a role that even she recognizes is thankless, so more often than not she gives in to the fun. Mick characterizes himself as congentially unable to take shit from anyone, but this doesn’t extend to his wife’s completely reasonable anger at him doing shit like spending their grocery money on what is basically a blind bet in hopes of striking it rich.

The action begins when Mick spends that grocery money to go halfsies on a $1200 locker, rumored to be owned by a rich old woman. They don’t find any antiques worth more than a few hundred bucks, but they do find a box of dated film reels shoved into an old dresser. One of these reels depicts the murder of Adam and Lulu, with the camera well positioned to catch the Zodiac’s full hood and black clothing with its characteristic symbol. The film once again avoids direct exploitation when the reel which was presumably going to depict the 9-27-68 murder of Cecilia Shephard (and attempted murder of Bryan Hartnell) burns before it can depict the action. Mick and Zoe are freaked and befuddled, but Harvey quickly explains who the Zodiac Killer is to these two dumb kids and we’re on our way.

Which way? Well, fortuitously, the San Francisco Police have recently reopened the case and are offering a $100,000 reward for information that leads to the identity of the killer. Aren’t film reels depicting the Zodiac committing murders and the lead about the storage locker sufficient information already, given that the police could follow those leads to figure out who rented the locker?

Mick watches a lot of Unsolved Mysteries, and he says no – they need to bring a definitive identification to the police in order to claim the reward. Instead, our amateur investigators decide to follow the leads themselves to discover the identity of the storage locker owner, which mostly involves a lot of breaking and entering.

It should go without saying, but: these are not actions you take if you are planning to turn over information to the police in order to claim a financial reward and not go to prison for breaking and entering. These are actions you take if you are planning to turn all this illegally obtained information into clout for your pseudonym on your murder mystery message board – and not even one of the respectable ones.

While they’re on the trail of a man who is presumably in his seventies and may very well have let his rent payments lapse because he’s dead, the film feels the need to establish stakes – and get in a rare gore scene – by having a mysterious figure kidnap and murder the manager of the U-Store-All. Mick also begins to receive some heavy breathing phone calls and hears noises outside of his trailer, becoming increasingly paranoid as the film goes on and he grows more obsessed with the case by reading message boards and listening to audio recording of the Zodiac over and over.

The film desperately wants to capture the neurotic mood of ZODIAC as the trio tracks leads, does research, solves ciphers, argues over suspects, and devolve into obsession, but it just can’t. It populates its tiny cast with red herrings – including Mick and Zoe’s neighbor Ray who portentously warns Mick, “Don’t mess around with shit you don’t understand,” claiming to have heard through the thin walls of the trailer that he’s investigating the “absolute genius”  Zodiac – but even with the established fact that the Zodiac is still alive and murdering, the stakes feel low. He’s old, guys. He’s old and you can go to the police at literally any time.

THIRD ACT SPOILERS!

Our intrepid ding-dongs eventually alight on a potential suspect – Ben Ferguson (Kenneth Welsh), the son of the woman whose name was used to rent the storage locker. He was in the military! He used to live in San Francisco! He has reels of 8mm film in his house! He wrote an article about the Zodiac, positing that he was involved in a series of murders across the U.S.! He’s totally not the killer, though, and as Mick and Zoe get no closer to the Zodiac, he gets closer to them. After murdering Harvey and Ben, the Zodiac manages to kidnap Zoe and leave a coded message for Mick, demanding that he meet him at an abandoned slaughterhouse to trade the film reels for his wife.

And who is the Zodiac? Surprise, guys – it’s Stephen McHattie, the recognizable actor who gets an “and” title in the opening credits and who previously popped up for one line as Ben Ferguson’s neighbor. Once that was established it could never be anyone but Stephen McHattie.

At this point the film devolves into farce as Zodiac sings a creepy rendition of Yankee Doodle Dandy (it’s no Hurdy Gurdy Man) and confines Zoe to an electrified cage maze, telling her “I left you a way out, if you’re brave enough to try.” He monologues for a while about his “legend”, why he’s in Virginia (he stalked Ben Ferguson across the U.S., intending to kill him, but ended up liking the town), and why he missed his payments on the storage locker (his memory isn’t what it used to be). Eventually Mick arrives for the showdown and he and Zoe, who managed to find that way out, take Zodiac out for good.

However, THE LEGEND CONTINUES because even with a body, the authorities still can’t figure out the Zodiac’s original identity. At least Mick has learned a lesson, though – he tells Zoe that his former boss offered him his old job at the factory and he’s accepted: “It’s time to make a real go of things, baby.” No more storage lockers and serial killers for this couple.

Mick also decides to take some responsibility by going outside to fix a flickering light outside their trailer, which leads to maybe the most baffling ending I’ve ever seen in a film. Zoe gets freaked out after hearing a noise outside, not immediately assuming (as most would) that it’s her husband fixing that light. As we cut to outside, Mick is nowhere to be found. There is, however, a man who steps forward with a black boot – cut to credits.

That’s right – this film ends by implying that there is a SECOND Zodiac Killer who is at large and for some reason in this trailer park!

God love it, this film is a mess. A well-intentioned mess, a not completely incompetent mess (it’s dingy as hell, attempting to capture the desaturated atmosphere of ZODIAC, but it’s well-filmed), a surprisingly charming mess, but a mess regardless. It’s also the kind of mess that I almost wish was even dumber that it is – like, how great would it be if it turned out Zoe was the Zodiac Killer’s secret daughter? Once you’re in this far, you might as well go whole hog.

I watched this on: Hulu

[unbreakablejemmasimmons]

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thanks for signing up for this superfun exchange! This is the fourth year I’ve participated now, and I’ve always enjoyed it-- I hope you do, too.

Below you’ll find the following:

General Likes/Kinks

General DNWs

Fandom Specifics/Prompts

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - Rebecca Bunch, Greg Serrano

Schitt’s Creek - Stevie Budd, David Rose

The Good Place - Eleanor Shellstrop, Trevor the Demon

Newsies - Katherine Plumber Pulitzer, Jack Kelly

I’ve tried to list some varied prompts for each fandom, but please don’t feel like you have to stick to what I’ve come up with! If the rest of my letter gives you another idea you’d like to write, I’d love to read it!

A little about me to start:

My AO3 name is SuburbanSun; you can also check out my Tumblr if you’d like, and my tags for each of my requested fandoms (that I’ve posted about before-- apparently that excludes Schitt’s Creek!) here: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The Good Place, Newsies.

General Likes/Kinks:

I’m a big trope fan in general– faves include rivals/enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, bed-sharing, trapped in an enclosed space, mutual pining, secret dating/sneaking around, slow burn, FWBs that turns into something more. Subversions of tropes are also great, so don’t feel like you have to go the obvious route if you choose to write something tropey!

I have a weird (not weird because it’s uncommon, more weird because it doesn’t fit in obviously with the rest of my likes and favored tropes) love for Secret Service/bodyguard/witness protection AUs and private eye AUs.

Epistolary fic, either as part of a story or as all of it, is always fun to me, if it’s up your alley. 

I love strong female friendships, strong-but-flawed-and-realistic female characters in general. Ladies kicking ass, preferably through cleverness and wit and competence as much if not more than through brawn, is the best, and I love it when they’re allowed to make mistakes and fuck up and dig themselves into a hole, too. That said, I will literally never turn down a Vampire Slayer AU. They’re among my faves. (I loved the one I got for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend last Yuletide, but am always excited to see more of them for other fandoms!)

Smut is cool and fun and here are some kinks that I like to read: Teasing. Phone sex/sexting. Semi-public sex (not actually getting caught though). Workplace sex. Dirty talk. Light domination (aka more like just bossing each other around rather than actual D/s stuff). Oral sex. Playfulness/joking around during sex.

General DNWs:

Darkfic. Sad endings. Gore/intense violence. Miscommunication that could super easily be avoided. Babyfic/kidfic/pregnancy in general. Self-harm/abuse. Noncon/dubcon. A/B/O, mpreg, incest, bestiality, hard kink. Poly/threesomes/orgies. Members of my ships being paired romantically with other people (unless it’s just briefly, on the way to an OTP-happy ending). First person POV.

Fandom Specifics/Prompts:

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Rebecca Bunch, Greg Serrano

I love this show so much. It’s clever, it’s feminist, it’s funny, it’s real (even as it features elaborate musical sequences!), and the characters are so flawed but so great. I got a couple of great giftfics for this fandom last Yuletide that I loved, but I’m always excited to read more.

I ship Rebecca and Greg so hard, in spite of their many flaws, and am bummed that Greg’s gone, and hope they find a way to bring him back someday. I just love their chemistry– bickery battle-of-wits style relationships are a huge favorite of mine. I also really just love Rebecca as a character. She’s such a mess and makes so many mistakes but I find her really relatable.

I’m very interested to see where the show goes this season with Rebecca’s revenge plot and seeming descent into (back into?) madness, but I don’t know that Greg easily fits into that trajectory for now, so don’t feel like you need to write something that takes place in current canon. I’d be happy with a story set while Greg was still in West Covina, or a future fic, or just a total AU.

Prompts:

Rebecca/Greg + any number of tropes– stuck somewhere together; inconvenient bed-sharing; fake dating, the works.

Rebecca’s blindness toward money is intriguing to me, in a “when is this shit going to REALLY hit the fan” kind of way. What if that had come to a head somehow and she had to get a second job at Home Base? How would she and Greg have taken to working together into the wee hours of the night? (Store-room sex could be a good addition here if you’d like!)

What’s their dynamic like in a couple of years when Greg returns from Atlanta? Are they over each other or not quite so much?

Conversely, what if a couple years go by, and Rebecca feels compelled to leave West Covina? Maybe she moves back to NYC (hopefully after a few hundred hours of therapy with Dr. Akopian to give her the coping mechanisms she needs to be happy there). Maybe Greg moves to NYC for a job after graduating Emory. Have they kept in touch enough to know they’re both in the same city again, or do they run into each other randomly, an echo of her NYC run-in with Josh in the pilot, only better, because she’s older and wiser and hopefully better-adjusted?

Schitt’s Creek Stevie Budd, David Rose

This show is so funny, dry and ridiculous at the same time. I love how absurdly out of touch the Roses are, and how the show balances their outrageousness with the humdrum middle-America of the town of Schitt’s Creek.

I can’t help but ship Stevie and David, and I hope the show leans into that. If you aren’t into them romantically, though, that’s okay-- they are also fab as begrudging BFFs. I love how they challenge each other and one-up each other, always smirkingly pushing each other’s buttons.

*Note: Season 3 was only just added to Netflix US this week, so when I wrote this letter I hadn’t seen it yet. I just marathoned it (loved it obvs) and it’s pretty clear that they’re not going go lean into Stevie/David, and that’s ok! I’m really digging the Patrick thing so far too. For the purpose of Yuletide, feel free to write something that takes place earlier in the series, or goes AU, etc. 

Prompts:

David finds out Stevie’s birthday is coming up, and decides (or perhaps is convinced by Alexis) to throw her a party, as posh as the parties of his old life with the limited resources of Schitt’s Creek. Of course, everything goes wrong.

I love Stevie teaching David how to adult. What other normal things has he never experienced before that she needs to walk him through?

Schitt’s Creek throws a fall festival, complete with a parade. Stevie gets chosen to be Sweet Potato Pie Queen or something equally ridiculous, and David will never. Stop. Teasing. Her. Until the Sweet Potato Pie King (or similar) comes down with shingles and Roland insists David step in.

Somehow (perhaps through a series of dares?), Stevie winds up running for local government. 

The Good Place Eleanor Shellstrop, Trevor the Demon

There’s not much on Earth I love more than a Mike Schur show, and I’ve always loved Kristen Bell, so I was pretty destined to dig this show. It’s just so clever and interesting and fun to watch!

That said, I wasn’t really shipping anything on the show yet. I like all the characters but nothing leapt out for me romantically. But then they introduced Trevor, and the thing is, Adam Scott is my weakness. If he exists on a show, I can’t help but ship him with somebody, and I have loved his and KBell’s chemistry together in other shows (Party Down! VMars!). I’m not proud of it, but my mind immediately went there.

But things are a little more complicated now! Is Trevor just a Bad Place demon who was acting like the head of the Bad Place, or does he actually hold some kind of leadership role? Is “Trevor” even his real name?? There are so many possibilities! I’m cool with fic that assumes any of them are true.

Prompts:

Trevor has a bad day at the "office," because he's really just a Bad Place underling who enjoyed the chance to play a big-shot evil-doer in Michael’s first attempt. He somehow runs into Eleanor get sloppy drunk together.

Eleanor and Trevor have to team up for some reason-- so he can get ahead in Bad Place bureaucracy, and so she can try to defeat Michael, for instance. How does that work out?

Any sort of stuck together/trapped in an enclosed space tropefic would be great– especially if they start to have feelings for each other.

Nothing wrong with a little good oldfashioned hatesex.

Newsies Jack Kelly, Katherine Plumber Pulitzer

A friend of mine invited me to go see Newsies when they did the first Fathom Events screening early this year, and I had nearly no familiarity with it-- hadn’t even seen the movie. So naturally, I loved it and immediately fell down the Newsies rabbit hole.

I love Jack and Katherine individually and together. I love how cocky he is, and the vulnerability that cockiness masks. I love how headstrong she is, and ambitious. I would love to see fic for them that takes place after the events of the show-- what happens next? How do they begin to have a real relationship, as different as they are, now that the strike is over? Does Jack take that cartoonist job? Does he keep selling papes, too? Where do they live? What do they do on dates?

Prompts:

Even out from under her father’s thumb, Katherine’s lifestyle is certainly a bit ritzier than what Jack’s used to. How does it go the first time she has him over to her apartment?

Jack likes to leave little notes around for Katherine to find, sketches, doodles, and the like. I’m not opposed to epistolary fic here or elsewhere.

Katherine has to plot with the other newsies behind Jack’s back, for some reason (surprise party? Surprise gift?).

So, that’s that! I really hope you enjoy the whole process this Yuletide season, and thanks for participating! Happy writing!