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yelena-bellova · 3 years

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Safe Haven: tfatws!Bucky Barnes x fem!reader - Chapter Six

chapter five - Chapter Six: Ten Minutes - chapter seven

Series Masterlist

Plot: Y/n, Sam, Bucky and Zemo investigate around Riga for any sign of the Flag Smashers, Y/n and Bucky spend some unconventional time together.

Word Count: 6.9k

Warnings: spoilers for episode. 4, a little language, flirty Bucky (which is a warning in and of itself, Walker’s an asshole, Y/n is still a badass, sloooow burn, lil’ bit of spice 🔥

A/N: First off, I just want to thank everybody for all the kind messages/asks/comments you've left on this series. I honestly didn’t expect this kind of response when I started writing this and have been blown away with each chapter. Seriously, it means a lot! 🥰 Okay so I’m not gonna lie, this chapter’s a little slower than usual whereas next chapter is going to be...well, if you’re reading this you’ve seen the episode so you obviously know lol. But this chapter sets up some pretty big shit so it’s not useless, enjoy!!

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I felt like a bit of a romantic cliche as I threw myself facedown on Zemo’s living room couch, hot off the heels of my realization about Bucky. But seeing as we didn’t have any leads and the Super Soldier wasn’t back from his “walk,” I felt I had earned it. “Hey,” I felt the weight of a jacket land on my back, “Whatcha got going on in that head?” I chuckled into the pillow, if Sam could see the thoughts bouncing around my brain, he’d have his wings on in a flash and would be flying around the city hunting Bucky down. Luckily, Bucky wasn’t the only thing I was thinking about. I turned on my side to see him sitting on a barstool in the kitchen, “I don’t think I give you enough credit for what you do.” “What are you talking about?”

“I knew that avenging wasn’t some cushy day job but,” I swung my legs over the couch and sat up, “I never realized how hard it actually was and this isn’t even one of the harder missions!” Sam smirked and raised his brows, “An army of Super Soldiers isn’t enough for you? You want more?”

I rolled my eyes, “I’m just saying, you’ve faced a whole lot worse. I tangle with a couple bounty hunters and I’m gonna be aching for weeks,” I rose with a groan, eliciting a chuckle out of Sam, “Don’t get me wrong, I like what we’re doing, but I definitely underestimated how challenging it was.” “You’re doing a better job than you think,” Sam said, “I know yesterday was hard on you, but you’re handling all of the really well. I’m proud of you.” I made my way over to him and put an arm around his shoulder, “Still regret bringing me?” “Nah,” he locked an arm around my waist and pulled me into his side, “It’s nice having you here, it’s like having a little piece of home with me.” Since we were in grade school, Sam had been one of the only constants in my life and sitting in the middle of Latvia chasing down Super Soldiers, I had never been more thankful for him. I knew that becoming Captain America was out of the question but if ever there were a Cap that I would follow, it would have been Sam.

The front door and the bathroom door opened at the same time, revealing Bucky back from his walk and Zemo from his shower.

“Well, the Wakandans are here,” Bucky announced as he came to the center of the room, “They want Zemo. Bought us some more time.”

“Were you followed?” Sam asked, both of us unwrapping our arms from around one another. “No.” “How can you be so sure?” Zemo asked, staring out the stained glass windows.

“Cause I know when I’m being followed,” Bucky replied, coming to stand across from me on the other side of the kitchen island.

“It was sweet of you to defend me at least,” Zemo said.

“Hey, you shut it,” Sam turned his attention to the Baron, “No one’s defending you. You killed Nagal.”

“Do we really have to litigate what may or may not have happened?” Zemo replied.

I leaned up against the island and squinted at the man, “There’s nothing to litigate, we all watched you shoot the guy.”

“Sam, Y/n…” We both turned to face Bucky, staring down at his phone intently. “Karli bombed a GRC supply depot.”

“What?” I said breathlessly, “Were there any casualties?”

“Eleven injured, three dead,” Bucky read the article, “They have a list of demands and are promising more attacks if those demands aren’t met.”

Zemo walked around the island to grab a pack of cookies, “She’s getting worse. I have the will to complete this mission. Do the three of you?” “She’s just a kid,” Sam said calmly, defending the young girl so many saw as a villain.

“You’re seeing something in her that isn’t there,” Zemo waved him off, “You’re clouded by it. She’s a supremacist. The very concept of a Super Soldier will always trouble people. It’s that warped aspiration that led to Nazis, to Ultron…to the Avengers.” “Hey, those are our friends you’re talking about,” Sam stepped quickly.

“The Avengers, not the Nazis,” Bucky followed up with.

Sam continued, “So, Karli is radicalized, but there has to be a peaceful way to stop her.”

“The desire to become a superhuman cannot be separated from supremacist ideals,” Zemo said, “Anyone with that serum is inherently on that path. She will not stop. She will escalate until you kill her,” the room’s silence became a whole lot heavier, “Or she kills you.” “Maybe you’re wrong, Zemo,” Bucky spoke up, “The serum never corrupted Steve.” “Yeah,” I agreed, peeking over my shoulder at Bucky, “But it didn’t corrupt you either.” Zemo picked up a ring shaped cookie on his finger and pointed to Bucky, “Touché, but there has never been another Steve Rogers, has there?” He popped the cookie in his mouth and shrugged, turning away from us to make further use of the kitchen.

“Well,” Bucky made his way to the living room, “Maybe we should give him to the Wakandans right now.” “And you’ll give up your tour guide?” Zemo asked, searching through cupboards.

“Yes,” Bucky answered harshly before sitting himself on the couch, leaning his head back and shutting his eyes.

“From my understanding,” Sam said, “Donya is like a pillar of the community, right? So when I was a kid, my TT passed away-“ “Your-“ Bucky squeezed his eyes shut and leaned forward, “Your TT?” “Yeah, my TT, yeah,” Sam replied plainly.

“Who is your TT?” Bucky annoyedly and confusedly asked. I chuckled at the exchange from beside Sam, “His aunt. The whole neighborhood had this big ceremony, it lasted like a week.” “Maybe they’re doing the same thing for Donya,” Sam finished.

“Worth a shot,” Bucky shrugged.

“Your TT would be proud of you,” Zemo said to Sam before tossing him a wrapped candy, “Turkish Delight, irresistible.” ——

We were out the door soon after and heading to Donya’s last known location, a refugee camp in the downtown area.

“Shame what’s become of this place,” Zemo commented when we arrived, “When I was young, we used to come here for fabulous dinners and parties. I knew nothing of the politics of the time, of course, but I remember it being beautiful.” It was hard to picture the beige building ever having been beautiful, the setting was so dismal and grey. It was filled with children and workers, refugees, who all collectively looked worn down. The GRC poster that hung on one of the walls that showed smiling families with their mission statement ‘Reset. Restore. Rebuild.’ was a stark contrast to what those words actually delivered.

“We’ll take a look around upstairs,” Sam said, gesturing to me before turning to Bucky, “See what you can find out and keep an eye on him.”

I left with Sam, climbing the quiet building’s staircase and wandering down the hall. Sam headed through an open doorway that led to a sewing room. “Hey, kid,” he called to one of them, “Excuse me,” he approached one of the only ones who hadn’t run out of the room at our presence, “You heard of Donya Madani?”

“Um,” the girl said, rising from her seat and making for another room, “No. Sorry, no.”

We stood there dumbstruck in the suddenly empty room, it wasn’t until Sam caught the Flag Smasher’s handprint symbol on a sewing box and pointed it out to me that the locked lips made sense. I took the lead and navigated through the crowded rooms, spotting another young person leaving at the sight of us. “Excuse me, do you know the name Donya Ma-“ The boy shut the door on me before I could finish my sentence, I turned to Sam who was close behind me. “Something’s not right,” I mumbled, walking in step with him further down the hall. We finally stumbled upon what looked like a classroom, one man crouched was next to a desk helping a kid and a table with two others who didn’t bolt at the sight of us.

“Excuse me,” Sam announced our presence, “Do you know a woman by the name of Donya Madani?”

The teacher stood to his full height, “We’re not refugees, for we have nothing to seek refuge from. We’re internationally- displaced persons, for what it’s worth, and we don’t trust outsiders.”

“No, I understand,” Sam stepped forward, “I’m not from here, but I have a pretty good track record of helping out.” “I know what happens when people say they’re going to help out,” the teacher tiredly stated, “Nothing. The Global Repatriation Council promised to send more teachers, supplies. That was six months ago.” “What’s your name? I can make a call,” Sam offered immediately, ever the helper.

“I know who you are, but I can’t trust you. I’m sorry,” the man dismissed him, grabbing his other two students and ushering them out of the room, “Let’s go.” The silence was sobering for us both, we may not have found anything about Donya but we’d certainly stumbled upon something of importance. And as we left the building with our heads metaphorically hung, I could feel that he was just as impacted as I was by it. “I didn’t realize it was so bleak,” I said as we went down the stairs, “The government’s done a great job of painting a different picture for people like us.”

“That could be said for a lot of things,” he replied, “But no, I didn’t think it was this bad either.”

We rejoined Bucky who was watching Zemo intently as he sat in front of a grouping of kids, a pile of candy in between them. “This is starting to feel like a dead end,” Sam commented.

“The hell is he doing?” Bucky accompanied.

“And why in Latvia does nobody raise an eyebrow at a stranger offering kids candy?” I observed as Zemo stood, approached the kids once more and came back to us. “Cute kids,” he smiled, leaving the three of us to share an unconvinced look after.

——

We returned to our hideout shortly after, defeated and all too aware of how fast the clock was ticking.

“Well, I got nothin’,” Bucky said as the three of us made our way to the couch, “No one’s talkin’ about Donya.” “Yeah, it’s because Karli is the one fighting for them,” Sam replied, “And she’s not wrong.” “What do you mean?” Bucky’s tone was low and exhausted, but I could have sworn that his eyes brightened for a millisecond when I plopped down next to him.

Sam sighed, “For five years, people have been welcomed into countries that have kept them out using barbwire. There were houses and jobs. Folks were happy to have people around to help them rebuild. It wasn’t just one community coming together, it was the entire world coming together. And then, boom,” he snapped his fingers, “Just like that, it goes right back to the way it used to be. To them, at least Karli’s doin’ something.” “He’s right,” I chimed in, memories of how the world was for five years flooded my brain, “Things were messy but they were…one. Everybody came together because we needed to, there was less room for segregation or prejudice. When things went back, the government made some really bad decisions. And for those of us who weren’t blipped, it was difficult to watch. I’m not saying that I support the Flag Smashers but I do understand why Karli’s doing what she’s doing.” “You really think her ends justify her means?” Bucky’s furrowed brows bounced between Sam and I, “Then she’s no different than him,” he gestured to Zemo who was making tea, “Or anybody else we’ve fought.” “I didn’t say that. She’s different,” I argued, tucking my legs under me and twisting to fully face him, “She's not fighting for word domination or something, she’s fighting for those who’ve lost everything. She’s just...misguided in her approach. ”

Zemo came and set the tray of cups and tea down on the table in front of us, a little too quiet. “That girl,” Bucky addressed him, “What’d she tell you?” The Baron kept up his silence as he thought to himself, eyes flicking between the three of us. “The funeral is this afternoon.” I blinked and awaited the rest of the answer, “That’s all you want to say?” “You know the Dora’s coming for you any minute,” Bucky stated, a bit of amusement in his eyes at the thought of the Wakandan warriors taking him away, “In fact, they’re probably lurking outside right now. Keep talking.” “Leaving you to turn on me once we get to Karli,” Zemo hummed, “I prefer to keep my leverage.” Exasperatedly, I looked over to Sam who looked just as done with the Sokovian royal as I was. Bucky rose from beside me and circled around to face Zemo, ripping the glass heeled in his hands and launching it at the wall, it shattered upon impact. “You wanna see what someone can do with leverage?” Bucky growled, I had to ignore the pit in my stomach that developed anytime Bucky’s voice reached a low decibel.

Sam and I were up and ready to deescalate the situation, him stepping behind Zemo and me placing a hand around Bucky’s metal arm. “Take it easy,” Sam said cautiously, “Don’t engage him. He’s just gonna extort you and do that stupid head tilt thing.” I turned in towards Bucky, the close proximity allowing me to talk softer. “He’s not worth it,” I muttered, his head moving slightly in my direction as I spoke.

“Let me make a call,” Sam said, walking off and slapping Bucky on the shoulder as he left.

My loyalty to Bucky prevented me from leaving until I knew he was alright and wouldn’t pummel our only lead to a pulp. As his stare lessened in intensity, so did my grip till my fingers ghosted over his bicep. “You want some cherry blossom tea?” Zemo awkwardly asked. “No, you go ahead,” Bucky answered with contempt, walking away with me following close by.

“So what are we supposed to do?” I asked as Bucky and I walked through the luxurious apartment, “Sit on our asses until he decides to give us breadcrumbs of information?”

“He’ll talk, eventually,” Bucky grumbled, “Even if I have to make him.” Why I was finding this side of him attractive, I couldn’t make sense of. Shoving that aside, I took the more practical approach. I gripped his arm to stop him from going further, “He wants to screw with your mind, don’t let him.”

Bucky bit down on his bottom lip and dropped his line of vision to the ground, silently admitting that I was right. There was something so strange about how easy him and I had become around one another so fast. I could level with him now like I’d known him for ages and he’d actually listen to me. The oddest part was that it felt so natural.

“Now,” I dropped my hand from his body and went to place it on my hip, “Sam’s on the- ow!”

“What? What is it?” Bucky jumped to attention, his metal hand instinctively reaching for my arm.

The pain had stemmed from my abdomen, radiating down to my waist. I pulled up the hem of my shirt and looked down to see an ugly purple bruise on my side. “Shit,” Bucky mumbled, bending down but quickly popping back up with an innocent gaze, “Can I…?” “Yeah,” I quickly replied, watching him crouch down to get a look at the injury, one of his metal fingers running over the colored skin with a featherlight touch. I prayed that he didn’t take notice of how my breath hitched when the cool Vibranium made contact with my body.

“How did you get this?” he asked with a laser-like focus on my stomach. “Must’ve been from yesterday in the shipyard,” I eked out, we were in close enough proximity that he was starting to cloud my head, “One of the bounty hunters had me in a death grip at one point.”

Bucky shook his head, his tongue darting out to wet his lips as he rose back up. “I’ll be fine, it’s just a bruise,” I said, pulling my shirt back down when a lightbulb suddenly went off in my head, “Although…” “What?” “I think I’ve got an idea on how you can work out your aggression and this,” I pointed to my side, “Can happen less.” I made my way down the hall, trying to find the right door that would lead to the right room. Turning each knob, I finally found a set of french doors that led to a terrace with a view of the beautiful city. Expecting and correctly guessing that Bucky had followed me, I spun around to face him. “Teach me how to fight.” “Are you kidding?” Bucky’s scrunched in disbelief, “No.” “Come on,” I pleaded, “I think we can both agree that I’m lacking in combat skills and if we’re going to end up fighting more Super Soldiers, I need to be more prepared than last time. Plus,” I pointed a finger at him, “You’re pissed and you need to let it out.”

Bucky scoffed, “I’m not going to let it out on you.” Rolling my eyes thoroughly, I created a force field to separate the two of us, “I’m pretty sure I can handle myself. But if you want to let me get my ass kicked, that’s fine…”

I watched as he let out a single chuckle, “You’re really gonna be like that?” “Yes,” I replied, trying to contain my smile, “I’m really gonna be like that.

He took leisurely steps toward me and started to circle me. I turned with him to keep the force field between us, smirks spreading across both our faces. “Alright, fine. As long as you promise not to go full throttle on me,” he gestured to the hands that had blue energy flowing from them.

“Fine,” I thinned my eyes at him, absorbing the force field back into my body, “But you better keep that arm in check.”

We separated from each other and I walked to my corner of the terrace to remove my jacket. When I turned to see Bucky doing the same, my eyes fell to his fit torso that was threateningly to bust the seams of his tight black t-shirt. In the Latvian sun, you could see the outline of each muscle of his chest and each vein that bulged in his arms was highlighted. Since the first time I’d gotten close enough to admire him, I’d had no shame in admitting to myself that Bucky was attractive. Now that I was actually starting to fall for him, there was a nervousness that came with appreciating his roguish good looks. I shook my head and dragged my gaze away from his body, trying to focus on his eyes as we walked towards one another. Not that I was any better off, they were just as enticing as the rest of him was… “Do you know how to punch?” he asked, I held up a fist and he examined it, “Okay, so that’s a no.” He placed his hands on my hips gently as to not disturb my bruise and turned me around, “Bring one of your feet back and out a little,” he instructed, I listened and he took a step back to accommodate me. “Now,” his hands moved to lightly grasp my arms, “Tuck your elbows into your body.” I swallowed hard as I followed his directions, his chest was now almost flush against my back and it was more than distracting. The closer Bucky and I got, the more muddled my thoughts became until he became the only clear one. With him pressed against me, his hands gently holding my arms and his breath fanning my shoulder, it was a miracle I could remember my own name.

“Now squeeze your abs, as long as it doesn’t hurt too much,” he said softly, inching a little closer as if to make sure I could hear him properly. Goosebumps I hoped he didn’t see erupted across my skin, I did as he said and ignored the pain it caused me. Bucky could have given me any instruction and I’d have followed, I was completely under his spell.

His hands left me and he came around to stand in front of me, “When you swing, you want to move with your whole body. You’re gonna push off with that foot,” he nudged my furthest ankle with his boot, “And turn your hips with it, but don’t over exaggerate or else you’ll lose your momentum. Your hand,” he took my improper fist into his palm and positioned my thumb below my fingers, holding onto it as he looked back up, “Should look like this.” My lips parted as I watched him mold my hand to his liking, my heart rate picking up as our eyes met. Bucky let go and held out his flesh arm to act as my target, smirking once again, “Alright, give it all you’ve got.”

I swung my fist forward and met his hand, only succeeding in making contact and nothing more. For a second I forgot that I was fighting a Super Soldier.

“Good,” he commended me nonetheless, “Again.”

I readjusted my stance and brought my fist forward again, I still couldn’t move him.

“Again.” Smack.

“Again.”

Smack.

“Again.” Smack.

“Again.” With hardly a thought, I focused my energy out of my fist as it collided with Bucky’s palm and sent his arm back in a mist of blue. I pulled my elbows back into my torso, gasping at what I’d done but not entirely unhappy with the results. Bucky looked just as surprised, turning to me with widened eyes and his pouty lips shaped in an ‘o’.

“Did you know you could do that?” he asked.

“I don’t know, the idea just came to me,” I answered, “Can I try that again?” Bucky held out his palm again and I repeated my attack, his arm jolting back upon impact once again. “I think I may have just made this a fair fight,” I said slyly, challenging him with one raised brow.

“I think you’re exaggerating a little,” he shot back, I could see the mischievous gleam in his eye that accompanied his words.

I shrugged innocently, “Guess we won’t know until we test it.”

Bucky’s wandering tongue darted out to the side of his mouth as he smiled, “I only taught you how to punch, but alright.”

He took a step closer to me, slowly and playfully putting out a hand towards me to act like he was going to attack me. I held my hand up and built a small force field to block him. Going a little faster, he raised his metal hand and I repeated the action of shielding myself. We kept going until him and I were moving across the terrace with me creating force field after force field to block Bucky’s attack. When my back hit the ledge, I shot up into the air and landed a few feet behind him.

“Is that a fair fight?” Bucky asked as he approached me.

“No, it’s not,” I sighed and lowered my head, looking back up with a smile, “It’s actually a little too easy.”

Bucky started throwing punches, me blocking each one with my palm radiating energy to lessen the impact of his hits. I was so focused that I didn’t see him lift his foot until I had landed on my back with a groan after he’d swept my leg. He pinned me, holding my arms above my head and gripping my wrists so I couldn’t attack. I squirmed a little, unable to move underneath his weight that simultaneously crushed me and sent a thrill through me.

“You were saying?” he smirked, our faces only inches apart and his lips just a little too alluring to continue ignoring. This was a different Bucky than I had become used to, he was playful and flirtatious. We were getting down to who he really was when we weren’t dealing with such serious circumstances.

Taking away the temptation to close the distance between our mouths, and eager to point out he’d made a mistake in pinning my wrists, I lifted and aimed my hands at him, firing two blasts at his shoulders. The grip he had on me was lost as his full weight landed on me, I quickly locked my legs around his and used my energy to flip us so Bucky landed on his back with me on top of him. I pinned his hands at his sides, two steady blue streams flowing from my fingers. Bucky tried to wrestle out of my hold to no avail, I took great joy in leaning over him and giving a shit-eating smile.

“You’re right,” I shook my head, “It’s not fair.”

Bucky breathily chuckled and stopped fighting, instead letting himself be defenseless underneath my body. At some point, the laughter and grins faded and the reality that I was straddling Bucky became very real. If I released my hold on his hands, I wondered what he would do. Would he scurry to lift me off of him and leave as quick as he could? Or would he dare to put his hands on my waist like he had in Madripoor, pulling me into him as close as he could? Nervously, I absorbed the energy back into my fingers and freed him, his hands laying limp where they were but his blue eyes held no intention of looking away. We rested there, trying to catch our breath and not daring to make a move that would shift either of our bodies or the moment. “Bucky, Y/n, where you at?” I heard Sam’s voice drift down the hall.

Stolen moments, that was all I could get with Bucky. I had only just discovered how I felt about him, I didn’t know how to handle it but I knew that when I did get time with him, it never lasted long enough. I unhappily levitated off of him and landed on my feet nearby, leaving him without a word to open the door and find Sam.

I looked down the hall and spotted my brother walking down the hall in search of us. “Hey,” I called, he turned around and changed his course, “Any leads?” “Sharon’s got access to a satellite, she’s gonna keep an eye on the camp,” he said, “And Zemo agreed to take us out to meet someone who’s got information on the funeral. Where’s Buc-“

Bucky appeared at that moment, his jacket back on and covering his build while carrying mine in his hand. He handed it to me, his eyes darting up to meet mine with some sort of meaning in them, “Did he say where he’s taking us?” “No,” Sam answered, “But at least he’s talking.”

The three of us headed down the hall and out to the living room where Zemo was waiting on us like a parent waiting on their children to get ready to leave. We left and entered the city once again, me trying to keep a little distance between Bucky since my cheeks were still burning. The memory of how he’d felt under me was still all too real and I needed to have a clear head for what was about to go down.

We hadn’t been walking for more than ten minutes when an unfortunately familiar voice sounded off in our vicinity. “Karli Morgenthau is too dangerous for you guys to be pulling this shit.” “Ah, how’d you find us now?” Bucky called across the street, John Walker and Lemar Hoskins hurrying down a set of steps toward us. “Come on, you really think two Avengers can walk around Latvia without drawing attention?” Lemar replied.

“No more keeping us in the dark,” Walker seethed, “You could start by telling us why you broke him out of prison.” I over animatedly shrugged my shoulders and looked between Sam and Bucky, “You told us to stay out of your way so that’s what we did. Can’t have it both ways, Walker.”

“And he broke himself out technically,” Bucky answered Walker’s original question.

“Oh,” Walker was practically spitting with rage, “This better be an unbelievable explana-“

“Hey,” Sam stepped in and placed a hand on his chest, “Take it easy before it gets weird.” Walker promptly stepped back and took a breath.

“I know where Karli is,” Zemo offered, stepping to the side along with Bucky and ready to continue on our path, before being stopped by Walker.

“Well, where?” “All we know is, it’s a memorial,” Sam answered, “So we’re gonna intercept her there.”

Zemo gently moved Walker’s hand off of him, and led the way, Bucky, Lemar and I following. “That means civilians,” Lemar said, “High risk of casualties.” “We won’t let that happen,” I replied, “And if they’re fellow funeral goers, neither will Karli.”

“All right,” Walker said, joining us along with Sam, “We’ll move in fast, take her by surprise.”

“No, I wanna talk to her alone,” Sam protested. As much as I wanted to stop my brother in the street and question the validity of his sanity, we were a united front against Walker and I couldn’t drop it. I’d wait for my turn to voice my concern.

“I’m not losing her again,” Walker pushed back. “Look, the person closest to her died, she’s vulnerable,” Sam argued, “If there was ever a time to reason with her, it’s now.” “What?” No. Wait, no! No! Stop. Hold on,” Walker jogged to get ahead of us, his sidekick following suit, “Stop, okay? I think we’re way past reasoning with her, unless you forgot that she blew up a building with people still in it.” “Sam, you walk in there cold, she could kill you,” Lemar may have had a problem with the plan, just like Walker, but he came at it from a different angle. That I could give him credit for.

“And if I go in hot and the op goes wrong, more people will die,” Sam countered confidently. “You’re gonna let him do this?” Walker addressed Bucky, “Are you gonna let your partner walk into a room with a Super Soldier alone?”

“He’s dealt with worse,” Bucky replied, “And he’s not my partner.”

“I used to counsel soldiers dealing with trauma, okay?” Sam stated, stepping around us to stand in front of Walker, “This is my wheelhouse.” “Yeah, I know. And I know those soldiers, which is why I know this is a bad idea,” Walker shot back. “Wait, John,” Lemar stopped him from going any further, “If he can talk her down, it might be worth a try.”

We stood, anticipating whether or not we’d have to fight harder or if Walker would agree to let Sam handle the situation his way. He scoffed and shifted his weight between feet before turning to Zemo, “We’ll deal with you later.” “I’m sure it will all come to an agreeable conclusion,” Zemo replied and gestured down the path, “My associate is just up ahead.”

We looked ahead to see the same little girl the Baron had been offering candy to earlier in the day. I fell in step alongside Sam and lowered my voice, “Are you sure about this?”

“Did you act like you agreed with me just to piss of Walker?” he asked, equally quiet.

“…Maybe…”

He pulled his hand out of his jacket pocket and we bumped fists, “Trust me, this is our best option.”

The five of us watched Zemo approach the child, handing her something and guiding us to follow where she was leading. She took us to an older factory, bringing us in through the back door of the boiler room. “Karli’s in there,” Zemo said.

Sam broke from our group and headed for the doorway while Walker slammed Zemo up against a furnace. “Hey,” he called to Sam, “You got ten minutes,” he handcuffed Zemo, “Then we’re doing things my way.”

With Sam gone and me not there to protect him in case things took a turn, there wasn’t anything to do but wait. Walker paced, Lemar stood and Bucky stared. I was leaned up against the brick wall that held Zemo, trying not to think of all the ways the plan could go wrong. Karli was young, quick to help but also quick to fight and the sight of Sam may be enough to trigger her into attacking before listening. But Sam wasn’t usually someone to get cocky about something he knew he couldn’t handle and I trusted his judgement. I just wish that I was trusting it in a less dangerous situation.

“Y/l/n.” I turned to Zemo, “Huh?” “In Madripoor, you said your last name was Y/n Y/l/n,” he continued in a hushed tone so nobody else would hear.

“So? What’s so interesting about my name?”

Zemo paused like he had just come to some conclusion I wasn’t going to be made privy to. “It simply sounds familiar.”

“What does that me-“ “Hey!” Walker exclaimed, staring me and the Baron down, “What’re you two talking about?” Zemo turned away from me like we’d never been speaking, the confusing conversation dissolving in the already tense air. “Nothing,” I lied, pushing off the brick wall and brushing past Walker, “That concerns you at least.”

I landed at Bucky’s side, he nodded his head towards Zemo and looked back to me. “What was that about?” “I’m not sure,” I answered, there was something unsettling about how Zemo’s gaze rested on me, “But I don’t think it was nothing.” We waited in another thirty seconds of silence before an antsy Walker spoke up again, “No, no, no, no, no, this is a bad idea.” “It hasn’t been ten minutes John,” Bucky said, “Just sit tight.”

“Don’t do that,” Walker looked over his shoulder at us angrily, “Don’t patronize me.”

“Then don’t start whining because you’re getting fidgety,” I replied, annoyed with his lack of patience, “Sam knows what he’s doing and if you let him do it, this could all go a lot smoother than Munich.”

He walked away, staring at the wall in deep thought before coming towards us. “I’m goin’ in,” he stated, punctuating his words with a punch to the shield.

Bucky stepped forward to block his path, I quickly stuck a hand in between their two bodies and created a force field to further state our point. My apprehension about leaving Sam to handle himself had lessened when he’d assured me he had it under control but I wasn’t sure if there was anything that would get Walker to back off.

“This is all really easy for you, isn’t it?” Walker grumbled, staring Bucky down, “All that serum runnin’ through your veins. And you,” he skimmed his hand over the unpierceable shield I’d made, “With that X gene of yours. Your brother,” he pointed at Bucky, “And your partner need backup in there. Do you really want his blood on your hands?” The images that Sharon had planted in my head were filled in by Walker, it suddenly became all too easy to picture Sam’s lifeless body on the ground. Just like the one I’d left in the ship yard. No, Walker was not in my head, I wouldn’t allow it. The man who had threatened me with the accords, who waved the name of Captain America around like a free ticket to do whatever he wanted. He could manipulate whoever he wanted, except for me. “You’re not getting past us, Walker,” I firmly stated, bringing his widened eyes to me, “Sam’s got this.” There weren’t many people that stood up to Captain America without a second thought, and the irritated expression on his face reflected that. “So that’s how it’s going now? You’re giving the orders?” “If it means giving Sam a better chance of ending this, then yes,” I countered, digging my heels further into the ground.

He looked me over, debating his options, “Fine.” After observing him for a few cautious seconds, I dropped the force field and stepped to the side of Bucky. No sooner than when my hand fell to my side did Walker shove past Bucky and storm up the stairs, the two of us quickly rushing to draw him back. “Walker!” Bucky shouted.

I aimed my hands out to pull him back in, the blue energy barely leaving my fingertips when Lemar came up behind me and pulled my hands down to my sides. I tried to wrestle out of his grip but he didn’t let me go until Walker had safely gotten up the stairs to a point where I couldn’t see him. “Are you serious?!” I cried as Lemar shot ahead of me up the stairs leaving me to follow pathetically. “Captain’s orders,” he replied over his shoulder as we hurried to catch up to the heated, impatient joke of a Captain.

“Karli Morganthau, you’re under arrest,” I heard Walker announce, spotting Bucky taking the stairs two at a time behind him.

As I entered the room, my hopeless eyes met Sam’s surprised set. Karli was just as shocked, the redhead asking Sam if it had been the plan all along to bring us in. Lemar pushed in front of me and Bucky, acting as a barrier to prevent us from interfering any more than we had. Bucky attempted to shove his arm away just as Karli landed a punch to the shield, sending Walker and Sam flying back into a table. I used my energy to shove Lemar back, freeing Bucky and I to jump into the fight. Bucky bolted after Karli who was making a run for it while I helped Sam to his feet. “We said ten minutes!” Sam exclaimed, glaring at Walker’s retreating form.

“I tried,” I said as we made for another staircase to try and catch Karli on the other side of the building. We went through a series of various halls, there was no way to make heads or tails of which way was right. Sam tugged me and led me up another set of stairs with no luck in finding her. “Shit,” I mumbled. On the opposite side of the landing was Bucky, looking just as confused as us. “I lost her,” he said defeatedly. “This place is a maze,” Sam panted.

I took a look at our surroundings, spotting a window and quickly forming an idea. “She could be out of the building by now. Bucky,” I ran to the nearest window, “Help me out.”

Catching on quick, he raised his metal arm and landed a whopping punch, shattering the glass and leaving a gaping hole. I took a few steps back and took a running start, ignoring the sounds of Sam’s protests and diving out the window. I threw my hands out to my sides and expelled energy, ceasing my fall and allowing me to shoot up higher in the air. I landed on the building’s roof, taking a look at the city below me and trying to spot Karli’s mop of red hair. I stayed atop the ledge searching until I heard gunshots from inside the building, dropping and flying back in through the broken window immediately. My blood ran cold with fear, Sam and Bucky weren’t where I had left them. I rushed down the closest hall, hearing a commotion from a room somewhere in the building and praying desperately that they weren’t in the middle of it. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever been so relieved to see the two of them as when I’d spotted them after turning a corner. Upon hearing my boots slapping against the ground, Bucky and Sam turned, both their faces showcasing the same relief. “Thank God,” Sam breathed, waiting for me to catch up with them before tearing off again.

We ran through the building until we found the one hall we hadn’t been down yet, we entered to find quite the scene. Walker was standing over an unconscious Zemo, vials of the super serum smashed on the floor and no sign of Karli.

“What did we miss?” Sam asked, still a little breathless from our chase.

I wasn’t a naturally angry person, but the irateness I felt with John Walker was enough to make my face warm with rage. He had proved that arrogance and impatience were his main modes of operation. He had no problem giving the orders but following someone else’s lead was nearly unbearable for him. His eagerness to jump headfirst into battle may have served him well in aspects of his career, but in this case it had ruined everything.

“You said ten minutes,” I gritted out, staring down Walker from our position on the stairs. His eyes didn’t carry an ounce of remorse for what he had done. Without another word, I turned on my heels and stormed out of the room without waiting for Sam and Bucky. We’d come so far only to lose to a completely preventable situation. I’d never worked with Steve professionally, but I knew that he would have never have sabotaged a mission because of his ego. Just one more reason why John Walker could never truly be Captain America.

----

A/N: I find myself having to reel myself in when writing Walker or else I’ll let my hatred of him show through a little too much lol. Let me know what you thought or if you’d like to be tagged :)

Safe Haven taglist: @tanyaherondale @wanniiieeee @asoftie4bucky @edencherries @i-reblog-fics-i-like @ttalisa @gcfty @withyoutilltheendofthismess @rinaispunk @weirdowithnobeardo @felicityofbakerstreet @godlypotterwhodiaries @eternalharry @voguesir @mizz-kraziii @okayline @smellmymisunderstoodfluff @wanderin-stories @nicklet94 @intricate-melody @aesthethickks @stumbleonmywords @simplybarnes @21bruhs @lostinwonderland314 @superbookishhufflepuff @kaelyn-lobrutto24 @zozebo @fandomxreaders @kittengirl998 @sarai-ibn-la-ahad @i-know-i-can @x-judyjude-x @thebi-valkyrieofvalhalla @buckverse

#bucky barnes x fem!reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes imagine #sam wilson x reader #sam wilson x platonic!reader #marvel imagine

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chelsie-fan-55 · 3 years

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‘Oldies are doing well’ Phyllis Logan hails older generations as Downton helps BritsDOWNTON Abbey star Phyllis Logan says it was “fabulous” to be reunited with the cast and production crew to shoot a second film due out early next year. The sequel follows on from the events of the first film released two years ago, which was set in 1927 with Robert and Cora Crawley, the Earl and Countess of Grantham, receiving a visit from King George V and Queen Mary during a royal tour of Yorkshire. Filming of the second film, which sees Dominic West, Hugh Dancy and Laura Haddock join original stars including Dame Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery and Elizabeth McGovern, started at Highclere Castle in Hampshire in April and finished in June. Phyllis, 65, who has portrayed Downton housekeeper Mrs Hughes in all six series of the original ITV drama and reprised the role for both films, said: “It was fabulous to be reunited with the cast again, we had such a lovely time, but it was over far too quickly. “During the six seasons that we did (for TV) we usually started filming in the February and finished in the autumn, so we had a good six months of each other, and now it is curtailed into a matter of weeks, so it was done a bit too quickly but we had a great time. “There is lots of nice, really fun stuff in it, I must say and some lovely star turns.” Phyllis, who is also the narrator of fly-on-the-wall TV show The Highland Vets, which starts its fourth series on Channel 5 tomorrow (MON) night, believes period dramas like Bridgerton and Downton have provided much-needed escapism during the past 18 months of the Covid-19 pandemic. She says: “With the likes of Downton Abbey it looks so magnificent, the costumes are magnificent and the mores of the time are different where you don’t air-kiss and have to be suited and booted, and straight-laced, well certainly outwardly.. who knows what they got up to behind closed doors. “But we try to show some of this too and the public just can’t get enough of this type of costume drama. “Everyone has been bingeing or re-bingeing on their favourite shows just to give them a sense of normality. “If you can watch Bridgerton, if you can watch Downton Abbey, or your favourite comedy show, you think the world is ok now, or get a sense that life is continuing in a fashion.” Downton has also led the way in using older actors in prominent roles at a time when TV and film has been criticised for being ageist. Phyllis says: “It’s been fabulous and long may this continue. With Dame Maggie (Smith), Dame Penelope (Wilton), myself and Jim Carter, the oldies are doing well.” Her husband Kevin McNally, who is also 65, is best known for portraying Joshamee Gibbs in all five Pirates of the Caribbean films but joined the cast of Downton for its second series on ITV as Horace Bryant. Phyllis says: “It was nice to have my husband in Downton as well but it was very peculiar the way it happened. “He was on set at one point and said I have just been offered this job and I said ‘oh, what is it?’ And he said Downton Abbey, and I said ‘very funny, what’s the job?’ And he said Downton Abbey and I said ‘oh come on, I haven’t got time, I’ve got to go back on set’. And he was being serious. “They did not even tell me they were going to offer it to him and I thought they should have run it past me first, surely.” She adds: “And it ended up with most of the scenes we were involved in being together, which was unusual. “In normal circumstances as he was playing a posh person and I was playing the housekeeper as usual, I thought our paths would never cross but the way the storyline worked we were always together. “So sometimes we got picked up in a car together to bring us to the castle and it felt like ‘bring your husband to work day’, so I thought ‘what is going on?’” Phyllis, who also starred as Lady Jane Felsham in Lovejoy with Ian McShane for eight years, met Kevin, who portrayed Bernard Ingham in The Crown last year, when they co-starred in mini-series Love and Reason in 1994. Since then they had only appeared together in short films and an episode of comedy show Rab C Nesbitt until their joint stint in Downton, but Phyllis says she would be happy to work together again in the future. And Kevin’s help was vital when it came to recording the narration for The Highland Vets, which follows the vets, nurses and receptionists at DS McGregor & Partners veterinary practice in Thurso, Caithness, as they treat animals in the remote northern tip of the UK mainland. After recording the first couple of episodes of series one in a studio in London’s Soho, Phyllis has been forced to do her narrations since the first lockdown in March last year from the study of her home in west London. She says: “Kevin was my sound engineer for the Highland Vets. They sent all this equipment and I was so useless at using it that Kevin was thankfully around and on hand to be my sound engineer.” The fourth series of the Highland Vets, which contains seven hour-long episodes, starts with the vets treating a young Common seal spotted struggling on a beach by a walker. She adds: “I haven’t done many narrations. I enjoy this one because it is such a lovely programme, there is always something different cropping up, so it is a pleasure to do it.” As a result of the repeated lockdowns for the pandemic she has yet to travel up to Caithness to meet the staff at the vets. But Prince Charles did pay them a visit during a two-day tour of Scotland, where he is known as the Duke of Rothesay, at the end of last month (JULY). Unfortunately the TV cameras were not there at the time but wearing a kilt, he was welcomed by senior vet and director Guy Gordon, who introduced him to his team, including Katie Reiss, 22, who had only started work a few days earlier. Ms Reiss said: “It’s an unorthodox start to work! We spoke about my training at Edinburgh University and chatted about how the vets have been really helpful integrating me into work. “He (Charles) said to stick at it and not lose hope because I have wanted to be a vet since I was a wee kid.” Guy says: “We felt honoured that Prince Charles was keen to visit our veterinary practice to meet the staff and learn about what we do. “He stayed with us for about 45 minutes chatting about aspects of our work with genuine interest and insight. “The light drizzle didn’t dampen this special occasion nor cause him to hurry, he took time to engage with everyone. “So they have the royal seal of approval.” She adds she loves getting to see The Highland Vets before anyone else to do its narration. “There are a few sad bits that do not go to plan but it is so heartfelt.. and the fact that they are in that location which is absolutely spectacular, that they all love it, they love their lives, their jobs, their workmates, their animals. “It’s just beautiful and lovely and life-affirming stuff, even when things go wrong.” Phyllis also stars in a film, The Last Bus, with Timothy Spall which they shot two years ago but has just been released. It tells the story of an old man whose wife has just died using his free bus pass to travel to the other end of the UK, where they originally lived, with her ashes in a small suitcase. She will also be seen in the second series of BBC drama Guilt, which is due to air later this year. *The new series of The Highland Vet starts tomorrow at 9pm on 5Select. Source: Sunday Express

#downton abbey phyllis logan #Phyllis Logan #downton abbey #elsie hughes #the hightland vet #guilt #lovejoy #the last bus #ladybaby

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sunaswife · 4 years

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Summary: It’s been five years since you’ve seen your ex, Rin. He’s still not over you and you’re not over him. When he finds out you have children he thought he didn’t have a chance. Then he finds out they’re his? All of a sudden you’re teaching Suna how to be a single dad.

note from denise: TAGLIST CLOSED

Warnings: Fluff, angst I guess, drama, and cuteness twin overload

Previously Up Next Masterlist

Chapter seven

“Alrighty give mommy kissy.” You squatted down. Both of your kids tackled you in a hug and they kissed your cheeks. You kissed them back and pulled away. You watched as they walked to the bus.

Even though they’re homeschool, they offered a program where your kids can still go to class in person once a week so they can socialize and it won’t affect their mental health. After talking to another mother who put her kids in the same program, she recommended it and you decided that it was best.

Your kids already socialized in their volleyball practice but it wouldn’t hurt for them to talk more with other kids.

You saw as Rini helped his sister up the bus first and blocked the back of her skirt from showing her shorts underneath and you lowkey wanted to cry because he was such a gentleman. He then got in and they sat together on the right side of the bus and they waved you goodbye. You waved back and the bus began to leave.

You sighed and turned back home. You washed this morning’s dirty dishes and cleaned a bit around. After you were satisfied with the presentation of your house, you made your way to your small studio office and began answering more emails and writing topics for the new podcast episode you and Jamie had to record.

You took another sip of your barley warm tea and finally you heard the doorbell ring. You glanced at the time on your watch and realized it wasn’t 12 yet, it was probably Jamie.

You carried your laptop and placed it on the dining table and ran to the door. “I’m coming!” You yelled as Jamie rang the bell again. You opened the door revealing your two best friends and you were shocked to see Hana. She’s your best friend from highschool, the one who blocked the boy’s numbers and let you spend the night when you got kicked out.

She was also the one who was rooting for you and Suna but she was more than furious when she found out what happened. You called her on New Years and started balling your eyes out.

You told her to never date boys cause they sucked but little did you know she had a big crush on you. You were her first love.

I guess you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. So when Rin started to take your attention, she felt jealousy and loneliness but your happiness mattered more than her selfishness.

She became a fashion major in University but dropped out because she didn’t like what they were teaching. With the bit she learned and already knew, she turned into art. She made beautiful leather pieces of lingerie with straps and belts and lace and the models needed dramatic makeup and hair. And you happened to know an amazing makeup artist.

That’s where Jamie came in.

And eventually they fell in love.

Hana is always busy with her lingerie company since everything is hand crafted and not made in a factory like Jamie’s makeup products. So that’s why it was a shock to see her here during the day at least. “Come in come in. Mi casa es su casa.” You said in broken Spanish and they laughed.

Jamie sat on the dining table and sighed. She rubbed her baby bump and you asked if she wanted something to drink. You got her water as well as some wine for Hana. “So they’re really coming over?” Hana asked as she opened Jamie’s laptop and set it up for her wife.

“Yeah I hope so. If they flake I’m not gonna give him another chance. I already told the kids he’ll be here and they’re excited.” You said and she nodded. “Good.” Hana replied. You and Jamie began reading eachothers notes and topics regarding the podcast. “I think Hana is gonna have to take my place on the podcast if I pop.” Jamie mentioned randomly.

“Hell no.” Hana immediately said. “That’s a you two thing I’m not getting into it.” Hana said sternly. “But Hana, since Jamie got pregnant. You didn’t have a face for your spicy lingerie line. So I temporarily replaced her. Surely you could do the same!” You exclaimed and she rolled her eyes. “Speaking of lingerie I have something I want you to try for the next photoshoot. I’ll go get it after my smoke.” She said and you rolled your eyes with a nod.

“It’s pretty hot, like a harness thing on your wrist that connects to your thighs.” Jamie spoke up as Hana left. “Where does Hana come up with these things?” You asked and Jamie made a smirky face. “Nevermind I don’t wanna hear about your guy’s sex life.” You shuttered and she snickered.

Hana got out your front door, walked to her fancy Mercedes and took out the gift wrapped box as well as her favorite pack of smokes. She sat on the small bench in the front of your house and she lit the lighter, breathing in the nicotine. She sighed and wondered if you’re going to be okay with your ex seeing his kids.

If it was her she would refuse to let him see them and take it to court. But you weren’t like that. You always had hope and patience that you’d meet Suna again someway somehow.

She heard a car door slam and looked up to see the three tall figures get out of a car. She exhaled the smoke and they looked up to see her. “It’s been a long time, huh?” She tilted her head to the side and Suna scratched the back of his neck as he neared. “Hana I—I’m sorry for everything.” He said. “I trusted you with my best friend and you hurt her. I don’t think I could ever forgive you for hurting my first love like that.” She spoke bitterly and put out the cigarette in the small froggy bowl turned ashtray that the twins made.

“First love?” Osamu asked and Hana stayed quiet and motioned for them to follow her. Suna didn’t know what to say, after you left Hyogo Suna began bugging her for answers and she went off on him once and that’s when he realized that Hana was gay and in love with you the whole time.

Immediately when the door opened they heard yelling and singing. Obviously confused the boys looked at eachother but Hana seemed unfazed, she’s used to her wife’s chaotic nature and even though you’re pretty quiet and collected you make a complete 360 with Jamie around. You were both like Yin and Yang.

“Shh she’s been trying to get this song down for weeks.” Hana whispered as the boys followed through the small hall. They looked at the photos that adorned the wall and they saw baby photos of Suna’s kids and they truly looked like him. From the corner of his eye, Suna saw a photo of you with Shawn Mendes and smiled that you finally had a chance to meet your celebrity crush.

Suna nor the twins didn’t know what to expect when they saw you again. But they were shocked to see you in your true nature with studio headphones over your ears as you sang each note higher and higher. Jamie was yelling and slamming the table with her palm encouraging you to keep on going. Jamie used to do that in parties, drinking games were her favorite.

You finally finished the song and you took off your headphones and started screaming. “SIX WEEKS IT TOOK ME SIX FUCKING WEEKS TO COPY IT TO A T! I DID IT OH MY GOD!” You yelled and Jamie yelled again too. “BITCH I TOLD YOU YOU COULD DO IT BUT YOU-“

“SELF-“ punch

“DOUBT-“ punch

“ALL-“ punch

“THE-“ punch

“TIME!” punch

“Alright alright I get it goddamn—if you weren’t pregnant you know I would punch you just as hard.” You scowled as you rubbed your arm. “Sorry y/n.” She apologized and chuckled. “We’re not interrupting right?” Hana spoke up causing you and Jamie to turn. The three men stood behind her and your face fell. The air shifted and you suddenly felt cold.

“No just work stuff.” You said and you quickly stood up. “Welcome to my home. You’re welcome to sit at the table.” You said and closed your laptop. “Would you like anything to drink..?” You asked, trying to be hospitable and Hana scoffed. “Give them water, you don’t have to be nice to them.” Hana said and she sat by Jamie. You bit the inside of your cheek and looked at the three men. “Water is fine..” Suna spoke up and the twins nodded.

“Sit.” Jamie said and motioned to the dining chairs. They all sat awkwardly while waiting for you to come back from the kitchen. You had your tray with their water, more tea for you and Jamie, and a glass of wine for Hana.

“Alright where do we start..” you said as you sat down next to Suna since that was the only empty spot. “The beginning.” Jamie shrugged. “I already explained what happened. I told her everything.” Jamie told the boys and immediately Atsumu scowled. “Knowing you you probably made yourself sound less bad.” He muttered, immediately Hana was about to say something but you interrupted. “Did you make the bet?” You asked the blonde, “Y..Yeah..” he frowned and shifted in the seat awkwardly, “Did you accept the bet?” You turned to Suna. “Yes..” he said guiltily. “Did you think Suna would win?” You asked Osamu. “Yeah.” “Jamie Did you think pissy— I mean Atsumu would win?” You asked her and she sighed a yes. “And did you all bet with money?” You asked. They all replied with yeahs and yes’s.

“Did you guys agree to quit because it was wrong?” You asked and they all nodded. “Then that’s all that happened. I don’t need to know anything else.” You explained.

“Look guys.” Jamie spoke up and she tapped her manicured fingers on the table nervously. “It took a long ass time for Y/N to forgive me and trust me, I ruined her life and I’m blessed to have met her. Without her I’d probably still be in an abusive relationship. Without her I wouldn’t have learned how to be humble and grateful for even waking up in the morning. She’s my best friend and I’m telling you straight up if you truly want to be her friend again. You need to work for it, Suna if you really want to be in the kids lives and earn Y/N’s trust you truly need to work for it.” she said almost desperately.

“If you ever disrespect her again. I will not hesitate to sock you in the face and I’ll call up Tobio if I have to. That goes for all of you.” Hana told the three men.

“Do you guys have anything to say?” You asked. “I would apologize but I’d rather let you see it than hear it.” Suna spoke up and you nodded. “Alright.” You said simply.

“I’m sorry, Y/N-cha—I mean Kageyama.” Atsumu said. “I’m sorry Kageyama.” Osamu finished and you nodded once more.

“Okay this is awkward. I forgave you guys a long time ago but I don’t trust either of you. Atsumu, Osamu you are not obligated to be my friend. Suna you aren’t obligated to be my friend either but I would appreciate it if we were civil with one another for the sake of the kids. If you ever have any questions regarding the kids I’ll be happy to answer.” You told him as you played with the tea bag in your cup, and they all stared at you.

Like that’s it? You forgive them? You’re not going to throw your tea at them?

“Um I kind of want to ask about the ya know..”

“Pregnancy?” Hana raised a brow and Suna nodded awkwardly. “Like when did you find out....and is that why you left?” He asked. “If its alright can we talk about that in private?” You asked and stood up. “Y-yeah sure.” Suna stuttered and he stood up as well. “Hana, Jamie you don’t mind—“ “The bus honks at 13:30 we know. We’ll be able to hear it.”

“Yeah and we have a lot of catching up to do.” Jamie fake smiled and you wanted to snort at the her disgust and their awkwardness. “Alright follow me.” You motioned down the hall. You opened the door to the kids room and you took a step in. He followed you and closed the door. You both released a sigh and you sat on Akira’s bed. “You can sit there.” You motioned to your sons bed.

He nodded and sat on the small bed. “Okay so..the pregnancy..” you started. “Mhm.” He nodded. “I found out on January 25th, I wasn’t feeling the best for a while and I couldn’t handle the discomfort anymore so I went to the hospital with my mom. The doctor asked me the basic sex questions and tested my urine. My mom came into the room when I was told the news and I was basically disowned.” You sighed and leaned back against the wall.

You hugged your knees to your chest. He could already feel the shame you must have felt in his chest. “I had to walk to the pharmacy in my school uniform to get to prenatales since my mom told me to walk home. When I finally arrived home, my room was trashed and they were asking if you happened to be the dad. I told them no. He even threatened to kick me out and I told him I didn’t know so I was kicked out and I left. I spent the night at Hana’s and the next day I resigned as the team’s manager, and gathered all my papers to transfer.” You said and he rubbed his face and sighed.

His birthday.

You found out on his birthday.

He patiently listened and asked a few questions here or there and before you knew it you barley heard the faint foot steps and the door bursting open. You both turned to see your guy’s kids standing there. “See I told you they were talking.” Akira mumbled. “Aunt Hana said something about them making out.” Rini huffed.

“She said making up not out! Are you an idiot or an idiot?!” Akira said slightly frustratedly. “I’m older than you, don’t call me an idiot.” He said and shoved her. Before you could scold your son, you saw Akira’s whole demeanor change and you knew Rini was fucked. “How many times has mom said to stop shoving girls and pushing women! If you keep at it than you’re going to be a bad husband to your future wife someday you stupid Rabbit!” She yelled as she tackled him and began smacking him around. “Get off me you nerd!” He yelled and you quickly pulled Akira away.

Rini began crying and Akira did too and you sighed and turned to Suna.

“Welcome to parenthood.”

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#haikyuu suna #miya atsumu #suna rintarou fluff #suna rintarō #suna x reader #haikyuu x you #miya osamu #suna imagines #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu!! x reader

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aer-in-wanderland · 4 years

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구미호뎐 | Tale of the Nine Tailed - Lee Dong Wook’s Early Christmas VLIVE 2020.12.23 TotNT Talk

In which Lee Dong Wook talks about the series finale, deleted scenes, behind the scenes, and what TotNT means to him.

This Year as Lee Yeon [1:16:20~]

The final ‘2′ is: ‘This Year as Lee Yeon.’ Yes, that’s right. Well, truly this year, after Wook Talk* wrapped, I lived as Lee Yeon for nearly the full year. As of this week, it's been.. What is it? Three weeks since Tale of the Nine Tailed wrapped, right? Still, to think three weeks have already passed…

At first, after it ended, for about one or two weeks, I was continuously listless; after it finished airing. But filming actually wrapped a while before then, so for nearly about a month, over a month, I've felt a bit empty, yes. And heartsick... (sigh) So, this year I lived as Lee Yeon. I received a lot of love, yes. And got to experience many new things; there were a lot of enjoyable things, yes.

Humans really are like that. We're forgetful creatures, aren't we? While we were filming, it was intense and exhausting. I would think, ‘Gosh, when are we ever going to finish? Seriously, when are we going to film all of this?’ But now that we've actually wrapped, now that a month and three weeks have already passed since we finished filming... (nods) Now that I'm able to calmly look back on things, ‘It was fun,’ ‘It was enjoyable,’ ‘We really had a great time of it. We really worked hard.’ These are the things that have stayed with me the most.

[*Note: This is the nickname for Lee Dong Wook’s 2019 talk show.]

Lee Dong Wook’s Affection for TotNT [1:18:18~]

[Reading the live chat] Do I have a lot of love for Tale of the Nine Tailed?

Yes. Most likely, of everyone in the world, I probably have the most love for Tale of the Nine Tailed. Of course, the fans of our drama that loved it, and my fans that loved me, probably have a lot of love for it as well, but it's possible that I love TotNT even more than our director and writer, yes. (nods)

(Sigh) Since there's so much that went on behind the scenes that I can't even begin to tell you about... (nods)

There's... Lee Seung Hwan, among Lee Seung Hwan hyung's songs, among Lee Seung Hwan sunbae's songs, there's one called ‘Even if I Write A Poem with Tears’ (눈물로 시를 써도). In the lyrics there's a line that goes, ‘A letter torn up for having far too many circumstances [to convey] / Do you know the meaning of that?’ Right now, that's precisely how I feel. There are so many circumstances, and since they're not all things I'm able to tell you about.. (nods) Yes, well, in any case, I believe of everyone in the world, I have the most love for Tale of the Nine Tailed.

Sense of Responsibility [1:19:51~]

Tale of the Nine Tailed is... to me it was one of the dramas in which I had a large burden, a lot of responsibility to bear; in which an immense amount rested on my shoulders. From the very beginning, the director, the writer, and I spent quite a lot of time preparing just the three of us. Mm...so, while I'm only saying this now, before we even began, from the very start, I began this project with the feeling that, whether the drama succeeded or failed, I would have to bear the full responsibility for that. (nods) It was a drama, and a character, that I felt that much responsibility, that much affection for.

So, yeah, we spent seven months filming, and the broadcast, too, ended well.

The Final Scene [1:21:10~]

There are an awful lot of questions about the final scene. ‘At the end, is he a gumiho or a human?’

Honestly, I hadn't thought that that was something to be that shocked about. ‘They'll just think of this as a bonus cut.’ ‘Whether he's become a gumiho, or he's human but his powers remained, Lee Yeon will continue to eliminate the demons (ak’gwi) of this world, and Ji Ah will be with him, encouraging him and lending him strength.’ I thought people would think of it as just that much of a bonus cut, but, ‘He's become human,’ ‘He's a gumiho,’ ‘He lied to Ji Ah,’ ‘He deceived everyone.’ There was so much talk going around. So, ‘Ah, this.. I may have been somewhat mistaken.’ I did think that, yes.

But that wasn't necessarily a decision made solely by the writer and director. My opinion is reflected in that as well, so, well, since it's all over and done with at this point, rather than blaming or not blaming someone, I think it would be best if we all just laid it to rest, yes.

Six Years Later [1:22:37~]

Rather, I thought the focus would be on the happy ending: ‘Lee Yeon returned. And so, he and Ji Ah became a happy family.’ (nods) And, there is a bit more to it than that, actually, yes.

Originally, hmm... We don't know if we'll be able to do the commentary [for the director's cut Blu-ray] or not, but if it turns out we do, we'll talk about these sort of.. yes, we'll talk about these things, so..

To tell you a little bit up front, originally, in the scene at the park where I meet Rang-ie, that boy who is like a reborn Rang-ie, that's six years later, according to the script. As to why we didn't add that '6 years later' in as a chyron... If we had, our environment would have needed to change completely. At the very least, the smartphones Lee Yeon and Ji Ah use; their car, like, the cars driving about on the roads, all these sorts of surrounding items; the house we live in - so, well, that would be a set, wouldn't it? - all those things would have had to have changed, but we didn't have the time needed to physically make those changes. And, honestly, none of us know what sort of smartphones we'll be using in six years, do we? What car models will be released six years from now, how people will dress and go about six years from now. So, in wanting to keep true to those details, we thought it might be fine to just leave it at, ‘some amount of time had passed,’ and go with that. But now, well, thinking about it now, if we'd just added in the chyron, I think maybe it might have been easier for you all to understand, yes.

Daughter [1:24:33~]

And, ah, there was really a lot [of talk] about that. That's...of course, we, since that scene itself was deleted it's only natural that you all wouldn't know, but, ‘Lee Yeon and Ji Ah have a daughter.’

So, well, there were these photos of this child actress going about [the internet], but.. she's not our daughter. (laughs) She's just.. As to what that deleted scene was, it was a scene in which Ji Ah and I happily enjoy a picnic, just the two of us, at the park. I’d made delicious kimbap...

And then, the little girl just passes by.. So, to put it simply, that little girl was an extra. But then, somehow, that scene ended up being deleted, and with all the curiosity over the ending, that just snowballed until people started saying, ‘That little girl was our daughter,’ ‘They had a daughter, but they didn't show her to us,’ that sort of talk was all over.

But, yes. (laughs) That's not the case. Well, for this, since there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding, I thought I might set the record straight for you just this once, yes.

[Reading the live chat] Yes, she's not our daughter! (laughs) She's a child actress who, yes, just came briefly to act as an extra for us.

Lee Yeon’s Thread Rings [1:26:08~]

Oh! The thread rings, yes. I said in my previous VLIVE that, yes, that the color of the thread rings was of no consequence. They’re just one of Lee Yeon’s accessories that I had come up with from the very beginning. But after I began wearing the couple ring I no longer wore them. Also, in episode 16, when I return from the River of Three Crossings as a human, at that time too I’m not wearing the thread rings. But...well, after the 6 year time jump that only I know about, I’m wearing them again. The thread rings.

So they were actually a mark just for me that symbolized my abilities. I regained my abilities, and so, at the end, in the bonus cut as well, I’m once again wearing those rings, as always. So that was what I was referring to when I said that. But at that time, the broadcast was still ongoing, so I wasn’t able to explain these sort of specifics; the meaning of the thread rings.

But that’s something that nobody knows. I’m the only one who knows that. The director, the writer, nobody else will know that. Because it’s something that I came up with all on my own, a detail I made all on my own, so that’s probably something that nobody knows. It was something that only I knew, yes.

‘Missing’ Behind the Scenes Footage [1:27:43~]

Well, I'm aware that there are a lot of other things you're curious about too. Regarding Tale of the Nine Tailed. But, well, I can't just go into each and every one of them here.

Ah, right! The.. ‘The kiss scene, the bed scene, why was there no BTS footage of that?’ I heard that people have been saying this, but.. (chuckles, sighs). Yes, there's a bit more to the story there as well.

So the thing is... that was the production team being considerate of us. They were being considerate of me and Bo Ah-ssi. As to why, it's because, before being actors, we're people. Of course, as part of acting we act out those sort of scenes, but there are times when we feel self-conscious. If a camera that isn't ours, another camera like a BTS camera or a still camera is filming that, the people who are taking that footage, those photos, are a bit, yes. They're hesitating for our sake. ‘Ah, is it okay for me to film this right now? To capture this?’ ‘Is this not, in some way, inconsiderate towards them?’ ‘Am I interfering with the filming of this important scene?’ Well, from that line of reasoning, they were being considerate of us.

But, also... It was something that I wanted. “I would like it if you didn't film the BTS for these sorts of scenes.” This goes for me as well, but also, the actress could feel even more self-conscious and uncomfortable, so. Well, it was that sort of thing, yes. It wasn’t as if we were filming some sort of x-rated scene with a lot of exposure or anything, but - I'm sure many of you are aware - when it comes to those sorts of specialized scenes, only the essential crew remain while everyone else goes outside, yes. They vacate the space. But, well, we also did that when we filmed these sorts of scenes. So you can just think of it in that context. Of course, I know that wasn’t what you meant when you said you were curious about the behind-the-scenes [for these scenes] but, (laughs) well, I'd I appreciate it if you understood, yes.

Behind the Scenes Story? [1:29:52~]

Tale of the Nine Tailed behind the scenes [stories]... There are so many. Yes. But, well, honestly, it's not as if each and every last one is coming to mind right now. My thoughts are all jumbled.

Inviting Questions [1:30:35~]

Since we're on the subject of Tale of the Nine Tailed, if you’ll send me some of the questions you had about TotNT, I'll take a look and answer a few. Using this time. That would be, yes, I think that would be best.

Iconic Scenes [1:31:03~]

[Reading the live chat] Iconic Tale of the Nine Tailed scenes?

Oh, I can't pick one. Iconic scenes, iconic lines, anecdotes that stuck with me, I can't pick these sorts of things. There were just so so many. Yes, so much happened. And well, yes, so many memories are coming to mind that I can't pick just one. (nods) That's a bit... I'd appreciate if you would understand.

But I’ll say this: from beginning to end, there wasn't a single scene, a single cut, that wasn't precious to me. Truly. (nods) Yes. Because I gave my all to the creation of every scene; because I had to take responsibility for more than I ever have in any other drama, all of it is precious, and all of it has stayed with me.

The First Scene Filmed [1:32:00~]

[Reading the live chat] The first scene we filmed?

The first scene we filmed was the one where, in episode 1, after exterminating Yeo Nui at the wedding hall, I'm sitting in the park and, yes. He's revealed later as Soo Oh. The scene in the park I filmed with that kid, that was the first scene we filmed.

(Sigh) But that day, there was a high wind warning. A high wind warning. The wind was blowing really hard, and even though it was mid-April, even wearing a long parka, it was cold. On top of that, our hair and clothes were being blown about, so even though it wasn't such a difficult scene, it took a long time to film.

So, although it was our first day filming, we really had a hard time of it, and it took a long time, and, conversely, it helped me adjust quickly [to what filming TotNT would be like]. It was that sort of scene. (chuckles)

The Red Umbrella [1:32:59~]

[Reading the live chat] You want to own the umbrella?

Ah, the umbrella. (chuckles) The umbrella. It's expensive. Yes. That's, but, as I mentioned previously, promotional items aren't something I can do anything about...

Wirework [1:33:31~]

[Reading the live chat] Did the wires hurt?

Ah, they hurt a bit at first. They hurt a bit at first but, later, after doing wirework for about seven months, I got used to them. (nods) Later on, doing wirework action was a bit fun. Well, that is, the people rigging the wires, our stunt team, must have had a hard time of it, but for me.. (laughs) I sort of enjoyed it later on. It was fun. I mean, moving about mid-air is something that, frankly, we can't normally do, isn't it? Flying about like this for a long period of time.. (nods) Later on it got really fun.

Imoogi SFX Makeup [1:34:50~]

[Checks the live chat and laughs] Hahaha Was the Imoogi makeup a sticker?

That's (laughter) that's really, really expensive special effects makeup. It takes an hour to do that (nods, laughs again). Yes, it's not a sticker. It's special effects makeup. Specialists in our country who are extremely good at special effects makeup came and took an hour each time to painstakingly apply that makeup.

[Checking the live chat] The questions are going by so fast. Hold on a second.

The Scene in which LDW Cried the Most [1:35:46~]

[Reading the live chat] Ah, the scene in which I cried the most?

Ah~ The scene in which I write a letter to Ji Ah. Mm....In that scene where I write a letter to Ji Ah......I really did cry a lot, yes.

And.... A scene where I cried when I wasn’t originally supposed to was...that, when I leave a video message for Rang-ie. Originally, crying there wasn't in the script. But, without even meaning to, tears came.

Ah, so, if you watch that scene again... The part where I go, ‘This message will explode in 10 seconds... I'm kidding. I just wanted to try saying that,’ and end the video, the camera draws back from me, like this. But I suddenly start crying, and sob. So this camera draws back, and stops. Originally it was supposed to zoom all the way out, but it stops, and goes back in a little bit, about this far. They used a camera rig to film it like this, but.. That’s how I remember it, yes. If you try watching that [scene] once more, you'll see. Yes. They were tears that hadn't originally been planned on.

Lee Yeon’s ‘Profession’ [1:37:51~]

[Reading the live chat] Haha After he's restored, will Lee Yeon really be a stay-at-home husband while living off rent money?

(Nods) He probably will, yes. (chuckles, nods) Lee Yeon has so much money that I don't think he'd bother working. And, I think he would focus all of his strength on protecting Ji Ah.

The Video Messages [1:38: 31~]

[Reading the live chat] In the final episode, in the scenes where Rang-ie and I cry while looking at each other’s video messages, were we really watching each other cry?

Yes. Rang-ie [Kim Beom] and I both actually recorded those messages on our phones. We really recorded them, and we each filmed while watching the video the other had recorded. So we really did watch them, and we really did cry. (nods)

Who Has More Money? [1:39:18~]

[Reading the live chat] (chuckles) ‘I heard that Lee Rang has more money than Lee Yeon~?’

Ah, it seems this was something Rang-ie said. (nods) That could be. I think that’s entirely possible.

[Note: This is a reference to something Kim Beom said in his Instagram LIVE]

End of TotNT Question Time [1:39:56~]

[Reading the live chat] I'm looking for a question I might be able to answer...but...nothing is really jumping out at me.

Hmmm Hmmm... Yes, well, it seems like I'll have to wrap up talking about Tale of the Nine Tailed here, yes. I had wanted to answer more of your questions but...yes. I'm not seeing the sort of question I might be able to answer for you. Well, in any case, thank you so, so much for loving Tale of the Nine Tailed, and for liking it so much even now.

Drama Memorabilia [1:42:12~]

[Reading the live chat] Oh! ‘Did you ever want to own any of the outfits you wore while filming a drama?’

Oh this one, yes. I can answer this one. While filming a drama, key items, things that are associated with me, like outfits, I have them. Yes. Ah... I think I have an item from just about every [project] at home, yes. So, come to think of it, hmm...from Goblin, you know, that grim reaper...uh...costume? From the fedora down to the shoes - the suit, shirt, shoes, fedora; I have all of them. Just as they were. The coat, yes. So I have my reaper costume kept nicely at home, just as it was. And when I was filming Life, the name tag I wore around my neck all the time, that, ‘Ye Jin Woo,’ yes, that, ‘Emergency Medical and Health Services, Ye Jin Woo’ name tag is also at home. It's hanging on the fridge. And that, when I filmed Partner some years ago, at that time, I had a nameplate that read, ‘Lawyer Lee Tae Jo.’ That nameplate is at home, too. So I always keep at least one prop, one item that's associated with me that contains memories.

I also have my grim reaper [death] list at home, even now. That list is really something that no one else will have. Yes. I'm definitely the only person in the world who has one. (chuckles) No, it's just, this is just another anecdote but, right around when we were nearly done filming Goblin, the staff had kind of made a lot of those lists, so there were extras. And they kept asking me to sign them. (laughs) But, originally, you're not supposed to write your name on there, right? You only, you know, write the names of people who are going to pass on, so I was like, ‘Even though I know this..is not the real thing, is it really all right for me to, ah, sign this?’ (laughs) Later I was like, ‘No, no I can't sign this,’ and turned them away. There was that anecdote. (laughs)

Oh, and that, that umbrella sheath that Yeon-ie wore everywhere. You know that umbrella sheath he wore like this? That's... I made that. I designed it. Should I have brought that today to show you? Well, later, if there's an opportunity. But even though I only ever wore the black one on screen, there was actually another one that was brown. So I had those made out of high-quality leather, very expensively, yes, two of them. Yes, it was my idea. It was an idea my styling team and I came up with. ‘Since he's always carrying that umbrella about, rather than carrying it in-hand, what if I tried wearing it over my shoulder?’ I thought. So we had them made, and when I mentioned it to the director he said, ‘Oh, that sounds interesting,’ ..yes. Naturally, I have those. Those too, as you'd expect, are in my possession. And... [Reading the chat] Yes, I designed them, yes. I paid for them myself.

And, oh. The umbrella that you all wanted so much. That umbrella, and the sa'ingeom, yes. I have them both. (nods) Ah, I should have brought them today. How much you all must have wanted to see them. I didn't think of it, I'm sorry. That umbrella case, the brown one that never aired, the umbrella, and the sa'ingeom, I have all of them. Later, if there's an opportunity, it'd be nice if I could give you a good look at them. Yes, well, from small things like the name tag to my reaper costume, these sorts of things, yes.

[Reading the live chat] You’re envious, aren't you? Yes (laughs) Yes, well, anyway.

~~~

For anyone interested, you can find excerpts from Lee Dong Wook’s earlier TotNT VLIVE that I translated here, here, and here.

#tale of the nine tailed #totnt #lee dong wook #king #구미호뎐 #이동욱 #vlive #20201223 #behind the scenes #bts #ldw is the true mvp of totnt #and I'm not just talking about this #he assumed a lot of responsibility and had a lot of creative input #way more than would be considered normal #gif cr: remm

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lils-writes-stuff · 4 years

Text

The Company

spencer reid x reader

Summary: When Derek’s presumed dead cousin turns up again the reader can’t help but feel guilty .

warnings: normal criminal minds things,

A/N: based on season 7 episode 20; this one was hard to write ngl

The warm shower water flowed through Y/N hair as she lazily ran her hands over it to rinse out the conditioner. The feeling of relief as she stood underneath the water made her sigh happily. When she stepped out, she wrapped a purple towel around her body and blow-dried her hair.

Stepping out of the bathroom, she grabbed her outfit that laid on her bed, a white tank paired with a taupe colored cardigan and some black pants. She did her makeup as normal and headed to the BAU office.

When she walked in, the atmosphere’s normal busy self greeted her. She smiled, for no particular reason, just a smile that made her feel good. Today was a good day, no clouds, just a bright sun that made her feel good.

“You seem perky, did something good happen?” Penelope’s sudden question as she approached beside Y/N made her jump. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” the woman apologized.

“No, it’s okay, I seem perky just because I have a smile?” She laughed as she spoke.

“Smiles in here are rare as you know, so I can only assume that something grand has happened to you,” she explained. “Which is a contradiction to Derek.”

“What happened with Derek?” Y/N asked. Whatever smile she had was gone as she felt concerned for her friend.

“This is the part I tell you that you have a case, and are to head to the jet right now,” Penelope said, a sheepish smile on her face.

Y/N’s head fell back, truly she was hoping today she got to catch up on some paperwork. But she felt guilty for her selfishness as she walked towards the elevator ready to help Derek with whatever he needed.

When she got in the elevator she pulled out her phone and called Spencer.

“Hi,” Spencer said, answering the phone.

“Hey, are you at the jet?”

“Yeah, I just got here, I was about to call you to ask where you were,” he said, confessing his actions that she had beaten him too.

“I’m on my way there now.”

------------

“So your cousin fled Chicago eight years ago because a co-worker was stalking her?” Emily asked Derek on the phone.

The team, minus Derek, sat on the jet as they went over what little they had on the case of Derek’s missing Cousin. Who had been presumed dead for the last year.

“Yeah, a guy named John Hitchens,” Derek answered. “Cindi and Yvonne came to me and asked me if they should be worried, her emails and phone logs showed classic stalker behavior.”

“Multiple messages every hour, gifts he sent which she later returned, that would enrage a stalker,” Spencer said as he looked over the file.

“But until they become violent, they are smart enough to skirt the law,” Y/N said, reading over the file in hand. Her mind traveled back to when she could feel Caroline’s eyes on her. While she sat in a lecture, or at a coffee shop, she could feel her eyes bore into her skull. She began to feel sympathetic for Cindi as she related to her.

“Human resources at the investment bank wouldn’t do anything and Chicago P.D. couldn’t. So Yvonne and I convinced Cindi to move. She contacted us from Charleston on her way to Savannah and then she was gone,” Derek explained.

“And Hitchens blew his brain out two weeks later in Chicago,” Emily added from what she read in the file.

“And that was enough for local P.D. to conclude that he killed her?” Y/N’s voice spoke with question.

“Except for one major detail, we never found the body. If his endgame was suicide, he wasn’t organized enough to dispose of the body that permanently,” Derek continued. “That’s why I never stopped looking, I just never thought she’d surface right back here in Chicago.”

“We need to reopen both cases. Both Hitchen’s suicide and Cindi’s disappearance, the discrepancies in each will explain her current behavior,” Hotch said. “Morgan, I need to talk to you when we land.”

“Can’t wait.” Derek hung up the phone and the team looked over the files.

When the team landed they drove to the police station immediately to begin their work. Officers pulled old boxes from the case and Y/N and Spencer began to put the pictures up on the board.

“Detective Palmer, what do you have?” Rossi asked as the detective walked up to them.

“I wish we had more to give you,” Palmer spoke as he watched the two put what little evidence they had on the boards. “You know how missing person cases are.”

“Actually, there’s a lot more here then you would think,” Y/n said after placing a photo of Cindi on the board.

“These-” Spencer held up a picture as he placed it on the board- “were found in Hitchens apartment after the suicide. Some were blown up from the original film stock,” he explained as he taped another photo to the board.

“So if Hitchens took them, he didn’t zoom in. He's an old school shutterbug,” Emily said looking at Spencer.

“Reid and Y/N, look into Hitchens photographic background, even eight years ago most people had gone digital,” Hotch said, prompting the two to give thumbs-ups as a response.

“The gun Hitchens used to kill himself was traced to this dealer.” Rossi pointed to the picture of the man on the board.

“A local guy, completely by the book, no record,” Palmer said to him.

“The 44 was the only gun in Hitchens’ possession, that’s a big gun to kill yourself with,” JJ said, her face contorting with the end of her statement.

“We should talk to the dealer, figure out what his mindset was when he bought it,” Hotch said.

Rossi nodded his head and then to JJ telling her to come with him as they left the station.

----------

Derek stared at the boards with the pictures on them intently. Listening to the words of those around him as they said what was found on Cindi.

Y/N couldn’t help but feel guilty, knowing what this was like for her friends when Caroline was tormenting and hiding her away. She couldn’t think about herself right now though, she had to focus. Derek needed the team, his family needed them, and she wasn’t going to let these little bottled up feelings obstruct that.

“So Cindi had two stalkers,” Derek said as he turned to those behind him.

“No, only one,” Y/N corrected.

“Ford fits the profile better than Hitchens,” Rossi explained.

“Ford had multiple assault and harassment charges, all filed by ex-girlfriends and random women he met,” JJ embellished on what Rossi said.

“And Garcia found credit card purchases for black and white photographic equipment for Ford,” Spencer added, relaying the information he and Y/N found.

“So this guy killed Hitchens and then set him up.” Derek’s voice was stern and certain as he came to the realization.

“Behaviorally, it would make sense,” Emily replied.

“If Ford was stalking you cousin, he would have seen Hitchens as competition probably,” Y/N continued the thought.

“So he kills him and he puts the photos to throw off your investigation,” Emily concluded.

“Hotch, I want to bring this guy in and question him personally,” Derek said, turning to Hotch.

“Garcia just sent us the address,” Hotch replied.

Y/N waited from a distance as Hotch spoke to Derek. When Hotch had finished she walked up to Derek.

“Hey, Morgan, listen I just want you to know I’m here for you, you know if you need to talk?” She looked at him with promising eyes, her hands wringing together from an old habit.

He smiled at her with his charming smile. “Thanks, wonder woman, let’s go.”

The team walked away from the boards and got ready to go confront Malcolm Ford.

----------------

“FBI!” Derek’s voice bombed through the house as they entered it.

Y/N followed behind Spencer as they walked up the stairs of the house to make sure the second floor was clear. Spencer walked into what looked to be the master and Y/N into the guest room. The room looked like it had never been touched, dust covering almost every item making her want to sneeze.

“It’s clear here!” Derek’s voice was slightly muffled from him being downstairs.

“Clear.” JJ’s voice was heard next.

“Clear,” Spencer’s voice said from the room next to Y/N.

“Clear,” Y/N said, holstering her gun and walking out of the room to follow Spencer downstairs.

“House is empty, but there’s evidence of a woman living here,” Spencer said as he and Y/N entered the living room.

Derek crouched in front of the fireplace, taking out a pair of gloves and reaching for the little remains of paper in the fireplace.

“Looks like they both packed up in a hurry,” JJ said.

“They were trying to cover their tracks,” Y/N said as she looked at the half-burnt paper Derek was holding up.

“What the hell is she doing with this guy?” Derek said inspecting the paper in his hand. His eyes were sad, as he felt guilt and sorrow for his cousin.

“I’ll call everyone else,” JJ said walking out of the room and pulling out her phone.

When everyone else arrived, Y/N sat next to Spencer in front of the fireplace, pulling out the bits and pieces of the paper that was left out.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Spencer said to detective Palmer as he picked up a headbox they had found and examined it.

Y/N turned her head to watch as Derek approached the man.

“What is it?” Palmer asked.

“It’s a- um, it’s a headbox,” Y/N answered. Her voice tone was uncomfortable as she knew what they were used for.

“He would take my cousin’s head-” Derek picked up the box and opened it- “and put it through the hole, and then he’d…” he pushed the box to close, showing how the latches would be retracted on themselves.

Y/N shook her head at the thought of someone being put through that. She looked over to Spencer to get her mind off it and watched as he stood up, intently reading a piece of burnt paper.

“Morgan, we need to deliver a profile,” Spencer said as he continued to read the burnt paper.

“Why, Reid?” Derek asked sternly.

Y/N then walked closer to Spencer to look at the paper. Her gloved covered hands reaching for it hesitantly before Spencer handed it to her and pointed to the part he had been inspecting.

“We know who the unsub is,” Derek continued.

“No, he’s right,” Y/N said agreeing with Spencer as she handed the paper back to Spencer for him to show Derek.

“We need to deliver the profile.” He showed the paper to Derek.

Derek grabbed the paper from Spencer’s hand, reading what the two had already done. The words yelling at him on the paper, telling of the acts his cousin was forced to be a part of and something else called the company.

“Let’s head back to the station,” Y/N said, prompting the two men to follow her out and to the cars.

------------

“After eight years in captivity at the hands of Malcolm Ford, we believe Cindi Burns’ ego has been shattered,” Y/N said as she began the profile.

“As a result, he could afford to give her some degree of freedom and trust that she would stay with him,” Emily continued.

“Which is why it’s going to be very difficult to get Cindi away from her captor,” Hotch explained. “We believe she’s suffering an extreme form of Stockholm syndrome.”

The officers in the room took notes diligently while they listened.

“Like Patty Hearst in the seventies, where she ended up robbing banks with her captor because of her Stockholm syndrome,” Y/N continued, giving an example that would hopefully be sufficient.

“Only this is worse, Ford has gotten Cindi to believe in something called the company,” Rossi said.

“What’s the company?” One of the officers asked, raising their hand politely.

“It’s a sadomasochistic role-play scenario, a game, essentially, in which a cabal of men tells their submissives they can trade their slaves at their whim. If you displease your master or try to escape, the company will find you, kill you, and kill your family, ” Spencer answered.

“The voluntary submissives understand that it’s just a fantasy, but Malcolm Ford has gotten Cindi to believe it’s real.” Hotch’s eyes scanned over the crowd as he spoke. Faces contorted in disgust and concern from the words of the profile.

“How?” Palmer asked.

“By making her sign a slave contract.” Y/N shuddered at her own words. The feeling of sorrow rising in her again for Cindi.

“The documentation we’ve found on the company informs our profile and will inform your manhunt,” Spencer began. “Because it might point you to where Malcolm Ford is now.”

“The language on their contract speaks of an underground network, which tells us that he has a few men he trusts,” JJ continued.

“Which means that what started as an S&M game could now be a ring,” Rossi said.

“Thank you.” The officers and others walked away to get back to their work. Y/N turned to Spencer, her lips pursed as she looked at him with the expression he knew all too well by now.

“Don’t feel guilty,” he told her. His voice wasn’t stern, but it was strong in a comforting way.

“I don’t think it’s guilt, I feel for her, I mean-” she looked around to see if anyone was in ears reach of her and Spencer- “I was basically held captive by a stalker, I hid away from everyone for years, I just, I want to help her.” Her sentence finished with a huff, finally feeling like she could breathe.

“I know, it’s what makes you a great person, always wanting to help others.” His smile reassured her.

She placed her hands on her face, rubbing her cheeks to snap out of her funk and get back on the case.“Thanks, I needed that, let’s catch this son of a bitch.” He nodded in response as the two began to look over the documents again and find out all they could.

---------------

“Is he in there?” Y/N asked as she walked up next to JJ. They stood outside of the bullpen of the interrogation room, both waiting for Hotch who had texted them to meet him there.

“Yeah, I think he wants us to start the interrogation, throw him off his game,” JJ said, looking over to Y/N.

Y/N nodded, saying that she understood.

Hotch then walked out to them, his face as serious as normal. “I need you two to throw him off, he’s expecting Derek but we don’t want to give him what he wants or expects. Just make it seem casual okay?”

The two nodded and walked to the bullpen. Y/N grabbed the Minella folder from Rossi, silently thanking him with a nod.

“Just start talking, like how we do in the mornings.” JJ nodded as she waited for Y/N to nod for her to start as the officer opened the door.

“So when I get home and, of course, he’s still up past his bedtime,” JJ said, her hands going up as the two walked to the seats.

“Uh, reminds me of why I’m not married yet,” Y/N said, laughing as she took a seat next to JJ.

“Oh, well, neither am I, technically,” JJ said, correcting Y/N.

“Oh yeah,” she laughed. “You’re right.”

Y/N placed her elbow on the table, turning her head away from Malcolm in the seat as she looked at JJ.

“Do you guys ever--”

“Oh, no, I really don’t need a man to tell me what to do,” JJ said, cutting Y/N off.

“Yeah, well that’s why things between me and Spence work great.” The two laughed as they just chatted, ignoring the man on the opposite side of the table. “I mean he does his thing, I do mine, we don’t have any problems re--”

“Excuse me?” Malcolm said, cutting Y/N off.

“Shh,” Y/N said, holding her finger to her lips. “Uh, the adults are talking.” Y/N pointed between her and Y/N.

“When it’s your turn to speak, I’ll give you permission.” JJ used the words that he would as a tactic to throw him off. “Okay, so anyway…” JJ trailed off as the two began to talk again.

“Oh, yeah, any sleep?”

“Uh, no, of course not.” JJ laughed at her words while Y/N turned to the file letting out a noise of annoyance at the thought.

“What are we doing here anyway?” Y/N asked, opening the file on the table.

“Oh, yeah,” JJ said, turning completely forward to face Malcolm.

“Oh okay so, Mal, can I call you that, cause I’m going too, you want to confess now or just go straight to prison your choice really.” Y/N folded her hands together as she faced the man across the table.

“Look, my wife and I had a disagreement in that store-” Malcolm began but he was cut off by JJ.

“Whoa- wife?” JJ asked, her words fake to throw him off.

“You’re married?” Y/N’s lip turned up at the thought. “No, no, this is about John Hitchens, it looks like his suicide is more of a murder and the gun, it traces back to you.” She pointed to the man with her pen that she held.

Malcolm’s once cocky demeanor was now broken slightly, realizing what he thought he was here for.

The two waited for a response, seeing as he was silent, they made their next move.

“Okay, uh, let’s go talk to this wife,” JJ said, standing up from the table, Y/N following suit.

“I don’t know who this Hitchens person is, but if you had anything you’d charge me already,” Malcolm said. Y/N and JJ turned back to look at him as he spoke. “You’re here because of Cindi.”

“Caught us,” Y/N said shrugging her shoulders with a laugh.

“You know what?” JJ said pointing to Malcolm as she sat down again. “This is my favorite part. This is where you hang yourself with your own tongue. So, please keep talking.”

The two women sat poised in their seats as they looked at the man. Gentle smiles on their faces they had before gone as they now had serious ones.

“What are you doing here?” Malcolm asked JJ. “With a baby at home being raised by a man you’re not married to, what are you doing here.” His words were judgmental, but JJ kept a calm face.

“Well, its work. But we make it work,” JJ answered the man, her voice calm.

“Where’s Cindi?” Y/N asked.

“Huh, work, I know all about work,” Malcolm scuffed, ignoring the question. “Negotiating who does the dishes, fighting over who folds the laundry. Except for Cindi and I never fight, she knows her role.”

Y/N laughed lightly. “After you beat her into signing a contract,” her words were calm and collected, not wanting to show Malcolm he was truly enraging her.

“What we have is a bond you know nothing about,” he said, eyes looking directly at Y/N. “But I’ll tell you about it-” his head then turned to look at JJ- “if you ask permission.”

JJ let out a laugh through her nose, never breaking eye contact with Malcolm.

Y/N chuckled, grabbing the file on the table. “Come on,” she said, standing up from the table walking to the door.

She watched as JJ played her next move, staying seated at the table.

“You’re curious, aren’t you?” Malcolm asked her. “You want to know our secret.” His head nodded as he rocked in his chair.

JJ just sat there, not moving for a second, until she tapped her hand on the table and stood up and walked to the door. Y/N opened it and led the two of them out of the room.

“I wanted to rip his face off,” Y/N stated once the door was closed.

“Please, let me go back in there,” JJ asked Hotch as they walked to him by the mirror.

“No.” Hotch’s voice was stern with his answer.

“His guard is down, he thinks he can manipulate me,” JJ said, pointing to herself.

“We can’t give him what he wants,” Hotch reminded her. “We need to keep him off balance.”

“Then let me go in,” Derek said entering the room.

Y/N’s face softened as she saw Derek enter. He looked distraught that he didn’t find his cousin, but also determined as he pushed forward in doing so.

“I can get in his head.”

“The way he got into yours?” Rossi asked referring back to when they found Malcolm.

“Look, I know I have no right to ask this, but please just trust me. I can break him.” Derek’s words were mostly to Hotch as he looked at him.

Hotch nodded, allowing Derek to then walk into the room and begin his interrogation.

-----------

Y/N stood behind Emily and Spencer who sat across from Malcolm’s lawyer and Cindi, who was very much alive and serious. She watched her demeanor, trying to spot any changes in emotions or stance as they sat in the room.

“We’ve been clear that we would like all charges dropped,” the lawyer said. His nasally voice made Y/N want to punch him. One because he was defending the egotistical prick in the other room, and two, because his face annoyed her, and she couldn’t deal with his voice.

“We still have some questions about John Hitchens,” Y/N stated, placing her hands onto the back of Spencer's chair to lean on it.

“And Mr. Ford has explained that the gun that Hitchens used to shoot himself was stolen, he even filed a police report,” the lawyer retorted, making Y/N internally roll her eyes.

Her eyes went back to Cindi, who was just staring blankly at the ground.

“So, what else do you need to know?”

Cindi then made eye contact with Emily, but when Emily turned her head in question, Cindi’s eyes averted.

“That’ll be all,” Spencer said standing up. The lawyer and Cindi did so also and exited the room.

“Did you see that?” Y/N said to Emily in a whisper as they began to walk out of the room.

“Yeah, I did.” The three walked out of the room, looking over to Hotch who raised a brow. Emily shook her head in response to the question, telling him that something was up.

Y/N, Spencer, and Emily walked over to a desk where JJ sat and began to talk.

“Was there anything?” JJ asked, hoping it was something that they could use to keep him here.

“No, but something was off with Cindi,” Spencer said, sitting on the desk in front of him.

Y/N stood next to JJ as the four began to discuss something, but her attention was soon brought away as Malcolm was brought out of the holding room.

“Guys,” she whispered, getting their attention to Cindi as she walked up and kissed Malcolm. Their faces sat in shocked expressions at what just happened.

Their eyes followed as they grabbed each other's hands and walked towards the door.

“There’s gotta be something that’s keeping her with him,” Emily said as she turned to the others.

“Yeah, but what?” Spencer asked, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Wait!” Yvonne said as she saw the two.

“I can’t talk to you,” Cindi said, her eyes turning to Malcolm’s feet.

Malcolm then whispered something to Cindi along the lines of trusting her.

“Let me just-- let me just look at you,” Yvonne said, timidly approaching Cindi. When she approached, she had a smile of relief on her face, finally able to see her daughter after so long. Her hand reached up, and pulled down Cindi’s turtle neck, seeing all the different bruises all over.

“Oh,” Yvonne whimpered. “What has he done to you?”

“He loves me,” Cindi responded, pulling her collar back up onto her neck.

“You call that love?” Yvonne asked aggressively.

“I have to go,” Cindi turned, tears in her eyes clearly evident but she wouldn’t let them spill. “I have to make him dinner.”

“Make him dinner? Would that be the first thing you would say?” Y/N asked her colleagues.

They all shook their heads, knowing something was definitely up.

------------

“We need to rethink the profile, this ain’t Stockholm,” Rossi said as they sat around the conference table.

“It could be battered wife syndrome,” Emily posed.

“No, it’s not,” Derek said.

“Morgan, the way that they hugged each other, I-I think she genuinely loves him,” JJ concluded from her observations, that fact.

“I’m telling you not the woman I know, she wouldn’t do that,” Derek defended his reasoning.

“Then what is it, Derek? Why would she behave that way?” Rossi asked him.

“She said she needed to cook dinner for him. Is that what you cook for your husband?” Derek held up the small can of spaghettios. He then showed it to JJ. “Would you make that for Will?”

“No, I might for Henry, though,” JJ answered.

“Exactly, when I was growing up, this is what Cindi and I ate, this exact brand,” Derek said, his voice strong as he came out with his thoughts. “Hotch, what did your mom make you for breakfast?”

“Oatmeal and orange juice,” Hotch answered.

“What do you make for Jack?”

“Oatmeal and orange juice.”

“Same brand?”

“Mm-hmm, yeah,” Hotch said, realizing what the conclusion Derek was coming through.

“So, she could have been cooking dinner, but not for Malcolm Ford,” Y/N said, her mind thinking the same thing.

“So are we saying we think they have children?” Emily asked.

“Yes, I do,” Derek answered. Y/N nodded in agreement as she thought the same thing.

“We didn’t profile that, there’s no evidence of one in the home or their lives,” Spencer said.

“Unless, Malcolm keeps the child hidden from Cindi to keep her in line,” Y/N contoured as she gave it more thought.

“That fits the profile,” JJ embellished.

“It’s a stretch,” Rossi stated, unsure of what they were claiming.

“It’s the only theory that would explain her behavior,” Derek said looking at Rossi.

“All right, Morgan,” Hotch said, bringing everyone’s attention to him. “Prove it.”

--------------

The sirens were loud as the team and S.W.A.T. pulled up to the cabin where Derek found they kids were being held from the lawyer. When they hopped out of the cars, Derek went around front to go look for Cindi and the kids.

JJ and Y/N went around back to go see if anyone was back there.

“You get anything JJ,” Y/N whispered to her as they stood in the woods behind the house.

She shook her head, but then her eyes went wide as she heard movement and Derek yelling Cindi’s name.

“Come on, baby, talk to me, Cindi, it’s Derek,” Derek’s voice said. JJ and Y/N stayed back hidden behind a tree, not wanting to be seen by Malcolm.

They heard the struggles of Derek as he was grabbed by Malcolm, his gun flying across the forest floor. Y/N flinched to go help, but JJ stopped her and told her Derek had it. He did, but then Cindi’s voice was heard along with the unlocking of the safety on a gun.

“Stop!” Cindi commanded Derek who was throwing blows at Malcolm.

“Cindi, wait,” Derek said calmly, holding his hand up to her. “He’s gotten you to believe in a lie, the company is not real.” His voice was pleading to her as he tried to make her believe him.

“I know, Derek, step aside,” Cindi said, moving the gun with the light on it to the side.

Dere stood up from over Malcolm’s unconscious body, grabbing the gun in Cindi’s hand. He pulled the gun away from her, sad eyes now rejoiceful as he saw his cousin how he knew her.

“Let’s go home.” Derek’s voice was soft, but still strong.

Malcolm then quickly stood up, but JJ and Y/N were quick to step in front of him. Guns aimed and ready to shoot if necessary.

“Hi,” JJ said with a smirk.

“Malcolm Ford,” Y/N said, holstering her gun then grabbing out her handcuffs. “You’re under arrest for kidnapping, child endangerment, and the murder of John Hitchens.” The whole time Y/N was arresting Malcolm, his eyes never left JJ.

The two women grabbed each one of his arms and began guiding him to the car to take him back to the station.

“So, um…” JJ began. “Can you tell me that secret now?”

When they got back to the station, Y/N walked in happily and went to talk to Spencer.

“This is what makes it all better in the end,” Y/N said, watching a Cindi and her mom reunited. She laid the side of her head on Spencer’s arm who leaned on the desk next to her. Smile on her face as she got to watch the happy moment.

“It is,” Spencer agreed. His eyes panned down to her on his arm, being able to relax knowing she felt better now and didn’t feel guilt. “You know you can’t feel guilty in every stalker case, you couldn’t help what happened with you.”

Y/N sighed, knowing he was right and that she shouldn't but sometimes she couldn’t help it. “I know, but there’s always gonna be a piece of a case I relate too, some more than others.”

Spencer leaned down and kissed the top of her head. A silent reassurance that he understood what she was saying and he accepted it.

Y/N smiled at the feeling of his warmth. She felt content at that moment, like nothing could break it. And nothing would, but as things work out, good moments can only last so long.

Tag List (let me know if you want to be added!!):

@throughparisallthroughrome @word-scribbless @nintendumbfuck @confused-and-really-hungry @justine-en @andiebeaword @itsarayofsunshine @baby-i-am-fireproof @abitofeverythinggg @nanocoool @marceline-is-my-spirit-animal @fancyfaucet @im-a-raging-gay @atletino @mo-whore @peterparkersdestiny @bandsandjill @mbowles23-blog @sarcasm-n-insomnia @citrussirus @nerual222 @april-14-blog @reidloversisforever

#spencer reid imagine #spencer reid #spencer reid smut #spencer reid series #criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds meme #aaron hotchner #aaron hotch hotchner #derek morgan #derek morgan imagine #Matthew Gray Gubler

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onlydylanobrien · 4 years

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Dylan O’Brien on ‘Love and Monsters,’ ‘Teen Wolf’ and Life After His Devastating ‘Maze Runner’ Accident

Dylan O’Brien didn’t expect to finish up his next movie “Infinite,” co-starring Mark Wahlberg, from the comfort of his own home. But there he was, holed up in his den completing ADR.

One of O’Brien’s friends came over when he to do some looping on a fight scene. For a good hour, his friend listened to him grunt, yell and make choking sounds into a recording system that the studio delivered to his house. “I have a terrible gag reflex so choking and ADR is always really hard for me, but also I think it’s effective because I really just go for it,” O’Brien says on Wednesday’s episode of the Variety and iHeart podcast “The Big Ticket.”

Eight months into the pandemic, O’Brien, best known for MTV’s “Teen Wolf” and the “Maze Runner” franchise, is still at home, this time promoting “Love and Monsters,” his new adventure film. He stars as a young man who goes looking for his high school sweetheart after spending seven years in an underground bunker because the world has been decimated by a “monsterpocalypse.”

“When I first read the script, I was like, ‘What the f— is this? This is great!’” O’Brien recalls. “I really loved it. I loved the humor in it, the characters, the worlds. I thought it was really unique and weird and funky and funny and sweet…and so good-natured.”

The movie, directed by Michael Matthews, wasn’t supposed to hit theaters until Valentine’s Day 2021, but Paramount decided to release it on VOD on Oct. 16.

It wasn’t that long ago when O’Brien thought he may leave the business. In 2016, he suffered traumatic injuries when he was hit by a stunt car while shooting the third and final film in the “Maze Runner” franchise. However, after several months of recovery, he went on to complete the film.

O’Brien is now, understandably, hyper-vigilant about safety on set. “Whenever I’m putting on a rig, I’m vetting every piece of that rig and much more,” he says.

But no matter how safe he may feel, O’Brien says, “Even to this day, if I’m on set and I’m doing a stunt, if I’m in a rig, if there’s some action going on, I am slightly irritable. There is a degree of anxiety in me that I don’t think there’s ever not going to be.”

His priorities in his personal life shifted, too. “I had friends that were so dear to me that I had felt that I had neglected for years,” O’Brien says. “All of a sudden, it was very important to me to nurture those relationships and not lose them. I think that it absolutely completely rewires and restructures the way you see your life and what you deem important.”

For “Teen Wolf” fans, O’Brien says he hasn’t been approached for any sort of reunion show (the series ended in 2017 after six years), but “I would jump at the chance to do any kind of thing. We’ll come back together for something at some point.”

#dylan o'brien #love and monsters press #infinite #infinite press

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fandomlurker · 4 years

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A Ponderous Rewatch: Bubba Bo Bob Brain and Cameo

Can I just say that I think I’m somehow getting worse at keeping the screenshot count down?

Neither the cameo nor the main episode in this post are animated by TMS, so that’s not the reason for the surprisingly high screenshot count. However, the regular episode is animated by Wang Film Production, who are the same folks that animated the very first PatB segment and have done most of the episodes I’ve covered so far, including the previous one. I can tell they’ve gotten a better handle at animating our main duo in the skit we’re looking at today, especially Brain. Wang Film Production is no TMS, but they’ve gotten very, very good at expressions. They’ve also seemed to settle into a rounded and soft design for Brain, something that they’re kind of known for among fans if I recall correctly. Pinky can still be a little…off at this point in time, though.

Moving on, the cameo that we’re starting with is animated by Akom Film Productions. They’re the folks who usually do the animation for the Chicken Boo and Goodfeathers episodes, and they usually do a pretty good job with those characters. As far as our mouse duo go, though, Akom has only done “Opportunity Knox” so far. You know, the one with the oddly nightmarish Brain close-ups. Thankfully we get none of that since it’s only a short bit.

So yes, onto the cameo in “Noah’s Lark”!

So this is actually a Hip Hippos episode, but luckily we don’t have to deal with them at all right now. The premise is the story of Noah’s Ark, obviously, but the character of Noah is done as a parody of the stand-up comedian Richard Lewis, who was somewhat popular in the 80s. The most modern and notable media he’s been involved in that people on Tumblr might know him from (or at least, what I think folks here might recognize, it can be a little hard to gauge that since both millennials and gen z folks are the main demographic of this site) are Robin Hood: Men in Tights where he played Prince John, and Curb Your Enthusiasm where he plays himself.

Noah is rounding up two of every animal to go onto the ark (which is a popular depiction of how the story goes, but is actually false: it’s supposed to be seven male and female pairs of “clean” animals of each species and one pair of “unclean” animals of the same species, but that’s as far as I’m going into that topic). He’s nearly finished the list and has just been mauled by the wolverine pair, and…

“Lab mice?...”

The fact that he’s specifically asking for a pair of lab mice raises a lot of questions that I don’t think we have time to unpack.

The pair of lab mice that he gets is, of course, Pinky and the Brain.

And Pinky is, for the very first time in the series, crossdressing, presumably to pass as a female mouse so he and Brain can survive the great flood by boarding the ark.

…This is also a lot to unpack.

“Check!” they both exclaim, although Pinky does it in a very deep voice for some reason.

Wow, look at the surprise and then hostile suspicion on Noah’s face there!

Their outfits are very 1950s, with Brain even carrying a suitcase. Anachronisms aside, these two really went all out for the “we are a normal, heterosexual pair” ruse, didn’t they? Not only is Pinky in a dress and a blonde wig, but Brain even put on a little bowler hat. Why did he feel the need to do that? Did he feel left out of dressing up otherwise? Was he afraid he wouldn’t look “manly” and hetero enough without it? I have so many questions…

“Whew! These pantyhose are killing me, Brain!”

Wow, for once it’s Pinky physically hurting Brain, even if it’s a relatively minor tug on the ear.

“I think I prefer knee-highs…”

…Pinky, you’re not even wearing pantyhose. What the hell are you talking about?

Assuming that this is just the result of an animation oversight (which, honestly, I’m certain it was), we now know that his disguise went so over-the-top as to include pantyhose which Noah wouldn’t normally see…and also it’s a type of pantyhose that Pinky doesn’t even like wearing, which implies to me that this is something Brain acquired for him.

There is just so much going on in cameos like these if you think about them for even a few seconds.

Also, I agree with Pinky. Knee-high pantyhose are much less uncomfortable to wear.

BONK!

So the mice are allowed to board and the audience is left to think that their little ruse worked, but immediately after the two run off and are out of listening range Noah rolls his eyes and says

“Who am I to judge?”

Heavily implying Noah completely saw through it and let them on anyway. Wow.

That’s the end of their cameo. Who’d have thought that this little scene would be the precursor to Brain having Pinky crossdress to disguise him as Brain’s wife so many times in the series? And who’d have thought that this very first time wouldn’t fool anyone at all?

But now let’s move on to the meat of this rewatch post:

We open to Acme Labs at night, as usual, though I’ve never noticed until now how lonely and eerie the place seems if you ignore our mouse duo.

“Pinky… I believe I have conceived my most brilliant plan to date!”

Oh boy, we have another first for today! Brain is very much a fan of using temporary mind control for his plans. It’s the method he falls back on the most, which is very interesting when you consider his various psychological issues involving having control taken away from him all his life.

“I shall use subliminal mind control to take over the world!”

“…Pinky?”

The hand-on-hip pose here is great.

“Today’s inside story is country mega-star Willie Ray Cypress!”

Uh, Pinky? Considering that this is pretty much the expression you had while looking at Pharfignewton, I am very, very worried about you looking at the Billy Ray Cyrus parody the same way.

“Don’t tell my head, my empty hollow head!~”

“You know I wouldn’t understand!~”

Same, Brain. Same. It’s just like Pinky to enjoy a song as earworm-y as this (not to mention how relevant this parody is to his everyday experience with Brain’s plans), but lord was the real song this is making fun of annoying as hell back in the day. Like, I was a small child at the time this song came out, and I still hated how often this would be played on the radio.

Luckily, Brain pounces on the remote’s off button and puts an end to the nonsense.

But oh, the look of sad betrayal on Pinky’s face is heartbreaking! I’m sorry, sweetie!

“It must be inordinately taxing to be such a boob.”

Heh, Brain said “boob”. /inner six year old

“You have no idea…”

“Pinky, do you know what a subliminal message is?”

“Something you leave on a subliminal telephone answering machine?”

Nice try, Pinky.

“No. It is a recorded message perceived only by the subconscious human mind.”

Two things here:

This diagram bothers me because my mind always interprets the way they’ve drawn the bottom of the cerebellum as the person shutting their eyes extremely tightly.

Brain using his own tail as a pointing stick is very, very cute and I love this detail.

“I have recorded such a message.”

He’s still holding his tail, aaaa!~

“Citizens of the world, you are under my control. You will do whatever I say…”

“Nice mix, but it’s not exactly danceable, is it?”

Oh, Pinky. Only you would sincerely compliment Brain’s incredibly dry mind control message and then immediately point out a flaw that has nothing to do with its purpose. Bless you, you stupid and wonderful little mouse.

I like how Pinky’s interjection startles the hell outta Brain for a moment, too.

“If people heard this message enough times, they would succumb to my control and we could take over the world!”

Notice that despite Pinky being a minor annoyance and despite the fact that Brain claims that everyone will be under his control, yet again it’s still both of them taking over the world.

“What do you think, Pinky?”

And he still wants Pinky’s input. It’s small and scattered and very, very subtle, but in my opinion this is Brain’s most frequent way of showing that he cares about Pinky. Brain likely isn’t even aware that he does it. Pinky might not be aware, either.

“I think I’m getting dizzy and I rather like it! Ahahahahahoo!~”

“Sometimes you hurt my head, Pinky…”

And yet, Brain. And yet…

“The only problem: How to get this message repeated worldwide airplay…?”

Offscreen, Pinky turns the TV back on and startles Brain again, but only for a moment.

Another great pose and expression here: Mildly annoyed, but interested and on the verge of an idea.

“I just adore Willie Ray!”

“I listen to his song twenty times a day!”

I…really don’t know why they chose to have this shot done with Brain walking over the “camera” towards the TV so we get a brief close-up of Brain’s mousey behind. It made me laugh, though, so I thought I’d share.

“Pinky… Are you pondering what I’m pondering?”

I’m also kind of obsessed with this brief expression of Pinky’s I unintentionally managed to capture. It’s a bit of a smug, knowing, and yet endeared look. I’m sure it’s completely unintentional on the animators’ part, but I love the idea it gives me of Pinky knowing exactly what Brain’s thinking but purposefully saying something entirely unrelated to playfully tease him.

“Well, I think so, Brain, but burlap chafes me so.”

To be fair, Pinky, I think burlap chafes everyone. And were you thinking about doing a potato sack race? That’s the only connection to burlap I can think of that would be in any way relevant...

“Country music, Pinky. I will go to Nashville and become the biggest country music star of all time! Everyone will hear my record and my subliminal message and I will take over the world!”

In all honesty, that would probably be easier to do in the early 90s when this takes place since country music wasn’t such a…well, “dead” is a bit of an exaggeration, but country music as a genre is incredibly unpopular nowadays with the occasional notable exception. In the early 90s? Not so much.

“Egad, Brain!”

This is the most enthusiastic swoon I’ve seen and heard from you yet, Pinky.

“Oh! But no, no… It takes people years of hard work to become famous, Brain.”

Well, that or they’re born into a famous family. Or they’re just rich.

“Why, take Kathie Lee Gifford for example: She did community theatre, and—“

I actually can’t find anything via Googling about Kathie Lee doing community theatre before she became famous. She seems to have studied music and drama in university, and had a folk music group in high school, but the only reference to theatre I can find is professional musical theatre in the late 90s.

It’s possible Pinky’s right, though.

BONK!

BRAIN! …Wait, where did you even get that tiny club?

“Stop talking, Pinky, I must think.”

You… Brain, I think I’m starting to see why some fans believe you may be as neurodivergent as Pinky is, but in a different way. I can’t in good faith elaborate on that myself, since I haven’t been diagnosed as such and it would be completely disrespectful of me to do so, but if anyone wants a good little theory on that, try here.

“I have calculated every ingredient necessary to become a country music mega-star. Read me the list, Pinky!”

He’s typing by hopping from one key to another, aww!

Eeeh, the lettering work on that computer is pretty bad, though.

“A cowboy hat.”

“Check!”

“A southern dialect.”

“Check, ya’ll!”

“Nice, Brain.”

The way Pinky says “nice” here reminds me of this meme. Also, aww, Pinky’s always ready with the compliments.

“Working class values…”

“I enjoy beef jerky and the comedy stylings of Gallagher. Check.”

His visible cringe at having to say he enjoys Gallagher is wonderful. I first heard about Gallagher through My Brother, My Brother and Me, but for anyone that doesn’t know, Gallagher is a frankly terrible prop comedian whose most famous act was smashing things on stage (usually fruits of increasing size) with a large mallet that he called the “Sledge-O-Matic”, ending with smashing a watermelon. It was apparently a mildly popular bit of comedy in the south. Does that sound entertaining? No? Yeah, that’s…that’s why Brain is cringing so hard.

“A song.”

“Check!”

A song titled “A Song”. Brain, sweetheart, I think you’re going to need to put in a little more effort than that.

“A name consisting of not less than three words.”

“From now on, I shall be ‘Bubba Bo Bob Brain’. Check.”

I would make fun of him for this name, but honestly it’s kind of genius in its bland simplicity.

“And…a height of at least six feet!”

“Aaa--guebuh…”

Whoops. Forgot about that one, huh?

“Drat!”

“There must be some way for me to increase my height…”

Gee, if only you had a fully operational mechanical human suit just laying around.

“Hmm, let me think…”

“Don’t hurt yourself, Pinky.”

He is trying his best!

“Faster, Pinky! Faster!”

…Why does Pinky have to spin the thread? The whole point of sewing machines like this is that they’re powered electrically, Brain. Are you just making him do this so Pinky feels included?

Oh. Oh no…

Brain’s “WTF?” face is great. He’s surprised and yet not at the same time, because things like this just happen when you have Pinky around.

“You amaze me, Pinky.”

“I do my best…”

A very cute exchange.

So instead of using the mechanical human suit they usually fall back on in times like these (maybe it’s under six feet tall?), the mice instead come up with…this.

“Proceed, Pinky.”

I have to give them some credit, regardless of how ridiculous this is, as sewing denim to make a very bizarrely thin and tall pair of jeans must have been an absolute nightmare.

“Ki-yi-yippee-yi-yo. How do I look?”

I’m getting flashbacks to the similarly deadpan singing of “Camptown Races” from last episode. Brain’s really on a western kick lately, isn’t he?

“Oh, very nice, Brain!”

Your finger-framing may be focused on the back of Brain’s head for some reason, Pinky, but your pupils are definitely pointed a bit…lower.

“It’s ‘Bubba Bo Bob Brain’.”

“You are my manager, Colonel Pinky.”

This is a reference to Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, who was honestly quite the bungler when it came to managing Elvis’ career. I honestly don’t think Brain’s making a subtle jab at Pinky’s competency here for once because Brain’s grasp of pop culture he’s not already interested in is surface level at best most of the time.

“You discovered me playing the guitar on the front porch of my humble pig farm. Any questions?”

“Oh, just one: When you farm humble pigs, how far apart do you have to plant them?”

“…If I could reach you, I would hurt you.”

Hey now, you’re the one that asked, Brain.

“But for now, on to Nashville!”

“On to Nashville!”

BONK!

“This is a pain that is going to linger…”

That’s what you get for rolling your eyes at Pinky’s enthusiasm.

No perilous car trips this time! Instead, the boys are getting bus tickets to Nashville.

“Two tickets to Nashville, please.”

“Ooh-wee!~ You’re a tall drink a’ water, aint’cha, darlin’?”

…Ma’am? Excuse me, ma’am? Ma’am, are you flirting with The Brain?

Like, sorry, that “tall drink of water” saying is not just to point out that someone’s tall. It’s specifically for flirting with someone who is tall and gorgeous and a refreshing sight to see, like a tall glass of water on a hot summer day.

This lady is flirting with a mouse on stilt legs.

I know that Brain’s disguises are prone to inexplicably work even when by all rights they shouldn’t, but…

“Actually, I am a lab mouse on stilts.”

Brain does his usual bold and plain truth shtick and I’m a little surprised that he didn’t react to what she said beyond that. Then again, this is Brain and he’s quite terrible when talking to women in general, so maybe we dodged a bullet here.

“…At least he didn’t ask me to pull his finger.”

I’ve worked in retail and food service for years, ma’am, and if that’s the extent of your experience with unpleasant men, consider yourself lucky.

“EGAD, Bibby-boo-bop-Brain! Round trips are so exciting!”

“It’s ‘Bubba Bo Bob Brain’, Pinky.”

“Right! Sorry. Zort!”

Honestly, Pinky’s version is much cuter.

“Concentrate, Pinky, concentrate!”

BONK!

“YES! This pain will definitely be with me a while.”

Brain out here looking like a bad Minecraft texture.

Hello again, Warner Siblings! Gosh, that little fringed western skirt on Dot is cute.

“’The Rowdy Ranch Nightclub’… What are we doing here, Boobie-baa-baa-Brain?”

I checked the official subtitles for this and yes, that is exactly what he mistakenly calls Brain here. We have had both of these two call each other “boob” or some permutation of it this episode.

Pinky and the Brain sure is a show that exists.

“…It’s ‘Bubba Bo Bob’ Brain. And according to statistics, and inordinate number of country western superstars have gotten their start at this very establishment.”

You probably didn’t need me to tell you this, but there’s no Rowdy Ranch Nightclub in real life. There is, however, “The Rowdy Ranch”, uh, ranch in Texas.

“Egad! [gasp] Do you suppose Minnie Pearl performed here?”

“One can only hope…”

Man, Brain, you are really laying the sarcasm on thick this episode. Come to think of it, he’s been slightly more sassy towards Pinky than usual this episode as well. I suppose he’s still sore about the end of the last one. You know, for reasons.

BONK!

At least he’s getting some karmic punishment for it, I guess.

“I am a telephone repairman from this area!~”

This little ditty this man is singing has bugged the hell out of me for quite a while, as it certainly sounds like it’s a reference to something but I never knew exactly what it was referring to until just now thanks to an old Animaniacs Usenet group from way back in the day: It’s a parody of the song “Whichita Lineman” by Glenn Campbell. The writers are really giving it their all with the pop culture references this time.

“When I give the signal, play the subliminal message tape.”

“Right-o, Bippie Bebop Balloola!”

“…Sometimes you frighten me, Pinky.”

Why, though?! Despite it being a mistake it’s honestly a goddamn adorable one. Why must you fear affectionate, innocent, unknowing malapropisms, Brain? Pinky’s still going to do what you told him to.

Anyway, Brain is ushered onto the stage as a newcomer and he’s…not exactly any more eloquent than Pinky was just now.

“Howdy, you all. Here’s a little…ditty I wrote. Hope you enjoy it…you all.”

Here’s the thing: Brain’s not one to get stage fright, and while he’s not the best actor he’s still usually better than this. He was saying “ya’ll” and getting the country-isms perfectly fine beforehand, although he was still doing it in his deadpan Brain way.

Now, suddenly, after hearing Pinky cutely screw up his fake name and going on stage he’s starting to mess up. It’s like Pinky’s error is still in the back of his mind and flustering him enough to throw him off for a bit.

He gets back into the swing of things when he starts singing his song, though.

“I am a lab mouse, I escaped from my cage

Never had a job, never earned minimum wage.~”

“He ain’t half bad.”

“Ain’t half good, either.”

OUCH. That’s a little harsh. Sure, the lyrics are kinda blah but he’s a decent singer here. Really, it’s just not a genre of music that his voice fits very well.

Also, lady? You’ve got a suspiciously busty doppleganger in the back there. That’s got to be a bad omen for you.

“But you will respect me, YES, once my plan is unfurled!~

You will call me your leader, I’ll be king of the world!~”

Careful, Brain. Your complicated emotional complex is starting to show in those lyrics.

There’s some more nice facial expressions here too. I can’t really capture it with still images, but Brain’s got a very tender demeanor when he sings about being king of the world.

“Now, Pinky!”

…I just noticed that Pinky’s wearing a completely different outfit here at the nightclub than he was when boarding the bus to get to Nashville. He was previously in an all-white colonel outfit and now he’s in a more generic yet very sweet cowboy get-up. Did you make yourself an entire wardrobe, Pinky?

Another minor detail is that while Pinky’s cowboy hat is a generic tan colour (although before, it was white), Brain’s hat is completely black, which as per western film traditions marks him as a clear villain.

You and I know he’s not really a villain and is, at worst, an anti-villain…but I thought this was worth pointing out anyway.

“Citizens of the world, you are under my control. You will do whatever I say.”

I love how he does this completely unneeded strum on his guitar in the middle of his subliminal message. It's for the drama!

“Buy my record and listen to it twenty times a day.”

Corporations be like…

Who am I kidding? Corporations nowadays would have you pay a fee monthly to have a song on your phone playlist and you would never really own a copy.

“Let’s buy his record…”

“And listen to it twenty times a day…”

Lady, that doppleganger is still over there. Do you need a distraction while you sneak out the back?

This smug lil’ jerk. Gotta love him, though.

And so Brain’s cassette tapes fly off the shelves at record speed.

Man. Cassette tapes. I feel so fuckin’ old…

“I don’t know ‘bout ya’ll, but I can’t get enough of Bubba Bo Bob Brain. Let’s hear it again!”

JFC, that spittoon. Blegh! And just what do you need that rope for?!?

“Well, he’s the hottest thing to hit Nashville since my mama’s jalapeno grits! Here’s Bubba Bo Bob Brain!”

Having just recently learned what exactly “grits” is, I am very disturbed by the idea of jalapeno grits.

“I’m your biggest fan! What d’you say to that?”

Hi, Dolly Parton! I’ve gotta say that the animators nailed the caricature of 90s Dolly here pretty well. She’s instantly recognizable, unlike some other celebrity parodies Animaniacs does. It’s not just because of Dolly’s, uh…most renowned physical characteristics, either. That’s a very Dolly Parton smiling face.

Not much to say here other than that Dolly’s a sweetheart of a woman, from what I know about her, especially for a celebrity. She’s a staunch supporter of Covid relief and Black Lives Matter as well.

That said, she’s sadly—both in the 90s and now—most well known for…

“I’d say puberty was inordinately kind to you.”

BRAIN!

Well, yeah. That.

I guess now you can see what I mean about Brain not being very good at talking to women. Like, he’s definitely not ogling her here. In fact he’s just kind of…stating something he’s noticed and looking absolutely done with this whole celebrity thing. But Brain you don’t just make a joke like that about a woman’s bust size no matter how deadpan you do it, you ass!

“Haha, go on.”

She takes it well, though, just like Dolly seems to in reality.

Still, though! Brain, you retroactively deserved all those run-ins with doorframes.

Continuing on the buxom southern women thing this episode has decided to run with (seriously, what’s going on here?), we now have a brief parody of a Hee Haw skit.

“Hahahahaha!”

“Hey, Bubba Bo Bob Brain, I just got back from France!”

“How’d you find it?”

“I used a map.~”

“Hahahahaha!”

Yeah, that’s an accurate depiction of Hee Haw style humour.

“And the Country Tune Award for best male vocal goes to…”

“Bubba Bo Bob Brain!”

Here we have Garth Brooks and Crystal Gayle emceeing this awards ceremony. I had to look up who these two were supposed to be, though, since the caricatures are pretty vague this time.

“EGAD! YIPPEE! Narf! Ah hahahahahaha!”

Aww, he’s so happy for Brain! And oh, is that yet another outfit I see? And a much more appropriately sunshine-y yellow and flamboyant one at that! Pinky really went all-out for this.

Again with the tongue hanging out too, except this time it’s more understandable.

“You’re embarrassing me, Pinky.”

And you’re continuing to be a jerk, wow. Someone needs a nap or something.

“Pardon my effervescence, but your accolade is more than any bucolic mouse merits.”

“What’s he sayin’?”

“I don’t know.”

Yes, Brain just used the word “effervescence”, much like in that one Tumblr Twilight meme. To those reeling from the fact that this compares Edward to Brain via their shared pretentiousness: You’re welcome.

Also, a Brain-to-common English translation: “Pardon my bubbly enthusiasm, but your award is more than any countryside mouse deserves.” Would that have been so hard to say, Brain?

“…I’d like to thank my mama and Elvis.”

I wouldn’t thank Elvis. He was an asshole. But that’s probably not wise to say at a 90s country music award show, so I guess it’s understandable.

“Oh, how nice!”

“Well isn’t that nice!”

“I’m outside the Grand Ol’ Opry, where tonight’s concert featuring country music sensation ‘Bubba Bo Bob Brain’ is being televised worldwide.”

“In two words: Bubba is hot!”

I… That’s twice in this episode where a human woman thinks a tiny, big-headed mouse on stilts is hot.

Furries, come get these poor, confused women.

“You gotta know how to cut ‘em

Know how to shuffle

Know how to deal the cards, before you play Fish with me.~”

Hello, Kenny Rogers. I only know the song parodied here, “The Gambler”, again through “My Brother, My Brother and Me” and the long and hilarious conversation about it.

It’s kind of weird to have a song that was made famous by Rogers in 1978 sung like it’s a recent hit in an early 90s awards show, but ehh. Maybe the shelf life of hit country songs is a lot longer than songs of other genres.

And then you die in your sleep~

“Do you realize what will happen if the world hears my song just one more time?”

“An angel will get its wings?!”

If only, Pinky.

“NO, Pinky!”

I think all this country stuff is really getting on Brain’s nerves. He’s being snappy and irritable and lashing out an abnormal amount ever since arriving in Nashville, and there’s not a lot of joy in the minor successes he’s had so far. Like, compare Brain smiling and praising Pinky for his work during the alien encounter spoof they did together, the last episode with Brain cheerfully singing to himself when he was certain he’d win the race…to now where he’s yelling at Pinky for minor mistakes that no one but himself is aware of and being joyless and faking pleasantries and rolling his eyes at the country stars he’s surrounded by. This mouse is crabby as all hell, and I don’t think it’s just because he finds the whole country western thing stupid and below him. This is a mouse who’s done and will continue to do degrading things to achieve his goal of world domination without this much jerkishness.

I think he’s still fuming about the whole Pharfignewton and Pinky thing, and the current plan being a very rural, country-focused plan like the last one with the Kentucky Derby is just exacerbating it by reminding him of it. Like, you don’t even have to take it in the gay way I am and instead take it in a “how dare that goddamn horse take the complete attention of my friend/world domination partner away from me and my plans, this sucks and I can’t believe Pinky’s just being his usual dumbass self like everything is fine and the same” sort of way.

But the gay way makes way more sense, fight me.

…Okay, don’t fight me, I’m tired and old and I really don’t want to get in internet fights about cartoon mice.

“My subliminal message will take permanent hold, and the world will be under my control!”

Ooof! We’re back down to “my” control and not “our”. Jeez, Brain. You really are spiraling right now, aren’t you? Your attitude has quickly devolved from the beginning of this episode...

“Oh, that.”

And dang, even Pinky’s enthusiasm is starting to get deflated.

“Now, do you remember what you have to do?”

“Yes. I need to make a dental appointment. I have horrible plaque buildup!”

Pinky, you do realize that unlike a regular, non-sapient mouse you can just brush your teeth, right?

“The tape, Pinky, the TAPE!”

“Oooh, right! When you give the signal, I play the tape.”

“And now, I’d like to introduce…”

“This is it, I’m on.”

“Good luck, Booba Bip Bop Brain!”

Folks, I swear to you that I tried to get a decent screencap of Pinky slapping Brain to figure out if he slapped his back or his ass and for the life of me I could not get it. The slap goes by just that fast and I’d honestly have to go frame by frame if I wanted to get it, but my video player will not go that slow.

Either way, Brain is certainly startled by the contact but is fixated more on the continued mangling of his fake name.

“How many times do I have to tell you, my name is--!”

Uhh, Brain? Getting a liiiittle close there.

“—Bubba Bo Bob Brain!” exclaims Kenny Rogers. And oh boy are these screencaps exploitable. Again, you’re welcome.

“Yee-haw! Let’s start this hootenanny!”

Better than last time you came out on stage to sing at a show, at least.

This time the crowd even sings along with him, and they’re not even hypnotized yet. Much better.

“Now, Pinky!”

“You are under my control, you will do whatever I say…”

“I will do whatever he says… Whatever he says… Whatever he says… Whatever he says…”

A confusingly consistent detail here: Every woman in the crowd has swirly red hypnotized eyes and every man in the crowd has swirly green hypnotized eyes. Why? Who knows!

“Way to go, Blubber Boo Bean Brain. Narf!”

Heh, that hand flip.

It looks like Pinky is trying hard to suppress his verbal tic here for some reason? Or maybe he’s just realized that he’s messed up the name again and is cringing in anticipation of Brain yelling at him? Either way, poor guy… You really don’t deserve any of what’s coming.

And what’s coming? Well, given Brain’s heightened pissy attitude and his mental issues with not having things go exactly the way he wants them to, plus his obsessive need this episode to correct Pinky on this one thing that doesn’t need to even be addressed because no one else hears it, plus other repressed emotions…

“Do me a favour and forget my name. While you’re at it, forget you ever knew me!”

Holy shit.

…Now you fucked up, Brain. Now you fucked up.

Man, I hate the one thick facial hair on the dude in the middle. It’s so unsettling.

“Hey, who’s that skinny guy on stage?”

“Who is he?”

“Get him off!”

“Boo!”

“We wanna see someone famous!”

Yup. Look at what you did. You messed this up all because you were having a temper tantrum about Pinky messing up your stupid false name. You hang that head in shame. And you apologize to Pinky.

Later...

“Tonight’s inside story: A complete unknown somehow made it on to the stage at the Grand Ol’ Opry.”

“…Turn that off, Pinky.”

You know what? Keep it on for a bit, Pinky. Let Brain wallow in this humiliation just a bit more. He needs to have the lesson set in.

“I’m trying to concentrate on a better plan for tomorrow night.”

“Why, Brain? What are we going to do tomorrow night?”

“Same thing we do every night, Pinky:”

“Try to take over the world!”

Hey wait just a minute! You can’t just reuse this excellent ending from “Win Big” on this episode! Brain doesn’t yet deserve to get back to being cocky and determined after being such an ass!

Ahh well. He does get better, folks, I promise. This is just a rough patch. Brain is… He’s going through some things, I think. He’s not processing his emotions in a healthy way and it’s really coming back to bite him.

Listen, I understand this whole thing with Brain being extra grumpy and hostile after the whole Pinky dating Pharfignewton thing is largely coincidence. We don’t actually know what order these episodes were made in, after all, and the Animaniacs writers were not big on continuity.

Here’s the thing, though: I still find it fascinating that these episodes were aired one after the other…especially with a random cameo with Pinky and Brain disguised as a married couple in between. It makes for the beginning of a strange sort of arc that occasionally reminds us that, hey, these two mice are a duo and something is amiss when that duo is broken up or there is a strain put on that relationship.

I’ve read that after a while, network executives at the time tried to push for these mice to settle down and have families and for the skits and the eventual spin-off to largely abandon the whole world domination thing. They wanted it to be more sitcom-like to rival and imitate shows like The Simpsons.

That obviously doesn’t work. It can’t work. The writers, especially Peter Hastings, very much pushed back against the idea. When you have a duo of characters who fit together and play off one another so well, when the basic premise of a story is of a pair of characters working together to achieve a goal, and when those characters just mesh so perfectly and basically complete one another…trying to add another main character just puts the entire story completely out of wack and/or changes it into something unrecognizable. You can add reoccurring characters off to the side, sure. You can have a nemesis or two pop up and return every now and again. But with something like Pinky and the Brain where the main story is a small pair against incredible odds working towards a singular goal, disrupting that core relationship is going to cause a domino effect that will ruin the whole thing.

All this to say that I like this approach that’s going on here much more, even if it was completely unintended by the creative team: There is the element added of Pinky, off-screen, dating someone. It’s not something that’s brought up a lot and whenever it is brought up, Brain is irritated. We’ve seen at the end of the last episode where this development was introduced that Brain is unusually snappy, and now in the next episode he continues to be angry more often than he was before. It’s a more subtle and smooth way of seeing how these characters react if something or someone threatens to come between them, in a way that doesn’t immediately break the entire premise to pieces. Of course, it helps that Pharfignewton is…largely absent for all this and is only brought up every now and again. It’s not a perfect way to explore this kind of thing, but it’s preferable when compared to something like Pinky, Elymra, and The Brain.

However, after this episode Brain’s temper begins to de-escalate, and we won’t pick back up on this accidental “arc” for a few episodes. So to folks who are maybe a little bit bummed out about his behaviour here: don’t worry. We’re getting quite the breather next time with a very odd alternate universe skit courtesy of the Warner Siblings messing around with character placement, as well as an entire Animaniacs episode devoted to a Pinky and the Brain skit…fantasy style!

#Pinky and the Brain #PatB #Bubba Bo Bob Brain

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annoying-lucy · 4 years

Text

Evan Evagora did an AMA involving the Star Trek Shitposting Facebook Group - the questions and answers below were copy/pasted direct from the collated master post. Evan is a member of the group, who participates under an unknown pseudonym.

———————————————

AMA Master Post!

Thanks so much to Evan Evagora for taking time out of his day for our AMA earlier. To make the questions and answers easier for ya'll to find, here they all are together below.

Q: How does my love of cats compare to Elnor?

A: Im actually more of a dog person, there was a scene that had Elnor and spot 2 unite briefly but unfortunately it didn’t leave the editing room

Q: How familiar was I with Star Trek before and did I have to do research?

A: I grew up with TNG, I’d have to say either worf, Guinan or Q are my favourite characters. And I was given episodes to watch that were to help with information before filming Picard

Q: How was I prepped to deal with the crazy fans?

A: I got told to join Star Trek shitposting 😉. Not but in all seriousness, it was Jonathan Frakes who gave me advice on entering the world of fandom from the other side and he said it’s been nothing short of a pleasure

Q: So if Hugh had survived would they have made out?

A: what happens on the cube stays on the cube

Q: My favourite moment of s1

A: getting to slice that romulans head off

Q: How did I hear about Star Trek shitposting?

A: most of the crew is either a part of the group or knows about, one of the amazing hair and make up ladies got me into I think my first or second day

Q: If I had to be Tuvixed with someone excluding elnor?

A: mirror verse Elnor, nah worf to be honest

Q: What is something I’d like to do in season 2

A: Id like to see Elnor and spot 2 together

Q: How am I passing my time woth quarantine?

A: ama for the gronp! Nah I’ve just been reading, writing and also the contact I’m having with the fans too has really helped a lot

Q: If I had to quarantine with any of my costars who would it be and why

A: I’d go with hardy treadaway he’s got the nicest place

Q: What am I hoping to see in Elnor’s future

A: Inner peace, contentment and possibly shorter hair?

Q: Am I intimidated by working on a show with such a big fan base?

A: no I grew up with Star Trek, you’re really in a bubble of filming when you’re making the show, it all didn’t really hit home until the first trailer at San Diego

Q: Would I consider playing Elnor as non binary

A: I’ve seen a lot of debate and discussion about not only my character but others in the series, if there is something that connects you with a character on this show and it resonates with you, even if it’s shown, not shown or hinted at I’m all for it. I am not for the constant belittlement, bullying and criticism of not only the characters on the show but also other fans. It really does break my heart reading comments where people aren’t welcoming of one another, because that is the whole reason why Trek has bought so many together and by spewing these disgusting cruel words out your not only showing the world you don’t understand the meaning behind the show, you also are destroying the thing that makes us all love it

Q: Is there Australia on romulas

A: yeah they have a down under I’m sure of it. No the accent can easily be explained with, Elnor left romulas at a young age, moved to a planet with different species and languages spoken so that influenced his accent

Q: Have I seen Elnor fan fiction and art?

A: yeah some of it has been really amazing! And some others have been...creative

Q: How excited am I to make home movies with my action figures?

A: my plan is to buy everyone’s, make them record audio and then film shit using the dolls and their voices

Q: Are you playing animal crossing?

A: I’ve preordered it because they’ve sold out here in aus, but in playing civ 6 to pass time and Mario party

Q: Did I get to try Romulan ale?

A: no I wish, I’m kind of hoping for a scene next year where Elnor gets drunk for the first time

Q: What character did I wish would appear in our show?

A: one word, one letter Q

Q: What’s my background have I been acting long?

A: Picard was my third acting gig, and the first project to release, so I have got some experience acting and I have previous work but it has either just aired or is going to next year

Q: Please my friend choose a charity you would like us to donate to

A: food bank

Q: Favourite ninja turtle

A: it’s always been Raph and always will be

Q: Do I know much about Elnors background

A: I know things that haven’t been mentioned yet, but also given his character is new and season 1 just finished, hopefully some of those things are explored

Q: How would o feel about the fan theory that Spock is my father

A: I mean, I’m not really sure, I can always shoot Ethan a message and ask him what he thinks too

Q: Which classic episode trope would I like to see?

A: mirror universe

Q: Can we look forward to more ninja representation?

A: is Elnor not enough? ☹️

Q: Were there any particular characters I drew inspiration from, any elves?

A: there’s a particular group of people I think Elnor might have been inspired from. Can I just say how cool it would be if Elnor is just cosplaying as an elf because Picard left him a copy of Lotr when he was young

Q: Would I be open to exploring Elnors sexuality in s2 and what would it be?

A: I am totally open for that, and as for Elnors sexuality, I’m not sure he’s only 17 he’s just left his planet and gone off on an adventure where he openly knew the success may lead in his death or others he hasn’t had time to figure himself out so seeing his sexuality explored would be amazing

Q: What stories did you hear about working on precious trek series from the OG actors?

A; So we found out Michael Dorn used to muddle his lines up because he was normally the last close up of the day. They used to put bets on to see how many takes he’d have to do. All I must add in very fun spirits nothing ever malicious or mean

Q: My long term career goals

A: id like to keep pursuing more roles I’m acting, I’m a big writer and have some projects I’m looking at getting created but right now I’d say I’m just here to learn and grow

Q: What do I write?

A: right now I’m working on three screenplays and two pilots most of the stuff I’ve written is just sitting on my hard drive just waiting to be used

Q: Ever fried an egg, buttered and vegemite'd some toast and eaten it like a sandwich?

A: what I just read, scared the crap out of me, I love vegemite but the most I’ll do is add cheese to it

Q: What is one of my favourite stories about s1

A: Jeri Ryan and I had a scene together in the borg cube (what a queen she made!) it was shooting at night and I think it was the final shot of the day, we couldn’t keep a straight face and just laughed through about fifteen takes

Q: Are you a big fan of fandom besides Trek?

A: Star Wars, lotr, the magician series Raymond e feist, a song of fire and ice series, avatar last air bender and legend of Korra (would love to play zuko) and of course Batman (fav Jason Todd as the hood)

Q: Could I see myself playing Elnor for six or seven years?

A: as long as there’s a good story that myself and fans will enjoy, but if it didn’t meet my expectations no. And also hopefully the writers and creators would want to

Q: My top TNG eps are in no particular order

I borg, all good things, tapestry, the measure of a man and all good things

I’ll also add I borg especially because it’s just cool seeing where Hugh began and how he ended up

Q: How did I land the role of Elnor?

A: I was on a break from filming Fantasy Island (a movie based off the old tv show) and I was home for pilot season which is when they cast for shows, I had two weeks of daily auditions before I was due to fly back and start filming again, two days before I was meant to leave I got an audition for Picard, the script had a code name and Elnors name was Kbar on it, but I was told it was Star Trek. I went into the room and thought I didn’t do a very good job, then I flew to film and two days later I was told I’ve made a list of people being considered, after a few more auditions and a couple of phone calls from producers and everything I found myself on a plane to LA five weeks later

Q: Have I made friends among the cast?

A: no, we tried really hard to become friends, but unfortunately we ended up becoming a family instead. Everything we say in interviews about us getting along is all true and not fake. I’m the newest to acting out of everyone so I was kind of of shocked to find out that how close we all are isn’t necessarily how it will be when I shoot other projects, so I think we just got lucky or they casted really well

Q: Have the Picard people seen your memes?

A: yes I’ve shown them the memes from the page, I’ve shown everyone including Patrick we find most of them funny (some shocking)

Not shocking in a bad way

Unexpected I should say

Q: How do I feel about the ears?

A: I wore them so much they came up in my dreams, but they were the easiest thing to apply onto me

Q: Which non tng character would I like to see return?

A: I wouldn’t mind seeing the doctor

Q: The most relatable Star Trek character?

A: Look for me growing up it was Wesley, i just picked anyone who was the young one. And I grew up with my sisters and was always being told I’m either wrong, an idiot or just to shut up

Q: Did I have previous martial arts experience before the show?

A: I have a background in boxing which helps when it comes to movement, reflexes and just all around fitness for stunts. I didn’t have any sword fighting experience before we began training for the show however

Q: How do you think being raised by an order of women affected Elnor?

A: I think it gave him a healthy understanding of not only the strength and resilience of women but I think he understands not only gender equality but just equality in general and I think that’s directly to do with growing up in a sect of all female warrior nuns

Q: What is a type of meme you would like to see more of in the group?

A: I love all the memes in the group, I hardly like any of them now incase someone figures out who I am though ahahah

Q: Favorite recent memes?

A: See my comment below

#evan evagora #star trek #star trek: picard #picard #elnor #ama #stsp

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hirunoka · 4 years

Text

Sorry for the long wait, dear @3tothe1. And I'm also sorry that it's pretty dialogue-heavy, and also short >< But I didn't want to keep you waiting any longer. I hope you have fun reading this chapter anyway. 💜

Gold Love by Moreid

CHAPTER 2

"That shouldn't be this hard! He said I could tell him if I needed any help, and I need that toolbox." Kayla reminded herself for the third time.

Everything was almost done in his new home beside the TV unit she needed to assemble.

She has been standing in front of Aaron's door for more than two minutes, one hand is ready to knock, while the other is holding a plate full of cookies.

Finally, she knocked on the door and not even after a minute it was opened.

“Hi, I brought cookies.”

“Heey, neighbor." Aaron beamed at her, trying to fix his hair a little. It looked all messy and soft to touch. "Do they contain any peanuts?" The doctor asked, looking at the plate. ‘Cause if they do, and I had some, I could realistically die.”

A moment of silence.

“...then you probably shouldn’t touch the ones on the right side, unless you crave death,” Kayla replied, handing over the plate.

“After my fiasco in that morning, I should probably start with the right side,” Aaron joked. “But in my defense, I wasn't fully awake yet. I know Spider-Man, especially fan of that super horrible dance Tobey does. Iconic. I was just lost for a second, I guess."

"Oh, hell no. Don't even go there." She laughed. Six days have passed since they met, and whenever they would come across each other, it would never be just greetings and 'have a good day' with them. Somehow they always found themselves laughing at something together. "And don't worry, it's not a big deal."

"Isn't it really, though? Because I'm pretty sure that your face said the exact opposite." He then pointed the cookies on the left side on the plate. "I assume these are the sweet, non-life-threatening peanut-free chocolate cookies?”

"Okay, okay, you got me." Kayla raised her hands in surrender with a grin. "What can I say? I love Spider-Man. And yeah, safe to eat."

“They look delicious, thanks. I thought I was supposed to bring you something? All the traditional rules say so. “

“Rules are meant to be broken,” Kayla shrugged, “fuck ‘em.”

"A rebel! Nice. Unless you rob banks in your spare time. You need any help with anything? I can grab my panda mask to join you in your illegal adventure real quick.”

"Didn't know you were this willing to root in jails."

"For real, though, you need any help with anything?"

"Actually, yes. Do you happen to have a toolbox? I have this large TV unit I need to assemble.”

“I can help you to assemble it if you want."

"Well, that would be good, but you really don't have to. I'd hate to bother you."

"Bother me? Never. I'm bored anyway, might as well put my hands to good use."

"If you insist."

"Let me grab my toolbox then."

"Don't forget to take your panda mask with you!" the photographer teased as Aaron disappeared down the hallway.

"I only use it for birthday parties and robbing banks with friends! No can do!" came Aaron's reply.

"Ah, too bad! I was kinda excited to see you in your panda mask. They are my favorite animals."

"I love them, too!"

***

"I must say, your place is really nice," looking around, Aaron said after they stepped into the living room. He whistled when his eyes caught the figure collections Kayla had, looking pretty impressed. The doctor then pointed at the figures: "May I?" he asked enthusiastically, to which she nodded.

"Feel free."

Seeing him walking towards her showcases reminded her of a kid in a candy store.

It was cute.

His big, blue eyes sparkled when he realized her Back to the Future figures were standing just like in that iconic movie poster; Marty is wrapped in his classic orange vest and sunglasses, checking his watch while Doc standing behind him.

"Wow, you have a Marty McFly figure?! That's rad. And not just him, but like, you have everything."

"You love Back to the Future, I see." Kayla smiled, leaning against the wall as he looked at the figures in admiration.

"Who doesn't? I love Star Wars as well, an excellent collection you got here. If one day you wake up to an empty showcase, it's not gonna be me. Just saying."

She shook her head with a laugh, "Now I’m happy that I don’t have a MJ figure yet, I would hate to see it gone. And thanks, I'll keep that in mind. Your place will be the first one I'll check if I ever wake up and find my collection long gone."

Aaron frowned at that a bit, "I just told you not to do that, you got it all wrong. I've always wanted a Delorean, by the way. I mean, not any Delorean, but," he pointed at the Delorean figure with his head, "a time machine. Then I could go back in time, and... nevermind."

"Girlfriend drama?"

"Oh, no. Not something as serious as that."

'He sounds like a kind of man who takes love seriously,' was Kayla's first thought when he said that. And her second thought was: 'I hope it's not girlfriend drama. God, please don't let it be girlfriend drama.'

"And I don't have one. A girlfriend, I mean."

YES.

Thank God.

"Well, that makes two of us." Kayla shrugged, "I don't have a girlfriend either. "

"Good to know." Aaron smiled at her, "How about a boyfriend?"

"Why? Are you offering?" She joked.

"With a collection like this? Hell, you can even expect a marriage proposal from me," he chuckled. "You didn't answer my question, though."

Not expecting a joke like this, Kayla laughed. "Wait until you see my DVD and record collection then. Eh, I had, now I don't."

"...you have a record collection?"

"Please don't look at me like that, it's old-school, I know, but I really love the-"

"No, no, no, I'm not judging you. I have a record collection, too. My friends love teasing me because of it. 'We're living in the twenty-first century, man! You are wasting your money for nothing, just download the damn song!' " He shook his head with a roll of his eyes, "They don't get it."

"Lucky for you, your neighbor does. That's mean of them. They shouldn't make fun of something you like."

"They mean no harm, but you're right. Do I make fun of Ryan's banana sticker collection, or Emeline stuffed cows collection that she has been collecting over seven years? Or Scott's pizza box collection? No, I don't."

Was he even serious?

Okay, his expression was pretty serious.

'Don't laugh, don't laugh, don't laugh,' Kayla warned herself, just after saying people shouldn't make fun of each other, she couldn't laugh at that.

But after a while, Aaron was the one who let out a laugh, not looking serious any longer.

"Oh God, you should've seen your face."

"Wait, did you just- That was mean! Do they even exist? Emily and Scott?"

"I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself. Well, yeah. They do exist. Somewhere. That '15 Things You Won't Believe People Collect' article I've read says so, at least."

"I can't believe I fell for it."

"Anyway, let's get to work, and I can tell you about the rest meanwhile."

"I'm not sure if I wanna hear it."

Aaron shot him a look saying 'Are you sure?'

"...okay, I kinda wonder," she admitted, "shoot."

***

"Dwight is my favorite after Jim," Aaron said.

After finishing assembling the TV Unit, they had found themselves watching The Office somehow. Probably because it was on TV, and because apparently, Aaron loved it, too. "I can't believe you have seen the show for more than six times."

What happened next was one of the weirdest things ever happened. Because her cat Milo walked into the room and didn't even run away when he saw Aaron. What he did instead was going next to Aaron and playfully nuzzling him with his head.

"Hi there, beautiful." the doctor smiled lovingly and picked up the cat and placed him in his lap, petting it carefully and slowly so as not to agitate it. His movements were slow and gentle.

"Look what you got here! What's your name, little buddy? Where have you been hiding all this time?" He petted his head and under his chin, and then slowly got the rhythm of it as he scratched behind his ear, making the cat purr. Aaron couldn't help but giggle at the cute behavior.

"I hope you don't really expect an answer from him."

"It would be so awesome if he could answer, but since he won't do that anytime soon, what's his name?"

"Milo."

"A cute name for a cute- wait, why are you looking at me like this?"

"If you were me, you would look at me like that, too. Believe me."

"Why is that?"

"Normally he doesn't even go near to anyone but me, let alone letting them pet him in their lap."

"Aww, I must be special then."

'Maybe you are,' Kayla thought. It wasn't long until Milo was asleep.

"Oh, I didn't realize how late it was. I should probably go now, but you will have to take Milo from me yourself because I don't have the heart to disturb him. I just can't. Look at him! How can I?"

"How about we don't disturb him for twenty-two minutes and watch one more episode?" She offered, "Stress Relief is the next after this. It’s my favorite episode."

"Wow. You really do know the name of every episode. Impressing. Mine is Dinner Party."

“Good one. So? What do you say?”

“I say, you’re right.” Aaron nodded, smiling down at the sleeping cat. “Let’s not disturb him.”

#bill hader #aaron conners #3tothe1 #my writing

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papermoonloveslucy · 4 years

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HUMILIATED & UNHAPPY

July 16, 1960

TV Guide ~ July 16-22, 1960 (Vol.8, No.29 & Issue #381) Cover photo by Sherm Weisberg, Fashions by Sacks Fifth Avenue

This was Lucille Ball’s tenth (of 39) TV Guide covers.

“A VISIT WITH LUCILLE BALL” by Dan Jenkins

On January 19, 1953, Desi Arnaz rushed exultantly into the Hollywood Brown Derby, grinning that wide, idiotic grin common to new fathers for the past several eons. Striding down a side isle, he threw his arms excitedly in the air and shouted, "Now we got everythin'!" By "everythin'," Arnaz was encompassing quite a bit of territory - an eight-pound son born that morning, the birth of the Ricardo son on ‘I Love Lucy’ that same night and a gold-plated peak of popularity for a television series which, in all probability, will never again be approached. On May 4, 1960, just seven years later, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, quite possibly the most widely known couple in show-business history, were divorced. She had sued for divorce once before (she didn't complete the proceedings), but that was back in 1944 when Desi was a corporal in the Army, Lucy was a star at MGM and World War II was getting all the headlines. By 1960, the Lucy-Desi combine had made so many headlines that no one even bothered to look at the press-clipping scrapbooks any more, or the countless awards that had rolled in on them from all over the country. On an overcast spring afternoon, just 10 days after the divorce, Lucille Ball was sitting in her small but tastefully decorated dressing room on the Desilu lot. That morning, during a short drive over to the neighboring Paramount lot to confer with the producers of her upcoming picture with Bob Hope, she had stuck her head out the window of her chauffeur-driven car and shouted to a friend, "Hi! Remember me? I used to work at Desilu." The remark was not only typical of Lucy Ball but an unwitting reflection of her character and a classic off-the-cuff example of the laugh-clown-laugh tradition. Like most true clowns, Lucy is not a jovial, outgoing person. Her devastating sense of humor, often with a cutting edge, is reserved for her friends. In her dealings with the press she is precise, truthful - and sparing with words. A newsman asked her recently if she had plans to marry again. Lucy stared at him for a few seconds and said simply, "No." (1) The newsman felt that Lucy had missed her calling and should be rushed into the negotiations with Khrushchev forthwith. Relaxing (which is to say, at least sitting down for a few minutes) with an old friend in her dressing room that spring afternoon, Lucy alternated between abrupt sentences and spilled-over paragraphs. On the subject of her immediate plans, she talked almost as though by rote. "I start rehearsals this week for a picture with Bob Hope. It's called 'The Facts of Life.' [She did not wince at the title.] I liked it the minute I read the script and said I'd do it if Bob would. It's written and produced by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank. We have a 10-week shooting schedule. "Then I go to New York with the two children, my mother and two maids. We have a seven-room apartment on 69th Street at Lexington. I'll start rehearsals right away for a Broadway show, 'Wildcat.' It's a comedy with music, not a musical comedy, but the music is important. I play a girl wildcatter in the Southwestern oil fields around the turn of the century. It was written by N. Richard Nash, who wrote 'The Rainmaker.' He is co-producer with Michael Kidd, the director. We're still looking for a leading man. I want an unknown. He has to be big, husky, around 40. He has to be able to throw me around, and I'm a pretty big girl. He has to be able to sing, at least a little. (2) I have to sing, too. It's pretty bad. When I practice, I hold my hands over my ears. We open out of town - I don't know where - and come to New York in December. [Ed. Note: ‘Wildcat’ is now scheduled to make its debut in Philadelphia in November.] (3) "I'm terrified. I've never been on the stage before, except in 'Dream Girl' years ago. But we always filmed ‘I Love Lucy’ before a live audience. I knew a long time ago that I was eventually going to go to Broadway and that's one reason why we shot Lucy that way. But I'm still terrified. The contract for the play runs 18 months. Maybe it will last that long. Maybe longer. And maybe it will last three days." (4) The phone rang. A man's voice, the resonant kind which a telephone seems to make louder, wanted to know if Lucy would like to go out that night. Lucy's expression indicated that the whole idea was a bore but the man prattled on. He apparently had a commitment to attend a young night-club singer's act. "I've seen him twice already," Lucy said into the phone, "and his press agent is now saying I've been there eight times. If I go again the kid will be saying I'm in love with him. He's 2-feet-6 and nine years old. I don't want any part of it." The voice on the phone turned to a tone of urgent pleading. Lucy held the phone away from her at arms length and looked to the ceiling for advice and guidance. She finally hung up. "I go out because people ask me to," she said. "I have no love for night clubs, unless there's an act I especially want to see. And I don't especially want to see this kid's again." She lit another cigarette. "Nervous habit," she said. "I don't inhale, never did. Just nerves.” "I get tired too easily. The reaction is beginning to set in. I've had pneumonia twice in a year. That's not good." There was a long silence. Even for old friends, Lucy is not an easy person to talk to. "I filed for the divorce the day after I finished my last piece of film under the Westinghouse contract," she said suddenly. "I should have done it long ago." Would there ever be any more Lucy-Desi specials like those Westinghouse had sponsored? (5) She stared. "No," she said abruptly. She paused. "Even if everything were alright, we'd never work together again. We had six years of a pretty successful series and two years of specials. Why try to top it? That would be foolish. We always knew that when the time came to quit, we'd quit. We were lucky. We quit while we were still ahead." Was she happy?

Another stare. "Am I happy? No. Not yet. I will be. I've been humiliated. That's not easy for a woman." She started to talk about the recent years with Desi. She talked in a quiet, factual monotone, a voice that had been all through bitterness and was now beyond it. She talked with an implicit faith that what she was saying was off the record. It was. Some day, it was suggested to her, somebody was going to write the story. She stared. "Who would want to?" (6) She looked over at the framed picture of Desi that stood on a small table. "Look at him," she said. "That's the way he looked 10 years ago. He doesn't look like that now. He'll never look like that again." The door was opened and a spring breeze began drawing some of the heavy cigarette smoke out of the room. Lucy smiled a little and turned to her desk. "Try to write," she said finally, "more than I said but not as much as I said."

FOOTNOTES

(1) Lucille Ball did indeed marry again - to Gary Morton (born Morton Goldaper) on November 21, 1961. They remained married until her death.

(2) Gordon MacRae, Jock Mahoney, and Gene Barry were considered before Lucille selected Keith Andes to play the role of Joe Dynamite. He was indeed 40 years old at the time of casting. He committed suicide in 2005.

(3) 'Wildcat’s’ Philadelphia tryout opened on October 29, 1960. The Broadway opening had to be postponed when trucks hauling the sets and costumes to New York were stranded on the New Jersey Turnpike by a major blizzard. After two previews, the show opened on December 16th at Broadway’s Alvin (now Neil Simon) Theatre.

(4) ‘Wildcat’ ran for 171 regular performances. The show was on hiatus from February 5, 1961 through February 9, 1961 during Lucille Ball's illness. The production was to take a 9-week hiatus after June 3rd, 1961 and re-open August 7, 1961, to complete Ball’s contract, but the show closed and did not return due to Ball’s physical exhaustion.

(5) Jenkins is referring to the 13 “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hours” which were part of the “Westinghouse-Desilu Playhouse” which continued the adventures of the Ricardos and the Mertzes, including guest stars, musical numbers, and travel-themed episodes.

(6) Lucy and Desi’s tempestuous marriage has been the subject of several books, two television movies, an award-winning documentary, and at least one stage musical!

TV Guide columnist Dan Jenkins had his name used by “I Love Lucy” in “Redecorating” (ILL S2;E8) in 1952 for the used furniture salesman played by Hans Conried. His name was also mentioned in “Lucy and Ethel Buy The Same Dress” (S3;E3) as a possible emcee for their television show. His qualifications? He plays tissue paper and comb!

In 1953, when Lucille Ball was accused of being a Communist, the real Dan Jenkins stood up at a press conference and said “Well, I think we all owe Lucy a vote of thanks, and I think a lot of us owe her an apology.” Lucy and Desi walked over to where Jenkins was standing and gave him a huge hug. Jenkins later said, “From that time on, we were very good friends.” His last interview with Lucy was in 1986 during “Life with Lucy.”

OTHER ARTICLES

“Shari Lewis and her Puppets” - Lewis was a ventriloquist who’s main character was the sock puppet Lambchop. In 1960, after years of guest-starring on television, Lewis got her own show, which lasted three years on NBC.

“Ty Hardin’s Whirlwind Career” - Ty Hardin and his western show “Bronco” (1958-63) was ABC TV’s answer to Clint Walker’s “Cheyenne”.

“From the Mouth’s of Babes Comes Happy’s Gimmick” - “Happy” (1960-61) was the nickname of a baby, who’s thoughts could be heard by the viewers in this one-season sitcom. It was filmed at Desilu Studios.

“The Untouchables - Fact and Fiction: Part 2″ - “The Untouchables” (1959-63) was a series that began on “The Westinghouse-Desilu Playhouse” and turned into a hit weekly show by Desilu.

PHOTO FEATURES

“Linkletter’s Packing Tips” - Art Linkletter was one of television’s most popular hosts and presenters. Lucille Ball appeared on his show “House Party” in 1965 as well as a 1966 episode of “The Lucy Show” and a 1970 episode of “Here’s Lucy,” both times playing himself.

“Connie Stevens’ Calorie Counter” - Connie Stevens was a singer and actress then playing Cricket Blake on “Hawaiian Eye” (1959-63).

REVIEW

“Mystery Show” - was a mystery anthology series broadcast on NBC from May 1960 to September 1960 as a summer replacement for “The Dinah Shore Chevy Show” with Walter Slezak as host, except for the last three episodes, which had Vincent Price as host.

At the time Evelyn Bigsby was the Associate Managing Editor for Women’s Features at TV Guide’s Hollywood Bureau. Her name was given to the new mother (played by Mary Jane Croft) who sits next to Lucy on the plane in “Return Home From Europe” (ILL S5;E26) in 1956.

Depending on the time zone, “I Love Lucy” was re-run every morning at 10 or 11am. Here it competed with “The Price Is Right” which was broadcast in color! NBC (RCA) was the leader in color television and staked its claim far soon than CBS. “The Lucy Show” didn’t air in color until the fall of 1965.

In another market, “I Love Lucy” ran weekdays at 10am. This edition (same cover and feature articles, different listings) included “Lucy” episode descriptions, while others did not. Notice that an hour earlier the same channel re-ran Desilu’s series “December Bride”. On Monday, July 18, 1960, the re-run was “Second Honeymoon” (ILL S5;E14). From this we can logically assume that this week, in this particular TV market, channel 2 and 8 presented:

TUESDAY, JULY 19, 1960 - “Lucy Meets the Queen (ILL S5;E15)

WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 1960 - “The Fox Hunt” (ILL S5;E16)

THURSDAY, JULY 21, 1960 - “Lucy Goes To Scotland” (ILL S5;E17)

FRIDAY, JULY 22, 1960 - “Paris at Last” (ILL S5;E18)

On Tuesday, July 19, 1960, at 8:30pm, CBS aired the unsold pilot for "Head of the Family". The pilot had Carl Reiner as TV writer Rob Petrie, Barbara Britton as Rob's wife Laura, Sylvia Miles as Sally Rogers, and Morty Gunty as Buddy Sorrell. In 1961, CBS would score a hit with a new name and a new cast of Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Rose Marie, and Morey Amsterdam, filmed at Desilu Studios.

For American TV viewers, this was the week between the Democratic National Convention (July 11-15) and the Republican National Convention (July 25-28). Both parties affirmed their November presidential candidates: John F. Kennedy (D) and Richard M. Nixon (R). Kennedy would prove the victor on Election Day.

Eight years earlier, in July 1952, an estimated 70 million voters watched the broadcasts, which ended with the nominations of Adlai Stevenson II and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Although the conventions were also televised in 1948, few Americans owned a TV set to watch them. There was a popular myth that Stevenson lost the election because of backlash from interrupting airings of “I Love Lucy” with hour-long campaign ads. Another story has Stevenson receiving a telegram from a Lucy fan that read: “I love Lucy, but I hate you.” The situation was paralleled on “I Love Lucy” in “The Club Election” (ILL S2;E19). By 1956, the conventions were less a novelty on television, and drew smaller ratings and less attention. In the summer of 1956, Lucy and Desi were preparing their sixth and final season of “I Love Lucy” and storylines had to revolve around big name guest stars (Orson Welles and Bob Hope) and the move to Connecticut.

Lucille Ball’s last appearance as Lucy Ricardo was on April 1, 1960, just four and a half months before this issue of TV Guide hit the stands. She wouldn’t return to series television until September 1962, by which time Lucille will be back on the cover of TV Guide once again. She remained a yearly fixture on the Guide cover until 1974 and then made only one more original appearance to mark her return with “Life With Lucy.”

After this article comes out, the next time TV viewers see Lucille Ball on their home screens is to promote her film with Bob Hope, The Facts of Life, on “The Garry Moore Show” on September 27, 1960. The film opened in November 1960.

For more about TV Guide and “I Love Lucy” click here!

#TV Guide #Lucille Ball #I Love Lucy #Dan Jenkins #1960 #Garry Moore Show #The Westinghouse-Desilu Playhouse #The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour #TV #Desilu #Eveyln Bigsby #Art Linkletter #Shari Lewis #Ty Hardin #Mary Jane Croft #Untouchables #Connie Stevens #Hans Conried #Wildcat

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ava-candide · 5 years

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T'aint right, t’aint fairas Prudie, the Poldarks’ housekeeper, would say. Poldark is nearing its end; let the Sunday-night-swoon audience rend its garments. It returns next month for a fifth series then that’s your lot: game over. No more shots broodily staring out to sea, no more dramatic galloping at full pelt across Cornish clifftops making me worry for that horse. But, at least, a rest for the poor overworked six-pack of Aidan Turner, whose performance as Ross Poldark has held thousands of middle-aged ladies in thrall.

And here I am sitting 2ft away from him in a tiny room at the British Film Institute in London, a man whose abdominal muscles are the most “celebrated”, by which I mean “leered over”, in Britain. “You’re a ‘hot property’, ” I tell him as if he somehow hasn’t noticed his own naked torso appearing incessantly in every newspaper and magazine since 2015. “Do you feel like a hot property?” He looks horrified. “No, I don’t,” he says, smiling through a bushy black beard. “I don’t think I’d want to know anyone who [called themselves] a hot property. That gives me the heebie-jeebies.” Good answer. Anyone who refers to themselves as a hot property is obviously a massive tool.

I assume the beard (the Daily Mail said it made him “unrecognisable”, but he is totally recognisable) is for a part in an “exciting” new project, which, he says, involves working with a director he admires but, alas, he can’t tell me what it is. “I’m so sorry, it’s boring; it sucks,” he apologises (he means having to be secretive, not the production, just to be clear).

So how does he feel to have pulled off Ross’s tricorn hat and ravished Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson) in that small Nampara bed for the last time? Turner, 36, has spent about a third of his working life on Poldark. Does it feel the right time to drop the curtain? “It feels storywise that this is the right time. It just seemed the right time in every possible way. It has been an incredible journey for all of us . . . but it’s a long shoot. I think we’re all ready to do other things.” I say I hope he had a suitably tearful farewell with Seamus, Ross’s trusted black horse who has built up such a fan-base that he is known as “famous Seamus”. Turner became very close to him, sometimes having a nap on his back between scenes. He thinks they have a similar personality: “We’re both Irish.” So how was the big goodbye?

“It’s kinda sad,” Turner says. “I was gutted.” For a terrible moment I’m imagining a glue factory, but it turns out he never said farewell to the horse. “With everything else when the job was wrapping up I remember the last time I wore the boots and the last time I wore the tricorn hat and the jacket, and the last time I did a scene with Eleanor in the kitchen. And I really marked it because I wanted to remember it. With Seamus I thought I was going to see him again; but then a scene got pulled we were going to use him for . . . so I never got to say a proper goodbye. I was really gutted.” Seamus lives in York. Might he go and see him? “Maybe I will. I should drop Mark, the trainer, an email and pop down and say hello and take him for a run-out.” A reunion? There lies a payday for the paparazzi.

This is the first of the BBC series not adapted directly from the Winston Graham novels (first dramatised by the BBC in 1975 starring Robin Ellis). There was a gap of ten years in the books and Debbie Horsfield, who has written every episode of the five series, has bridged the gap between novels seven and eight using information gleaned from the later works, to keep the characters at their present ages. The Graham estate thinks she has a great affinity with the novels. It is a strong first episode, with new characters and suggests, shall we say, that Elizabeth’s death is affecting the mental health of George Warleggan (played splendidly by Jack Farthing) more than we realised. After our conversation there is a Q&A and a screening of the episode at the BFI, but Turner says he thinks he’ll duck that bit because he feels uncomfortable watching it with an audience. “I’m not very good at that. I find it a bit strange.” He is quite shy and endearingly modest for a man so lusted after. At one point some traffic noise erupts outside and he jumps up to close the window for the sake of my Dictaphone which, trust me, not every actor would do.

How boring has he found the enormous fuss and objectification over his six-pack, prompted by a famous scything scene? “I get asked a lot. It’s par for the course,” he says. “It certainly doesn’t irritate me; it’s not something I regret doing, so it’s not something I ever care to avoid talking about. I just don’t find it that interesting.”

Turner, who was born in a suburban town near Dublin and attended drama college there, probably first became well known to British TV audiences in Being Human, after which Peter Jackson cast him as a dwarf in The Hobbit. But it was Ross Poldark who has made him famous. He says he’ll most likely miss Ross —“I love him; he’s a flawed character; he’s real” — though it’s early days. Is there anything he won’t miss? He seems flummoxed for a moment. “It’s good that I have to struggle a bit for that actually,” he says. “There’s nothing I hated and despised on the show. I’m used to early mornings. I’d love to be able to give you a bit of gossip but there’s nothing . . . Maybe living in rented accommodation.”

There have been reports of rows between him and Eleanor Tomlinson on set, usually over protecting their own characters in the show. She has joked that they squabble like an old married couple. “I don’t think we fall out often and certainly nothing serious. If there was ever any tension between us it was purely to do with work because we care a lot,” he says. “These conversations came later, the last two or three years. As we became more invested we felt we had more to lose because the show was successful, but it was always very professional. Eleanor’s an intelligent girl, conscientious, polite and articulate, so it never got into any screaming matches or anything. I was always really interested in what she had to say.” He starts laughing. “And most of the time she was right.”

I wonder if he minds the level of fame that has come with Poldark. Recently the actor Richard Madden (Bodyguard) revealed that he deliberately wore the same clothes and carried the same cup of green juice every day in the same way so the paparazzi couldn’t get a different picture and would lose interest. Turner says he tried that, but the photographer waiting outside the theatre (he was performing in The Lieutenant of Inishmore, for which he got rave reviews and a Stage debut award ) told him he could change the colour of his T-shirt in a heartbeat. “And the next day he showed me! He changed my T-shirt to pink and the colour of my jeans.” But he doesn’t mind the attention from the public. “People are usually very nice and polite. I like to see the best in people.”

He rarely reads reviews or his own interviews, never uses social media and is guarded about his private life, namely his American girlfriend, Caitlin Fitzgerald, with whom he was pictured recently on a red carpet (they met on the set of a film they both starred in: The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then Bigfoot). He has also been photographed walking her dog, Charlie. When I mention Fitzgerald he raises both palms: “I can’t say anything about that,” he says, again apologetically. I imagine all those swooning fans would rather not hear about it anyway. For the record, he says he splits his time between London, Dublin and New York. Does he fancy big Hollywood films? “Wherever the work is,” he says.

He believes this fifth series is the most exciting yet and promises the issue of Valentine’s parentage will be a big story (the little boy who plays him and may be Ross’s secret son looks spookily like him, right down to the hairdo). “It’s a great story for George Warleggan; Jack is brilliant. He’s amazing, a real talent.” By the end will the audience be sad or happy, Aidan? “I don’t know,” he says cryptically. “Some people might be happy; some people might be delighted.”

But it might not be game over, actually. He does not completely rule out returning to it in ten years’ time when he is old enough to play the more mature, wrinklier Ross (Horsfield has said “never say never”). However, he says a lot of things would need to be in place. All the actors would need to be available, the Graham estate would have to agree, and most of all the audience would still need to want it, which is the most important point. Television moves on so fast these days. “It would be silly, though, to say that it’s completely off the table,” he says.

So was he emotional at the end as it all wound down? “That last day I think it was just myself and Eleanor in the bedroom at Nampara, which was lovely,” he says. “It felt like the right way to finish and probably the right place as well. Yeah, it was quite emotional.” They still had the work to finish, the call sheet to complete, but “it was lovely just to be with her”. Afterwards, when it was done, he says it was — and he searches for the right phrase — “a bit shocking. It just feels surreal because it’s over.” For him, yes, but not for us. Not quite yet.

#aidanpics

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tenchiforum · 5 years

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For the first time ever, the Toonami versions of OVA1/2, Universe, and Tokyo are available online! On their respective archive.org pages you can access each episode easily.

Watch now: OVA1/2, Tenchi Universe, Tenchi in Tokyo.

For users who keep up with contemporary anime communities, we also have an upload for the entire run available on Nyaa.

It’s been quite a journey in getting these episodes from analog to digital. If you’re interested in reading about the process of how these almost lost-to-time edits came into our hands and how we’ve gone about preserving them before the tapes rot, then sit back and enjoy the story below!

Part 1: Toonami – A Love Story.

Tenchi Muyo! and Toonami are tied together like the red thread of fate often times referenced in many East Asian myths. For those who aren’t aware, Toonami was a programming block on the Cartoon Network channel. Starting in 1997, it did one thing for anime that no other channel in the English-speaking world had ever done: showcased anime during “PrimeTime” (In North America at least, this was 4pm to 7pm Eastern Standard time). Before the internet, having this block of time meant having the most eyes on your product, meaning exposure was huge. Oftentimes whoever got on this block, regardless of the channel, was “made.”

However, it wouldn’t be until mid 1999, with a soft-rebranding, a new host, and an almost entirely anime-focused block, that Toonami would take over the world.

And on July 3rd, 2000, an entire generation was introduced to Tenchi Muyo! for the first time.

youtube

- The now legendary two minute Toonami promo.

Thanks to the efforts of Jason DeMarco, Sean Akins, Gill Austin, Sean Polinski, and the rest of the Toonami crew, the “Toonami generation,” still to this day, is the largest block of Tenchi Muyo! fans. Whether it was Toonami US, UK, or Australia. Tenchiforum is a testament to this fact. I personally would not be here were it not for Toonami, so to say that fans of Tenchi Muyo! hold Toonami in a high regard is an understatement.

I had always wanted to somehow, some way, get the Toonami version of Tenchi up for everyone to see again, but my old Toonami VHS recordings were long gone, and I figured trying to piece together the Toonami version from other people’s tapes would just be too hard with how many episodes were broadcast, that was until… 2012

In mid-to-late 2012, I found out that Pioneer actually released a home video version of what was shown on Toonami. It was simply released as “Tenchi Muyo!” in those big, white, clam shell VHS cases (that most people probably remember for old Disney movies). I felt as though I had struck gold! I was able to get a hold of the first two OVA, and was able to rip them to my computer.

- Vol. 1 & Vol. 5 of “Tenchi Muyo!” – No distinction was made that they were separate series.

Though I was high on my endorphin-induced nostalgia, I ran into a couple of unforeseen problems.

First and foremost, the equipment I was using was not great. I used an old StarTech composite to USB dongle and the software that came with it. While this isn’t necessarily bad at first glance (it doesn’t support Windows 10), I had no experience whatsoever in the field of digital transfer. While I think my rips were okay for the time, I knew even then that they were too low of bit-rate and the quality of the rips suffered for it.

Because I also had no VCR at the time that had S-Video output, I was only able to output from composite, which meant the whopping 240p equivalent VHS tapes look fuzzier than they probably should. (I realize that VHS is technically an analog format, meaning that a 1:1 equivalent digital representation is hard to pin down or that someone might argue that it did technically output 480i over composite, but basically it was 240p.)

Another problem was the software itself, I had no idea about Virtualdub, AmaRecTV, or other helpful capture software, so I only recorded at a lower bit-rate, again producing an inferior quality rip.

I also ran into the problem of showcasing the videos. Funimation (who now owns the vast majority of the Tenchi Muyo! franchise in North America) had finally started really cracking down on people uploading videos to Youtube. Even though my videos were not completely the same, the algorithm immediately flagged and blocked them. This led me to uploading the videos to Facebook. I had to cut them in half because of Facebook’s restriction to roughly only 12 minutes of video. Somehow in the process, some of the videos had audio drop out for a minute or two, and for some the audio dropped out completely.

Arguably the biggest blow though, was when I learned that this set of Toonami tapes was incomplete. Pioneer stopped producing the Toonami version for home video after they finished releasing Universe. Meaning, the only way to get the Toonami version of Tenchi in Tokyo, was hope that someone, somewhere, had taped it 11 years earlier.

While Tenchi in Tokyo has been getting more appreciation from fans as of late – thanks in part to most newer entries in the Tenchi OVA sucking harder than a vacuum – in the year 2000, it was the black sheep of the Tenchi Muyo! franchise. So expecting fans to have recorded any of it, let alone the entire series, was the long shot of all long shots. But even still, I made a post on the forum in 2013 asking if anyone knew anyone that might have anything.

Naturally, no one had any leads, and all of these previous problems meant that this project would, frustratingly, have to be shelved indefinitely.

Or at least, that’s what I thought.

Part 2: Deferred Dreams Don’t Die.

On April 5th, 2019, a person by the name of Talos dropped into our Discord server, and posted an introduction. Like so many, they had gotten into Tenchi through Toonami, but what would change everything, was this.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading, someone actually had it!

Instinctively, I reached out to Talos via PM to ascertain how to go about acquiring these tapes, and admittedly, to see how legit this claim actually was. Because the fact of the matter is, when you’ve been around Tenchi fandom as long as I have, you’ll quickly realize the best bullshitters in the world come from this fandom.

But Talos was more than the genuine article! They sent over pictures and an incredibly detailed analysis of the quality of their tapes, watching through them all again to prove to me that their claim was valid.

It can’t be said enough that this all would not be possible without Talos, their willingness to work with me and send me their own personal tapes that they’ve kept for almost two decades just goes to show how awesome they are and how much they care about the fandom.

So the deal was struck, and the dream that laid deferred for almost six years lived again.

- A time capsule from another era.

But with dreams from the past, come the demons that plagued them way back when. I still only had the setup I once had, and at this time I was really trying to be tight with my finances for a number of different reasons, but this opportunity was too good to pass up, I wasn’t going to let this dream go, even if it wasn’t perfect.

Talos’ tapes showed up, and I rolled up my sleeves.

So I put in the first tape, the first seven episodes of Tokyo, into the old VCR I used to originally rip the Pioneer tapes, a JVC HR-VP650U….

And static…

Or rather, a tape that would play for 3 seconds, then immediately drop to static.

This wouldn’t work.

I then tried my other VCR, a Sony SLV-N50 from the mid-to-late 90’s that I was able to “fix” by removing the old Android Kikaider tape that got stuck in there many years prior.

It worked!…..but…..not all that well.

While it did actually play the tape relatively smoothly, the colors were completely washed out in comparison to the JVC, and it had this weird color flickering that was particularly noticeable when black backgrounds were on screen. (This was not unique to this tape, it did it with everything I put in there.)

As much as it pained me, there was no way I was going to rip it with this setup.

So the hunt began for not just a replacement VCR, but one that was high quality and recommended among enthusiasts for digital transfer. Which meant research and long winding rabbit holes of non-answers and vagueness, and unfortunately, money.

Without a doubt, the de facto list of best VCRs for transferring comes from digitalFAQ.com. This list is not only informative but gives you a broad range of ones to look for in the event you can’t find an “elite” one. However, this list has also become the de facto list used by people who are hawking their sets on eBay to try and get every penny from enthusiasts and new-comers as possible.

After three frustrating weeks of losing bid wars on eBay, someone finally put up one of the good sets, the JVC SR-V10U. I quickly sent them what I thought was a reasonable but not bank-breaking offer….

And they accepted! The beast was finally mine.

Immediately upon unwrapping and testing it, the quality difference between what I had then and what I was looking at now was staggering. The SR-V10U had beautiful color, while having the incredible ability to stabilize the old tapes with its TBC (Time Base Corrector), as well as onboard Video Stabilization option. Combined with the ability to output video via the superior S-Video cable, I now had something that, despite its age and typical old VHS wear, was way better than I could have imagined.

Part 3: No Need for Nostalgia.

You’re probably thinking to yourself “Dagon, why go through the trouble? The OVA has a beautiful Blu-ray release, and Universe and Tokyo have pretty decent DVD releases. Why would you ever want to rip old VHS tapes of an inferior quality release that was in some cases censored?”

- The now famous Toonami “bikinis”.

Because this version of Tenchi Muyo! is a piece of history. Not only is it a piece of Tenchi history, but a piece of Toonami history as well. Being able to preserve this in the best quality possible is being able to point to future generations and say “This is why I’m here.”

For a lot of us it’s about taking us back to a simpler time, grade school, high school, university. Taking us back to a time before the internet was what it is today.

So now we can, after almost 20 years, re-watch the version of Tenchi Muyo! that brought so many of us joy and wonder.

#tenchiforum #tenchi muyo #toonami #toonami promo #cartoon network #tenchi universe #tenchi in tokyo #toonami tenchi muyo #anime nostalgia #90's anime #vhs #vhs anime

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monsters-demons-and-ai-oh-my · 5 years

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What We Lost and What We Have:

Chapter 6: Sock puppets, stomachaches, and what you really learn in college

In which we meet a very strange nurse, talk about teen drug use and the plot thickens.

TW: Conversations about recreational drugs, questions about suicidal intentions, and brief mention of throwing up

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AU somewhat inspired by Episode 2x20 - What Is and What Should Never Be, and the season 14 storyline concerning Jack’s illness.

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AO3 Link

Previous Chapter

First Chapter

Complete Tumblr Chapter List

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Sam and Dean both decided to give the Kline’s a little space after after the incident with Jack’s lunch tray. Ironically both brothers using the excuse that they hadn’t had anything to eat since they arrived early that morning.

Jack seemed on the verge of mortified tears afterward and for selfish reasons or not neither wanted to be the one to push him over the edge.

The kid was already embarrassed enough.

The doctor had told the brothers (much to Dean’s chagrin) that at least one of them should come back in later that evening as they had a few more background questions for all of them once Jack had a chance to rest.

There was only so much the doctor was willing to do when they still didn’t know what was causing Jack’s symptoms but when Jack’s nausea refused to fade and several more bouts dry heaving literally drove Jack to tears they finally gave him anti-nausea drugs that had the added benefit of finally putting him back to sleep.

Getting a few hours of rest (plus something new the doctor gave him via IV to help with the fact he hadn’t eaten for a day and a half) seemed to perk Jack up a bit. At the very least Jack seemed a lot more calm when he woke up around three hours later.

Though, that could have also been the low dose of narcotic painkillers doctor Hannah also decided to give despite the risks when Jack’s stomach pain was bad enough to cause his heart rate to skyrocket.

It wasn’t enough narcotics to make Jack start accusing innocent staff members of being out to suck his blood again, but it was enough to render him quiet and subdued… and not at all like the Jack Castiel knew.

‘He could only watch and try to comfort Jack as he got sick and then hugged his stomach, literally crying with the pain the action caused him…’

A quiet Jack was better than a sobbing Jack, but it still terrified Cas.

It threw him back to sixteen years previously when Jack was first born, made him feel like he was failing Kelly all over again…

He remembered when Jack was four and a half and afraid of long clawed demons under his bed. ( strangely specific child that he was ) Then Castiel could consol him and promise to protect him from any monsters .

When Jack was seven and John died and Jack tried to run away from home, ( only getting so far as the neighbor down the street who lured him in with cookies and called Castiel ) he’d been able to reassure the traumatized boy that his parents and the people around him didn’t die because he was close to them.

“...you’re not cursed Jack, I promise… and I’m not planning on leaving you alone any time soon.”

But this…

Castiel couldn’t promise everything would be okay, he didn’t know how to fix this, he didn’t even know what this was…

Every little twitch Jack gave in his sleep, every harsh intake of breath was like an electric jolt to Cas’s heart, terrifying him that Jack would start seizing again.

By the time that Jack was awake again and Cas was able to call the Winchester’s back in he was thirty-six hours without sleep and felt on the verge of a mental breakdown.

“Med student party here yet?” Cas heard the now unfortunately familiar voice of Dean Winchester over his shoulder.

“No…” Cas said dully, hand tightening over Jack’s as he broke into another fit of harsh wheezy coughs.

‘The antibiotics either weren’t helping the pneumonia or were taking far too long to kick in for comfort.’

“I...I don’t really feel up to p-party,” Jack muttered with a tiny wry smile.

“You feeling any better buddy?” Sam’s voice was a little more tolerable.

“They gave me more drugs?” Jack said bluntly, perhaps the amount of pain meds he was given was still enough to make the teenager a more aloof if not completely loopy.

As scared as Jack must be Cas didn’t have it in him for him to be upset with Jack being a little… high, as it were.

‘Anything to keep away the horrible tears of pain.’

“They’re waiting for me to let them know you’re here…” Cas explained quickly to the brothers reaching for the nurse call button and using the moment to compose himself.

“I thought we were done with all the questions?” Dean sighed pacing by the window like nervous rather unimpressive tomcat not looking at anyone.

“Well apparently they didn’t get what they needed last time.” Cas tried not to think that more questions meant the doctors were at a loss with what answers they did get.

“It probably had something to do with you ‘scaring the crap’ out of the person who was recording them…” Cas glared choosing to believe that instead.

Dean’s eyes narrowed for a moment and he opened his mouth as if to say something scathing but Sam surprised Castiel by speaking up.

“Well whatever the reason pointing fingers won’t help anyone,” Sam said taking Dean’s old spot by the far end of the bed. It seemed like while Sam was rendered relatively unable to function when it came to Jack that same reservations did not stand for confronting his argumentative older brother or Castiel.

“So how about this time we all sit down, and shut up, and get this over with and then neither of you will have to see each other again if you don’t want to…” Sam said with an air of aggressive calm, folded his hands in his lap.

Jack eyes seemed to dart between each one of them tense and nervous, clutching at the sheets without a word.

Castiel felt a pang of guilt in his chest.

He and Dean took their seats… quietly.

They sat awkwardly like two children who’d just been chewed out by the principal until the silence was broken by a knock on the door.

Well… a series of knocks… to the tune of… Yankee Doodle?

Jack’s eyes darted between his uncle and the door like he wasn’t sure if he actually heard what he thought he heard or if the drugs were just kicking in.

“Come in?” Castiel said hesitantly.

The door opened and in stepped not the nervous med student, but another more suspicious looking individual.

Another… nurse?

“Hello,” said the strange skinny man in seemingly oversized giraffe print scrubs. He had a smile about as appropriate for the tense atmosphere as sunbather in a snowstorm, “My name is Garth but you can call me nurse Fitzgerald and I’m here to help Jack and you all with a patient history today.”

Dean shot Sam a confused look that was ignored.

“What happened to the other g-guy?” Jack hacked into the back of his hand, looking wary of having yet another stranger in his room.

"Well, Kevin was having a bit of a hard time, so the head nurse wanted someone with a bit more experience to finish it,” Nurse Fitz-… Garth shrugged the left sleeve of his scrubs dangerously close to sliding off his narrow shoulder, “they send me in when things get a little hinky,"

"Hinky?" Castiel's eyebrows rose.

"Well I say hinky," Garth smiled, "I think it's a much nicer word than the one nurse Master's used... that I won't use in front of a child.

The child in the room looked mildly offended.

"Or what was written on the chart," he picked up Jack’s chart clipboard off the end of the bed and flicked it significantly, “which is… ''disorderly"."

Dean scoffed, "Please, we weren't "disorderly”,” he drew quotation marks in the air.

The strange skinny man just continued to smile shrugging, "okay well you made poor Kevin cry in the on-call room so I wouldn't exactly call that "functional behavior"."

Dean’s mouth opened looking defensive but for a second time the words were lost behind an interruption.

“Sorry…” Jack said quietly, clearing his throat, “they… they mean well… I think…”

“We should… probably apologize to this Kevin though…” Castiel said sheepishly.

“Probably…” Dean muttered noncommittally refusing to look at Castiel.

“What’s that?” Sam spoke up suddenly sounding confused, everyone turning to see at what he pointing at.

I appeared to be a strange looking… sock with lips? hanging of Nurse Garth’s scrubs pocket.

“Oh him?” the nurse pulled the object out his pocket smiling at it fondly before slipping it over one hand, “This… is Mr. Fizzles.”

He opened and closed the sock puppet’s mouth in Jack’s general direction as the boy looked on warily pressed against his pillows.

“A lot of kids find a friend easier to talk to than a stranger, especially when in a big scary place like the hospital.”

He looked at Jack expectantly.

“I...I think I’ll pass…” the teenager said turning a little pink.

Garth seemed mildly disappointed but shrugged and surreptitiously tucked the sock back in his pocket picking back up the chart.

“Well Kevin’s handwriting started getting illegible at… drugs…” he looked up expectantly at Castiel’s affronted face.

“He had a tablet of ibuprofen about seven hours before the seizure and then a second four hours later, but no Jack does not do drugs,” Castiel said flatly.

“I think… he was asking Jack…” Sam said carefully watching Jack who was refusing to look back, scratching at the adhesive over the line in his arm.

“I don’t… do drugs…” Jack said quietly.

Castiel gave nurse Garth a satisfied “see” look.

“But there was… this one time,” Jack coughed sheepishly.

Everyone was suddenly staring at Jack who seemed to be trying to disappear into his hospital mattress.

“Jack…” Cas’s heart sunk more disappointed than angry, he didn’t have a chance to ask why before Jack cut him off seeming desperate to explain.

“It… it was just one time… Noah offered me a hit?” his eyebrows drew together and he looked unsure at the terminology, “of a joint he had?”

Dean gave an impressive little huff earning him a dirty look from Cas.

“Don’t look at me, I didn’t go to college…” Dean shrugged, shooting Sam a knowing smile he refused to return.

“It was just the one time though!” Jack said quickly looking at Cas pleadingly, “It was really, really gross and… and I never did it again!”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” Castiel asked exasperated, trying not to show Sam or Dean how hurt he was. What made it worse was he knew how stereotypical it was for a parent to think their teenager would never lie to them. Half the parent teacher conferences he had to call at the high school were dealing with people under such delusions.

“I… I didn’t want to get Noah in trouble…” Jack mumbled biting his lip and refusing to look Cas in the eye.

“Noah?” Castiel mentally ran over his shortlist of acquaintances Jack talked about and came up empty. “Wait… Noah Ophis?” Castiel felt completely at a loss when Jack’s blush seemed to confirm it, “Jack… wasn’t Noah the one who locked you in the school gym’s weight room and then stuck gum in the lock so we had to call maintenance to disassemble the door to get you out?”

“It… was never confirmed…” Jack muttered turning brighter red glancing back between his older brothers as if expecting them to laugh.

“How long ago did you ‘get silly with Mary Jane’?” Garth broke in on the tense moment seeming unbothered.

Jack looked extremely confused for a long moment, “Six… months ago?”

Garth wrote that down, “well it’s probably not that then, the devil’s lettuce only lasts like… a few hours, unless you snort it that’s worse...”

Castiel really did not believe that was an actual way people consumed marajauna… he had gone to college after all.

Cas suppressed the need to start in on a long speech about peer pressure, lying, and the dangers of underage recreational drug use (especially when you didn’t know the source), but now was not the time, not now with as Jack as sick as he was. He would be taking advantage of a secret Jack only willingly told because he was scared for his own safety, and Jack’s health might rely on him being honest with his doctors.

Though Cas was relieved when the next question was, just “Do you have any animal friends?”

He felt his confidence as a surrogate parent had taken enough of a hit for the moment.

“Well… I have Felix… but I don’t know if he thinks of me as a friend, I’ve read their brains can’t really process that sort of thing?” Jack’s eyebrows furrowed in thought.

Sam’s eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline.

Maybe the drugs had a stronger effect on Jack than Castiel first realized.

“What is Felix?” Sam looked completely at a loss.

Jack blinked, “A corn snake,” he said like it should be obvious.

Dean seemed to recoil slightly and then snorted, a very, “of course I’m going to judge the character of a kid I don’t know based on the fact he keeps a snake…” noise.

That was a big mistake… Castiel knew Jack was fairly shy but he’d been on the wrong end of one of Jack’s, “I must defend the honor of snakes everywhere,” speeches before when the Jack was first trying to convince his uncle to let him keep Felix.

“Felix is really great!” he insisted, probably louder than he should have judging by the short fit of coughs that followed. He cleared his throat before croaking, “N-not only do corn snakes eat d-disease carrying pests, they're really gentle, and they’re easy to breed in captivity, and they’re from the US so they... they don’t c-contribute to the… the e-exotic pet trade…”

Castiel remembered vividly Jack showing up in his classroom clutching a shoe box the day before winter break, nervous but determined. He’d gone into a spiel about how a boy had brought the snake to the lunch room to show it off but the boy was planning to kill it at the end of the day with a rock because he thought it was ‘kinder’.

“He said he couldn’t get it to eat, but! he only tried one thing and... and you can’t let him do that, he doesn’t deserve that…”

He’d practically begged Castiel to let him keep the snake, “even if it was just for a little while,” and then spent the next week researching and trying to feed it different things, bringing everything from bags of frozen mice to eggs and minnow into the house before he’d had success.

Cas remembered the huge grin on Jack’s face when he finally succeeded heard him whisper, “see you’re going to be okay now,” into Felix’s enclosure when he thought his uncle wasn’t watching.

Jack dissolved into another fit of coughing near the end of his snake rant, doubling up as Castiel laid a worried hand on his shoulder.

“Fine fine kid jeez…” Dean raised his hands in mock surrender, looking mildly alarmed, “I believe you, don’t lose a lung over it…”

“Snakes are great you’re just a mean,” Jack muttered breathily with one laugh hacking cough, sinking wearily back in his bed. The short bout of passion seemed to have taken a lot out of him.

“I don’t really like snakes, I’m sure they’re great but the way they look at me makes me nervous y'know?” Nurse Garth Gave a shiver, no one knew what he meant. “Also they can carry salmonella…”

The nurse spent the next half hour asking more questions of various degrees of embarrassment. Each answer the brother’s gave grew increasingly bored and each answer Jack gave getting softer as he grew increasingly drowsy.

Any energy Jack gained by resting seemed to run out of him like water through a sieve and soon he had fallen back asleep. Castiel knew seizures could take a lot out of a person but this? This felt different. He breathed deeply to calm himself down, told himself he never finished nursing school, let alone medical school like the doctor’s taking care of Jack.

‘He was in good hands…’

He carefully straightened Jack’s blankets, trying not to listen to the wheezy quality of Jack’s breathing even in sleep.

“Did you get all the answers you needed?” Castiel asked quietly, not wanting to interrupt and of the sleep the boy managed to get.

The nurse smiled looking a little too pleased with himself, “yup just about the entire thing, I don’t know what Kevin was upset about you all seem like very nice people.”

Dean looked up mildly guilt pulling his hand back from where he’d been trying to fish the sock puppet out of Garth’s pocket, while Sam hid his face in his hands. “Yeah… um… so it’s fine for us to take off now?”

‘Of course…’

Garth nodded satisfied, “yeah, visiting hours for everyone but parents are ending soon, and the kid looks like he’s had all the fun he can handle for today.”

Castiel just nodded in agreement trying not to seem to eager carefully fixing Jack’s mussed up hair, “I think he’s had enough of strangers for now…”

That was enough for Dean who left with one last indignant puff of air but Sam stayed back for a moment tettering as was his custom in the doorway.

“Call if something changes?” he asked, like he was half unsure he should say the words.

Cas offered a tight smile, “sure…”

-------------------------

Sam and Dean left for their home and hotel respectively the nurse leaving soon after to give Castiel and more importantly Jack some time to rest.

The nurses mostly let Jack be through the evening only coming in once or twice to record his vitals and give him more of the drugs the doctor prescribed earlier, Jack thankfully remained asleep during the visits.

He seemed mostly stable much to Cas’s relief though that could have just been due to the pain and nausea meds masking the worst of his symptoms. It wasn’t until Jack reached a full twenty-four hours without another seizure that Castiel finally let himself relax.

It wasn’t until much later, half past midnight that the doctor came in again.

Castiel had finally fallen asleep in a recliner chair one of the nurses graciously brought in when they realized he was staying with Jack for another night..

‘They’d explained it was standard practice for when a parent stayed with their child on the ward…’

He’d been woken rather unceremonious by doctor Hannah pulling a cumbersome looking machine into Jack’s room.

“What’s… What’s going on?” he asked dumbly rubbing at his face, the confusion quickly turning to alarm when he saw the look on the doctor’s face.

Her face was mostly calm, but her eyebrows were furrowed and her mouth was pressed in a thin tense line.

“I… need you to wake up Jack…” she said something worrying in her calm voice Castiel couldn’t quite identify.

Castiel immediately began to panic head snapping up to the monitor of Jack’s vitals. Everything seemed the same, except the fever which had risen to an even hundred degrees.

“Is… What’s wrong?” He asked in as hushed a tone as he could manage.

The doctor gave him a reassuring smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“I just need to check something…” she said unhelpfully.

Castiel tried to breathe evenly and remain calm as he gently shook Jack’s shoulder.

‘What was so bad you’d wake a sick kid in the middle of the night?’

He gently shook Jack’s shoulder, calling his name, Jack barely moved, his eyes twitched and he let out a soft cough.

Castiel frowned shaking his shoulder a little more forcefully eliciting an unhappy groan from Jack as he rolled away as far as the tubing on his face would allow him.

‘At least it was confirmation he wasn’t comatose or something…’

“The painkillers he’s on can have a sedative effect,” she frowned, “it’s always best to try to wake someone up naturally but I did bring something if that doesn’t work.

She produced a set of keys from her pocket to unlock the set of rolling drawers the machine she brought was propped on top of.

“Wait,” Castiel quickly held up a hand, “there’s one thing I haven’t tried yet…” he leant down close to Jack’s ear, “Jack… come on you have to get up… we’re going to be late to school…”

Jack tensed up and groaned, “I… I don’t want to, I don’t feel good…” he grumbled face screwing up.

Cas huffed a sad laugh, gently ruffling his hair to keep him from falling back out, “I know Jack, but you still need to wake up.”

Jack finally blinked woefully up at him, “you said I didn’t have to go…” His croaked eyes wandered towards the window as he coughed to clear his throat, “it’s still dark out…” he muttered bewildered.

“I know, I know… you don’t have to go to school, you can go back to sleep... in a little bit?” Cas looked back toward the doctor who offered him another thin smile, neither confirming or denying.

“But doctor Hannah she needs to talk to us… for now, alright?” Castiel said still gently squeezing his shoulder...

Jack just blinked and nodded trustingly too tired to question it.

Doctor Hannah ducked down to his level whispering, “I’m going to turn on the lights now and I need you to roll on your side like before okay?”

Jack looked wary breath speeding up, “P-please don’t stick another needle in my back…”

“It’s okay Jack, I promise I’m not going to do that honey,” she said gently flipping on a switch and making everyone in the room wincing at the sudden brightness, “I just need to run an ultrasound on your back and abdomen…”

Jack looked even more confused, face morphing into mildly suspicion, “But… I can’t have babies?”

Doctor Hannah actually chucked, “No that’s not all we use ultrasound for, and that’s not what I’m looking for…”

“What are you looking for?” Castiel couldn’t hold himself back from asking, fidgeting in the recliner.

The doctor’s face dropped a little before she could stop it, “I’ll let you know if I see it, I… I don’t want to alarm you,”

Her eyes drifted back to Jack with an unspoken, ‘or him’ .

Jack’s eyebrows furrowed but he still did as he was told and the doctor guided him onto his side before pulling down the blanket to his waist and undoing the ties on the upper half of his hospital gown while he blushed pink.

When she carefully began to probed Jack’s back it became abundantly clear the medication didn’t completely numb his pain.

He barely held back a cry of pain between clenched teeth, reducing it to a strained groan, his whole body shaking.

Castiel reach for his hand which was clenched around the bed sheets. “It’s okay Jack… I’m here.”

“Th-that… that really hurts,” Jack mumbled tearfully.

“I know Jack I know…” the doctor said seemingly lost in thought

doing her best to move quickly through prep procedures for the ultrasound. Applying a plastic cover over the wand and spreading clear gel on a portion of his back.

Jack looked like he was trying not to scream when the doctor finally pressed the ultrasound wand into his back, teeth gritted together heart rate spiking.

The doctor’s eyes were fixed on the ultrasound screen beside the bed looking grim and Castiel wished not for the first time that he’d finished his degree so he’d know what she saw.

‘All he could do was hold Jack’s hand.’

“Shit…” he barely heard the doctor mutter as she set aside the wand and gingerly wiped away the gel on Jack’s back.

There were already already tears welling in Jack’s eyes when she had him turn back onto his back.

The doctor promised to be as quick and gentle as she could as she repeated the process with the upper part of Jack’s abdomen.

Jack was shaking and crying silently by the time it was over, and the doctor was if anything quieter.Terrifyingly lost in thought.

Castiel carefully helped him back into his gown, telling him softly that he did well and could go back to sleep soon.

Jack watched the doctor red eyed and wary gripping the blankets a little too tightly even as he wilted exhausted back against the bed.

The doctor waited until the teenager seemed to have calmed back down before speaking.

“Jack… I’m going to ask your uncle and you some questions and I need you to be as honest as possible, alright?”

The tone of doctor Hannah’s voice set off the already ringing alarm bells in Cas’s mind to a shrieking pitch.

Jack nodded cautiously, “O-okay…” he said shakily.

The doctor began pacing at the foot of his bed hands clasping anxiously at one another.

“You said Jack had a headache a few hours before he had a seizure at the restaurant and that you gave him ibuprofen for it, are you sure it was ibuprofen and not aspirin?”

Castiel blinked, “yes I’m sure I know better than to give a child aspirin, and I even remember the brand I bought, it was Advil…”

“It’s was a blue... package,” Jack said after a moment coughing into his elbow, exhaustion, and illness fogging his brain.

The doctor nodded and resumed her pacing, “and… how much did you give him?” she asked seeming careful about her phrasing.

“A lower dose, one tablet… and then another four hours later…” Castiel said suspiciously, “what is this about?”

The doctor hesitated, “did you see Jack take them both times?”

There was a long pause as Jack looked increasingly upset, “wh-what are you tr-trying to say?”

“What are you suggesting?” Castiel knew full well what she was asking but he couldn’t believe he’d heard it.

“I…” she paused and sighed, “I have to ask it’s very important.”

Jack seemed to understand despite everything, “I...I wouldn’t, I couldn’t d-do that I…” his breathing sped up.

“The first thing Jack asked about when he woke up was school and needing to take care of his pet? Does that really strike you as someone who would try to… to…” Cas paused, “to hurt themselves?”

“I… I was upset and sad after what happened but…” Jack’s forehead wrinkled again as his breathing grew more frantic and his heart rate rose with it, “I wouldn’t, I didn’t do that…” he muttered eyes pleading and filling back up with tears, “please believe me.”

“I know Jack… I do believe you,” Castiel reassured him gently squeezing his shoulder.

A thought dawned on Cas and he reached for his coat still hanging off the back of his chair, “he really physically couldn’t…”

Castiel pulled a small half crushed blue box from the pocket of the coat, “I didn’t even buy a bottle of pills they didn’t have any in the hotel commissary they only had it in a box of packets and there were only four pills to start with…”

‘The stupid box had cost a whole ten dollars regardless.’

He handed it over for the doctor to see, “and there’s still two left…”

The doctor looked in the box then checked the date on the bottom, but instead of looking relieved like Cas expected…”

She just looked... frustrated?

“Alright… I’m sorry, we had to rule that out as a possibility…” she sighed.

The apology did nothing to placate Jack, who just stared at her distrustfully tears running silently down his cheeks hugging himself still breathing too fast.

Castiel tried to resist the anger and resentment building up in his own chest he knew the doctor was just doing her job, but it was late and the already ill and drug addled Jack was not tolerating being woken in the middle of the night to be painfully prodded, cross examined, and accused of hurting himself very well.

He placed a protective hopefully comforting hand on Jack’s shoulder, “couldn’t you have just tested for a possible overdose in the blood samples you took instead of coming in here past midnight and harassing him?”

“If the problem was being caused by taking too much ibuprofen it would be important to find out and treat as soon as possible.”

“W-why?” Jack mumbled hunching forward red-eyed and shaking his breath coming out in uncomfortably fast puffs, “what… what’s wrong with me?”

He looked how Castiel felt, on the verge of panic.

“Jack, it’s alright I need you to calm down…” the doctor said looking warily between him and the vitals reading on the monitor.

‘That didn’t calm him down.’

“You… you don’t know d-do you?” Jack sobbed continuing to hyperventilate, heart beating about a mile a minute on the monitors, “y-you don’t…” he coughed, the developing panic attack not helping his already labored breathing, coughing soon turning to wheezing.

Castiel’s mouth became a thin anxious line as he wrapped a supportive arm around his shoulders.

“Jack?”

The doctor moved quickly back over to the locked set of drawers retrieving a vial and injecting something into Jack’s IV line, “it’s alright it’s okay… just try to breathe deeply Jack…”

Jack tried, leaning on his uncle tears running down his face even when his breathing slowed and he relaxed as whatever drug the doctor gave him took effect.

The doctor and Castiel gently helped him lean back into his pillows as his eyes blinked blearily, “it’s alright… just rest now… you’re alright…”

She didn’t look like even she believed what she was saying as he drifted quickly back into unconsciousness the rise and fall of his chest slowly evening back out.

Castiel felt as if a live wire was clenched between his teeth.

“What happening to Jack?” he managed an impossibly calm tone.

The doctor sighed taking a moment to steal herself before answering. “Most of the tests we have back so far… they came back inconclusive… There was no sign of meningitis or encephalitis in his spinal fluid, no… conclusive signs of infection in his blood at all…”

“But,” Castiel said feeling miles away.

“But… between the blood taken when he was first admitted and a few hours ago, we’ve found a significant increase in his liver enzymes and protein levels and if… they don’t improve in the next few hours I want to look at transferring him to Kansas University hospital…”

Castiel felt like the ground was dropping from beneath him, “and… the pain, what you were testing for just now that was…”

The doctor paused for an even longer moment before answering, “Jack’s liver and kidneys… are showing signs of inflammation… and the blood tests results are signs they’re starting to lose function…”

‘Failing… she meant they were beginning to fail’

“And you don’t know why…” Castiel mumbled numbly.

The doctor said nothing...

Notes:

Dun dun dun, and the plot thickens, hopefully the introduction of nurse Garth managed to lighten things up a bit before the darker second half and reveal.

If you enjoyed this chapter and have the time and/or inclination please let me know what you thought :)

#SPN #Supernatural #Castiel #Jack Kline #Dean Winchester #Sam Winchester #fanfiction #whump #humor #illness #family drama #garth fitzgerald iv #Hannah #TW drugs #TW vomit mention #only accusations of not an actual attempt of overdose #kylermalloy

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happiness4jane · 5 years

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The Scariest Thing I’ve Ever Done

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Well, this is terrifying. Paralyzing almost. My hands are literally trembling as I try to punch the letters on my keyboard. When I allow myself to think about the people that might read this. People I know. People I work with. Students I teach. Students I’ve taught. My soon-to-be-in-laws. My exes. Their families (they’ll say, “I told you so!”). My friends. Their friends. My family. My children. All 836 of my Facebook “friends” are potential critics. And they’ll share it with even more people that might know me or will know me, that see me around and will avoid making eye contact with me in Walmart forevermore! When I allow myself to think about that – the people that might read this – every self-doubting, loathing, shaming, insecure demon inside me surfaces in protest. BUT… but. That’s the point, after all. For people to read this. To maybe help others claw their way out of the uncompromising, crippling, and degenerative grasp of the illness known as Bipolar Disorder (no, but seriously, this scares the shit out of me and I can’t breathe).

Here’s the thing though – I shouldn’t be ashamed of it. It isn’t fair we live in a society that shames people with mental illness into silence. That calls us “crazy”. We can’t just snap our fingers and make it go away (but, oh, if I could!). We can’t just act normal, act rational. It’s not something we can tame on command. And we didn’t choose this. Who would choose this?! Who would choose to leave behind a legacy of wreckage? Well, I don’t doubt there are some who’d choose that… As for me, when I think on all the destroyed relationships, the lost jobs, the unfinished projects and departed dreams, the reckless moments that would haunt me for years, the countless days stolen away by infinite darkness… the shame, the shame, the shame – I would never choose this. And yet, despite all the chaos and ruin and regret, it took me about twenty years to get help. Why? The simple answer is, I didn’t want to be Bipolar. I didn’t want people to think I was crazy (Ha! Like they didn’t already!). So, I refused to accept it. I refused to seek treatment. And it got worse. Much, much worse.

About seven months ago, after another life-is-amazing-and-I-don’t-need-to-sleep-and-I’ll-hyper-focus-and-finish-that-novel-and-train-for-that-marathon-and-FUCK!-you-better-stop-getting-in-my-way-or-I’ll-bite-your-damn-head-off-so-feed-yourself elevated state (Symptoms of a manic episode: increased activity, energy or agitation; decreased need for sleep; abnormally upbeat) followed inevitably by a crashing-into-bed-and-plotting-out-the-details-of-my-exit-because-I-just-can’t-live-in-this-world-anymore-and-I’m-worthless-and-horrible-and-you’d-all-be-better-off-without-me depressed state (Symptoms of a major depressive episode: feelings of sadness, emptiness, hopelessness; marked loss of interest in activities; fatigue; feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt; thinking about, planning, or attempting suicide), I sought the help of a counselor. So, what changed, you might be wondering? What made me seek treatment at this point, after shunning it for so many years? Well, it used to be that I had normal periods of time between the depression and the elevation. It used to be fun and ambitious and productive (euphoric but always beguiling) to be elevated. It used to be the depression came maybe a couple times a year. The unwarranted distrust and insecurity and ultra-sensitivity was fleeting. The suicidal thoughts were daunting rather than soothing. That’s what used to be. It was easier to pretend I was normal then. I was just eccentric! I was special! Like some of the greatest artists and inventors and individuals that made history. I was a mad genius just like Salvador Dali, Vincent Van Gogh, Charlie Chaplin, Ben Franklin, Sir Isaac Newton, Michelangelo (Symptom: exaggerated sense of self). I was able to ride that train of twisted thought for a long long time, because I could finish what I started then, because I was younger then, and there was always another job, another lover, another place that would accept me. But around seven years ago, that all began to change. The depression seized more frequently. The elevation became less euphoric and more agitated, even rageful at times – lashing out at and rejecting the people I loved most. I started projects but never finished them. It became more and more difficult to go to work, and when I got there, I had to convince myself out of the car and into the classroom. In the classroom, I felt like an alien. I couldn’t stay on track, couldn’t focus my thoughts (Symptom: rapid and frenzied speaking, racing thoughts). I felt like I was disconnected from everything around me, like I wasn’t real (Symptom: dissociation). And then over the past year, the episodes seemed to be crashing right on top of each another with no reprieve in-between. It was relentless, crippling. One day of unbridled energy followed by two days of extreme irritability followed by one day of bed-ridden depression and then rinse, lather, repeat. Weeks, months, a year like this. The darkness that occasionally consumed my thoughts mutated to a pervasive utter blackness – leaving a void where hope and happiness used to visit. My fiancé pleading with me to get out of bed. My 10-year-old son asking me why I was so angry. My six-year-old daughter saying, “Mommy’s sick again.” I hated myself. I couldn’t pretend I was perfectly healthy – just eccentric – anymore. I was sick. Very sick.

You see, Bipolar Disorder is a degenerative illness, and by denying myself treatment, I had enabled a progression into periods of rapid cycling, meaning I was basically Bipolar on steroids – my depressive and manic moods shifting in a constant unpredictable shitstorm. This is the way it was explained to me by my counselor (in much more eloquent terms). She said that in the same way progressive diseases like Cancer will eventually cause organ failure if left untreated, Bipolar Disorder gradually diminishes brain function if left untreated. Oh, did I mention this conversation took place just a month ago? And, perhaps you remember that I went to see her the first time about seven months ago? No, it didn’t take that long to diagnose me. It took that long for me to commit. I honored my appointments only twice before I disappeared for another two months and then for another five months after that (I was still battling my desperate desire to be “normal”). During those initial appointments, I either purposefully omitted the symptoms of my elevated states, or honestly didn’t know they were elevated states. Hard to tell. On the one hand, for most of my life the elevated states were something to look forward to. They were a tremendous relief since they often followed a long period of depression, or, they were a welcome rush of intense energy and focus and ambition after a period of normal moods and routines. On the other hand, there was a part of me that hoped, if I had to be diagnosed with something, that it be depression and/or anxiety – just not Bipolar, please, not that! For some totally illogical reason, having depression and anxiety seemed more socially acceptable to me. People posted about their depression and anxiety on social media. My students openly discussed their struggles with them in class. Lot’s of people are depressed and anxious! Poor reasoning but, I convinced myself that my elevated states were just “normal” times when I wasn’t depressed. After all, I didn’t behave like someone that was manic. I was nothing like Bradley Cooper’s character in “Silver Linings Playbook”! I didn’t suddenly become totally irrational. I didn’t spend everything in my bank account in some obsessed frenzy. I didn’t abruptly start making good on all my wildest fantasies and desires. I didn’t incoherently speed-talk and jump around from one interest to another. No, it was never that pronounced. Or, was it? I’d certainly been called Bipolar enough in my lifetime – and not in a concerned or encouraging way. More like I was being called a “crazy bitch”. It was a bad word. And I did spend [a lot] more money than I should when I felt “good”. Like, when I bought that boat with a personal loan on a 50% interest rate. Or, when I financed that international trip while negative in my bank account. And on all that professional camera equipment when I decided to be a video editor, and on this website two years ago when I decided to be a blogger (Perhaps, now, I’ll finally make use of it?). And the hundreds of dollars I invested in gear when I was suddenly inspired to run a marathon (but I did follow through on that one, thank you very much!). Oh, right, I guess I do jump around from interest to interest when I’m feeling “inspired”. I’m going to be a motivational speaker, no, a novelist, no, a personal trainer, no, a corporate trainer, no, a filmmaker, no, an entrepreneur, no… the list goes on and on. But these things felt so good. Even though I had to clean up the wreckage whenever I smashed back down on the pavement. The rubble of estranged relationships, busted bank accounts, retired jobs. So yeah, I went with depression and anxiety, masking the symptoms of mania. And I refused medication (because all I really needed to do was get my shit together, not numb myself with zombie-making pills). Until the progression to rapid cycling imprisoned me and I sulked, defeated, back into therapy five weeks ago.

After years and years and years of heartbreak and rejection and confusion and self-loathing and denial and protest, I began taking a daily mood stabilizer and seeing my therapist once a week. It took a couple weeks before there was any discernable change, and after four weeks, the change in my behavior was nothing short of striking. At that point, I realized I hadn’t been swallowed by the black void in three full weeks – a record time in nearly a year. I hadn’t lashed out in rage at anyone either. And the most surprising thing? I wasn’t the living dead. I had heard these nightmare testimonies about people with Bipolar Disorder beginning medication and going numb, like they’d been lobotomized, and that panicked me. I didn’t want to stop feeling, I just wanted to experience my feelings in a regulatory fashion. And I was, for the first time in years. Now, I want to be very careful not to sound like the poster girl for medicating. My strong belief is that we over-medicate in this country (but that’s for another post). No miracle has occurred. I’m not “cured”. In fact, there is no known cure for Bipolar Disorder. It can be managed, with a combination of medication and psychotherapy. Some days are better than others. But every day, I still battle my demons and the life-long conditioning of patterns, emotional reactions, and behaviors. My recovery is a continuous journey where no arrival point exists. But I have hope today. I wake up motivated to get out of bed without needing the boost of mania. I carry out the responsibilities and routines of the day without fighting off panic or becoming despondent. I fall asleep without the “lulling” melody of my own death dancing around my thoughts. Yes, I still get anxious and angry and sad and overly eager. The difference is in the way I’ve responded to those feelings since starting treatment. My awareness of the condition and the symptoms that accompany it, along with my medication, has helped me acknowledge my feelings before acting on them.

I hope it’s not the honeymoon period. I hope it lasts.

It’s early yet.

But if this remarkable change is here to stay [with dedicated treatment], I can’t help but feel frustration with myself for not seeking help sooner. Just to think on all the chaos and anguish I could have spared myself and others… But I’m here now, and perhaps it’s exactly where I’m supposed to be – writing this blog so that you may read it and be inspired to act now. For yourself, or for someone you know, before it’s too late. Make no mistake, this disease does kill. The suicide rate for people with Bipolar Disorder is twenty times that of the general population, and nearly 30% will make a suicide attempt at least once in their lifetime.

Don’t pity me, and please don’t fear me. I’m not very different from you. I have a family, friends, a career, hopes and dreams and struggles and fears. For those of you that know me, I’m still Jen. Maybe I’m even a better Jen – my greater and more genuine self. As a society, we need to reframe the way we perceive and speak about mental illness. Help me promote a fair image for those individuals and families that are afflicted with it – so they won’t suffer in silence. So they get help.

My name is Jen Hogue, and I’m diagnosed Bipolar II. Today, I’m in treatment. I take my medication everyday and see my counselor every week. I have a sense of hope that I haven’t had in far too long. I still don’t know if I’ll be brave enough to publish this. But I hope I will. After all, it’s often in the greatest risks we take that we find our greatest triumphs, and our greatest gifts to one another.

#happiness4jane happinessforjane mentalhealth bipolardisorder bipolar depression anxiety mentalhealthsupport

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