#first time since literally before my first successful escape that i died anywhere other than hades

[mihotose]

btw did a couple runs of hades today after a few days break just to max rank all the keepsakes and it just wasnt feeling Right and i realise now i basically had zag kill himself via minotaur

[fuwahiko]

Ok more fluff coming your way because i throw it all on Hajime mans needs a break. Imagine a Non-Despair au where Izuru is a real person and Hajime's twin, they go to Hope's Peak. Izuru in the Main Course and Hajime in the Reserve Course.

Class 77 plan a get-together outside of school because they wanted to...and Chisa said to get together outside of school. Izuru is...not feeling social so he decides to bring Hajime along. He didn't tell anyone he was bringing his brother, but they'll learn when he shows up.

So fast forward to The Hang Out, and all of class 77 are waiting for Izuru. They're not surprised because Izuru is Izuru and he does not like socializing. They're all chatting and laughing at TeruTeru getting his ass chewed out by Mahiru when Izuru comes in and...he's hanging off of someone with short choppy hair and green eyes? Whomst? Izuru doesn't have friends outside of them who beith this man?

"Izuru what the hell, you forgot to tell them about me?!" "...oh, it seems so. Sorry Haji."

So Izuru introduces his brother because he FORGOT to tell his class about Hajime. Everyone's nice to him, even Nagito because he's got a hope boner for Izuru Kamukura aka Ultimate Hope man.

Fuyuhiko goes up and says "hi" because if Peko can try to socialize, so can he. Hajime smiles and says hi back, and that's that. Fuyuhiko goes back to his antisocial wall, and Hajine goes back to being Izuru's emotional support pillar. Literally.

But they're both flushed. Fuyuhiko's eyebrows are furrowed and Hajime's biting his lips. They steal glances at each other when the other isn't looking. Fuyuhiko and Hajime are both thinking, "Oh no cute boy."

And LET THE MUTUAL PINING, TSUNDERE ACTIONS, AND CLASS 77 SHENANIGANS COMMENCE. With wingwoman Peko, insgigator Natsumi on both sides, and Izuru being the overprotective brother that he is.

yessss pining boys!! without having like... the reasons they had in the game to talk to each other, how does one approach a cute boy (tm)? when both you and the cute boy (tm) are so awkward and have such difficulty getting chatting, what do you do?

imagining Peko as a wingwoman is really cute and kinda amusing too because she’s y’know, sort of awkward too and sometimes struggles to keep conversations going and stuff so I imagine there’d probably be some moments where Peko is trying her best to help Fuyuhiko by starting a conversation with Hajime so she can bring Fuyuhiko into it as well but maybe it’s a sort of unusual topic or she doesn’t really give Hajime much to work with so it kinda flops at first and Fuyuhiko’s concerned that it’s not gonna go anywhere, but then Peko ends up saying something that Hajime finds funny (even though there’s a 95% chance that Peko wasn’t intending to be funny) and that allows for the conversation to open up more and become a lot easier.

Hajime and Fuyuhiko end up keeping the conversation going for a few minutes, but they’re both still pretty flustered and they keep getting overwhelmed and distracted (cute boy!! omg!!) so they end up struggling and the conversation dies out again. just then Izuru spots them and comes over again to butt in and latch onto Hajime and Fuyuhiko uses it as an opportunity to head off and escape the awkwardness. Hajime gets irritated with Izuru for scaring Fuyuhiko off but is also honestly a little relieved because he wouldn’t have wanted to make things even more awkward by just letting the silence between them carry on for who knows how long.

the get together ends without them getting the chance to talk any more than that, but even so they both find that they just can’t stop thinking about each other in the days that follow. it’s been several days already but Fuyuhiko still gets distracted in class thinking about how cute Hajime’s big bright smile was and the sound of his laugh, how soft his hair looked, how big his arms were compared to his own. Hajime finds himself sitting on his bed and hugging his pillow to his chest as he thinks about Fuyuhiko’s pretty eyes, his cute freckles, and how surprisingly friendly and sweet he’d been in contrast to his intimidating aura (which Hajime also found very attractive, of course). there’s a lot of covering cheeks with hands, lowering heads to hide soft expressions and a hell of a lot of times where somebody is trying to get Hajime’s or Fuyuhiko’s attention but they might as well be talking to a brick wall because they’re both so distracted by their thoughts that they’re completely lost to the world.

Natsumi notices all of this from both of them and finds it hilarious (and pretty adorable, she has to admit) and even though she does think Hajime is sort of lame she knows her brother is genuinely really into him and... well, he’s not that bad, right? yeah, okay, he’s actually pretty alright... so why not give them both a little shove in the right direction?

problem is, they’re both completely useless.

she makes several attempts at trying to encourage them to do something about all these god damn butterflies and fluffy pink hearts that are practically radiating from them both, but nothing works. she gives up. a few more days pass and... nothing changes. they’re both so god damn annoying. Hajime lets out his 200th dreamy sigh in class (which is a lot less discreet than Hajime thinks it is) and Natsumi almost loses it. she has to do something about this.

the next day she asks Hajime to meet her in a quiet spot just outside of school when classes are over, she tells him she wants to talk about something. Hajime doesn’t really get what the deal is but he figures he’ll just go along with it rather than questioning her and making a fuss.

after school he goes to wait in the spot (Natsumi says she needs to do something else quickly first and tells Hajime to go ahead) but when he gets there... he sees Fuyuhiko is there waiting for him?!

Hajime stops dead in his tracks, freezing up and struggling to even breathe properly, and when Fuyuhiko looks up and realises Hajime is there he tenses up and balls his hands into fists at his sides. they stare at each other for a moment, their cheeks burning up as they process the situation, and then as soon as Fuyuhiko is able to kick his brain into gear again he realises exactly what is going on. he scrunches his face up, still bright red, though Hajime doesn’t notice yet. “god damn it, Natsumi!” his voice is loud, making Hajime jump a little, but it’s also sort of shaky.

“oh uh- I was supposed to meet her here- I-”

Fuyuhiko sighs. “yeah, me too. she did this on purpose. she was trying to get both of us here because she knows that-” he cut himself off, suddenly realising what he was about to say. out loud. to Hajime.

“huh? knows that what?” Hajime couldn’t figure out what Natsumi could possibly want from this that Fuyuhiko would know of. the only reason he could imagine was because she knew about his crush on Fuyuhiko and probably wanted to play some kind of prank, but that couldn’t be it because how would Fuyuhiko know why she’d called him there?

it was then that Hajime noticed that Fuyuhiko was turning away and avoiding eye contact. wait... is he blushing? what would cause him to blush in a situation like this? hang on a second...

slowly Hajime started to piece the situation together... but he must be imagining things, right? there has to be some other explanation. but he couldn’t help but cling onto that little thought, that maybe Fuyuhiko was also interested, even if it was silly to ever think that that could be the case. he wanted to test his theory out without giving himself away, and in the moment the best he could manage was some awkward joke. of course.

“hey... isn’t this kinda like when two characters in a romance anime meet up outside of school to confess or something?”

Fuyuhiko has a small coughing fit. he recovers after a moment and adjusts his tie, finally looking back at Hajime again. “huh?!”

Hajime panics and nervously searches for somewhere else to look so he doesn’t have to meet Fuyuhiko’s intense eyes. “n-nothing! I was just joking around! I uh- I thought it’d uh-” he feels like his cheeks are about to catch fire. he wants to run away but his legs won’t move an inch.

Fuyuhiko lets out a breathy laugh. “you’re so weird.”

Hajime looks up again and is surprised to see Fuyuhiko’s expression is much softer than expected, and though he keeps glancing up at Hajime he’s also struggling and looking around awkwardly as well. suddenly Hajime catches a look in Fuyuhiko’s eyes and they find themselves staring at each other for a moment. Hajime sees that he really wasn’t imagining it; Fuyuhiko’s face is very red right now. he realises that Fuyuhiko has noticed that his face is also red. he must have done. there’s no way he could possibly miss it. oh god.

there’s a long pause.

Fuyuhiko swallows and takes a moment to clear his throat.

“well anyway, since we’re here, do you want to... hang out sometime?”

Hajime’s eyes widen in surprise. he isn’t even able to process the question before Fuyuhiko continues speaking.

“I just mean because you’re my sister’s classmate n’ all I figure we should try to get along and-”

“y-yeah, sure. uh, I’d like that actually.” Hajime doesn’t realise he’s cut Fuyuhiko off until he’s already spoken.

there’s another pause, and then maybe a couple more minutes of them arranging a time and place to meet up in a few days while trying not to lose it and just turn to a big pile of mush out of embarrassment, and then they awkwardly part ways.

as Hajime turns to leave he thinks he hears something rustling in a bush nearby but figures it must be his imagination so he just ignores it and continues on his way.

Natsumi heads back home, a couple of small leaves stuck in her hair, giggling to herself. today would go down as one of the greatest successes of the ultimate little sister.

[joannerowlingfans]

JK Rowling’s Track Of My Years choices:

Cloudbusting by Kate Bush

Heaven by Emeli Sande

Big Country by Big Country

Court and Spark by Joni Mitchell

All Along The Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix  

River Song by Dennis Wilson  

Ramble On by Led Zeppelin

Waitress by First Aid Kit

Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers  

Dream On Dreamer by Brand New Heavies

Cloudbusting by Kate Bush – being a student in Paris:

JK: [Cloudbusting] came out in 1985 when I was still a student… because I was studying French I spent a year in Paris… I was teaching students in a lycee, basically a comprehensive on the outskirts of Paris. It was a very particular experience going away, I left a boyfriend back in Britain and we were all quite young and we were all quite broke… we had some wonderful adventures during that time… there’s something very wistful about that track… we were all people who like to travel and there was a sense of being lost, but in quite a nice way I suppose, we were exploring life a lot at that time… I don’t know how I managed to get Paris because a lot of my friends ended up in tiny little towns in the middle of nowhere so we all had very varied experiences. I couldn’t believe that I’d got Paris which was of course my first choice.

Heaven by Emeli Sande – remembering the fear of doing the London Olympics Opening Ceremony

JK: I love this song so much, but I have a particular memory attached to it which was the London Olympics Opening Ceremony. They played this track during the ceremony and that was probably the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done in my life, being part of that Opening Ceremony and, in fact, I told Danny Boyle twice, ‘I can’t do it, Danny, I just can’t, I would be too scared’. I’ve got better, but I find public speaking an ordeal. I’ve got better at it and I’ve made myself get braver about it, but I said to him I can’t do it in front of that large an audience, I can’t do it live, please don’t ask me and he kept asking, kept asking me and finally he just said to me, ‘Look, we’ve got the Queen jumping out of an aeroplane’ and when he told me that I honestly thought, [that] no-ones even going to remember I was there. If that’s happening, that’s sort of takes the pressure off! But I do remember just rehearsing and practising and practising this little piece I had to read and when it was over I cannot tell you the sense of exhilaration that I’d done it, I hadn’t fallen over, I hadn’t messed up the reading so I went up into the stands to sit with some people I knew and then we watched this extraordinary ceremony and they played this Emeli Sande track and I will forever associate it with that night…. I said to my husband on the night, ‘On my deathbed, that will be a moment I remember, going out into that stadium.’ It was the most epic event that I’d ever been involved in and I think all of us who participated would say the same thing, nothing will ever come close.

Big Country by Big Country – first ever gig

JK: Now I had to put Big Country by Big Country on the list because this was my first ever live gig. I went to Dingwalls in Bristol with my teenage boyfriend… and they were amazing live… and I just thought they were wonderful, they really were.

Ken: You’ve lived in many different places, where do you feel home is, where do you feel drawn to?

JK: Well, home now is definitely Scotland. I’ve lived most of my life now in Edinburgh, I’ve lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere else, but when I was younger I had very itchy feet and I’ve lived in London, Manchester, Paris, Oporto… I’ve moved around a lot. I also, within those cities, kept moving. I just do have very itchy feet. But when I had my daughter, I decided consciously, not that that has to stop because I love travelling and as a family we travel a lot, but I decided that she needed roots so we stayed in Edinburgh, which I now love and really do consider my home and my city… [Travelling] is a useful thing to have done and to have seen life from a lot of different perspectives… and I love exploring.

Court and Spark by Joni Mitchell – on inspiring her latest book

JK: Before I began writing Troubled Blood… I looked up all the albums that came out in 1974 because the whodunnit… concerns a women who vanished in 1974 and I wanted to peg her disappearance to an album that she would have loved and I saw that Court and Spark… had come out then and I thought that’s perfect, perfect for this character. So then I began listening to it and listening to it and listening to it and then I loved it so much I now literally own everything that Joni Mitchell has ever brought out and I can now honestly call myself a mad Joni Mitchell fan. It was an odd way to discover all her other work, but I think she’s just untouchable, and as a lyricist I think there’s no one better. My husband last Christmas bought me a book of all her lyrics and it can be read like fine poetry. She’s absolutely extraordinary… Court and Spark is now one of my very favourite albums.

All Along The Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix  – playing it after a bad break-up and being insecure

Since first hearing this song when I think I was probably 18 or 19, I’ve always had it in my music. I do remember playing it very loudly and drunkenly after one bad break-up and I think the attraction there was the opening line, ‘There must be some way out of here’. But it’s just a great song and he again, what a talent and at the venerable age I have reached now, looking back at artists who died so young is particularly poignant I think. I mean you ache for them because you think what would Jimi Hendrix have achieved if he’d lived to past the age of 27? It’s just extraordinary that people produce work of that quality when they’re so young… I think the thing I admire most is having the confidence because I had the idea for Harry Potter when I was 25 and I’d done a lot of writing before then, but I was extraordinarily insecure and very rarely shared anything that I’d written. I wrote some spoof things for friends to make them laugh, but I never shared anything that I’d written in earnest because I was quite insecure. But of course performers are different and they are driven to share in a way that writers don’t do; obviously we live in a far more introverted life, but… I am drawn to biographies of people like Hendrix because I am just in awe of what they did and what they achieved.

River Song by Dennis Wilson – reminding her of the pandemic during lockdown

This is always going to remind me of the pandemic, this song, because I’ve been listening to his album Pacific [Ocean] Blue which is a bit of an undiscovered gem. I’d had it for a while and listened to it, but it seems to be speaking to me in lockdown and River Song – maybe it resonates because certainly lots of my friends have talked about rediscovering being in the natural world in lockdown – having space and time to appreciate the small things. That’s not to say that any of us wouldn’t change things in a heartbeat, but it has brought a lot of us closer to family. Just having time to enjoy small things has been one small upside of the pandemic

Waitress by First Aid Kit – reminding her of an old friend

I think they’re kind of wonderful. This song in particular reminds me of one of my oldest friends Lynn she and I were in Paris together, we’d never have met otherwise because she’s American. There’s something about our shared nomadic tendencies in this song because it is a song about escape and reinvention. Now I’m very fortunate, I no longer feel the desire to escape or to reinvent myself I am very happy and I have a wonderful family. But I think this is a song about young women feeling displaced and feeling anxious and I think that’s the reason both of us particularly love this track.

On her lack of belief/confidence in writing

You have to push through your lack of belief. Certainly with Potter and with other things I’ve written, I’ve put them down for months at a time. I have got better at believing that I can push through. I remember when I was writing Potter I was writing two other things simultaneously and slowly but surely I realised that Potter was the best of them. And even though I was very insecure I just kept pushing on, pushing on. Actually, the thing that pushed me to complete the book and really to have belief, was having made such a mess of my life generally. In fact I do remember feeling, ‘Look, so you get turned down by every publisher in the country, what’s to lose now?’ Well you know, it was even that I thought it would be a massive success because I certainly didn’t. What I did believe was, I came to a point where I thought, ‘This is a good story and I’m going to put everything into this and see what happens.’ And I’d lost the fear of failing or rejecting that had probably hampered me a little bit early on in my writing.

On the Robert Galbraith books being a desire to that that the writing was as good as she thought it was and it wasn’t her name that was selling?

Yeah, that was definitely in there. I think I had a real yen to go back to the beginning, to go back to what’s important. And to get unvarnished criticism. And so I became Robert and it was a fantastic experience. I can honestly say the rejection letters were fantastic. I know that sounds bizarre and masochistic, but it was satisfying because I was getting unvarnished feedback and I was resilient enough to think, ‘Well that is a fair comment, but no I don’t agree with that comment’ because you’ve got to have faith in what you’re doing but I’ve never been arrogant enough not to believe that I need feedback and a good editor is essential, however successful you are.

Ramble On by Led Zeppelin – growing up

When I was really young, I mean sixteen or seventeen, growing up on the Welsh border, Led Zeppelin was a real thing for me as an adolescent and my oldest friend Sean he loved Zeppelin and it was something we shared. I just love Ramble On.

Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers – on a moving marital moment and lockdown being a special time with her family

JK: Well I think of all the love songs written, this might be my favourite. It’s such a beautiful, simple sentiment, but I have an additional reason for choosing it, which is that it took lockdown for my husband to say to me… I was playing it in the kitchen while cooking something; he walked in, he said,  ‘This always makes me think of you when you’re down in London’ and that was a very moving marital moment so now it has an extra layer of meaning for me. [On lockdown]…. Well, I hope that all listeners have had the happy experience that I’ve had of it being quite a special time. We also have teenage kids and it’s been kind of wonderful to spend that extra time with them.

On being involved with the screen adaptations of her work

JK: Well, interestingly, I’ve been much more involved in the TV show than I have been with the movies. With the TV show, because I’m writing a series about my detectives, Strike and Robin, I have been very involved because I didn’t want the TV show to take them to places that I know they wouldn’t go because I know what’s coming, so that’s been such a happy project. I’ve loved all of it and I think and believe it’s been a very happy experience for everyone involved… a lovely cast and amazing crew, it’s been really satisfying…. It’s always a challenge because certain changes need to be made between novel and screen and I’m always sympathetic to that; different media have different demands, but the tv adaptations of the Galbraith novels I think have been very very faithful.

On fan feedback before it was known she was writing as Robert Galbraith

JK: The first three months I had, when no one knew it was me and I was Robert Galbraith, and Robert started to get letters… and fan feedback which was so genuine and so lovely. I think what people are mostly drawn to are the central relationship between the two detectives and I’m constantly being asked, ‘When are they going to get together?’ So, yeah, I think people will be happy with this book because they certainly do advance in their relationship, though possibly not quite the advance that everyone’s hoping for, but I loved writing that [latest book], it was a joy.

Dream On Dreamer by Brand New Heavies – on dreaming that Potter might be a success

JK: This is such a personal and meaningful track to me. When I was finishing the first Potter book, this track was being played constantly on the radio, and in one of the cafes that I used to write in, it felt as though this song was played every three minutes and I can remember more than once asking myself, ‘Is that who you are, are you the dreamer?’ [for] thinking that this can be published or will be published? But I still had this degree of belief in the story that quelled my doubts and made me keep working, difficult though it was at that time, so it always takes me back to just being on the threshold of the insanity that then ensued, because at that time I could have had no idea what was coming.

[kyuflix]

➤ 𝐁𝐑𝐎𝐊𝐄𝐍| 𝐋𝐞𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐡𝐨

𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐑𝐄: very angsty, tiny bit of fluff if you squint

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆: weapons, violence, blood, swearing, let me know if i forgot anything

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: Y/N is on a new mission and discovers some things that leave her more broken then she already is

𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒: +3k

𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐍𝐈𝐄𝐒 𝐒𝐊𝐄𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊: literally one of the favorite things I’ve written so far. sorry that this took me so long but school was a bitch the past weeks but since i’m on break now i can write more! this little fic makes more sense if you read my mafia!Seungmin before this one but it can be read on its own. i hope you enjoy!

You walked through the club, your hand ghosting over the knife you had strapped under your thigh. Your gaze flickered to the bar, a hint of a smirk on your lips as you found your target of the night. A guy in his middle 50’s. Based on the file you got from your boss, he was a pervert, having molested and raped a lot of women and getting away with it just because he was a wealthy man. 

You sat down a couple of seats away from the guy and chuckled as you saw who the bartender of the night was. “Well, Jisung we meet again, hm?” You put your face on your palm and stared up at him with a smile. The boy smiled back and handed you a drink. “The usual right?” You nodded and at that, his smile widened. Jisung used to be in the same ‘company’ as your partner before he joined the mafia. The only thing you knew of was that the mafia he joined names themselves 'Stray Kids’ or 'Skz’ for short. You never got to meet them as you were an assassin and were trained to be stealthy with your job.

“How’s it going Jisung? Any big fish yet?” You smirked as you glanced at the man a few stools away from you. You seemed to capture his attention. Bingo. You glanced back at Jisung and took a sip from your glass, the alcohol flowing down your throat and leaving a burning sensation behind.

He nodded and continued to wipe at a glass as he stared behind you. “We’re on a mission actually. You know I would love to introduce you to the guys but you’re either 'missing’ or we are busy.” You smiled at him, apologetically. You were about to retort something but Jisung beat you to it.

“There’s probably gonna be some gunshots in a few moments so you better get out of here.” You shook your head and emptied your glass in one swift gulp. “Thanks for the warning but no, I’m on a mission myself.”

You nodded to the guy who was just staring at you with a wicked smirk on his face. You made a disgusted face at Jisung who was nodding and smiled at you. He made a motion with his hand and you nodded at him as you stood up and began walking out of the club.

Suddenly, gunshots shot through the entire club, just like Jisung predicted. Just as you turned to see where your target was a bullet graced your cheek, leaving a little scratch as blood started dripping down your cheek. A gasp left your lips and immediately, you ducked down and got your knife out. Screamed echoed throughout the room with a few gunshots here and there, other than that it was completely silent. You took a look around the room and found your target underneath the bar table. You strode over to him with quick steps. You pulled him out from underneath the table and put your knife to his throat. A cry left his lips as he started begging for you to spare him. You didn’t even listen. You were trained to show no mercy to your opponents. That was what your father showed you before you died or to put it better before he was murdered.

You were practically born into the life filled with guns, knives, weapons in general, blood and drugs. Your mother is in a place unbeknownst to you as she was transferred when an attack on your home took place. You were still at school and were devastated when you came home, only to find everything in chaos and no one home. Your father, of course, knew of this, since he was the original target of the attack. The only trace that was ever found was from the intruder, a small note that said he would come back again. He always completed his mission. Your father figured that since he was getting old and you were his only child you would be the one to continue his work.

On the night of your father’s death, you only saw the profile of the murderer’s face. You swore it was the guy who attacked your home not even months before his death. You saw the way he looked at your father’s lifeless eyes with a smirk on his face. And in that very moment, you swore to avenge your father and kill the guy who murdered him.

You slit his throat, his blood splattering on your dress. “And it was such a pretty dress.” A little smile formed on your lips and you bent down to his now dead body and started searching for valuable things.

“Oh come on-” Suddenly a sharp, cold object was at the base of your neck. You spun your head around, a guy probably even younger then you had a knife pulled at your throat. “Changbin don’t!” You heard Jisung’s voice call from afar. The guy turned back to you and pulled the knife away from you and backed away slightly. You took a deep breath and gave a nod to Jisung. He gave a nod back and took Changbin’s collar and pulled back, presumably back to completing your mission.

You turned back around to the guy and crouched down, your knees parallel to his lifeless body. You pulled your knife out for one last time of the night and stuck it right in between his eyes, your personal trademark. You stood back up and took a good look around the room. Several bodies were splattered throughout the room, laying in their pools of blood. Some people were still fighting. The only sounds that filled the room were punches and kicks thrown here and there. You searched the room for your former partner and saw him fighting off a guy almost a whole head taller than him, but it looked like Jisung was winning.

That was all you needed to know that he was still very much alive. With slow steps, you left the club and took a deep breath, the cold night air filling your lungs and calming you down. You took your earpiece and put it on. “Mission accomplished.” You turned it off once again and waited. You only had to wait a few moments before a car pulled in front of you and the windows rolled down. “A success I guess?” You rolled your eyes as his eyes reflected his cockiness, but you smiled nonetheless. “You know it Jaebum.” You sat in the passenger seat and Jaebum put the car in reserve. A black car pulled up next to you and you looked over. A guy was in the car, seemingly speaking with someone with a smirk on his face.

Your eyes widened. You couldn’t believe it. It was the same guy who murdered your dad. “Turn around Jaebum.” He looked at you with confusion in his eyes and opened his mouth. “Turn the damn car around Jaebum!” Jaebum did as told and hit a sharp turn as you gave the instructions back to the club. But the car was gone. “Dammit!” You sighed and formed your hands into fists, your fingers digging into your palm. 

“Y/N what’s wrong. Why did you want to go back?” Jaebum bombarded you with questions, but you only shook your head, 'it was him’ leaving your lips like a mantra. It took a few moments but Jaebum seemed to catch onto what you were mumbling. His expression hardened and he took a deep breath.

“Buckle your seatbelt.” He almost growled and you looked at him. “What?” “We’re going back we need to report.” You only nodded and closed your eyes. “It was him, I swear it was.” And with that, you slowly fell asleep. Jaebum looked at you with sadness swimming in his eyes. 'We’ll get him Y/N.' He thought back to the event where you told him that your father was murdered. And at the thought that the guy who murdered him was still on the loose, his eyes narrowed as he gripped the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turned white. 'I swear we’ll get him.’

Jaebum was over at your apartment as he slid a file over to you. He was your assigned partner for this mission. He would usually request to do his missions alone as he wasn’t good at doing them with other people. But he didn’t mind this time. Jaebum and you grew quite close when he just joined the 'company’. You were the first one to train with him and you were the first to show him kindness in this wicked world of violence.

He wasn’t born into this life like most of you did in the 'company’. He was only one of a few who chose to. He chose this life full of violence for one solid reason. 

From what he told you, Jaebum’s entire family was the target of one of the highest searched mafias a few years ago. Jaebum was the only one who survived the attack. His family was celebrating the birthday of his little nephew. But he couldn’t be there, as he was called into work at short notice because one of the employees was sick. So he felt quite relieved when you explained why you chose this life. He was glad that there was finally someone who understood him.

He went over the file with you and stood up from your couch as you discussed everything. He gave you a little smile. But the smile didn’t reach his eyes. They were still filled with despair and sadness, even after all these years. 

You opened your eyes abruptly and clutched your chest as heavy pants escaped your lips. You shut them once again and fell back onto something soft. Hold on. The last thing you could remember was you falling asleep in Jaebum’s car. You opened your eyes again. You were in your room. 'How in the hell did I get here?’ At that moment the door to your bedroom opened and in walked Jaebum with a mug in his hands. He offered you the mug and you gladly took it, taking a sip. He sat at the end of your bed and leaned back onto his hands. “You fell asleep in the car so I brought you to your home. I already reported so you don’t have to do it.” He looked at you and smiled a little. You placed the now empty mug on the ground and leaned your head against the headboard.

“I swear I saw him Jaebum. It was the guy who killed my dad. I would recognize that face anywhere. It’s burned into my mind.” Jaebum took your hands in his and squeezed them firmly. “We’ll find him Y/N. I promise you that.” You squeezed his hands. “We’ll avenge them Jaebum. All of them.” He nodded at your words and pulled you into a hug. “We will.”

You pulled away abruptly as a thought came into your mind. “Jisung!” He looked at you in confusion. “What?” “Jisung! He was my partner before he joined a mafia. I saw him yesterday! Maybe he can help us!” You exclaimed and threw your hands in the air. “I just have to contact him again!” You threw your covers aside and sprinted outside of the room. “Get your ass over here Jaebum!” “What the fuck am I getting myself into?” Jaebum mumbled as he followed you out of your apartment. “I heard that!”

When you arrived at the building of your 'company’ you parked your car in the garage and quickly went out of the car, Jaebum doing the same. The two of you quickly walked into the building and into your office where you had all of the profiles from former employees and the ones that still worked here. On the way, you explained your plan to Jaebum. You would look for his file and go track him down. Once that’s done, you’re gonna meet up with him and ask him about the night in the bar. “Are you really sure this is going to work?” “A thousand percent.” You replied with extreme confidence and began searching for Jisung’s file. 

You searched and searched for what seems like hours. “I swear if I’m not going to find that stupid file soon I’m going to pull my hair out.” Jaebum said and scowled as he went through every file, still no luck. “I agree.” You puffed your cheeks and sighed as you took yet another file only to throw it across the room a second later. “I fucking swear to- I found it!” You screamed as you finally found the stupid file. You tossed the file over to Jaebum who caught it quickly before it hit your plant. “Oops?” He glared at you and opened the file. “Here it is Y/N!” He pointed towards a section and tossed it back to you.

“Third paragraph!” You skimmed over the text and grinned as you took the information in. “Bingo.”

Jaebum and you grinned at each other. “Let’s get rolling!” You stood up and placed the file back onto your desk.

You took a sip of your drink and leaned back against the booth. You contacted Jisung and told him you wanted to meet him to discuss a few things. Now you were only waiting for him to show up. As you rose your glass to your lips again a figure slid into your booths. You looked up and gazed into the eyes of Jisung. You grinned at him and cocked your head to the side. “I didn’t expect that you would come here.” His eyebrow rose and he put his face into his hand. “You called me so I came and I know that look you’re giving me. Spill it.” You looked at him with wide eyes before your smile returned. “You know me better than I thought.”

You nodded and began your story. Of how your dad got killed. The image of the guy’s smirk that was burned into the deepest set of your mind. And the story of the night at the bar where you recognized that face again. Jisung was pale, his stature tense. “You know something Jisung. Tell me.” He only grew tenser at your words and shook his head. “I-I can’t. He’s a member of our mafia. I can’t betray Minho.” “He is what?!” Jisung only nodded and closed his eyes. “I’m so sorry Y/N. About everything.” And with those words, he left the booth running outside the shop.  You only looked at your drink in shock.

“I-I can’t. He’s a member of our mafia. I can’t betray Minho.” The words repeated in your mind over and over. Jaebum slid into your booth as he entered the shop as soon he saw Jisung leave it. “What did he say?” He asked and leaned in closer as you began mumbling words. “He’s his friend.’' 

Jaebum pulled back, his eyes wide.

’'That’s not true. Tell me it isn’t true” You shook your head as your body shook. “He’s his friend.”

Jaebum pulled you into a hug and rubbed your back in a comforting manner. You slowly pulled away and gave him a weak smile. “It’s okay Jaebum. I’m okay.” He shook his head.

“No, no you aren’t. You’re broken. Just like me.” This time you pulled him into a hug and let yourself loose in your thoughts. He was right. You were broken the moment your mom had to travel to god knows where. You only got more broken as time passed. 

The next few minutes were spent in silence as you just held onto each other. With Jaebum the world seemed a little brighter. He the one who understood you. You sighed and pulled away once more.

“Thank you Jaebum. For everything.’' 

’'Anytime.” You smiled at each other and you looked out of the window. Rain poured down from the sky and your smile turned a little sad as a memory of you and your dad playing in the rain came to mind.

A 'ding’ erupted and you looked you up at the door as a guy walked inside. A mask covered half of his face. As he pulled his mask down to speak to the cashier at the front you froze. You shook Jaebum next to you. You gestured to the guy and Jaebum seemed to catch on. He nodded at you.

“I’ll be in the car.” You nodded at him and Jaebum left the store. You waited as the guy got his drink and slid into a booth not too far from yours. You still waited as he sipped his drink. And you followed him outside when he left. You followed him into an alley and pulled the gun you always had with you, if not on missions out. You put it against his forehead as he spun around.

“So we finally meet Minho.”

“You’re the guy who killed my father. Do you remember?” Minho shook his head and a small chuckle passed your lips.

“I killed many men. Tell me the name.” You scowled at his cockiness and pulled a photo of your father out of your wallet. You stuffed your wallet back into your pocket and gave him the photo.

“Do you remember this man?” Your tone grew colder with each word. When he nodded your eyes narrowed. “I’m his daughter. And I swore to avenge him. So here I am.”

You removed the safety from your gun and pressed it further against his forehead. “So tell me. What does not give me the right to just kill you right here right now?” Your voice was stone cold. “Because you’re a better person than I was then.” You froze.

“I know I killed your father and I am so sorry about that. Believe me, I am. It wasn’t my choice to kill your father. It was an order from someone who is by now already dead.

I know how broken you are Y/N. Let me try and fix your broken self. Let me be the one to help you. Let me fix my mistakes.” He looked up at you as tears rolled down his cheeks.

Minho spread his arms out and smiled at you through his tears. “Take my life if you want to. I won’t judge you. Hell, even I would kill me if I were you. I did many terrible things. I still do and I would be lying if I say I regret nothing.” He let his arms fall to his side. Tears rolled down your cheeks now too, the rain didn’t cover them and mask it as raindrops. You shook your head vigorously and gulped. 

You threw the gun aside and broke down to the ground, sobs and screams leaving your lips as you hit the ground repeatedly. Minho took you into his arms and rocked the both of you back and forth. “I’m sorry Y/N. I’m so sorry.” You looked up at him and wrapped your arms around him.

“No more blood, no more gun, no more knives. I’m going to choose my own life.” You mumbled against the crook of his neck and closed your eyes. You looked at the scenery as a small, sad smile formed on your lips, the memory of you and your father playing on the rain coming into your mind once more.

'I’ll live for you father.“

[electratm]

Posting a quick intro because I’m super excited to get into interactions! Hi guys it’s ya girl Theo, I’m 20 and cursed to be in the GMT+2 timezone. I’m currently in uni studying journalism and pr, but you guessed it I won’t be able to save this PR wreck aka Electra Romero. I’ll have some ideas for connections down below, but if you want to reach me do it though my dms here or you can find me on my discord  —   theoffs#3866 !

.  *  ◜  oh  my  god  ,  you’ll  never  guess  who’s  coming  to  this  party  tonight  !  according  to  stan  twitter  ,  i  heard  that  it’s  electra romero,  a  singer who’s  currently  signed  to  gold  crown  entertainment  .  wait ,  you  don’t  know  who  she is  ?  well  ,  el is  a  cis female known  around  los  angeles  as  having  a  striking  resemblance  to  camila mendes,  &  the  resemblance  is  uncanny  .  they’re  a  twenty-two year  old  who  has  been  signed  to  gold  crown  for  THREE YEARS,  &  have  an  identical  career  to  camila cabello,  which  probably  explains  why  they’ve  amassed  such  a  following  .  ever  since  they  signed  to  gold  crown  ,  they  have  been  known  for  being  quite  astute &  maverick,  but  crown  exposed  seems  to  want  to  paint  them  as  nothing  more  than  detached &   irascible .  i’m  beyond  excited  that  they’ve  made  it  this  far  in  their  career  -  every  time  i  see  their  instagram  ,  i  can’t  help  but  picture  her  collection  of  electric  guitars, patched  denim  jackets,  drunken  swearing  at  paparazzi .  oh  wait  ,  they’re  coming  over  here  –  act  natural  !

Basics —  

Name:  Electra Rosario Romero Nicknames: El, Romero Age & Birthday: 22 /  March 1st 1997 Zodiac sign: Pisces Gender: cis female Occupation: singer / songwriter sexuality: heterosexual ( bicurious ) Born: Los Angeles, California Ethnicity: Brazillian  Career Claim: Camila Cabello Pinterest: here.

Background  —  ( death tw )

when I first applied I didn’t have that much of a backstory on her, but the more I worked on her pinterest and mock blog I fell in love with her messed up self. So the gist of it is that her family moved to L.A before she was born, her mother an aspiring singer and her dad wanted to do anything for his woman plus he is a car mechanic so he could find a job anywhere. Before her they had another daughter,  her older sister by 4 years and  a younger brother that was born 6 years after her. They were never the happiest family, high school sweethearts that got knocked up and wanted to escape the life in Brazil so they went with the ‘American dream’  only it was a goddamn nightmare. Her father found the work he was looking for, but her mother was seriously struggling and her only way of getting jobs being to sleep with whoever offered and she kept it a secret from her husband. Even with doing that it didn’t really lead anywhere, she grew old and bitter and wasn’t the best mother to her three kids. They didn’t see their father that often either, but that’s just cause he worked his ass off to keep them with clothes on their backs and to be able to afford food which obviously isn’t easy in L.A. It was home that never felt like home for Electra, she knew it like the palm of her hand, but there wasn’t that feeling of security as they lived in a pretty crappy neighbourhood. 

They still got around though and the three kids practically raised themselves. Her older sister playing the biggest role in her life as she practically raised her and taught her everything while her mother was off hooking up with random men. Her sister was quite the social butterfly in contrast to Electra and always did what was best for their family. Even if that meant doing some not so ethical stuff to get money. When Electra was 14 though things got really bad and her life literally turned upside down. Her sister had began stripping for money, something she made El swear to keep a secret, not that she understood it well, but she knew neither of her parents especially her father would be okay with that. That left 14 year old Electra looking after her then 8 year old brother after school, making sure he’s fed and okay. Electra actually learned how to take care of herself and others real young. But one day as he was walking back from school just as he was calling her to ask what they’ll have for lunch he hadn’t looked around while crossing the street and was hit by a car mid conversation with Electra. He died on the spot and although it’s not her fault she has always thought that she had a part of it because she was supposed to protect him. 

It was a devastating few months for the Romero’s,  not long after her younger child’s death her mother finally went ahead and left them for another man. Everything that happened made Electra sick and angry, but neither of them could stop and mourn properly cause if they did they’d have no place to live. That’s when around the age of 15/16 Electra started getting into songwriting. Being slightly more mature going into adolescence she started to experience the things that are love and friendship and got caught up with them. Smoking, underage drinking, stealing her first electric guitar and learning to play it so she could impress her then boyfriend. She did whatever she could to distract herself from the sad reality that was her life and for a while it worked like a charm. Her making a living out of singing never seemed like an option to her as she knew her father and sister wouldn’t approve. She saw what happened with her mother and even thinking about it wasn’t a topic of discussion. So it remained a silly little hobby she’d work on while she skipped on school to hang out with her friends until the moment when one of them suggested that she’d upload one of them for her as at the time Electra couldn’t afford owning a computer. She didn’t think much of it and agreed, but instead she went viral  and not long after a producer reached out to her with the chance to join a girl group he was forming. Electra was probably drunk or high when that happened, but somehow she ended up agreeing. 

Singing career / present  —    

Somehow Electra had been discovered by an actual producer that wasn’t going to scam her, and not only that, but he made a pretty decent girl group. Her and the four other girls who also had gone viral in some shape or from made quite the team, each girl different in her own way and attracting all sorts of people. He signed them to his record label and they started blowing up within a year of their release, yet Electra never seemed to take it as seriously as the rest of them. There she was all glamorous singing repetitive pop songs in a short skirt, something that even she found embarrassing, but the money was good.  Her family made a big deal out of it and didn’t want to do anything with her, seeing that she never told them and they found out when they saw one of her first preformances. Not facing them wasn’t that hard as they were almost always on the road doing show after show without consideration for their wellbeing. Not only was this not her music, it wasn’t her life anymore she had no control over it. About a year after they’d began she started getting out of control, skipping rehearsals, snapping at the crew and overall being super problematic which they ignored  for as long as they could, but she couldn’t stop crossing the line. After roughly two years the management kicked her out which they played out as a mutual decision, but it was obvious that she’s at fault. And again it was her fault that her family couldn’t get any money again, this time she could truly blame herself, but she had been so sick of being controlled all the time.

For awhile not working felt good, she got her own sound back, even wrote enough to have her own album, but all the people she had alienated while constantly on tour left her with nothing, but her music. Her sister was okay with talking with her, but her father still refused as he saw the wife that left him in the face of his own daughter. Even if he was mad at her Electra still wanted to provide for them, it’s what she was taught to do so when Gold Crown entertainment reached out to her with a whole plan to get her back in the spotlight she was all up for it. A fake relationship and collab that would make her out to be a new and changed person, inspired by it all she writes an album that becomes an instant hit and suddenly everyone adores her again. They let her write her own songs which she was happy about, but she had to follow this whole PR scheme to redeem herself. She didn’t really care if people liked her, what mattered was that at the end of the day each scandal or drama she was involved with brought money to the table and soon enough she would establish a much more successful image for herself than her girl band days that she wasted. This time she wasn’t going to fuck up. 

Personality  —    

Electra isn’t the nicest person, but she cares a lot. The people that gain her trust are very special to her and she’d do anything for them. She values family even if it’s as broken as hers with a workacholic father, a stripper sister and a mother that’s nowhere to be seen. She’s an honest and authentic person even if what she has to say isn’t pretty. El has seen quite the stuff growing up and doesn’t share it, especially the stuff that makes her vulnrable. Her life is strictly business and she can’t go around telling people her sob story as she feels guilty for it really being that way. At this point she just tries to keep her temper intact and do what she has to in order to have some advantage. She often contradicts herself with the things she believes yet still does the opposite thing cause she’ll get something out of it. She’s been in love and experienced real friendship, but that hasn’t helped her or filled the void of guilt in her heart. 

Wanted connections  —    

I have a lot of those! Whether it’s acquaintances, friends, frenemies, enemies, hookups, pr relationships, I want them all! Here are the main ones that I feel like are crucial to her story:

The PR relationship of a lifetime. This can be taken in any way whether they get along, have actual feelings or hate each other’s guts. The main idea of it is that when Gold Crown reached out to her and had a plan for her getting back to the spotlight this relationship was involved. What started out as an innocent collab at first would blossom into a romance. One that would inspire her to change her ways and write a whole album! Or at least that’s what the public has to see. In reality Electra is trapped by it as cause of it she can’t really have a real relationship with anyone. The only thing she can do is have hookups with people she’s certain won’t rat out that her other relationship is fake. 

Roomies. I suppose not long after she turned 18 and was still in her girl group she moved out due to her strained relationship with her family and started living with someone else. Could be another member from her girl group or just a friend from the business she made along the way. She’s probably really close to that person they’re one of the few to see her caring and protective side. 

Hookups. You know a girl has her needs. Whether she was sad, got drunk and somehow ended up in bed with that person or they made a fwb kinda deal it’s always fun to play out. 

Ex-band members. Another person to leave the band after her or they fell apart who knows, but they all share the long weeks of preforming every night and know the struggle that came in being in a girl band.

Dumped for the job. Another starlet she met in the start of her career. At first they hit it off and even got together, again one of the few people to know the real her and what’s she’s all about and that’s what drove them apart. Inspired but this post. Probably tried to stick by her in her rough patches, but she just kept pushing him away and with her offer for  the PR relationship it was obvious it was never going to last. There may still be some lingering feelings, but not all of them are good. 

These are the main things I can think of. I’m good with anything tbh and if you’re stuck you can take a look at my wanted tag or we can just brainstorm so like this post or hmu!!!

[nomorelonelydays]

kick your pretty feet up on my dash

Part 1 | Part 2

 -

Two days after the Instagram account opens, Sidney unofficially gets put on naming duty.

 The strawberry shortcake biscuit is named The Taylor.

 The cream cheese-stuffed banana muffins, crusted with dark chocolate ganache, is The Fleury.

 The slice of warm spiced peach cobbler (available for just two weeks), topped with a generous portion of thick, whipped cream and vanilla ice cream, is The Deidre.

 He shares the account password with her, but she seems more interested in digging up her mom’s old recipes from an ancient box filled with yellowed index cards than photographing.

 “I’ll leave that up to you,” she says, then passes him a card titled, ‘Cherry Layer Chocolate Cake.’ “I think I’ll make this for the holidays. What do you think?”

 Deidre makes just one and a half cakes for a trial run (the other half, which had come out lopsided, is sitting in the back of Sidney’s fridge). It’s another instant hit.

 Sidney watches a couple, two teenagers who are making it pretty painfully obvious that they’re on their first date, split a slice in a corner seat. She’s chasing the cherry around the plate with her fork, and he watching her like she hung the literal moon. He laughs a little too hard at her jokes, his eyes crinkling like Geno’s when he’s chirping Sidney. But with the way she’s beaming, it’s clear that she doesn’t mind at all.

 He’s not jealous—or, at least, he doesn’t think he’s jealous. Having hockey and having a boyfriend have always been mutually exclusive. But now, with no obligations to the NHL, he’s supposedly free to do everything that he’s wanted to. He doesn’t dwell too long on it though, because the last thing he needs is to have an existential spiral in Deidre’s store over whether or not he’s missed his his golden hour to be happy the exact minute the Penguins drafted him all those years ago.

 He finishes lettering the card for the cherry chocolate cake and slides ‘The Jack’ neatly into its proper holder.

-

Geno calls him on Thursday nights now, like clockwork. He’s grateful for the routineness of it, especially when he knows how much Geno lives on spontaneity. It’s always the same—updates on how the team is doing (good, the weather over in Pittsburgh (not so good), another dumb prank the rookies are trying to pull (hilarious, but slightly unoriginal with the shaving cream), even though it’ll never be as good as the ones Flower used to plan.

 “How are you?” Geno asks one night, while Sidney is puttering around the kitchen to figure out what he wants to make for dinner. “Your tomatoes grow?”

 “I think those are a goner,” Sidney grimaces. The entire plant had shriveled up weeks ago, despite Sidney faithfully watering them. “Guess I’ll just have to stick with the storebought ones.”

 Geno is silent for a bit. Then, “Is quiet in locker room without you.”

 Sidney pauses. “I doubt that’s true.” There’s plenty of rookies every year, eager to prove themselves on the ice and to establish themselves as a personality on the team. Besides, Sidney has never been the life of the party—that’s always been Geno himself.

 “No, is quieter.” Geno sounds like he’s swallowing a yawn. “Different without you.”

 Sidney’s heart flounders, and he has to blink a couple of times before his throat unclogs. “Maybe you should get to sleep. It’s pretty late over there.”

 “No, I’m not tired,” Geno mumbles, sounding very drowsy. Sidney can almost picture Geno, hair-mussed and sleepy eyes about to close as he curls up on his mattress. “Want to keep talking.”

 “I know you have practice tomorrow, G,” Sidney says. “You have the C now, you can’t get there two hours late anymore.”

 “I’m never late,” Geno huffs. “You too early.”

 “Get some rest,” Sidney says gently. “I’ll still be here next week, same as usual.”

 “Maybe I call tomorrow.’

 “I won’t go anywhere.”

 “Wish you still here, Sid,” he murmurs. “Miss you so bad, some days.”

 Sidney doesn’t miss a beat. “I miss you, too,” he whispers, because any louder and he knows his voice will crack. “I’ll be here tomorrow. And the day after, if you still want to call.”

 “Okay,” Geno says. “Okay.”

 -

 Sidney’s restocking the brioche rolls when Deidre’s voice casually pipes up from the coffee machine, “You have a secret admirer, you know.”

 “I know. It’s Samantha. PTA President,” Sidney says, trying to not sound exasperated. He only knows her name and title because she must’ve giggled it at him as a greeting every single time she’s marched in. “She asked me what the main ingredient was in the banana muffins and I told her banana like, three times.”

 “She just likes to hear you say banana. And no, it’s not Sam.” Deidre makes a come hither motion with her hands and slides a napkin towards Sidney. “Yesterday afternoon, there was a young man, maybe around his 30s, who stopped by for a latte and he asked where you were.”

 “Oh.” There’s something he can’t name fluttering in his stomach. The words on the napkin scrawled out, Jeremy, and a string of numbers. “What did you say?”

 “I told him, ‘He’s a cute one, isn’t he? He’s the store eye candy, bringing in all the sales.’”

 “Dee, you didn’t.”

 “I did, and he went full red. It was adorable. And I told him that you pop in in the mornings and in the afternoon to help with opening and closing.” She leans forward, grinning. “I’m just saying, think about it.”

 He thinks about it.

 At night, he tells Geno, “I think I have a secret admirer. Or a stalker.”

 Geno’s voice suddenly becomes infinitely more awake. “Have what? Someone stand outside your house? I read about this before, you need call police.”

 “No, it was at the bakery. I got his number on a napkin. Well, the owner gave me his name on a napkin, so I don’t really know what he looks like. He could be 100. People in this town are usually…around that age range.”

 Geno still sounds perplexed. “So say no.”

 “What?”

 “Say sorry, only go on dates with girls. But thank you.”

 Sidney’s brain feels like it’s stuttering to a pause. “Geno, what the fuck?”

 “What?”

 “I don’t ‘only go on dates with girls.’ I—” Well, to be quite fair, he hasn’t gone on any dates at all. “You know this.”

 It takes a full ten seconds for Geno to crackled back to life on the line again. His voice is hesitant. “You only bring girls to events. Like Halloween, or—”

 “They’re my friends, I’ve told you. I’m not going to bring a guy in front of you guys,” he exclaims, then reigns in his voice. His heart is beating like a jackhammer boring straight through. “Hey, listen, I have a pretty early day tomorrow, I’ll talk to you next week, okay?”

 “Sid, wait—”

 He hangs up and puts his phone face down on the nightstand. It’s not his proudest moment.

 -

 I’m sorry(((, the text reads. The timestamp indicates that the message had been sent at 2 AM. You should go on a date with secret guy. Maybe he’s secret Ryan Reynolds.

 Geno’s texts are never longer than five words, usually cryptic versions of a yes or no, accompanied by eyeless smilies. Sidney wonders if he’d been painstakingly worrying over each word since Sidney hastily ended the conversation.

 I don’t think he’s Ryan Reynolds, Sidney sends back. Besides, no one in this town knows hockey. That’s gonna be a problem.

 Geno’s reply is instantaneous, as if he’d been waiting.

 Picky)))))

More messages follow in quick succession, before Sidney can even start typing. 

But always best for u. Deserve the best only.

 He laces up his shoes and heads to Dee’s.

 -

 It snows a little mid-December.

 He helps Deidre with the decorations, hanging up tinsel and little snowflake cutouts on the window. She has a box of Christmas lights stored away in a dusty box from the attic, which definitely looks like they haven’t been disturbed since the 80s, but the one of the bulbs dies with a sad fizz the moment Sidney plugs it in. So they have to make do with the other nonflammable options.

 The store looks nice. ‘Well-loved’ is a better word for it, with its mismatched decorations and ancient garlands. He snaps a photo of the mini tree on the counter for Instagram before he goes to help Deidre frost the rest of the ornament-shaped sugar cookies.

 There’s commotion on the streets from all the tourists and families coming back for the holidays. He thinks about flying to Nova Scotia for the holidays, but then he realizes that none of Deidre’s children will be coming to Cardwell Point.

 “They’re busy,” she shrugs indifferently, but she turns her back to Sidney as she busies herself with rearranging the shelfs. “It’s alright. That’s what Skype is for, right? Besides, I have to watch the store.”

 He thinks about Geno, who’s probably headed to Florida soon to escape the onslaught of winter chill that he absolutely abhors, no matter how much he loves the city. He could Skype Geno, or Facetime him. Except Geno would always have the angle wrong, and Sidney’s sure he’d just get an on-brand mugshot of Geno’s nostril from the bottom up for the whole conversation. 

He did ask Sidney if he wanted to go to Florida, except the way he had asked had felt like a given tagged with a question mark at the end (Florida w me this year?). Nonetheless, Sidney had been tempted.

 But he also wonders if he’d feel even more homesick when Geno is physically standing in front of him again, all tall and loud and too big, too much, too many years of his unrequited love staring at him and making Sidney think that he has a chance. He doesn’t want to go to Florida to watch Geno pick up strangers at a club.

 “I’m not going anywhere, either,” he tells her.

 She looks over, finally, pursing her lips like she’s trying to hold back her smile.

 @DeesBakeryandCafe

Season’s greetings and a happy New Year to our wonderful customers and families here in Cardwell Point. Hope everyone is spending time with their loved ones this holiday season.

-

 Winter refuses to go. The clouds hang over the streets stubbornly, and each days trudges on like it’s dragging its feet.

 He misses skating.

 He misses Geno. Especially as it gets closer to February and teenagers and adults alike start coming to the shop in twos, their gloved hands clasped together as they squeeze through Dee’s tiny corridor when it’s really much easier to be in a single-file line.

 He’s not jealous. He is not.

 But he is lonely. And really fucking cold.

 He serves up at least thirty slices of The Jack, which is apparently the most popular item these days thanks to Instagram. Deidre switches up the decoration, so the cherry-glazed design in the middle forms a big, gaudy heart. The Internet completely eats up. Sidney doesn’t understand it.

 “It’s like a Titanic reference, right?” a customer asks, as he picks up the cake for his wife. “Like, an ‘I’ll never let you go,’ kind of thing. Jack and Rose?”

 “Sure,” Sidney says. It’s really for his first childhood crush, but he can work with the Titanic.

 The moment Deidre fills her last custom order of The Jack (and there had been plenty of those, for anniversaries to birthdays to just becauses), she tells Sidney that she’s figured out how to make her mother’s cheesecake.

 “Finally worked out how to stop the goddamn filling from clotting,” she says, cutting him a slice. The cake has a brownie bottom, and the inside is perfectly creamy and smooth and dotted with dark chocolate chips. “What do you think?”

 “I’m biased,” Sidney says, trying to not scarf down the whole thing like an animal. “I love cheesecakes. This one is my favorite so far.”

 “Good,” she tells him. “You can name this one, then.”

 His fork stops mid-air. “Weren’t you going to call it ‘The Lily’?”

 She pats his arm affectionately, not unlike the day she did when Sidney told her why he ended up at Cardwell Point. “I figured she wouldn’t mind. This can be our second February special. God, I’m sick of The Jack.”

 The next week, Sidney carefully slides The Geno in its display cabinet.

 (Deidre doesn’t ask about the peculiar name. She never does, and Sidney is grateful.)

 After over a decade in the NHL, he’s well aware of what he can and can’t have. But lately he’s been feeling selfish. He snaps a photo of the cheesecake and sends it to Deidre.

It’s a good photo.

-

 “I got invited to a neighborhood potluck yesterday,” Sidney mumbles into the receiver, when Flower asks him how retirement is treating him. “I don’t know what to bring. Maybe I’ll bring something from the bakery.”

 “Do you officially work at the bakery or are you just there because the owner is blackmailing you? Does she know who you are?”

 “I just help out when I can. And no, I told you, it’s not a hockey town. They do have competitive knitting here. It’s a thing.” Sidney doesn’t have much to do these days, aside from working out and catching up on reading, which means that he does end up doing most of the latter in the café. Maybe he should take up competitive knitting. “I started an Instagram for her shop. We just hit 200 followers.”

 “You know how to do that?” Flower asks, because he’s a little shit. “I’m kidding, I know you’re not actually a senior citizen.”

 Sidney rolls his eyes. “I haven’t checked it in a while though. I let Deidre handle the posting now. It’s her shop, anyways.”

 “What’s the handle?”

 He tells him. Flower is quiet for a bit as he searches through the page. “Pretty cool, eh?”

 “Yeah,” Flower says, his voice slightly off. “Yeah, it’s—it’s good. Looks like the real deal.”

 “What’s that supposed to mean? Of course it’s the real deal.”

 Flower makes a noncommittal noise. “Nothing. Cheesecake looks good. Does Geno know?”

 “No,” Sidney says. “I mentioned the bakery once or twice. He didn’t ask. Not, uh—not after I told him about Jeremy.”

 “Secret napkin man?” Flower remembers. “You didn’t go on that date?”

 “No, I didn’t go on a date with ‘secret napkin man,’” he mimics. “I don’t think he’d care.”

 “I think he’d care.” Flower always sounds so sure when he wants to be serious, and it’s one of the things Sidney missed most when he left for Vegas—there’d been a metaphorical hollow within the team for a good few months following his departure, and that void never quite got replaced no matter what.  

 “Maybe.”

 Sidney can only hope. But he’s a little too old for hoping these days.

 -

 Foot traffic is slower when they hit March, but Deidre promises that it’ll pick up when Cardwell Point’s 11th Annual Theater Festival starts in the middle of the month, because that’s apparently the other big thing aside from the 4th of July Carnival Bash. Sidney has just packed up another dozen of red velvet cupcakes for Samantha the PTA Queen when the front bell jingles.

 “Hello? I’m look for—”

 Sidney heart leaps to his throat.

 “Sid,” Geno says softly. He looks like the wind knocked him in (it probably had), mismatched Frakenshirts and all. “Hi, Sid.”

 Samantha may as well not have even walked into the store at all.

 “How are—“ He must be imagining things. But Geno takes another step, until he’s right in front of the counter and Sidney can reach out and touch just how real he is. He hasn’t changed much--still the same eyes, the same nose and lips, and maybe his hair is a bit thinner but he still makes Sidney’s chest feel too small and too big all at once. “Where did you—how are you here?”

 “Fly,” Geno says sheepishly. “Wanted to see you.”

 “What about—”

 “No games until Friday.” He’s staring at Sidney like he’s looking his fill and he can’t get enough. “I—I see your post, and I just—buy ticket.”

 “What post?”

 Geno pulls out his phone and flips through it until he lands at a familiar Instagram account. He passes it over to Sidney, his hands warm as it brushes against Sidney’s fingers.

 @DeesBakeryCafe

‘I love you’ tastes a lot like our chocolate chip cheesecake, The Geno.

 “Oh,” Sidney breathes. “Oh.”

[starry19]

Not-Quite Silver Linings

AN: For my beloved Garcy Tumblr fandom, who, after screaming wildly, put on their deerstalker hats and went full-on Sherlock Holmes about who was sleeping where the night Jessica stole the Lifeboat. Conclusion: Lucy was with Flynn. We have evidence.

And then there was absolutely no way I couldn’t write this. So, here we are. Also on ao3

—

It was a full three days after they returned from San Francisco that Lucy realized how very close she had been to dying.

But not on that last, terrible mission.

It took three days for the insanity of the visit from their future selves to decrease to a level she could cope with. Three days for them to catch hold of a shred of hope when it came to how, precisely, they were going to try their highly inadvisable trip back to save Rufus. Three days for it to not hurt when she smiled.

Not that she smiled very much.

When Jiya had taken a short break from staring at computer screens, and only at Mason’s insistence that she eat real food for a change, Lucy had come to sit beside her on one of the hard metal chairs.

There were any number of conversations they could have been having, ranging from the other woman’s three years- three years- in the past to their strategies to what the current Rittenhouse headquarters looked like.

Instead, they were mostly quiet. There was a little solace in proximity, however, a sense of unity. She had meant what she said in that saloon - they were all each other had.

Jiya looked up at her once, dark eyes haunted, exhausted. “I killed a guy,” she said abruptly.

Lucy froze, cup of tea halfway to her mouth.

“When Jessica first took me,” the other woman said. “And I escaped. I killed a guy to do it.”

She nodded, because she did understand. “I killed a guy because of Rittenhouse, too,” she said.

It was a sign of how dark their lives had become, that this was a conversation they were having, with absolutely no judgement rendered on either side. They had both done what they had needed to.

Jiya took a breath and wrapped her fingers around her own mug. “I heard them talking a little bit, your mom and Jessica. Nice family you’ve got, by the way.” There was no bitterness, just a bleak touch of humor. “Jessica was supposed to kill you, that night she left. But she couldn’t find you and I guess she didn’t think she had all the time in the world to play hide and seek.”

She blinked several times in quick succession. That night seemed like it was in an entirely different lifetime. Where had she been that Jessica couldn’t find…oh.

Connor suddenly yelled for Jiya, and the other woman stood with an apologetic shrug. Lucy smiled blankly back, or at least she hoped that was the expression she was making.

The only reason she hadn’t been shot by Wyatt’s wife was that she hadn’t been able to sleep. She’d tried, made some token attempt. Had stared at the ceiling from her place on the deeply uncomfortable couch cushions. There were about a million things she could have been thinking about, but none of the subjects would stick. Instead, they had been whirling through her mind like windmills, never stopping.

She’d given up, gathered up her blanket, and knocked on a door that was now very familiar.

Garcia Flynn let her in, sleepy-eyed and amused, and she’d spent the rest of the night in between him and the wall, the regular thrum of his heartbeat beneath her ear. He was warm, steady. This was…peaceful.

At least until all hell broke loose outside the door.

But she’d had no way of knowing what was coming.

All she knew was that he felt like safety and sanity, broad shoulders and strong chest. It was no different that night than it had been the handful of times she had done this before.

He never asked any questions. Never turned her away. Never brought it up in the daytime.

Just held her, let her sleep against his chest, or talked to her until the world made a little more sense than it had.

She knew what he looked like when he was dreaming, what he smelled like, what the muscles of his stomach felt like under her palms.

She consciously tried to not think about what any of it meant. Was this about comfort or love or lust or something else entirely? Did it matter?

He was open arms.

He was safety.

Apparently literally.

There were orders out to kill her. And there had been an operative in the bunker. She must’ve walked by the door to Flynn’s room, but only an idiot would have tried it.

The mental imagery that conjured up was enough to make her shudder, goosebumps rising on her arms.

Lost in her waking nightmares, she failed to notice when Flynn appeared in the kitchen, jumping slightly when he sat across from her in Jiya’s vacated chair.

He took a single look at her expression and sat down his coffee cup. “What?” he asked, but softly, long legs stretching out beside hers under the table.

She tried to smile, to look nonchalant.

He raised an eyebrow. You’re full of shit, it said. And I know it.

Yes, that was a problem, too, how well he did actually know her. That was mostly her fault. He’d asked, once, on a dark road in the 1930s. And she’d told him, had let him in. It made it very difficult to keep secrets from him.

She shrugged. “I’ll tell you,” she said, since there really was no point in keeping it from him. “Just maybe not here?”

He glanced around pointedly, silently reminding there that there were very few people currently present, but conceded to her request with an eye roll.

They were very good at having conversations without speaking.

Safely shut away in his room again, she tried to quietly and emotionlessly repeat what Jiya had told her. His eyes got darker, and she was very glad he did not use that expression when he looked at her, ever.

When she finished, he swore very fluently in Croatian for a full minute. She could pick out a few phrases - he’d laughingly taught her a couple of curse words when she’d asked one night - but for the most part, thought it was better that she only had a vague idea of what he was saying.

“We’re going to have to move locations,” he finally said, switching back to English, though his accent was slightly stronger than it normally was. He was ferociously angry.

“Move locations?” she echoed. “Like…get a new bunker?”

He nodded. “Or safehouse, or whatever. Jessica knows how to get here, thanks to Wyatt. The last damn thing we need to worry about it them raiding us in the middle of the night.” He swore again, but quietly. “I should have thought about this the second we got back.”

“To be fair,” she said, “we all sort of had a lot on our minds.”

Like Rufus. And coming to face to face with the Rambo-esque versions of themselves. And just sheer grief. They’d all been reduced to focusing on small-term goals. Get up. Get dressed. Eat. It had been just about all they could deal with.

He spared her a glance that did not look amused, and she realized he was angry with himself, too.

She stepped forward, sliding her arms around his waist. After a slightly surprised second, he pulled her in, cheek on top of her head.

It was the first time she’d held him this way, in day time, without any sort of emergency or traumatic event in the works. At night, in the dark, it was easier to ignore the implications of what was happening between them.

But maybe she didn’t want to ignore them anymore.

The tension in him relaxed a bit, but she could still feel it - the need to move, the call to action. Garcia Flynn had been a solider since he was fifteen, and a spy after that. He didn’t take well to sitting around.

Gently, he pressed a kiss to her hair, the first time he’d done such a thing. “You are, of course, going to be staying here at night until things are more secure.” It was not a question.

She had not actually been sleeping anywhere else since they’d returned from Chinatown, battered and bruised and so far beyond heartbroken. She’d needed him then, needed him badly, and he’d been there with arms open. Well, she amended, arm open, at least until he’d gotten sick of his sling.

“Okay,” she said, quietly, and he let out a breath, one hand tracing down her spine. She closed her eyes, face in his chest, and relaxed a little herself.

The clanging of doors outside told them someone else had arrived in the bunker. Since no alarms were currently screaming, it was, by default, Agent Christopher.

Flynn stepped back, but slowly. “I need to go,” he said. “This needs to happen fast. Before we even make a play for Rufus.”

She blinked.

He was probably right, but the abruptness of it was startling.

He took in her expression, then gently touched her face. “For logistical reasons,” he told her, “you’re not going with us to save Rufus. That fourth seat has to remain open. We need a pilot, and likely all the firepower Wyatt and I can carry.” He paused for a moment, making sure she was with him. “I cannot disappear into the past for God knows how long, worried about what’s waiting for me when I get back. I’m not inclined to take risks with your safety, Lucy. Not when they can be avoided.”

Her eyes widened. God, what if…

What if the second the Lifeboat vanished, the alarms went off? Emma appeared, guns blaring?

Well, she would be dead. One more body for Flynn to find.

She turned her face up to see his, saw the very same thoughts crossing his mind. But behind the horror, and the fear, she saw an immense and terrifying blackness. She had brought him back, the last time, had believed in him until he had found his humanity again.

If she died, however…

She didn’t think there would be any coming back for him.

Garcia Flynn was darkness incarnate, and brokenness, and…hers.

Maybe, maybe he always had been, from the very first time she’d seen him, looming out of the fiery wreckage of the Hindenburg like Lucifer himself. When he’d pulled her in front of him, gun aimed at Wyatt, she’d gotten a sense of overwhelming strength. At the time, it had been terrifying.

She had the same sense now, but an entirely different reaction. He was there to protect her.

She could protect herself, and had. But it was just so very nice to know that he would do it for her.

“Okay,” she finally whispered. It was perhaps the one small source of comfort she could offer. She would promise to not take risks with her safety, beyond the ones they always took when they disappeared into nowhere, would promise to abide by the rules he set.

He nodded in acknowledgement, then gathered her in his arms again, but briefly.

With one last look backwards, he stepped out of his room. She heard him calling for Agent Christopher, and wondered if she should go lend herself to his side of the argument. Decided against it. What could she say that he wouldn’t have already thought of?

In the end, Agent Christopher had agreed wholeheartedly, as had everyone else. No one had really liked the idea of putting the search for Rufus on hold, but then again, it wasn’t like the 1800s were going anywhere.

She slept next to Flynn that night, facing him in the darkness as they both laid on their sides.

There were a few notable difference from the other times she had done this. Firstly, he’d moved the pillow to the other end of the bed, so he could face the door. When she’d figured it out, she was actually touched that he’d felt safe enough, that he trusted the team enough, to have not done it in the first place. She was sad that was all gone now.

The second major difference was that before he’d joined her on the narrow mattress, he’d methodically loaded his gun and left it in easy reach.

She’d eyed it warily from against the wall as he climbed in, taking up almost all of the available space.

He’d rolled his eyes. “You do know guns aren’t in the habit of sporadically going off, yes?”

“Yes,” she said, slowly.

He ignored her lingering trepidation, sliding one arm under her head, the other resting across her waist. It was perhaps the best thing he could have done to ease her mind. What on earth could touch her here?

With a deep sigh, she closed her eyes, burrowing as close as she could get to him.

She was mildly surprised she had managed to fall asleep, given everything that was being set in motion. Then again, perhaps she shouldn’t have been. She was in the safest place she could be, wrapped in the arms of a very armed and very vigilant Garcia Flynn.

In the morning, she kissed him for the first time, and she loved his shaking exhalation of breath as her lips moved over his, loved the spirals of pleasure that circled around her even more.

There was a part of her that always remembered that he was a dangerous man. But not to her, never.

When she raised her head, he smiled brilliantly, looking…well, awestruck, and it was difficult to not be in wonder at the effect she had on him.

Around them, she could hear the sounds of the bunker coming to life. There was a great deal to do - their meager possessions needed to be packed, computer equipment to be disassembled, and all of the general chaos that attended a sudden move.

With reluctance, she untangled herself from him. This time, she deliberately slid herself over his prone body on her way out of bed, and was delighted with what that did to his expression.

An hour later, the bunker was humming with activity. She was surrounded by boxes and cables and packing tape, and trying to not be run over by anyone rolling something large and electronic by her.

She didn’t think she was terribly regretful about leaving this place. Yes, it had been her home and some weird semblance of safety during what was probably her darkest time. But when it came down to it, it was still an old army bunker with about ten minutes worth of hot water and World War II-issue everything.

Their new place, wherever and whatever it was, probably couldn’t be worse.

Maybe it even had queen sized beds.

With that happy thought playing in her mind, she cheerfully wrote her name on the side of a box. Stacked it next to Flynn’s small pile of things.

Wherever they were going, she was sure they were going together, and that was better than nothing.

By a long shot.

[nayutai]

Linked | 1

“Are you excited?” my best friend Deja asked me excitedly over the phone. I can hear her boyfriend Hoseok yapping in the background with their new puppy and my heart aches.

My 21st birthday is in approximately two hours and seventeen minutes, but it’s more than just your average birthday. Sure, I’ll be able to legally drink and that’s cool I guess but it’s more than that.

Everyone is born with a soulmate. Another person that is destined to be their other half. A person born to complete them in every way they could possibly imagine. When a person turns 21, their soulmate’s initials will appear on the inside of their wrist. From there it’s all up to fate to lead each half to the other to make a whole.

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be” I say with a sigh. I want what they have but the pessimist in me can’t help but think, what if I’m one of the unlucky ones? What if I’m one of the few who get a rose instead of initials, meaning my soulmate has died before I’ve even gotten the chance to meet him.

“Stop it, hoe! I can practically hear you stressing yourself out through this phone” Deja is way too intuitive for her own good sometimes. “When you wake up in the morning there will be initials on your wrist and you’re going to see that you’ve been freaking out over nothing. Now go get some sleep and we’ll see you tomorrow for dinner”

We say our goodbyes and for once I actually listen to Deja and go to sleep. My dreams are filled with a shadowy stranger whose features I can’t make out no matter how hard I try. I can tell he’s tall and lanky with brown hair that flops over his forehead, but not much else. Even though his face is a blur, I feel a sense of peace in his presence.

I awake with a sigh, groggily rubbing eyes when I become aware of three slightly raised letters on the inside of my left wrist. Holy crap Deja was right. I was worrying for nothing.

KTH

KTH? I take a mental inventory of everyone I know but come up empty. No one I know has those initials so my soulmate isn’t someone I already know. My mind drifts back to the boy from my dream. It has to be him. It’s the only scenario that makes sense.

My phone rings with a skype call from Deja before I can sink too deep into my thoughts.

“Let me see your arm” she demands the second the call connects.

“Damn good morning to you too. I’m doing great on this fabulous anniversary of my birth thanks for inquiring”

“Happy birthday, babes! Now expose thine arm” with a roll of my eyes, I lift my wrist to the camera so that she can see the little black letters tattooed on my skin.

“I’m not gonna lie, I was hoping it would be Jungkook’s initials so we could go on cute little double dates” my eyes roll on their own accord at the mention of one of Hoseok’s best friends. He’s a year younger than me and therefore not old enough to know who his soulmate is yet. Everyone else in our friend group has already seen those tell-tale letters appear on their skin although so far Deja and Hoseok are the only ones to actually find their soulmates.

“Little Jungkookie is going to make some girl very happy one day, but that girl will not be me”

“Maybe if I don’t kill him first. Did I tell you that he ate all my girl scout cookies when he came over the other day? That shit is just unacceptable”

“Welp, it was nice knowing him I guess. Anyways, help me pick out an outfit for tonight. I need to look extra hot just in case this KTH makes an appearance tonight”

My birthday is a smashing success, but I end the night still oblivious about who the initials on my skin belong to. I lightly run my fingers over each letter as I lay in bed. I have the very same dream as I did the night before but this one is slightly more detailed. My shadow boy’s face is still blurry for the most part as he dances around in some spacious room but this time I can see his smile. It’s boxy and makes my heart skip a beat with its beauty. I decide then and there that I will do whatever it takes to keep that smile on his face.

He starts to fade away. The word ‘tomorrow’ silently forming on his lips as he backs away from me. I reach out, trying to keep him with me but it’s no use and he disappears once more.

~

I can barely focus in my classes the next day as all my thoughts are of the literal boy of my dreams. It feels like the day is dragging by or maybe I’m just seeing it through eyes that are desperate to be closed in slumber so that I can dream again. Either way, it’s undoubtedly the longest day of my life.

This never-ending day only gets longer when my mom reminds me that my cousin is being featured in an art exhibit at a local gallery tonight and that my attendance is required. I try to put my foot down but of course my mom isn’t having that which is how I find myself driving the 45 minutes back to my hometown after my last class to attend my cousin’s art show.

The art exhibit is just as boring as I expected it would be. A bunch of pretentious art hippies standing next to dots and boxes on a canvas that are supposed to be a representation of some deep cultural conflict. Thank God for complimentary champagne.

I’m aimlessly milling about, sipping what I believe is my third glass of bubbly when I spot a painting of a young woman. Her skin is a rich chocolate that contrasts beautifully with the white oversized sweater that hangs off of her frame in a way that’s classy yet sultry. She’s looking over her shoulder but the only clearly discernible facial feature that’s clearly depicted is a set of full lips shaded a deep red. The rest of her face is obscured by the waves of inky black curls that cascade slightly past her shoulders.

The fine intricacies of art are generally lost on me, but I can tell that this piece was painted with immense adoration and reverence. Every brush stroke is purposeful in its intent to recreate the beauty that is this woman. I only wish that someone could paint me that way.

“Do you like it?” a husky voice asks over my shoulder, causing me to gasp and nearly spill the glass of champagne I’d all but forgotten about.

A shiver runs down my spine as I jerk my head around to put a face to the voice. What I see sends my glass of champagne on a direct path to the hardwood floor beneath my feet. I’d recognize that floppy brown hair anywhere.

“Shit! I’m so sor-” he grabs my arm to stop me from bending to help one of the servers that had rushed over to clean up my mess. His touch sends lightning bolts of heat and awareness shooting through my veins. “Please tell me your initials are KTH because if they aren’t I’ve just a made a fool out of myself for nothing”

The cute boxy smile I’d been dreaming of makes an appearance as he gently grabs my wrist, running his thumb over the initials on my skin.

“And to think I almost skipped this lame art show. I’m Kim Taehyung. Pleased to finally make your acquaintance Ms. JLG” he says as he lifts my left hand to his lips.

“Jessica, but you can call me Jess”

“Well Jess, you never answered my question. Do you like this piece?” he inquires once again. I try not to focus too much on how delightful my name sounds coming from his lips

“Oh, yes, it’s beautiful!” I turn to look at it fleetingly, doing a double take when I finally notice the small golden name plate beneath the painting.

Kim Taehyung

But does that mean? No…it can’t be. The question in my head must be all over my face because Taehyung quickly confirms that I am in fact looking at an artistic rendition of myself. It’s even more mesmerizing now that I know this information.

“Two years” my thoughts are once again interrupted as he speaks up again. “I’ve worked on this for two years. Ever since you first appeared in my dreams I’ve been trying to capture you on paper so that I didn’t have to be asleep to see you smile at me” I’m choked up with emotion as he pushes a stray curl away from my face.

This can’t be real life. I must be dreaming. Kim Taehyung is the definition of perfect and here he is making me feel like no one else matters or even exists for that matter. I’m tempted to pinch myself to make sure I’m not actually asleep when my mother does it for me.

“Jessica Lorraine Garrison! I have called you five times and why are you hiding in the corner with some boy?” my mom demands and it’s then that I notice that the gallery is nearly empty save a few stragglers.

“Kim Taehyung, pleased to meet you Mrs. Garrison. It appears that your daughter and I are soulmates.” Well he sure doesn’t beat around the bush. My mom chokes as she looks between me and the man next to me with wide eyes. In all twenty-one of my years on this Earth I’ve never seen this woman speechless. My younger sister is standing behind her biting her fist as she struggles to contain her laughter.

She grabs his arm and unceremoniously shoves the sleeve of his sweater up to his elbow so she can get a clear, unobstructed view of his wrist. Way to make a first impression mom. Seeing my initials on Taehyung’s tan skin makes my heart skip a few beats. This is actually happening. I could’ve done without my mom interrupting our first meeting to manhandle him but this is just who she is as a person. I breathe a sigh of relief when she finally releases him but of course it’s short-lived.

“Don’t think that just because you’re my daughter’s soulmate you’ll get to whisk her away. I still don’t know you so, if you want this to go any further, I expect to see you at family dinner on Sunday” she finally turns to me and I’m sure I look absolutely scared at the prospect of subjecting my soulmate to my crazy ass family. “Olivia, give him the address. We’ll be in the car” She saunters away with my sister in tow, meeting up with my father who is impatiently waiting by the door.

“I’m so sorry about her. She has no concept of privacy or personal space”

“Don’t worry about it. Your mom is just protective and I can’t say I don’t feel the same way about you, Jess.” He says as he reaches out to cradle my face in one of his large hands. I can’t help the satisfied sigh that escapes me as I let my eyes drift shut, leaning into his palm.

He pulls me into his chest in a tight embrace, kissing the top of my head. I’m not sure how long we stood that way but it wasn’t long enough. When we finally separate, we exchange numbers and I make sure to send him my parents’ address for dinner on Sunday.

“Until we meet again” he whispers before pressing his lips to my knuckles. I nearly melt into a puddle of mush but somehow manage to keep it together. Feeling a little bold, I quickly peck him on the cheek before rushing out of the door in embarrassment.

~

“You met your soulmate already?! Damn that was quick!” Deja screeches into the phone the next day as I recount my meeting with a certain Kim Taehyung. “It took me almost a whole year to finally find Hoseok. I’m jealous!”

“Mom is making him come over for dinner tomorrow and if he makes it through that then we truly are meant to be because my family is full of nut cases.”

~

It’s Sunday and I’ve been on edge all day. My phone vibrates with a text from Tae while I’m doing my make-up and my heart flutters. We’ve been talking non-stop since we met at the gallery so you would think that I’d have gotten used to seeing his name on my phone but it always feels new. I smile to myself as I coat my lips in red lipstick before picking up my phone.

Taehyungie: see you in 20!

Attached to his text is a picture of a beautiful bouquet of daisies. I don’t know how he knew that daisies are one of my favorite flowers but I’m not complaining. Feeling flirty, I snap a picture of my lips to send back to him, commenting on how my lips match his painting of me.

Taehyungie: Ms. Jess you’re going to be the death of me

Exactly 20 minutes later the sound of the doorbell echoes through the house.

“I got it!” I yell as I make a mad dash down the stairs but my dad beats me to the door.

“Good evening, sir! I’m Kim Taehyung. It’s nice to meet you” He holds his free hand out to greet my dad who just grunts like a caveman as he steps aside to let him in.

“Oh my God, Dad, stop trying to scare him” He waves me off as he walks towards the kitchen probably to try and convince my mom to let him sample the food. “Sorry about him. He’s not always like this I promise”

Dinner goes surprisingly well. My family is on their absolute worst behavior despite their promises to act civilized, but Taehyung rolls with it and even joins them in their foolishness. Maybe there is something to this soulmate thing after all.

~

“Tae, I think I’m dying” I collapse on the floor at his feet and he has the audacity to just ignore me. “So you’re just going to leave me here to suffer?” I ask, using his knees to pull myself up on to the couch next to him.

“You’re the one who decided that eating sushi from a gas station couldn’t possibly be a bad idea” I pout as he tosses my poor decision back into my face.

“Shut up” he nuzzles my neck, leaving a kiss at the junction of my shoulder. “No, I don’t want your kisses anymore”

“Oh come on, babe. I held your hair when you were praying at the porcelain throne. Doesn’t that count for something?”

I give him a sideways glance before tuning him out completely and focusing on the cartoons playing on the tv instead. His dog Yeontan comes traipsing into the living room a few minutes into Tae’s pout session.

“Tannie! I know you’ll love me” The small dog gives Tae a once over before jumping into my lap instead. “Wow” he complains, “even my dog has abandoned me. What did I do to deserve this?”

“You know he still hasn’t forgiven you for petting that Chihuahua when we went to the park yesterday. You hurt his feelings” As if he can understand me, Yeontan gives a little sniff in Tae’s direction before snuggling deeper into my lap.

This is a typical weekend for us now. We’ve spent nearly every weekend for the past eight months together. We try to alternate weekends, but according to Tae my college apartment has better natural lighting which means he’s usually at my place and constantly taking candid photos of me. The struggle of dating a Photography student.

“Can I have a kiss if I buy you pizza?” he asks out of the blue.

“Pepperoni and bacon with jalapeños and lots of pineapple please” I reply with a kiss to his cheek.

Two hours later, after gorging ourselves on pizza, we’re cuddled up on the couch watching a random movie on Netflix when Tae’s long fingers suddenly skim across the exposed skin where his t-shirt has ridden up. A gasp escapes me as goosebumps rise along my skin in the wake of his touch.

“Excuse me, sir, but I’m actually trying to watch this movie that you picked out” I say as I pull his wandering hand out of my shirt and lace our fingers together.

His frustrated groan makes me giggle as I continue to deny his advances. Getting him all worked up is one of my favorite past times. We both know I’m going to give in. It’s only a matter of when.

Just as I’m about to relent to his persistent ways, an intense burning sensation singes the nerve endings in my left wrist. It feels as though a lit match is being held to my skin. I can vaguely hear Tae freaking out over my screaming but my focus is narrowed on the small letters on my skin that are actually beginning to fade.

“Fuck” Tae’s slender fingers wrap around my skin as he lifts my wrist to examine it. He runs his thumb over what’s left of his initials and the burning instantly ceases as the letters come back into focus before our eyes.

“Tae, what just happened?” I ask, more freaked out than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

“I don’t know but I think we need to call The Institute immediately”

For as long as there have been soulmates, there have been scientific minds hard at work trying to figure out how the whole thing functions. Formally called, The Soulmate Scientific Institute, they are the people you call for soulmate emergencies. They handle everything that could possibly negatively impact a soulmate union and my eyes go wide at the fact that we are now in need of their services. I swallow around the knot in my throat and nod as Tae scrambles to find his phone.

I absently stroke my thumb over Tae’s initials, wincing slightly at the fleeting burning sensation that still remains. Yeontan seems to sense my distress and licks my wrist before hopping back into my lap. I stroke his fur as I try to wrap my head around what just happened. I just hope The Institute can give us some answers.

[arplis]

Arplis - News: Two years ago, but it seems closer to ten, a nice deputy editor for a new publication approached me to write a piece

He had been reading me forever and was working for this company with a bunch of money invested in it, could pay pretty well and expose me to some new readers not only on the web but a print magazine he compared to Rolling Stone. I said yes and we were going back and forth about what my first piece should be, and then my mom died. Freelance gigs are usually a little stressful and all-consuming for me, but for some reason I still wanted to do it. Looking back at my emails, I was literally trying to schedule around the days off I had other than the one for the funeral. I agreed to write about the Halloween series, in conjunction with the upcoming David Gordon Green sequel. I watched all ten existing movies (including remakes) and came up with this piece that ties them all together thematically, at times addressing the grief and fears I was dealing with at the time. I took longer than I was supposed to and ended up with twice the agreed upon word count and I was so unsure anybody else would be interested that in my email I said, “If you don’t want it I understand, just let me know and I’ll use it on outlawvern.com and we’ll come up with something else for me to work on for you.” Then the magazine (you will never see this coming) ran out of money, all the editors resigned, I don’t believe I ever got paid and the article could only be seen on the Wayback Machine. But I got no regrets because working on this helped me in a tough period of my life and gave me a better understanding of my relationship with the genre. So I’m proud to repost it here. (I’ve kept their edits, so you’ll notice some British spellings in here.) THE SHAPE OF EVIL: Confronting darkness through the ‘Halloween’ series 26 October 2018 08:59 John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) was, in its time, the most successful independent movie ever made, and its influence still echoes through cinema four decades later. It cemented many of the hallmarks of the slasher subgenre: unstoppable masked killers, murder sprees tied to holidays, a troubling connection between sexual activity and death. And it became one of the most enduring brands in horror history, spawning a series of eight sequels so far (including a new one this month), undeterred even by a 2007 remake that had its own sequel. Some may wonder why, in these dark times of mass shootings, human rights abuses, corrupt regimes, collapsing institutions and impending environmental catastrophe, anyone would want to watch ten movies about an escaped mental patient stabbing people to death. Personally, I found catharsis in revisiting them all this month while grieving over the loss of my parents to long, cruel illnesses. If you look at the series as a mass-market treatise on humankind’s struggles against death and evil you can focus less on the horror of being stabbed and more on the possibility of getting away. In the opening scene of Halloween, as well as the closing of part four and other moments throughout the series, our viewpoint is from behind the mask of the killer. Lesser Halloween sequels, particularly the sixth and eighth entries, try to further implicate us in the evil by creating victims who ‘deserve it’ in cinematic terms – an abusive husband, an obnoxious shock jock. But, for the majority of the series, we identify with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and the other protagonists who follow her, rooting for them so we can survive by proxy. We watch the masked killer Michael Myers in movies to face our worst fears in a forum where they can never get us, can never truly win. Being a fan of more than one Halloween movie is more complicated than it may sound. It requires canonical decisions, like some Video Age equivalent of ancient scriptures. It would be easy to recognise only the original Carpenter productions, Halloween and Halloween II (1981), with or without the narratively unrelated Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1982). Some fans who came up in the Eighties may also acknowledge Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Dwight H. Little, 1988) and Halloween 5: the Revenge of Michael Myers (Dominique Othenin-Girard, 1989), but the cliffhanger of 5 demands the resolution of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Joe Chappelle, 1995), which many reject due to its out-of-left-field retconning in of a cult that has been controlling Michael since the beginning. Even those who accept that twist have to decide between the theatrical version and the drastically different ‘Producer’s Cut’, once a semi-legendary bootleg, now an official release. ‘Halloween’ (John Carpenter, 1978) To enjoy them all you have to accept multiple realities, because the timeline expands and contracts like an accordion. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (Steve Miner, 1998) erases everything after II. Laurie faked her death and went into hiding, which could explain her absence in 4-6, except that now she doesn’t have a daughter named Jamie (Danielle Harris). Personally, I like the H20 continuity as long as I can disavow Halloween Resurrection (Rick Rosenthal, 2002), which turns the ending of H20 on its head so that Michael survives and Laurie doesn’t, like some shocking cinematic Supreme Court ruling. And now David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018), a sequel, not remake, of John Carpenter’s movie of the same title, will tell us that there is only John Carpenter’s Halloween. It even erases II – which continued on the same night and was written, scored and reshot by Carpenter – so Laurie and Michael are no longer siblings. (Which means the TV version of the first film is also out.) Like Michael’s body at the end of the first film, all those sequels were there just a second ago, and now they’re gone. They could be anywhere, or everywhere. But through all its repetitions and resets, the series keeps performing the same ritual: hiding a pure, unknowable malevolence behind a rubber human face and sending it into our civilisation to see if we can survive its wrath. In all but one of these films, that force of evil is Michael Myers, who at the age of six put on a clown mask, stabbed his sister Judith just moments before their parents got home, and never spoke again. Since Michael saw Judith fooling around with her boyfriend before the murder, people often interpret some sort of prudish anti-sex judgment behind his actions, something that became a cliché in the wave of slasher movies that followed in Halloween’s wake. But I think we only assign an explanation like that to protect ourselves from our fear of the inexplicable. There is no cause or motive. Even by the eighth film, so little is known about Michael that the producers of a live webcast from his house have to plant fake props to imply ‘something that might explain why Michael Myers went bad’. After his first murder, the kid and his parents look equally dumbfounded. They have no idea why it happened. So grown up Michael Myers and his mask represent the unknowable and the incomprehensible. To keep him extra-mysterious, his head stays out of frame while he stalks the neighbourhood during the day; even though, with close examination, you can see enough to tell that he’s wearing the mask. It’s worth noting that we actually can glimpse his face when he’s stealing the car at the beginning of the first film and can see it clearly when Laurie pulls off his mask at the end. His expressions reveal so little emotion or intelligence that it’s easy to forget those shots and think of the mask as his true face. He’s as much an automaton as the zombie-like gangsters in Carpenter’s earlier Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). His psychiatrist of 15 years, Dr. Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence), gave up on Michael’s humanity in 1972 and considers him a personification of evil, as in, ‘He’s gone, he’s gone from here. The evil is gone!’ He says that ‘what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply evil.’ He refers to him as ‘it’, instead of him. He tells the sheriff that ‘Death has come to your little town.’ None of this seems like an appropriate way for a doctor to talk about a patient, but it belies Loomis’s diagnosis that this man in the mask is no longer whoever (or whatever) Michael Myers was before he snapped and killed his sister. Tommy Doyle, the kid whom Laurie is babysitting, calls Michael ‘the boogeyman’, a description that Laurie eventually adopts. Not even the end credits consider him to be a person anymore – they call him ‘The Shape’ (a tradition repeated in 2, 6, H20 and the 2018 sequel). And though 4 and 5 are chapters that credit him with his human name, 4 has a preacher who tells us that ‘Apocalypse, end of the world, Armageddon – it’s always got a face and a name… you can’t kill damnation, mister. It don’t die like a man dies.’ And 5 emphasises Michael’s Death status by having him wield a scythe like the grim reaper. He finds it in a barn, and uses it to kill a more watered-down personification of evil: a partygoer in a sexy devil costume, armed with a legitimate farmer’s pitchfork. There’s a popular notion – fuelled by the theories of Randy in Scream (Wes Craven, 1996), themselves inspired by the ‘Final Girl’ concept in Carol J. Clover’s book Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film – that Laurie survives because she’s a virgin or a goody two-shoes. The latter is disprovable: Laurie shares two joints with Annie in the car. But I don’t see it as Laurie being rewarded for her good qualities. I see it as her having to go through all this because she’s the one that always has to deal with this shit while other people are out screwing around. That’s her personality and her lot in life. She runs errands for her dad’s real estate business, babysits to save up money, and takes care of Lindsey so that Annie can have fun with her boyfriend. Twenty years later, she’s the headmaster taking care of the rich people’s kids, and even then she stays behind and gets attacked by The Shape while most of the school has fun on a field trip. ‘Halloween II’ (Rick Rosenthal, 1981) A working title for Halloween was The Babysitter Murders, and though shifting the emphasis to the holiday setting was an ingenious hook, giving the heroine this societal role was also crucial. It’s this strange stage of growing-up where she’s not treated as an adult, yet trusted with the sacred task of protecting someone else’s children. Dr. Loomis held a related role – to understand young Michael and help him heal – but he has long since failed. Now his mission is just to tell everybody: Hey, this guy is evil, there was nothing I could do, now it’s your fault for not listening. His superiors pass the buck as well, declaring ‘I’m not responsible, Sam!’ Loomis wears a trench coat and carries a pistol, a self-styled warrior, a ‘good guy with a gun,’ our society’s prescription for murderers, terrorists, and other evils we don’t know how to understand. Not until part five, when he spends time with Jamie in a hospital, does he act like a child psychiatrist again. And he ends up yelling at her and being rightfully reprimanded by a nurse. In her status as a deputised adult, Laurie tries to console Tommy by telling him that there’s no such thing as a boogeyman. But after having been attacked, having shepherded the children to safety, and been rescued by Loomis, she breaks down and she and the doctor agree that that was the boogeyman that just came after her. The Shape has destroyed the comfort of her worldview. It is an evil that undermines belief in objective truth. When Halloween’s story continues in II, Laurie’s lacerations seem superficial, but she’s in such shock that they have to carry her out of the house on a stretcher, and she finds herself bed-ridden at Haddonfield Memorial. She has lost all agency, unable to even stop them from giving her a shot. The babysitter, having fulfilled her duty and returned her charges safely to their rightful guardians, now has no choice but to hand herself over to society’s official healers and protectors. But they are fallible. Sherriff Brackett (Charles Cyphers) wasn’t there to protect his own daughter, and has to end his shift to mourn. Some of the hospital staff are fucking around and don’t have their eye on the ball. The security guard is killed by the Shape, and a nurse who hasn’t been trained to use the walkie-talkie misses his message to call for help. Even safety regulations fail them – there is no way the sauna should be able to get to a temperature that’s actually labelled ‘scalding’ on the meter! The Shape repurposes that and other medical equipment (syringes, IVs) for killing, the opposite of their intended use. The Shape stalks his victims from where life begins, the maternity ward, across the medical facilities where we fight off death. The turning point comes when Laurie realises that she can’t count on the protection of society and must make a run for it. Loomis does protect her (by heroically blowing himself up with The Shape), and only after disobeying direct orders from the governor. Though III is the only Shape-less chapter – producer Carpenter’s once infamous, now generally appreciated attempt at an anthology series – its themes have much in common with II. Once again, the story begins with a victim taking refuge at a hospital, but this one is murdered by a killer who, rather than being burned up by Dr. Loomis, goes ahead and sets himself on fire. In the tradition of Loomis, Dr. Challis (Tom Atkins) is an MD who, upon witnessing bizarre happenings, abandons his role as a healer to become some sort of undercover vigilante detective. But it’s not always wise to take justice into your own hands. In 4, the old-timers at a bar form a posse and end up shooting an innocent man. And guns can’t really stop The Shape anyway. The sheriff later gives one to his daughter’s dumb boyfriend, but The Shape pulls it out of his hands and impales him with it. One admirable citizen is part three’s Good Samaritan gas station attendant (Essex Smith), who brings an injured man to the hospital. In one of the series’ very few hints of racial tension, the poor man is convinced that he will be blamed, but fulfills his duty anyway. He’s setting a good example for Laurie’s neighbours in the first film, who, when she comes screaming for help at their door, just turn the lights off. (To be fair, the neighbours who try to help Loomis’s nurse Marion in H20 end up getting killed.) In the original Celtic tradition, 1 November was the beginning of winter, and the night before – marked by the festival of Samhain – was when the barriers between the living and the dead were thinnest. You’d wear a mask to protect yourself from the spirits of the dead by causing them to confuse you for one of their own. ‘Halloween III: Season of the Witch’ (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1983) In a sense, The Shape reverses that concept. He is Death, but wearing a mask allows him to blend in with other holiday revellers. In both 5 and Resurrection he’s mistaken for pranksters disguised as him. Conversely, other people’s similar masks cause them to be mistaken for The Shape – in II, Ben Tramer is run over and set on fire in a case of mistaken identity. In 5, Spitz pranks the police and his girlfriend with a mask. If you think bringing Druids into this is a stretch, talk to Loomis, who brings up Samhain and fire rituals in II. Or talk to parts three and six, which both bring religion into the equation through contemporary cults building from ancient Celtic beliefs. In 6 we learn that, all along, Michael had been chosen by the regressive Druidic Thorn Cult to ritually sacrifice his next of kin on Samhain, when a certain constellation is visible. In the opening they have Jamie on a gurney, she’s about to give birth, and, as they roll her through hallways, the hospital decor gives way to torches and stone walls – they plan to take her baby for either a sacrifice or a recruit. In other words, they’re violating Jamie’s reproductive freedom, forcing their religion on her body. Rites before rights. In III – a story about deadly Halloween masks – cultists are forcing their backwards beliefs on us through capitalism. In this sense, the cult works less as a metaphor for religious zealotry than for the differing needs of a corporation and the community that surrounds it. Santa Mira, California is a company town, home of Silver Shamrock Novelty, the proto-Silicon Valley behemoth creating a high tech, mass-produced product that is heavily advertised to and coveted by children all across the country. The opening scene victim is basically a whistleblower, killed for trying to warn the world of their plans. Their CEO Mr. Cochrane has enough clout to spirit a woman maimed by one of their products to their ‘most marvelous facility for emergency treatment’. That treatment literally turns workers into automatons – biomechanical drones filled with clockwork and slime, willing to kill whistleblowers for the boss and very professionally self-immolate when the job is done. It’s unlikely that they unionise, or need vacation time or bonuses. The ideal employee. This is the trouble with allowing corporations to become too powerful – they pretend like they share the values of the community, but often they don’t. In this case, they follow ancient Celtic occultism and are creating masks equipped with special chips that, when activated by a special Halloween TV broadcast, will cause their wearers to melt into piles of goo and bugs and snakes. Which there should be regulations against, but the FCC is so compromised these days. I have family in broadcasting, and recently toured a building housing several different radio stations. It was the weekend and all the studios were dark, their shows playing from monitors and lights dancing up and down on the boards, but we didn’t see a single other person in the building, not even a janitor. I bring this up because of the climactic scene in which Dr. Challis calls the TV stations from a pay phone, begging them not to play the deadly broadcast. I always thought it was ludicrous that he manages to get two stations shut off that way. But if it happened now, obviously, there wouldn’t even be that slim chance. No-one would be there to answer the phone. Maybe you’d have to @ them on Twitter. In Resurrection it’s a start-up that tries to profit from evil, a webcam feed called Dangertainment that hypes up a live broadcast from the Myers house, where most of the participants are murdered while home viewers laugh and cheer, thinking it’s fake. And in the sequel to the remake it’s Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) who profiteers, cashing in on his psychiatric failure in order to sell books and speaking engagements. His crassness is criticised by the father of Laurie’s murdered friend Lisa, by Sheriff Brackett, and even by his own publicist. ‘Halloween’ (David Gordon Green, 2018) But the thing about true evil is that there doesn’t even have to be money involved. Death doesn’t need to get paid. In II, 4, 5, 6, H20 and Rob Zombie’s 2007 and 2009 films, Laurie, Jamie and Jamie’s baby are all marked by their familial connections. Halloween protagonists are comforted by non-genetic family – friends, adopted parents and siblings – but doomed by their actual relations. They can’t control who they were born to, but they’re cursed by it, worrying that their brother/uncle will find them or, in some cases, that they will inherit his evil. This is the Shape that haunts me most: the spectre of a hereditary disease that killed my dad, and could come for me some day. Even those who survive The Shape – like any form of violence or trauma – can be marked for life. In Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (2009) his version of Laurie suffers from intense Michael Myers nightmares. She lives with Annie, whose face is covered in knife scars, but who seems less psychologically damaged. In the director’s cut the two constantly fight, but in the theatrical cut they have a sweet bond as fellow survivors. When Laurie finds out that she’s related to Michael and takes it out on her friend, it separates the two right when they need each other the most. Laurie ends the movie smiling to herself in the sanitorium, and it could be explained as a genetic inheritance, some sort of supernatural transference, or as the result of extreme trauma. In 6, grown-up Tommy Doyle (now played by Paul Rudd) is still tormented by the memory of Michael Myers. He lives in a boarding house with a deranged woman who claims to have been Michael’s babysitter on the night he killed his sister. In 4, even Laurie’s daughter Jamie, who was not alive during the attacks, has nightmares and visions about The Shape. In 5, having been stalked and arguably possessed by him, she’s lost the ability to speak. In H20, Laurie has tried ‘12 steps, self-help, group therapy, shrinks meditation. Everything.’ Her cabinet is full of pills for dealing with her nightmares, and she’s labelled ‘a functioning alcoholic’ by her son, whom she keeps under lock and key. She constantly imagines Michael in reflections and shadows. Until she decides she can’t run anymore. When Laurie chases Michael Myers with an axe, to her it’s her brother who killed her friends and ruined her life. But to us it’s also The Shape, and The Shape is the inexplicability of random violence, the inevitability of death, the neglect of civil responsibilities, the failure of institutions, the intrusion of regressive beliefs on our lives, the inescapability of family ties, or traumatic memories. So – just as the character of The Shape is repeatedly resurrected by a succession of rights-holders, filtered through the worldviews of new storytellers, all working towards a more accurate reconstruction of that original mask – any attempt to explain or understand him has failed to demystify him enough to stop him. The forces he represents are forever. As Tommy Doyle says in 6, ‘You can’t control evil. You can lock it up, burn it and bury it, and pray that it dies, but it never will. It just… rests awhile. You can lock your doors, and say your prayers, but the evil is out there… waiting. And maybe, just maybe, it’s closer than you think.’ And yet, doesn’t it feel good that, forty years later, Laurie too has come back from the dead, and we’re still here with her, and we’re not too scared to face him again? Evil is eternal, but so too are its opposing forces. For every Shape there are a whole town of babysitters and doctors and sheriffs and orderlies and responsible gas station attendants, and most of us will get the chance to last a while. If we just try our best to keep the kids safe and answer the door when the neighbours come knocking, maybe we’ll be okay. The post The Shape of Evil: Confronting darkness through the ‘Halloween’ series appeared first on VERN'S REVIEWS on the FILMS of CINEMA. #Slashers #BlogPost(shortForWeblog) #JohnCarpenter #Halloween #Essays

Arplis - News source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Arplis-News/~3/4K31kNiQ7cc/two-years-ago-but-it-seems-closer-to-ten-a-nice-deputy-editor-for-a-new-publication-approached-me-to-write-a-piece

[kingofthewilderwest]

what's your thoughts on the clone!shiro theory?

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for sending me this ask. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the theories too. I am extremely excited to talk about this. Honestly, before you asked me about the clone!Shiro theory, I was undecided and personally wavering between several different options. I couldn’t tell what to think. Now that I’ve gone through, watched the entire series anew, and carefully studied all relevant scenes about Shiro… I must say… S3 clone!Shiro theory looks like the real deal.

It really looks like clone!Shiro is the real deal truth. I’m now FIRM in the camp that S3 Shiro is a clone and I’ve got a bunch of reasons analyzed below the Read More.

I haven’t been closely reading everyone’s arguments and analyses about clone!Shiro. I know some of the basic claims but haven’t read other fans’ meta in depth. So what I’m going to be saying here is going to be almost entirely my personal, novel observations. Here goes my thorough reasoning why.

Possible Explanations for Shiro’s Clone

I looked at the entire series. Voltron is amazing for subtle foreshadowing… for instance, Keith’s Galra blade even makes an appearance in S1 E1. So I knew that information about Shiro and his potential clone could be anywhere. Restricting myself to studying just “The Journey” could have been limiting myself to key information about what is going on with Shiro.

I checked out all of Shiro’s flashbacks, tried to study how and why he disappeared in S2, looked at his personality in “Tailing a Comet” and “The Legend Begins,” listened to all his conversations with people like Sendak and Haggar about his imprisonment period, and basically combed over Voltron. I’m not going to mention everything I observed, even if minute observations throughout the series helped me make my decision. I was trying to look at all possibilities and see where evidence supported or nullified these possibilities.

To me there seemed to be lots of different options to comb over, including:

S1-2 Shiro was the real Shiro and S3 was a clone. The cloning project could have begun either before Shiro’s first escape or following the S2 finale. Either way, the intent of creating the clone would be to infiltrate Voltron. Starting the cloning process after S2 would make more sense; while Ulaz released Shiro so that he could have a shot at finding Voltron, presumably the Galra fleet did not know that was Shiro’s mission when he escaped… whereas by the end of S2, Shiro is the obvious Black Lion Paladin and a good person to clone for infiltration.

S1-2 Shiro was the clone Shiro and S3 Shiro was the real deal. I considered this a real possibility due to Shiro’s long hair in S3 E5 “The Journey.” The length of his hair suggests around two years of growth… presumably around the length of time since twenty-four year old Shiro got kidnapped by Galra on Kerberos. If the Galra had held onto Shiro for two years (aka, we met a clone in S1 after a year of imprisonment, and the middle of S3 is one year after the start of S1), then the hair growth is the right, realistic length for the time period.

S1-3 is all genuine Shiro. He just happened to get captured by the Galra twice and managed to escape them twice. Tough luck, buddy.

S1-2 is the real Shiro and so is S3 Shiro, but the latter has been mentally altered by the Galra. Shiro is seen gripping his head in pain when he is escaping the Galra ship in “The Journey,” and in the next episode he also makes a comment about having a peculiar headache. The headache could be a sign of subtle Galra psychological control. This one is something I seriously considered, but it wouldn’t make as much sense for the Galra to create that short-haired clone we see at the start of S3 E5.

Now, since Shiro escaped the Galra twice, it seemed especially important to compare the two incidences. I wanted to watch S2 E3 “Shiro’s Escape” to see if I could spot parallels, inconsistencies, or clues between Shiro’s two alleged escapes. Comparing the two escapes helped me decide that S3 Shiro has to be a clone. But most of the information about what has happened to Shiro can be found in “The Journey.”

Lack of Physical Restraints

In S2 E3 “Shiro’s Escape” we see that Shiro was strapped down to an operating table for experiments. Ulaz released Shiro from physical restraints that were at his wrists and ankles. There was no way Shiro could have left his imprisonment without the assistance of someone else.

In contrast, when Shiro wakes up in S3 E5 “The Journey,” he has no physical restraints on him. Considering as he is a talented fighter with a powerful mechanical arm… not to mention a Paladin of Voltron and one of the most dangerous people to the Galra Empire… it seems very fishy that the Galra wouldn’t have him restrained.

He literally just wakes up and steps off the table in his “second” escape.

Now the fact that he sees Ulaz in “The Journey” could potentially explain why he has no restraints. Maybe Ulaz released him through the controls. But given as Ulaz appears to have died in S2, given as Ulaz vanishes when Shiro looks at him, given as Shiro has frequent PTSD flashbacks, and given as Shiro appears to be mentally unsteady when he’s waking up here… it seems more likely to me that he is hallucinating Ulaz. Something like that.

(Apparition!Ulaz is the hardest-to-explain element for me).

Shiro’s Long Hair

Shiro’s hair is important. It’s very important. Shiro’s hair actually turned out to be the key element I needed to figure out who was the clone and who wasn’t. 

At first, relevant Voltron timeline was a struggle for me. I had to consider multiple things such as:

How long had it been since Shiro encountered Galra on Kerberos?

How long had it been since Shiro disappeared at the end of S2?

The reason why this is important is because Shiro’s hair length suggests two years of growth. For fun(?), we can even compare it to my current hair growth, which is two years of not being cut. These photographs are literally taken one year apart from another: August 2015, August 2016, and August 2017.

Shiro’s long hair length is akin to my two year hair growth:

So timeline is important. Would it be realistic for Shiro to have this much hair growth and so little facial hair growth between his disappearance in S2 E13 “Blackout and his escape in S3 E5 “The Journey”?

On one side, the Paladins certainly give time for Shiro to come back, and they go about doing some diplomatic errands and missions that would take time. Reasonably, decent time has passed before Keith takes over the Black Lion. It’s also to note that neither Keith nor anyone else makes a comment that Shiro’s hair growth is strange, suggesting that they are either unobservant about details, or that the hair length is unsurprising.

But on the other side, to me it doesn’t feel reasonable that two years would have passed between Zarkon’s defeat and Lotor’s appearance. Zarkon in a two year coma without Haggar acting? Lotor taking that long to get to Haggar? The Paladins also treat their loss of Shiro with raw enough emotions that it seems far less than two years have passed. So, while it’s weird the Paladins don’t make note of Shiro’s odd hair length, maybe they’re so overwhelmed to reunite that the long hair slipped their minds.

So Shiro’s hair seems to be too long for the likely time period between S2 and S3. This is why I didn’t throw out the possibility that maybe Shirolocks is the same individual who got kidnapped on Kerberos, that this real Shiro never escaped the Galra until S3, and that S1-2 Shiro was a clone. Lance, Keith, Pidge, and Hunk meet Shiro at the Garrison a year after his disappearance. It wouldn’t be that strange for a year to have passed between S1 and S3. This means two years would have passed for a real Shiro to grow his hair this length.

But! Other material seems to throw this idea out the window, or at least make it less likely. Haggar calls Shiro “Champion” in S1 E13 “The Black Paladin,” suggesting he is the same individual who was obviously Shiro and fought in the gladiator ring. The rest of the conversation makes more sense if we look at S1-2 Shiro as the real Shiro. And more evidence from “The Journey” ultimately distills (in my opinion) the idea that Shirolocks could be real!Shiro imprisoned by the Galra for two years.

For instance, why would the unreleased Shiro have the neat Shirocut, but not the escapee? That’s weird.

Subject Y0XT39

There’s a very brief flashback Shiro has when he’s on the ice planet. For me, this brief flashback is the most important evidence that S3 Shiro is a clone.

During this flashback, we hear Galra speak these words above him:

Subject Y0XT39 has normal response to optic stimuli. Approved for use in Operation Kuron.

There are several things to note about these two sentences:

Subject Y0XT39: This term suggests that there are multiple subjects for an experiment, or at least multiple potential subjects being considered. However, since Shiro is the Black Paladin and the Galra know it, they’re not going to experiment on him like they would some other random person. Shiro’s too valuable now. The Galra would want to use their capture of the Black Paladin to the fullest possible advantage. This means it’s not Shiro who is Subject Y0XT39… but that Subject YOXT39 is meant to replicate Shiro.

Normal response to optic stimuli: Presumably Galra would not be hugely attentive to whether or not real!Shiro had typical visual responses. Shiro has always had vision, and so would be the case for most specimens of any sighted species the Galra came across. Especially, the fact that this subject’s visual responses are connected with it being approved for Operation Kuron… suggests that this is something that is made, and that the visual success is a breakthrough or important “checkpoint” in a cloning creation process.

Operation Kuron: the word “operation” is typically used for things like… you know… infiltration or other important missions.

The big question to ask is whether or not Subject Y0XT39 is the short haired or long haired Shiro. Watching Operation Kuron’s stages clarify that long-haired Shiro is Subject Y0XT39. The Galra watch Shiropunzel escape at the same time they talk about Operation Kuron Stage Three… not at all paying heed to the short-haired Shiro they still have. Given as they state Subject Y0XT39 - the clone - is approved for Operation Kuron, and this is the Shiro that passes all three stages of Operation Kuron… then long-haired Shiro is Subject Y0XT39.

So the fact that long-haired Shiro is Subject Y0XT39 gives us a huge hint he’s a clone. It’s not that they created a clone and released the original. This information about the long-haired Shiro pins him as the fake.

Operation Kuron Stages

In a very brief amount of time, we watch Operation Kuron go through three stages. These stages occur within a matter of minutes… at the same time long-haired Shiro goes through his key points of his escape. It doesn’t look coincidental.

Operation Kuron Stage One occurs when Shiropunzel sees the short haired version of himself on the table. The Galra are staring at the short haired Shiro when they announce Stage One is complete and they are proceeding to Stage Two. At first, this made me curious. Why were they were so focused on the short haired Shiro here? If Shirolocks were the central subject of Operation Kuron, would they be paying so much attention to the short haired guy in the vat?

My answer: Yes. There’s an interesting correlation between the Galra attending to short-haired Shiro… and long-haired Shiro waking up. The short-haired Shiro is terrifyingly blank, vapid, empty, like a shell. His eyes stare straightforward and he doesn’t move. It’s almost as though they transferred the consciousness of the real Shiro with short hair… to the clone on the operating table. Thus, Stage One of the operation would be setting up a mental link between real!Shiro and Subject Y0XT39… thus causing Subject Y0XT39 to wake up and try to escape.

Stage Two is vague, but it appears to coincide with the moment Galra sentries start firing at the long-haired Shiro. Presumably, Stage Two is getting long-haired Shiro off the ship.

We don’t hear when Stage Two is completed, but we hear about Stage Three moments later. This stage clarifies that the long-haired Shiro is the central subject of Operation Kuron. Stage Three is completed shortly after Shiro’s escape ship has been hit by Galra weaponry and he is hurtling toward the planet surface.

The ominous thing is that once Shiro’s ship gets grazed, the Galra stop firing at him. The commanding officer aboard calmly watches Shiro descend to the planet surface and says, “Notify command headquarters. Operation Kuron Stage Three is underway.” 

The Galra intentionally don’t shoot Shiro out of the sky. The Galra intentionally don’t follow him. The Galra intentionally let Shiro get away. At the same time they’re watching him leave, they’re saying their operation has successfully reached its third stage.

Other Small Details

During Shiro’s first escape, a Galra begins to put anesthesia into Shiro’s left arm. Ulaz stops the Galra and says he wants Shiro to be awake enough to feel the next experiment.

We also glimpse this seemingly same anesthesia in “The Journey”. This correlates to when the short haired Shiro is seen to be unresponsive. This suggests that the Galra put this Shiro under. And at the same time this Shiro went under, the other long-haired Shiro woke up.

Beyond that, we see that long haired Shiro suffers strange headaches. He clutches his forehead when he is making his escape in “The Journey.” 

One episode later, he comments he’s “just trying to get rid of this weird headache.”

At first part of me wondered if this meant that the Galra were influencing the real Shiro’s mind. But what we see all in “The Journey” neatly aligns with clone!Shiro concepts. The fact that short-haired Shiro goes under the same time Shirolocks wakes up means there could have been a transfer of consciousness from the real Shiro to the clone. The clone would be experiencing headaches because of this unnatural mental link.

To Recapitulate…

Shiro’s hair suggests two year hair growth… which would be nearly impossible if it were the real Shiro who disappeared at the end of S2. It seems unlikely that two years have passed between S2 and the middle of S3. A clone with longer hair, however, is not hard to create.

The long-haired Shiro is the one who is labeled as Subject Y0XT39… and this subject is tested for things like visual perception, something that would make more sense if the Galra were working on a clone, than operating on Shiro himself.

At the same time Operation Kuron Stage One is underway, the short haired Shiro (aka the Shiro with the logical haircut for the timeline!) is creepily put unconscious… while the long-haired Shiro suddenly wakes up. This Subject Y0XT39 Shiro continues to experience headaches, even after he leaves the Galra behind… suggesting there was a transfer of consciousness from the real Shiro to this clone.

The long-haired Shiro wakes up by himself in a room not guarded… and he’s not even in restraints. It’s frankly really easy for him to run out and escape.

When Shiro escapes and flies away from the Galra ship, the Galra quit firing upon him when he gets hit once and don’t make any efforts to pursue, track, or stop him. He’s intentionally allowed to flee.

At the same time the Galra watch him fall to the planet surface, they announce that Stage Three of their operation is successfully under way.

All this together really really really supports the idea that S3 Shiro is a clone. The man the Galra still have aboard their ship has to be the real Shiro.

One Other Worrisome Thing

I don’t think Subject Y0XT39 knows he’s a clone. He seems too sincere in his statements and actions. The Galra let him escape on seemingly his own free will, an escape in which he had to fight his way to a pod. They had him close enough to rebels to make contact with them and learn about Voltron, but he was still far enough from Voltron that it wouldn’t be suspicious to him about where he was. The Galra seem to be manipulating Subject Y0XT39 such that he believes he is the real deal Shiro.

But there appears to be some worrisome things happening when Subject Y0XT39 is aboard the Castle of Lions. I’m not going to get into an analysis of Shiro’s behavior and personality… but I am going to bring up this:

In this moment, Voltron pulls up a shield for defense. Shiro tells Keith that Voltron needs to lower the shield to shoot the cargo ship. Keith gives the order. Before Voltron moves to act, Lotor tells Acxa that Voltron is going to lower the shield and shoot the cargo ship.

How the fuck did Lotor know Voltron was about to lower a shield that had just been raised up… and fire the cargo ship? How could Lotor possibly know? 

Note that Lotor doesn’t know what Voltron is going to do until Shiro and Keith have their exchange. Both Shiro and Keith talk about lowering the shield and shooting the cargo ship. However, given as Lotor has had very limited interactions with Voltron and would not have had the chance to tap into the Lions, he probably could not have been listening in through Keith. 

But maybe he could have been listening in through Shiro.

Operation Kuron was reported to Galra central command. Lotor, current leader of the Galra, could easily have accessed this information. 

Infiltration… complete?

[arplis]

Arplis - News: Two years ago, but it seems closer to ten, a nice deputy editor for a new publication approached me to write a piece

He had been reading me forever and was working for this company with a bunch of money invested in it, could pay pretty well and expose me to some new readers not only on the web but a print magazine he compared to Rolling Stone. I said yes and we were going back and forth about what my first piece should be, and then my mom died. Freelance gigs are usually a little stressful and all-consuming for me, but for some reason I still wanted to do it. Looking back at my emails, I was literally trying to schedule around the days off I had other than the one for the funeral. I agreed to write about the Halloween series, in conjunction with the upcoming David Gordon Green sequel. I watched all ten existing movies (including remakes) and came up with this piece that ties them all together thematically, at times addressing the grief and fears I was dealing with at the time. I took longer than I was supposed to and ended up with twice the agreed upon word count and I was so unsure anybody else would be interested that in my email I said, “If you don’t want it I understand, just let me know and I’ll use it on outlawvern.com and we’ll come up with something else for me to work on for you.” Then the magazine (you will never see this coming) ran out of money, all the editors resigned, I don’t believe I ever got paid and the article could only be seen on the Wayback Machine. But I got no regrets because working on this helped me in a tough period of my life and gave me a better understanding of my relationship with the genre. So I’m proud to repost it here. (I’ve kept their edits, so you’ll notice some British spellings in here.) THE SHAPE OF EVIL: Confronting darkness through the ‘Halloween’ series 26 October 2018 08:59 John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) was, in its time, the most successful independent movie ever made, and its influence still echoes through cinema four decades later. It cemented many of the hallmarks of the slasher subgenre: unstoppable masked killers, murder sprees tied to holidays, a troubling connection between sexual activity and death. And it became one of the most enduring brands in horror history, spawning a series of eight sequels so far (including a new one this month), undeterred even by a 2007 remake that had its own sequel. Some may wonder why, in these dark times of mass shootings, human rights abuses, corrupt regimes, collapsing institutions and impending environmental catastrophe, anyone would want to watch ten movies about an escaped mental patient stabbing people to death. Personally, I found catharsis in revisiting them all this month while grieving over the loss of my parents to long, cruel illnesses. If you look at the series as a mass-market treatise on humankind’s struggles against death and evil you can focus less on the horror of being stabbed and more on the possibility of getting away. In the opening scene of Halloween, as well as the closing of part four and other moments throughout the series, our viewpoint is from behind the mask of the killer. Lesser Halloween sequels, particularly the sixth and eighth entries, try to further implicate us in the evil by creating victims who ‘deserve it’ in cinematic terms – an abusive husband, an obnoxious shock jock. But, for the majority of the series, we identify with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and the other protagonists who follow her, rooting for them so we can survive by proxy. We watch the masked killer Michael Myers in movies to face our worst fears in a forum where they can never get us, can never truly win. Being a fan of more than one Halloween movie is more complicated than it may sound. It requires canonical decisions, like some Video Age equivalent of ancient scriptures. It would be easy to recognise only the original Carpenter productions, Halloween and Halloween II (1981), with or without the narratively unrelated Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1982). Some fans who came up in the Eighties may also acknowledge Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Dwight H. Little, 1988) and Halloween 5: the Revenge of Michael Myers (Dominique Othenin-Girard, 1989), but the cliffhanger of 5 demands the resolution of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Joe Chappelle, 1995), which many reject due to its out-of-left-field retconning in of a cult that has been controlling Michael since the beginning. Even those who accept that twist have to decide between the theatrical version and the drastically different ‘Producer’s Cut’, once a semi-legendary bootleg, now an official release. ‘Halloween’ (John Carpenter, 1978) To enjoy them all you have to accept multiple realities, because the timeline expands and contracts like an accordion. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (Steve Miner, 1998) erases everything after II. Laurie faked her death and went into hiding, which could explain her absence in 4-6, except that now she doesn’t have a daughter named Jamie (Danielle Harris). Personally, I like the H20 continuity as long as I can disavow Halloween Resurrection (Rick Rosenthal, 2002), which turns the ending of H20 on its head so that Michael survives and Laurie doesn’t, like some shocking cinematic Supreme Court ruling. And now David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018), a sequel, not remake, of John Carpenter’s movie of the same title, will tell us that there is only John Carpenter’s Halloween. It even erases II – which continued on the same night and was written, scored and reshot by Carpenter – so Laurie and Michael are no longer siblings. (Which means the TV version of the first film is also out.) Like Michael’s body at the end of the first film, all those sequels were there just a second ago, and now they’re gone. They could be anywhere, or everywhere. But through all its repetitions and resets, the series keeps performing the same ritual: hiding a pure, unknowable malevolence behind a rubber human face and sending it into our civilisation to see if we can survive its wrath. In all but one of these films, that force of evil is Michael Myers, who at the age of six put on a clown mask, stabbed his sister Judith just moments before their parents got home, and never spoke again. Since Michael saw Judith fooling around with her boyfriend before the murder, people often interpret some sort of prudish anti-sex judgment behind his actions, something that became a cliché in the wave of slasher movies that followed in Halloween’s wake. But I think we only assign an explanation like that to protect ourselves from our fear of the inexplicable. There is no cause or motive. Even by the eighth film, so little is known about Michael that the producers of a live webcast from his house have to plant fake props to imply ‘something that might explain why Michael Myers went bad’. After his first murder, the kid and his parents look equally dumbfounded. They have no idea why it happened. So grown up Michael Myers and his mask represent the unknowable and the incomprehensible. To keep him extra-mysterious, his head stays out of frame while he stalks the neighbourhood during the day; even though, with close examination, you can see enough to tell that he’s wearing the mask. It’s worth noting that we actually can glimpse his face when he’s stealing the car at the beginning of the first film and can see it clearly when Laurie pulls off his mask at the end. His expressions reveal so little emotion or intelligence that it’s easy to forget those shots and think of the mask as his true face. He’s as much an automaton as the zombie-like gangsters in Carpenter’s earlier Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). His psychiatrist of 15 years, Dr. Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence), gave up on Michael’s humanity in 1972 and considers him a personification of evil, as in, ‘He’s gone, he’s gone from here. The evil is gone!’ He says that ‘what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply evil.’ He refers to him as ‘it’, instead of him. He tells the sheriff that ‘Death has come to your little town.’ None of this seems like an appropriate way for a doctor to talk about a patient, but it belies Loomis’s diagnosis that this man in the mask is no longer whoever (or whatever) Michael Myers was before he snapped and killed his sister. Tommy Doyle, the kid whom Laurie is babysitting, calls Michael ‘the boogeyman’, a description that Laurie eventually adopts. Not even the end credits consider him to be a person anymore – they call him ‘The Shape’ (a tradition repeated in 2, 6, H20 and the 2018 sequel). And though 4 and 5 are chapters that credit him with his human name, 4 has a preacher who tells us that ‘Apocalypse, end of the world, Armageddon – it’s always got a face and a name… you can’t kill damnation, mister. It don’t die like a man dies.’ And 5 emphasises Michael’s Death status by having him wield a scythe like the grim reaper. He finds it in a barn, and uses it to kill a more watered-down personification of evil: a partygoer in a sexy devil costume, armed with a legitimate farmer’s pitchfork. There’s a popular notion – fuelled by the theories of Randy in Scream (Wes Craven, 1996), themselves inspired by the ‘Final Girl’ concept in Carol J. Clover’s book Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film – that Laurie survives because she’s a virgin or a goody two-shoes. The latter is disprovable: Laurie shares two joints with Annie in the car. But I don’t see it as Laurie being rewarded for her good qualities. I see it as her having to go through all this because she’s the one that always has to deal with this shit while other people are out screwing around. That’s her personality and her lot in life. She runs errands for her dad’s real estate business, babysits to save up money, and takes care of Lindsey so that Annie can have fun with her boyfriend. Twenty years later, she’s the headmaster taking care of the rich people’s kids, and even then she stays behind and gets attacked by The Shape while most of the school has fun on a field trip. ‘Halloween II’ (Rick Rosenthal, 1981) A working title for Halloween was The Babysitter Murders, and though shifting the emphasis to the holiday setting was an ingenious hook, giving the heroine this societal role was also crucial. It’s this strange stage of growing-up where she’s not treated as an adult, yet trusted with the sacred task of protecting someone else’s children. Dr. Loomis held a related role – to understand young Michael and help him heal – but he has long since failed. Now his mission is just to tell everybody: Hey, this guy is evil, there was nothing I could do, now it’s your fault for not listening. His superiors pass the buck as well, declaring ‘I’m not responsible, Sam!’ Loomis wears a trench coat and carries a pistol, a self-styled warrior, a ‘good guy with a gun,’ our society’s prescription for murderers, terrorists, and other evils we don’t know how to understand. Not until part five, when he spends time with Jamie in a hospital, does he act like a child psychiatrist again. And he ends up yelling at her and being rightfully reprimanded by a nurse. In her status as a deputised adult, Laurie tries to console Tommy by telling him that there’s no such thing as a boogeyman. But after having been attacked, having shepherded the children to safety, and been rescued by Loomis, she breaks down and she and the doctor agree that that was the boogeyman that just came after her. The Shape has destroyed the comfort of her worldview. It is an evil that undermines belief in objective truth. When Halloween’s story continues in II, Laurie’s lacerations seem superficial, but she’s in such shock that they have to carry her out of the house on a stretcher, and she finds herself bed-ridden at Haddonfield Memorial. She has lost all agency, unable to even stop them from giving her a shot. The babysitter, having fulfilled her duty and returned her charges safely to their rightful guardians, now has no choice but to hand herself over to society’s official healers and protectors. But they are fallible. Sherriff Brackett (Charles Cyphers) wasn’t there to protect his own daughter, and has to end his shift to mourn. Some of the hospital staff are fucking around and don’t have their eye on the ball. The security guard is killed by the Shape, and a nurse who hasn’t been trained to use the walkie-talkie misses his message to call for help. Even safety regulations fail them – there is no way the sauna should be able to get to a temperature that’s actually labelled ‘scalding’ on the meter! The Shape repurposes that and other medical equipment (syringes, IVs) for killing, the opposite of their intended use. The Shape stalks his victims from where life begins, the maternity ward, across the medical facilities where we fight off death. The turning point comes when Laurie realises that she can’t count on the protection of society and must make a run for it. Loomis does protect her (by heroically blowing himself up with The Shape), and only after disobeying direct orders from the governor. Though III is the only Shape-less chapter – producer Carpenter’s once infamous, now generally appreciated attempt at an anthology series – its themes have much in common with II. Once again, the story begins with a victim taking refuge at a hospital, but this one is murdered by a killer who, rather than being burned up by Dr. Loomis, goes ahead and sets himself on fire. In the tradition of Loomis, Dr. Challis (Tom Atkins) is an MD who, upon witnessing bizarre happenings, abandons his role as a healer to become some sort of undercover vigilante detective. But it’s not always wise to take justice into your own hands. In 4, the old-timers at a bar form a posse and end up shooting an innocent man. And guns can’t really stop The Shape anyway. The sheriff later gives one to his daughter’s dumb boyfriend, but The Shape pulls it out of his hands and impales him with it. One admirable citizen is part three’s Good Samaritan gas station attendant (Essex Smith), who brings an injured man to the hospital. In one of the series’ very few hints of racial tension, the poor man is convinced that he will be blamed, but fulfills his duty anyway. He’s setting a good example for Laurie’s neighbours in the first film, who, when she comes screaming for help at their door, just turn the lights off. (To be fair, the neighbours who try to help Loomis’s nurse Marion in H20 end up getting killed.) In the original Celtic tradition, 1 November was the beginning of winter, and the night before – marked by the festival of Samhain – was when the barriers between the living and the dead were thinnest. You’d wear a mask to protect yourself from the spirits of the dead by causing them to confuse you for one of their own. ‘Halloween III: Season of the Witch’ (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1983) In a sense, The Shape reverses that concept. He is Death, but wearing a mask allows him to blend in with other holiday revellers. In both 5 and Resurrection he’s mistaken for pranksters disguised as him. Conversely, other people’s similar masks cause them to be mistaken for The Shape – in II, Ben Tramer is run over and set on fire in a case of mistaken identity. In 5, Spitz pranks the police and his girlfriend with a mask. If you think bringing Druids into this is a stretch, talk to Loomis, who brings up Samhain and fire rituals in II. Or talk to parts three and six, which both bring religion into the equation through contemporary cults building from ancient Celtic beliefs. In 6 we learn that, all along, Michael had been chosen by the regressive Druidic Thorn Cult to ritually sacrifice his next of kin on Samhain, when a certain constellation is visible. In the opening they have Jamie on a gurney, she’s about to give birth, and, as they roll her through hallways, the hospital decor gives way to torches and stone walls – they plan to take her baby for either a sacrifice or a recruit. In other words, they’re violating Jamie’s reproductive freedom, forcing their religion on her body. Rites before rights. In III – a story about deadly Halloween masks – cultists are forcing their backwards beliefs on us through capitalism. In this sense, the cult works less as a metaphor for religious zealotry than for the differing needs of a corporation and the community that surrounds it. Santa Mira, California is a company town, home of Silver Shamrock Novelty, the proto-Silicon Valley behemoth creating a high tech, mass-produced product that is heavily advertised to and coveted by children all across the country. The opening scene victim is basically a whistleblower, killed for trying to warn the world of their plans. Their CEO Mr. Cochrane has enough clout to spirit a woman maimed by one of their products to their ‘most marvelous facility for emergency treatment’. That treatment literally turns workers into automatons – biomechanical drones filled with clockwork and slime, willing to kill whistleblowers for the boss and very professionally self-immolate when the job is done. It’s unlikely that they unionise, or need vacation time or bonuses. The ideal employee. This is the trouble with allowing corporations to become too powerful – they pretend like they share the values of the community, but often they don’t. In this case, they follow ancient Celtic occultism and are creating masks equipped with special chips that, when activated by a special Halloween TV broadcast, will cause their wearers to melt into piles of goo and bugs and snakes. Which there should be regulations against, but the FCC is so compromised these days. I have family in broadcasting, and recently toured a building housing several different radio stations. It was the weekend and all the studios were dark, their shows playing from monitors and lights dancing up and down on the boards, but we didn’t see a single other person in the building, not even a janitor. I bring this up because of the climactic scene in which Dr. Challis calls the TV stations from a pay phone, begging them not to play the deadly broadcast. I always thought it was ludicrous that he manages to get two stations shut off that way. But if it happened now, obviously, there wouldn’t even be that slim chance. No-one would be there to answer the phone. Maybe you’d have to @ them on Twitter. In Resurrection it’s a start-up that tries to profit from evil, a webcam feed called Dangertainment that hypes up a live broadcast from the Myers house, where most of the participants are murdered while home viewers laugh and cheer, thinking it’s fake. And in the sequel to the remake it’s Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) who profiteers, cashing in on his psychiatric failure in order to sell books and speaking engagements. His crassness is criticised by the father of Laurie’s murdered friend Lisa, by Sheriff Brackett, and even by his own publicist. ‘Halloween’ (David Gordon Green, 2018) But the thing about true evil is that there doesn’t even have to be money involved. Death doesn’t need to get paid. In II, 4, 5, 6, H20 and Rob Zombie’s 2007 and 2009 films, Laurie, Jamie and Jamie’s baby are all marked by their familial connections. Halloween protagonists are comforted by non-genetic family – friends, adopted parents and siblings – but doomed by their actual relations. They can’t control who they were born to, but they’re cursed by it, worrying that their brother/uncle will find them or, in some cases, that they will inherit his evil. This is the Shape that haunts me most: the spectre of a hereditary disease that killed my dad, and could come for me some day. Even those who survive The Shape – like any form of violence or trauma – can be marked for life. In Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (2009) his version of Laurie suffers from intense Michael Myers nightmares. She lives with Annie, whose face is covered in knife scars, but who seems less psychologically damaged. In the director’s cut the two constantly fight, but in the theatrical cut they have a sweet bond as fellow survivors. When Laurie finds out that she’s related to Michael and takes it out on her friend, it separates the two right when they need each other the most. Laurie ends the movie smiling to herself in the sanitorium, and it could be explained as a genetic inheritance, some sort of supernatural transference, or as the result of extreme trauma. In 6, grown-up Tommy Doyle (now played by Paul Rudd) is still tormented by the memory of Michael Myers. He lives in a boarding house with a deranged woman who claims to have been Michael’s babysitter on the night he killed his sister. In 4, even Laurie’s daughter Jamie, who was not alive during the attacks, has nightmares and visions about The Shape. In 5, having been stalked and arguably possessed by him, she’s lost the ability to speak. In H20, Laurie has tried ‘12 steps, self-help, group therapy, shrinks meditation. Everything.’ Her cabinet is full of pills for dealing with her nightmares, and she’s labelled ‘a functioning alcoholic’ by her son, whom she keeps under lock and key. She constantly imagines Michael in reflections and shadows. Until she decides she can’t run anymore. When Laurie chases Michael Myers with an axe, to her it’s her brother who killed her friends and ruined her life. But to us it’s also The Shape, and The Shape is the inexplicability of random violence, the inevitability of death, the neglect of civil responsibilities, the failure of institutions, the intrusion of regressive beliefs on our lives, the inescapability of family ties, or traumatic memories. So – just as the character of The Shape is repeatedly resurrected by a succession of rights-holders, filtered through the worldviews of new storytellers, all working towards a more accurate reconstruction of that original mask – any attempt to explain or understand him has failed to demystify him enough to stop him. The forces he represents are forever. As Tommy Doyle says in 6, ‘You can’t control evil. You can lock it up, burn it and bury it, and pray that it dies, but it never will. It just… rests awhile. You can lock your doors, and say your prayers, but the evil is out there… waiting. And maybe, just maybe, it’s closer than you think.’ And yet, doesn’t it feel good that, forty years later, Laurie too has come back from the dead, and we’re still here with her, and we’re not too scared to face him again? Evil is eternal, but so too are its opposing forces. For every Shape there are a whole town of babysitters and doctors and sheriffs and orderlies and responsible gas station attendants, and most of us will get the chance to last a while. If we just try our best to keep the kids safe and answer the door when the neighbours come knocking, maybe we’ll be okay. The post The Shape of Evil: Confronting darkness through the ‘Halloween’ series appeared first on VERN'S REVIEWS on the FILMS of CINEMA. #Slashers #BlogPost(shortForWeblog) #JohnCarpenter #Halloween #Essays

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/two-years-ago-but-it-seems-closer-to-ten-a-nice-deputy-editor-for-a-new-publication-approached-me-to-write-a-piece