#also rob and his wife? totally different couple than who I’m talking about here. like that was the past

[explanationpoint]

..

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #587

Top Ten Villagers in Stardew Valley

My family is, at the time of writing, caught in the pixelated grip of another Stardew Valley addiction. My wife keeps restarting the game to attempt a perfect run. Daughter #1 has adopted a baby. Daughter #2 is about to propose. It’s all kicking off down Pelican Town.

Me? I just like fishing. Caught two of the five legendary fish so far. My aim is to become like Homer in that one episode of The Simpsons, spoken of in hushed tones by idiots at a bait shop.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, Stardew. It’s great because it’s one of those games that’s simultaneously very relaxing and also profoundly anxiety-inducing. There’s a quaint lustre to the simple village life as you plant crops and tend to your farm, taking part in odd little celebrations with the other townsfolk, making friends, running errands. But then there’s also the constant ticking clock of the seasons, attempting to buy and grow and ship and catch everything you can, and the increasingly difficult adventuring in the games many caves and caverns. There’s tons to uncover – I’ve hardly seen it all – and as well as the actually taxing nature of some of the challenges, there’s also the mental strength required to keep every end straight and balance the whole game strategically.

Or you could just chat everyone up.

One of the big draws of the game – and I’ve looked online and can confirm this to be the case – is in its cast of villagers. The various oddballs and eccentrics all exist, essentially, as their own little quest, a regular need to keep them happy and give them gifts on their birthday as well as increasing your relationship level to unlock various perks and snippets of backstory. There’s a lot to unpeel in the game’s vaguely Twin Peaks-meets-Northern Exposure setting, and that’s before you even get onto the whole romance angle as you seek a willing bachelor or bachelorette (pretty sure it’s set in some fictionalised version of “America”), doing up your house so there’s room for them to move in and, later on, have a couple of sprogs.

And that’s what we’re talking about here. Each villager has a suitably different personality, with different things they’ll say and different histories to unfurl. And some are, frankly, more interesting or amusing than others. Some I think are genuinely sad! So what follows is a celebration of my favourite residents of Pelican Town; the best villagers in Stardew Valley. And that’s all there is to it really. Praise Yoba!

Willy: I already said my favourite part of the game is the fishing, and I’m currently trying to catch everything, so I’m naturally drawn to Willy (not like that). He’s a filthy, raggedy, salty old sea dog who probably stinks. He lives in a shack by the sea and I imagine he sounds exactly like Robert Shaw playing Quint in Jaws. Despite all this, he seems to be something of a “town elder” and commands a good deal of respect. Life goals, essentially.

Robin: an absolute superwoman and by a considerable distance the most capable character in the game. You get the impression she built half of Pelican Town single-handedly, including her massive house and 90% of your actual farm. She’s got a silly sense of humour, seems largely unflappable, and has a really cool family with her weirdo son, mad scientist daughter, and totally spaced out Egon Spengler husband.

Clint: a proper sadsack of a character, an overweight mopey beanbag who bitches about his job and his life and rather heartbreakingly pines for Emily, who doesn’t appear to return his affections even if you don’t marry her. He’s a really smart and useful blacksmith, knowing his stuff and being super helpful, but it’s the undercurrent of tragedy to his life that I find oddly endearing.

Linus: another character with a hint of tragedy to them, but unlike Clint who’s ostensibly on the up but a mardy bum, Linus has nowt but is happy about it. A weird hermit dressed in leaves who sleeps in a tent and robs from bins, Linus is naturally very guarded but once you get through to him he’s super-loyal and dependable, and no one in town seems to look down on him or belittles him.

Abigail: she’s a purple-haired goth who hangs around in the graveyard, dreams of wearing a suit of armour, and wants to go on adventures in the mines. Of all the prospective husbands and wives in Stardew Valley, Abigail is clearly the most badass and likely the most bonkers. Not necessarily my first choice for prospective spouse, however, as I can’t shake the fact she’s supposed to be about sixteen.

Maru: whereas Abigail is an emo-tinged adventure junkie, Maru is all about the science. A dungaree-clad tinkerer, her room is littered with parts of actual robots and all manner of strange and elaborate machinery. She nearly electrocutes you at one point. Thinking about it, she’s pretty badass too.

Leah: Maru is science but Leah is art. An airy-fairy semi-hippy who hangs out in a picturesque cabin by the lake where she spends most of her time painting and sculpting. And that’s great; there’s something really optimistic about her and her outlook. Plus her house is lovely. God knows why she’d leave it to move into your shithole of a farm. Poor sod.

Gunther: Gunther is an enigma. Ostensibly an expert on historical antiquities, relics, and precious minerals, he can explain away any oddball trinket you find, and give you a nice reward for donating it to him. He’s very rarely seen outside his museum and there’s precious little to indicate any exterior life. Does he have friends? Where does he actually sleep? How does he find time to serve coffee in Central Perk? But the most bizarre thing is that he appears to be a general from the American Civil War. What the hell is up with that?

Pam: once more we return to the realm of quasi-tragedy, as Pam is quite seriously an alcoholic. She lives in a shitty trailer with her daughter Penny (very nearly on the list, sorry, Pen); she’s unemployed and drinks all the time. But peer under the surface and you see she’s not just a lush; there’s sadness and disappointment there. And she’s still one of the old-school bigwigs, popping up in Gus’ saloon to have important meetings. And you can help her get her life back together, getting her old job back and building her a house. It’s a redemptive tale.

Gus: just edging out the likes of Penny, Emily, Pierre, and Harvey, we have Gus. A comedy barkeep with a Mario tasche. He’s always got a kind word of welcome when you walk into Stardrop Saloon. He gives free food to Linus! What a mensch!

Maybe I should have also included that cat/mouse thing that sells hats. They’re really weird.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #403

“ashes to ashes, watch me disappear”

If given the opportunity, would you like to star in a musical? Definitely not. I don't like musicals. Name one person you’d take a bullet for: There's honestly a lot, but Mom immediately came to mind. Any posters of a band on your bedroom wall? Yeah: Metallica and Marilyn Manson currently. I want lots more, especially an Ozzy one. Do you think you’ve already met your soulmate? I don't believe in soulmates. Do you share your bedroom with anyone? No, unless you include my cat and snake. Is your favorite color yellow? No, it's actually one of my least favorites. Were you born in a hospital? I was. Do you know the name of the person that delivered you? No, but Mom does. I think he delivered me and my two sisters, and I know Mom has seen him since for other reasons. Was your birth recorded? God no. Good call, Mom. Did you eat a peach this week? Would you believe me if I told you I had a small bit of peach pie for my sister's birthday? For some reason, I just really wanted to try some. It was okay, but the aftertaste sucked. Are you leaving the house tomorrow? Yes, for TMS therapy. Every weekday. Do you enjoy romantic movies, even when they’re cliche? I honestly do. If you could get free vocal lessons would you take them? Probably not. I don't like singing in front of anyone, and it's not like I wanna get anywhere with my singing, so. Is your mother diabetic? She is. Are you? No. Ever sang someone to sleep? No. Who do you stalk the most through Facebook? Nobody. Have you ever deleted your Facebook, then brought it back? No. What is your main responsibility each day? Be sure to take my medications. Do you feel like you fulfill those responsibilities? Yeah. There are rare mornings where I forget, but I almost always remember. I don't fw skipping out on meds that keep my mental health stable. When was the last time you used spray paint? Good question. Do you know the middle name of the last person you kissed? Yep. Who is the friendliest person you know? My mom, probably. Something that annoys you about summer: THE HEAT. THE HUMIDITY. UGH. Something that annoys you about winter: Hm. That's hard to say, given I love winter. I guess the fact it doesn't snow enough here. Are the doors of your fridge side by side or on top of one another? Side-by-side. If you’ve moved out of the house you were born in, do you know the people who live in that house now? Nope. Have you ever cried in a movie theater? Not sobbed or anything, but I've definitely teared up and gotten the sniffles because of multiple movies. Do you read comic books? No. Do you force your way into conversations in which you are not involved? No. Have you ever seriously pretended to be clinically insane? I didn't need to pretend; I'm pretty damn sure I was for a while. Might I add that it's EXTREMELY inconsiderate to pretend you're insane, btw. Insanity is not "cool." It's not "funny." It's not "edgy." It's a serious, confusing, heart-wrenching issue that can ruin lives. Do you know anyone with a stutter? Yes, myself included when I'm even mildly nervous. And sometimes just randomly. With a lisp? I don't believe so. What was the last board game you played? The Disney version of "Pretty Pretty Princess" w/ my niece and even my nephew, even though his sexist-ass dad didn't want him to. Like let your kid have some fun with his sister and aunt, goddamn. They had a blast. It was Aubree's birthday present from me, so I am SO glad she loved it. Did you win? Ha ha, no, I always let Aubree or Ryder win. I came super close once, but I let the kids bend the rules a bit. They don't like losing, and even though they definitely need to understand that just happens and is totally fine for it to, I wasn't about to be the one to make them sad about it. When was the last time you tried to speak with an accent? OH MY LAAAAAWWWWWWD. Also at Aubree's b-day party, at one point, I spoke in a snobbish British accent while I was winning at the aforementioned game. Ryder asked, "Why are you speaking Spanish?", and I fuckin DIED. Have you ever made up a word before? Yeah, I know at least a few instances for fantasy animals in writing. When was the last time you went to a museum? A couple summers ago when my brother and his son visited, we went to a science museum. My nephew was sooooo into it. Do you have a nice yard? If so, do you spend a lot of time outside in it? If not, where do you go when you want to relax outdoors on nice days? Our front and back yards are both small and honestly very boring. The grass is a pretty green, but that's the only nice thing about it. I don't go to sit outside here on any day. Do your parents enjoy any of the things that you enjoy? Do you bond over these things? My parents and I have very similar music tastes, so there's that. I also didn't know for the longest time that Mom likes to write, which I sure as hell do, too! She doesn't really write anymore though, and she's self-conscious of it anyway, like I am. She and I also love a lot of the same shows. What is the movie that you have waited the longest for/which film do you remember anticipating the most/are still anticipating? I think The Incredibles 2. I aaaalways wanted to know what happened after the end of the first film. Do you have any ideas for a story or movie you’re planning to write or you’d write if you had the time/had the talent? Please share a synopsis! I genuinely think some RP I've written is series-worthy, but I don't feel like re-writing the YEARS of RP into a book format, and I sincerely worry that the ridiculously dark parts could inspire people like serial killers and cause A LOT of controversy, crime-blaming, and just general hate. I don't want to be involved in that. What is something that an interested guy/girl could comment about you, that would make you instantly open to them (e.g., “That book you’re reading is from my favorite author”)? Compliment my Markiplier tattoo, obviously knowing it's a tribute to him, and we're essentially besties. Is there a person in your life (maybe barely) that you feel in constant competition with (even just in your imagination)? Maybe you feel they are consistently outshining you? Ugh... there's a local photographer that's much more successful than I am that I admittedly am very envious of. I swear to whatever god you may believe in that I mean it from a modest perspective, I really, really do, but I genuinely think my skills surpasses hers, and she's only more prevalent because photography REALLY is about who you know. She's talented, yes, but like... come on. If you are single, even if you are normally happily single, are there certain specific things you witness that make you wish you were in a relationship (e.g., people getting engaged)? I mean yeah. I miss cuddling, holding hands, kissing, just being cute together, and especially people getting engaged or having kids. It's such a trigger to me. Once upon a time, that's all I wanted with Jason. I wanted to be that beautiful couple that got married and had two or three loved-beyond-words children, but then he left so abruptly, and I feel like it was so brutally robbed from me. I don't want kids anymore like at all, but the point still stands that I felt like my dreams were just ripped away. Out of all your usernames for websites, which one is your favorite? Do you use it for more than one site? I use "Ozzkat" just about everywhere. Have you ever spent the whole day (or multiple days) just looking up one thing on the internet (e.g., videos of your favorite band, how-to videos, quizzes, etc.)? OHHHHHHHHHH YEAH. There have been a couple days or so where I was totally glued to looking up various tattoo designs, bingeing let's plays or conspiracy theory videos, etc. etc. If you ever think about getting married, what are some aspects of the wedding that you would like to see in a non-traditional manner (e.g., a different color dress or “partners” over “husband” and “wife”)? I WILL NOT get married in a church, first of all. I'm also not having the traditional vows, and I probably won't wear a white dress, but instead black. Salt & vinegar, barbecue, sour cream & onion, or cheddar? Ohhhh, I like all those options but barbecue. I think I've gotta go with sour cream & onion, though. Bow ties on guys, dorky or adorable? A D O R A B L E ! ! ! I think they're ordinarily geeky, but I mean, geeky is cute in my world. :^) Do you believe in demonic possession? How about ghosts? Angels? Angels, no. Spirits/ghosts, 100%. I don't exactly believe in demons, per se, but I do question if evil spirits can possess someone. What is one romantic movie that you enjoy enough to watch more than once? I've seen The Notebook numerous times. Name three countries you want to visit; why those three? South Africa to interact with meerkats at the KMP, somewhere up in Canada to see the Northern Lights, and Germany just because, really. I took German for four semesters, and the culture and all just interests me. Do you have a good luck charm? No, considering I don't believe they do jack. Do you use Skype to talk to your friends? Only Sara. Now that I have Discord semi-figured out now though, we'll probably use that for voice chatting. Are you allergic to any animals? I might be allergic to dogs. Do you usually spend your weekends out, or at home? I'm like... always at home. Do you think it’s wrong for people to say "retard/retarded" as an insult? Absofuckinglutely. Don't pull that shit when I'm around. Have you ever had to go to the police department? No. Have you ever lived through a hurricane? Plenty. Have you ever had a home-grown tomato? Yes, from my old friend's garden. We'd have delicious tomato, mayo, and bacon sandwiches. The only instance where I've enjoyed tomatoes. Have you ever held a real gun? The former friend I mentioned just before, her husband always carried a gun, and he just needed me to hold it for a sec for some reason I don't recall. I hated the feeling. Would you rather wear Converse or Vans? I like both, but I think I prefer Converse. Have you ever been called bipolar? Yes, because I clinically am. Have you ever made fun of a handicapped person? FUCK no. And like the "retarded" thing, don't you fucking DARE to do this in front of me. I WILL deck the shit out of you. Do you think it’s okay to have sex before marriage? Sure, as long as you're being safe and are very thorough in communication. Do you like to watch old sitcoms? I don't really watch TV as I say in like every survey it seems, but I do enjoy some old sitcoms I grew up watching with my mom, like The Nanny, The Golden Girls, The Munsters, etc. If asked, could you run a mile nonstop right now? Being completely serious, I don't even know if I CAN physically run right now. My legs are so incredibly weak, and I'm humiliatingly close to what my heaviest weight was back in 2016, so I can almost guarantee my knees would crumple if I tried. Do you wear those rubber wristbands? I used to. I don't really like bracelets nowadays. If a necklace/ring gives you green marks, do you still wear it? Nope. Have you ever driven an electric car? No. When was the last time you saw someone you went to high school with? Uhhhh idk. What breed was the last dog you saw? A fucking GOLIATH of a lab. I shit you not when I say my sister's roommate's dog Hudson is the size of a goddamn bear. How long have your parents been together (or how long were they together, if they no longer are): I wanna say they were together at the very least 20 years. What has been your most epic cooking failure? I once accidentally put something (I don't remember what) in the microwave for around 45 minutes I believe, and I walked away and completely forgot about it. I remembered a long while later, and safe to say, it wasn't edible, whatever it was, lmao. Have you ever been to Mexico? No. Have you ever had a parrot sit on your shoulder? No, but that'd be cool. Has anyone in your life ever treated you abusively? No. How long has it been since your last breakup? Somewhere around two years ago? My memory is so garbage nowadays. Can you concentrate well while listening to music, or do you find it distracting? It's distracting, usually. What’s something you’ve been struggling with lately? I've been pretty bad about drinking too much soda lately. :/

[gascon-en-exil]

Bottom Ten Three Houses Characters

I decided after a while that I couldn’t fulfill an anon request to do a top 10 list for the whole series, because it would overlap too much with ones I’ve already done - lord privilege is a thing that exists, and I’ve ranked those before - and because it’s really difficult to compare so many characters (~600 if we’re being thorough) across so many different games.  Instead I decided to go negative with it, although around 2/3rds of these ought to be totally uncontroversial at least in my corner of the fandom. Starting from the one I dislike least:

(Dis)honorable Mention: Anna, for putting in such a lackluster showing that she doesn’t deserve a spot on this list despite technically being in the playable cast. It’s not only the lack of supports, although that hurts, but also how obvious it is that the writers have no new material for her. Anna’s gimmick worked fined when she was an NPC and perhaps for the space of a single game as a playable character, and Fates originated the meta idea of making her paid DLC so you have to shell out real money to use her, but that’s the extent of her here too. As a unit she’s far from spectacular, and her paralogue isn’t even good for much but a ton of (mostly mediocre) drops and a tiny bit of context for that Pallardó guy from non-CF Chapter 13. Here’s a revolutionary idea: for the next original FE it might be good to have Anna back to being only a wacky dimension-hopping NPC shopkeeper.

#10 Constance - It pains me that she’s on this list, more than anyone else by far. I really wanted to like Constance, and at first glance she’s right up my alley as a haughty impoverished aristocrat coping awkwardly with her diminished status. I like the dark flier class she’s built around, and her default personality is an even louder pre-timeskip Ferdinand whom you know I love. However, it’s that “default personality” bit that sours me on her, because she’s got two of them. What could have been an interesting take on Constance’s struggles with identity and self-esteem in the wake of her family’s disgrace is presented in such an over-the-top comedic manner that it’s impossible to take her very seriously. It’s more reminiscent of FE13′s Noire than anything, and at least she has the excuse of a mother who performed dark magic experiments on her and fractured her psyche. Constance also supports Jeritza and yet somehow they do no more than lightly allude to their personality issues which is as much a missed opportunity as you can get with such a terrible character (see below), opting instead to try softening Jeritza with his fondness for roses. Lovely.

#9 Leonie - Fandom exaggerates her Jeralt fixation, although it does pop up at the worst times (see: her Byleth support right after his death). As I’m not very concerned with Byleth’s nonexistent feelings though this placement more comes down to general indifference. Leonie feels completely disconnected from the rest of the Deer, and although she’s a supposed reflection of the house’s more egalitarian bent there’s nothing connecting her to the politics or larger culture of the Alliance until you learn about her student loan debt. She really is best understood as a Jeralt fangirl first and foremost, which is why perhaps the most surprising thing about her is when reality comes knocking in her endings and it turns out she picked up her mentor’s vices as well. Jeralt himself would be even further down this list were he playable, but as he isn’t I’ll have to settle for side-eyeing all of his adoring fans. Which brings me to....

#8 Alois - Remember that dating sim Dream Daddy that people were talking about a few years ago? The one that willfully misunderstands what the term “daddy” means in gay male spaces to write fluffy dad joke-laden romances intended for a presumably not-gay audience? Alois is the spirit of that game personified as an FE character, which is not something I ever would have thought to know that I didn’t want. He’s got some funny lines here and there, but that’s the most you can say about him when otherwise he’s just passable midgame filler (of a unit type each house including the Wolves already has one of) standing in Jeralt’s imitation Greil shadow. I don’t even mind the platonic S support all that much because it’s still only Byleth, but it occurs to me that just about the only thing that would have made Alois memorable would be if his S support was romantic but he remained married to his wife. I can’t think of a time when this series has allowed the player to indulge in adultery, so even if it had been limited to an option for f!Byleth it would have been a fascinating option.

#7 Cyril - This isn’t about his devotion to Rhea, which is fully understandable given his circumstances. Nor is it about his performance as a unit which in my experience at least is actually rather good for a Donnel/Mozu-style villager archetype. No, what gets me is that he’s a self-righteous workaholic which makes for quite the grating personality trait. I understand that he finds meaning in his work and that he’s got some entertaining supports calling other characters to task for their terrible work ethics or ignorance of the lives of commoners (VW should have really dug more into his back-and-forth with Claude), but the lectures on not interrupting him or telling Byleth to get back to work are as tiresome as they are frequent. It’s petty I know, but one can only hope he grows out of it eventually. At least he doesn’t wear a pot on his head....

#6 Mercedes - Like Constance, she’s the type of character I wanted to like from the start. She’s pious pseudo-Catholic clergy, with a quirky thing with ghosts and some quiet lesbianism with her BFF that I can take or leave but that I know some people really enjoy (and also she’s bi-for-Byleth, but no one talks about that). Unfortunately as I touched on when talking about Marianne in my Top 10 characters list, Mercedes’s appealing points are sharply contrasted against her more annoying ones. The breathy voice acting I can mostly get used to, but her backstory is unnecessarily convoluted - three families and two flavors of evil adoptive father - and as is also true of Constance her association with Jeritza drags her down a fair bit. To this day I still have no idea what we’re meant to make of the Lamine siblings’ dynamic, but Mercedes’s eagerness to overlook her brother’s crimes and unrepentant bloodlust so she can coo over what a sweet boy he is deep down say some pretty odd things about her personal moral code. Maybe it was implied all along with the paranormal fascination that she’s not as orthodox as she appears to be, but the dissonance is real especially in CF where she gets a support line with Jeritza that tries to woobify him and affirms how much she loves him...and meanwhile in monastery exploration she’s wringing her hands over how much she hates the idea of fighting Faerghus and the church. There’s no through line here, and as justification for characters siding with Edelgard go this one is pretty flimsy.

#5 Gilbert - Similar to Cyril, I don’t dislike Gilbert for the reasons that most of the fandom does. Yes, he’s a crappy father, but as I’m pretty indifferent to Annette and to father-child bonding in general I can appreciate the fresh spin he places on the archetype of the devoted knight. In short, he’s a knight who wasn’t devoted and ran away from his duty, and his arc in AM is all about making up for his past failures both to his family and to his liege. This is an angle to knighthood FE doesn’t delve into often, and it makes him an explicit foil of Dedue as explored in their supports. The reason that Gilbert is on this list though in fact has more to do with that opposition, because I am painfully aware that had AM not killed off Dedue by default in service of self-insert romance Gilbert would not have had to be scripted as Dedue’s replacement both as a unit and as a retainer figure. It’s not his “fault” of course, insofar as one can ever blame fictional characters for the actions of their writers, but whenever I’m running AM and have to take those randomized supply run quests from Gilbert instead of the route’s actual retainer I’m reminded of how we were robbed of power couple Dimidue (in AM anyway - CF of all routes delivers on this point). Gilbert could have been father of the year to Annette and freely given Byleth his (grand)daddy dick and it still wouldn’t overwrite the fundamental problem that Byleth screwed over all three AM-exclusive characters in different ways. As to that, well...look at #1.

#4 Raphael - It’s hard to describe just how much wasted potential there is to this guy. Along with Ignatz and Leonie he could have illustrated the greater social mobility of the Alliance and the increased opportunities non-nobles enjoy there, but all three are mostly side characters. He’s repeatedly positive in the face of tragedy and remains motivated by his love for his remaining family, but 90% of his dialogue revolves around either eating or training to the point that he’s arguably the closest FE16 comes to gimmick character writing (something almost every FE is guilty of, but that has come under heavy scrutiny in recent years because of how much Awakening and Fates used it). He has a sweet friendship with Ignatz with even a bit of chemistry that sits in good company with the kind of simply affability he has with almost everyone he supports, but they have a no homo ending involving one of the game’s eternally offscreen characters. He supports Dimitri, but the bara content is thin on the ground and their line stands out as easily the least substantial of the house leaders’ cross-house supports. Even as a unit he’s lackluster, in the same repetitive category as Alois with nothing that makes him really stand out from the other axe-and-brawling guys. Highest HP growth in the game...whee. I’ve seen arguments that Raphael’s simplicity is the source of his charm, and while I can sort of see that he feels like he belongs in a game like the GBA or Tellius titles where characters have a much smaller amount of overall content to their name. In a game like Three Houses the sheer torrent of lines about food and training wear thin quickly.

#3 Bernadetta - see #8 here. To sum up, she’s annoying, her sex appeal falls flat with me and is frankly just kind of confusing, it bugs me that a significant portion of the Ferdibert fandom headcanons her as Hubert’s bestie when the man clearly does not do besties, and the most positive thing I can think to say about is that based on her habit of befriending known murderers among other things she might be a bit of a sociopath. That’s not very flattering, but at least it’s somewhat interesting. Oh yeah, and Edelgard setting her on fire at the Gronder rematch is good for a meme although I suppose that isn’t technically attributable to Bernadetta.

#2 Jeritza - Jeritza sucks. Everyone, apart from the small number of fans into Bylitza for some reason, is aware that he sucks. He’s a bloodthirsty serial killer we’re meant to like because he killed his father to protect his sister and also because he likes ice cream and kittens...and because he’s clearly mentally ill in some way and Edelgard is weaponizing his illness for her war which means all the murder is okay, I guess. Jeritza is like FE7 Karel if he was somewhat important to the plot and that instead of a redemption arc between games he got Karla and some other characters swearing that he’s really sweet deep down and also he can romance the male self-insert - yay. I love the line of thinking sometimes espoused in anti circles that M/M Bylitza is the only non-Problematic™ Byleth ship because he’s their only gay romantic S rank partner who’s not one of their students, a loli, or Rhea who is obviously the most evil character in the game. As I’ve mentioned above Jeritza also makes other characters he supports worse by association, although he’s not quite as bad in that regard as #1. Do I even need to bring up the painfully affected voice acting? It’s ironic that the vocal director for the English localization turns in unquestionably the worst performance among the named cast, and I have to assume he picked the role for himself solely because he sounds like an imposing Death Knight and not because his voice is at all suited to the troubled twunk underneath the armor. Just about the only thing that would have salvaged Jeritza for me would be if he and Hubert got to have an epic competition to determine once and for all which of them is more evil. Hubert would wipe the floor with this poser.

#1 Byleth - see here at the bottom. They fail as a self-insert, they fail to be a properly realized character even more than previous Avatars, they damage other characterizations and arcs all over the place, and Three Houses overall would have been vastly improved if they didn’t exist or at least weren’t the PoV character. In that previous post I listed just two reasons why I still prefer Byleth to Robin as an Avatar, one being that their significance to the plot is set up before the game even begins and the other being that their lack of a voice makes f!Byleth a less obtrusive presence when it came time for me to have her S rank all the guys to fill out the support log...not enough to where I could treat her as a self-insert, but any amount helps. I do however have to add a third small bit of praise for Byleth, in that they apparently drive antis up the wall for the most asinine of reasons which is always entertaining to witness. I recall when this game’s school setting was first revealed that everyone in the fandom nodded their heads and made the easy prediction that there would be teacher/student sex because that’s just how FE rolls, but somehow still there’s outrage over it. Even so, Byleth is horrible by every significant parameter, and it’s a shame we’ll only be able to imagine what FE16 would have been like had the developers not felt the need to write the whole thing around an Avatar.

[justfinishedreading]

After having read In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami and hearing about the critically acclaimed film adaptation of another of his novels, Audition, I was excited to read it. At first glance it seems a perfect story for the Me Too era: a film producer hosts a fake film audition with the secret aim of finding himself a wife. But the beauty he selects gradually starts displaying warning signs that others around him, and us the audience, can see, but he cannot.

The novel presents the story solely from the producer’s experience of events, his name is Aoyama, he is 42, a widower and has a teenage son. He is a good creation of a character, what I mean is it would be too easy for a writer to portray him as total lying villain, a man deserving of all the horrors coming to him. But what author Ryu Murakami does brilliantly is make him human, presenting his misogyny and arrogance alongside his vulnerability and hope for a warmer home life. His misogyny is presented in subtly ways, it is important to understand that sexism isn’t always extreme and obvious, often sexism is most damaging when it occurs unnoticed in uneventful daily life.

An example of the duality of his character: in the very first pages he tells us a little bit about his late wife, Ryoko: how she was an amazing woman, he “had nothing but love, respect and gratitude for this remarkable wife of his” and yet in the very next sentence we’re told he frequently cheated on her, and spent large amounts of money on hostesses. He praises Ryoko for maintaining her “cool and quiet dignity” in light of his wrongdoings. Since losing Ryoko, Aoyama also lost the desire to fool around with other women, in the way that an adulterer feels less able to gamble with love and rejection if they’ve lost their guaranteed partner at home.

Aoyama’s biggest positive, some would say his only positive, is his love for his son, Shige. He is frequently thinking about his son and his well-being. And yet in parts of the book when Shige comments that strange things have been happening in the neighbourhood and hints that he’s worried to be left alone, Aoyama leaves him nevertheless for large periods of time without a second thought. Shige isn’t a child, he’s 15, but this love merged with lack of responsibility and lack of thought is typical of Aoyama’s character.

In their first scene together father and son watch a women’s marathon. To watch women as Aoyama puts it. Both father and son lament the lack of beauty on display and in the world in general. Here we have a case of female athletes being judged by two men on their appearance. Aoyama comments that he thinks women will outrun men in marathons due to physiology, praise that women can excel men at something, but still within the physical realm. Physiology is a huge part of sports of course, but so is psychological strength and determination, which is something neither of them think about.

Shige suggests that his father should find a new wife, and Aoyama agrees. He wants a wife. Not a girlfriend, not dating, but a wife and step-mother to Shige. He doesn’t want to go on dates, doesn’t have the time for it, or for match-making interviews. He talks to his buddy Yoshikawa, who’s also in the filmmaking business, and Yoshikawa has the idea of holding auditions for a fake film, but with the sole intention of finding a wife for Aoyama.

The idea of a man wanting the luxury of picking a woman from a swarm of applicants, is very real. As I was reading Audition I heard about real-life Japanese billionaire, Yusaku Maezawa, who was looking for a female "life partner" to accompany him on a tourist voyage to the Moon planned for 2023. The 44-year-old had at the time recently split from his 27-year-old actor girlfriend. He was now asking women to apply for a "planned match-making event" on his website. How balanced would this relationship ever be if one of the partners had literally been in competition with hundreds of other women for the “prize” of being a billionaire’s “special someone”?

So, what kind of woman does Aoyama want? “I’m not that particular about age, but nobody too young” Says Aoyama. On the next page he settles on mid-twenties to early thirties (the woman he eventually picks is 24, Aoyama is 42). He wants a woman who has trained as a classical musician or ballerina, but she doesn’t necessarily have to be successful at it. And she shouldn’t be “contaminated” by the entertainment industry. Basically, someone he can show off but who doesn’t surpass him. “Office girls?” Says Yoshikawa “Forget about it, it’s not that there aren’t beautiful office girls, but get a well-adjusted woman with a regular job and it’s just not that easy to pull the wool over her eyes.”

Aoyama does wonder whether they should go ahead, it seems immoral and fraudulent. Yoshikawa is excited at the prospect of having fun organizing a fake audition solely for their amusement and eggs Aoyama on. A radio announcement for wannabe actresses with no previous acting experience is put out and applications for the film start pouring in. “Having them include a brief essay along with the résumé and photo was a brilliant idea. The essay, amazingly enough, gives you a clearer image of the person than even a photo does” remarks Yoshikawa. Duh Yoshikawa.

Amongst hundreds of applicants Aoyama is taken in by the profile of Asami, a beautiful, young and modest woman who trained as a ballerina but was forced to stop because of an injury. That evening, without even having met her, he daydreams of her washing the dishes at his home after a meal, they discuss how Shige has accepted her. Aoyama imagines her asking him how best to drink an alcoholic spirit “is it all right to have it in ice?” she asks, and they relax together on the sofa.

Although they have selected thirty candidates for face-to-face interviews, Aoyama can only think of Asami. He anxiously awaits her interview time, barely listening to the other candidates before her. So what can I say about Asami? For the majority of the story she keeps us guessing, Aoyama can only see his own created perfect image of her, combined with the manufactured image she presents. She appears humble, beautiful but insecure, fragile and needing guardianship and so appreciative of Aoyama’s attentions. The other characters around Aoyama feel uneasy but the author never explanation why exactly. Anyone who reads this book already knows something is wrong with Asami, we’re constantly wondering how much does she know? Or does she have motives outside this story? How much is an act or a plan? What is she thinking?

The more we want to know Asami’s inner thoughts, the less Aoyama seems to care to. And that really is the most fighting of all. As an audience we know something bad is coming to someone falling deeper into his own illusion. Even Aoyama’s 15-year-old son seems to be more mature and clued-in than his father. And yet they both share a difficulty understanding woman, Shige comments that he doesn’t understand the girls in his school and maybe he’ll end up with a beautiful foreigner from Kazakhstan, “Language might be a problem, but­­-“. We never get to hear Shige’s solution to the language problem but it illustrates the absurdity of thinking that you as a man would get on better with a woman you can’t actually communicate with, and from a completely different culture, than trying to talk and understand the women around you.

Something that works to Aoyama’s, and the story’s, favour is that Aoyama was never a sleazy film producer looking for easy sex, he is looking for a bride. The first couple of meeting are completely innocent. In this way we feel some sympathy for him, stupid as he may be, he is not an evil man, and yet we also want to see what Asami is going to do to him. Or at least I did.

If I were writing an essay (which perhaps this does feel like) there’s all sorts of other moments and even linguistic choices which I’d mention and analyse, but for this review I’m going to wrap it up. I was enjoying this book until close to the last chapters. For me the story goes downhill the moment Asami’s reasoning is revealed, her whole persona is explained in a few paragraphs and the mystery of Asami is resolved whilst the story is still happening. She goes from potentially being intelligent and conniving to being a woman of impulses she cannot control. And the book loses something in the process. I had read In the Miso Soup before Audition and I loved the psychopath Frank, a character we never get to fully understand, complex and full of lies. To have Asami explained away so simply robs her of interest and urgency.

The brilliance of the book is really in the lead up to the final grand event. Not so much the ending itself. In fact regardless of whether things turned out badly or well (I won’t spoil it for you), it still ends on a bitter note, a final comment that the men of Audition, after these life lessons, after feeling the consequences of their actions, still don’t understand where they went wrong.

Review by Book Hamster

[arecomicsevengood]

Watching Movies In Self-Isolation, Part Two

L’Assassin Habite Au Rue 21 (1942), dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot. Clouzot is better known for directing The Wages Of Fear (the movie William Friedkin remade as Sorcerer) and Diabolique, but this is the first movie he directed. It’s a pretty effective comedy, as well as an Agatha Christie style murder-mystery thriller. It’s really cool to watch these things that feel like they are just “movies,” before a bunch of genre conventions got built up and put in place. This one’s also eighty minutes long, super-short. The premise of the movie is there’s a serial killer on the loose, leaving a business card on every dead body. A dude passes along to the police that he found a stash of the business cards in the attic of a boarding house, so the killer must live there. A police officer goes undercover as a priest moving into the boarding house to investigate the residents. His wife, an aspiring singer, has made a bet with him she can solve the crime first, and in doing so become a celebrity that will be hired to perform places, so she also moves into the boarding house, partly to annoy him. The stuff at the boarding house is basically the film’s second act, while the first and third act are more typical murder-mystery stuff, although the tone of comedy is maintained throughout, despite all the cold-blooded murders.

All These Women (1964), dir. Ingmar Bergman. Kind of dumb sex comedy directed by Ingmar Bergman, but with gorgeous Sven Nykvist cinematography, bright jewel-toned pastels, and sort of theatrical staging in spots seeming to foreshadow Parajanov’s The Color Of Pomegranates or eighties Greenaway stuff. About a critic who visits the palatial estate of a famous cellist to write a biography of him only to find a harem of women; the whole thing unfolding from the cellist’s funeral a few days later. The winking humor is both music-hall bawdy but in a way that feels self-aware or “meta” in the context of a sixties film.

The Touch (1971), dir. Ingmar Bergman. Bergman’s one of my favorites, many of his canonized classics resonate deeply with me, but he was also astonishingly prolific, with a bunch of movies of his blurring together in my mind, and even more that I didn’t know existed, like this English-language one, starring Elliott Gould. Gould’s another favorite of mine, being in a bunch of great movies in the sixties and seventies, but damn, he’s unlikable here. Unlikable characters “hit different” in older material because I’m not sure if you’re supposed to sympathize with them according to the sexist cultural attitudes of the day. Here he’s “the other man” Liv Ullman is cheating on Max Von Sydow (RIP) with, but he’s pretty emotionally abusive, just a shit to her, extremely demanding of her in a relationship he did nothing to earn, though it does feel like the movie is kind of treating him as a romantic lead.

The Anderson Tapes (1971), dir. Sidney Lumet. This is heist movie, starring Sean Connery as a dude fresh out of prison, planning to rob his girlfriend’s apartment building, costarring Christopher Walken in his first film role. It contains all the plot beats of a typical heist thing, all the satisfying “getting the gang together, planning things out in advance, chaotic elements interfere” stuff but also a totally superfluous bit of framing about like constant surveillance, video monitoring and audio tape. All this dystopian police-state stuff seems, implicitly, like it would make a crime impossible to execute, the criminals are monitored every step of the way, by assorted agencies. But then the punchline, after everyone’s arrested for reasons having nothing to do with that, is that all this recording is illegal and all the tapes should be erased as the high-profile nature of the case makes it likely the monitoring agencies will get caught. Sidney Lumet directs a good thriller, even though I don’t find Connery (or Dyan Cannon, who plays the girlfriend) particularly compelling.

The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse (1933), dir. Fritz Lang. I watched this years ago, after reading Matt Fraction praise it, particularly how skillful the transitions between scenes were, and I really enjoyed it, but didn’t remember much about it and was excited to rewatch it. It’s got a lot going for it: An exceedingly elaborate criminal plot whose only goal is to wreak chaos, low-level criminals caught up in something they’re morally unprepared to reckon with, a charismatic police detective interviewing a bunch of weirdos, Fritz Lang following up M by continuing to be a master of film and sound editing very early stitching it all together. The Mabuse character was previously the star of a silent film I haven’t watched, and here he’s mute, which is a clever choice I didn’t register until writing it out just now. He’s gone completely insane, but is nonetheless writing a journal filled with elaborate crime plots, and his psychologist is completely insane and following these directions, in a commentary on the rise of Nazism in Germany at the time.

House By The River (1950), dir. Fritz Lang. I watched this in the pre-Quarantine days, but it totally rules. Again, it feels sordid in part because of how old it is and my assumption you’re meant to identify on some level with the completely loathsome protagonist’s sexual desire and anger at getting turned down. It’s so creepy, he’s listening to the sound of his maid showering at one point. All the characters seem very fun to play, they’re all pretty cartoonish. This guy murder his maid, and then gets the idea that he should write a book about the murder when someone explains the idea of “writing what you know” to him, and he is then surprised when his wife reads the book and puts together that it’s a murder confession, saying something like “Really? I thought I disguised it pretty well.” The film functions as a dark comedy because every character is completely mortifying. Lang’s work becoming less ambitious and more reduced in budget during his time working in America is pretty sad but this movie feels legit deranged.

Midsommar (2019), Ari Aster. Heard good things about Hereditary, but haven’t watched it yet, having been put off by the plot summary of Aster’s preceding short film, about a kid who rapes his dad. This is like a longer version of The Wicker Man, basically, starring Florence Pugh, who I had heard was like the new actress everyone’s enamored with, but didn’t think was that compelling in this. A bunch of Americans go to a Swedish village, one of them (played by Chidi from The Good Place) has studied their anthropology extensively, but all are unprepared for the fact that their whole culture seems to revolve around human sacrifice and having sex with outsiders so they don’t become totally inbred. There’s a monstrously deformed, cognitively impaired child who’s been bred specifically so his abstract splashings of paint can be interpreted as culture-defining profound lore, which I took away as being comparable to the role Joe Biden plays within the death cult of the DNC.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2019), dir. Bi Gan. This got a lot of acclaim, but I am almost certain the main reason I watched it is because the director made a list of his favorite movies and included Masaaki Yuasa’s anime series Kemonozume on it. Does a sort of bisected narrative thing, where half of the movie is this sort of fragmented crime thing, a little hard to follow, and then you get the title card, and then the second half is this pretty dreamlike atmospheric piece done in a single shot, with a moving camera. I’m not the sort to jerk off over long shots, although I appreciate the large amount of technical pre-planning that goes into pulling them off. The second part is pretty compelling though, enveloping, I guess it was in 3-D at certain theatrical screenings? I’m a little unclear on how my fucked-up eyes can deal with 3-D these days and I was never that into it. The first half is easy to turn off and walk away from, the second half isn’t but I’m unsure on how much it amounts to beyond its atmosphere.

Black Sun (1964), dir. Koreyoshi Kurahara. This one’s about a Japanese Jazz fan and dirtbag squatter who meets a black American soldier who’s gone crazy and AWOL. He loves him because he loves Jazz and all Black people, but the soldier is pretty crazy and can’t understand him anyway. Jazz is, or was, huge in Japan and this is a cooler depiction of that fandom than you get in Murakami novels but it’s a fairly uncomfortable watch, I guess because the black dude seems so crazy it feels a little racist to an American audience? Maybe he wasn’t being directed that well because there would be a language barrier but it’s weird.

Honestly the thing to watch from sixties Japan on The Criterion Channel is Black Lizard (1962), dir. Umetsugu Inoue, which I watched shortly after Trump’s election in 2016, when all the Criterion stuff was still on Hulu, and it cheered me up considerably in those dark days. It feels a little like The Abominable Dr. Phibes, but with a couple musical numbers, and is about a master detective who thinks crime is super-cool and wishes there was a criminal who would challenge his intellect. Then the Black Lizard kidnaps someone. It’s a lot of fun, with a tone that feels close to camp but is so knowing and smart it feels more genuinely strange and precise. One of those things you get fairly often where the Japanese outsider’s take on American genre stuff gets what it’s about more deeply and so feels like it’s operating on a higher level. I really love this movie.

I had this larger point I wanted to make about just feeling repulsed by genre stuff that self-consciously attempts to mimic its canonical influences and that might not be all the way present in this post. Still, something that really should be implicit when talking about movies from the past is that they are not superhero movies, and how repulsed I am by that particular genre’s domination of cinema right now, and how much of cinema has a history of something far looser and more freewheeling in its ideas of how to make work that appealed to a broad audience, and how much weird formal playfulness can be understood intuitively by an audience without being offputting, and the sort of spirit of formal interrogation connects the films I like to the comics I like (as well as the books I like, and the visual art I like), this sense of doing something that can only be done within that medium even as certain other aspects translate.

[amplesalty]

Christmas 2019: Day 4 - A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

Four rounds of sliders!

So, turns out I had the title of this movie wrong, it’s not just A Harold & Kumar Christmas, it’s a 3D Christmas! Which also answers the question of where we go from the second movie, apparently out goes all that racism and in comes just so, so many shots of things flying at the camera.

It’s 2011 by this point, have we not left all this in the past? Hell, they were doing this in House of Wax when I watched that last year and that was back in the 50’s. To their credit, they do poke fun at the whole 3D thing at times, like near the start Harold’s assistant brings in a big ass TV meant as a present for Harold’s father in law. Harold questions if the whole 3D thing hasn’t jumped the shark by now but his assistant disagrees, exclaiming that it’s going to be ‘amazing’ as he points down the camera for emphasis. Harold just dryly asks who he’s looking at.

Harold has been moving up in the world it seems, now a very successful businessman on Wall Street. Unfortunately this comes during the whole ‘Occupy Wallstreet’ movement and the streets outside his office is lined with protesters wanting to eat the rich. Perhaps with a side of eggs which they throw at him by way of the camera lens.

Like a good soldier though, his assistant steps into the line of fire and takes a barrage of eggs to the face. RIP in peace. They have this whole musical sting whilst it’s happening, I feel like this has to be referencing something but I’m not sure what, war movies aren’t my thing.

Harold’s father in law by the way is played by non other than Danny Trejo, which is a rather scary thought. Trying to impress the father in law is bad enough without factoring that into the equation. He’s predisposed to disliking Harold as well given that his mother was killed by a bunch of Korean street thugs when she came over to America.

We learn that in his youth, Mr Perez dreamed of celebrating Christmas with a Christmas tree but would never get his wish. It was only upon reaching America that his mother promised they would have one every year, only for his life to be cut short. That’s why he holds this season and Christmas trees in particular in such high esteem. We also learn that apparently he was born with his moustache, which honestly wouldn’t surprise me with Danny Trejo. Also, someone being viciously murdered by street thugs seems a bit dark for this franchise.

Speaking of facial hair, Kumar is still a layabout bum who got kicked out of medical school for failing a drugs test. I do dig the beard though. Vanessa has left him though and he lives in filth with a neighbor who rents out his bathroom to let homeless people take a shit. So yeah, little bit of a mismatch on how our two heroes lives panned out over the last 7 years. I’m digging the beard though, but he promptly shaves it off under the pretense of trying to finally mature somewhat when he finds out Vanessa is pregnant.

Although, he is a little distracted during this revelation by the unfolding scenes of A Christmas Story and Flick getting his tongue stuck to the flagpole. Clearly an Xbox man as well, seemingly playing some Crackdown and Gears of War recently. This isn’t like that time I kept seeing It’s A Wonderful Life everywhere, is it? I’m not going to start having A Christmas Story pop up in all these movies, am I?

H&K are reuinited for the first time in two years when a package turns up at Kumar’s apartment addressed to Harold, which turns out to be a massive joint. Kumar lights up, only for Harold to play narc and throw it out of the window. Miraciously though, it curves around and flies back in a different window, lighting up Mr Perez’s Christmas tree and nearly burning down the whole house. This only reinforces what a negative influence on Harold’s life Kumar is and it looks like our duo are going their separate ways again. But, this does give us our impetuous for another hour and a half of whacky shenanigans because if Harold doesn’t fix that tree, there’s a good chance Mr Perez might kill him.

So we get the odd foursome of Harold and his new white bread bestie, Todd (and his daughter) and Kumar and his neighbor, Adrian, out on the lookout for a tree. This does lead to perhaps the most racially driven portion of the movie as they head to a tree lot run by two African-American guys trying to do this ‘good cop, bad cop’ thing, the Fat Albert looking guy playing nice and the other wondering what a pair of honkey, cracker, white ass fools are doing coming up in their turf.

Turns out Mr Perez isn’t the only one out to kill Harold though, as the tree search takes them to a party by way of Adrian who has a hookup waiting for him that he met online. She’s a virgin because apparently all the guys at school are scared to go anywhere near her. Adrian realizes that’s because her dad is notorious Ukranian mobster Sergei Katsov. At first I thought this was Chris Meloni making his third outing in the series but no, it’s actually Elias Koteas who was Casey Jones in the Ninja Turtles movies.

After Adrian goes soft upon finding out this information, Mary will settle for anyone at this point and goes to start blowing Harold right in the middle of the party. An inopportune time then for Daddy to come home and find what looks like an Eiffel Tower situation going on.

Even after they barely escape though, the nightmare is far from over as they start tripping and think they’re in the middle of a multi storey evil snowman attack. And, this all takes place in claymation. This is a really awesome scene, the design of the snowman is great and the level of destruction going on is amazing.

I could do without Kumar showing off his clay cock though, I only dread to think how much worse this is in 3D with him waving it about in your face.

Luckily, old buddies Rosenberg and Goldstein are there to shake them out of their bad trip and take them to White Castle to relax. Man, they have a much easier time getting their this time. They’ve clearly learnt from their past experiences. Along with the whole 3D into the camera gimmick, the racism angle has been replaced somewhat with religion, notably here with a whole speech about how Goldstein’s wife had him convert to Christianity and him just going in on those ‘dirty Jew bastards’.

That and the use of his son as a distraction so Harold & Kumar can go steal a tree from a church. ‘Pillow fight in the altar boys room, last one there is a rotten egg!’. Going in on the Catholics as well, I see.

And of course, the big one, the main man JC. Apparently Heaven is like a nightclub and we get the story of how NPH was ushered in the front door following his altercation at the whore house. Only, Jesus didn’t take kindly to NPH macking on his ladies so put in a word to the big man upstairs to send NPH back down to Earth. I mean, it’s not 100% to the letter but I’ll take this as I fucking called it.

The third part of the trifecta of racism replacements in this movie is metaness. There’s a good example here how they call out NPH coming out of the closet in real life, only to reveal that NPH is as big of a poon hound as he’s ever been and this is all just a trick to get the ladies. David Burtka? He’s not his husband, he’s just his dealer!

There’s a couple of other moments like someone referring to Harold as ‘Sulu’ or Adrian saying he lied to Mary and said he was Robert Pattison’s acting coach and that Kumar worked in the White House.

NPH is starring in some big festive stage show and sweet talks one of the dancers back to his dressing room, suggesting she strip down so that he can give her a massage. Hey, it’s cool, we’re all girlfriends here, right? Now just give him a minute so he can squirt some of his special lotion on your back...

He hooks up H&K with a tree from the set but before they can head home, the gangsters catch up with them take them to a secluded part of town for an execution.

But as they make their escape, Harold finds his dick has become stuck to the pole they were tied to. Okay, firstly, between this and Office Chrstimas Party, I’ve seen just about enough dicks to last me til the end of the season. Secondly, maybe this is God’s way of reminding me that I have some unfinished business with A Christmas Story. Sure there was the original and that sequel no one asked for but there is another...

And just in case you forget this is a Christmas movie, Harold inadvertently shoots Santa out of the sky and Kumar has to perform impromptu surgery, because he always does. Santa being played by Richard Riehle who was in Grounded for Life and, relevant to this blog, Chillerama and the Rob Zombie Halloween II. Turns out he was the one who sent Harold the massive joint so that the two of them could reconcile. I never knew Santa cared so much about the friendship of two potheads. I don’t know if he’s a good fit for Santa though, a little too gruff and mean. Doesn’t have the heart of say, an Edmund Gwenn. That could have been an alternate way to do this actually, have a totally sacherine by the numbers Santa that gets corrupted by H&K when they get him to smoke with them, he’s on too much of a bad trip to deliver the toys like normal so it’s up to them to save the day.

I think I would have to put this above the sequel but behind the original in terms of quality. As one note and as fleeting an appearance as he is, the Ukranian gangster somehow feels more of a threat than the entire US government in the second film. Keeping this adventure local again makes it feel much more grounded and there’s just a more light hearted atmosphere to the whole thing when you don’t have that massively racist and oppressive tone pressing down on it.

[wendynerdwrites]

Guess who got a big chunk of writing done for the first time in months? This gal!

Okay, so here is a rough first chapter of a Metalocalypse fanfic, Dethcomics:

"Gentleman… It seems Dethklok is looking into joining the world of comic books. A call has gone out seeking artists and writers to create a Dethklok graphic novel."

"This could be catastrophic! Every new Dethklok industry venture manages to upset the balance of trade, but a band-sponsored book spreading their messages further?!"

"At least with their music no one can tell what Nathan Explosion is saying. But written in black and white?!"

"Exactly. To elaborate, I have called in expert in comics, Professor Varveil Molfirbygai."

The Professor, skinny and acne-ridden, comes forward, pushing his square-framed glasses up  the bridge of his nose. "Gentlemen, Dethklok have already rejected the proposals by Brian Posehn, Brian Piludo, and Grant Morrison for their books and are tearing through artists one at a time. At this rate, no one in the industry will be left but Rob Liefeld and Devin Grayson. Apparently their contradictory demands and unrealistic expectations have even been characterized by Alan Moore as 'too far out'. Marvel, DC, Image, and Dark Horse have all blacklisted them, leading to the band to launch their own independent publishing house. This could potentially upset the delicate balance of power within the industry. And God help us if the title is snatched up for screen adaptation by Sony or - ugh - Hulu."

"What can we do to nip this in the bud?"

"It seems that Nathan Explosion's new wife, Abigail Remeltindtdrinc and Charles Offdensen have taken a more direct role in monitoring the project. They may prove a stabilizing influence…"

~_~_~

"Ugh, Dildos!" William Murderface hurls his whiskey bottle to the corner of the game room. "These artsy-fartsy types are a bunch of egotistical, emotional dildos!"

"Ja, likes how obsessives and arrogants can yous gets?" Skwissgaar adds, shredding silently on his Gibson. "And sos delicate!"

Toki, leaning back from the Mortal Kombat machine, sniffs. "I's kinds of liked that Yoorerd Way fellows…"

"HE DIDN'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ROCK!" Nathan roars from the foosball table, engaging in a fierce battle with Pickles.

"Maybe we should just write it ourselves, y'know." Pickles suggests, "And get, I don't know… Toki, you draw things, right?"

Toki brightens. "I'S DO!"

Skisgaar scoffs, "All's he's draws is girly, fluffy tings like happy bunnies and womens withts de tits covered."

"Toki is even less metal than that Brenden Smalls douchebag! Heh, Brenden Smalls, what did he ever create for anyone?" Murderface adds.

"I cans draw brutal!"

"I'm sure you can, Toki, but I'm afraid that still isn't happening," a firm, female voice calls out.

The room falls silent as Charles and Abigail enter the room. 

"Guys, Abigail may have found someone to write and draw the book," Charles announces.

Abigail blanches slightly, somewhat uncomfortable. "Maybe, if I can convince her."

"Her?" Murderface asks, somehow sounding simultaneously dismissive and aroused. "We can't let ladies make stuff for us!"

Abigail cradles her temple. "See?" She says to Offdensen, "I told you!"

"Why would we wants chicks arounds us?" Skwisgaar asks.

"Guys, we already put out the announcement. You've blown through nearly every acclaimed graphic novel creator in the business. Fans are getting impatient. So if we can get Abigail's friend to do this for us, you will be on your best behavior!"

"Maybe we should give this chick a chance, you know?" Nathan offers, offering his wife a sympathetic look.

"Oh, you're only saying that because your lady suggested it!" Murderface howls, taking a new bottle of alcohol from a Klokateer with a tray. "You're totally whipped, Man!"

Abigail's eyes burn. She smarches over to the couch and yanks the bassist by the ear. He cries out.

"Listen, you talentless sack of piss, this whole project has been taking time away from recording. And you know how I feel about that. You're going to be a good little boy and do as I say, understand?!"

"YES, MA'AM!"

Abigail releases him, leans back, clears her throat, and smooths her blazer. "I apologize for that. I am… not feeling like myself lately. Like I said, I haven't even convinced my friend to do this, I am not even sure I can. But you can all be sure of her qualifications. Her name is Sofia Maldonado, she's been creating comics since she was fifteen. She has worked on titles like The Boys, Swamp Thing, Ms. Marvel, Deadpool, Nightwing, and Batman. She has her own book, The Emerald Pixie, that has been a hit with both critics and readers and has been nominated for four Eisner Awards, winning two."

The band looks at her as if she is speaking Chinese. She sighs.

" Uh, 'Emerald Pixie'?" Nathan inquires, "No offense, Honey, but that doesn't sound very metal."

"The Pixie has retractable ten inch fangs."

"Oh, uh, that's cool, I guess."

"I mean, it can't hurt, I guess." Pickles adds.

"Is she hot?" Murderface asks.

"Yeahs, is she hot?" Skwisgaar asks.

Abigail turns to Charles. "Why am I doing this again?"

Offdensen pats the producer on the arm. "Guys, please, that is irrelevant. And you will keep things professional, or I am cancelling your vacation to Pornfest this year, understand?"

"What?! Can you even do that?!" Pickles cries out.

"As per my new contract with the five of you, I most certainly can." 

The band all grumbles, except for Toki.

"Cans I's shows her my drawings?"

"I'm sure that will be fine."

Abigail sighs. "Look, guys, this woman is a friend of mine, she is good at what she does, and she does not put up with crap. I am going out on a limb for you with this. One wrong move and she bolts. Understand?"

They all grumble again, but answer in the affirmative.

"Excellent." Charles straightens his tie and clears his throat. "Abigail will call up Ms. Maldonado and see if she is willing."

~_~_~_~

"No."

"Just lis-"

"No, Abby, and also: No. Nope. Negative. Nuh-uh. Nein. Not happening. They've run through almost everyone. Do you know how fucked up you have to be to weird out Alan Moore?! The man worships a Roman Snake God, for fucks sake. I am not descending into that pit of testosterone and excess."

"I will keep them in line, I promise. I managed to get them through six albums in as many years. Now that I'm involved, it will be different, I promise."

"Didn't William Murderface once refer to women as 'Serpents with tits'? Abby, I have reached a point in my career where I am through putting up with shit like this. I have had to collaborate with Garth Ennis and Frank Miller. I even spent an entire hour of my life in the presence of Dave Sims. I have done my time."

Abigail groans. "Sof, Charles Offdensen is offering enough for you to put Eddie through preschool, K-12 private, college and grad school someday."

"Emerald Pixie is selling like crazy and Paramount and Universal have approached me for the rights."

"I'll get you an interview for Collegiate."

There's a long pause. 

"...Really? How?"

"I'm an alum, remember? And the Headmistress owes me, like, seven favors. Your son will be playing in the sandbox with the children of Governors and hedge fund owners.”

There’s another pause. Abigail smiles. For all that Sofia has gone on about hating capitalism and her passion for Leftist politics, since her son was born she’d grown a little hypocritical on that front. Not that Abby could blame her. Sofia didn’t have a lot of support, being a single mom. 

“Maybe I’ll consider a meaning.”

Abigail tries a different tactic. “Please do. To be honest, I could really use a friend around here at the moment.”

It’s not something she’d normally say, as independent as she is. But as she makes the statement, she realizes that it’s true. 

Sofia’s voice becomes gentler. “What’s up?” 

Abigail tells her.

Her friend takes a deep breath. “Okay, then. I’ll take the meeting. But I mean it, Abby, one shitty comment---”

“---I know. But hey, look, you’ve met Nathan, and he’s not so bad, right?”

Technically, Sofia had encountered the entire band to varying extents at the wedding. She’d really only spoken to Nathan, and stared, mouth agape, at Pickles’s bender and slurred Best Man’s toast.

“He’s not too bad, I guess. But the rest? Bunch of crazy gringos.”

“Toki is sweet. Pickles actually isn’t bad when he’s not blackout drunk. Skwisgaar can be decent, aside from the arrogance. And Murderface… Don’t worry, I’ll keep my boot to his neck. I’ll keep my boots to all of their necks. I swear. Please, Sof, do this for me.”

Sofia takes yet another deep breath. “Alright. I’ll be available in a couple of weeks. Book me a flight. And I want my Collegiate interview before then.”

“Done. Thank you so much.”

They say their good-byes. Abigail hangs up and leans back against the pillows of her bed, rubbing her temple. Nathan enters the bedroom, looking a little sheepish. 

“Look, uh, I had another talk with the guys. Murderface is in debt again, so I offered to pay it off, if you don’t, uh, mind. That should help keep him… you know… less Murderface.” He sits down on the edge of the bed and takes her hand. “Did she say yes?”

  “We have a single meeting in two weeks. I’m pretty sure I’m going to draw up a list with Charles about things they are not allowed to bring up.”

“You’re sure this is a good idea, right?”

Abigail smiles ruefully. “No, not at all. But it’s the only idea I have.”

“I hope the guys don’t, well, uh, you know…”

“Sofia talks a big game, but she’s tough and willing to put up with more than she lets on. She wouldn’t be where she is if it were otherwise. If we keep them reined in enough, I think we might make this work.”

~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~

“Hey, I’s remembers her!”

“Shut up, Toki! Don’t be weird!” Pickles snaps as they watch their prospective new artist drop her bags in the middle of the Mordhouse entry hall and look up at the gargantuan ceiling. 

She is tall and athletic, with bronzed skin, blue eyes, and dark brown hair. She wears boot-cut black pants, a red graphic tee, and a black jacket with pins on the lapel. The band all peers at her curiously as Abigail rushes forward to greet her, ask after her son, and re-introduce Charles.

Handshakes are exchanged, and Abigail ushers the band over.

“Sofia, you of course remember my husband Nathan. This is Pickles, the drummer. Skwisgaar Skwigelf, lead guitar.”

“Hi’s.” Skwisgaar offers, obviously trying not to stare at her tits.

“Toki Wartooth, rhythm guitar.”

“Hello’s artist-lady!” Toki bounces on his heels, clutching sheets of paper. “I’s have some drawings, I hopes you like them!” He thrusts them towards her.

The artist smiles kindly and takes them. “I’ll give them a look. Thank you, Mr. Wartooth.”

“Calls me Toki!”

“Thank you, Toki.”

“And finally, William Murderface, bass.”

“Greetings and salutations, Senoriiiiiita!” Murderface grabs the woman’s hand and presses a wet kiss to it before smirking up at her. “Ole.”

Sofia snatches her hand back and glances at Abigail, who glowers at the bassist. “Knock it off, Murderface, or I’ll have you neutered.”

He squeals and jumps back. “S-Sorry.”

"So's, tells me, comics-lady. Cans we's makes dis comic book a pops-ups book and can we's makes the pop-up dragons breathes fire?"

Sofia takes one look at Toki, then another at Abigail. "I'm so glad to be here!"

[garden-ghoul]

listen to and share my podcast where I talk about being a baby witch and having to learn to manipulate the fabric of society! it doesn’t get more autistic than this! 

transcript below the cut.

Before reading: THIS IS THE BEST TIFFANY ACHING BOOK! Because it’s about navigating new peer groups and feeling like an idiot and being weird even among the weirdos who should be your people! Tiffany is SO multiple and so relateable and I kind of want to have kids just so I can read them this book and tell them “See, if you feel this, you’re in good company.”

Also I should introduce Tiffany, since this is the second Tiffany book. In this one she’s 11 years old. She’s a witch who grew up on chalk instead of hard stone and sometimes people look down on her for that. She’s a little pretentious about how perceptive and thoughtful she is and how she knows a bunch of big words she can’t pronounce. I believe she whacked the queen of the fairies on the head with a frying pan, or something similar. And she briefly met Granny Weatherwax at the end of her first book, and Granny gave her the eponymous hat full of sky, which is a pointed witch hat that nobody can see. I’m not exactly clear on why. The point is she’s the perfect picture of a good half of all autistic children and she’s very dear to my heart.

SO the book starts by presenting a bodiless, frightened thing that has lost the brain it used to live in, drifting slowly over the hills. And then Tiffany does a spell that allows her to step out of her body and look at it from outside and it notices her. Perfect! A strong mind! Filled with lots of little nested minds! There’s the setup of the plot, this creature called a Hiver. Now to the action.

Tiffany is going to the mountains, and on the way we get a flashback about that time Tiffany was briefly the ruler of a colony of pictsies—the Nac Mac Feegle. I mention this because there’s a bit with the new ruler, the new kelda she’s called, who gives Tiffany a get out of here this is my turf now look—and this territoriality theme was a very strong in the last book. We also get a lovely bit of editorial from the author on the new kelda, Jeannie: he says that because she’s new, because she’s moved here from far away and is frightened and unsure and alone, she makes a mistake. And that mistake is telling her clan not to protect Tiffany from the Hiver that is following her.

I want to read some excerpts from the later part where we see Jeannie’s husband, Rob Anybody, having some existential dread about it. Because it’s some great comedy and some great pathos, all in one. Jeannie comes out to try and stop him brooding about how he’s not allowed to keep Tiffany safe—offers him a drink of extra strong liquor that may or may not be made from turpentine and when he refuses it she starts yelling that he’s died. A couple of his brothers come out and start crying, it’s a great bit. But then Jeannie, as his wife, asks him not to go save Tiffany. Heavy-hearted, Rob agrees… and the next moment, as his kelda, she tells him he does have to save Tiffany, because Tiffany is the hag of the hills and she tells the land what it is. But be careful, won’t you?

“You've got something to come back safe to me for, Rob Anybody,” said Jeannie. “An' I beg ye to use your heid for somethin' other than nuttin' folk.”

“I thank ye, Kelda,” said Rob Anybody. “I'll do as ye bid. I'll tak' some lads and find the big wee hag, for the good o' the hills. It cannae be a good life for the puir wee big wee thing, all alone and far fra' home, among strangers.”

“Aye,” said Jeannie, turning her face away. “I ken that, too.”

I just love this growing sympathy between Tiffany and Jeannie, as women who have to make their own way to power and self-confidence.

There’s a bit of intrigue for Tiffany on the way to the mountains, with her escort making these divination devices cum curse nets called shambles and having them explode with some kind of oppressive power, but she does make it. We meet her new mentor Miss Level, who has two bodies and used to work in a circus because it seemed like she was reading her own mind. She’s desperate for a bit of company because the last three girls who came to apprentice with her found her too unsettling and left.

She takes Tiffany out to the nearby villages that are on Miss Level’s beat, as it were, collecting gossip and free food and tending to the sick. The witch’s life is presented as this sort of a web of implication and subtlety, manipulating the social fabric so as to do good and get paid without causing any resentment. Although Miss Level says it’s VERY important that a witch never expects to get paid.

“Pretty soon people will be killing their pigs for the winter,” said Miss Level, “and I'll get more brawn, ham, bacon and sausages turning up than a family could eat in a year.”

“You do? What do you do with all that food?”

“Store it,” said Miss Level. 

“But you-“

“I store it in other people. It's amazing what you can store in other people.” Miss Level laughed at Tiffany's expression. “I mean, I take what I don't need round to those who don't have a pig, or who're going through a bad patch, or who don't have anyone to remember them.”

Witches are agents of communism! From each according to ability, to each according to need. I think it’s cool that they’re here to sort of smooth out economic inequality.

Miss Level also asks Tiffany about her Granny Aching, and the way she used her influence. I really like this bit.

“Did she help people?” Miss Level asked.

“She made them help one another,” Tiffany said. “She made them help themselves.”

Miss Level sighed. “Not many of us are that good.”

So a witch’s job is to subtly manipulate everyone around her into being a better person.

So Tiffany is doing a lot of boring taking care of people. She doesn’t like it, it’s not very glamorous. Another apprentice witch named Petulia Gristle, who has an inconvenient amount of occult jewelry, stops by to invite her to the ‘sabbat’ the other apprentices have. But Petulia keeps asking Tiffany whether she doesn’t want to dress to fit in, and using strange jargon. Petulia is VERY good at fitting in, in the kind of quickly-back-up-your-opinions-and-turn-them-in-a-different-direction kind of way. We’re also introduced to Annagramma, who is the leader of the apprentices in the same way Granny Weatherwax is leader of the witches: which is to say, everyone cares a lot about her opinion but of course witches don’t have leaders. Annagramma says.

Annagramma is the type of insufferable teen who insists on being the only clever person in the room. This is a tall order because most witches are a bit like that, and Tiffany certainly is. But Tiffany is younger and doesn’t have as much experience manipulating the social fabric, and Annagramma uses her inexperience to humiliate her. Oh sure of course you kicked the fairy queen out of your village. Uh huh. And Tiffany does a little analysis of how Annagramma manages her underlings: she’s like a dog worrying the sheep so much that they don’t have time to do what she says, so nothing gets done. She’s getting in her own way because she, too, is a teen and doesn’t know anything. Aww. I almost like her. I have a soft spot for teens.

Tiffany tells the other apprentices that she’s met Granny Weatherwax (to general disbelief) and that Granny gave her this hat. Everyone asks, What hat? And what follows is maybe my favorite scene from the book.

Long afterwards, and long after all sorts of things had happened, she'd go 'la la la!' to blot out the memory whenever something reminded her of that evening. Miss Level tried to talk to her as she ran upstairs, but she bolted her door, kicked off her boots and lay down on the bed with the pillow over her head to drown out the laughter echoing inside…

Tiffany's First Thoughts were running around in circles. Her Second Thoughts were caught up in the storm. Only her Third Thoughts, which were very weak, came up with: Even though your world is completely and utterly ruined and can never be made better, no matter what, and you 're completely inconsolable, it would be nice if you heard someone bringing some soup upstairs . . . The Third Thoughts got Tiffany off the bed and over to the door, where they guided her hand to slide the bolt back. Then they let her fling herself on the bed again. A few minutes later there was a creak of footsteps on the landing. It's nice to be right. Miss Level knocked, then came in after a decent pause. Tiffany heard the tray go down on the table, then felt the bed move as a body sat down on it.

Just this very sweet and relateable baby teen moment where Miss Level tries to comfort her. The other thing I really love about it is the Third Thoughts being the part of you that makes sure that even when you’re low you still take care of yourself. Because I’ve named that part of myself too and it makes me feel close to Tiffany.

Tiffany is feeling so miserable and insecure and homesick that she really just wants to see the invisible hat. So she uses her “See Me” spell to step outside herself and sees the hat right there on her head… but when she tries to reverse it the Tiffany she’s looking at says, “We see you. Now we are you.” Then: Lightning struck somewhere nearby. The window blew in. The candle flame flew out in a streamer of fire, and died. And then there was only darkness, and the hiss of the rain. Damn, that’s a good end for a chapter.

The next morning Tiffany seems to be back in her body, and feeling just great. But discontented with boring nonmagical chores. She wants to climb mountains! BUT she’s losing tiny bits of time, during which she seems to be trying to leave messages, asking for help. Once again, a multiple witch is able to resist not just mind control, but total annihilation of the mind. It seems like her Third Thoughts are somewhat able to curb the nasty temper of the new Tiffany because they’re already used to regulating her. Which is how it is, right, when you’re going through puberty? But she’s seeing things that were seen by minds the Hiver already consumed, and speaking in their voices. She can read minds and she’s telekinetic. She just wants to ACTUALLY USE SOME MAGIC. She leaves the cottage, and Rob, who’s been worriedly tracking her, talks to Miss Level about her.

Miss Level is bewildered at the idea of Tiffany being a powerful witch because she can’t do everyday magic on command—Rob says no, it’s a deep magic tied to the land, not to be used for party tricks. It kind of reminds me of a recent discussion on ADHD, and how it makes ‘simple’ tasks like doing the laundry or making lunch very difficult, but complex tasks like spontaneously producing a podcast much easier. Tiffany is very much in the mold of a hyperlexic child who doesn’t fit in anywhere and is bad at what people expect her to be good at, while being good at things no-one expects her to be able to do at all. Makes me wonder some things about Sir Terry.

So she goes to Annagramma’s to threaten her and try to recruit her as a crony, because the Hiver likes to amass power. Wherever she goes, shambles and curse nets disintegrate, presumably because her very existence is a curse—the type of magic she uses doesn’t play nice with anything else. She goes to a magical paraphernalia shop and turns someone into a frog to get a good discount. Comes home and kills Miss Level. In the ensuing struggle within Tiffany’s mind, she passes out and the Feegles have to go inside her mind.

Inside the part of Tiffany’s mind where Tiffany still is, it looks like the Chalk, and there are the hills and Granny Aching’s shepherd hut. On the door in chalk is written a list of smells that belong to the hut, and if the Hiver smells them it will be brought there—this is important because as long as Tiffany is on her own turf she’s pretty well unstoppable since her power comes from the land. So Rob sends a raiding party to steal the smells, and meanwhile he’s got to fight a bunch of trees that are trying to steal the sunlight from the hills. When the Hiver appears on Tiffany’s turf the Feegles all start fighting it, because of course they do! The earth shakes; the trees start to fall over; and the hills grow taller and start to move, because they’re the shape of a sleeping girl. Yes! That’s right! Tiffany IS the land, and she is SO much bigger than the Hiver, which she picks up between her two fingers. The Feegle bard begins to weep because he’s not good enough to write a song that will do justice to their hag of the land.

And Tiffany wakes up under a green quilt that looks like the chalk hills. She’s really dissociated but someone tells her to milk the goats, so she does. When she comes back to herself Granny Weatherwax is there and explains that one of the previous hosts, a wizard who studied Hivers, explained everything in Tiffany’s sleep. Hivers collect people, and Tiffany now has a head full of ghosts. That’s right she’s DOUBLE MULTIPLE.

We also have a very good bit with Miss Level, who you will recall lost one of her bodies in a Hiver accident, still going about her business as if she still had four hands without realizing it. And because she’s a witch, she can just do that! To me it reads as a parallel for the hat full of sky Granny gave Tiffany, something you can’t see but that nevertheless exists and does its job. I mean, I’m also a sucker for magical workarounds for disabilities, especially if the disability is something strange like ‘only having one body.’ Granny does a little speech on how magic is the easy part of witching, and dealing with people is both the hard part and the more important part.

Now this is something very important to me! Pratchett’s witches, the good ones, are ALL about tikkun olam. They don’t ask ‘who will repair the world?’ They say, ‘I will do it.’ When I was young this made a huge impression on me, that Pratchett presented these witches as the people to admire. I still find it very comforting, this permission to be able to be nasty and self-confident and know I can’t expect thanks for my good work. This is not necessarily to say that I approve of anyone telling children that selflessness is The Right Way To Be—just that for many reasons I have chosen to try to be generous and hardworking, and Pratchett tells us this is difficult and irritating and uncool. I love him.  I’m probably going to witter about this during every single witch book but whatever, Granny Weatherwax is my own mean grandmother who raised me.

So now Tiffany has to repair the world. She’s got to do the medicine for everyone and she’s got to visit old Mr Weavall whose money she stole while she was possessed. But when she checks in the box, lo and behold, it’s filled with gold from the barrow where the Feegles live! Mr Weavall is delighted, gives Tiffany a gold coin, and decides on the spur of the moment to get married.

Which is a very cute way to show that sometimes you’ll get rewarded when you don’t think you deserve a reward, but you’ve got to be humble about it even so. “It’s an unfair world,” Granny tells Tiffany. “Be glad you have friends.” And that’s it, isn’t it?

Granny and Tiffany spend the night up in the mountains stalking the Hiver (unsuccessfully) and then go down the Witch Trials, which is a bit like a fair where all the witches show a cool thing they can do. The Hiver finally starts to move in.

Tiffany builds a shamble, an inconsequential piece of witchery she hasn’t been able to do for the whole book. She can do it now because the stakes are high enough. Yep! That old familiar ADHD feeling, where you can’t make anything happen unless you’re panicking and half mad with guilt! Like us, her power comes from being stressed the fuck out, and it’s correspondingly huge: when she creates her shamble, a curse net to catch the Hiver, the carved horse on the hillside down in the Chalk gets up and leaps away toward the mountains. I’m sorry I haven’t communicated all the great imagery that Pratchett brings back for the climax; he’s excellent at weaving together the details of place in a way that make them important and real. Any book about Tiffany Aching is also a book about her whole country, because in many ways she is the avatar of the Chalk.

And she talks to the Hiver. It’s afraid of endlessly continuing to experience the world, which is a real mood. It wants Tiffany to teach it to die, but it feels that because it isn’t a single person it can’t possibly die. Tiffany tells it a lovely story:

'I'm made up of the memories of my parents and grandparents, all my ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the colour of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think. So who is “me”?'

She tells the Hiver it might as well just construct an identity and inhabit it, in the same way humans do. And now that your name is Arthur (she names it) you just have to cross this endless desert behind this creepy door that I’ve just invented. So the Hiver goes off to learn how to die! But Tiffany is trapped here forever because her door has vanished. She has a few minutes to sink into despair before Granny Weatherwax opens the door from the other side and goes “Come on now, I’m an experienced psychopomp and so will you be, but we haven’t got all day.” And, importantly, Granny says witches never talk about the psychopomp thing. One of those open secrets.

Tiffany wakes up surrounded by the other apprentice witches. She tries to tell them what she’s seen but Annagramma is pretty set on making it seem like Tiffany must have been imagining things. But she takes off her boots and they’re full of black sand that moves weird, and Petulia has heard the rumors about the dark desert, and they believe her.

“Petulia, we're not supposed to talk about this,” said Harrieta, gently. 

“No!” said Petulia, her face red. “It is a time to talk about it, just here, just us!”

This feels very important to me, that there’s a space for girls to have secrets and to explore taboo topics together. The camera cuts away for the actual conversation, but I’m glad they got to have it.

Gossip travels fast among the witches. All of them want to see Tiffany and Granny Weatherwax pitted against each other in the Trials—everyone seems to want one or the other taken down a peg. But neither of them enters. They just stare at each other through all the performances, and Tiffany feels that she’s already won because Granny, the only witch who matters, gave her approval already. It seems a bit shortsighted when I put it like that, but it’s such an important an buoyant feeling to have a mentor figure you admire and trust  tell you that you’ve done well. Tiffany doesn’t care what Annagramma thinks any more, and in Pratchett’s universe this takes away her sway over everyone. Not quite how it works, but certainly how it feels in your heart.

Later she goes to visit Granny and gets another lecture on how the trappings of station aren’t as important as what you do with them, and she thinks about how Granny feels a lot of pressure to keep being The Best and would secretly like someone clever to beat her at her own game. It’s a very sweet moment. The books ends with Tiffany going home for a couple weeks to help with the lambing down in the Chalk, and throwing away her fancy witch hat with the stars on it. She replaces it with the hat made out of the sky, which, as night falls, fills up with stars.

 It’s a special kind of fun to dissect young adult novels because by reading them we can understand what the author wants children, here especially young girls, to know and believe. In this one we have:

People can’t make you feel small and stupid if you don’t play along with them

Understanding people is more important than any technical skill, and more difficult to learn too

It’s extremely embarrassing to be a weird mentally ill kid but you can do great things if you see your strangeness as an asset instead of trying to destroy it

Regulating your own worst thoughts and impulses is a power that takes careful honing but can become a superpower

Capable friends are the best thing in the world to have.

This, and the very last bit where Tiffany turns up for Jeannie’s first kids to be born, also lead us to an important message: that women should support each other even when circumstances or other people seek to pit them against each other. We see this too during the Trials when the other witches want to see Granny and Tiffany compete. Allying yourself with other women is better all around, and additionally it might surprise other people in a very satisfying way. I’m not a woman and I don’t believe I’ve ever thought I was, but I’m VERY interested in women learning to love themselves and each other. And of course, witches have also got to love themselves and each other, and I am a witch.

 Thanks, A’tune in next week, theme song by et c et c.

[atc74]

Fire & Ice

A probably not highly anticipated part 2 to She Waits. I totally did not intend for it to have a second part, but then I joined another challenge and the host graciously agreed to it. So if you’re interested, here is some more disgusting fluff. Taylor, @impalaimagining, this is for you, love and your Sing It Supernatural Challenge. Thank you for all your love and support! My prompt is in italics.

Pairing: Rob Benedict x Reader

Word Count: 2192

Warnings: Rob singing, pregnancy, birth (not graphic), Rob singing

Thank you to all who indulge my Rob Crisis as is reaches critical mass. I mostly blame @iwantthedean and @d-s-winchester, as they are horrible, amazing influences and I love them. Also, to my beta, @just-another-busy-fangirl, I love you!

(photo credits to google search, @mandileaphotography and @stardustandmelancholy)

Rob slipped quietly through the door to your rented condo in Vancouver. He knew you had been tired lately, being six months pregnant and all, and he didn’t want to risk waking you. It had been a long night on set and the director hadn’t called a wrap until almost two in the morning.

He removed his shoes and tossed his jacket over one of the kitchen stools before grabbing a bottle of water and shuffling his tired feet and body down the hall. He ensured the bathroom door was shut before he turned the light on and set to getting ready for bed. After a quick shower, he brushed his teeth. He flipped the lights off and tiptoed into the bedroom.

Rob reached his way along the wall to his dresser and grabbed a pair of boxers and pulled them on. He eased his way to the bed and gently pulled back the comforter.

“Rob?” your voice was raspy from sleep.

“Hey, Honey, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you,” Rob whispered.

“S’okay, baby woke me up anyway; hafta pee,” you groaned as you eased your swollen body from the mattress and rushed the bathroom. You quickly finished your business and returned to the bedroom, greeting Rob with a kiss.”Hmmm minty. How was your day, Babe?”

“It was good. Long, but good. Only one episode left,” Rob welcomed you back into bed with open arms.

“I missed you, Baby,” you snuggled into his side. “Only a couple weeks left and we will be on our way home. I can’t wait to get the nursery finished so we can be ready for this little wiggle worm.”

“I can’t wait to meet our baby, Y/N. I love you,” Rob murmured into your hair.

“I love you, Robby,” you whispered before drifting back to sleep.

~*~

“Honey, are you ready?” Rob called through the apartment.

“I will be in just about three minutes,” you responded strolling out into the living area. “Can you zip me please?”

“Honey, you look absolutely exquisite,” Rob breathed out, his cerulean orbs roaming your figure in the dress you had found on a recent shopping trip.

“Thank you, Robby. I am just glad it fits, for now,” you joked. “I am getting bigger and bigger every day. Pretty soon, I will only be able to fit into sweats!”

“It doesn’t matter what you wear, you will always be the most beautiful woman in the world to me,” Rob said. “And you’re all mine.”

“Okay, you sap, we are going to be late if you don’t zip me up,” you joked, turning around and gesturing to your back.

“I don’t care. I just want you all to myself,” Rob murmured, as his fingers slowly caressed your spine, taking his time.

“I promise you I am all yours tomorrow, but tonight,” you sighed. “Tonight we have a wrap party to attend and you are the emcee and entertainment.”

“I am going to hold you to that promise, Y/N,” Rob relented and zipped your dress with a heavy exaggerated breath.

“You know, you look pretty damn good in that suit, Babe,” you teased, getting an eyeroll in response.

The bar had just started to fill up and it looked like you and Rob arrived just in time. Jensen and Jared greeted you at the door.

“Y/N, you look beautiful, too good for Rob. Run away with me?” Jared teased.

“I am sure Gen would not be okay with that. Control yourself, MIster!” you joked just as easily with him. You loved this family with everything you had and knew your life wouldn’t be the same without them. Throughout all the struggles of the past few years, before, during and after Rob’s stroke and thinking you might lose him, they had all been there for you, through thick and thin.

“Jare, get off the pretty lady! Hey, Sunshine, how is my favorite niece doing?” Jensen hugged you and instinctively rubbed a large hand over your belly.

“Jen, we don’t know if it is a girl or boy, so don’t get too excited just yet. You’ll have to wait a few more months, just like us,” you told him.

“Yeah, well I can hope! And we have receipts for everything!” Jensen blurted out as he took your hand and led you to a table reserved for you. “What can I get you?”

“Just some water with a lemon, please,” you eased yourself into the chair and noticed Rob in the corner talking with Bob Singer and Jim Michaels, figuring it was most likely about the episodes they had just filmed.

“Hey, Honey, you comfortable?” Rob crouched down in front of you.

“Yeah, I’m good, let’s go mingle with everyone before you are stuck on entertainment duty,” you proposed and Rob helped you to your feet, one hand on the small of your back as you walked around, talking to all of your friends and family.

“So how many weeks left, Y/N?” Brianna asked excitedly.

“Just about ten. It feels like just yesterday when I found out,” you marveled.

“I know! It feels like it goes by in the blink of an eye, but lasts forever at the same time!” she exclaimed, hugging you tightly.

“Hey, where’d my husband go?” you wondered aloud as the music started. Brianna just pointed toward the stage where Rob and Rich had taken up their post.

“Ladies and germs! Thank you all for coming tonight. We have some people who wanna say some stuff, so please, pretend to listen and be interested, and blabbity blah, yada yada yada,” Rich joked and passed off his mic to the show runners.

Jokes were made, insults tossed back and forth, but it was all in good fun and camaraderie; the cast and crew were notorious for it and it was what made them all family. They had another great season under their belts.

“Robby?” Rich called out.

“Yeah, Rich?” Rob answered.

“So you guys gonna play something for these nice people? And Jared and Jensen?” Laughter broke out among the party, Jared and Jensen feigning offense.

“We were thinking about it, why, you gonna join us?” Rob asked. “And ah, Jensen Ackles, get your ass up here, too.”

Applause rang out as Jensen jumped on stage, Rich handing him a microphone. The opening notes of ‘Whipping Post’ started and Jensen was flawless. More and more guests joined the stage singing a variety of songs, just like a Saturday Night Special concert.

You alternated between sitting and standing, singing along and carrying on conversations with everybody. The baby would start kicking furiously whenever Rob was singing and it made your heart happy to know that your baby loved Daddy’s voice as much as you did. You had just returned to your seat and slipped off your shoes when you heard your name.

“Y/N, Honey, I know this isn’t the most romantic way to spend our first anniversary, but I don’t think we would be here today if it wasn’t for the love and support of some of the people in this room,” Rob looked off the side and then you saw Gil walk out on stage, followed by Jensen, Brianna, Kim, Ruth and Mark took up his post on the drums. “Surrounded by our friends and family, I vow to you, Y/N, to love you more each day and never to look back, as you are my future.”

You smiled sweetly, not believing what a sap he had turned into. “I love you, Robby!” you yelled to him as a familiar pair of arms encircled your waist and a loud kiss was placed on your cheek.

“Nic! What are you doing here?” you squealed as you hugged her.

“Well, we were coming just to help you move, but Gil couldn’t pass up an opportunity to sing with the boys, so here we are,” she shrugged.

The music started again and you both turned back to the stage, giving your husbands and friends your attention as a old country tune filled the room. This was different than they normally played, but you didn’t care. Rob singing was what you enjoyed most and it didn’t matter if he sang commercial jingles.

“This song is dedicated to my beautiful wife. She is everything I could want and more. Happy anniversary, Honey,” Rob announced.

She’s sun and rain, she’s fire and ice

A little crazy but it’s nice

And when she gets mad, you best leave her alone

‘Cause she’ll rage just like a river

Then she’ll beg you to forgive her

She’s every woman that I’ve ever known

She’s so New York and then L.A.

And every town along the way

She’s every place that I’ve never been

She’s makin love on rainy nights

She’s a stroll through Christmas lights

And she’s everything I want to do again

You and Nicole swayed to the music, not caring anymore that you had taken your shoes off or that your feet still ached. A warmth surrounded you as Rob sang, the group harmonizing perfectly behind him. You watched him as he left the stage and knelt before you.

She’s anything but typical

She’s so unpredictable

Oh but even at her worst it ain’t that bad

She’s as real as real can be

And she’s every fantasy

The song finished, but you couldn’t hear anything. Your attention was on your husband as he wrapped his arms tight around your middle, placing soft kisses to your baby bump. He looked up at you with tears shining in those blue eyes you loved so much.

“You and this baby are all I could ever want. Thank you for being patient and loving me. I don’t know where I would be without you,” Rob confessed and kissed you soundly as everyone clapped, wishing you a happy anniversary.

“You’ll never have to find out,” you promised.

~*~

“Rob!” you yelled from the bathroom one dark and stormy night. A rare thunderstorm had rolled through Los Angeles County and although you loved a good storm, this one had woken you up only to discover that your water had broken.

“What flavor?” Rob mumbled from the bed, still half asleep.

“Rob, Babe, I need you to get up and get dressed right now. My water broke,” you told him, gathering a change of clothes from the bedroom.

“Okay, I’m ready! Let’s get to the hospital!” Rob jumped out of bed and put his shoes on.

“Babe? Uh, you probably are going to want a shirt…and some pants,” you observed as he stood before you in nothing but his boxers and a pair of sneakers.

“Oh, yeah, right. Pants,” Rob babbled as he ran around your bedroom, looking for said pants, settling for a used pair from the hamper.

“Baby bag, check. Mama bag, check. Pants and shirt, check,” Rob recited his list of go items, as he ran down the stairs of your two story home to the door to the garage, slamming it behind him. The door opened and slammed again, and you heard him as he bounded back up the stairs. “Pregnant wife, check.”

“I was wondering if you were coming back for me!” you laughed as he helped you down the stairs, out the door and into the car. Your breathing exercises were not exactly helping, but as you glanced in the back to the brand new car seat he had installed the day before, worry set on your face. “Rob, what if we are horrible parents?” you blurted out as the panic started to set in. You and Rob hadn’t had the smoothest of roads and you worried if you had rushed into the parenting thing.

“Honey, as long as we have each other, that is all that matters, remember? We made it through together and we will make it through this, too,” Rob assured you, his hand rubbing soothingly up and down your arm. He started singing as he drove, knowing that always helped calm you.

~*~

You woke to the sun as it shone through your window, blinking in the brightness. Your arms stretched over your head and you noticed a dull ache in your midsection. The events of the night rushed back to you as your eyes opened wide to take in your husband singing softly, gazing lovingly at the pink bundle in his arms. You listened, content at the sight before you.

“You know, she still needs a name,” you pointed out and his eyes met yours.

“Hey baby girl. Your mama is awake,” Rob cooed gently as he rose, shifting your daughter into your arms. You had marveled over this little wonder for months and she was finally here.

“I was thinking about, too, and may have an idea,” Rob volunteered. “How do you feel about Rowan?”

“I love it, Rob. Welcome to the world, Rowan Elizabeth Benedict. Your Uncle Jensen is going to be so pleased to meet you,” you whispered. Rob reached over and wiped away your silent tears before he kissed the top of your daughter’s head. “She’s beautiful.”

“Just like her mother,” Rob agreed.

Taglist - now open - add or remove here: @iwantthedean @chelsea072498 @paintrider13-blog @d-s-winchester @just-a-touch-of-sass-and-fandoms​ @just-another-busy-fangirl @winchesterprincessbride @waywardjoy @like-a-bag-of-potatoes @mamaredd123 @ellen-reincarnated1967 @sis-tafics @katymacsupernatural @tankcupcakes  @wonderange @meeshw777  @tmccarney @ruprecht0420 @theoriginalvicki @hexparker @nanie5 @docharleythegeekqueen @megansescape @notnaturalanahi @impalaimagining @mrswhozeewhatsis @blacktithe7 @emoryhemsworth @dracotomanddeansprincess23 @bringmesomepie56 @devilgirlsarah @spnbaby-67 @emilycollins11 @myoutletforfanfiction @deansangelgirl @mizzzpink @jerk-bitch-and-an-angel @kayteonline @percussiongirl2017 @fanfreak07 @tattooedmomster13 @sandlee44 @moonstar86 @uttertrash–butlikecutetrash  @squirrel-moose-winchester @growningupgeek @charliebradbury1104 @evansrogerskitten @feelmyroarrrr @itseverythingilike @smoothdogsgirl @evyiione @ashstrom87 @supernatural-jackles @ryantherandomhero 

[ts-hvv4]

RITES OF PASSAGE

Let’s Look back fondly on those who have been voted out:

SARAH: We never got to talk and thats sad. Sorry to see you were first boot.

MALIK: You were cool and I liked you but you stopped being as active. Love to hear more from you though!

NED: Sorry bro, it was either going to be you or me. I saw from the other season you played that you seem to be a really skilled player, so it’s a bummer (and probably fortunate for me) that we didn’t get to see that play out this time. I assume that life just got in the way the first few days-- I totally understand that-- and I hope you’ve done well since we last spoke!

JAKE: You were fun to talk to but unfortunately a bit inactive and an easy vote.

SARAH: King of Starbucks. ILY but you were kinda inactive so Im sorry you left </3

MALIK: We didn't meet tbh but I heard thing about you.

NED: I didn’t get to play with you this time, but honestly I’m really glad I didn’t have to compete against you. Dude, you are a force to be reckoned with and I am so thankful this game wasn’t a repeat of Open Ocean (https://survivor-pacific-islands.fandom.com/wiki/Survivor:_Open_Ocean) where you voted me out first while I was on a ski trip two years ago!!! I don’t know if you’ll read this but you are one of the most dominant, scarily good players I’ve ever seen and I know if you lasted longer this game would have gone in a completely different direction. I know it’s been a while but I hope you’re doing great!

JAKE: I didn’t play with you and idk you.

SARAH: pls send me more pics of ur kitty cat. I love.

MALIK: I know you frrom Facebook! Sadly you didn't last here.

NED: I was hoping to be able to meet you but unfortunately things didn’t pan out that way. I’ve heard great things about you and I’m hoping we’re able to meet after this game ends!

JAKE: I didn’t play with you but I heard you were a crackhead rip

SARAH: We never got to chat but I screeched when I heard tribal council about how you snaked Kage in Thera.

MALIK: I actually really enjoyed your company! Sorry you left early, things just happened.

NED: Birch, you’re an incredibly kind person and I loved getting to know you. I really appreciated your openness and getting to see firsthand your genuine care for others. The only reason I voted you out is that it became apparent that you were probably not going to be on my side moving forward, but I hope you’ve been doing well since the world ended a couple weeks ago and I’d love to hear about how things are going since we last talked about them during the game. 

JAKE: You were really nice in the game and I enjoyed our conversations, unfortunately I don’t think you connected enough with everyone which lead to your vote out.

SARAH: I literally never know if you are loyal to me or if you want me dead. You are a WILDCARD and I love playing with them but you were pretty bad for my game so I had to vote you out. I am sorry :(

MALIK: I heard you were chaotic! But also didn't officially meet you so sorry there.

NED: We didn’t really talk much but u seem cool. HAGS! I don’t know Kage so that was what I would say if we were in middle school and I was signing his yearbook

JAKE: Idk what you were on but you were kinda crackdt during our tribe swap which is why I think people wanted you out LOL

SARAH: I heard you went around telling everyone Andrea/Ned/I are in a F3 alliance really early on in the game. LOL 1) who are you? 2) how do you know me? 3) imagine after getting voted out having the audacity to still talk to ppl about the game. We love cheaters!

MALIK:  Girl, girl, girl. You wanted me in your group, then you were talking RECKLESS about me, being fake about it but then spearheading a vote against me when I didn't do a damn thing to you. You say it wasn't personal but I felt it was because I didn't see why you went so hard to go after me. But gg to you though.

NED: Olivia!!!! Dang, I am really sad this went the way it did. When we talked on day 1 I was planning on being with you all the way. It just became clear that I wasn’t in your serious long-term plans when other people came to me about the 5-person alliance you were in pre-swap that you hid from me. I wish it could have worked out, because you’re super cool and you honestly should have gone much further than you did. You were a great player both strategically and socially and I needed people like that on my side, not against me! I can’t wait to talk to you again and catch up after the season’s over, because you’re a great person and I loved the time we had together.

JAKE: I was shook to see you get the boot pre-merge and I thought we would reunite again at some point, robbed and gone too soon

SARAH: Sorry you left, I loved the way you played on flops and would have really loved to work with you this season

MALIK: I actually really grew to like you a lot Keegan! Hard to connect to at first, but towards the end of the game, I really liked you. I hope we'll talk more afterwards.

NED: Dude, I really enjoyed talking to you and voting you out broke my heart because I know how much you wanted to be there. It came down to the same situation as Olivia, because I knew you were in the alliance with Olivia and also the one pitching my name as a contingency plan, which honestly scared me. My goal in the early stages of the game was to fly under the radar and make as few waves as possible, so it was my priority to eliminate anyone who might throw out my name and possibly expose the cutthroat game I was actually playing. I felt I had to take that opportunity to vote you out, because I know you’re an extremely competent player and would have been a hurdle for me to overcome down the road. I’m sorry things ended the way they did, because I truly did enjoy talking to you and comparing notes on Survivor! Also, you freaking killed it in the music video challenge and should probably go pro.

JAKE: I couldn’t really connect to you that well on our original tribe but you did seem like a nice person.

SARAH: Im sorry we didnt talk too much. We just happened to not be very similar and as much as I can force a convo, it was weird as fuck.

MALIK: We hit it off immediately at the beginning and you were my favorite, and then similar to Olivia you ghosted me and didn't say much to me. I really did like you in the beginning, and I wish you had just told me how you felt then. Because you really did seem cool.

NED: Trent, you are the freaking man! While you were here, you were killing it as a player, and that’s on top of having a BABY on the way!! It was really great getting to know you and play with you at the beginning of the game-- it was honestly kind of scary how well-connected you were, and I respect the heck out of you. I hope you’ve been able to spend some more time with your wife while all of this has been going on and I can’t wait to catch up with you!

JAKE: I hope you are less stressed now that the game is over, tbh I wasn’t sure how much I could trust you early on because Sharifa and Kurt told me about the alliances you had without me, and I did lie to you about the Birch vote LOL but when we tribe swapped we did get really close and I appreciate you sacrificing yourself basically this round, hope I am doing you proud!!

SARAH: KING OF BOOKS. Lets still chat about it. I'm sorry that you got fucked over bc of your idol. You seem so genuinely nice that I would love to be friends after this.

MALIK:  I LOOOOVE YOU SO MUCH! I was worried coming in about how we'd get along this game, but we left off where we were last time!! I'm glad me and you were there for each other and I'm glad you could protect me from the evils! You were so robbed!

NED: You are one of the coolest people, for real! I loved talking to you on the heroes tribe and I'm sorry for exposing your idol and voting you out lol. I hope you're doing well!

JAKE: I  couldn’t really connect with you when we finally merged, plus I heard about your idol and I felt like it was a smart choice for you to go.

SARAH: MY LITERAL BEST FRIEND. I AM SO SORRY U GOT SNAKED BUT I CANT WAIT TO SEE U SOON. ILYILYILY

MALIK: was glad I connect with you more privately and I missed you. You did end up throwing me under the bus, and I was very pissed with you and the others but I still have love for you  It's ok

NED: You suck at this game. Hope to see you never

JAKE:  We didn’t talk as much as I’d like, but I also was threatened by you coming into merge because I perceived you as having a lot of solid connections which intimidated me, which is why I pushed to vote you out that round. The conversations we did have were really nice though!

SARAH: I am so glad I got to meet you, you are a literal icon and although I'm pretty sure I was way more loyal to you than you were to me, I feel like we get along super well and I'm happy we get to chat about this season after everything is over :)

MALIK: I was drawn to you immediately for some reason, but I think it's the villain charm. Sorry like I tried to work with you TWICE, and you lied to me and tried to vote me the first time(likely) and then waited till then to think we could now work together because you're down and out, vs when I was. That turned me so off of you and even when you weren't my target, I was happy you were out of there. I do really think you're a cool dude though and hopefully after the pandemic we'll see each other!

NED: We didn't get the chance to talk a ton so it's understandable that we went after each other. From what I've talked to you though, you seem really dope and I think we'd get along really well.

JAKE:  I couldn’t get a good read on you throughout merge and even though we had an alliance together I was wary of you, but besides that we had some really good conversations about animal crossing and CS so I hope you’re doing well.

SARAH: You played a good game and it wasnt until the last minute I realized that you play a very cut throat game. No shame. Props.

MALIK: I've missed you. I was so sad to see you leave, and I didn't think we'd connect how we did. I miss the talks of anime and shows we had together!!

NED: My German friend, I love you and I hope you're doing well. I wish I could have stayed in Germany longer because the people at the airport there were really nice and it would have been cool to meet you! I also met some German college students in Sweden and they were dopeeeee so if you're anything like them then you're dope too.

JAKE: Dennis you are a sweetheart but I knew you were too much of a threat to let slide by any longer in the game after you worked hard to solidify yourself in the majority again. I’m sorry for lying to you about the vote, was just idol paranoia and stuff.

SARAH: I loved talking stratgey with you and loved playing with you. Sorry if you didnt feel the same :(

MALIK:  I. LOVE. YOU. No. lie. I didn't expect to connect with you so much after it all went down during the merge, and even though I hurt you with voting you that one time, I tried to make it right between us. I definitely want to keep in contact with you the most after this season. Our bond took me by surprise. 

NED: It was fun but difficult talking to you! You said I never talked to you but I vividly remember complaining to people about how you left me on read all day multiple times lol. But it's chill, I've only heard great things about you and the fact that you're Jake's friend can only mean you're really cool!

JAKE: I’m happy that I finally got to play a game with you and even though it was a rocky ride you had my back in the game and I appreciate that a lot. I wish I listened to you more though

SARAH: Theres a reason you have never been voted out before until now. You are good at what you do. You are good at every aspect of this game. I am sorry that I used you to get far and cut that off. To be fair, I knew you were not loyal to me. However, I do believe our relationship and the things we talked about personally were real so Id love to still chat after this game.

MALIK: You are such a sweetheart and I'm glad we got to play together, I see why you've won twice, you were ON IT. And if it wasn't for TS I probably wouldn't have caught on to how amazing you were playing. You did that damn thing, but you had to go (Even though that wasn't when I was going to attempt it.)

NED:  I'm gonna freaking cry typing this. Sharifa you are incredible and I hate myself for ruining what we had. Talking to you was one of my favorite things to do during the game and I had to do what I did or else you'd be a 3-time winner! Tell me I'm wrong! You're still amazing and I'm so thankful we got to meet during this game.

JAKE: So I was pretty upset when I found out that you and Kurt had turned on me and were lying to me so much (especially with the emotional way you framed our alliance) but I do respect you a lot as a player because damn you’re fierce and now I know why you’ve won twice and made the finals 3 time, you are a true villain.

SARAH: You were going to win this game after Sharifa was voted off. You are well liked. We barely talked and butted heads and I still liked you. If you ever want to chill, lets grab a drink after this whole COVID19 thing.

MALIK:  Easily my #1 guy here. we bonded like from the beginning, and we really grew an amazing relationship with each other, and merge was strained but we kept reconnecting, and then you leave when I'm left out on knowing you were the true vote. I'm sorry I never knew you were really going home, and I NEVER did vote you. Sorry you think so, and I hope you forgive me by the time you see this but I never did vote you, and I hope you give our bond another chance. Lukas was supposed to tell you but idk if he did or he forgot and I hope you forgive me. If not I'll count my losses and leave it there.

NED: Kurt, you are one of the kindest people I've ever met in an ORG. You're so friendly and funny and down-to-earth and I truly enjoyed getting to know you as a person, not just an ally. I hope you can forgive me for going so overboard when I voted you out, you're still a homie and I'm really grateful for you during this game.

JAKE: Same as above with Sharifa but we did talk things out after that Sharifa vote. I wish things went differently in the game but it is what it is, outside of the game you were really fun to talk to and vent with all of the shit going on as I felt I could relate to you with a lot of things.

NED: Dude, you are so freaking hilarious and I WISH we had met pre-merge!!! By the time we got to know each other it was kind of too late to change up my gameplan, but I want you to know that the conversation I had with you the night before you left is probably the best, most real conversation I've ever had with anyone in any game. I'm so thankful for that, it really lit a fire under me to win that final immunity and I honestly just loved talking to you. I hope we can become actual friends after the season is over because you're incredible!

JAKE:  I never really trusted you in the game and I think our relationship was rocky for the most part, no hard feelings though because you were hilarious and a great troll the entire time and I hope we can turn up at club cafe one night when this pandemic ends xxx

MALIK: Such a crazy person!! You were so amazing and I'm glad we met at the merge. You had funny moments and crazy ones but what would this game be without you.

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

Review: BLACK MIRROR Season 4 (Part II - Episodes 3 & 4)

New Post has been published on https://nofspodcast.com/review-black-mirror-season-4-part-ii-episodes-3-4/

Review: BLACK MIRROR Season 4 (Part II - Episodes 3 & 4)

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

While “Crocodile” felt a bit like a filler episode, lacking the nuance and depth of the best of Black Mirror, the issue it examines (surveillance and the sanctity of thought) is interesting. Some moments shine.

“Hang the DJ” is Brooker back to True, at his best. Delicately structured, wonderfully shot, incredible concept…another bit of spec-fiction brilliance.

EPISODE 3: CROCODILE

If you read my first review, you’re probably still wiping off the drool from all my slavering praise. The season’s first two episodes are incredibly strong. “Arkangel” could very well show up in this year’s Emmy roster. “USS Callister” might be one of the single best episodes of anything I’ve ever seen.

“Crocodile” struck me a little bit differently. The episode starts with a hit-and-run accident (think I Know What You Did Last Summer, but more bleak, less Sarah Michelle Gellar). Mia (played by Andrea Riseborough) wants to go to the cops, but Rob (Andrew Gower) was driving drunk. He convinces her to dump the body and keep the secret.

There’s a thin line between “subtle” and “slow.” For me, “Crocodile” fell firmly in the mire of the latter. After the masterful structuring, nuance, and depth of the first two episodes, this episode is a bit of a slump. The stakes are part of the problem. Or, rather, the lack thereof. From the beginning, I didn’t care much about Mia: when Rob runs over the cyclist, she lets herself be steamrolled into keeping it quiet. When he gets sober and tries to make amends for what they’ve done, she kills him to protect the shiny, new, successful life she’s built. Wife. Mother. Architect with daring hair.

Except…we hardly see any of that life. Her husband is onscreen for maybe three total minutes, and we’re given no reason to empathize with him. Same with her son: he’s just a male human child, more the outline of a character than anything.

There’s a strange sterility in many of the characters, actually. Nobody seems to really mean anything to anyone. It’s like they’re all actors on a stage together, and they vanish from the world the moment the camera looks away. They are without weight or life. What characterization there is feels a bit like Bella’s clumsiness in Twilight. Lacking any real inner life or depth, Bella is “clumsy.” Some of us are clumsy. Thus, we can relate to her.

In “Crocodile,” Shazia (Kiran Sonia Sawar) pops peppermint candies and likes pop songs. What are her dreams? Who does she admire? We find out in the end that she has a child with her husband, Anan, but I only know for sure that they’re married because the characters have the same last name on IMDB. He buys her a hamster, they talk about what time she’s going to be home. That’s sort of it. There’s no sense of history, or sexuality, or chemistry.

They both get murdered. That’s pretty much all they have in common, as far as I can tell. We almost get a peek into Anan’s inner workings (he’s watching a movie when Mia comes for him), but…nope. All we get is the credits. Even our ostensible protagonist, Mia, is flat and gray as the landscape she lives in. (The scenery in this episode is the highlight. Shot in Iceland, there’s a rocky, desolate beauty that is almost a story in and of itself. The wide tracking shots of cars slipping along barren landscapes and empty roads like black clots into the heart of the wild are breathtaking.)

  When Mia was young, she liked to party and dance all night. Some of the younger viewers probably like to party and dance all night. What do women drink? (White wine.) What do women do when they murder people? (Almost lose it, but keep it together. Drink white wine.) You see what I’m getting at.

With nothing to invest me, watching Mia murder people wasn’t so much shocking and horrifying as perplexing. And a little frustrating: I was interested to learn more about this newly-sober Rob. Maybe see something of their relationship. Oh. Mia killed him. This investigator might be on to what Mia has done. Oops. Dead. The investigator’s husband knew where she was going, so…nope. Also dead.

Even the baby at the end felt more like a cheap attempt to get me to feel something, like Killing the Dog. I assume Brooker was going for dark irony when the Detective reveals that the baby was blind all along. (So Mia killed him for no reason! Gasp!) But it ends up feeling so shoehorned-in and clunky that it falls flat.

There are definite high points and powerful moments in the episode. By high points, I mean one of the darkest, most disturbing things I’ve ever seen on a screen. This in a series that showed us a man having sex with a pig for nearly an hour.

Watching Mia examine Shazia’s memories without permission was excruciatingly like watching a rape scene. I think Brooker’s larger point about the theme of the episode is colored in, here, and in an episode I was fairly uninvested in, this scene stands out as masterful. Sawar’s acting, the sense of despair and rage and violation, is superlative. Riseborough stays on note, but the flatness of her deliveries works well in contrast to the work Sawar is doing. I nearly cried when Shazia started praying through the gag in her mouth.

Though similar ground was covered in earlier episode of Black Mirror (namely, Season 1, Episode 3: “The Entire History of You”) the thesis of the episode is interesting: what happens when the final privacy is removed? What happens when not even the contents of your mind are safe anymore?

Perhaps it’s reflective of the current political climate that two episodes in a row are addressing Orwellian concepts. Surveillance is a word that raises hackles. “Crocodile” raises questions. As Shazia points out to Mia when she comes to watch her memories, Mia is now required by law to talk about an incident if she’s seen it. The cameras Shazia might have used were vandalized, but what does she care? When you have legal leverage to look at people’s memories, everyone is a camera for the government. We are the surveillance. Big Brother is Us.

  EPISODE 4: HANG THE DJ

The Mobius Story is a tried-and-true staple of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre. It’s also quite the tricky mistress. But this is Charlie Brooker (sole writing credit) we’re talking about here. With Timothy “Boardwalk Empire” Van Patten in the director’s chair.

Let’s just say they pull it off.

If you haven’t seen it, and you’re still reading this: don’t. Don’t ruin this one for yourself. “Hang the DJ” is too clever, the payoff and final implications too mind-blowing to wreck reading a summation and analysis. So. Go on. Watch it.

“Hang the DJ” is, on the surface, a story about the inevitable future of dating apps and online dating. Frank and Amy are two participants in a new dating program. The computer dictates not only who you are in a relationship with, but predetermines how long that relationship will last. It is infallible. The data it collects from the relationships (experiments?) it puts you through supposedly allows it to predict with 99.8% accuracy who your perfect lifemate will be. It’s never wrong. Nobody ever questions the authority of the program.

The episode asks the simplest, most powerful question science fiction can ask:

But what if…?

There’s innumerable little bits we could dig into, but the two titanic elements that stand out and most need applause (roaring, standing, bleeding-palms applause) are: the Structure and the Irony. The way the end of the episode feeds back into the beginning feeds back into the end and on into infinity is very much in the spirit of the Mobius Strip. Up until the end, “Hang the DJ” is a good episode. The last five minutes are what make it a great episode.

It would be easy to write the O. Henry twist off as “Oh, really? ‘It was all a dream?’ Great.” But it’s so much more than that. So much more. The recursive genius of that twist was stunning: a dating app measuring compatibility by how many times a couple rebels against that dating app. I’ve said before that Brooker understands capital-I Irony in a way that very few people do.

Well, here: exhibit A. Think about the nuance and implications of that: the episode postulates a computer program that manages to simulate the irrationality and fire of the human heart, and then factors it in to its program in order to mitigate that factor in the real world. Is the final meeting between Frank and Amy hopeful? A happy ending mirroring the arc of their Romeo/Juliet computer analogs? Or is it showing us the real-world beginning of the very program that the app postulates in its calculations?

Not one to twist a knife just once, Brooker’s twist cuts a layer deeper, upon reflection. The app is so elegant and effective that, almost inevitably, its success in the real world will ultimately lead to the world it bases its simulations in. Excusez mon francais, mais… That is fucking brilliant.

Black Mirror explored similar territory in Season 1, but there’s so much more elegance here, such grace. Do we really want to know? All of it? Really? I don’t want to, and, neither, I think, does Charlie Brooker. There’s comfort in the fog. Perhaps the spark of life is really the little thrill of fear we feel in the face of the unknown.

  IN SUMMATION

“Crocodile” might be your cup of tea. Maybe you need some shock-for-shock’s-sake TV. Maybe you like peppermint candy and pop music. It wasn’t really for me.

“Hang the DJ” has the sort of Forged of a Piece flawlessness that fans of the show came for and stayed for through the first two seasons. One of the great ones.

There’s less cohesion between these two than there was between “USS Callister” and “Arkangel,” but an overarcing 1984-esqu thread is emerging. Control. Privacy. Freedom. These are the concerns this time around.

Timely concerns for all of us, indeed.

[movietvtechgeeks]

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/jim-beaver-supernatural-talk-jensen-ackles-jared-padalecki/

Jim Beaver 'Supernatural' talk on Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki

When one of our Movie TV Tech Geeks family members has something new out, we love to help promote it, especially when it's something that every Supernatural fan will want to get their hands on. Lynn Zubernis, who writes some pretty in-depth and intense Supernatural recap reviews, has her latest book hitting on May 9 Family Don’t End With Blood: Cast and Fans on How Supernatural Has Changed Lives (You can order it here), has interviewed nearly everyone from the show, and we're happy to run her 'best ofs' leading up to her book launch. If you want to attend her Los Angeles book launch check it out here. Her latest book features With contributions by Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Misha Collins, Mark Sheppard, Jim Beaver, Rob Benedict, Briana Buckmaster, Osric Chau, Matt Cohen, Ruth Connell, Gil McKinney, Rachel Miner and Kim Rhodes, and a Dozen Passionate Fans! Check out her classic interview with Misha Collins. Check out when we interviewed Lynn on her own Supernatural experiences. Check out exclusive excerpts from Lynn’s upcoming book! Next up, Jim Beaver (Bobby Singer), who wrote an incredibly powerful chapter for Family Don’t End With Blood. Here’s one of our favorite interview chats we’ve had with Jim over the years… As promised, more from our trip to the Chicago Supernatural convention – in this case, some quality time with one of our favorite guys, Jim Beaver. Jim is one of the first actors we interviewed two years ago at the start of our Supernatural road trip, and damn, he really skewed our expectations. Not only did he invite us to come over and chat in his living room, but four hours later, we were still there! That conversation took place before Jim’s very first fan convention, so we spent some of the time trying to prepare him. (Yes, fans will line up for your autograph – little did he know!). Jim asked us as many questions about the fandom as we asked him, and we weren’t surprised that he ‘got it’ in so many ways. We also managed to get in a dare before we left, but honestly, we never expected Jim to be so creative in his tee shirt design. O—o We missed sitting down with Jim at the last convention, because he was still signing autographs at 2 am and we were falling over with exhaustion. (So much for his disbelief that fans would line up for his autograph! ) Not surprisingly, his photo ops and autographs ran late in Chicago as well. Jim’s determination to give each and every fan some quality time was once again working against our chances of reconnecting with him. When 1:00 a.m. rolled around, and the other celebs had finished their turns at ‘speed dating with the stars,’ at the dessert party, we were ready to bail. (The desire for sleep does sometimes prevail!) Disappointed, we headed back to our room and walked smack into Jim who was being shepherded downstairs to make his belated appearance. So much for sleep. Jim never sleeps, as anyone who’s friended him on Facebook has probably figured out, and apparently he never eats either. After making the rounds with the die-hard fans who waited for him at the dessert party, he was handed a chicken Caesar salad by one of the Creation staff. He had every intention of eating it after he said goodnight to Richard Speight Jr and Aldis Hodge in the bar. Somehow that turned into a few rounds of pool and by 2:30 that chicken Caesar was looking less than savory. When we all finally collapsed in the corner table of the deserted lobby bar, poor Jim was starving and lacking food options. But fandom is a curious and wonderful thing. Suddenly there were fans. With meat. In fact, they appeared with an entire deli platter and asked if we wanted it. (Whoever you are out there, thank you!) Interviews with Jim tend to run the gamut from serious contemplation of the nature of fame and celebrity and fannishness to the kind of joking around that invariably makes Lynn do that embarrassing snort-when-you-laugh thing. This one took place at 3 am, so there was a lot more of the joking and less of the seriousness. Jim has mentioned before that while Bobby has evolved into a father figure for Sam and Dean, he has a different relationship with Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles. Much more a peer relationship than a fatherly one – in fact, Jim asks the boys for professional advice more often than the other way around. Lynn commented around her ham sandwich that Jim obviously wasn’t old enough to be their father in real life anyway, which earned her an eye roll and an incredulous smirk. In one of our earlier chats with Jim, he talked about Bobby’s relationship with ‘the boys,’ and his delight in playing such a character. Jim: “It’s often alot funnier to be the guy standing there looking at somebody going, ‘you moron,' than to be the guy doing the funny stuff. Somebody did a YouTube tribute to Bobby, and I was looking at it last night. I watched the clips fade, and I knew exactly what it was — it was a look I gave Jared when I was working on a gun. I was saying, ‘and it’s gonna take me as long as it takes me.’ And he asked if it was ready and I just gave this look. That kind of stuff is delicious. And a lot more fun than being the guy saying ‘Hey Bobby, is it ready?’ I can’t imagine anything more delightful than playing this guy.” Much to our amusement, Jim also brought up the power of subtext, a topic with which most Supernatural fans are quite familiar. When Jim took his turn at playing The Trickster in Season 3, he relied on the subtle nonverbal nuances that the Supernatural actors are so damn good at to give the viewer cues that Bobby is not who he appears to be. Jim: “I’ve always thought the best actors know something you don’t know. Like they’ve got a secret, and it may never get revealed. The best people I’ve seen act, I’m seeing all this stuff and there’s something underneath too, and it makes me want to watch and figure it out. Just to convey that there’s something going on other than just the words. I love to find bits of subtext that didn’t occur to me before. Subtext is great. My favorite movie in the world is John Ford’s The Searchers. The driving force is John Wayne’s love for his brother’s wife and vice versa. It’s the thing that drives virtually everything that happens to the main characters. And there is not one bit of dialogue actually relating that. You see the looks between the characters, you see his reaction when she dies, you see, but nobody says a word about it.” There followed a long conversation about Freudian interpretations of Sam and Dean and long looks and nonverbal cues, which eventually got around to a discussion of Jensen and Jared’s acting ability. Jim: “It wouldn’t work if these guys weren’t good actors. I think you could do an episode of Supernatural without a single word of dialogue with this bunch. Not for the gimmick value, but because the crew on this show is capable of doing an awful lot of expression non-verbally, and making people really think deeply about what is being conveyed with no words. I did an episode of Melrose Place, and I wouldn’t want to do an episode with no dialog with them. But on this show, we feed off each other pretty well. The fact that we all like each other is helpful, but it’s also the fact that Jared, Jensen and I must be very similar actors. We all three are the kind that can be joking around, and then they say action, and we are in it. None of us are the kind of guy that has to sit in a corner for an hour to get ready. Nothing wrong with that, but we’re just very attuned to the same kind of work. We just kind of relate to each other in ways that work well, and fit well. That the boys are good buddies and enjoy each other’s company, that too is not all that common. Sometimes magic hits. I don’t know if there is any coincidence that there are three guys whose names all start with J and are all from Texas. I feel like I’ve got a couple good friends in Jared and Jensen. And to a certain extent, you can’t fake that chemistry. I feel pretty lucky to be a part of it.” Jim did get serious at our late night (early morning?) dinner chat in Chicago when he talked about the challenge of his character being confined to a wheelchair, though, saying how tough it was to have to stay down all the time, to not be able to move around like you’re used to. (In our experience, Jim rarely stays still for long – where does the guy get all that energy??) Jim’s capacity for empathy is clearly one of the abilities that make him a kickass actor, and he went on to say that as difficult as it is playing Bobby in a wheelchair, he was always acutely aware that he could get up when they called ‘cut.’ He went on to say that Jared and Jensen delighted in ribbing him during some scenes where Bobby’s bare legs are showing as he’s sitting in the wheelchair in a hospital scene, taunting him about how pale and white his legs were. “So I explained to them,” he continued, voice growing serious, “that when I was in the POW camp, one of the things they did to us was they used bleach on our legs….and it was horrible….they’ll always be white like this because of that.” Lynn stared at him dumbfounded, mouth open in horror, trying frantically to remember whether Jim had ever spoken about being a POW before, wondering how Jim had survived, what kinds of scars – when Jim suddenly burst into laughter, slapped her on the knee and yelled “Gotcha!” Apparently, he got Jensen and Jared too. This time we’re glad we stayed up until 4 am. Totally worth it! We will continue through the launch of Lynn’s book with some of her best Supernatural interviews. Check out Misha’s chapter – along with many other cast and fan chapters – in Family Don’t End With Blood. You can pre-order it here.

Movie TV Tech Geeks News

[flauntpage]

Notes and Quotes from the J.T. Realmuto Introductory Press Conference

What a day it’s been. While most of us were slipping and sliding on icy roads, Matt Klentak and Gabe Kapler were introducing their newest acquisition, catcher J.T. Realmuto.

Some notes and reaction from the press conference, beginning with GM Klentak:

“In acquiring JT, we’ve acquired best catcher in baseball. Our organization is excited. Top to bottom thrilled to add JT. Not just on field, but as teammate & leader. Thrilled to have him…”

More:

Realmuto was asked about what he knew about the Phillies organization, to which he responded by talking about it being a storied franchise and that past players had nothing but good things to say about the organization.

He was then asked about why he chose the #10 jersey. He said his options were 10, 38, and 39. He did not cite any past players to wear the number for the team, but said he liked the #10 more than 38 and 39.

When asked about whether this season was different considering the trade rumors, he said:

“It was a different offseason for me and my wife. We spent more time on social media than normal, looking for scoops… I’m happy with the outcome.”

The next couple of questions were related to the difficulty of hitting at Marlins Park, his .300+ average on the road, and how he thinks he’ll do hitting at Citizens Bank Park. Realmuto said it’s tough to hit at Marlins Park, he’s glad to no longer have to crush a ball into the outfield, only to get robbed by Odubel Herrera, and that he thinks he’ll do well in Philly. He also admitted to putting too much pressure on himself:

“I tried to do too much in Marlins Park, which over time can cause problems. Playing in a more hitter-friendly park will help.”

On the Phillies pitching staff, after the jump:

“Definitely studied all of them from facing multiple arms. [The all have] good, electric stuff. The entire rotation has quality and has gotten better… They’ve all drastically improved… I’m gonna help mold them.”

Asked if there’s any additional pressure to succeed in a new city with a better team:

“Not necessarily pressure. I just wanna prove myself… Looking forward to challenge.”

On committing to a long-term future with the Phillies:

“Honestly, I haven’t had the chance to think about it. The last week’s gone by so fast. Everything I’ve heard [about the organization] has been amazing… We’ll see in the future.”

Realmuto emphasized the importance of the catcher/pitcher relationship and how he intends on building those relationships quickly.

He was then asked if he had been told of any potential deals this off-season. He said that he believed a move was close three or four times and that multiple reporters in Miami would text him that something was close. He intimated that the process was exhausting and ultimately the finalized move was exciting.

Gabe Kapler was asked if he’s envisioned where Realmuto would slot into the lineup:

“J.T. can hit in a lot of places in the lineup [including the] heart of lineup… Teams can’t bring in a right-handed slider guy to get him out. He’s so athletic he can hit anywhere in the lineup.

Matt Klentak emphasized the importance of acquiring a guy like Realmuto:

“It’s no secret we value guys who can play regularly. It’s hard to find that in a catcher because of the position. When you have a guy like this who’s as strong as he his with the mentality he’s gonna be out there EVERY DAMN DAY (it’s a great addition).”

Klentak on discussing free agents with J.T. –

“I’ve been down here 48 hours. I haven’t discussed free agents with JT.  This acquisition doesn’t preclude us from pursuing free agents. There are certain times of the year where there’s activity. We know there are some pretty good free agents out there. If it makes sense, we’ll pursue it.”

Other random notes:

For what it’s worth, Realmuto did say he’d love to have a guy like Bryce Harper on the team.

Gabe Kapler talked about the importance of keeping J.T. healthy, while J.T. reiterated his mentality and desire to play 162 games while noting the improbability of that. 

Realmuto mentioned that he wasn’t necessarily surprised that the Phillies ultimately made the move for him. He said that throughout the winter he had conversations about potential teams, but wouldn’t believe any of it until he received confirmation by phone.

He also said that while some of his former teammates have gone onto find success with other teams, he focused on his own game and the task at hand for the Marlins.

He had great conversations with Rhys Hoskins while on the Japan trip and that Rhys was a great teammate then and he looks forward to being his teammate going forward.

He stated that some seasons in Miami were tough, especially when the team was out of contention by the start of the summer, but he always worked hard to play the right way in what some would call meaningless games late in the season.

Realmuto has caught a bullpen session with Aaron Nola and a sidebar with Vince Velasquez.

After learning of the trade, he drove through the night – 17 hours total – and switched in the morning with his wife. He said the bags had already been packed, they just needed to know where he’d be playing.

Here’s the full presser:

Join us in officially welcoming @JTRealmuto to the squad! https://t.co/wkPajx3Abm

— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) February 12, 2019

The post Notes and Quotes from the J.T. Realmuto Introductory Press Conference appeared first on Crossing Broad.

Notes and Quotes from the J.T. Realmuto Introductory Press Conference published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[sorayahigashikata]

Chapter 44: "FUUUUUUUUU-"

[dequietus]

… 🃏

[  — 2008 년 10 월 19 일 ] :

Remy found himself headed towards what looked like a small bed and breakfast — which also happened to double up as a bar and casino — just outside Louisiana, near broke. The place was called Thibodaux: small and humble, nothing much worthwhile to steal either, but a bed was a bed, and he needed one after many consecutive nights of sleeping on the cold, hard ground. There was just one catch. To get a bed he needed quick cash, and to get cash — he was expected to gamble.

As luck would have it, Chris Kubert was also staying in Thibodaux, just another stop on his way to what the mutant presumed was California, conveniently hauling sixty thousand in cash and coin in between his visits to some of his off-site casinos. The men he employed to guard him were as dumb as they were surly because once they got a few drinks in their belly, they couldn’t stop from bragging about their employer and all their riches to the local girls, which is exactly what Remy overheard while hustling the poor slobs in a game of poker.

And what better way to say ‘au revoir’ to the thieves guild than to pull off the one job they never could? Maybe it was the whiskey, or the ache in his chest, but it sounded like a win-win situation to him.

All of his worst ideas did.

The stacks of hundred dollar bills on the table in front of him were rapidly growing in size a half-hour into their game of poker, and Remy couldn’t help but smile smugly. This casino did not live up to its predecessor’s name in most regards, but for the first night since leaving New Orleans, he was having one hell of a time. The men currently sitting across from him, including their boss who joined the game half-way, didn’t share his enthusiasm however, as their wallets continued to get thinner and their luck grew worse, but that was all just part of the fun.

Remy chuckled as he laid down his hand, in part because he just won the pile, but also because he was thinking about what they’d say about him back home after he pulled this off. One man across from him scowled, and pushed his chair out from the table. The brazen girl on his lap slipped off  —  without much warning — in the process and frowned rather sullenly.

“Fuck this,” the man exclaimed. “I’m going to the club instead!”

“I imagine those ladies will appreciate your money as much as I do, homme,” Remy said coyly. “Maybe even more. But I hear they play dirty.”

“This cheating bastard,” another man growled, after throwing down his cards in defeat and slamming his empty shot glass down onto the wooden table.

And as amusing as their dramatic behavior had been, Remy had been mainly focused on Chris Kubert the minute he first stepped foot into the casino, because the mutant knew no matter how much money their boss lost, that this snobby man would still be good for more.

“It’s not cheating if it’s skill, buddy. But Chris, you seem calmer than these idiots, stay another round and maybe I’ll go easy on you.” He didn’t need to cheat, not when his opponents were inebriated, shortsighted, and had too much cash than they even knew what to do with.

Chris, himself, spat on the floor after hearing what Remy just sprouted. And by the looks of his well-founded glare, it was obvious that he was thinking about pummeling Remy’s face in. But getting into a brawl right now might ruin his plans for the night, so Remy bought him another drink in good faith, and the clueless man stayed a little while longer. Thieving was a job of planning and patience, so he couldn’t risk screwing it up now.

A month ago, stealing from the likes of Chris Kubert was only a dream. A daunting prospect to brag about over drinks, the kind of heist most thieves talked about pulling but never dared to execute. He was one of the richest men in the country. And he never traveled without a cadre of mean bastards quick on the trigger and hungry for blood. What better way to keep outlaws from robbing you blind than to put them on your payroll? It worked, too. Those very men, coupled with Chris’ financial reach and political connections made him a thief’s worst nightmare. Most weren’t dumb enough to try. But most weren’t Remy LeBeau.

But to be fair, he probably wouldn’t have either until he killed a man. And not just any man. No, the man whose life he ended was none other than his wife’s older brother. And it didn’t matter to anyone that it was self-defense, that Julien Boudreaux pulled on him first. Too much trouble was brewing in the aftermath, too many rumors to sort through. “Killed him in cold blood,” majority said, but nobody could figure out why and nobody really took the time to ask either.

The thieves guild dealt its own ambiguous laws, sure, but even they drew the line at murder. So, just like that, the only life he’s ever known turned its back on him without so much as a second glance.’

[  — 2018 년 10 월 19 일 ] :

A decade later, Remy was still actively thieving and screwing people over of their family heirlooms. The only difference now was that the mutant had found a new home in New York. A home that was both welcoming and accepting of his mutant abilities and unique appearance. And even though he was given a fresh start to put his head on straight with his solidified position as a professor to his kind. Remy was way too avaricious to just settle with teaching.

His urge to pull off impossible heists tended to arise whenever he was feeling emotionally unstable. And right now, the male’s emotional state was off the charts. He barely got any sleep as it is, but that paired with the awful nightmares he was often subjected to, and you were left a ticking time bomb — ready to misfire at any second. Truthfully, he knew that lying about him feeling “okay” with the ruthless experiments done to him and his brother over the summer would come back to bite him in the ass. And sure enough it did. It came in the form of him losing control of his powers, multiple times. And for Remy to not only become a danger to himself but to his loved ones around him.

And this is why tonight, like most nights, Remy decided to hit up another blusterous club hoping to find something fun to do. He was just desperate, at this point, to fill the empty void in his heart. He preferred the bar to the club, but now that alcohol no longer had any effect on him, he found some semblance of satisfaction watching other people lose themselves to the music. It wasn’t nearly the same numbing feeling alcohol could have given him, but it was a good start.

“Sorry, dude… I didn’t see you there,” Remy exclaimed after he had accidentally bumped into another man in his attempt to weave past the crowd. The man shot him a murderous look before leaving, one that might scare the shit out of someone who wasn’t used to it. But because he was, a small snort sounded as he eyed the gradually disappearing figure with newfound curiosity. He couldn’t help but to notice the male’s attire, and it led him to believe that he was worthy of becoming his next target. All he had to do now was to figure out if he was alone or not. And not too long after, he’s learned the male’s name and who the other members of his posse were. There were six in total, a bartender told him, after flowering her with compliments and boyish smiles, making her feel like she was the only thing in the room that mattered.

She even went as far as to point at two men — of the six men — nursing drinks at the other end of the bar-side, and to warn him how they were prone to fighting.

“I hope they haven’t caused you any trouble here, chere,” he told her. “No woman such as yourself should be expected to serve such animals.”

She tried to hide her flushed cheeks behind a crop of curls. “They keep mostly to themselves, or to the girls down at the red light district. They go in shifts, so their boss is never alone. But I swear, all hours of day and night I seen ‘em walking to and from them whores like they was starving.”

“Then they must be bursting at the seams with cash.”

“They was. I don’t figure they are anymore.” She was quiet, then leaned in close. “Say, can I ask you something?”

Remy looked at her intently. “Anything your heart desires.”

“What’s the matter with your eyes? I never seen anything like that before.”

There was no reservation in her question. Another man might’ve taken it personal, but Remy had expected it. Somebody always asked eventually, figured he’d want to ask too, if he saw somebody with red irises and black scleras. At the very least, he preferred it to “where are you from?” and “why are you here?” He leaned back in his chair and rested his foot on the edge of the table.

“C'est la passion, ma chere. Burning for you.”

“You probably tell that to all the girls,” she said, but her cheeks had to be sore from grinning so big. And just like that — the rest of his drinks from then on had become free of charge.

He took his sweet time calculating and sat in silence, watching Abraham’s men a little while longer, drinking till their faces were red and they were swaying in their seats. Two had presumably left for the red light district already, which probably meant two more at the hotel where Abraham was staying, sober and itching for a fight. He paid for another couple drinks to go to the men at the bar, and told the bartender to keep it quiet who they were from. Getting a clean shot at Abraham’s money meant knocking down the men in his path, and what better way to do that than with their own vices? A job like this was much better off approached with subtlety, not a gunfight, and that suited Remy just fine.

The brothel he soon followed the other two men into was the furthest thing from subtle. The smoke was thicker there than in the club, and the music twice as loud, but he was grateful for that part, because he had no desire to overhear what was going on upstairs in the bedrooms. He slipped the cash to the first woman who greeted him and gave her the descriptions of Abraham’s men, told her they had a particularly rough few days and to treat them well all night long. They might be unemployed tomorrow, but he figured they’d owe him a thank you for that at least.

“What about you, honey?” she asked him as he turned to leave.

“I’m too fragile, chere,” he said, then pushed a wad of cash between her fingers.

“But if anyone comes around asking about me, you could tell them I been here all night.”

She pursed her lips, deciding, but seemed satisfied enough with the deal. And on his way out, he caught the sober eyes of the owner and a chill ran up his spine.

But the look was long forgotten as Remy made his way to Abraham’s hotel. Although, he noticed someone else watching him too, a short looking man surrounded by a cloud of smoke, thick from a cigar. The NYPD badge pinned to his shirt gave him a short pause, but he nodded hello and kept walking, every step feeling those eyes on his back felt like daggers.

Sundown was near now and it made the orange glow from the windows of this otherwise two star Inn look more and more inviting. It’d be a nice place to stay to relax if he could, but he was already planning his getaway route. He kept his borrowed hell-charger just outside of the hotel so he could drive off before anyone knew the difference.

The woman behind the desk had hair white as snow, which cascaded down a brooding face in tight coils. Her overall beauty was unparalleled, Remy thought, as she stared him down from across the counter. Her name badge read Andrea Voght, and something in her eyes made it seem like she could see right through him, like she could rip the air right out from his lungs if she wanted to.

“How many are with you?” she asked, running her finger against the guest registry. He tried to get a look at the names and the room numbers without being too obvious, but she swiftly covered it with the top of her hand.

“Just me, belle. Unless, by any chance, you wanted to keep me company,” he said with a wink.

The corner of her mouth twitched, barely giving way to a smile, but her hand didn’t move. “I’m sure, mister—”

“LeBeau.”

She paused to take him in for a moment with dissecting brown eyes. “I’m sure, mister LeBeau, there are plenty of women here who would take you up on that offer.”

“But not you?”

“You would not survive the night, I’m afraid.”

Remy leaned against the edge of the counter and smiled. He couldn’t tell if she was serious or not, and a part of him would’ve liked to find out. But before he could ask, a young girl came trampling down the stairs so quick she nearly stumbled when she hit the bottom, and collided with another guest, sending him to the floor.

“Amelia!” Andrea yelled as the girl hurried to help the man she brushed into.

“Sorry ‘Andy, daddy’s waiting for me outside.”

Andrea left her post behind the counter to smooth things over with the fallen guest, while Amelia kept on running out the door. Remy ought to buy the kid a drink after that distraction. While Andrea was away, he found Abraham’s name in the guestbook by room six, then casually waited for the drama to pass.

When Andrea came back, she looked apologetic, before she realized she left the book wide open. Her gaze lingered on Remy, peeling him apart piece by piece. She knew he was trouble, she just didn’t know which kind. Hopefully she wouldn’t have time to figure it out. Finally she handed him a key with a cautious hand. “Room eleven will do you well.” He thanked her with a smile and an obnoxious wink, and then handed his credit card over so that she could finalize the payment.

Room eleven would do him well, if he planned on staying. It was nice enough, cozy if not small. There was an ornate mirror and a nameless painting hung up to cover tears in the wallpaper, and a bed frame crafted from metal, long rusted. The mattress was thin and uncomfortable but still beat out his bed at the orphanage he grew up in ten to none.

Outside the narrow window, the brothel was in sight. He could even hear the music. He was tempted to crawl into bed and let the piano play him to sleep, pretending he was going to wake up tomorrow as part of clan LeBeau same as always.

Whenever he closed his eyes, he either heard his brother Travis screaming as he was tortured right in front of him. And other nights, he still saw Julien standing there in front of him, ready to draw. “Don’t do it,” he would say each time, only this time Remy was talking to himself.

The gunshot echoed between heartbeats, where it stayed.

He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and kept watching through the window, hoping his cards were played properly. If they were, the two men from the club would be too drunk to notice the time, and the two in the brothel wouldn’t care.

When he spotted one gruff-looking bastard walking from the Inn in the direction of the said brothel, hand on the butt of his pistol, he had a good feeling they were. Night descended heavy against the city as the man disappeared into the darkness.

Remy adjusted his gun belt, though he hoped not to use it, and slid a knife from his trench coat’s pocket into the side of his combat boot just in case. He could probably handle one man without shooting, but it was best to be prepared for the worst case scenario.

When he was just outside of room six, he secured a bandanna over his nose to hide his face and took a deep breath.

“…Telegram,” he declared against the door as he knocked three times.

Silence followed. The halls were empty. And everybody else was bound to be asleep by now. He almost knocked again when the door swung open and a gun was shoved in his face before he could even blink. A hand pulled him inside. The door slammed shut behind him and was locked next. So much for preparing for the worst.

All he saw was the furniture of the room left askew. And on instinct, he reached towards his pistol, but a woman’s voice stopped him.

“Don’t try it,” she said, calm like she was merely ordering breakfast. “Unless you think you can pull faster than I can squeeze this trigger.”

He froze, a fingertip away.

“Marie, take his gun.”

He hadn’t noticed the second hooded woman until she was beside him, ripping the gun from his side. She handed it to the other, who placed it in her own holster for safe keeping.

Now that he was hyper-aware of his surroundings, there was a lot to fully take in. But most importantly, there was a dead man laying on the floor with a knife plunged into his chest — the last of Abraham’s security likely, and Abraham, himself, bound to a chair, fabric stuffed in his mouth to keep the sound in. Remy scanned the room once more, carefully looking over the chaos he just stepped into. This suite was much nicer than the one he paid for with ample space to walk and a desk to sit at, but what really caught his eye was the strongbox sitting against the wall, a perfect case for a couple thousand bills.

“Put your hands up,” the woman said, and then to Marie, “Keep your gun on him.”

They both did as they were told as she patted Remy down with gloved hands, searching for anything he might have hidden, none-too-gently either. He was relieved when she moved past his boot without checking for the knife. The last thing she did was to pull his bandanna down, revealing his face to the man he originally planned to steal from. He could feel Abraham scrutinize him with narrowed eyes, memorizing every detail.

“You got anymore weapons on you?” the woman asked.

Remy forced a grin. “Might be more fun if you keep searching, non?”

With the weight of her gun behind her fist, she landed a solid punch to his jaw. And the impact made him stumble back a few steps as blood rushed into his mouth.

“Yandra…” Marie started, concern seeping through restraint. She was met with a cold, commanding gaze, and took a step back. Remy raised a lone brow as soon as the second woman spoke. There was an odd sense of familiarity that washed over him. He knew that voice. And he was sure that he’s heard it many times before. But how was that even possible? And why was his fellow x-men member posing under this guise of ‘Marie’.

“Who the hell are you, and what do you want?” Yandra asked, locking Remy back in her sights, ready to blow his head off it she had to. Her hair was the color of blood, and he wondered how she got it that way.

“How about you drop the gun and we can talk about it?” he said, charm slipping from his cadence. When Yandra lowered her aim to his groin, he tried to smile through the discomfort and laughed awkwardly instead. “Not exactly what I meant.”

She kept it fixed on his middle while she sat him in a chair beside Abraham.

“Tie his hands back,” she told Marie.

“You gonna’ kill him?”

“Don’t know yet. It depends.”

Remy didn’t dare move. “May I ask on what?”

“On if I like your answers or not,” she said. “What’s your business here, and don’t bother lying.”

Remy focused on the madwoman as ‘Marie’, who he still couldn’t get a clear view of, tightened some rope around his wrists, but not so much he couldn’t move. He noticed this without giving away that he did. And when he did look her way again in hopes of catching her gaze, she refused to look back, her visage still concealed beneath the hood of her cloak. Abraham, on the other hand, fixed his eyes on Remy and wouldn’t look away. He didn’t seem panicked, only annoyed.

Moving his wrists in small motions, Remy thought about his limited options.

“Just delivering a telegram,” he said, hoping to bide time.

She cocked the hammer back on her pistol. “Try again.”

The sound sent a wave of panic through him and Yandra didn’t even blink. There were better ways to go than to bleed out from your groin. He swallowed hard. “I’m a thief. I got no business with you,” he said. “Happy to be on my way. We can pretend this never happened.”

“He doesn’t work for you?” Yandra asked Abraham, who shook his head slowly. Remy thought he saw a smile beneath the fabric shoved in his mouth.

“We could just let him go. He ain’t gonna talk,” Marie said.

“Don’t be so naive.”

Marie’s voice was lower than a whisper, but loud against the quiet. “You said no killing.”

“He’s seen too much.”

“I only see a body, how it got to be dead remains a mystery. As for him?” He looked over at Abraham. “Not my concern.” He worked his wrists slowly against the rope but every inch of him froze when Yandra pushed her gun flush against his skull.

“You don’t want to be talking right now.”

Marie suddenly jerked the barrel of Yandra’s pistol away until it was aimed at the floor. Fury burned from her very core as Yandra turned her scowl to her partner, silent, waiting for explanation.

“No more killing,” Marie said, emphasizing every word.

It was just the lapse in time that Remy needed, as the ropes fell from his wrists. Before Yandra had time to notice, he knocked her gun away and pushed her to the floor. She was quicker than he gave her credit for, and let off a shot before the gun flew from her grasp. Abraham groaned with pain as the stray bullet hit his foot.

Remy pulled his gun from Yandra’s holster with one hand, and slipped his knife out with the other. She opened her mouth to speak, but he held the blade to her throat. “You don’t want to be talking right now,” he repeated with smug satisfaction.

Instead of trying for words, she pursed her lips and spit across his face. He did his best to wipe it clean without letting up on the knife, then felt a familiar presence against his skull.

“Let her go, Gambit.” Marie said, gun to his head.

Yandra smiled.

“You’re all kinds of confused, ain’t you, chere? I know it’s you, Rogue. You can drop the act now. Why are you siding with this bitch anyways? And ‘Marie’, really? I thought you hated your birth name. Since when do you rob people? Breaking people’s hearts was more your thing. Does professor Xavier know you’re here?”

A flurry of questions managed to escape. And Remy knew it was not a good time to be losing focus but the shock of him crossing paths with his colleague, whom he considered himself to be close to, caused him to unknowingly pull back on the knife that was previously pressed to Yandra’s neck. When the blade was clear of skin, Yandra shifted her body from beneath him, kicking him hard in the stomach as she did. He tried to catch his breath while keeling over, now staring down the barrel of another gun. He briefly saw the ghost of his past: his brother-in-law on the other side and closed his eyes before the flash of the muzzle, but it never came.

A hard knock on the door interrupted them all. Abraham’s eyes darted to the sound and he yelled ‘help’ from under the cloth.

Yandra pointed her gun towards the door, but Marie automatically knocked her arm down.

“There’s no more time, I’m sorry to have to do this to you Marie…” Yandra said as she rushed off to try and dart out of the window to make her solo escape. But not before she flung a knife —  his knife to be specific  —  in the direction of her supposed accomplice. And as much as he would’ve love to see his friend dodge it on her own, he didn’t want to take that chance. And so, he instinctively intervened by attempting to block its path and destroying it mid-way with a blast of kinetic energy from his palm. What he wasn’t prepared for, however, was for his powers to fail him when he needed it most. The blast did come, but it came much too late, and instead of the knife exploding a safe distance away, it exploded right in the mutant’s face.

“AHHHH! MY EYES!…” Nothing could have prepared the male for the brutal wave of agony that followed this mini-explosion. The bright light of his own explosion seared into his eyes like a hot camera flash, but after the heat and light had gone he was left in the most complete blackness he had ever known. He no longer knew what was happening around him either. His consciousness was floating through an empty space filled with a thick static. Throughout the inky space, his heartbeats pounded loudly, echoing in his ears, alongside fading pleas for help. The feeling in his body draining away until, finally, all was black.

“YOU IDIOT! I had that covered!” Marie immediately rushed to his side to see the extent of the damage done. It was obvious that Remy was is in so much pain. His complexion now completely ashen. His natural golden skin has sunken in to something so lifeless in just a matter of seconds. His steadily bleeding eyes come to a slow close, and he sucks himself into a deeper place to cope like he always does.

And it was then that the door slammed open and another two x-men members appeared: his nemesis Scott, along with his best friend Ororo, who immediately rushed to help Abraham and his bleeding foot as soon as the sight set in.

“I think he’s blind…”

It felt like that one minute Remy was straining against the twilight, head almost spinning on his neck to locate the next person needing cover due to his fight or flight mechanism being triggered, and the next he was on his back  — knocked out cold.

But when a pair of capable hands pulled him to his feet, he had to wait for the voice to tell him if it was friend or foe. This question was soon answered when he could hear Scott yelling right into his ear. His fellow member wasn’t having it and began shouting while throwing free his arm up in the air. “Leave it to you, gumbo, to single-handedly ruin our recon mission. Why do you always have to break the fucking rules?” And even though he was asking Remy a valid question, all he could personally try to do right now was to not lose his balance all over again; because aside from a hazy glow around his peripheral vision, he saw only endless blackness and he knew it has nothing to do with the time of night.

“It ain’t what it looks it,” Marie said, trying hard to find the humor in this dire situation, even if there wasn’t any. She then choked out a nervous laugh as Ororo shot her a look of pure disappointment once she’s gotten a good look at her teammate.

“You leave him out of this, Scott… He’s injured! Can’t you leave your bruised masculinity outside and get him out of here?! He needs immediate medical attention!” Ororo scolded in reply as she tended to the wound of Abraham who was still tied down to the chair.

“And you— Call for backup right now, Rogue! We have to act fast. Yandra is getting away!”

This is the last thing Remy can hear, much less comprehend, before he’s inevitably passing out for the second time tonight.

It just wouldn’t be his life if everything went according to plan, now would it?

… 🃏 you can read how this will affect my muse here: (https://tinyurl.com/y84pstsy)

*〲: THIS CONTENT IS STRICTLY OOC KNOWLEDGE.