#I just wanted some comedic effect of my aggravation

[little-noko]

hi ^^ um this is probably a dumb question, but i was just wondering if u do free commissions?

[mayhemchicken-varneyposting]

Varney the Vampire, Chapter 13: IT'S VARNEYING TIME

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The search of the grounds continues. Despite combing over every stick and stone, the only trace they find of their nighttime visitor is a small amount of blood beneath the window where Flora shot at the vampire.

Morning dawns, bright and beautiful, and Henry laments that he may have to leave his picturesque childhood home. His reverie is interrupted by a servant, bringing him a letter from Varney. The servant tells him she wants to quit due to all this vampire business, and he lets her go without a fight, much to her disappointment.

Varney's letter contains an offer to buy Bannerworth Hall, which Henry finds sort of suspicious. He asks for Marchdale's advice on the matter, and Marchdale suggests he try renting the house to Varney for a year, rather than selling it outright.

Henry also talks to Flora, who is very open to the idea of leaving. Flora and Charles agree to have a meeting in the garden to talk about their feelings, which does not happen in this chapter.

Henry and Marchdale go to Varney's house to discuss real estate with him. Varney's servant informs them that his master is not well, but is willing to see them just the same. He leads them upstairs, where they discover that Varney is, in fact, the spitting image of the man in the portrait - the vampyre!

Henry, at this point, is McFreakin losing it, and is unable to keep from telling Varney to his face that he looks like ~the vampyre~. Varney remains cool as a cucumber throughout the entire interaction, except for when he bumps his arm against a chair, and it turns out that arm is injured - from a fall, he claims.

Henry attempts to surreptitiously ascertain whether Varney has been to Bannerworth Hall before - say, a hundred years or so ago, perhaps - but his efforts yield no results.

HE'S HERE!! The guy of all time, God's wettest and most tortured meow meow, the man the myth the legend VARNEY THE VAMPIRE himself!

I'm getting ahead of myself. Calm. I am calm.

Everyone's had a shot at the vampire by this point, but it seems only Flora actually made him bleed, at least as far as they're able to find evidence. This is a sign that you should include Flora in more things, guys.

But no. They tell Flora Charles' gunshot was only a precaution, to deter any would-be intruders from the property, and send her back to bed. We can't go upsetting her delicate feminine constitution.

As the sun rises, Henry reflects on the story's Gothic themes: this vampiric intruder, in all likelihood an ancestor of their family, poisoning the happy atmosphere of their home, until the very building itself feels monstrous. Fortunately, the sun has risen, and as we've previously established in this story the sunrise has literal, physical mood-altering effects, so Henry's angsting is abated somewhat.

A servant appears, and we get a brief comedic sequence. Rymer's dogshit politics aside, I think this part manages to be decently funny.

This woman was one of those who were always armed at all points for a row, and she had no notion of concluding any engagement, of any character whatever, without some disturbance; therefore, to see Henry take what she said with such provoking calmness was aggravating in the extreme; but there was no help for such a source of vexation. She could find no other ground of quarrel than what was connected with the vampyre, and, as Henry would not quarrel with her on such a score, she was compelled to give it up in despair.

At least, I could see a filmed adaptation of this sequence that is funny. Rymer's addiction to telling not showing makes the delivery a little lackluster.

Now we get to Varney's letter, and oh my God he is so unsubtle. Varney. My guy.

"What I have heard from common report induces me to believe that Bannerworth Hall cannot be a desirable residence for yourself, or your amiable sister. If I am right in that conjecture, and you have any serious thought of leaving the place, I would earnestly recommend you, as one having some experience in such descriptions of property, to sell it at once."

"Now, if you were looking to sell it, I might be interested in buying...just saying...not for any particular reason, I certainly don't have ulterior motives here..."

"How strange," he muttered. "It seems that every circumstance combines to induce me to leave my old ancestral home."

It sure does seem that way, doesn't it, Henry! Wow it's almost as if someone is plotting behind the scenes to get at your house for some unknown purpose. Haha that'd be crazy wouldn't it. Anyway.

Henry and Marchdale discuss the prospect of selling the house, and Varney's offer. Marchdale suggests that the vampire may be haunting the house, not the family, and therefore leaving is the best option. Henry, who is rather attached to his childhood home, worries the opposite may be true, and that they might flee the house only to be pursued wherever they move to. Marchdale proposes, as a compromise, that they rent the house to Varney for a year, and see whether the vampire follows them or bothers him. Henry, unable to make up his mind, decides to talk with the rest of his family and see what they think.

The rest of the family are pretty much unanimous that selling or letting the house to Varney sounds like a good idea, and Flora is especially keen on the idea. Henry, his mind having been made up for him, resolves to visit with Varney at once to discuss the sale or rental of Bannerworth Hall. Before he does, though, Rymer interjects a setup for a later chapter:

"Dear Flora, you will now surely no longer talk of driving from you the honest heart that loves you?" "Hush, Charles, hush!" she said; "meet me an hour hence in the garden, and we will talk of this." "That hour will seem an age," he said.

An age indeed; we won't go back to them until Chapter 16.

Oh, but now it's time - we're going to Varney's house! Marchdale insists on going along, so there will be a third party at the negotiation. Henry and Marchdale speculate about Varney as they make the short walk to his house; neither of them have ever seen him, nor do they know anything about him.

Varney's servant sees them into the study, where Varney is sitting in the dark waiting to dramatically reveal himself.

There was very little light in this small room; but at the moment of their entrance a tall man, who was seated, rose, and, touching the spring of a blind that was to the window, it was up in a moment, admitting a broad glare of light. A cry of surprise, mingled with terror, came from Henry Bannerworth's lip. The original of the portrait on the panel stood before him!

Dun dun dun!

From the moment he appears, Varney steals the whole show. He plays the mannerly, aristocratic host with skill on the level of Dracula, but where Dracula's act is laden with undertones of subtle, building horror, Varney's oozes camp. He could not be more obviously a vampire; he knows this and leans into it. He's having fun. He's living deliciously. I'm obsessed with him.

"Are you unwell, sir?" said Sir Francis Varney, in soft, mellow accents, as he handed a chair to the bewildered Henry. "God of Heaven!" said Henry; "how like!" "You seem surprised, sir. Have you ever seen me before?" Sir Francis drew himself up to his full height, and cast a strange glance upon Henry, whose eyes were rivetted upon his face, as if with a species of fascination which he could not resist.

"You know, from common report, that we have had a fearful visitor at our house." "A vampyre, I have heard," said Sir Francis Varney, with a bland, and almost beautiful smile, which displayed his white glistening teeth to perfection.

"Nay, Henry," whispered Mr. Marchdale, "it is scarcely civil to tell Sir Francis to his face, that he resembles a vampyre." "I must, I must." "Pray, sir," interrupted Varney to Marchdale, "permit Mr. Bannerworth to speak here freely. There is nothing in the whole world I so much admire as candour."

The trap of manners is back, and boy does Varney skewer Henry to the wall with it. Poor Henry goes completely to pieces at the first sight of Varney, spending the entire conversation on the back foot. Varney, meanwhile, seems to take great delight in winding him up, playing the part of the gracious (and oblivious) host while simultaneously dropping outrageously unsubtle hints. On a different protagonist this approach might prove fatally dangerous to him, but Henry is no Jonathan Harker, lacking both the latter's ability to play along with the vampire's social games, as well as his murderous determination. It's a good thing for Henry that Marchdale is here to mediate things somewhat; I can only imagine how much more disastrously a solo meeting between him and Varney might have gone.

Varney's smooth facade falters only once, when he bumps his arm on a chair and can't help wincing in pain - although I have to wonder if this wasn't an intentional move on his part, given how blatant he's been so far. "Ooh ouchie I hurt my arm...oh it's nothing, sir, I only tripped and skinned my elbow, barely a flesh wound. I definitely did not get shot at multiple times from point blank range, perhaps while I was breaking into a house. That would be outrageous."

Henry attempts to play along with Varney's 5D chess game for a bit, without much success.

"How true it is, Mr. Bannerworth, that in the midst of life we are in death." "And equally true, perhaps," said Henry, "that in the midst of death there may be found a horrible life." "Well, I should not wonder. There are really so many strange things in this world, that I have left off wondering at anything now." "There are strange things," said Henry. "You wish to purchase of me the Hall, sir?" "If you wish to sell." "You—you are perhaps attached to the place? Perhaps you recollected it, sir, long ago?" "Not very long," smiled Sir Francis Varney. "It seems a nice comfortable old house; and the grounds, too, appear to be amazingly well wooded, which, to one of rather a romantic temperament like myself, is always an additional charm to a place."

"The house, no doubt, has suffered much," said Henry, "within the last hundred years." "No doubt it has. A hundred years is a tolerable long space of time, you know." "It is, indeed. Oh, how any human life which is spun out to such an extent, must lose its charms, by losing all its fondest and dearest associations." "Ah, how true," said Sir Francis Varney.

He's trying, bless him, but he's not nearly enough levels deep into the mind games. Varney already knows you know, Henry, you're not going to bait him into saying he's a vampire outright.

Next: Henry shows an embarrassing lack of object permanence

[azure-steel]

@mercyxkilling​ said: “can i kiss you?” other crew members be damned, she didn’t care. let them have their show if they wanted to watch. Send "Can I kiss you?" to see how my muse responds - No Longer Accepting

Pls accept and enjoy this lil ficlet about these babs. Because of you my adoration for this franchise has be revived TENFOLD and I just can’t get enough of these two being so disgustingly adorable together.

I adore you and your amazing muse so much, and I should tell you more   (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

It All Happens In The Mess Hall~Cloud x Mercy a Mass Effect Story.

It was possibly the one place aboard Mercy’s ship where Cloud spent the majority of his time, that and this was where his relationships with the rest of the crew members began to gain any real traction. A neutral ground where it became so very apparent that almost every member of this ragtag group was here for the same reason. To earn a few credits and perhaps sate a thirst for a little adventure. 

And they all loved their captain with every fibre of their being. 

Cloud had spent the initial weeks of his time amongst the crew largely by himself, but this was nothing really new; naturally coy the task of attempting to relate to others was laborious at best. Even as a member of T’Loak’s court had he been a man one on his own, not that there was any love lost there whatsoever. It had never truly been a problem, not when alcohol and red sand was in copious supply and enough of an escape from the arduous day to day life living amongst the rest of the filth occupying the Omega station. Moreover this environment was so wholly different, wholesome almost, to a fault, and the longer he spent on the outside of this tight-knit collective, the longing to be included began to eat away at him. Often would he remove himself from the hall when the crew would filter in, sensing all those eye puncturing the flesh between otherwise broad shoulders. They didn’t trust him, and they had every reason to be wary.

Shotgun - a battle worn Krogan mercenary - was the first to approach him here in the mess hall, though it was after Cloud had all but shit himself believing this guy was about to pop his head like a zit (Listen... this bastard is BIG and looks very angry almost always, can’t blame a guy for feeling just a tad intimidated beneath his shadow) that he came to realise Shotgun was very interested in the firearm he was servicing at that time. 

A rather worn and very well loved M-300 Claymore - A Krogan weapon. 

A common ground was established in that moment, taking root and from that grew an unlikely friendship between them, and for a time the pair were seemingly inseparable. It was the first time in a long while in which Cloud was reduced to fits of laughter at the Krogan’s many stories, and, boy, did he have a lot of those. Maybe some were a little far fetched and embellished, but it really didn’t matter. The guy was hilarious, and Strife very much enjoyed his company, even if the guy liked to overshare on occasion. Discovering that male Krogan have four testicles dangling between their legs was enough nightmare fuel to keep the blond awake for two nights straight after the fact. And needless to say maintaining eye contact with Shotgun had been a little more difficult than usual for a few days until Strife had eventually gotten over himself. At least he knew where the term ‘QUADS’ originated now... 

No wonder Krogan were so pissed about the Genophage, all things considered of course; these guys were clearly breeding machines as well as living breathing tanks, evolved over millennia for the very purpose of brutal warfare, civil or otherwise. It seemed the Salarians and the Turians had a lot to answer for.  

Still, oversharing and absurd knowledge about alien reproductive organs aside, the mess hall, and Shotgun’s kinship was the beginning of Cloud’s gradual unification with the rest of the team. As far as he was concerned, Mercy had very little to do with that aspect, though he knew very little of the woman and what gears she was working behind the scenes. He was, unfortunately not privy to the private smiles she kept hidden in the shadows when she would spy his social development amongst the men she cared so deeply for; he had no true reason at that point to believe she even cared about it. Though Cloud had every reason to figure that simply having him onboard, despite the toxic levels of contention his presence here initially - and unsurprisingly - wrought, was enough for her men to decide that he was, at the very least, useful; a first for him really. 

But Shotgun had done well to push open the door left ajar by their comrades and gave Cloud a golden opportunity to further still this usefulness he’d never been able to appreciate before now. He would help Vinnie during meal prep even if Cloud was only the busboy for the most part, setting tables, clearing them, washing dishes; all part and parcel of mucking in as it were and it seemed the older guy appreciated the aid. And the Turian Brothers - Adavixus and Artisius - would sometimes invite him to play in their tournaments of Numerfictil whenever Cloud was present in the mess; a game very similar to dominoes where decorative tiles with strange symbols were used to beat those already placed upon the board. It took a while for Strife to learn what each symbol meant, but the brother’s persevered with the highest level of patience. Other crew mates would join on occasion, bringing to the table cloudy bottles of homebrewed lager fermented from alien fruits beneath one of many heating vents on the ship; often pungent, almost always violently potent in which contests between the humans were born to see who could stomach the most ‘poison’ in one sitting. 

Cloud almost always lost those bets and would suffer greatly for them the following day. Though never would he complain, even when the hangover rendered him practically useless and crumpled agonisingly deep in the darkest recesses of the communal shower block. To be gathered amongst comrades around the smallest table in the mess, to be shunted playfully via the shoulders and included in the guffaws and jests from the mouths of men hailing from all walks of life and the far reaches of the galaxy, he’d be stupid to trade it in for anything else. They’d dubbed him Strifey - and he liked that more than he cared to mention. To be included, to form meaningful bonds, for all of his sorry life, that was all he’d ever wanted and it had taken him until now to even realise it.  

He was beginning to like it here, along with all the colourful people surrounding him. How strange it felt to begin associating a star-fairing ship as home. 

The trust was building, and for the first time for as long as he could even dare to recall, Cloud was being greeted with welcoming nods, hard slaps to the shoulder and raised hands on his commute to the days tasks either in the mess or the engine room where Darius resided, a rather strapping Italian-American man honing a booming voice but with the patience of a doting father teaching his son how to maintain the family vehicle. He was beginning to enjoy the eyewatering stink of engine oil and general man stink, and Darius was all about teaching his new protégé everything he could about ‘Nova’s’ inner workings and how to maintain her. 

Even his relationship with the previously emotionally elusive captain had begun to flourish. In the beginning Cloud was under no illusion that his biotic abilities were of some great interest to her. She honed similar attributes even if her gift was granted to her under very different circumstances. Yet Mercy would pick at him, complain about the state of his armour - as shoddy as it was but fit like an old favourite slipper hence his reluctance to do anything about it - though with an air of comedic affection laced from an otherwise viciously sharp tongue. On occasion she would reprimand him when his performance was lacklustre, when his actions or lack thereof became detriment to the collective of her crew. He didn’t like those days, to be reminded of his flaws and failings, and yet, from those instances began what could be considered a strange flurry of respect for a woman deemed hostile from anyone on the outside looking in. Because never in those instances did she beat him down, but drove into him how she didn’t believe he was better than what he was giving, but that she knew it to be true. Another instance where, for the first time, he was given food for thought, something to chew and improve on. 

Some hard lessons were learned this way, and her methods were brutal often resulting in volatile spats the whole ship could hear, yet somehow Mercy seemed to know that a firm hand was needed to keep the newest member of her team grounded, and no mistake was ever repeated twice. Yet after all of that, apologies for her hard hitting words would be delivered mostly without fail, once again, in the comfort of the mess hall. Cloud, of course, would take them with the upmost humility. She was the captain after all, her word aboard her ship, was as good as the word of any God. 

Despite all of this, with every mission Strife would be on the front lines with her, standing down heavy fire from the enemy and teaming up with this formidable and outrageously powerful woman to deliver precise and deadly attacks. And it was the culmination of that power, coupled with the harsh demands to be better where a whole new problem began to develop deep in the recesses of his cluttered head. Cloud didn’t recognise it at first, all he knew for certain was he was frustrated, and Mercy’s presence seemed to aggravate that issue exponentially. It wasn’t until she invited a stranger into her cabin some weeks after that the penny finally dropped. 

He was falling for her. And the sight of her bringing that man into her intimate space was a pain like no other, so much so that it fractured something inside of him he wasn’t sure he could even fix.

White-hot jealousy began to override his good senses, unable to shake the notion that it wasn’t him occupying the spaces in her bed, and throwing himself into work was doing so very little to alleviate the devastation of - once again - being on the outside looking inward. Wishing to be a part of something so very far out of his reach. 

But what could he do? Cloud knew of other crew members trying their luck and getting knocked back. He didn’t think he could handle that level of humiliation, and so he settled into a foul gloomy limbo of wanting her and never being able to have her. Residing to live vicariously through his own sexual fantasies and fucking his pillow whenever he was alone. Pathetic didn’t even come close to how he viewed his own behaviour, when he was reserved and snippy with her, yet utterly miserable was much closer to the truth than he truly wanted to admit, even to himself. Strife had even tried Mercy’s methods of attempting to deal with his predicament, inviting attractive tail onto her ship with the intent of getting his end away in a bid to alleviate the intolerable pressure building in his loins. A failed attempt at best when all he was able to talk about was his disdain for his captain and how she made him feel so damn desperate. Needless to say that instance was a flop at its very finest. 

It was Mercy he wanted, not some loose broad dragged in from a club. No one else's interest could even come close to what he wanted from her. 

Though it wasn’t long after that instance that things began to change; where he would catch her watching him only for her quickly turn away when their gazes locked. Where she would begin to make excuses to touch him, softly, so tenderly, be that with fingers through his hair in the guise of innocent curiosity, or the slow sensual dances illuminated by the strobe lights of every bar and club they’d visit. Where hands roamed over broad planes of covered flesh and set his soul on fire. Where times spent simply talking in the observation deck had drawn them closer, noses bumping together while he’d begin to drown in the warm honey of her eyes, swept away on the winds of every exhale, unable to fight against the gravity of her, and relishing how his heart pounded against the walls of his chest in eager anticipation of that very first kiss. 

Cloud was so fucking ready to fall in love with her, to plummet beyond that point of no return only encouraged by her imploring hands and those heavy lust filled hues. To kiss her, touch her, make sweet love to her and make her his. Even if they were interrupted each and every time by convenient obstacles in the form of Benny and Vinnie. 

It all came to a head during one of their many sparring sessions, tensions released as they fucked like animals on the cold floor of the training room, where she’d cried his name and nothing in the galaxy had ever sounded so sweet, where the sharp grazes running across his shoulders had never hurt so good, marked to claim him as hers together with the sensual rocking of hips and desperate pleading moans. And there on after Cloud was common presence in those spaces in her bed, peeling away the layers, touching her in her most intimate places, securing hot wet kisses against scorched flesh while she straddled his waist and rode him beyond that sheer edge of rapture itself. No amount of booze nor substances could compare to this addiction, just her hands on him was enough to make him hard, just her lips moaning his name hotly against the shell his ear enough to make him cum, for her and only her over, and over, and over again. 

Wild and untameable was she, and he wouldn’t change her for all the credits in all of Citadel Space; no finer feeling had he ever experienced to know that she, this apparition of everything Cloud knew to be beautiful, inside and out, had chosen him in the end.  

Keeping their relationship from the rest of the crew was impossible, they were too obvious with how they merely looked at one another, the way they had started to protect one another in battle, how they were caught so many times locking lips within the shadows of corridors. Yet even then, everyone knew, if the knowledge of their relationship wasn’t widely accepted as being out in the open, it was still very much common knowledge. And for her men at least, harbouring that information was insufferable. 

Until one day, in the usual place where the crew gathered, where she would muscle Shotgun out of his seat next to Cloud to claim it as her own, and she looks at him from beneath those long dark lashes and the words “Can I kiss you?” oozed from her lips like the finest syrup. Cloud gazes back, baby blue’s dropping to her mouth before flickering upwards once more to meet with those gorgeous honey glazed eyes. He doesn’t offer an answer, least not a verbal one, choosing instead to close that distance, his mouth enclosing those glorious luscious lips with the softest of coquettish sighs. 

And much to the gleeful appreciation of the crew sat amongst them, jeering and whooping in a sort of celebration for this affection they’d found in the most unexpected of circumstances. 

Because like everything here aboard the Nova, it all happens in the mess hall. 

[tessatechaitea]

Justice Society of America #4 (1992)

Ultrahumanite exhibits all the characteristics of a man happy to be reunited with friends: cheerily laughing, bright happy expression, hands on hips, weirdly-shaped massive hard-on.

Forgive me for the erect penis joke but I felt it was in the tradition of Grunion Guy. You might find it funny if you knew how uncomfortable it made me to type it and how worried I was for a second that my mother might see it. But then I realized that if my mom saw it, it would mean my mom read Grunion Guy's blog, and then I almost threw up. That would be so embarrassing! Normally I would be on the side of the Justice Society of America because they are the good people with the good values. But how good are their good values if they are trying to stop a job creator and upstanding corporate citizen like Ultrahumanite who is just trying to run his Ultragen business the best way he knows how: with stormtrooper bodyguards to defend labs where they experiment on animal-human hybrids? Anything that hurts corporate profits is a bad thing for capitalism and the Justice Society of America should know that, being that they have "America" right there in their name. Although they also have "Society" in their name and that is a bird whistle for socialists. The bird whistle is the dog whistle of the left because it is more pleasant to listen to and it isn't aggravating or obnoxious and it makes the world a better place for everybody (except people who hate birds and probably own guns to shoot those stupid birds. Stupid birds. So dumb).

Oh no! Nobody warned these old timers that we aren't doing prison rape jokes anymore!

Wildcat has some great words of wisdom in that previous panel. It is the most scienciest science statement I have ever read (unless it was the mathiest math statement): "If X did not happen, Y would have happened! Thusly I have proved we are better than you! QED! In your face, Ultrahumanite!" Whenever I would lose a game of Dungeons & Dragons with my friends Bullpup and McGroover, I would say, "Oh yeah? Let's see you make a delicious sandwich!" Then they would back down and they would be all, "Yes, you are correct, Pickle Boy. You are the better friend with the most useful skills and we are only good at pretending to slaughter Kobold families for copper coins." That's pretty funny if you realize Dungeons & Dragons is about adventurers invading the lairs of creatures to steal their material possessions! Doctor Mid-Nite does not quip with the others because he might be dead. Do not forget these guys are really old! It does not matter how many muscles they have or what kind of cardio breathalyzer tests they can pass; they still have super old bones and a lifetime of clogged arteries. One slip or the slightest bit of extra exertion could mean Stroke City or Brokenhipsville for these cool cats! That is old person slang! It is very humorous!

Now they goof on his stutter? I am beginning to wonder who the real villains are in this story!

Look how happy the Ultrahumanite is! And these old guys have been nothing but bitter, cynical old winds from the butt! Plus he is a successful businessman and scientist who has created life! It sounds like he has turned over a new leaf now that he no longer has to steal bodies. I am not ignoring the laboratory full of hybrid creatures; I'm just going to assume that they were all volunteers until it is proven otherwise. You cannot go through life never eating the buttered bread that fell on the floor buttered side down! Ultrahumanite decides to recount his past for some reason. This made me laugh because I was thinking, "Yeah! They are old men. They cannot remember stuff from so long ago and also they have enlarged prostates!"

But which is actually worse: making fun of somebody's disability or sympathizing with Nazis? I've got some hard questions to answer!

Some things are unforgivable but one thing I think we can all agree to forgive is a hot woman who sided with the Nazis.

How does a huge ape body reflect the Ultrahumanite's desires? Please do not answer, "He loves to copulate with monkeys," because that's what I an suggesting by the question and you would look like one of those fools on Twitter who thinks they are hilarious by restating somebody's joke in a less subtle manner.

Ultrahumanite continues to explain how he became such a pillar of the business community. It is as boring as you would expect a PowerPoint presentation from a business man would be. That was probably the joke! Why is not the trademarked name "PowerPoint" two words? If you are going to bother capitalizing the second "P", you might as well just separate the words. Maybe it was somebody's online name when they were fourteen years old. It is always a smart decision to just run the two words together rather than separating them with an underscore. And it is easier to read when the second word is capitalized (as opposed to every other word capitalized or just the consonants. I do not understand young people). Nobody remembers to put underscores in when searching for a name online!

"Ultrahumanite! You are experimenting on innocent people, ruining the environment, causing unknown amounts of damage to the populace of every city where one of your labs operates but Ted Grant and the world just want to know one thing: was that hot Nazi body the real you because 'Rrrrrow!'"

You think I am making a joke but I don't joke about things that I don't joke about and one of those things is that Ted Grant has previously expressed interest in cultivating an intimate relationship with hot Nazi Ultrahumanite. Specifically, he said earlier that she "swept him off his feet." He only used that phrase so Al could make a joke about how they were hanging upside down so the sweeping off of feet is still happening. But I think, in his heart, he wanted to say, "She made me spontaneously become a man every time we wrestled. Is that okay under the Hays Code? Can I get away with that amount of innuendo?!" The Ultrahumanite has to go deal with The Flash who has literally suddenly appeared. Weird how the word "literally" is never actually needed when it is used properly. I guess using it in a hyperbolic and exaggerated fashion is really its only job. While Ultrahumanite is gone, Doctor Mid-Nite "double joints" his wrists to escape. I'm pretty sure Grunion Guy's wrists were double jointed by the amount of times he wrote about masturbating. He was a crude jerk but I still hope he rests in peace in that pauper's cemetery down by the toxic sludge factory. Doctor Mid-Nite takes on the guards while The Atom and Wildcat rush out to save The Flash who is The Flash and almost certainly does not need saving. While Doctor Mid-Nite is beating up the guards, he suddenly becomes a stand up comedian. Was I wrong to assume he was an actual doctor? Is that just his stage persona? I would tell you why his jokes were funny if they were but I cannot figure them out. Why is this an old joke (and if it is, why would he even retell it when it is nonsense): "I know you're out there because I can hear you breathing"? The Flash gets encased in some living green goo that absorbs heat and kinetic energy which might also be a definition of heat? I'm just a sandwich maker slash writer's assistant who has never once showed an ounce of curiosity about the real world so forgive me for languishing in my ignorance. At least I own a thesaurus. Back in Gotham City, Jesse Quick appears for a page or two to remind everybody that she exists. "Hello! I am the hot daughter of the infomercial guy! I have also deluded myself into believing a mathematical equation gives me super speed! It makes no sense!" Jesse takes some papers proving that Ultragen is breaking laws so the JSA has the right to beat the crap out of its CEO. For comedic effect, they have a little more confusion over Ultrahumanite's pronouns (which, to be fair, he has not expressed any preference for and doesn't seem to mind using whatever pronouns match the gender he seems to be expressing) before rushing off to punch her in the face. I don't know what pronouns to use either but she was a super hot Nazi so let's just go with that one.

See? She is a scientific genius!

At first I was all, "Oh, big deal! So The Flash is trapped in goo!" And then the Ultrahumanite was all, "You cannot breathe without oxygen!" And then I was all, "Oh no! I had not thought of that! Somebody save him, preferably an old guy from the JSA or I will feel cheated out of my hard earned buck twenty-five." I keep laughing at that previously scanned panel and how Wildcat and The Atom are hiding behind trees the way characters do in comic strips. So ridiculous! It is even funnier if you remember that they are old men! I bet you are laughing a lot more now! Doctor Mid-Nite arrives because he "smoke bombed" with his previous stand-up gig. Get it?! If you understood the play on the word "bomb" there and that I meant the fight against the guards when I said "stand-up gig," you would be cracking up like crazy!

Yeah. A smoke bomb! We all know that is where he keeps them!

The Flash breaks free and Doctor Mid-Nite punches Ultrahumanite in the nose, breaking it. Ultrahumanite is so vain that he falls to the ground, defeated! And that is when the Calvary arrives! That is funny because I used the wrong word and now you are picturing a crucified Jesus riding up on a horse to save the day instead of Green Lantern, The Flash, and Jesse Quick arriving on a Green Lantern construct! Justice Society of America #4 Rating: A. I have not read as many comic books as Grunion Guy but this one seemed pretty good in comparison to the ones I have read, like WildC.A.T.S. #1 and pick any issue you want of Youngblood. One more "What gender is Ultrahumanite?!" joke for the road!

Alan felt this was the kind of thing a heterosexual would say. It's funny because he "New 52" comes out of the closet later!

[glassesandkim]

am i tripping here or did nico look like he was trying real hard to control his expressions around link when link told him off? idk i love link but it definitely felt like he was being unfair and taking out his anger (??) on nico and levi and what with the earlier line from nico about how he's not gonna show favoritism link implying that he's doing just that even though levi's been working his ass off and they both know it, that line must have been particular aggravating for him

It was a little unfair but I get it. I work in a hospital environment too and when things get chaotic, we all get a little short with each other because there are urgent things and patients we all need to take care of. We just need to remember not to take it personally and at the end of the day, so much happens that I can’t remember or care anymore that someone was short with me. Sometimes my coworkers will apologize to me at the end of the day and I’m just like, “I don’t even remember that anymore. That was 10 hours ago” LOL

In terms of TV though, I think the scene was to serve a few purposes: 1) It let the audience know that Link knows and is cool about the fact that Nico and Levi are together/gay together, 2) Link, normally cool headed, is clearly aggravated and frustrated about the situation, 3) Nico fighting for Levi as a skilled surgeon, 4) maybe set up the storyline for a future surgical patient where Levi gets to do some procedures solo, and finally, 5) for comedic effect with the whole butterflies thing.

Also Link is kind of “mean/sassy” towards Nico rofl. The first episode they were together, Link didn’t want to let Nico do a procedure because he wanted to do it because it was too cool. I think, for now, that’s just their working relationship and it helped to paint Link’s character into a really ~cool, fun, loose-go with the flow~ surgeon. 

[plotlinehotline]

"Overused” is Overused: Understanding Clichés and Tropes in Your Writing

I hate writing advice.

That’s my little tongue-in-cheek joke for this post, because the irony of what I’m doing literally as I type that statement is not lost on me. It’s true, though— I honestly think that advice is one of the most damaging things to a writer’s mindset. It makes them second-guess their methods, their ideas, and even whether they truly have what it takes to be a *~*writer*~* in the eyes of the rest of the world.

It’s a truly unfortunate thing, because it’s so important for writers to be able to share their experiences and successes. The problem is that these experiences get passed around in a game of It’s-Been-Ten-Years-Since-This-Essay-Was-Written Telephone, and the original intent of the advice (and sometimes its actual meaning!) gets lost along the way. They become these overarching blanket statements that offer broad limitations without reason or potential alternatives.

One of the greatest offenders of this is the idea that you ought to avoid clichés in writing. I’ve been part of online writing communities for a while now, and by far the most common concern I see is some variant of, “I’m thinking about doing [x], but I’m worried it’s too cliché”. It’s an epidemic amongst writers, and it absolutely infuriates me that so many writers have come to doubt their own work just because some vague internet grapevine has told them that clichés are to be avoided at all costs.

Because I’m so infuriated by this (and because I’m super extra and actually have a relevant platform on which to discuss this), I’m going to take some time to explain the actual meaning of this particular piece of “advice” and why it’s far less of a concern than you’ve been lead to believe.

To begin, it’s very important to address the fact that there’s a fundamental misunderstanding surrounding this idea. This starts with the fact that the terms cliché and trope are mistakenly thought to be synonymous, or otherwise become confused with one another. Before I move forward, I want to offer the proper definition for both.

A cliché is a particular phrase that’s been used often enough to become commonplace. In writing, they’re generally used to create a specific image or tone that we can take for granted that the reader will recognize.

She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. It was raining cats and dogs, but she still stood with her arms to the sky, laughing like she didn’t even notice. She turned to me and winked, and I felt my face go as red as a beet. In that moment, I knew that I’d give my right arm to be with her.

A trope is a convention used in writing to give meaning to aspects of your story. They’re used as storytelling shorthand to attach identifiable qualities to your plot and characters— recurring themes that exist throughout history to guide stories.

Examples of tropes include the hero’s journey, the character’s fatal flaw, the comic relief character, the hero with a dark past, and the Mom Friend.

I’ll be the first to admit that there are similarities between the two— both are used to help readers understand parts of your story, and tropes can be specific phrases as shown in the cliché example above. The key is to separate the two in your mind and think about them only by the definitions above.

It’s important to do this, because part of the central misunderstanding is that “cliché” is often used in daily life to describe ideas as a whole that have been overused (think of the “I’m holding up the tower!” pic that literally everyone takes at the Leaning Tower of Pisa). I get the confusion and concern here, I really do. The most important thing to remember is that clichés have a specific meaning when it comes to writing. No matter how often you may see a particular theme or character arc, it is and always will be a trope.

With that out of the way, I’d like to discuss why this should be good advice. The truth of the matter is that clichés should be avoided where possible because they give the impression of lazy writing. Writers and readers alike take the imagery for granted and rely on these tried-and-true phrases to add physicality to their prose instead of finding unique descriptors; while it certainly gets the point across, it comes across as more of a 2D picture from a magazine than a scene from the movie adaptation we all know our books are destined to have.

To illustrate this, let’s take a look at the example above with all of the clichés removed:

The world had never experienced a beauty like hers— neither had I. I just watched as she stood there, arms to the sky as the rain pelted her relentlessly, soaking into her clothes and hair. She smiled as it ran down her face, laughing at each raindrop, finally turning to me and winking. She could have just been blinking the water out of her eye, I don’t know, but my face was hot and I suddenly found it hard to look at her. I stared at my shoes, willing them to take a step for once so I could go and join her.

Clichés fall flat because they aren’t specific to you as a writer— they aren’t at all indicative of your unique style. Your story loses so much when it’s not told in your own voice, so you shouldn’t rely on old phrases just because you know people will automatically understand them.

While the argument could be made that tropes fall into this same category, I would point out that tropes serve a deeper purpose than clichés. Where a cliché would act as filler, a trope would act as a foundation. Tropes are tools (most frequently, structural tools) that guide the story through plot/character development and tonal themes to give your reader a general idea of what they’re signing up for when they read your story.

Example Time!

Say that you wanted to write someone a love poem. You do your research, sifting through decades of poems to pick out the best phrases and metaphors, and you end up with the following:

Your eyes are as deep as an oceans Your eyes shine like stars They’re like windows to your soul I get lost in them every time I look

The poem is essentially a cut-and-paste of phrases from every cheesy romance novel out there, and will most likely leave the object of your affections wondering why you’re so obsessed with their eyeballs.

Alternatively, you hand them this:

Roses are red, Violets are blue...

and things get a little more interesting. Sure, the opening to the poem is a cliché in and of itself, but it sets the stage for whatever you want to fill it with. You could go with something traditional and make it cutesy, you could subvert the trope by dropping the rhyme scheme for dramatic or comedic effect, you could even revive the old 2015 “gun” meme. The world is your oyster!

The point is, the poem hasn’t been written for you. Sure, it follows a similar structure to poems that have been written before, but where you take it is entirely up to you— the opening lines are simply the prompt to make way for your own creative license.

Let’s be real, here. 

I get that everyone wants to make something new and exciting that comes entirely from their own imagination. It’s the dream! The idea that anything we write could potentially be sourced back to an existing piece is super aggravating, and you don’t have to tell me how discouraging it is to have something that you’re genuinely proud of suddenly fall flat because someone says, “Hasn’t the teen dystopia thing been done to death?” or “Didn’t Star Trek do an episode like this?” or “Penney, this is just a Star Trek fanfiction with the names changed to Dirk and Spork, please stop.”

To be totally honest, there is not (nor will there ever be) a single piece of writing on this earth that’s 100% original. Everything is based off of a story that came before it, or had plots and characters that were cherry-picked from the millions of plots and characters that existed previously.

Even more honestly, people like it that way. Tropes help us to identify our favorite genres and characters, guide us to stories that we may like based on those preferences, and open our eyes to new stories and authors that follow those tropes in a slightly different way. 

In short, embrace your tropes. Learn to recognize them and how they can be used and reimagined, and build your story out of the wonderful things that come of that knowledge. Be like me and waste a billion hours in the rabbit hole that is TV Tropes!

Most importantly, write the way you want to write and don’t let anyone else tell you how to do it. They’ll have their time when you’re ready for peer review. Right now is your time to do as you please, ignore all writing advice you see online, make a few mistakes, and do it all over again because that’s what writers do! Get out there and make some beautiful, cliché-ridden, trope-y masterpieces.

Love, Penney

[taz-writes]

I was scrolling through your blog and saw something about a mermaid incident in class... date I ask for the story behind that?

I will absolutely tell you the story behind that, because it is equal parts baffling and hilarious, even now an entire year later. 

It begins… with my creative writing minor. Last fall I took a class called Survey of Forms: Fiction, which was an introduction to the canon of literary fiction, as well as literary fiction writing and basic style skills like characterization, narrative voice, dialogue, et cetera. Sounds pretty typical, right? Well, my professor was a fun guy, and one of our assignments around the middle of the semester was to write a rant. What sort of rant, you may ask? Literally anything. It was an exercise in narrative voice, he wanted 2-4 pages of a first-person tirade on something that you had strong opinions about, to be read out loud in class the next week. We had the option to write as a character from our short story WIPs or to write as ourselves. 

I chose to write my rant about a subject very near and dear to my heart: mermaids. Specifically, how much I fucking hated them as a child.

A bit of backstory, so you can understand why this got me so incredibly riled: I’m all about fairies. I was the fairy kid. I literally thought I was a fairy princess from outer space until I was, like, 11 or 12 years old. I wanted to have cool magic powers and sparkly wings and all that good stuff! I wanted to fly! I wanted to live in the forest and grant wishes! But like, mermaids are and have always been way more popular. If you’re a little girl who loves mermaids, your options are everywhere. You’ve got mermaid TV shows! Mermaid movies! Mermaid book series! Mermaid-themed makeup, mermaid-themed clothing, mermaid-themed Halloween costumes and lunch boxes and merchandise, mermaid stuff is everywhere. If you’re a little girl who loves fairies… you get, uh, Winx Club? Barbie Fairytopia? And maybe some Disney stuff if you squint. This was before even those Tinkerbell movies went mainstream, and if you were (like me) the sort of tomboy to frown at pink ruffly stuff, then you had absolutely NOTHING. 

And for bonus points, every single one of those fairy things I mentioned? Yeah they have mermaids in them. And the mermaids got overmerchandised, while the fairy MAIN CHARACTERS were neglected. Winx Club has a whole mermaid season, Barbie Fairytopia has mermaids and got a freaking mermaid-based sequel and never did justice to the actual fairy protagonists until long after I’d outgrown Barbie media. So like, I’m salty. I literally started writing Feilan because I was tired of every story with fairies being either immature Disney shit for 5-year-olds or edgy grimdark YA novels with too much kissing and inappropriate language for baby 12/13-year-old Taz’s tastes. I wanted something in between–fairies who weren’t stupid little glittery farts, but who didn’t spend all their time being ~evil and sexy~ or whatever either. If you like mermaid stuff, you can find a zillion different interpretations of merfolk lore, but despite the vast breadth of fae lore the fiction inspired by it only has two real subgenres. Fairies just aren’t as popular. I think they’re coming back a little bit because of SJM and Holly Black, but I HATE SJM’s fae and Holly Black’s are unbearably edgy, so that’s not really a good thing? 

On top of this, I am the type of person who clings very tightly and personally to minor things that aggravate me. I’m not sure why, and I wish that wasn’t the case, but at this point I’ve accepted it as part of my personality. It’s very rare that I find something I’m quite so passionately mad about, but when I latch onto a pet peeve I take it seriously. You can’t argue with me about the meaningless petty grudges, those are my lifeblood, and the mermaid thing is one of the oldest pet peeves I have. 

Back to the topic! The rant I wrote for Survey of Forms was the above tirade, expanded over several pages with sources cited. I was pretty proud of it! I came up with some really brutal turns of phrase, I thought my ~authorial voice~ was top of the line, it was a good rant. Time rolled around for us to share our rants with the class, and I gave a fabulous dramatic reading. My comedic timing is one of my strengths as an actress. 

Everything went as normal for the next few rants… and then, one of my quieter classmates began to read his rant. It sounded fine for the first few sentences, a discussion of traditional elements and their thematic associations okay whatever… but it became increasingly obvious, as he went on, that this wasn’t what he’d written. No, he was improvising a speech on the spot, because he was SO upset that I didn’t like mermaids that he had to tell me exactly how and why I was wrong about my entire worldview. 

In public. In front of our ENTIRE CLASS. 

He explained how mermaids belong to elemental water, and they’re valuable to modern society. See, water is the element of empathy and compassion, and those things are so rare in modern American society! It was almost a year after the 2016 elections, and our politics were so vicious and divisive, and the influence of water’s empathy was dwindling and he could see it burning through society! An over-emphasis on elemental air and its transience was leading to the rise of fake news and misinformation and alternative facts, elemental fire led to rage and passion and an inability to think logically, and we needed water to balance everything! So in fact, we need more mermaid stories! Because mermaid stories teach us to feel empathy! And the lack of water’s empathy, this growing hatred of mermaids (and by extension anything water-based)–that was the reason America was falling apart! That’s why Trump was elected! Because… uh, because I don’t like mermaids? 

Yeah, this guy basically implied that I was the reason Trump became president and the media devolved into vitriolic chaos. Because I don’t like mermaids. 

I couldn’t make this shit up on my own if I tried. 

I was absolutely livid, a friend of mine in the same class told me I turned redder than my scarlet school hoodie. I’ve never had the best anger management skills, I was literally shaking in my seat, I was inches away from flipping the table I sat at. I probably would’ve done it, too, if my classmate hadn’t put her boiling hot cup of soup down on it without the lid on. One of the lovely side effects of my ADHD is that sometimes when I get upset, my brain gets so hyperfocused on that one emotion that I’m physically incapable of feeling anything else or even thinking straight, and I can’t snap myself out. Those rages are terrifying. This was one of the worst rages I’ve ever experienced in my life, and I thanked my lucky stars later that I didn’t hurt somebody. I did get to scream at the guy for a couple minutes, but I don’t remember what I actually said. It involved a few physical threats and a lot of being embarrassed in front of my peers. 

Anyways, the professor didn’t even stop this guy, because–like everyone else–he didn’t realize what was going on until it was too late. And once he realized, I guess he froze up or something? I don’t know. I lost my fucking mind about this, I went into my next class and screamed for like fifteen minutes. My poor Music History teacher was so confused. 

The Survey professor emailed me and asked me to stop by his office later, and I thought I was going to get lectured for throwing a fit in class. I used to throw a lot of tantrums in grade school and even when I grew out of that, I was always the person blamed when an argument or fight broke out with me involved, so I had some muscle memory… the professor actually wound up apologizing. He told me he just didn’t know what to do in the moment, and he was really nice about it, and by then I’d calmed down enough that I wasn’t literally frothing with rage. It was very very surreal. I felt quite validated. 

Mermaid guy wound up writing me a length apology email. I’m pretty sure the professor put him up to it. He went on to explain that he was from Singapore and he was raised right by the water and so it was really important to him, his culture has some kind of mermaid thing that he’s emotionally attached to, et cetera… He seemed very sincere about it, so I accepted the apology, but I still have no freaking clue what possessed him to derail the entire class in order to argue over my goofy childhood grudge. It’s hilarious in retrospect, I just can’t even begin to understand the logic. I still have that email saved because it was so mind-blowingly absurd. 

So yeah, that’s the Mermaid Incident. I wish I could say it went down in university history but I’m not sure if anyone remembered it longer than a week or so after it happened. Nobody ever mentioned it again. 

And despite said classmate’s best efforts, I still have a grudge against mermaids. They’re very nice in their own dedicated media, but if I see them popping up like plot cancer in stories you told me were about fey? I will come for you. 

[theeurekaproject]

Alienigena

“You know,” Athena said, “I never would have pegged us as the type who’d be good at politics.” She fidgeted with the sleeve of her white dress, which didn't look like something she would ever willingly wear. Acidalia had suggested it and Carina had forced Athena into it; she didn’t seem particularly happy about the garment, and it was bound to end up in a crumpled ball of fabric on the floor by the end of the meeting.

“Well, we are astrophysicists,” Carina said, trying to hide the fact that her voice was shaking. She was also dressed in a gown that seemed to expensive for someone of her stature, and she felt just as awkward in it as she probably looked. It was a gorgeous dress that most likely cost more than her rent, but that didn’t make her feel any more comfortable in it—it was so clearly made for Acidalia that it felt like every seam and piece of fabric was in the wrong place. The skirt was too long, the waist was too small, and the chest and hips were too large. Carina felt like a knockoff Imperatrix, like an off-brand version of Acidalia that one might find in the bargain bin of a big box store. Her very un-Imperial short, straight hair didn’t help matters—no matter how much she wrestled with it, it seemed to settle back into strict bob, and it was too light for Acidalia’s black bobby pins to blend in. She was a stranger in a world she never thought she’d have a place in—all of this was Aleskynn’s territory much more than it was Carina’s.

Then again, Athena looked even worse, so maybe Carina was just overreacting. At least she hadn’t managed to destroy the sleeves of her dress.

“Stop playing with that, you’re ruining it,” she said. “Look, now there are loose threads.” “Well, if they didn’t want me to ruin it, they should have made it sturdier.” Athena pulled on another thread, which created a rippling, cinched effect from the top of the sleeve to the bottom. “This thing is probably more expensive than the Hope Diamond, but it feels like it’s made of paper.” “I mean, it’s made for noblewomen, isn’t it? They don’t do a whole lot of heavy lifting, or any work at all.” Carina couldn’t even remember the last time she’d seen Aleskynn do much of anything, really. Mostly she just sat around and complained, neither of which were the types of activities that would strain clothing.

“Noblewomen or not, if I can’t kick someone’s ass in all my finery, that finery isn’t worth the price,” Athena retorted, frowning down at the glitter that fell from her bodice every time she moved.

Behind them, someone laughed in a way that was instantly recognizable as the stilted chortle of a rich lady—a rehearsed sound somewhere in-between the o~hohoho of an anime ojou and the polite chuckle a parent might do when their child presented them with a crayon drawing. Carina turned around to see Acidalia, leaning against a bulkhead and looking amused. “I quite agree,” she said, smiling slightly. “If you can’t fight in a dress, why wear the dress at all?”

“Then why are you wearing that?” Athena asked, and, for once, Carina had to agree that she was right. Acidalia’s outfit was the epitome of impracticality—it was a cross between a Greco-Roman toga and a very large ballgown, which had been dipped in enough glitter that it could probably blind anyone who looked at it too hard. She was absolutely dripping with jewelry and regalia, which looked like it would hinder more than help her, and she was about five inches taller than she’d been before, meaning she must have been wearing even higher, fancier heels. From the way her skirts swept against the floorboards, Carina could tell she was wearing a crinoline, and several more skirts on top of that. Plus, her waist was cinched so tight that there was no explanation for it other than a very tight corset, which didn’t seem comfortable at all.

“Ballgowns are actually easier to fight in than you might expect,” Acidalia said. “There’s plenty of room for footwork under the skirt, and crinolines are very flexible, or it’d look like you’re walking around with a cage under your dress. And at a certain point, the bigger the skirt, the better—it protects your legs from scratches and hits, and sometimes even laser fire. I have multiple armored skirts.”

“But wouldn’t you trip on the hem?” “Not if you’re graceful about it. It’s usually fine, as long as you don’t try to run backwards.” Athena looked curious. “Hmmm. I’m going to have to test that.” “Don’t. You’ll get a concussion,” Carina warned. “So? I’ve had two concussions and my brain is fi-iiineee.” She slurred the last word for comedic effect, but nobody laughed (though Acidalia did look mildly amused.) “But what about the rest of it? High heels, corsets? Do you just break the heels off?” “You can’t make flats by breaking the heels off of stilettos,” Acidalia said, “but you can always kick them off. And the corsets are usually fine, too. If they’re laced up so you can breathe—which mine always are; Terra’s atmosphere makes it difficult enough for humans to breathe when their lungs aren’t being compressed, and I don’t need to suffocate in the middle of a speech—they aren’t that restrictive. I suppose it would be a problem if someone got you down onto the ground, because they do make it harder—though not impossible—to get up from that position. The worst part about dresses is usually the sleeves.”

“Then I guess it’s good that I completely destroyed mine,” Athena said, completely unashamed. Carina cringed.

Acidalia shook her head. “Not that type of sleeve. It’s the off-shoulder sleeves that are aggravating, because they make it impossible to raise your your arms fully, and if you rip them off, the bodice will slide down your front.” “At least flashing the enemy might distract them,” Athena remarked, and Acidalia laughed the same way a little girl would laugh after hearing something scandalous at a slumber party. How weird was that? Carina thought. This woman had admitted to smashing someone’s skull in—smashing multiple people’s skulls in—and the thought of anything remotely sexual was somehow stranger than that to her. Most people Carina knew had had sexual interactions with other people, but she didn’t know too many perpetrators of homicide.

But was Acidalia really a perpetrator of homicide? That made her sound like a criminal, and she was most definitely not a criminal—at least, not in the traditional sense. Most of her killings could probably be written off as justifiable self-defense; she didn’t seem like the type to take some sort of sadistic pleasure in stabbing people to death. Then again, you never really knew anyone, did you? Acidalia didn’t seem like the type of person who would willingly hang out with Andromeda, either.

Carina didn’t know how she felt about Andromeda. She seemed smart enough, and certainly powerful—her presence was just as imposing as Acidalia’s, if not more so. But there was a roughness, an edge to her, that gave Carina pause. The way she’d spoken about T’s death was so unnecessarily rude and dehumanizing, and the brash way she’d acted about dropping nuclear bombs on people who hadn’t even committed a crime was incredibly concerning. Even though they had only met once and never spoken, Carina got the feeling that Andromeda was the sort of person who thrived on violence—she didn’t exactly seem like a peace-seeker. But maybe peace-seeking wasn’t what warriors were supposed to do, anyway.

***

The journey to the landing site was only a few hours—it would have been much shorter if they weren’t actively trying to avoid detection—but thirty minutes in, Carina already felt like she was suffocating. The Revelation was just as huge as it had been on the way to Mars, but with this many angry, scared people packed inside, it felt so much smaller. Only Acidalia seemed calm, but even then it was difficult to tell if she was really as unaffected as she seemed; she was always so stoic that her emotions were completely unreadable.

As they flew over the starscrapers of Appalachia City, barely far away enough to avoid being seen from the ground, a wave of nausea hit Carina like a hovertrain. She swallowed hard, pushing it down into her chest where it seemed to curl up into a tight little ball of festering worry. For some strange reason, she almost wanted to tell Acidalia about it—Acidalia would know what to do. Acidalia knew everything. But Acidalia was busy studying some very official-looking books in the corner, the kind with gilded edges and embossed covers and paper made from real trees, and even if she wasn’t in a position where interrupting her felt unwise, she was still the Imperatrix Ceasarina. She was not the type of person Carina, or anyone, could really befriend.

Meanwhile, as Acidalia calmly flipped pages and wrote notes in the margins of elaborate books, the others argued and paced and stewed in a sea of barely-concealed, furious anxiety. Across the ship, David Seren and his daughter were engrossed in a screaming match, both insulting each other in Martian Anglicus Carina couldn’t even understand conversationally, while Athena looked on, entertained. Andromeda paced, dragging her one metal leg on the white floor with the strength of an ox, leaving scratches in the marble and looking angry—angry at the circumstances? Angry at herself? The expression on her face didn’t make Carina particularly eager to find out. Then there was Ace—poor Ace, who had lost a brother just as much as the Imperatrix had—who had disappeared with Lyra into a closet and slammed the door shut, barricading anyone from entering. Athena had cracked a joke about the implications, but Carina knew what they were doing in there—crying, mostly. Crying harder than Acidalia ever had or would, or slowly driving themselves mad with regret for what they’d lost.

Look at us, Carina thought. We sure make one hell of a team. A dethroned empress with the world’s worst mother, a Praetor with anger issues, two clueless Martians, two inexperienced Scientias, a Cantator who had stumbled into importance by accident, and a traumatized, depressed super-soldier whose only friend in the world had just died. They could barely even exist on the same starship together; how were they supposed to serve as a delegation? She understood why she and Athena were here—politicians or not, they were astrophysicists, and they had an innate knowledge of both the stars and the organisms that made their homes among them. The presence of the Martians and the Praetor could be justified, too, because they specialized in this type of thing—it wasn’t out of the question for appointed bureaucrats  and wartime leaders to meet with foreign ambassadors. But there was no reason to drag Lyra and Ace into this, especially not when they were so clearly upset. Did they even want to be here? Carina wondered. Some people chased danger like their lives depended on it, but most weren’t willing to throw themselves headfirst into war for the sake of an adrenaline high.  And now that T was dead, they couldn’t have been thinking rationally—they hadn’t been given any time to even process what had happened.

Nobody’s in a good mental state right now, Carina realized. She was terrified, and Athena probably was, too; she was just better at hiding it. The Serens had just effectively lost their home and all their “social points,” whatever those were. Acidalia and Ace and Lyra were all mourning, even if they didn’t show it. Andromeda was likely the most emotionally stable person on the whole Revelation, and she was a complete war hawk. How would they ever talk to the Mira? Acidalia would say something eloquent and political, then Andromeda would follow that up with something crass, and maybe the others would pop into the conversation to offer snippets of expertise, but half of them would be crying the whole time, and Cressida would still be on her phone, and David would stare awkwardly like a politician who didn’t know how to be a politician. And then the Mira would look at them and think really? This is who they sent? and that would be that and they’d be dead, and the war would be lost before it had even begun, and—

“You alright?” Athena asked, appearing behind Carina and making her jump about six feet.

“No,” she said truthfully, “I’m not. I’m scared to death, Athena.” “About what?” “About the nightmare aliens from outer space that have been at war with us for hundreds of years?! How are you not worried about this?” Her hands were shaky, her palms clammy, her voice higher than it normally was. She felt like she was breathing in helium, replacing all of the air in her lungs with squeaky-voiced nerves.

“We’re not dead yet,” Athena shrugged. “Besides, do you really think their ships are that scary looking?” “Well, I wouldn’t know; I’ve never seen one before.” When they were younger, before they were able to do calculus and telemetry, she and Athena had been responsible for tracking Miran starships, but that job mostly involved pressing the tab key on a computer when the numbers on the spreadsheet changed a little too much. It was the most primitive form of tracking—they were just looking at stars and the things that obscured them, and if their light dipped too low when it wasn’t supposed to, the Scientias would mark it for review. It was boring work that never paid off; nearly every foreign body was a planet or a satellite or something else of that nature, and all the other changes in the light were sent off to more experienced people before Athena or Carina got to understand what it was.

“Well,” Athena said, “don’t look now, but I think there’s one behind us.”

“What?”

“Look.” Athena gripped her shoulders and spun her around, sending a cascade of sequins and glitter careening towards the floor and leaving a puddle of pure sparkle. How did Acidalia live like this? Carina thought briefly, before turning to the window. She couldn’t see anything other than a blinding white glow and the rays of light that reflected off the Appalachia City starscrapers.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?” “Watch.” Athena fixed her steel-gray eyes on some invisible object before them, and Carina tried to do the same.

“I don’t see—“ she began, but then she did see, and something in her voice died. She stared up at the ship, a luminescent wall of blue that seemed more like a hovering water droplet than a spacecraft, and tried her hardest to conceptualize the fact that it was real. Fading in and out of her vision like a ghost, the ship didn’t appear very corporeal, but that was just the cloaking—underneath all that, it was as grounded in reality as the Revelation itself, despite its strangeness.

“It’s not what I expected,” Athena admitted, looking at the flickering wall of watery cerulean. “But I guess they’re aliens, so…?” “Yeah,” Carina said. “Aliens.” But, shockingly enough, she wasn’t as afraid as she thought she’d be; the ship looked more like a children’s toy than a military craft, and she couldn’t see any weapons anywhere. They were probably hidden—the Mira were anything but harmless, if they were strong enough to battle Eleutherians for hundreds of years—but they weren’t visible, and that was enough to reassure Carina that she probably wouldn’t be killed just for standing here. If they really meant business, they would have shown up in something more clearly dangerous… right? Acidalia looked up from the watercolored pages of one of her ancient books. “I suppose it’s time, then,” she said, with a deliberately final-sounding sort of calmness. In a massive movement of skirts and fabric, she stood, somehow elegantly staggering under the weight of her own swirling petticoats.

“Already?” Carina just barely squeaked out. “I guess it makes sense, but—“ “Scared?” Athena laughed. “Relax. They’re just, like, mermaids on crack or something.”

“Well, those ‘mermaids on crack’ managed to match us in war for centuries, so, yes, I’m a little nervous,” Carina snapped, flushing. Mermaids on crack was a hell of a way to describe a dangerous enemy, even if they were sparkly and blue. Acidalia looked at her sympathetically. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” she said, clearly trying her hardest to be gentle and nice.

Carina bit her lip. She didn’t want to do this—this place was not her territory. She had no business being here to begin with, and she knew she’d never be able to add anything valuable to the conversation—at least, nothing as valuable as Acidalia would add. But she was also a relatively normal-looking girl who could maybe pass as a rich girl to an uninformed observer, and it’d be simple to masquerade as a noblewoman or a lady-in-waiting as long as she kept her mouth shut and didn’t say anything stupid. The alien ambassadors would doubtlessly be suspicious if Acidalia arrived without an entourage, and that would be bad—the Revolution couldn’t afford to make their leader seem illegitimate in the eyes of the enemy, even if she was a technically illegitimate royal. With a Martian companion, two soldiers, and a battery of ladies-in-in-waiting, Acidalia looked like an empress. Without all of that, she’d look like a fleeing princess ousted from her empire. And sure, Athena and Cressida and Lyra could probably make Acidalia look more legit, but would they really? Athena couldn’t even give a research presentation without cursing, and there was no way Cressida could get through a boring political meeting without checking something on her metadit.

“I’m coming,” Carina decided, trying not to look too afraid. If she was one of the first Eleutherians to peacefully speak to the Mira, she’d make history. And if she died… well, she hoped it was quick.

[timeflies1007-blog]

Doctor Who Reviews by a Female Doctor, Season Five, part II

Please note: these reviews contain spoilers for this season as well as other seasons of the reboot, and contain occasional references to the classic series.

Vampires of Venice: I usually like Toby Whithouse’s writing, and this isn’t really a bad episode on its own terms, but its continuation of the silliness that started at the end of the last episode kind of destroys it for me. There are plenty of good things: the “vampires” are effectively creepy, there are some good supporting performances here from Helen McCrory and Lucian Msamati, Smith gets some good comedy to work with, the episode is well-paced and fairly clever, the scenario of another dying species is a good way of introducing this Doctor’s approach to his actions in the Time War, and we get some intriguing references to the Silence. When the Doctor interacts with Rosanna, the story is vibrant and compelling—the two work together brilliantly, and Venice provides a nice backdrop for their struggle.

However, the Amy/Rory/Doctor romance situation continues to be really unpleasant, to the point where it makes it difficult to enjoy the episode. Part of the issue is that the love triangle is still being played as comedy; poor Rory may not be a fully formed character at this point, but he deserves better than to have the Doctor pop out of a cake at his stag party to announce to everyone that Amy kissed him. Rory does get some good moments in this episode, including the revelation that after the events of “The Eleventh Hour,” he started doing research into sci-fi theories—something which way more characters on shows like this should be doing—and his accusation that the Doctor endangers people by making them want to impress him. The rest of the time, though, he’s just stuck being jealous of the relationship between Amy and the Doctor, and one of his conversations with the Doctor features easily the worst joke of the season: “And you kissed her back.” “No, I kissed her mouth.” Good grief. The general ickiness of the vampire-fish plot makes the stupid love triangle look even worse—the Doctor does at least acknowledge that the effort to kidnap and transform young women so that they can re-people the fish monster race is unusually gross, but having a storyline like this while Amy’s sex life is being mishandled just seems particularly problematic. The actual portrayal of Amy is less troubling than the last scene of the previous episode was, largely because she seems more confused and uncertain and less traumatized, but she’s still a weaker character here than she was in most of the previous episodes. I don’t really have much to say about this episode—it’s an entertaining enough plot, but my general response to the love triangle story is just to shut my eyes, put my fingers in my ears, and wait for it to get better. Fortunately, this is only one episode away, but for now, I would have preferred Venice and its “vampires” if they hadn’t been burdened with the nonsense that the show is currently making Amy go through. C+

Amy’s Choice: “There’s something that doesn’t make sense…let’s go and poke it with a stick” says the Doctor, in a story that pokes at absurdity in a surprisingly delightful way. As the concluding episode in the ill-advised love triangle subplot, this episode should be a disaster, and yet it somehow manages to pull off a difficult story with a huge amount of charm and very little material that is reductive or insulting to the characters. I don’t love the idea of Amy being forced to choose what she wants in a life or death scenario, but this episode is pretty much the best possible version of this plot. It’s helped by a marvelously comedic script—the dialogue sparkles here to a greater extent than almost any other episode this season, giving us a fantastically funny version of the Doctor but also (and perhaps more impressively) of the other major characters as well. “I was promised amazing worlds. Instead I get duff central heating and a weird kitcheny wind-up device” doesn’t seem out of character for Rory, but it portrays his slightly aggravated regular guy persona in a memorable way, something that previous episodes hadn’t really managed. I love Amy going on about Leadworth’s terrible amateur dramatic society, which is about to attempt Oklahoma!, and I love even more her determined assertion that “If we’re going to die, let’s die looking like a Peruvian folk band” as she hands out warm clothing. The Dream Lord gets in some solid insults toward the Doctor--“If you had any more tawdry quirks you could open a tawdry quirk shop” is a pretty true statement, and really makes me want to see what a Tawdry Quirk Shop would look like. Some of the best moments for the Doctor himself come in the form of tiny details; I found his turning the “Open” sign around as he escapes into the shop to be an especially hilarious piece of the Doctor’s bizarre logic. The writers have started to get what kind of lines work best with Smith’s particular brand of quirkiness, and lines like “What a nice bench, what will they think of next?” and “Did I say a nightmare? More of a really good…mare” don’t seem especially funny on their own but they play nicely into the strengths of Smith’s acting.

Beyond the humor, this episode benefits from being immaculately structured. The zooming back and forth between dream worlds, with transitions marked by birdsong, makes for an exhilarating plot, and the continuation of time in both worlds simultaneously adds to the sense of stakes. The frozen TARDIS is a pretty simple idea, but it looks brilliant, and the story of the fantastically-named Mrs. Poggit and the Evil Elderly People is sort of wonderfully ridiculous. The actual choice that Amy has to make is set up as sensitively as the love triangle stupidity permits, and I particularly like that the story separates choosing Rory from choosing the fantasy of domesticity in the first dream world. It initially looks like staying with Rory means committing to the dream of being pregnant and a bit bored in Upper Leadworth, but her eventual realization of her feelings for Rory prompts her to destroy that world. She’s ultimately given a choice between two different versions of her life with Rory, rather than a choice between Rory and the Doctor, and there’s only a little bit of outright competitiveness, so it mostly feels like Amy thinking through what kind of life she wants to pursue with Rory rather than having to pick which man she wants. This is really important to the episode, which would pretty much be a lot of good jokes in the service of a bad, offensive story if it had mishandled the substance of the choices that she’s given here. No one seems to have put any thought whatsoever into how to begin the love triangle in a way that avoided outright character assassination, but there at least appears to have been some thought about how to resolve it without making a mockery of the characters. Amy also has real chemistry with Rory here, especially in the very cute scene in which he cuts off his ponytail. I had no real interest in their relationship after the previous episode, but I’m quite happy with them as a couple here.

A lot of this episode is bright and sunshiny and fun, but it’s also organized around the idea that the darkness in the characters is informing everything that happens. The Doctor claims that it is his darkness alone, but that’s pretty clearly not true, and there’s a lot of fun to be had in trying to figure out which bits of the story came from which character. The secretly sinister version of quiet, peaceful Upper Leadworth is a pretty clear reflection of Amy’s hesitation toward the world that she ran away from, while the frozen, drifting TARDIS is both the Doctor’s worst nightmare and, possibly, an expression of Rory’s uncertainty about whether the life of traveling and adventures is what he wants. The Dream Lord does a good job of taunting the Doctor, noting that his friends never see him again once they’ve grown up, but he’s even better at pointing out Amy’s flawed understanding of the Doctor, including her assertions that he never has to apologize for anything and that he tells her everything. The darkest moment is the first of many “deaths” for Rory, which is memorable mostly for Amy’s certainty that the Doctor will be able to fix it: “What is the point of you?” she demands when he can’t. I was put off, at first, by her total willingness to possibly commit suicide in order to reject this dream world, both because it makes her seem incapable of living without her fiancé and because she is pregnant with what seems like a baby she wants. Still, her language in this scene suggests that at least part of her thinking centers on an inability to believe that this can be the real world, as if the Dream Lord’s introduction of false realities prompted her to start putting tragedy in the “unreal” category. It’s not a healthy state of mind, but I can imagine it being a very tempting one, and the episode as a whole works very well as a large-scale version of Amy’s tendency to write bad things out of her understanding of reality.

           The episode definitely has some iffy romantic things happening, which was inevitable given the love triangle arc it was a part of, but unlike the last episode and the end of “Flesh and Stone,” they’re at least happening to complex, layered people who are fun to watch. I don’t think it was really possible for this episode to emerge from the love triangle business completely unscathed, but it really brings much more sensitivity and humor to a bad setup than I would have expected, and it brings a very welcome stop to the Rory vs. the Doctor romance nonsense instead of letting it unfold across the season. Given where this plotline started, resolving it in a way that I actually like is…well, not quite as miraculous as rebooting the universe, but it’s pretty close. A-

The Hungry Earth: Things coming up from underground to grab you and pull you under is a properly scary concept, and the Silurians are good monsters, but this episode doesn’t reach the potential of either of those things. It’s odd, because when he returns in Season Seven, Chibnall’s strong point is that he is especially good at writing the Ponds: “The Power of Three,” for instance, has one of the most pointless plots in the show’s history, but still mostly works for me because the tension that Amy and Rory feel between their time-travel adventures and ordinary lives is so beautifully realized. There are some questionable moments with the Doctor in Chibnall’s Season Seven episodes, but some really great moments as well, particularly in his reaction to having to deal with the slow pace of life in the Ponds’ home. Here, though, it’s like Chibnall is going out of his way to make Amy, Rory, and the Doctor into unlikeable characters. There are constant jokes about how Amy’s wearing tiny shorts because she was expecting to go to Rio. There’s an awkward conversation in which Amy seems really uncommitted to her relationship with Rory, even though the previous episode ended on exactly the opposite note. Then she falls down a hole, after which she gets nothing to do in the episode beyond being terrified. We get a brief shot of her covered by dirt, she lies in a glass case and yells until she gets knocked out with gas, and then she wakes up in chains and wriggles about a bit before Mo tells her not to struggle because she’s just going to be dissected anyways. It’s a complete waste of Karen Gillan’s abilities, particularly after all the interesting work that was done with her in “Amy’s Choice.” Meanwhile, Rory wanders around, gets mistaken for a police officer, and just goes with it for no reason. I get that you might go along with whatever job you were mistaken for having if you were in space or the distant future or past because of the need to create a role for yourself in a world that you don’t actually belong in, but pretending to be a police officer when close to one’s own time and place just seems irresponsible. He does help the Doctor to trap a Silurian in some sort of meals on wheels van, which is fun, but otherwise there isn’t anything interesting for Rory to do here. The Doctor does a lot of shouting when Amy falls down the hole, and then he gets in a lengthy argument with Nasreen and Tony about whether various science-fictiony things are possible, and then doesn’t do much of note until making a speech about needing everyone to be the best of humanity, which falls awfully flat. Last week’s episode showed that the Doctor, Amy, and Rory can be absolutely delightful together, but they’re very dull characters here.  

           Minor characters vary in quality. Nasreen is fantastic—easily one of the best single-story characters of the season. She feels like a believable, interesting person almost immediately, and her TARDIS entrance is probably the best moment of the episode. Tony and Mo are all right, but Ambrose is already questionable, in preparation for being an outright disaster in the next episode, and Elliot is mostly annoying, although he has a nice conversation with the Doctor about wanting to leave home. Alaya is pretty one-note, but Neve McIntosh (who will eventually be cast as Madame Vastra) makes her as compelling as possible. The actual science-fiction plot here is really pretty good. There is some cool stuff with computer models, and some very nicely-directed horror sequences, especially the scene in which they frantically try to open the door to let Elliot in, only to find he has disappeared. The Silurians’ status as monsters who are not actually aliens makes them unique among the creatures on this show, so the story definitely carries a level of excitement, and the attention to the dangers of drilling grounds the story in the real world in an interesting way. By the end of the episode, though, Nasreen is the only character that I’m invested in, and so the good pieces of the plot just don’t mean very much to me. C+

Cold Blood: The title is appropriate for an awfully chilly episode. Nasreen continues to be a great character, and the Silurian civilization is visually very well done, but I find this episode difficult to get through. The most generous reading of it is that it was trying to do an interesting gender reversal, in that the male characters are mostly very peaceful, while Alaya, Restac, and Ambrose are militant or impulsively violent. It’s a workable concept, but it doesn’t come across well here because there is no effort to give this violence any depth or coherent motivation. All three of these characters are extremely one-dimensional, and very obviously wrong, and they are constantly being talked down to by men in a way that suggests the show sides unequivocally with the male characters. This is especially true of the insistence on hammering home exactly how terrible Ambrose is as a person. I don’t like Ambrose, but watching everyone tell her how much of a failure she is over and over and over gets cringeworthy, and it brings out the Doctor’s self-righteous side to an unbearable degree. He is perfectly fine with the Silurian scientist, who dissects and experiments on kidnapped people, but all he can think of for Ambrose is repeated scolding laced with contempt. (This season had been doing all right, until this point, with working with the Doctor’s arrogance in a way that was intriguing and not annoying; even his biggest burst of self-righteousness, in “The Beast Below,” gets shut down pretty much immediately by Amy figuring out a better plan than his. This episode, though? Definitely up there with Tennant lecturing Torchwood/UNIT/whatever other authority figures got thrown at him in terms of making the Doctor look like a big, dismissive jerk.) You could do really interesting work with, for instance, the idea that Ambrose’s maternal instincts actually prompt immoral behavior, but this is only interesting if you treat her like a person and not as a punching bag. The tone of the episode is honestly pretty close to sadistic pleasure in pointing out just how much of a failure she is, and that removes all of the potential from what might be a worthwhile look at gender stereotypes.

Amy at least gets to do something other than be a victim in this episode, but she still doesn’t seem like a fully realized character here. Her attempt to rescue the Doctor is completely treated as a joke, and even after this she mostly just sits around and provides humorous lines. You wouldn’t really know, from watching most of this episode, that she’s a main character in this show, because she just comes across as sort of background comic relief. I like the idea of having Amy and Nasreen negotiate with the Silurians for the fate of the planet, but Amy appears to be trying to take a nap during most of it, although she wakes up for long enough to suggest putting the Silurians in deserts. I like that the Doctor tries to stay out of the negotiation and allow humans and Silurians to take care of the situation themselves, but if he wants to provide encouragement he could find something more productive to do than stand around telling everyone to be extraordinary. In the end, the Silurians just decide to go back to hibernation for a long time, so nothing really comes of this entire storyline anyways. The issue of whether Silurians and humans could share the planet makes this episode similar to the Silurians’ debut episode back in Season Seven of the classic series, but this episode never finds the depth that that earlier episode managed to bring to this scenario.

           Because the main plot does very little of interest, this episode is mostly memorable because of its shocking final scene, in which Rory is swallowed up by the crack in time. It’s a surprising development, and a far more emotional scene than the rest of the episode. While Rory has some good moments in the first two thirds of the season, he hasn’t really stood out to me as a character by this point; still, it’s horrifying to watch someone be erased from time, and Gillan does a nice job with Amy’s dramatic shift from agonized grief to complete forgetfulness. The explanation of why she could remember the clerics who were erased by the crack in time but not Rory is a bit half-baked, but otherwise it’s a solid scene that ends a highly questionable episode on a much more positive note. C+

[reptilerach]

“Rejection”; Chapter Eight

NOTES: Sorry sorry sorry! This chapter was delayed to freaking WiFi issues down here in FL. April vacation will give me a lot of time to work on my Disbelief! comic, so… that should be out sooner than I’d originally thought. The only reason why it’s taking so long is because I dread all the shading… Ah, well. Enjoy this cute lil’ chapter! (Is sure that it will make the Reader blush)

…

Oh, and go check out this great, brand-spankin’-new comic AU, Pastfell, created by the one and only @vanessagirl286​! For the title page and beginning of her awesome comic series, click here.

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A peaceful silence rested between you, and it felt like an eternity. The heat rushing off your face probably made you look like a tomato, but you didn’t care. This was Sans you were in front of; a guy who didn’t care for little things like this. You squint your eyes just to check that he wouldn’t be able to notice. For a second, you thought he had blue dusted cheekbones. A slam erupted within the abyss of noise, causing you and the skeleton to glare at the door.

Papyrus stood there with a few grocery bags, and huffed heavily. He looked worn out, but upon seeing you he cheered right back up again. “I HAVE RETURNED, HUMAN! WHAT WAS MY TIME?” You gulped, and looked to your side for Sans’ help. He’d already teleported back to his seat, and was leaning back nonchalantly like nothing ever happened. He opened an eye lazily at you, and winked with a devilish grin. You silently plead for his help with your facial expression, but he simply turned a nose up to the air. You could tell what he was trying to get across; “you’re on your own. this is payback from earlier.”

Stammering, your face grew hotter than it had already been from the sudden embrace moments before. “WELL?!” Papyrus demanded, and dropped the bags onto the floor. He fold his arms impatiently, and stood a few feet in front of you. You looked up at him, and came up with a random number. “P-paps, your t-time was, um… 2 minutes and 32 seconds.” You cringed, and Papyrus just stared blankly. Then he cheered, and punched the ceiling. Sans laughed at his brother’s happiness, and smiled wider when Papyrus picked you up once again and spun you around. 

“OH, THANK YOU DEAR HUMAN! I BEAT MY RECORD BY 3 SECONDS!! TO CELEBRATE, THIS PASTA WILL HAVE TO BE THE ABSOLUTE BEST!! LET’S CONTINUE.” He settled you down after another twirl, leaving you feeling dizzy as hell. Sans snickered from across the room, and you put your hands on your knees from the overwhelming vertigo. 

You glanced over at him, out of breath; he wiggled his eyebrows playfully (but still somewhat modestly) upon seeing your distress. You knew that was just Papyrus’s way of hugging people, but to be honest it was unbearably rough. You blushed, and plastered a frown one would make when they pretended to be dead.

Sans clicked his teeth, and pointed an index finger at you. Then, without a thought, he fell asleep. You rolled your eyes at his incompetence, and laid a hand on your crimson cheek. Papyrus jumped beside you, and lift your body up unexpectedly. “SAY, HUMAN… YOU SEEM AWFULLY RED. DID YOU AND SANS TALK ABOUT ANYTHING WHILE I WAS GONE?” You flinched, and bit your lip. “…No.” You said simply, but for once, the tall skeleton saw right through you. Heh, I should make that into a pun for Sans later, you thought with a giggle.

Papyrus frowned, and continued with his accusation. “ARE YOU SURE? BECAUSE IN THE TIME YOU’VE BEEN LEFT ALONE WITH MY BROTHER, WHICH IS VERY LITTLE, YOU SEEM REALLY FLUSTERED WHENEVER I COME BACK.” You gasped, and blushed harder. You raised your hands to cover his mouth, and whipped your head to Sans. Thankfully, the short skeleton was still snoring away on the table. Once you made sure he wasn’t eavesdropping, you let go of Paps and played it off as casually as you could.

“Nah, we’re cool. Sans just makes me laugh really hard when you’re gone; because we don’t want to aggravate you when you’re here, we save the bad puns for later. And when I laugh hard, my face turns red.” You sweat nervously, but fortunately Papyrus seemed to buy it. “THANK YOU FOR YOUR MERCY, (Nickname). IF SANS CANNOT CONTROL HIS COMEDIC ACTIONS AROUND YOU ALREADY, THAT MUST MEAN HE REALLY LIKES YOU.” You froze, but remained calm. 

“Heh, how sweet.” You replied sarcastically, but on the inside you meant it; you just wanted the nosy skeleton off your case before Sans woke up and heard any of your embarrassing conversation. “HE CAN BE, WHEN HE WANTS TO. AH…DON’T TELL HIM I SAID THAT.” Papyrus set you down, and hand you a spare apron. It was a tad bit large, but you eventually figured out a way to make it work. “OKEY-DOKEY! LET’S FINISH WHAT WE STARTED!” Papyrus called loudly, and an urge to wince arose. However, you rolled it off quickly with a care-free chuckle.

You hummed happily, forgetting your sorrows temporarily and remembering how Frisk went on a cooking show with Mettaton and nearly got killed. Instead of growing remorseful over the memory, you chortled under your breath at the thought of the wacky robot. There was no way I would get hurt here in the skelebros’ home, as Papyrus is always looking out for my safety and Sans… Well, you didn’t know how Sans would react yet if you were in danger. He did just say you were friends, and that he knows the two of you might grow into real great ones, but that didn’t mean that he would protect you.

Maybe, just maybe, if he let himself grow attached towards you, then he would. But that takes time. You can’t just be best friends with someone over night; you have to know them like the back of your hand and share many experiences with them. Well, I guess I already got that wagon rolling. You thought to yourself as Papyrus gave you a sudden order to stir the pot. 

Hugging the guy as soon as I meet him, sharing some pain through a sympathetic mourning fest… those times may have not been special to him, but they meant everything to me. You agreed with your conscience, and smiled under your breath. Those times were moments where you used more than just your sense of sight to interact with your favorite character; and that was because you weren’t behind a computer screen anymore.

You sighed, and finished cutting your set of vegetables. Sans doesn’t forget things easily. I’m sure he’ll remember our first meeting for the rest of his life, or this timeline rather. Your mind drifted elsewhere, and you gazed up at Papyrus with awe. The speed and accuracy of his chopping was insane; probably because he had a skele-ton of practice, while you did not.

I wonder when Frisk is going to reset, and what it’s going to be like for me when they do. The consequences of the idea flooded your mind, and you grimaced. Hopefully that doesn’t happen soon, since Frisk may not know what they’re doing and mess the game up. This timeline is special, since I’m here, and starting everything over might effect me in some unpleasant ways. You sang a familiar tune, completely forgetting your dislike of singing in front of new people. 

Papyrus hummed along too, minding his own business and finishing his work. He sang along to a peppy beat, one that sounded awfully familiar. Little did he or (Y/N) know that Sans was awake the entire time; listening in on their “private conversation”, and how (Y/N) hummed delightfully under her breath. 

Receiving a genuine hug of empathy? Check. Getting a rare compliment from his brother? Check. Listening in on a oddly calming tune that relaxed every nerve in his bones? Check. Boy, Sans was having quite the good day.

When Papyrus pointed out (Y/N)’s habit of being flustered around his older brother, the short skeleton smiled shyly underneath his arms (of which were covering his face). For a dramatic effect, Sans continued to snore and convince (Y/N) that he was asleep. The tone in Papyrus’s voice felt similar to one implying something; like he knew something that the human and comedian didn’t (or rather just Sans; (Y/N) apparently knows everything). But Sans brushed it off; Paps tended to jump to conclusions about many things, and 50% of the time he was wrong.

As for when the tall skeleton said that his brother already seemed to be growing fond of (Y/N), Sans tensed immensely under his arms. Well, Paps wasn’t exactly wrong; no one, not one person ever, had a soul like (Y/N)’s. It was the most magnificent Sans had ever seen, but it’s not like he was ever going to admit that out loud. He’d just told her that they were friends, for Pete’s sake! That’s more than enough emotional stress for one day. But, however, being considered “friends” with (Y/N) automatically felt…right. Like it was meant to be that way. Perhaps (Y/N) was just that kind of human anyone could get along with.

The same did not go for the Surface’s humans, based on the cruel insults that she’d said the jerks told about her when she had to wear her brace for 4 years. four years… damn. that’s a really long time, now that i think about it. Sans thought, and frowned under his hood. (y/n) said it was like being stabbed constantly 24/7… that’s a shit-load of pain. not to mention all the emotional stress by interacting with society. Sans furrowed a non-existent eyebrow, and pondered deeply.

how could people be so cruel to her? she’s so freaking smart, and funny, pretty- Sans flinched at his own thoughts, and pushed them away immediately from embarrassment. His bones shifted uncomfortably, and he adjusted his position on the table carefully to not give away his act. the point is that i said i was willing to get to know her better. as a supportive friend. is that already considered getting attached? if it is, i mean, how could i not? the girl freaking tackled me with a bear hug when she first met me! normal people don’t do that. but she isn’t normal…not at all…

Sans thought back to her soul again; how it changed colors frequently to all the different spectrums in a rainbow based on what she was feeling at the moment. He didn’t care that he was technically dreaming slightly perverted dreams, as in the monster society thinking about one’s soul was like thinking about boobs. He was just so fascinated by that specific aspect about her; no other monster would really understand him for that, as he was the lone Judgement Monster. He had abilities that no one else in the Underground could ever imagine, such as the ability to see into one’s soul and determine how much LOVE they’ve gained or how much EXP they’ve earned.

And with (Y/N) particularly, that was none. Although she had no “LOVE” within her, Sans didn’t realize that she was slowing receiving “love” from him every time she shared a laugh to one of his terrible puns, or made one of her own. Every time she cooked with Papyrus or made the tall skeleton happy, every time she brushed back a strand of hair reflexively, and even when she tested Sans’ patience to show that she wasn’t a complete wimp was very slowly but steadily increasing her “love”. It was just as the subconscious within Sans had feared; the more time that (Y/N) spent in the Underground making new friends with monsters, the more she was wrapping everyone’s emotions around her little finger.

And what scared him even more was the fact that he was already thinking these thoughts after only meeting her once and communicating with her here within his private sanctuary for a solid three hours. He couldn’t imagine what he’d be like after a week.

if the timeline doesn’t reset by then, he thought sourly. It was always around that time that Frisk did, and as depressing as it was, Sans had gotten used to it by now. Not being able to share any of his feelings with anyone, he locked himself up in his room. Away from where Papyrus, or anyone for that matter, would see him in his time of weakness. 

But now he could show those emotions. Because (Y/N) was here; the human from outside the game, who knew everything there is to know about Sans’s issues. Who knew and understood what he was going through, and how to deal with them perfectly. For that, he was extremely grateful. 

As much as Sans hated making promises, when he saw how big of a wreck the poor girl had been earlier, and how she let him comfort her during her times of heartache, he promised to himself inside his heart that he would not stop until all of her issues were resolved right alongside his. 

Because a human like (Y/N) didn’t deserve to be unhappy. 

For the first time in a couple of hundred timelines, Sans was determined to protect a human from all emotional and physical conflicts. Deep down inside of his beating soul, a force emerged from never before. Sans didn’t know it, but this force was festering into something bigger and stronger every moment he was around the human he now considered a friend.

And that wasn’t Frisk.

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Chapter Ten (Where all the chapters before that are.)

Chapter Twenty (Links for Chapters 11 --> 19)

Chapter Thirty (Links for Chapters 21 --> 29)

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Learn from Others...

The short film Funnel is a funny perspective of a journey that everyone has made at least one time in their life. Sundance. Org, listed the logline to be “A man’s car breaks down and sends him on a quest across town that slowly turns into the most fantastically mundane adventure” (Sundance.org, 2013). This story accomplished its main premise. The official Sundance Institute Film selection in 2014 starred, written, and directed by Andre Hyland and presented by Bod Odenkirk. The tone of the film was melodic with a light undertone of frustration and eagerness. Since the fade in, the protagonist can be seen in natural lighting and diegetic sounds. The music was a clear indicator of the use of foley, giving the mood an elevator conversation type of vibe. The only dialogue was on the phone which gave the main actor the illusion that he wasn’t alone, which is ironic towards the ending of the short. Throughout the journey natural sounds of footsteps and the background noise from the woods to the creek to the bridge added to the story. The plot of the film was easy for the audience to follow the main character. The depth of field was crucial to the story because the setting changed, but kept the actor in the middle ground which eluded to the illusion of travel. The usage of wide shots and medium shots helped the camera track the actor’s every move. It appeared as one continuously long tracking shot. This film would look differently if the lighting didn’t change from day to night. The low key saturation gave theme a representation of a long tedious journey home. The director used establishing shots, close ups of the phone and drinking mountain dew, and a montage between locations to follow the rule of six. The final element which provided the comedy was achieved through the dialogue. At the end of the story, the actor’s phone rings and he becomes perplexed and frustrated that the entire journey was like a long voicemail that was never heard. His reaction gave the audience the aggravated comedic relief need to close the story. He was so upset that the domino effect boiled over when he realized he locked himself out the car and couldn’t change the situation. The audience left knowing exactly how the main character left when he chose to just go home due to a failed attempt from the whole journey.

 I absolutely enjoyed this film for three reasons. The film was zero to low budget, clear and precise plot, and left an impact on me as a viewer. The term zero to low budget to me means, that anybody with a camera and little knowledge of filmmaking could have shot this film. Its simplicity is where the genius comes in because of how Hyland wrote the script. He also directed and starred in the film which gave it more personal touch like a Spike Lee film. This short shows me how to create using my resources for my own project and the student film for this class. I can utilize the simple tricks to control the outcome of the film. I’m truly starting to learn that it is the writing that makes a film and not the funding and money put into it. This concept will help me to use natural lighting and shot progression in a unique way like how Hyland used in his film. Secondly, the concept and plot was very precise which makes the viewer want to be in that world. Although the obstructions for my student film will force me to get to the point quicker, I can still see the impact of a clear scripts’ effectiveness on the story telling with less time and shots. Lastly, every great film left its audience with some emotion. The obvious answer is because it connected with the viewers. I felt the aggression and frustration when the signal cut out and he saw that his keys was locked in the car. It was the feeling of stupidity and loneliness boiled over in a heated outbreak in which he throws the mountain dew can and gives up by walking home. The film was overall relatable and easy to visualize which is half the battle of good story telling. I learned from this film how to reach the viewer instead of giving them just content to view. This film is a great example of potential work I can see myself creating for this class’ film and my own personal projects.

References

Hyland, A. (Actor). Hyland, A. (Writer). (2014). FUNNEL [Online video]. Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1CIGKiz8xo

Sundance Institute Announces Short Film Program for 2014 Sundance Film Festival. (2013, December 10). In Sundance Institute. Retrieved from http://www.sundance.org/blogs/news/2014-festival-short-film-program-announced

[vernicle]

3 ways 'Deadpool' perfectly sums up Hollywood's LGBTQ problem.

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Like a lot of folks, I fell head over heels in enjoy with "Deadpool" previous calendar year.

The movie, based mostly on the Marvel comic, raked in over $700 million around the world, creating it the second-optimum-grossing R-rated movie at any time manufactured. Executives raced to get a sequel into creation to feed America's unquenchable thirst for far more Ryan Reynolds in a restricted red match (sure, be sure to). "Deadpool 2" is slated for summertime 2018.

A calendar year and some odd months following "Deadpool's" release, GLAAD's Studio Duty Index (SRI) — the group's once-a-year review on how lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, transgender, and other queer figures are depicted in movie — landed in my inbox. "Deadpool" was 1 of the one hundred twenty five movies the review analyzed, and for my beloved superhero flick, the outcomes were not fantastic.

Will not get me completely wrong I continue to enjoy the motion picture. But GLAAD's results show just how problematic the superhero flick — and so a lot of of our other Hollywood faves — definitely can be.

So buckle up, fellow "Deadpool" supporters — this may perhaps not be simple to go through.

GIF through "Deadpool."

one. For starters, Deadpool is pansexual. But you wouldn't know it from the motion picture.

In the Marvel universe, Deadpool was created as pansexual — that means he is fascinated in all genders and orientations. When director Tim Miller confirmed before the movie's release that Deadpool's sexuality would remain real to its origins, a lot of supporters rejoiced — this would be the to start with large-price range superhero flick with an overtly queer lead.

Then the movie came out, and supporters viewed as Deadpool ... did not.

GIF through "Deadpool."

In a push release, GLAAD pointed to "Deadpool" as an instance of a movie that "continue to [necessitates] the viewers to have go through push protection or have outside the house knowledge" of a character's sexual orientation or gender identification because their queerness will not be identifiable in the movie. (Truthfully, I observed considerably far more homoerotic habits at frat parties in college or university than I did in "Deadpool.")

As a homosexual guy, I want to assistance films that display figures with tales like mine on monitor, and it is really aggravating when there's excitement encompassing an LBGTQ character in an upcoming movie, only to have their on-monitor queerness diminished to a suggestive sentence or ambiguous very same-sex conversation (searching at you, new "Power Rangers" motion picture). Why are unable to overtly queer figures truly be overtly queer in their movies?

2. "Deadpool" fails the Vito Russo Test — big time.

The Vito Russo Test — encouraged by the feminist Bechdel Test and named following GLAAD co-founder Vito Russo — is a set of simple standards to examine how LGBTQ figures and movies are portrayed on monitor.

To pass the take a look at, the movie will have to: one. comprise an LGBTQ character who is identifiably queer who is 2. intricately woven into the plot in a significant way and three. not only defined by their sexual orientation or gender identification.

"Deadpool" fails on the test's to start with, simple prerequisite: Reynolds' character, whilst technically pansexual, was not identifiably queer.

If you did not know he was pansexual before looking at the movie, would you have guessed he is not a straight, cisgender character? Most likely not.

GIF through "Deadpool."

Regrettably, "Deadpool" just isn't the exceptional exception between LGBTQ movies. Of the 23 films in the review that highlighted queer figures in 2016, only nine of them passed the Vito Russo Test, according to GLAAD.

three. Deadpool is a large jokester. And when that is fantastic for laughs, the jokes in the motion picture were being not normally fantastic for the LGBTQ group.

And I say that as a homosexual guy who believed "Deadpool" was hilarious.

As GLAAD wrote in its report:

"When director Tim Miller told push ahead of the film’s release that Deadpool was pansexual, the only references that manufactured it to monitor were being played for comedic effect in throwaway jokes meant to emphasize just how outrageous the character is instead than any actual perception of need."

GIF through "Deadpool."

This just isn't unheard of in movies that includes LGBTQ figures, according to GLAAD's report. Normally, queer figures and their identities are soley integrated as fodder for low-priced jokes.

I definitely hate staying a buzzkill. But those people throwaway jokes in "Deadpool" definitely do have an effect. As GLAAD ongoing:

"The portrayal of a pansexual identification as a brazen or scandalous trait, instead than a lived identification, has actual effects for bisexual+ folks. For the reason that their identities are typically misunderstood, bisexual+ folks are much less possible to be out to family and good friends than homosexual and lesbian folks."

Pansexuality is an identification — not a punchline.

I compose all of this not to rain all over "Deadpool's" parade, but in hopes that the sequel — and all of Hollywood, definitely — will do superior future time.

Maybe "Deadpool 2" will include things like a queer most important character of color as the report famous, we will need a total large amount far more of those people. Maybe that character will be a intricate, completely realized lady, who does not slide into the fatigued tropes queer females typically do on monitor as the report also famous, we desperately will need far more of those people, far too.

Or it's possible — just it's possible — Deadpool will uncover himself a guy.

“I certainly would not be the male standing in the way of that,” Reynolds responded in February 2016 to the prospect of Deadpool having a boyfriend. “That would be fantastic.”

In far more strategies than 1, sure it would, Ryan.

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Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/woody-harrelsons-star-wars-garris-shrike-wilson/

Woody Harrelson's 'Star Wars' Garris Shrike and 'Wilson'

Woody Harrelson is certainly keeping busy having recently shot his truly live action film “Lost in London Live,” and on Monday, he confirmed that he’d be taking on the role of Garris Shrike in the stand-alone Hans Solo “Star Wars” movie. He did all this while promoting his latest film “Wilson” at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

He’s that busy shooting one film after another along with all the fun promoting that goes with it, but he really seems like he’s having a great time even though time is something he doesn’t have a lot of. He was a little hesitant about confirming the “Star Wars” news, but once he did, he let loose on his ability to lead. His character is Han Solo’s mentor.

The character is a part of Star Wars’ extended universe and was first introduced in A.C. Crispin’s The Paradise Snare, which was released in May 1997. The book was the first installment in The Han Solo trilogy and introduced Shrike as the man who swept Solo up and taught him how to be a criminal, essentially.

A quick description from the book on his character gives us this:

Han Solo was a child without a past, a Corellian street urchin, abandoned, foraging for scraps of food, when the cruel Garris Shrike whisked him away to a nomadic band of spacefaring criminals. Now, years later, Han fights his way free. His goal: to become an Imperial Navy pilot. But first he needs hand-on experience flying spacecraft, and for that he takes a job on the planet Ylesia—a steaming world of religious fanaticism, illicit drugs, and alluring sensuality…where dreams are destroyed and escape is impossible.

Shrike was a young bounty hunter, but his quick temper resulted in the deaths of many criminals he was supposed to capture. Following his failings as a hunter, he turned to a life of crime, “collecting a group of orphans whom he used in confidence tricks and thefts.” Although Shrike saved Solo from a life of homelessness, he was also a cruel man who would beat the young Solo when aggravated.

The film doesn’t have a title yet.

“I wouldn’t choose me,” the actor shrugged and then laughed at the premiere of “Wilson” at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

It will also star Aiden Ehrenreich as Han Solo. Donald Glover will play Lando Calrissian and Emilia Clarke has been cast as well but in an unknown role. The movie is scheduled to come out on May 25, 2018.

As for “Wilson,” it’s adapted from a graphic novel of the same name about a curmudgeon, played by Harrelson, who reconnects with his long lost ex-wife, played by Laura Dern, and discovers they have a daughter he didn’t know about.

Craig Johnson, the director of “Wilson” talked about the film and working with the always busy Woody Harrelson.

For his third feature film, Craig Johnson opted to do something he’d never done before — direct a screenplay he didn’t write. Still, he didn’t step too far outside his wheelhouse, as the project he helmed is a film adaptation of Daniel Clowes’ widely admired graphic novel Wilson. Woody Harrelson takes on the title character, an unbridled dog-lover who endures a series of outrageous misadventures when he reunites with his estranged and very messy wife, Pippi (Laura Dern), and bonds with their daughter he never knew existed. As with his previous comedy The Skeleton Twins, Johnson paints a deeply felt portrait of a lonely misfit trying to navigate the strange world around him.

You seem like someone who’d be a fan of Daniel Clowes, but how did you become involved with Wilson?

Craig Johnson: It was being developed by Fox Searchlight with a different director. When that director stepped away, it was sent to me as an available script to direct. I was familiar with the graphic novel. I’m a big Dan Clowes fan and even had the graphic novel on my shelf. The second I got a script called Wilson, I thought, “Oh my gosh! Is this the Dan Clowes novel that I love?” I just dove into it, read it in about an hour, and immediately knew I wanted to do it. At the time, I was reading a bunch of scripts. It was right after my last film, The Skeleton Twins, had come out, and I was lucky enough to be getting sent a bunch of stuff. Frankly, nothing was that great. This just stood out. It was unlike any other script I read, with its sense of humor and sensibility. I just jumped on it. I said, “Who do I have to kill to direct this?”

Since you typically direct your own scripts, what specifically was so appealing about this one?

It started with Dan Clowes. I was a fan of how he sees the world. It’s a bit of a shared sensibility in that we both have a lot of the misfit and outsider and the weird prickly people you don’t usually see movies about. It’s true that up to this point I’d only directed things I’d written. That was never a hard and fast rule for me. If something comes across and my voice as a director merges with the writing, I’m happy to take it on.

How different is the directing process when you’re working from another writer’s script?

In some ways, for better or worse, there’s more distance. You’re seeing it slightly at arm’s length, which can be helpful. Sometimes there’s a danger when you direct your own stuff that you can become precious about it and cling on to things that don’t serve the movie as a whole just because you love them. If it’s not your material, you can have more objectivity that will result in a stronger version of the movie.

How did you get along with Daniel during your collaboration?

It was a fantastic collaboration. I adore that man. He is a real sweetheart, which may surprise some people since he’s associated with misanthropic characters. He doesn’t suffer fools easily, but he really has a tremendously big heart and is interested in [people] that are easy to dismiss. That’s actually every character in Wilson.

Many of the events in Wilson’s life are tragic, but you find the comedy in them. How do you achieve such a balance?

The real key to the whole piece is striking that balance between the hilarious and the heartbreaking. Yes, there are a lot of heartbreaking events in his life, but I think it has a lot to do with Wilson’s attitude toward them. He’s undaunted. He’s not going to let anything knock him down. He’s the perfect example of someone who gets back on the horse. He does pass through something in his journey, whether it be a bit more self-awareness or a better sense of how to interact with the world. Yet he doesn’t give up his essential Wilson-ness. I think it’s the character that allows you to take these tragic events and see the comedic value in them.

This was such a wonderful and expansive role for Woody Harrelson. Dating back to his time on Cheers, no matter the role he plays his persona is that of a very likable guy. What did you see in him that made him the right choice to play a misanthrope?

He has such an inherent likability, which is why he gets cast as villainous characters. You just can’t stay mad at Woody for long. You will accept him as a serial killer or psychopath or as Wilson. Certain actors just have this presence and this warmth to them. We knew that Wilson needed warmth to him. The character is rough. He’s a difficult guy, but he’s funny and says things that make your jaw drop. That’s great for a graphic novel you can read in 20 minutes, but for an hour-and-a-half movie you need to latch onto something a bit more human in the character. Woody brings that humanity naturally.

As Pippi, Wilson’s messy estranged wife, Laura Dern has added another wonderfully eccentric portrayal to her résumé. How did you decide to cast her?

We wanted a Pippi that had a little more spark to her. When we thought of a Laura Dern version of her, this whole new Pippi came to light. I like to think that when Wilson and Pippi were dating 17 years before the start of the movie, there was this youthful volatility to them. It would have been the late ’80s, early ’90s, and I imagined Pippi as this ex-Van Halen groupie, involved in drugs with this hot temper — explosively volatile person. It just felt like the right Pippi for the Woody version of Wilson. Nobody does unhinged like Laura Dern. She can break your heart too. It’s not just a crazy person losing her mind. It’s a real human being who’s got her heart on her sleeve as well as your anger on her other sleeve. You can see her shift within a frame. She’s probably got the most expressive face of any actress I’ve ever worked with — just the way her mouth will curl up if she’s pissed off or the way her eyes will melt if she’s moved by something. It’s the magic of a brilliant actor.

For your previous film, The Skeleton Twins, you won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. What effect did it have on your career?

I’m literally staring at the award right now in my living room. When you start out as a filmmaker you spend a bit of time feeling like a fraud, like you’re illegitimate on some level and you don’t really know what you’re doing. To win a screenwriting award functions as a way to legitimize myself — maybe I’m not just kidding myself and I have a knack for this. Certainly, career-wise, it’s helped me tremendously. People are aware of it and it’s helped me get writing and directing gigs.

Wilson has already been set for theatrical release by Fox Searchlight. How does this change your Sundance experience?

It removes a giant cloud of existential angst, that’s for sure. [Laughs] I’m just hoping I don’t try to fill up that space with angst about something else. My hope is to go into the Festival and look at it as a celebration of the film. I’m happy to present it to the world and share it with people. I’m going to enjoy that aspect without wondering if the cow is going to sell at the market. It’s a rarified position to be in, so I’m not taking it for granted for a second.

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