#and then kate wants scott to be her puppet

[buckybarnesss]

I get not liking Allison. She did some shitty things, truly. But the way people hate her but then champion around Theo is truly wild.

Allison did bad things. She is susceptible to manipulation (something she shares with Derek, which is incredibly common in abuse survivors!!). But she never really gets gleeful about killing and torture the way Kate, Theo, Peter, and Deucalion get.

Theo, Duecalion and Peter are all outright villains. They are also victims. They have their origin stories.

Kate is also a victim of Gerard's abuse and manipulations but she is very much a villain. She revels in her violence, manipulative games and her abuse of others. It makes her feel powerful and in control which she likely never did with Gerard.

Jennifer is also a victim and one can definitely understand why she becomes consumed with revenge against the alpha pack but she is still a villain.

One can be sympathetic and empathize with these characters while still recognizing their villainy.

Even Jackson receives a lot of sympathy in the narrative and nothing Jackson does is on par with the main villains. He's a petty, insecure high school jock and bullies Stiles and Scott repeatedly. It's also heavily implied his family ignored the abuse Isaac was suffering just across the street. Point is, he was used against his will to murder people and the narrative makes it clear he is horrified at that. Despite being an asshole he willingly allows Derek (and Peter) to kill him than continue to be a puppet.

Fandom has written essays upon essays about why a particular character is justified actually but the amount of times I've seen very little grace and empathy given to Allison could fill a sock full of quarters for which I could beat sense into them with.

Allison suffered abuse from her family. Her interests were devalued and she felt the need to hide them (her artwork and photography). These things were clearly devalued over her archery and gymnastics by Chris and Victoria because unbeknownst to Allison she was being trained to eventually become a hunter.

She has been lied to her entire life about her family's true nature and all through season 1 her parents gaslight her.

Her father terrorizes and tries to kill her boyfriend solely because he's a werewolf. Scott did nothing wrong besides fall in love with her. Her father threatened Jackson and Stiles. Has threatened Derek. Threatened Lydia because she didn't turn when bit.

Chris had her fucking kidnapped as part of her "training". Allison was legitimately terrified.

Her mother commits suicide because the Code says so. Her mother rather die and leave Allison motherless at 17 than be a werewolf. By and large we see very little evidence werewolves cannot have normal and fulfilling lives. In fact the biggest threats to them are people like the Argents.

Kate wants to groom Allison into being like her. Her introduction to the supernatural is Kate torturing Derek. Allison had met Derek. He'd been nice to her. Kate tries to coerce Allison in joining into her depravity.

Allison learns that Kate killed an entire family. Not just the adults but children too. They burned alive. Kate was like a sister to her and her closest family member that she was excited to see and trusted. The betrayal of that. And than Kate is killed in front of her.

Despite good intentions Scott keeps the truth about her mother from her until after she's already falling victim to Gerard's manipulations and lies.

Allison's entire season 3 arc is knowing she fucked up. Her actions dominoes into Erica's death. It's no accident she discovers Erica's body and is there to see Derek's grief. She feels enormously guilty about it and spends all of s3 trying to atone. She's haunted repeatedly by her mother and Kate.

Allison was 17 years old and in the end she died trying to save her friends. She wasn't a bad person. She made bad choices based on lies, manipulations and not being told the full truth.

But there's a large segment of fandom that just writes her off and in the same breath defends Peter, Theo and Duecalion. Allison is a lot like Derek and Derek is one of the most popular characters but in the same turn Allison and Derek receive a lot of the same kind of criticism.

They aren't perfect abuse victims and make questionable decisions sometimes which makes people upsetti-spaghetti.

I think that dismissing Allison as some stupid little girl -- which is what so many of these arguments boil down to -- just devalues her character arc, what she meant to the other characters and the place she has in the story.

She's so much more than Scott's Lost Lenore or Chris's dead daughter. Allison Argent fought so hard to have agency in her own life.

[madcatdaderpydrawer-blog]

Taking up that offer now. To simplify it Phone Tapes is about Scott slowly finding out his best friend Vincent is the one behind the child murders all the while surviving being a night guard in the toy's location. There's a lot of characters but the main ones are the nightguards and the kids! Scott - dayguard turned night guard. Good guy with anxiety issues. Tends to ramble a lot. But always wants to make others happy. Vincent - Stand offish, not the most social person. Mechanic turned nightguard. Protective to those close to him but generally keeps to himself. David - The bite victim. Killed by his older brother Max. Shy kid who's easily scared. Likes reading and listening to nature docs. Too soft for his own good (Nightmare) Max - Kill his brother on his 10th Birthday. Edgy teenager who loves anything sharp. (Foxy) Russell - Energetic theater kid! Loves anything to do with the movies, espuesully musicals. (Bonnie) Luwis - Son to a hunter he's very out doorsy. Has a pocket knife and knows how to use it. (Freddy) Warren - Easily excited girl who has a big sweet tooth. (Chica) Alex - Nonbinary shy kid who wants to get out there more. Knits. (Soul attached to Puppet) How would the FNAC ocs react to this gumble of kids and the nightguards watching them? (Would also love to hear about these guys)

In my fnac au, a guy named Roderick is the killer and all the people he killed were friends of his. They all worked at candys together and went on to possess the animatronics. I’ll go in order of how they died first.

Chester was the first to die. You heard a bit about him from what I shared before. Roderick killed him out of jealousy and beat him to death with the metal banjo from the chimpanzee animatronic. He possessed Chester the chimpanzee s the one he possessed.

Cindy was the next to die. She’s a very shy young women who worked as a waitress in the burger place. She died when Roderick asked her to help get something unstuck from a machine only to turn it on crushing her. She possessed Cindy the cat.

After that was Vinnie, who was killed by accident. Vinnie was a very cheerful optimistic person and the youngest of the group. Roderick was targeting Carl, Cindy’s twin brother, because he was suspicious about the story he presented and Roderick didn’t want to get caught. Roderick didn’t want to kill Vinnie, he was his baby brother, but he did by accident. He possessed the Vinnie puppet.

Roderick killed Carl after that a few days later. Carl is a talkative extrovert, basically the definition of a social butterfly. Roderick killed him with a circular saw. He went on to possess candy the cat.

Pedro is someone you’ve heard about too. He’d talked with Carl before his death who mentioned his suspicions with Roderick and after he died he went looking for evidence. He found some tapes from the security office after hours but ended up getting cornered by Roderick there and was strangled. He possessed the peppy animatronic.

Brett is serious and protective of his friends. One of those people who are rough around the edges but loyal. He was Roderick’s best friend and also the security guard at the business. He and Roderick got into a physical confrontation and while Brett did manage to shoot him he was still killed. He possessed the blank animatronic.

Kate was a childhood friend of Roderick’s, and other then Vinnie he’s known her for the longest. Roderick wasn’t the one who killed Kate, she commit suicide via hanging from the stress. She possessed the cat animatronic.

The last one is Chris. Before lord night he was my favorite :) what can I say, I have a type! He’s a introvert who struggles with social skills since he didn’t have any friends until he was an adult and his parents basically ignored him his whole life. Overly formal most of the time, also the oldest, but warms up and acts more himself with the people he’s close with. He’s the owner of the business. By the time he was murdered he knew it was going to happen, at least in part. He’d been preparing things for the possibility at least. It was pretty obvious Roderick was responsible but there was no proof so he couldn’t do much. Despite being careful Roderick managed to spike his coffee with cyanide which is what killed him. He possessed old candy. He still works as the owner because he feels like he has to for the others sake. Since he opened the restaurant he feels guilty for what happened there and overworks because he feels like he has to make it up to them. He’s just squeezes so troubled. I feel like he’d get along with Scott

Roderick himself has always been kinda a blunt dick. He’s comfortable with his current life and doesn’t like change, and always liked . He died via intentional overdose and possessed the rat animatronic

Now as for how they’d react to your ocs, that depends. Are your characters dead during it, or is it when they’re alive? Is it before my characters died or after? Their personalities changed after death so how they’d act is different to.

[kneeslapworthy]

Assigning MBS characters different songs that i’ve been listening to recently because this is the content I want to make and no one can stop me :)

Reynie: Simulation Swarm - Big Thief (because emotional but nonsensical indie-folk feels like his vibe) 

Sticky: The Card Cheat - The Clash (let Sticky have a punk phase please and thank you. also gAmBLiNg rEfEReNcE.) 

Kate: Lady Day and John Coltrane - Gil Scott-Heron (because Kate would have the Taste to enjoy this)

Constance: Birthday - The Sugarcubes (my favorite Weird Girl needs her Weird Girl Music™)

SQ: True Blue - boygenius (because my recent fic about him was heavily based on the new boygenius singles) 

Mr Benedict: Visa från Utanmyra - Jan Johansson (because a jazz rendition of a Swedish folksong feels like the perfect mix of quirky and endearing for Mr Benedict to enjoy)  

Rhonda: Demain Berlin - Guerre Froide (a song in three different languages for my polyglot queen) 

Number Two: Rattlesnake - King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard (just because.) 

Miss Perumal: In My Room - The Last Shadow Puppets (Miss Perumal would love Alex Turner and y’all know it) 

Milligan: Hiding All Away - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (because my current headcanon is that Milligan loves goth music)

[formerheroeswhoquittoolate]

Break down you Gerry Dugan hate for me please (if you’d be so kind)

that's so fair of you actually. and I want to start off by saying: I don't think he's actually a bad writer. his hawkeye vs deadpool is one of my favorite limited series ever, sam alexander nova (which he wrote a decent chunk of) is one of my favorite characters, and aside from my grievances about the stepford girls, I absolutely loved his cable run from a few years back. he can and does write well!

when you give him things he knows how to write.

and the problem with that is marvel... kind of hasn't been doing that. his marauders was good, except for kate pryde's sudden, random bi arc that started and basically ended with her kissing a female tattoo artist. and his x-men was fine until it turned out he had to write a female character with mental illness and another female character with an extremely complicated and trauma-ridden relationship with her own autonomy (and a ton of queercoding). not to mention the reduction of a fairly functional polyam relationship to just scott and jean. and he definitely doesn't seem prepared to be handling so much of the fall of x -- he's never been responsible for an event to this degree before, it's really just been tie-ins before this.

you'll notice that two of the series I mentioned in the beginning (nova and cable) are very similar -- teenage guy Figuring Out What The Hell Is Going On with the unfortunate shadow of an older version who does the same thing and a lot of space shenanigans. and the third involves deadpool, and duggan has been a deadpool writer for at least as long as I've been reading comics, probably longer. these are things that gerry duggan can definitely do! he is good at them! they are enjoyable and make me feel things!

but I don't think he was prepared to branch out from that when marvel dropped krakoa in his lap and said "figure out how to kill this." I definitely don't think he was prepared for writing multiple characters who were Weird Kinds Of Queer, or who had mental health issues that went beyond your standard heroic ptsd and angst, or who would have to have some pretty complex feelings about the questionable homeland they're defending. writing a lot of comics at once is really difficult, too. and so I think he fell short, and he fell short hard, and his writing suffered for it.

what could have been a story (or even a side arc) about laura and her previous history with self-harm instead became a remix of the tried-and-true Logan's Memory Sucks storyline. and then what could have been a story about the dynamic between laura and talon and which one was real instead became a heterosexual romance with laura completely jettisoned from the x-men. what could have been a very relevant and pressing schism within the team after lorna puppeted laura while laura was unconscious was instead played off as a joke. what could have been an emotionally fraught and complex arc about scott and alex reconciling was instead a five minute conversation with the endgoal of a fight instead of a conclusion, and then alex was completely jettisoned from the x-men. what could have been an interesting, complicated, and nuanced conversation about the idea of exterminating all the brood that paralleled the broader conversation humans were having about mutants instead became scott summers advocating for genocide. and that's just within his x-men (largely because that is the series I'm most familiar with and the characters I'm most familiar with outside the context of the series) and pulled out of my ass at eight in the morning. I have so many thoughts on the way he's been handling his portion of the fall of x.

it's not so much that I hate gerry duggan as it is that I hate what he's doing. he's been put in a situation where he has too much to write and so he's resorting to the easy stuff, even if it means he has to resort to tropes and oversimplifications and sentences like "I didn't go to the gala because I have depresssion." and it fucking sucks! because I love a lot of the characters he's writing and I think he could do so much better under different circumstances. maybe just with less to write so he can give the characters the time and attention they deserve, maybe with series that are more suited to the things he's good at. I don't know. but what's happening right now is not working and I don't like it.

[letthestorieslive]

Day 1 of @scottappreciation week : Scott + nightmare

[fortysevenswrites]

Top 5 canon sethkate moments 👀

1. Confessions and forced forgiveness over shitty tequila at the Twister. Because Kate is PISSED at Seth and the, “I want to stab you.” vibes are just SO DAMN clear and then there’s Seth who is just d y i n g to have a family like the Fullers but it’s so deep down he doesn’t know it and doesn’t have the self-awareness about family to understand it.

2. Seth punching out what’s-his-face in front of the Twister Because Kate Fuller was SO impressed with Seth that it was almost enough to distract me from the fact that the way the editors cut that episode, DJ is shaking out the wrong hand right after he hit the guy.

3. Seth hallucinating Kate in 2x03 Like, yeah, it’s not actually Kate there, but it’s SUCH A FUCKING SHIPPY SCENE AND I LOVE IT SO MUCH. Like, Kate is the FONDEST and Seth is just so high and stupid. Like, come on.

4. The scene at the junkyard You said it best yourself in the tags, Emily. HE JUST WANTED TO HOLD HER HAND SO WHY WOULD HE NOT HOLD HER HAND????? Like, she was there and this was his first proof that Kate WAS there, and Amaru wasn’t just using the husk of her body as a puppet (ouch) and Scott is telling him to not touch her but SHE’S HOLDING HER HAND OUT OF COURSE HE HAD TO TAKE IT.

5. The aftermath of the torture scene in 3x07 The face touching! Kate being free of Amaru for five minutes! Seth telling Kate to fight! Kate being so out of it! Seth losing his goddamn mind and ultimately leading to Amaru’s escape because he has SO MUCH TROUBLE seeing past Kate. The heartbreak of “I don’t forgive you”. God, just, the entirety of season 3 was a SethKate GIFT

Runner up: The entirety of 3x10. I could pick five fucking moments just FROM 3x10 with those two assholes. Like...the blood transfusion and how she looked at Seth when she regained consciousness/came back to life/whatever the hell actually happened because we ALL know that that transfusion was NOT enough to actually replace the blood she lost, the scene in the tunnels with Seth’s stupid face when he told her she should be at prom and she’s just like, I’m in love with a fucking moron, what the hell, and “you took these criminals and killers and turned them into heroes, how could I not take this walk”, “IN THE EYES OF THE PEOPLE I LOVE” and how Seth looked at her when she said that, and jjust how Seth looked at Kate the entire time before she walked through the gate. Like, COME FUCKING ON.

Ask me my top-5 anything

[aion-rsa]

Once Upon a Time in America Is Every Bit as Great a Gangster Movie as The Godfather

https://ift.tt/38Ku8cF

This article contains Once Upon a Time in America spoilers.

The Godfather is a great movie, possibly the best ever made. Its sequel, The Godfather, Part II, often follows it in the pantheon of classic cinema, some critics even believe it is the better film. Robert Evans, head of production at Paramount in the early 1970s, wanted The Godfather to be directed by an Italian American. Francis Ford Coppola was very much a last resort. The studio’s first choice was Sergio Leone, but he was getting ready to make his own gangster epic, Once Upon a Time in America. Though less known, it is equally magnificent. 

Robert De Niro, as David “Noodles” Aaronson, and James Woods, as Maximillian “Max” Bercovicz, make up a dream gangster film pairing in Once Upon a Time in America, on par with late 1930s audiences seeing Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney team for The Roaring Twenties or Angels with Dirty Faces. Noodles and Max are partners and competitors, one is ambitious, the other gets a yen for the beach. One went to jail, the other wants to rob the Federal Reserve Bank. 

Throw Joe Pesci into the mix, in a small part as crime boss Frankie Monaldi, and Burt Young as his brother Joe Monaldi, and life gets “funnier than shit,” and funnier than their more famous crime films, Goodfellas and Chinatown, respectively. Future mob entertainment mainstays are all over Once Upon a Time in America too, and they are in distinguished company. This is future Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly’s first movie. She plays young Deborah, the young girl who becomes the woman between Noodles and Max, and she even has something of a catch-phrase, “Go on Noodles your mother is calling.” Elizabeth McGovern delivers the line as adult Deborah. 

When Once Upon a Time in America first ran in theaters, there were reports that people in the audience laughed when Deborah is reintroduced after a 35-year gap in the action. She hadn’t aged at all. But Deborah is representational to Leone, beyond the character.

“Age can wither me, Noodles,” she says. But neither the character nor the director will allow the audience to see it beyond the cold cream. Deborah is the character Leone is answering to. She also embodies the fluid chronology of the storytelling. She is its only constant.

The rest of the film can feel like a free fall though. Whereas The Godfather moved in a linear fashion, Once Upon a Time in America has time for flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, and detours that careen between the violent and the quiet. It’s a visceral experience about landing where we, and this genre, began.

Growing up Gangster

Both The Godfather and Once Upon a Time in America span decades; it’s the history of immigrant crime in 20th century America. But they differ on chronological placement. Once Upon a Time is set in three time-frames. The earliest is 1918 in the Jewish ghettos of New York City’s Lower East Side. 

Young Noodles (Scott Tiler), Patrick “Patsy” Goldberg (Brian Bloom), Philip “Cockeye” Stein (Adrian Curran) and Dominic (Noah Moazezi), are a bush league street gang doing petty crimes for a minor neighborhood mug, Bugsy (James Russo). New on the block, Max (Rusty Jacobs) interrupts the gang as they’re about to roll a drunk, and Max makes off with the guy’s watch for himself. He soon joins the gang, and they progress to bigger crimes.

The bulk of the film takes place, however, from when De Niro’s Noodles gets out of prison in 1930, following Bugsy’s murder, and lasts until the end of Prohibition in 1933. Max, now played by Woods, has become a successful bootlegger with a mortuary business on the side. With William Forsythe playing the grown-up Cockeye and James Hayden as Patsy, the mobsters go from bootlegging through contract killing, and ultimately to backing the biggest trucking union in the country as enforcers. They enjoy most of their downtime in their childhood friend Fat Moe’s (Larry Rapp) speakeasy. Noodles is in love with Fat Moe’s sister, Deborah, who is on her way to becoming a Hollywood star. The gang’s rise ends with the liquor delivery massacre.

The final part of the film comes in 1968. After 35 years in hiding, Noodles is uncovered and paid to do a private contract for the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Christopher Bailey…  Max by a different name who 35 years on has been able to feign respectability and make Deborah his mistress. An entire life has become a façade.

Recreating a Seedier Side of New York’s Immigrant Past

While The Godfather is an adaptation of Mario Puzo’s fictional bestseller, Once Upon a Time in America is based on the autobiographical crime novel, The Hoods. It was written by Herschel “Noodles” Goldberg, under the pen name of Harry Grey while he was serving time in Sing-Sing Prison. 

Coppola’s vision in The Godfather is aesthetically comparable to Leone’s projection. From the opium pipes at the Chinese puppet theater to the take-out Lo Mein during execution planning, the multicultural world of old New York crowds the frames and the players in both films. Most of Once Upon a Time in America was shot at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios. The 1918 Jewish neighborhood in Manhattan was a street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which was made to look exactly as it had 60 years earlier.

Leone skillfully, yet playfully, captures the poverty of immigrant life in New York. The first crime we see the four-member gang commit could have been done by the Dead End kids. They torch a newspaper stand because the owner doesn’t kick up protection money to the local mug. And like the Dead End kids, they needle their mark, and joke with each other. At the end of the crime, Cockey is playing the pan pipe, and the very young Dominic is dancing. They are proud of their work and enjoy it. It’s fun to break things for money. And even better when they get a choice between taking payment in cash or rolling it over into the sure bet of rolling a drunk.

Violence without the Cannoli

Gangster films, like Howard Hawks’ Scarface and William A. Wellman’s The Public Enemy, were always at the forefront of the backlash to the Motion Picture Production Code. Which might be why gangster pictures were one of the first genres to benefit from the censors’ fall. A direct line can be drawn from the machine gun death which ends Bonnie and Clyde (1967) to the toll-booth execution of Sonny Corleone (James Caan)  in The Godfather. Another from when Moe Greene (Alex Rocco) gets one through the glasses and Joe Monaldi gets it in the eye in Once Upon a Time in America.

The Godfather has some brutal scenes. We get a litany of dead Barzinis and Tattaglias, horse heads and spilled oranges. Once Upon a Time in America ups the ante though. The shootings and stabbings are neat jobs compared with the beatings, which allow far more artistic renderings of gore, and pass extreme scrutiny. The one time the effects team balks at a payoff is when it’s not as gruesome as the setup.

“Inflammatory words from a union boss,” corporate thug Chicken Joe asks as he is about to light Jimmy “Clean Hands” Conway O’Donnell on fire. The mobster has such a nice smile, and the union delegate, played by Treat Williams, looks so pathetic while dripping gasoline that it feels like it might even be a mercy killing. It is a wonderful set piece, perfectly executed and timed. When Max and Noodles, and the gang defuse the situation, rather than ignite it, it is a lesson in the dangerous balance of suspense.

Like many specific scenes in Once Upon a Time in America, Conway’s incendiary introduction would’ve worked in any era. This is the turning point for the gang. The end of Prohibition is coming and all those trucks they’re using to haul liquor can be repurposed for a more lucrative future. 

“You Dancing?”

Music is paramount in both Leone’s and Coppola’s films. The Godfather is much like an opera, the third installment even closes the curtain at one. Once Upon a Time in America is a frontier film. The score was composed by Ennio Morricone, who wrote the music behind Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The film opens and closes with Kate Smith’s version of “God Bless America.” Though the scene occurs during the 1968 timeframe, the song comes out of the radio of a car seemingly from another point in time.

Morricone’s accompaniment to Once Upon a Time in America is as representational as Nino Rota’s soundtrack in The Godfather. Characters, settings, situations, and relationships all have themes, which become as recognizable as the Prohibition-era songs which flavor the period piece’s ambience. Fat Moe conducts the speakeasy orchestra through José María Lacalle García’s “Amapola” while grinning dreamily to Deborah who is chatting with Noodles. He’s a romantic.

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The music becomes part of the action in Once Upon a Time in America. Individual couples cut their own rugs, doing the Charleston between tables as waiters and cigarette girls glide by. Cockeye, who has been playing the pan pipe since the beginning of the film, wants to sit in with the band. 

Forsythe almost steals Once Upon a Time in America. He cries what look like real tears at the mock funeral for Prohibition and drinks formula from a baby bottle during the maternity ward scene. The blackmail scheme, which involves swapping infants, plays like an outtake from a Three Stooges movie, something Coppola would never dare for The Godfather. The ruse is choreographed to the tune of Gioachino Rossini’s “The Thieving Magpie,” which elicits the youthful thuggery celebrated in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. 

Devils with Clean Faces

One ironic difference between the two films is whimsy. The Godfather, which glorifies crime as corporate misadventure, is a serious movie with no time for funny business. Once Upon a Time in America, which is an indictment of criminal life, has moments of innocence as syrupy as in any family film (of the non-crime variety) and can be completely kosher. It’s sweeter than the cannoli Clemenza (Richard Castellano) took from the car, or the cake Nazorine (Vito Scotti) made for the wedding of Don Vito’s daughter. 

The scene where young Patsy brings a Charlotte Russe to Peggy in exchange for sex is a masterwork of emotive storytelling. He chooses a treat over sex. On one level, yes, this is a socioeconomic reality. That pastry was expensive and something he could never afford to get for himself. But as Patsy sneaks each tiny bit of the cream from the packaging, he is also just a child, a kid who wants some cake. He learns he can’t have it and eat it. It is so plainly laid out, and so beautifully rendered.

The Corleone family never gets those moments, not even in the flashbacks to Sicily or as children on the stoop listening to street singers play guitars. We know little of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) or Sonny as youngsters, much less teenagers, and are robbed of their happier moments of bonding. We know they are close, they are family. But Michael has his own brother killed while Noodles balks at the very idea. Twice, as it turns out.

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“Today they ask us to get rid of Joe. Tomorrow they ask me to get rid of you. Is that okay with you? Cos it’s not okay with me,” Noodles tells Max after the gang delivers on a particularly costly contract, double-crossing their partners in a major diamond heist. They are not blood family, but from the moment Max calls Noodles his “uncle” to fool a beat cop, they are all related. 

Noodles then does what young men in coming-of-age movies have done since Cooley High: Something really stupid. An indulgence the Corleones could never enjoy. He speeds the car into the bay. The guys can’t believe it. It adds to his legend. The scene could have been in Diner, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, or even Thelma & Louise. It is hard to dislike the gangsters in these moments. We know them too well, even as they do such horrible things.

How Women are Really Treated by an Underworld

The Godfather is told from the vantage point of one of the heads of the five established crime families; organized crime is as insular as the Corleone mall on Long Beach. That motion picture reinvigorated the “gangster film,” long considered a ghetto genre, but its perspective is insulated. By contrast, no matter how far they climb, Leone’s characters never really get off the block. They are street savages, even in tuxedos. Once Upon a Time in America whacked the gangster film, and tossed its living corpse into the compactor of a passing garbage truck.

The Godfather doesn’t judge its gangsters. The Corleones are family men who keep to a code of ethics and omerta. They dip their beaks in “harmless” vices like gambling, liquor, and prostitution. While there are scenes of extreme domestic violence, and a general dismissal of women, the film stops short of challenging the image of honorable men who do dishonorable things. Leone offers no such restraint. His history lesson is unabridged.

Long before Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman stripped gangster lore to a tale of toxic masculinity, Once Upon a Time in America robbed it of all glamor. There is a very nonchalant attitude toward violence and other demeaning acts against women in Leone’s film, from the very opening scene where a thug fondles a woman’s breast with his gun in order to humiliate her civilian date.

This is deliberate. The director, best known for Spaghetti Westerns, wants to obliterate any goodwill the gangsters have accumulated through their magnetic antiheroism. One scene between Max and his girlfriend Carol (Tuesday Weld) is so hard to sit through, even the other members of the gang squirm in their chairs.

Noodles sexually assaults two women over the course of the film. While there is some motivational ambiguity in the scene during the jewel heist attack, the rape of Deborah is devastatingly direct. It kills any vestige of romance the gangster archetype has in film. The camera does not look away, and the scene lingers with terrifying ferocity and traumatic intimacy. There is a visible victim, and Noodles’ wealth and pretensions of honor are worthless.

The Ultimate Gangster Epic

Once Upon a Time in America brings one other element to the genre which The Godfather avoids, a lingering mystery. Coppola delivers short riddles, like the fate of Luca Brasi, which are revealed as the story warrants. But the 35-year gap between the slaughter of Noodles’ crew and the introduction of Secretary Bailey is almost unfathomable. How did Max go from long-dead to a man with legitimate power?

What happens to Noodles in those years is fairly easy to guess, without any specifics. He got by. The gang’s shared secret bankroll was empty when he tried to retrieve it as the last surviving member. He put his gun away and eked out a quiet life. But even as the details spill out on the true fate of Max, it is unexpectedly surprising, as much for the audience as Noodles.

“I took away your whole life from you,” Max/Bailey says. “I’ve been living in your place. I took everything. I took your money. I took your girl. All I left for you was 35 years of grief over having killed me. Now why don’t you shoot?” This final betrayal, and Noodles’ inert revenge, take Once Upon a Time In America into almost unexplored cinematic depths. 

Max has gone as low as he could go. The joke is on Noodles, everyone’s in on it, including “Clean Hands,” who is tied in to “the Bailey scandal.” The cops are in on it, and so is the mob. Max admits even the liquor dropoff was a syndicate set-up. He’d planned this all along. Just like Michael Corleone had a long term strategy to make his family legitimate. 

This is an ambitious story. Beyond genre, this bends American celluloid into European cinema. By sheer virtue of being outside of Hollywood, Leone transcends traditional boundaries. He has a far more limitless pallet to draw from. He can aim a camera at De Niro’s spoon in a coffee cup for three minutes and never lose the audience’s rapt attention. Leone can pull the rug out from everything with a last minute reveal. Coppola bent American filmmaking for The Godfather, but stayed within proscribed parameters. He never gets as sweet as a Charlotte Russe nor as repulsive as the back seat of a limo. 

Once Upon a Time in America ripped the genre’s insides out and displayed them with unflinching veracity and theatrical beauty. It is a perfect film, gorgeously shot, masterfully timed, and slightly ajar.

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[lettersofwrittencollective]

The Pull (86/?)

Summary: The Ragnulf’s are one of the oldest lines of werewolves known. A gift from ancient times was gifted to them. Though not all of the line will experience it. There are some who will experience a Pull. This Pull leads them to their true mate, a soulmate. The problem is, just because the wolf finds their true mate does not mean that they are the same for that person.

Author: @lettersofwrittencollective​

Pairing: Stiles x Hale!Cousin OC (Reader)

Word count: 2538

Warnings: angst,  some fluff, Norse storyline development, threatening 

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The old god watched his daughter curled into her mate.

Taking deep breaths he tried to breathe through his anger. 

The Norns would not be swayed… this he knew. But hadn’t the fox been enough? 

They’d faced the fox and she’d brought back her mate… 

She had faced losing herself in the process.

He had almost been destroyed.

Natasha Rafnulf and Stiles Stilinski would be a force to be reckoned with when they fully came into themselves and their powers… if they stay with Scott McCall they’ll be damn near impossible to stop… 

But the Ragnulfs tend to return to their pack… the protection of their family always stronger than any other pack as they knew the bonds and they were aware of the implications. 

Stiles Stilinski, however, was intensely loyal… to Scott McCall. The question wasn’t if Stiles would accept Natasha, the way he held her currently 

Sighing, Odin recalled Hugin and Munin to his side. 

As his ravens returned, he thought back to what he had learned a moon cycle ago. 

Munin had accidentally stumbled across the remains of a group of assassins. They had not been trained very well from Munin cold tell. 

He’d come upon the scene as a woman taunted a man. She’d not been on her own. 

What had caught Munin’s attention was the creature with the woman. The one that seemed to be doing her bidding.

It looked like a man with an animal skull on his head. 

Munin hadn’t seen one of those in centuries… The magic to create them having become almost non-existent.. but there was something off about this one. 

Berserkers were not meant to be puppets. Like their counterparts,  Ulfhednar and Svinfylking’s they were meant to be the most ruthless men and women in battle.  They were originally meant to be the bodyguards of noble families but had become elite warriors in their own right as time had passed 

Berserkers entered their trances when they would need to go to war and while a man in a true rite may not be able to tell the difference between friend or foe, they rarely did someone else’s bidding. 

This one was following the huntress, Kate Argent.

Munin had stayed to watch as the woman asked about who the “Benefactor” was. Whatever this name was, it had been enough to cause her to go after his men. From what Munin heard, he figured that this “Benefactor” was paying for assassins.

Before Munin could figure out who the assassins were supposed to go after, he’d been distracted by the sound of the huntress groaning in pain. Munin had turned his attention to focus on the girl solely when he’d heard the clatter of a gun against the asphalt. 

Munin had watched as the blonde in front of him had doubled over in pain before her skin had transformed and he’d watched as a nagual formed in front of him, this one a were-jaguar. One of Xolotl’s then… 

Curious as to why Munin had followed the woman as she’d gotten the Berserkers to listen to her. It hadn’t taken them very long to disappear and the woman had then made her way north.

It was when Munin had told him the story of what he had seen, that Odin had thought to ignore the Norns, to step in and have the consequences be damned but the problem was the consequences wouldn’t be his to face. They’d be hers. 

So, he’d done the one thing he could do- he opened up the link her mate had with instincts just a little wider. 

He’d managed it just in time… 

Natasha had been foolish in taking off on her own but Stiles had made it in time and though it took his mind a little longer to catch up to his instincts, his instincts had immediately called for the blood of the one that would harm what was his. 

You hadn’t let go of Stiles since you’d launched yourself into his arms. 

You’d had to remind yourself that he was okay… that he was here and that the stupid bitch Violet wasn’t going to be able to get to him. 

Stiles had let you hold onto him. Had wrapped his fingers in yours and you’d leaned your head on his shoulder. Taking in deep breaths, you let yourself be grounded to the moment in front of you, to the man in front of you when the sound of a gasping, wheezing breath pulls your attention. 

Looking around, you’re struck by the memory of earlier, Violet had been taunting Brett… Wolfsbane. 

Running over to the boy, you’re met with the sight of him literally foaming at the mouth as he wheezes. 

“I need a lighter!” you call out but, unsurprisingly, no one has one.  

Trying to think of other ways you can get rid of wolfsbane poisoning, you realize that each one has its own specific set of rules. 

Thankfully Stiles has already pulled out his phone. As he dials out, Brett lets out a gasping breath before he starts choking and the foam at his mouth turns yellow. 

Calling out for Stiles, he’s at your side a moment later as he hangs up the phone and tells Scott to help him out. The three of you quickly make your way towards Stiles’ jeep and you get Brett situated in the backseat.

You’re just about to jump in the passenger seat when a hand grips your wrist. Turning, you see Scott giving you an apologetic look, “I told them you were the one attacked.”

“What?! Why?” you demand, knowing this means that you’re going to have to separate and not liking the idea at all. 

Scott grimaces but points out that you had been attacked and that he’d told the Sheriff as much before they had figured out Brett.  

You want to tell him to figure out something else, tell the Sheriff that he’d been attacked or something… You’re about to tell him as much when Stiles speaks up, sounding less than pleased, “Tasha… you need to give your statement.”

You want to argue but Brett’s pained grunt distracts you. 

Sighing, you step back from the car and make your way towards the school. As you walk oer, you can hear Scott promising to Stiles that he’ll keep you safe. 

Just as you make it inside the doors, Liam calls your name and a moment later he’s got you wrapped up in a hug, “Thank God you’re okay…”

He ushers you towards Coaches offices, through the locker room where you Violet’s been tied up, and as you do, you can hear the sound of sirens approaching the school. 

It isn’t long before the school is bustling with the sounds of people. Officers, students, parents… they’re all there and everyone is trying to demand answers. 

Parrish comes in and takes your statement, it’s just a rehashing of what you remembered. Though, you told him you’d come back to the locker rooms because you needed some girl stuff from your bag that you’d forgotten to take with you earlier and that you had no idea how you had gotten the necklace off of you.  Which was partially true. 

“Adrenaline rush?” he’d supplied for you and you’d merely shrugged your shoulders. It made more sense than whatever you could tell him at least.

Nodding his head Parrish took his notes and made his way out towards the locker room, no doubt to get Violet.

“Guys, back off. You can get your gear tomorrow. If anybody sees Garrett, you notify the police immediately,”  you hear Coach informing the rest of the team before grumbling, “Then tell him he's off the damn team.”

You’re not 100% sure how Coach knows Garretts involved but you can’t help but chuckle softly, somehow you doubt Garret’s going to care about getting kicked off the team. 

Making your way towards the girl’s locker room. You figure now’s a good a time as any to try and change— only to discover that they’ve locked down both locker rooms. 

You’re making your way through the people when you catch sight of Kira who’s sprinting down the halls and out of the school. Curious as to what that’s about, you’re about to go after her when you hear the pup calling your name. 

He catches up to you and immediately puts a jacket in your hand, looking down you see the large white numbers, an inversion of your own number 42 and can’t help but raise an eyebrow at the pup in front of you. 

Liam offers no remorse, he simply shrugs his shoulders and advises, “He texted me, said to make sure you had a jacket since you’re apparently always freezing and then he told me where it was.”

Smiling to yourself, you shrug on the hoodie. As you’re putting it on, you hear the Suit’s voice. You had known that Scott’s dad was around but you hadn’t seen him at the game - though to be fair you hadn’t been looking for him. He’s asked Parrish to hold up and is walking over while Scott makes his way up to you and Liam. 

Scott questions the absence of Kira.

“Not sure,” you tell him, “I saw her running through the halls earlier though.”

“She took off,” Liam elaborates. When you and Scott both turn to look at the pup he informs you that, “As soon as you guys took off, she called Lydia about that list and well-“ 

“Her moms on it…” Scott picked up, putting the pieces together.

“Everyone’s on it.”

“Wait a second,” you cut him off before dropping your voice and asking, “Are you on the list?”

“Not yet,” he mutters, “but there’s still another third, right?”

Before you can respond, Scott’s dad’s voice catches your attention, mostly be aide it’s accompanied by the scent of anger bursting as he says, “... that’s right. You don’t have any parents. That’s why they call you The Orphans.” 

You can hear the rattling of Chains and can only assume that Suit got the reaction he was looking for.

A moment later he’s telling someone, “We need to find the boyfriend, Garrett.” 

“Coach —I’m gonna need both their locker numbers,” you hear Sheriff point out before he comes into the hallway, “And someone find me a set of bolt cutters.”

Pulling into the parking lot at Deaton’s, Stiles finds both Deaton and Derek waiting for him. 

“Scott called,” he offered when Stiles raised an eyebrow, “where’s Little Wolf?” 

“Stayed behind,” Stiles growls out, not particularly excited at the prospect,

Working together, Derek helps him get the apparent werewolf out of Roscoe and into the clinic where Deaton’s grabbing some stuff. 

With Derek’s help, he manages to get the boy laid out on the metal table. As they’re getting him situated, Brett starts to seize again, this time thrashing about and choking on foam at his mouth. 

“What the hell is happening to this kid?!” Stiles asks as he tries to hold the boy down on the table. 

“He’s been poisoned by a rare wolfsbane,” Deaton answers as he comes to the boy’s other side. “I need to make an incision and you need to hold him as still as possible,” he says as he the boy thrashes forward. 

Stiles can feel his irritation at the older man but decides against it, pushing down on the boy again. Finding that they’re having a hard time holding the boy down, he snaps at the other werewolf, “Hey Derek, how about a little werewolf strength?” 

“Yeah, I'm not the only one with werewolf strength,” Derek snips out. 

“If you can’t hold him still, the incision might kill him,” Deaton points out and in his frustration, Stiles tugs the boy towards him.

A terrible idea really, because Brett seems to slide over to him quite easily. 

Stiles tries to push him back but Bretts covered in sweat and the yellow foam and as he thrashes about he can feel the boy slipping. 

Calling out to Derek, he tells the man that Bretts slipping and he doesn’t think he can hold Brett down. 

A moment later, Brett is taking a deep gasping breath as his eyes open.  Stiles looks over to see the boys terrified eyes just as the smell of something sour hits his nose.  

Brett growls menacingly and Stiles can feel himself getting thrown back into the cupboards. Grunting in pain, he looks up to see that Brett had managed to launch himself up and off the table he was just on. 

Growling, he starts to stalk towards Stiles when he seems to think better of it and turns to take off. He’s cut off, however, when a fist collides with his face and Stiles turns to see a blue-eyed Peter pulling his hand back, “I guess I still have a little werewolf strength myself.”

“Yeah,” Derek scoffs before looking from Brett back to Peter, “Maybe more than a little.” 

Stiles turns back to Brett who’s currently unconscious on the floor and he crouches down beside the boy’s body. He’s no longer choking on the rare wolfsbane but he doesn’t seem to be breathing either. 

“Hey Doc,” Stiles calls over his shoulder as he checks Brett’s pulse to make sure the boy’s not dead at least,  “I don’t think he’s breathing.”

From his peripheral, Stiles watches as Deaton drops down next to Brett, scalpel in hand. He takes one look at the boy before he’s taking the scalpel and dragging it down Brett’s chest, slicing open along his sternum, releasing a puff of putrid-smelling yellow smoke. 

Brett gives a gasping breath before his breathing seems to even out. Breathing out through his nose, Stiles tries to clear the putrid stench from his nostrils he asks Deaton, “Is he okay?”

“I think he’ll be fine. But he’ll probably be out for a while,” Deatom answers with a nod of his head as he moves to check the boy. 

Brett seems to be breathing easier overall but his lips are moving and Stiles can hear the boy murmuring softly. 

“Guys, can you hear that?” he asks the others, “I think he’s saying something.”

 Looking up he sees Deaton giving him a confused look and Derek’s face contorted like he’s trying to focus. 

Deaton’s already leaning over Brett so Stiles follows suit and as can make out the words the other boy is whispering, “The sun… the moon… the truth…the sun… the moon… the truth… “ 

He knows the words from somewhere… he knows he does… he just can’t remember where. Looking over to Deaton, he watches the older man lean back as understanding dawns on him and he says, “Three things cannot long be hidden — the sun, the moon, the truth.”

“It’s a Buddhist proverb,” Stiles realizes before his face furrows, “Why is he saying a Buddhist proverb?”

Deaton’s face doesn’t seem to indicate that he has any idea why so Stiles turns to Derek who’s staring at Peter. 

“Satomi,” Peter practically growls out. The two werewolves having a silent conversation with each other and Stiles figures that either Derek or Peter will be hunting down Satomi real soon. 

After a moment, Peter turns towards Stiles and asks, “Where is Little Wolf?”

-

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-

A/N: Thank you so much for reading!! Let me know what you thought! Comments, reblogs, asks… all of these things let me know how you’re feeling about the story and give me life!

Everything taglist: @stiles-o-dylan24​​ @nicole-lynne​​ @mummybear​​ @emichelle​​ @genius2050​​ @suhoey​ @fullangelimagines​ @xceafh​

Series taglist:  @treestarrrrrrrr​ @redsalv20​ @truthdaze​ @cutiepiemimi13​  @unoriginallysara​  @the-three-eyed-ravenclaw​  @linktomyheartpiece​  @sasha-obrienn​  @piccasoe​​ ​@msrawog​ @eternallyvenus​ @michellebarista​

@lostinwonderland314​​ @katemusic​ @kiwihoee​  @thesailbells​ @1967-chevy-impala-called-roscoe​

Dylan Taglist @blvckcanry​ @fandom-princess-forevermore​ @theholydestiny​​ @delacxurs​​ @yaya2503 @thegirlwhoimagined​​

Do not copy and paste my writing anywhere without my consent. This work is the property of lettersofwrittencollective. Associated characters belong to MTV and are being borrowed for this work, all OC’s are the property of lettersofwrittencollective. These works contain material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of these works may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

Posted 13 March 2020

[tsuraiwrites]

I dont have any specific prompts but I do have lots of encouragement to do voiles! Or steter! I love your writing and these are some of my fav pairings

thanks for the prompt, anon! I started with a grand plan but ran out of steam, lol. 

Fic: Reaching Out

It starts after the nogitsune, because for a short while before things fall to shit again, Stiles Stilinski acts normal.

As if nothing is wrong and his time as a puppet to a malicious spirit hadn’t cost him a friend and the Pack’s trust. Even Lydia flinches when Stiles forgets himself, gesturing widely with his hands in a determinedly-animated chatter. 

The boy’s face and scent both go flat for a long moment, before he picks up again where he left off as if nothing happened. 

It isn’t healthy, isn’t right. 

Peter’s not sure why he cares. He already has the name he needs, that of the girl who wraps herself around Stiles every night not unlike a pup with her favorite chew toy – he needs to focus on her.

Still, it lingers in the back of his mind. Peter is the poster boy for unhealthy coping mechanisms and has no room to throw stones. He thanks the gods sometimes that his temper is less hair-trigger than it was in those days after waking from his coma, but now that anger has been crowded out by worry. 

Lydia stares off into the distance, focused on something only she can see. Peter watches her out of the corner of his eye so as not to get caught. Scott and Stiles volley back and forth in an intense conversation; when Scott turns to answer a question from Kira, for a split second Stiles’ face falls into blankness. The moment Scott turns back, his expression comes to life again.

Neither of them will consent to talk about it, and certainly not to Peter. He thinks for half-a-moment of mentioning something to the sheriff, or even their dear Alpha, and calling his good deed for the year done. 

He won’t, of course. Sheriff Stilinski is hardly the worst father Peter’s ever seen, but what he has seen doesn’t make him eager to place any faith in the man. Scott, for all his good intentions, can’t see anything six inches past his nose, with the exception of the kitsune girl. Even if the Alpha doesn’t brush Peter’s words off altogether, Stiles is skilled at fooling his friend in particular. Nothing will come of it. 

Peter does what he can – he has more resources than some. 

-

He delivers two bouquets, one to Stiles' windowsill and the other to Lydia’s front door with a short note of something to brighten your day, left unsigned. He doesn’t wait around for the discovery of either, returning to his apartment, far on the other side of town from Derek’s. 

It takes less than a day for a perfectly-arranged bouquet of wolfsbane to appear on his kitchen counter. The fancy vase tied with an expensive gold ribbon isn’t accompanied by a note; not that he needs one. Peter takes a moment to admire the deep, deadly purple of the blossoms, then moves to open a window before the pollen gets too strong. He returns to the kitchen with a trashbag and uses it to cover the entire thing, lovely vase and all, before regretfully tossing it in the dumpster behind his complex. 

Message received, Peter resolves to resist any instincts to reach out to Lydia. 

Stiles, however, doesn’t react at all. The flowers are gone from the sill when he passes the Stilinski house, but he hears no hint of the boy asking after them. That’s fine, Peter isn’t doing this to provoke a reaction. Not yet, anyway. 

-

There are things Peter wants: to be Alpha again, to connect with his daughter, to be free, to end Kate once and for all.

He’s not sure where Stiles falls in all this, not yet, but he plans to find out.

[buckybarnesss]

It only recently dawned on me... was Kate the Argent Matriarch in season 1? And then it passed to Victoria in season 2 for only a few months before her death?

How can we ever criticize Derek's short time as an Alpha when he at least held onto his power longer than Victoria Argent held on to hers? Which she mostly spent pretending to be an administrative assistant to her father-in-law in a high school?

the thing about the argents is that they are lying their asses off about being matriarchal. chris is so goddamn deluded y'all.

in code breaker, when kate is confronted by chris at the hale house when she has scott at gun point she tells chris "i was following orders" whose orders was she following? who was victoria argent playing second fiddle to? who manipulated allison? who was meeting with duecalion under false pretenses and instead attacked him, blinded him and killed his own men?

gerard argent.

i don't think it's coincidental that we learn nothing about chris and kate's mother. she is of no-consequence to the story. she did not matter.

in this era of argent history the "woman are leaders" is a line. it's a bunch of bullshit. gerard has been pulling the strings for decades. he wants to play kindly old grandpa while he sits on his liar's chair plotting genocide.

the argent's decline, their decent into madness is gerard's doing. it's his personal vendetta. his indulgence in violence and war. his blood lust. he doesn't care about anyone that isn't himself and his ends.

gerard costs them everything in the end.

kate and victoria had false power. puppets on strings. the smokescreen to his endgame.

even allison was ensnared in gerard's web and lies of manipulation put on the same path as kate and hoodwinked into thinking it was her own decision.

while peter is the one who killed laura and it's a debate on how truly culpable he was it was hunters that desecrated her body. i think it was gerard argent that cut her in half in a rage at his plan at getting the bite from her falling through. that is my own speculation though.

[lord-woolsley]

Neverlove

Fandom: Teen Wolf (Stiles Stilinski/Derek Hale) Chapters: 1/1 (1795 words) Rating: Teen And Up Summary:  When the Nogitsune possesses Stiles, there's only one person who can save him: Derek Hale. However, Derek has to fight his own feelings first. Rant: If you like it, please leave some love on ao3. ♡ Ao3: Link

Neverlove

"When the Nogitsune gets the better of me, you have to kill me, Derek“, Stiles said. He was feeling the exhaustion as he managed to free himself out of possession for a very second. His eyes filled with a familiar sparkle, showing a hint of the sly humour that reminded Derek of Stiles’ usual sarcastic self.

His eyes were reflecting small rays of light shining from the light bulb above their heads. Eyes brown like dark chocolate and now without the pain Derek could see in them just a few moments ago. Stiles’ eyes were way too warm and soft for such a terrible situation, way too present for a body that wasn't his anymore. Derek could see the warmth in them that had always helped Stiles and his friends to manage even the worst of situations. But this time Stiles smiled for himself and only for himself, desperately trying to find pieces of self-awareness to hold onto. But after all it was just a mechanism to protect himself from losing everything that ever meant something to him, to shield himself from the corruption of possession that would certainly destroy him.

Derek looked at Stiles’ eyes again and again, eyes he loved so dearly, eyes he wanted to protect at all costs, never letting them go again. Ignoring his feelings however, he nodded slightly, giving his one and only a silent promise to fulfil his wishes, to hopefully save the real him. Even if death seemed to be the only possible solution, the inevitable outcome.

Derek would have loved to give his own life instead of sacrificing the soul beside him. He was a bad person after all, he might even have deserved a fate like this. But Stiles: pure, soft, always happy Stiles, should have been save, save at home watching TV with his dad, out on the field with Scott or (he didn’t even dare to think about it) making out with Malia on the backseat of his jeep. Everything was better than having Stiles here with him, possessed and broken.

"You’re the only one who can do it. Scott and Malia will not be able to end this", Stiles said. "Oh, Stiles", Derek thought. "Why do you think I'm the right person for this?" He didn’t speak the words out loud. Stopping himself from sobbing, he couldn’t show Stiles what he was going through. Stiles needed someone here with him who was ready for whatever outcome this situation might bring. Someone he could trust and Derek wanted to be this person for him when he needed him the most.

It was evening already and the white artificial light threw a silver shadow on everything it could find. Derek and Stiles were sitting next to each other on the ground waiting for the Nogitsune to take over. The high school was empty at this hour and they were completely alone. Every few minutes or so Stiles said something to show Derek he was still in control of his mind, still fighting against it. Not knowing that Derek was fighting a battle of his own. Thankfully the light was faint enough for Stiles to not see the desperation on Derek’s face.

"If you only knew…", Derek muttered softly to himself. His lips were moving, his mouth closed. He didn't have the strength to say the words out loud. He was aware of his feelings for Stiles for a long time now. Every time Derek started to like a person; his life turned into a nightmare. “Maybe…”, an evil voice in his mind said, “you’re not meant to fall in love.” Whenever Derek had felt an intense feeling of attraction, his life fell apart. He didn’t seem to deserve it and now Stiles had to suffer the consequences.

Derek remembered Kate, her long blonde curls, her confident smile. That was the trait he had fallen in love with first. Derek had loved her unconditionally; he had loved her till the moment she killed his family in flames and betrayed him. He was still blaming himself for it, searching for a specific mistake he had made that had led her to destruction. Derek had let the enemy in, opening himself and his family to her who then had to pay the darkest price for his emotions, how ironic. That's what he wanted to spare himself from. Letting Stiles in would only make it worse. That's why he kept silent, why he didn't tell Stiles about his feelings for him because he wouldn’t be able to endure the consequences again. He wouldn't survive losing another person he loved. If Stiles wasn't his, he might even be able to save him.

Derek hadn’t the chance to start crying because Stiles transformed again. His face was turning dark with eyes looking so empty that every last bit of Stiles' mimic seemed to vanish instantly, transforming his expression into something colder than ice, something that wasn’t Stiles at all anymore. Malignity destroying the last hint of ease Stiles had been able to keep on his face for so long. Stiles was gone.

Derek recognized it as soon as it began, and he was trying to get up as quickly as he could when the Nogitsune tried to attack him with a small pocket knife which Stiles had probably hidden in his pocket for self-defence purposes earlier that day. In a fleeting moment Derek would have loved to die, he imagined the creature throwing him to the floor, tearing into him, ripping his heart out into multiple pieces, shredding it. “No heart, no heartbreak. No heartbreak, no pain”, he thought to himself. It was not granted to him.

Instead of lingering on his thoughts much longer, he took Stiles' hands in this, freeing them from the weapon with sheer strength. From one monster to another. Stiles was trying to hold onto the weapon with inhuman strength, there was nothing left of the fragile teenage boy Derek got to know over the last few months. “I’m 145 pounds of pale skin and fragile bones, sarcasm is my only defence”, Derek remembered him once saying. Without his voice and his wits Stiles was defenceless in this, no one could outsmart a Nogitsune with willpower and sarcasm only, especially not while being possessed and trapped in his own body by said creature. Stiles would be unable to free himself.

Stiles’ hands were stiff but still remained warm, they felt exactly like the first time he had the chance to touch them. Derek’s treacherous heart would always remember that moment like it had been yesterday, burnt into his mind forever, setting off a nostalgic spark from the past, a faint glimmer so much needed in the dark hour he was suffering through right now. For a better lack of words he could only describe it as a fast-beating mess.

Back when the Kanima had paralyzed him and he had been so close to drowning in that goddamn school swimming pool, before bodily-weak, fragile Stiles Stilinski had turned himself into a hero just to rescue him. Derek couldn’t trust his eyes back then when someone was actually coming for him, and even less so, when this special someone turned out be Stiles. Very unexpectedly, he might add. Derek smiled gently, mentally bathing in memories from times long gone. He wouldn’t let go off Stiles’ fingers back then and he had blamed the Kanima’s paralyzing poison for it. None of the others ever found out about it, but he was still clinging onto Stiles’ hand long after the poison had already left his body. Stiles’ fingers had always seemed so fragile, this new strength didn't fit them. Derek didn’t like the change because he was aware of what would follow, and he was not ready for it.

Stiles' bones made a horrifying breaking sound when Derek forced his hand open to take the weapon inside it. Not a real weapon though, not even a sword, just a small pocket knife, and oh the irony, still worse than anything Derek could imagine. He pushed it into Stiles' chest, over and over again until his own sobs stopped him. Derek slid down the wall behind him, leaving blood marks on the wallpaper, now holding onto the body he attacked or “saved” from himself seconds ago. He held him too close, desperate, broken. A puppet, still warm, ready to rise again at any given moment.

The lights made the floor look red, making the wet spots look like puddles, puddles shining in dark ruby red.

"I'm so sorry...“, Derek whispered. It was the first time he apologized to someone.

But in this very moment Derek never wanted to be a powerless and weak minded coward again. “You didn’t break your promise”, the voice in his head said. “You owed him that.” Derek wanted the voice to shut up.

Stiles’ shirt was covered in blood but his eyes looked human-like again, hurt, lost in pain. The Nogitsune stopped its possession, ready to move on, ready to find a new host, a host able to live, to act, and to fulfil its commands. The little left of Stiles wasn’t worthy of its control anymore. Stiles was more dead than alive, more corpse than person. Derek let go of Stiles body slowly and kneeled down beside him, one hand softly resting on Stile's cheek. His eyes were open but his breath so very shallow. He was barely conscious when Derek kissed him.

"I'm so so sorry...", Derek repeated. He said it again and again, repeating it like a mantra that, so he hoped, could undo all of his actions. Derek wished he could turn back time, stopping himself from getting too close to Stiles in the first place, preventing Stiles' fate by staying as far away from him as possible. Keeping him save by cutting him out of his cursed life that was destroying everyone near him.

Derek turned around looking for help, someone had to call an emergency. Maybe Stiles could still be saved after what the Nogitsune did to him? After what he did to him. Maybe there was still enough life left in him? Stiles was a fighter. Derek saw Malia instead.

She gazed towards the body in horror, clasping her hands over her mouth, a shrieking sound escaping her lips. Derek got up instantly, risking one last look at Stiles. He would leave Stiles with her. He was not his Stiles anymore, he had never been his Stiles in the first place. He was Malia’s Stiles and that’s what he would be.

"Wait!“, she shouted while calling an ambulance on her mobile phone. Ignoring her, Derek ran faster, still feeling Stiles' lips on his own. Lips sealing their goodbyes. Derek wasn’t sure if he could ever forget them.

[dixie-diamonds]

The (non) Fridging of one Ms. Emma Frost.

For our initial offering, dear followers, we bring you our thoughts on the sad, tragic, and sadly unnecessary, fate of one Ms. Emma Frost at the end of the sordid, editorially driven to the ground, non-event Inhumans vs. X-Men.  

We wanted to get some distance from the events of this installment before putting down our thoughts to keyboard about…well there’s really no better way to say it…the character rape-ification that happened to Emma on IvX # 6.  So now a few days later. I think our thoughts have settled.  

One of the most awful truisms in life is the notion of having to take one’s own advice.  It sucks.  Particularly when it comes to comics.  We’re usually the one to tell folks, right after their favorite characters get nuked because some writer thinks awful writing choices means ‘genius’ or something, that one of the only constants in our hobby/culture/life is the constancy of change.  Status quos last only rarely and even something seemingly permanent can be rebirthed, rebooted, forgiven, recast, retconned, whatever.  That’s a long winded way of saying that…even though things are bleak at the moment, to quote Avenue Q, ‘this is only for now’.  We know it’s small, fleeting comfort fellow Emma fans.  We feel you.  But…it’s the only silver lining we can see emerging from this hot mess of a fucked up sitch we’re in right now. It’s hard to swallow.  We find it difficult to accept it at times still.  At the end of the day though, I think it’s also important to assess and realize that look, at the end of day, and as much as we all love her, she is just a fictional character.  Her status quo now, as awful as it is, hasn’t killed anyone (as far as I know) or made the Trump regime even worse (again as far as I know).  So we’re ok.  

So now that the table-setting is out of the way…let’s get on with the nitty gritty.  We’re not gonna summarize the plot of IvX, as that’s available plenty of other places.  And if you’ve read the story…well you know.

We’re not unhappy about Emma’s reversion to an out and out villain.  Honestly, after the events of Death of X and the earlier installments of IvX, any other kind of conclusion, or hell even having her returned to the X-Fold wouldn’t make much story sense.  Lemire and Soule have laid down enough story real estate that having it end any other way than that would just be silly or horribly contrived.  And you know what? That’s fine.  That’s totally fine.  Why not? It might even be interesting.  What would an anti-hero Emma, skirting on the darker sides of the gray lines she already inhabits, look like? What would an Emma-ized notion of Magneto’s previous ideology look like?  Would that even be her motivation?  Or would it just be (and to us far more interesting plot-wise and commentary wise on the X-franchise as a whole) more of Emma finally saying ‘FUCK IT’ to all the endless thumb-twiddling the X-folks have been doing ever since Bendis took over?  Or hell, she can just go full on Black Cat and just be an international jewel thief coz she is so sick and done with the X-Men’s perennially regressive approach to things and the endless Uncle Tom-ing they all seem to be doing lately.  All of these options are cool to us and they would be interesting to read about.

But that isn’t what we got.  What we got instead is Emma literally assuming the identity of the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (also known as Cyclop’s secondary mutation, seriously man, you should check that, it is a serious condition), and without the wit or awesome musical numbers that you get from the CW show.  Her motivation for turning the heel is literally, and we wave our fist to the sky as we type this, ‘my boyfriend died and I’m nothing without him’.  A notion that Soule (and Lemire too? It isn’t clear which of these two editorial puppets came up with the notion, though most seem to argue that it’s Soule) ratchets up to a level beyond creepy when he has Emma don an outfit THAT LITERALLY IS HER PUTTING ON HER EX-BOYFRIENDS SKIN.  What in the fuckity fuck fuck fuck is this?  How/why does this make sense?  As many other fans (and non fans) have said…we are talking about a woman who a) watched many iterations of her students die b) survived the 9/11-ing of Genosha by Sentinels (more on that FUCKITY FUCK plot point in a little bit) c) killed her sister for killing one of her students d) lost her brother, whom she cared for deeply to insanity because of an abusive father e) literally started from the bottom to build up a massive financial empire.  We can go on.  The point is, in the grand scheme of traumas that Emma has experienced, losing Scott would probably just amount to a small paper cut.  The fact (that Soule and Lemire forgot about?) that she and Scott ALREADY BROKE UP BEFORE DEATH OF X makes the notion of this crazy, stupid love even more ridiculous. Also, remember, in her diamond form, she is supposed to feel nothing, NOTHING, now let’s go back to IvX and count how many times Emma assumes her diamond form... bored of counting already? This characterization of Emma as jilted lover, turned all the way up to level 100 gazillion, is just idiotic writing borne out of some editorial mandate. 

And look ok, fine, let’s make Emma unstable.  Sure, why not, we can go there too.  But seriously? You’re going to show that by having the woman who, when she got god-like Phoenix powers (which, by the way also maybe made her a little crazy?) MADE IT HER FIRST PRIORITY TO LITERALLY DESTROY EVERY SENTINEL ON THE PLANET.  How does this even fucking work?  If Emma is really all ID now and she’s gone off the rails, and is now doing whatever the fuck she wants…why in the hell would she want to create Sentinels?  It makes no sense….even if the aim was to show her instability.  It also lacks the kind of deeper, elegant hurt that she’s capable of and prefers to inflict.  This Sentinel shit is amateur fucking hour, and she is anything but.  See, for contrast, the way she handled Laura’s previous handler Kimura.  That wasn’t the kind of mustache twirling fuckery we got handed.  That was Emma going for the elegant kind of pain: one that’s long lasting and deliciously poetic.  If Emma is going to be a baddie, then that’s the kind of next level shit they need to show her being capable of, not this two-bit hysterical monologuing bullshit we got.  Cullenn Bunn has stated in a recent CBR X-Position that Ems will be playing a big role in X-Men Blue.  Now, we trust Bunn, he does good work, particularly with anti-heroes like Magneto and Sabretooth...perhaps he can salvage something from this horrible situation.  

Making Emma the big bad of ResurrXion, the next Magneto, now that Magneto is a hero (at least this week), is all fine and dandy. But do it well. Make it meaningful. It takes about 2 panels for her to kill hundreds of inhumans. Almost as a side note. Those panels are going to define her as a genocidal villain for the rest of her days, the same way Hank Pym has been defined by a single panel that was not even scripted.

Why is all this happening? Why did it have to happen this way?  Our completely unscientific (and admittedly conspiracy theory-leaning) argument is that it all has to do with nostalgia.  RessurXion seems to be banking on regressing everything back to the 90s…the time when the X-Men were walking around in tights, constantly playing baseball, and involved in 30 plus year subplots that don’t ever get resolved.  And look, there’s nothing wrong with that.  But, why does that shiny new reboot have to be bought and paid for by throwing both Cyclops and Emma under the bus?  Why does this have to come at the price of wiping away so much of  the compelling additions that the Scott/Emma era of the X-franchise created? The notion of mutants as a tribe, as one people; of mutants being an actual political minority that exists in the larger Marvel firmament; the notion of an X-character, who not only is a compelling, multi-layered female character, who doesn’t go for the usual liberal/assimilative platitudes the X-People usually spout.  Why does all this need to be wiped away?  Are the new writers just not good enough to create something that the nostalgic mouthbreathing focus groups want (and is this even a real demographic? Who exactly did this development please? Other than godawful Jean partisans and non-intelligent comic readers?) while being respectful of and keeping (mostly) intact the import of stories that have already been told.  The fact that what happened happened feels like a slap in the face to all the fans who are rightly asking these questions.

Secondly….we think this development also owes a lot to the kind of demographic Marvel is targeting, and the kind of female characters that that demographic is interested in reading and supporting.  That is, the kind of female character who is a modified distillation of the manic, pixie dreamgirl: spunky, ‘strong’, sexual (to a degree), feminist (to a degree, but also only in a very specific second wave kind of a way)  and of course have to be tumblrflower, Bleeding Cool and Mary Sue approved, lest the wrath of twitter be provoked.  I’m talking of characters like America Chavez, Kamala Khan, Kate Bishop and Carol Danvers.  Strong, feminist, etc. But, not threatening, not overtly sexual, not swagger-y, and god forbid, not sexual only for the sake of sex; they are the equivalent of Boy Bands in the 90′s and early 00′s, attractive, easy to sell, tame. Remember She-Hulk being a strong woman with a brilliant career, kicking ass and taking names, having sexual fantasies with fellow Avengers in the 90′s? well, that She-Hulk is also gone.  After Civil War 2, poor Jen is being written as a very mousey Millennial...who’s afraid of her own power and strength.  Seeing a pattern already?

 Emma, in our view, represents one of the last few fabulously written female characters that counters this second-wave feminist tendency in current comic writing/production of female characters.  She has an unproblematic relationship with sex for pleasure and she isn’t here to make you feel good about your goddamned feminist struggle or your sophomoric need for representation.  And for that, she had to be punished and made the bogeywoman of all the twitter warriors who insist that female characters be feminist-strong…but only in the way that they find palatable and ‘relatable’.  I’ve always been very aware that Marvel is a business (a point I belabor to anyone who thinks Marvel OWES them something)…and of course they have to go where the money is.  But, it doesn’t make this direction for Emma, or the character assassination she and we have endued, any more palatable.  

Which brings us full circle to the essay’s title.  She may still be alive, walking around the Marvel U in an outfit that can only be described as ‘too garish, even for pre-Joanne Lady Gaga’, but for all intents and purposes, Emma Frost has been fridged.  Not physically, and in a way this is even far more cruel to her fans.  They could have just taken her away from us cleanly, ending her story, not in the best of places, but at least it would have ended (for now) and we can go on, missing her, but at least with the comfort that it couldn’t get any worse.  But that isn’t what happened.  Instead, they took her away from us, one sordid, horribly mandated development at a time, until all that’s left is this ghoul-caricature of a character, walking around; sapped of all of her vitality and that je ne sais quoi that made her so unique, endlessly compelling, and the source of such pure comic joy.  That woman is long gone.  And what’s in her place now is just a zombie that Soule and Lemire should have just put out of her misery.  

It’s fine that Marvel needed an X-Men reboot.  Hell, in many ways as a fan, I might have welcome it with much more enthusiasm than my tepid ‘oh great I guess I’m obligated to read it’ feeling that I’m having right now.  If only, this shiny new future for the merry mutants didn’t have to bought with the merciless, cruel, and absolutely unnecessary, and far worse, character fridging of one Emma Frost.

At least, we’ll always have the trades fellow Emma fans.

Keep the faith.

We’re hanging on with you.   

[aion-rsa]

Top New Fantasy Books in August 2020

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

It’s summer. Lots of people are staying home. It might be a good time for a book. Here are some of the upcoming books we’re anticipating:

Join the Den of Geek Book Club!

Top New Fantasy Books August 2020

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson 

Type: Novel  Publisher: Tor Release date: Aug. 11 

Den of Geek says: The Baru Cormorant series features as its hero a mentally ill accountant with the fate of an empire at its fingers. The third book in the series promises more dark, twisty introspection and grim, creative world-building. 

Publisher’s summary: The hunt is over. After fifteen years of lies and sacrifice, Baru Cormorant has the power to destroy the Imperial Republic of Falcrest that she pretends to serve. The secret society called the Cancrioth is real, and Baru is among them.

But the Cancrioth’s weapon cannot distinguish the guilty from the innocent. If it escapes quarantine, the ancient hemorrhagic plague called the Kettling will kill hundreds of millions…not just in Falcrest, but all across the world. History will end in a black bloodstain.

Is that justice? Is this really what Tain Hu hoped for when she sacrificed herself?

Baru’s enemies close in from all sides. Baru’s own mind teeters on the edge of madness or shattering revelation. Now she must choose between genocidal revenge and a far more difficult path―a conspiracy of judges, kings, spies and immortals, puppeteering the world’s riches and two great wars in a gambit for the ultimate prize. 

If Baru had absolute power over the Imperial Republic, she could force Falcrest to abandon its colonies and make right its crimes.

Buy The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. 

Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley

Type: Epic Poem  Publisher: MCD x FSG Originals Release date: Aug. 25 

Den of Geek says: Headley got an intimate look at Beowulf in the modern interpretation The Mere Wife. She turns the intellect behind that inventive, scathing novel about complex and furious women to a translation of the poem featuring new research. 

Publisher’s summary: Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf―and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world―there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements that have never before been translated into English, recontextualizing the binary narrative of monsters and heroes into a tale in which the two categories often entwine, justice is rarely served, and dragons live among us. 

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. The familiar elements of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history―Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment, powerful men seeking to become more powerful, and one woman seeking justice for her child, but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation of Beowulf, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation. Buy Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley.  

The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe

Type: Novel (Reprint)  Publisher: Tor Books Release date: Aug. 11 

Den of Geek says: Gene Wolfe is a modern master of fantasy. This reprint of a 2004 duology provides both original stories in one paperback package. 

Publisher’s summary: A young man in his teens is transported from our world to a magical realm consisting of seven levels of reality. Transformed by magic into a grown man of heroic proportions, he takes the name Sir Able of the High Heart and sets out on a quest to find the sword that has been promised to him, the blade that will help him fulfill his ambition to become a true hero―a true knight. 

Inside, however, Sir Able remains a boy, and he must grow in every sense to survive what lies ahead…

Buy The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe. 

Top New Fantasy Books July 2020 

The Book of Dragons: An Anthology by Jonathan Strahan

Type: Anthology  Publisher: Harper Voyager  Release date: July 7 

Den of Geek says: I’m always looking for a good book about dragons, and this incredible list of authors promises adventurous and unique stories. Anne Leckie, Zen Cho, Seanan Maguire, J.Y. Yang, Patricia A McKillip, Brooke Bolander … it’s an astounding, literary-flavored list of people qualified to write cool creatures.

Publisher’s summary: Here there be dragons . . . 

From China to Europe, Africa to North America, dragons have long captured our imagination in myth and legend. Whether they are rampaging beasts awaiting a brave hero to slay or benevolent sages who have much to teach humanity, dragons are intrinsically connected to stories of creation, adventure, and struggle beloved for generations. 

Bringing together nearly thirty stories and poems from some of the greatest science fiction and fantasy writers working today— Garth Nix, Scott Lynch, R.F. Kuang, Ann Leckie & Rachel Swirsky, Daniel Abraham, Peter S. Beagle, Beth Cato, Zen Cho, C. S. E Cooney, Aliette de Bodard, Amal El-Mohtar, Kate Elliott, Theodora Goss, Ellen Klages, Ken Liu, Seanan Maguire, Patricia A McKillip, K. J. Parker, Kelly Robson, Michael Swanwick, Jo Walton, Elle Katharine White, Jane Yolen, Kelly Barnhill, Brooke Bolander, Sarah Gailey, and J. Y. Yang—and illustrated by award-nominated artist Rovina Cai with black-and-white line drawings specific to each entry throughout, this extraordinary collection vividly breathes fire and life into one of our most captivating and feared magical creatures as never before and is sure to become a treasured keepsake for fans of fantasy, science fiction, and fairy tales.

Buy The Book of Dragons by Jonathan Strahan on Amazon

Or What You Will by Joe Walton 

Type: Novel  Publisher: Tor Books Release date: July 7 

Den of Geek says: Jo Walton is a writer’s writer, highly praised but still generally skating under the radar. I found her 2014 My Real Children to not nearly live up to its very high concept, but she’s one of those authors with technical prowess who is at least worth checking out for context for women’s science fiction. The metafiction plot sounds fun. 

Publisher’s summary: He has been too many things to count. He has been a dragon with a boy on his back. He has been a scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a thief. He has been dream and dreamer. He has been a god. 

But “he” is in fact nothing more than a spark of idea, a character in the mind of Sylvia Harrison, 73, award-winning author of thirty novels over forty years. He has played a part in most of those novels, and in the recesses of her mind, Sylvia has conversed with him for years. 

But Sylvia won’t live forever, any more than any human does. And he’s trapped inside her cave of bone, her hollow of skull. When she dies, so will he.

Now Sylvia is starting a new novel, a fantasy for adult readers, set in Thalia, the Florence-resembling imaginary city that was the setting for a successful YA trilogy she published decades before. Of course he’s got a part in it. But he also has a notion. He thinks he knows how he and Sylvia can step off the wheel of mortality altogether. All he has to do is convince her.

Buy Or What You Will by Jo Walton on Amazon 

The Adventure Zone: Petals to the Metal

Type: Graphic Novel  Publisher: First Second  Release date: July 14 

Den of Geek says: The Adventure Zone is a wildly popular humorous fantasy podcast. It’s part of the big 2010s wave of Dungeons & Dragons coming back into the geek space. Especially for someone who might not want to listen to hundreds of episodes of a podcast, the illustrated version does a good job of smoothing out the story into a graphic novel format without removing the goofy chaos of the original podcast. 

Publisher’s summary: START YOUR ENGINES, friends, Clint McElroy and sons Griffin, Justin, and Travis hit the road again with Taako, Magnus and Merle, the beloved agents of chaos from the #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novels illustrated by Carey Pietsch, The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins and The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited.

Our boys have gone full-time at the Bureau of Balance, and their next assignment is a real thorny one: apprehending The Raven, a master thief who’s tapped into the power of a Grand Relic to ransack the city of Goldcliff. Local life-saver Lieutenant Hurley pulls them out of the woods, only to throw them headlong into the world of battle wagon racing, Goldcliff’s favorite high-stakes low-legality sport and The Raven’s chosen battlefield. Will the boys and Hurley be able to reclaim the Relic and pull The Raven back from the brink, or will they get lost in the weeds?

Based on the beloved blockbuster podcast where three brothers and their dad play a tabletop RPG in real time, The Adventure Zone: Petals to the Metal has it all: blossoming new friendships, pining for outlaw lovers, and a rollicking race you can root for!

Buy The Adventure Zone: Petals to the Metal 

The post Top New Fantasy Books in August 2020 appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/30f7KEw

[the-master-cylinder]

SUMMARY Kate (Catherine Hickland) is driving alone down a highway in Riverton, Arizona after having left her fiancé at the altar. While driving, she hears the noise of horses galloping outside her car, but sees no one. After pulling onto the side of the road, she is whisked away in a dust cloud and disappears.

Sheriff Langley (Franc Luz) is dispatched to Kate’s abandoned car, found later that day. While pulled over, a man on a horse rides by and shoots at him. Langley exits the car, and a stray bullet hits the car’s gas tank, causing the vehicle to explode. Langley wanders by foot, stumbling upon a ghost town off the main road. After falling asleep in an empty building, he awakens the next day to various apparitions that appear to be linked to the town’s past. He meets a barmaid, Grace (Penelope Windust) and a blind gambling dealer (Bruce Glover), as well as a blacksmith and his daughter, Etta.

Meanwhile, Kate is being held captive by Devlin (Jimmie Skaggs), a zombie-like outlaw who has control over the town through a pact he made with Satan. Devlin terrorizes the souls of the town’s residents, and kills both the blacksmith and Etta after they confide in Langley. Upon discovering his modern gun to be ineffective, Langley is given an old revolver by Grace, and finds that he is able to kill Devlin’s henchmen with old bullets.

After finding Kate, Langley is hunted by Devlin’s henchmen. The two hide in the abandoned church, which Devlin and his henchmen light on fire. However, Kate and Langley escape. Outside, Langley has a shootout with Devlin, during which Langley effectively destroys him. As he and Kate leave, the souls of the town’s residents look on with approval, and the town disappears behind them.

PRODUCTION Empire’s Ghost Town, by Australian Richard Governor, produced by Tim Tennant, who is dealing here with his first horror movie after involvement with the likes of Gung Ho! and Hot Dog: The Movie. The lead role is essayed by Jimmie F. Skaggs, who has his first-ever starring part in his first-ever horror film as the demonic Devlin, a zombie gunslinger who lives-if that��s the correct word in the titular town and who ends up battling a present day sheriff who wanders in.

Experienced genre hands on the Ghost Town shoot include popular cinematographer Mac Ahlberg, stunt Coordinator Kane Hodder, the MMI makeup FX crew, which comprised Scott Coulter, Greg Johnson and Mike Deak. The FX trio, like the others, went on location in an Arizona ghost town for the five-week shoot. MMI shop foreman John Criswell and lab workers Tom Lauten, Andrew Kenneworthy and Roger McCoin also contributed to the FX workload.

So what did this combination of genre newcomers and seasoned horror vets come up with? Well, for one thing, they didn’t come up with a splatter movie. Oh, sure, we’ve all heard that before, usually from would-be auteurs who want to juke us into believing what they do is real serious art. This time, though, the “not-a-gore-film” line appears to fit.

“It’s more a Gothic horror film than a slasher film,” says producer Tennant. “It’s not what you see in the film, it’s what you don’t see.” Head zombie Skaggs allows that “it’s more like a Twilight Zone episode.” And perhaps the strongest indication of what can be expected from the movie comes from Coulter, the man in charge of Ghost Town’s prosthetics and makeup FX.

“We intentionally stayed away from gore effects in the film,’ Coulter claims. “In fact, when Devlin gets shot in the film, he does not bleed blood, he does not bleed slime. He bleeds dust. When he’s shot, dust hits fly out. We did it with squibs just like regular squibs, but instead of filling them with blood, we packed them with Fuller’s earth.”

Don’t panic. Ghost Town won’t attract Alan Alda fans. The movie contains plenty of sequences designed to raise the gooseflesh, such as a scene in which a prosthetic arm (created by Greg Johnson) gets shot off an actual one-armed man, which Coulter terms a “great” effect, as well as a zombie resurrection.

“When the sheriff comes across the ghost town, the original sheriff from 100 years ago who had been buried alive comes up out of the ground as a rotted zombie and grabs his hands to warn him,” reveals Coulter. “This is the big zombie effect in the movie, and it’s entirely a mechanical puppet. I sculpted it, and John Criswell did the mechanics.

“We shot about 35 miles away from our hotel, out in the middle of nowhere, with no electricity and no water,” he goes on. “They had to get power loaders in there to dig this big hole about six feet deep. There was a big wood platform over it, dirt over that, and a big pit where the actual puppet was. So we had to bury this thing and operate it, and it took all of us. We were grabbing grips and people off the crew to pull cables for it. There were eight or nine of us packed down underneath the thing. and it was about 185 degrees. We were in there for a number of hours, but there was a handy little trap door we could open up between takes, so it was OK. We even had a little video monitor down there so we could see what we were doing.

“The other big spectacular gags are the various things that Devlin does in the movie,” continues Coulter. “He does one really good effect. We were in this barn that was built for another movie. It was old dry wood, full of straw and stuff, and the director insisted upon using a hot iron poker in the scene. Devlin’s a walking zombie at this point in the film, and he takes this hot iron poker and pierces it into a blacksmith, lifts him off the ground, and slams him all across the barn, pinning him to the wall. The special effects guy did this amazing rig; it looked real.

“But what was funny about it was that in the barn, with dried wood and straw all over the place, we were using a 1.500-degree hot iron poker,” Coulter laughs. “I was standing by an exit. If anything happened, I was grabbing my makeup kit and getting out of there. The desert was already quite hot enough.”

Speaking of hot, Kane Hodder and stuntman Alan Marcus pulled off a seldom-seen treat for the film. “Richard Governor wanted to see a guy ignite on camera, and that presented a little problem.” admits Hodder. “If you think about it, when you see someone on fire in the movies, they usually cut from something else to that person already on fire. This was a little tricky. You couldn’t just do the regular thing where I’d come in, wait until the cameras start to roll, light Alan and then run away before the shot begins. Alan was doubling a zombie who had just been shot, and Richard wanted to see a little action of Alan first, then have him burst into flames on camera. What we did was this: Alan stumbled out of a doorway, smoking, and bumped into the door jamb, pausing for a second. I had positioned myself on the other side of the door with a torch, and I ignited him the instant he hit that door jamb. So he continued stumbling for a few steps, and then caught on fire. It worked out real well.”

Hodder echoes the others by stating that Ghost Town is not really a gore exercise. “Of course,” he adds, “there are a lot of excellent makeup effects things, but not so much of the blood-and-guts type. It’s more scary than gory.” He also believes that Skaggs’ performance is one of the brightest things about the entire film, a feeling shared by others.

“Jimmie Skaggs is the sweetest guy in the world playing the meanest guy in the world, and it’s a wonderful contrast,” asserts Tennant. “It’s a very demanding role, because of the makeup. and the hours, and the getting into it and out of it when there isn’t enough time. He’s a real pro and very powerful in the role.”

“Director Richard Governor seemed like a crazy, high energy, highly sexed, charismatic guy with a strong Australian accent… At the time, I was not sure that he had complete control of his set, but I’ve since learned the no one ever has complete control of any set.” – actor Franc Luz

MMI head John Buechler designed the appliance that converts nice guy Skaggs into the hell-on-hooves zombie. The Devlin makeup was sculpted, fabricated and applied on set by Coulter, who likewise praises the actor. “Jimmie is the best actor I ever worked with, as far as using the makeup correctly.” Coulter raves. “He is honestly better than Freddy Krueger, better than any of those guys, about using the foam latex. I watched him when he first got it, and he just sat there, right in front of the mirror, and saw what the foam could do, and then he used it. The man used his entire body, too. He had a walk, a whole attitude. He was very character-oriented. There’s a complete character there on the screen.”

“I had never worn appliances on my face before, and interestingly enough, I got used to them very quickly,” notes Skaggs. “I noticed, though, if I got warm and started to perspire, it would bubble a bit. But Scott Coulter was so experienced at this that he knew how to doctor it up so that no one would ever see. Cut a little hole, drain the sweat, then cover it back up and color it, and no one knew. I didn’t have a real problem wearing it, because once I was in makeup. I was no longer Jimmie Skaggs, and people respected that.”

Prior to the location filming, Skaggs visited the MMI studios for some pre-production work. He says he had no idea what to expect when they sat him down to cast a life mask. “They talked me through it and it all sounded very simple, so I agreed and made a few jokes about how it was like practicing Zen and the art of patience. But then they

started putting this stuff on,” he laughs. “I have never experienced anything like that in my life. It was almost total sensory deprivation. This stuff went in my ears, over my eyelids, covered my mouth. All that was left open were two little nostril holes. I was just fine … for about 15 minutes. Then, all of a sudden, I could feel this flush start to creep up from my chest through my neck up into my face and ears, and I got a little nervous. And I guess about 20 minutes into it, I thought, ‘Oh, God, I’ve got to get out of this! So I started making motions with my hands, and the guys were joking: “What do you want? A glass of water? A cigarette?’ Finally, I stood up in the chair and they got the message. They got it off and, thank God, it had set enough so they could get the mold.”

After one particularly long day in the Arizona sun, Skaggs learned another rather painful truth about the makeup FX business, thanks to some baiting by Coulter and company. As he relates it. “We went back to the trailer to take the makeup off, and everyone was tired. I was tired, Scott was tired, Mike and Greg were tired, and they were taking this stuff off. It took about two hours, and about 45 minutes into it, they were saying, ‘Oh, let’s just get this crap off. Just pull it off, Jim. I pulled that sucker-and my skin came with it! I learned very quickly that we were going to take our time.”

“Yeah,” grins Coulter. After that, he never ever complained about the length of time it took to take the makeup off.”

Stories like that, coupled with a tough shooting schedule and the remoteness of the location, might help explain why a passerby-had anyone passed by-on the last night of filming would have been treated to the bizarre spectacle of a shirtless Jimmie Skaggs, zombie appliance hanging from his face, gleefully shooting up an outhouse in the middle of the Arizona desert as whooping crew members joined in.

“It was after a whole night’s shoot,” recounts Coulter. “And it was the end of the film, you know? You don’t get an opportunity to be out in the desert firing guns very often, so we stopped in the middle of removing the makeup. Jimmie was covered in grease, his makeup half off, out there with a gun. That’s one thing I wish I’d gotten a picture of.”

Besides the performance of Skaggs (and the rest of the cast, which includes the beautiful Catherine Hickland and veteran bad guy Bruce Glover) and the special makeup FX work of the MMI crew. an outstanding facet of Ghost Town may be the film’s overall look. Tennant counts the visual quality as one of the strongest things about the movie.

“Richard Governor brought to Ghost Town a rich visual look,” asserts the producer. “Richard is one of the top commercial directors in the world, and he specializes in documentaries and TV comedies as well. This is his first theatrical picture, but down the line he’s going to be a well-known director because of his tremendous visual sense. He’s a terrific painter of pictures, and the film has a great look because of that. The negative side of it is that he falls in love with everything he sees, in terms of how he stylizes things. He fell so much in love with the images in the picture that when he went into editing, he wanted everything to stay. But everything can’t stay. You’ve got to get away from it, and he couldn’t do it. So he ran into trouble in the editing room.

“Richard is in love with the Gothic horror look, and with European film,” Tennant adds. “Empire, on the other hand, is more bang-bang bang!-get it into a fever pitch and keep it that way to the end. Richard’s cut is more romantic. It has more transition between scenes: it’s not a hard-cut film. There is more of a romantic form after the violence. That’s what he wanted, and that’s what we shot.”

Richard Governor did something very smart in this film,” elaborates Coulter. At the beginning, he shot not the effects, and not the stuff that Empire wants to show in their films. He shot the characters. He spent a great deal of time shooting them and shooting the gravy stuff, the extra stuff, not just the essential storyline. So when it comes time to shoot the stuff that Empire wants to see, that’s when you’re running out of time. But at the same time, he has a strong human story in there now.”

Although Tennant concedes with rancor that Empire knows its market, he also makes it clear that he preferred the director’s original cut, which was paced a bit too leisurely for Empire. “Empire knows their genre better than I do,” he states. “They know their market, and they’re exactly right about that market. But there’s not much you can do to speed up Ghost Town because of the type of film it is.

“A Western is just slower-paced,” Tennant sights. “It’s not modern day cops and robbers, where you have chase scenes with cars. It’s a Western, and you have chase scenes with horses, and a horse doesn’t go as fast as a car. It’s not a car screeching around a corner, it’s a horse turning a corner, and the two are different. You just can’t make things move faster than the period lets them.”

CAST/CREW Directed Richard McCarthy

Produced Larry Carroll

Written Duke Sandefur

Story David Schmoeller

Franc Luz as Langley Catherine Hickland as Kate Jimmie F. Skaggs as Devlin Penelope Windust as Grace Bruce Glover as Dealer Zitto Kazann as Blacksmith Blake Conway as Harper Laura Schaefer as Etta Michael Alldredge as Bubba

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Fangoria#75

Ghost Town (1988) Retrospective SUMMARY Kate (Catherine Hickland) is driving alone down a highway in Riverton, Arizona after having left her fiancé at the altar.

[biofunmy]

‘Saturday Night Live’: Matthew Broderick Joins the Trump Team

Given time, “Saturday Night Live” will eventually find a celebrity impersonator to play every member of the Trump administration. This weekend, “S.N.L.” spun its wheel of fortune (a.k.a. Lorne Michaels’s Rolodex) and landed on Matthew Broderick, who appeared as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a sketch about the White House’s ongoing response to the Ukraine affair and the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

The episode, which was hosted by the “Fleabag” creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge and featured the musical guest Taylor Swift, began with a sketch set in the office of Vice President Pence (Beck Bennett). Huddled up with Kate McKinnon (as Rudy Giuliani) and Aidy Bryant (as Attorney General William Barr), Bennett told the group they needed to strategize.

“We need to get ahead of this story before it spirals out of control,” he said. “Did you see those text messages they uncovered?

“They totally exonerate us,” McKinnon said.

“Really?” Bennett asked. “What do they say?”

Reading off her phone, Bryant replied, “Well, this one says: I think we should stop texting about the crimes and maybe tell the crimes over the phone so that the crimes don’t leave little crime footprints.”

Broderick arrived to deliver a few jokes inspired by his role in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” When Bennett observed, “If things go bad for Trump, then I’m president,” Broderick replied, “That’s gonna work out just great. I can’t wait for that to happen. Impeachment moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around, you might miss it.”

Broderick also told the group, “I’ve been asking around and I think that this whole impeachment thing could be really bad.”

Bennett asked him, “Who told you that?”

He answered, “Like, America?”

Kenan Thompson appeared as Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development (“I’ve been sitting in my empty office for like three years. Does anybody know what my job is supposed to be?”) and Alex Moffat played President Sauli Niinisto of Finland, still shellshocked after participating in a joint news conference with President Trump.

The sketch also featured an appearance from the White House adviser Stephen Miller (actually a puppet of a snake) and, for whatever reason, concluded with McKinnon wearing “Joker” makeup.

Opening Monologue of the Week

In her opening monologue, Waller-Bridge extended the victory lap that started two weeks ago at the Emmy Awards, where she won the trophies for lead actress in a comedy and writing for a comedy series and “Fleabag” was named outstanding comedy series.

Waller-Bridge said that people often ask her if she is like her protagonist on “Fleabag,” whom she described as “sexually depraved, foul-mouthed and dangerous.” She continued, “And I always have to say to them: ‘Yes, you’re absolutely right.’”

She went on to say about the series:

“Fleabag” came from a very personal place for me. It began as a way to get Andrew Scott to dress up as a priest and tell me that he loved me. It took me six years and two seasons to achieve it but I did it. I don’t care about awards, I just want gay men to love me. I call the character Priest in the script, but everyone started calling him Hot Priest. Obviously Andrew is hot, but this Priest character caused such a horn-storm. Andrew and I were trying to figure out what it was about him that was driving women so mental. And we boiled it down and realized, it was because he was doing this one thing: listening. Really, really listening. Try it, guys.

Local News Parody of the Week

The premise of this sketch, which presents itself as a parody of a midday TV news program, may not be immediately clear. (Though you do get to hear Waller-Bridge try on an American accent.) But give it a moment, when her anchorwoman character details a series of gas-station robberies and points out that the suspect is a white male — and her co-anchors, played by Kenan Thompson and Ego Nwodim, celebrate noticeably in the background.

“We’re just glad that we know what the criminal looks like,” Thompson says, adding, under his breath: “And he ain’t one of us.”

A battle of sorts escalates between the show’s white anchors and black anchors, and also draws in the show’s meteorologist (Chris Redd), who tries to argue that a hurricane named Chet has “a white man’s name if I’ve ever heard one.”

Weekend Update Jokes of the Week

At the “Weekend Update” desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the impeachment inquiry into Trump.

Jost:

As impeachment gains momentum, President Trump said he may stop referring to the media as fake news and start calling them corrupt news. And the media said they may stop referring to him as President Trump, and start calling him former President Trump. Trump then brushed off any concerns about impeachment, saying, I’m used to it, it’s like putting on a suit. Meaning it’s a massive daily struggle that takes up most of his morning. And this week, we started seeing evidence of the White House covering up the Ukraine scandal, like, one not-at-all-suspicious text that said there were no quid pro quos of any kind. Unfortunately, the next text was the wink emoji, cash emoji, crazy wink emoji and then the Giuliani emoji. [actually a vampire emoji]

Che:

Trump keeps saying there was no quid pro quo, which can only mean there was mad quid pro quo. Whenever a guy with like a 30-word vocabulary starts quoting the law in Latin, it’s because he breaks that law all the time. That’s only something you can learn the hard way. Just like there’s guys who can barely count but can somehow tell you exactly how much cocaine you can get caught with before it’s considered trafficking. That’s three grams, by the way.

Weekend Update Deskside Bit of the Week

McKinnon reprised her role as Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. After being congratulated by Jost for all the money she had raised from small donors, McKinnon replied, “That’s right. That’s grass roots. And guess what, mama loves to garden. That’s why every day I spend four hours taking selfies with every Warby Parker customer in America.”

McKinnon also feigned dismay at Jost’s observation that wealthier donors were uncomfortable with her. “The billionaires don’t like me? Oh no,” she said. “I’m going to tell you the same thing my grandson told me when he took me to ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ — this ain’t for you. But then again, taking big checks from Wall Street worked out great for the last lady running for president. Let me just skip Wisconsin and change my name to Emails Benghazi while I’m at it.”

Other Weekend Update Deskside Bit of the Week

Bowen Yang, an “S.N.L.” writer who was promoted to a featured performer this season, made a lasting impression as a Chinese trade representative who was basking in all the attention he was enjoying amid the trade war between his country and the United States.

As he explained to Che, “I’m running tariffs, so this is my time,” Yang said. “I’m having my moment. I’m basically the Lizzo of China of now. And it turns out I’m 100 percent that trade daddy.”

When Che asked him if he feared a recession, Yang replied, “No, way, Sam. In fact we just waived our tariff on American soybeans so save some of your tempeh for us, Mackenzie.”

“Who’s Mackenzie?” Che said.

Yang replied, “Probably some sophomore at Vassar who drinks out of a metal straw and it’s such a performance.”

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