#funny what about all the terrible things you have done in your warren

[handfulofmuses]

I just want to say - I don’t hate Campion. But we cannot deny that he is terrible, that includes both the Netflix series no matter how cool he is in there later and the tv series where he gets a lot of leeway for his behavior, from his general, from Hazel and the others, even from the fandom. He is an extremely flawed individual and I wish that side of him was talked about more.

[reasonsmandy]

TRACK 3

Mystical Time

The sun was setting and you were still looking at the note this person had left you, whoever this drink was, they were right, it was extraordinary. You once again survey your surroundings for the secret admirer and your eyes only find a boat a few steps away from you, grabbing your things and quickly putting them in your bag you make your way to the floating object in the dark waters.

You make your way to the boat door, knocking a few times hoping to be answered by someone who could offer some explanation.

"May I help you miss?" A tall man opens the door, you get a little scared but try to focus on what brought you there.

"Yeah actually, I got this letter... I was wondering if you knew who could have given it to me." You hand the paper to the man who collects it in his calloused hands, staring at the letters, not happy.

"Did my employee give you this during his work?" You are taken by surprise by the question, he observes the glass in your hand and you notice that he recognizes the object "That's mine." He roughly takes the glass from your hand. "The guy that gave you this is someone extremely irresponsible who will be fired in the morning! Have a good night miss." He threatens to close the door.

"Hey wait, I don't want anyone to get in trouble because of me."

"I never liked him anyway, Rojas... what a dumb fucking name" He seems mad and you feel really uncomfortable.

Before the man could discard the note, your hand shot out, snatching it back with determination, your eyes darted to the initials engraved on the back – W.R. – a subtle detail that sparked a flicker of recognition within you.

"I'm sorry, but can I keep this?" You asked, your voice trembling slightly with nerves.

The man regarded you with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion, but he shrugged nonchalantly. "Suit yourself," he muttered, turning to leave.

You watched him go, your mind racing with questions and possibilities. You tucked the note safely into your bag, a newfound sense of purpose driving you forward. You didn't know who W.R. was or why he had chosen to reach out to you, but you were extremely sad that you harmed him somehow.

Y/n Rojas L/n: You see, that day haunted me for a while *looks down sadly*

"It's so weird you know." Warren says, looking at his half melted ice cream.

"What?" You felt nervous for some reason, waiting for his response.

"This feeling of deja vu every time I look at you" He chuckles, and you find it very adorable.

You laugh nervously, trying to play it cool. "Maybe we knew each other in a past life or something," you joke, hoping to lighten the mood.

Y/n Rojas L/n: I thought to myself "how long can I take this?". In my defense I thought it'd be funny to reveal we actually had met before. *blushes*

"You know, what's your full name again? Maybe we do know each other." You go on with your playful tone.

"Warren Rojas" As soon as you hear it, your body freezes, you swallow hard, trying to hide your surprise.

W.R

"Rojas, what a dumb fucking name..."

Y/n Rojas L/n: I panicked, I mean... What were the odds? I made the guy lose his job, I felt terrible!

Warren Rojas: *shrugs looking at his shoes*

Interviewer: So you decided to lie about knowing him?

Y/n Rojas L/n: It wasn't my first decision, my plan was to see if he was indeed the guy from the note and then well... Things got a little more complicated.

Warren Rojas: When we came back they had already recorded the song, we talked for a while and left when it was all done.

Y/n Rojas L/n: You see, when coincidences happen so many times we don't expect another one to happen. I didn't clarify anything because I was sure I wouldn't see him again other than at some record company events. But in the end, that wasn't what Daisy had in mind.

Daisy Jones: In August 1977 we became Daisy Jones and The Six *says proudly* I just had to find a way to explain to Y/n that I had other plans...

Interviewer: And how did that go?

Daisy Jones: Well...

"What do you mean you're gonna join them?" Your arms crossed over your chest so stiff it hurt a little.

"They are great and we work well together!" Daisy says with her hands on her hips.

"I thought we worked together too." You try to hide the way you're hurt with this whole situation.

"We do but— Look Y/n, you can still write with us." She holds your hands and you avoid her eyes.

"I tried so hard for this, I thought...” You try to stop yourself from crying. "Do you really think Billy will let both of us in?"

Daisy stays silent, you shake your head.

Y/n Rojas L/n: Well, I was right. Billy hated the idea and I lost my partner in crime, it'd be a shitty day If it wasn't for *opens a small smile*

"I said no Daisy!" Billy almost shouts, your body shivers as you feel embarrassed with the situation.

The rest of the band hadn't arrived yet, it was just you, Daisy, Billy and Teddy having a discussion about how things would go from now on. Your eyes were fixed on your lyric notebook as Daisy and Billy argued like a married couple.

"Why do you have to be such a jerk all the time?" You could swear Daisy's eyes were on fire.

"I'm being a jerk? You're the one who just got in the band and wants to choose everything!" He responds with a sneer, rolling his eyes. "We need everyone's opinion before deciding anything"

"Look, I don't want to cause any fight..." Your voice comes out almost in a whisper.

"Like you let anyone in this band choose anything." Daisy ignores what you say and goes on with the fight.

Billy rolls his eyes and opens his mouth when he's interrupted by a certain drummer.

"Hey, have y'all seen my timbale sticks?" The curly-haired man invades the meeting room. "Oh, important meeting... My bad"

Instead of leaving, he stops and observes those present, smiling when his eyes fall on yours. You give him a small smile and he winks at you, sitting by Teddy's side at the table.

"So, what are you discussing?" He crosses his arms over his bare chest, whether or not his presence lightens any atmosphere.

"Daisy wants to join the band and bring along her whole fucking family." Billy says, rolling his eyes. "No offence." He says at you.

You don't even bother to answer him, looking at your hands all the time.

"I thought we agreed that Daisy would join us." Warren says, clearly confused.

"Yes, but now she wants Y/n to join us as a song writer." The older Dunne looks at Teddy like asking for help.

"And what's the matter?" He still doesn't get it.

Billy scoffs, and Daisy gives Warren an approving smile.

Interviewer: So you joined the band?

Y/n Rojas L/n: Not exactly...

"I had an idea" Warren says, looking directly at Price.

"Warren this is important." Billy disagrees not even listening to him.

"I thought you needed the band's opinion" Daisy says under her breath.

"Will you too please give it a rest?" You say louder than intended. They all look at you.

Warren Rojas: If you think you've seen someone hot? It's because you haven't seen my wife mad *smirks, and slowly realizes* Don't tell you father I said that to you.

"Why don't you work as a ghost writer for the company?" Warren finally makes his suggestion, your eyes light up. "She can help us without being strictly linked to the band, still growing her career."

Y/n Rojas L/n: There is no one more generous than my husband, and now see if you understand me... How could I tell him that I knew him and consequently tell him I made him lose his job, after that?

"Would you be interested in that Y/n?" Teddy says, looking proud at Rojas.

"Of course!" You can't help your excitement.

"So we agree, from now on you will work for us and you guys will officially be Daisy Jones and The Six" Price smiles at all of you, even Billy seems okay with the situation. "Tomorrow I'll bring the paper for everyone to sign, but until then you guys better get to work!"

Daisy and Billy leave the meeting room while discussing how they should go about this change, you still stand there trying to process everything that just happened when you hear Teddy's ringtone and watch you leave you and Warren by yourselves.

"Thank you so much." You turn to Warren, a huge smile on your face. "I really don't know how to thank you..."

"What about joining me for dinner tonight?" He says with hopeful eyes.

Y/n Rojas L/n: He was so adorable that day...

Warren Rojas: You hear that? I'm adorable *grins*

Y/n Rojas L/n: So Warren and I started to see each other, you know, some dates here and there *smiles with the memory* but at the same time we weren't sure of how things actually worked between us. I guess I got overwhelmed by the whole situation I was keeping as a secret, every time we got way too close I pushed him away.

Warren Rojas: If I wasn't sure? Well, I really liked her and even though I saw other women in the meanwhile, things with her were different... I just felt that she didn't want anything with me. *shrugs* Until that night...

"Alright, let's hear for Y/n!" Billy says drawing applause, offering you a small smile. "Y/n here is gonna be helping us with the final touches for the album."

Warren's playful gaze lingers on you, his smile suggestive as he winks in your direction. The air crackles with anticipation as Roundtree steps closer, his hand enveloping yours as he presses a kiss to your knuckles.

Before Roundtree's lips can meet your skin, Rojas intervenes, his grip firm as he pulls his friend back, a hint of possessiveness in his voice. "What do you think you're doing?" Rojas's tone is low, a subtle warning in his words.

Eddie chuckles at the exchange, rolling his eyes at his best friend.

"It's nice having you." Karen says to you, her words offering a sense of welcome and ease in the midst of the charged atmosphere.

"Yeah bella." Rojas puts out his cigarette getting closer to you. He kisses your cheek "So nice." He whispers in your ear.

You feel a shiver down your spine, as you thank them all for having you there.

Y/n Rojas L/n: He was so fucking hot that day *sighs*

"So first we would like you to hear the songs before the mixing and after it." Billy says showing you the way towards the sound table. "Daisy and I are working on the last song we're having a hard time finishing, but you can feel free to write some ideas and give your thoughts."

"I can show her, no worries." Warren grabs your hand, looking into your eyes.

"Of course you can, you dog." Eddie smirks clicking his tongue on the roof of his mouth.

Warren Rojas: Eddie was a pain in the ass that day.

"And what are we supposed to do in the meanwhile?" Graham asks, crossing his arms.

"I guess you guys can have a day off." Daisy says, looking at all of them.

Y/n Rojas L/n: So Eddie was the first to leave, after that Graham gave Karen a ride.

Warren Rojas: Billy and Daisy went to Teddy's house, for some reason they liked to write the songs there. So basically, we had the place to ourselves *smirks*

Y/n Rojas L/n: I tried my best to keep my distance from him, there was something about him that drove me crazy. When everyone left that day I was sure I wouldn't make it that day. *looks at the camera embarrassed*

✧.* 📚 — Hello! So, my first time writing something with more than two parts. I hope you like it because I'm very excited about my ideas. As it is different content, I don't know if I will use the same taglist that I always use. So here's the new one (in case you want to be tagged)

✧.* taglist — @cieopatrasss @neptunes-curse @boredshit-shadow @boouoy @softstarlite @xopearlz @nakedmolerat @coldonexx

[mangoisms]

you know what i’m thinking about. in the unmasked run in robin 93 where jack figures out tim is robin and does so by breaking tim’s privacy and going through his room and it’s often used as backup that jack was abusive most specifically in fanon spaces where bruce can then be posed as tim’s true father/better than jack and like dgmw it was bad and shitty and he shouldn’t have done it.

but it’s also funny that right before this, in that same issue—#124—it starts off with this terrible sequence of bruce treating tim like shit because he’s lost confidence in himself after accidentally killing (but not permenantly; now it seems that way) johnny warren; bruce’s defense here is tim doesn’t know this factually which i mean is fair, but he calls it an excuse and basically doesn’t address the core of tim’s feelings At All. like. look.

Bruce: This is dangerous business, Robin. No such thing as calling “time out” or “no fair.” Not unless you want those to be your final words, before the cops fish your body out of the Gotham River. Tim: Give me a break, Bruce. You’re Batman. How can I possibly hope to beat you in one-on-one combat? Bruce: I limited myself to using only the fighting styles indigenous to the Indian sub-continent: Kallar Payattu; Verumkai; some Gatka— Tim: So what? You’re Batman! Bruce: Still, you should have held out longer than three minutes. Last winter, you nearly lasted seven.  Tim: Last winter I was still—I mean back then I hadn’t— Bruce: If you have something to tell me, then spit it out. Otherwise I have better ways to waste my time.  Tim: Back then I still hadn’t killed anyone. Bruce: Oh, so it’s that again? How long are you planning to use that crutch? Tim: I— Bruce: For three months, you’ve used that incident to justify slacking off. You show up late for training sessions, or miss them entirely.  Tim: I— Bruce: You're moody, petulant and no longer self-motivated. Anytime Alfred or I aren't actually watching, you stop working. I've about decided you're not fit to continue being Robin. Tim: And that's the real crux of our problem, isn't it? You've lost trust in me. You haven't let me go out on real missions, or patrol on my own, since the Johnny Warren case. Bruce: Cart before the horse, Tim. You lost trust in yourself then, so I stopped giving you the weight you could no longer seem to carry. Tim: Is that true? Alfred, have you seen it, too? Was it me all along? Alfred: When you first came to us, Master Tim, you were so blithe and confident--ready to take on the world. How did my father describe the type? "Ready to charge into hell with no more than a bucket." Don't mind admitting that you seemed a godsend--the one young man who could exorcise the ghost of Jason from these chambers. Bruce: Careful, Alfred. Stick to business. This isn't an encounter session, and no one needs to dredge up ancient history. Alfred: Point taken, sir. My apologies. In any case, Master Tim, you no longer seem to be the same young man who so dazzled us then. Now all of the light has drained out of you, and this noble cause you once desired so much to participate in has instead become a dreadful burden. Bruce: I'll put you back out there the moment you show me that's where you want to be. But if you're going to keep using Warren to continue acting this way, not even knowing if you actually caused his death--well, that excuse is good once more, and once more only. I’ll accept it as the reason you quit. Take a day or two to decide.

like? bruce isnt looking too good here either. at all. anyway. there’s too much i want to say with this but this is already long so. Here

[thewordsinthevoid]

Alright this is my THIRD time relistening to 5.1, lets dump ALL my thoughts then:

-first of all, one of the best opening story sequences. I love when unwell does this framing, and it is always well done. "We may be going home soon" is a line that disturbs the shit out of me, and once again unwell's sound design is absolutely incredible with all that the dogs do. I do also want to see silas get his teeth punched out.

-i could talk for hours about chester this episode. But i just want to say both the writing and pat kings performance were perfect for him. The way he aporoaches the house practicing what to say, and specifically stumbling through all their namea, then is immediately thrown off by the house being casual is so comedic and him. I really want to know how pat king manages to sound that pathetic, its amazing. Hes also amazing later in the episode where hes freaking out over norah and wes.

-"come in!" "Mrs. Harper? Its me? Chester Warren?" "What of me yelling come in didnt you understand?" The way the cast acts is so fhdjsjjdjdbsjs seeing dot tentatively accept chester is so nice, while she still keeps bullying him a bit throughout the episode. Its such a good dynamic on full display.

-abbie is a bastard. Its perfect.

-"lily-an"

-"i can eavesdrop from here!" "Tell him to speak up!" AND THEN CHESTER ACTUALLY TALKING LOUDER IS FHDJDKSKNFNDA. Once again character dynamics are shining this entire episode, and having chester play the straight man to their antics is a good role for him.

-"i dont know how to proceed!" Have you ever met a man so pathetic-

-chester is a 24/7 mental breakdown at this point. Yeah this is what i wanted from season 5.

-i should write a fic where chester reads rudys will and all that-

-When you arent exactly a found family because you fell apart and didnt know each other long enough but in the end your the only person left to stand over their body-

-Abbie getting their character development shown off this ENTIRE EPISODE we're so proud of them learning to handle their own emotions.

-also lily WES IS A KID TF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT???? Like yeah hes a ghost but come on. Tinee.

-chester refusing to enter the house is such a good character detail. My guy needs help.

-and now we're at the norah scene where she needs SO MUCH THERAPY

-once again applause for the sound design making Norahs voice have an interesting echo that isnt distracting!

-dot immediately asking Norah to stay there in rudys room absolutely made me and my friend start screaming at her. Im glad it turned out well but we both kind of just had a spittake

-btw dot actually sticking to joking about norah being her daughter is cute and hilarious. Like yee girl you got found familied

-wes being the only one to grive the way chester knows how to handle is so fucking funny to me actually-

-now this is the point of the episode for me that i freak out for. Chester not remembering ghosts or wes. I have a lot of general thoughts about this episode regarding it and 4.12s status, but i will say this specific scene mightve been good to include at the start of the new season rather than the end of last because i genuinely dont remember if wes and chester know each other. Im sure they should, and im sure chester does know about ghosts, but its been months since i heard the last few episodes, so i start to question my own knowledge. Its so unsettling and uncomfortable and i think seems like a good point of tying an audience effect to the plot. Like, its good metatextualy. And if im completely wrong and chester wasnt meant to know these things then. Idk. Bully me in my askbox

-regardless, once again im applauding pat king for the best, most pathetic performance ive ever seen

-chester and abbie getting into a theological debate is the type of content i need while im being forced to take a terrible theology class

-the mugs as a joke in this episode are goddamn hilarious. Its also nice how they manage to make some history with it, despite the audience not seeing it, its more in the little things of dot and lily joing its bc "shes fancy" in such a way it feels like they both know the joke. Its nice. Also wes getting fenwood house!!!!

-the way they manage to audibly convey dot walking over, snatching the alcohol of chesters hand, and drowning it is fucking skillfull and hilarious

-lily and norah getting the final mourning scene broke me. Norah crying broke me. I have nothing really to say about that scene other than it was good and made me wanna cry.

-the rain beginning is terrifying me. I am so ready for this season i am so hyped.

-FINAL THOUGHTS:

- if i could start season 5 in any way, it would be like this. This is all i wanted and more. The character dynamics and cast performances that (for me) are the pinnacle of unwell are on full display, its acknowledging a life changing event from the last season, and everything that happens in the episode is incredibly gripping on a character level

-the episode i think masterfully balances both a tone of mourning and humor, often getting into some darkly humorous places, and seems to be a concerted effort by the entire team to balance it. The writing, acting, design, all really make this tone work.

-can i keep mentioning the acting? The actors are incredible

-i get the feeling this might be chesters last appearance. I dont want it to be, but this feels like it could also be a send off to his character, and i wouldnt blame the writers if they did so, just so they had a smaller cast to focus on in the finale. I hope chester returns though, hes somehow become a bright spot in the show for me, and i blame his actor

-im also very concerned for what will happen to lily this season. Shes definitely struggling a lot with guilt, and i dont think shes going to be making the best choices. Regardless, i love her and norahs friendship, and she and chester also got a weird friendship that i think should lead the two to try to kill silas together.

-for my final thoughts, i deleted what i wrote about this and 4.12, but to summarize, i just hope the writers didnt feel pressured to write this episode, but that this episode serves as a good leadin to the rest of the season.

-i loved this episode, and it has already become one of my favorite. Unwell season 5 is delivering!

[bamfdaddio]

X-Men Abridged: 1980 - The Dark Phoenix Saga

The X-Men, those enduring mutants that have sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, are a cultural juggernaut with a long, tangled history. Want to unravel this tapestry? Then read the Abridged X-Men!

(X-Men 132 - 140, X-Men Annual 4) - by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, John Romita Jr. and Bob McLeod

Go on. Name a more iconic X-Men panel. I’ll wait. (X-Men 134)

If you were born in 1980, you were born under the sign of the Phoenix. This means you will have great hair, but you’ll also be absolutely corrupted by power. Don’t worry, as long as you don’t consume any stars and/or galaxies, you should be fine.

This year hits the ground running, introducing Emma Frost, Kitty Pryde and Dazzler in one fell swoop. The White Queen is the first of the Hellfire Club to make her move, but Phoenix is quickly able to dispatch of her, as you can read here.

Cyclops, worried that the rest of the Inner Circle will soon come in for the kill, decides to abscond to Angel’s Aerie in New Mexico to throw their pursuers off their scent. Jean decides to make the most of it and has sex with Scott on top of mesa. (Kinky!) She also shuts off his uncontrollable destructo-beams, nbd. This somehow inspires Scott to go from reactive to proactive and lead an ill-advised charge straight into the Hellfire Club on the night of their big ball… soirée... thing. Call it a Hellfire Gala-avant-la-lettre.

Fine, he might have been inspired by the raw power of the Phoenix. She’s the biggest gun on their side and, if there's one thing you can be sure of, it´s that reliable powerhouse Jean won´t switch sides in the middle of battle.

Oh wait, that's exactly what she does.

As soon as they enter the Hellfire Club, Jason Wyngarde, who reveals he’s actually Mastermind, takes control of Jean, finally turning her into the Black Queen. With the power of the Phoenix and the patriarchy on their side, the Inner Circle makes short work of the X-Men. They consists of:

Jason Wyngarde, aka Mastermind.

Sebastian Shaw. Often shirtless. The Jeff Bezos of mutantkind. Has the ability to absorb kinetic energy, which means punching him only makes him stronger. (Colossus and Storm figure this out the hard way.)

Harry Leland. Ability of mass manipulation, which has got to be one of the dopest powers ever. Uses it to dunk Wolverine three floors down into the sewer.

Donald Pierce. 25% robot, 100% asshole, 100% useless in taking out X-Men, 225% the worst.

Wolverine is the only one who escapes, resulting in another iconic image:

Apparently, this picture is solely responsible for the fact that Wolverine became the face of the X-Men in the zeroes. It also lit my cigar from the other side of the room. (X-Men 132)

Needless to say, stabbing ensues.

Meanwhile, Shaw pontificates what he wants with the X-Men. He means to use them as guinea pigs to isolate the X-Gene, which he’ll then reverse engineer to give everyone (with money) super powers and all of a sudden, I want Shaw to do a team-up with John Sublime. Jean is not all there, however: she’s trapped in the astral plane, cultivating a cruel streak a mile high.

And suddenly, Jean-turning-evil is not all that funny anymore. (X-Men 133)

Cyclops traverses the mental link he shares with Jean to confront ‘Sir Jason’ and challenge him to a duel. Guy can’t catch a break: in Jean’s mindscape, he is stabbed and he promptly collapses in the real world. Ruh-roh!

Wolverine, meanwhile, has done a passable impression of the Bride against the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill, and he interrupts the Hellfire Club and their gloating. That’s when Jean resurfaces as well, snapping out of her voluptuous Victorian fantasy and, playing a dubious tango with everyone’s trust issues, switching sides once again. The Phoenix is like the golden snitch: as long as your team holds it, it’s enough to win.

Colossus snaps Pierce’s robo-arm, Shaw gets punted through a floor and Leland uses his powers to increase Wolverine’s mass - just when Logan is jumping on top of him. Oops! Should have made him lighter than a feather, Leland.

Jean, meanwhile, is doing her own passable impression of the Bride and goes on what the advertisements would refer to as a ‘Roaring Rampage of Revenge’. (Oh, she roars, and she rampages, and she gets bloody satisfaction.)

This is what happens when you fuck around and find out, Jason. (X-Men 134)

Phoenix makes Mastermind’s mind touch the infinite. His tiny human mind can’t cope. And, just like me when I’m at Pride and surrounded by a bevvy of shirtless gym bunnies, he becomes a dribbling mess. A shell with nothing inside. For those of you paying attention: this is where your Lit teacher would shout “dramatic irony” and underscore Emma Frost vs. Storm on the chalkboard.

This is also the moment where she officially Breaks Bad.

We see powerless people become heroes all the time. The reverse, where the angel falls? That happens far more rarely. I think that is the reason this story was so shockingly effective in the eighties. The reason why it’s still so effective? I think because, like the One Ring, you can read the rise and fall of the Phoenix in a myriad of ways. Is this a victim, reclaiming power? Is this a woman, trying to rise in a man’s world? Is this someone who was always buttoned up, daring to embrace her own power, her sexuality, her dangerous side -- only to get promptly beat down? The ambiguity of the narrative gives it strength, which is why I think it keeps resonating even now. This counts especially in the X-Universe, inherently designed to appeal to the underdog.

Anyway, the X-Men try to flee, but it’s too late. Jean can’t hold it in any more. She explodes in Phoenixesness and vaporizes the X-Men’s aircraft over Central Park. Relishing in her power, Jean easily defeats her friends, before flying off into the galaxy.

In the Avengers mansion, Beast gets the report that the X-Men are trashing the Hellfire Club. Ignoring his duties as an Avenger, Beast chooses his old family and hops off to investigate on his own.

The report, by the way, comes from Shaw, who knows when to turn tail and cut his losses. Among the confused, scared refugees of their party, he begins working a politician on the importance of a Sentinel program. That politician? Senator Kelly. Remember that name.

Jean can’t talk, she’s doing hot girl things. Nomnomnom that star system, sis. (X-Men 135)

Originally, Jean wasn’t meant to die. This one panel, the one showing the inhabited planet, is the reason why she eventually does: Jim Shooter, editor-in-chief, felt Jean shouldn’t be able to get away with a literal genocide. Claremont and Byrne, who had planned to strip Jean of her powers at the end of this, had to change the end of their story within days before it went to print. Additionally, this stoked the adversarial fire between the two: Claremont claims that he hadn’t originally intended there to be an inhabited planet, but felt his hands were tied when Byrne drew one. I wonder how true this is, considering how embedded it is in the narrative, but that’s neither here nor there.

The Phoenix’s genocide alerts the Shi’Ar - and therefore Lilandra - to her presence. Lily says that Galactus is nothing compared to the Phoenix: he merely eats planets, she will consume all that exists.

A hungry Jean, meanwhile returns to Earth, not sure what she’s looking for. She pays a visit to the home of her parents, but when they warily come to greet her, she can’t help but read all the innermost thoughts of her family. Nothing is secret, nothing is sacred. (Imagine knowing all those little thoughts your parents had about you, all those little terrible human things they did in their life. Imagine knowing all their sexual fantasies. Brrr.) It sours the Phoenix against them and she is about to start familicide to her list of sins, when the X-Men attack!

Nightcrawler slaps a psionic scrambler designed by Beast on her, but she’s still too strong. Wolverine tries to end her, but he isn’t ruthless enough to do the deed. When the scrambler overloads, Scott tries reasoning with her, appealing to her love. This causes the Phoenix to waver and Charles Xavier (airdropped in by Warren), bolts Jean telepathically.

Drinking game rule for the Phoenix saga no 6: shout “ca-caw” and take a sip every time the raptor appears. (X-Men 136)

Xavier feels Jean helping him out from within the Phoenix and together, they slowly trap Phoenix in the same sort of energy-matrix as Jean did with the M’Kraan-crystal. The Phoenix finally lays dormant, the X-Men have Jean back and Scott, overwhelmed by emotion, sort of awkwardly proposes to her. Happy Ending! And then, pulling the rug out from under our feet, the X-Men (including Beast and Angel) are whisked away.

They appear in front of Lilandra. The Shi’Ar hold Jean accountable for her planet-killing ways and Lilandra orders her Imperial Guard to take her away! But Charles invokes an ancient law with the same relish of someone who invokes an obscure board game rule against the person who is about to win: he demands a trial by combat.

The rules are easy:

X-Men win: Jean lives

Shi’Ar win: Jean dies.

The trial will be on the dark side of the moon. The Shi’ar are way too strong and, one by one, the X-Men fall, until only Jean and Scott are left. In their last stand, Jean loses control and becomes the Phoenix again, wiping the floor with the Imperial Guard. Technically, they win, but she knows now.

Suicide by abandoned-machine-of-a-long-forgotten-civilization-on-the-dark-side-of-the-moon. (X-Men 137)

She dies. Phoenix dies. The X-Men lose. Scott, bereft, leaves the X-Men.

One detail I love is the holempathic crystal that Lilandra bestows on Jean’s parents.

Without becoming too maudlin, the idea of this is beautiful. A condensed image of a person you love, one you can touch when you feel memories slipping away so you can remember who they were. (X-Men 138)

And with that, season 2 of the X-Men ends. Without Cyclops and Phoenix, the X-Men have to readjust. While Beast returns to the Avengers, Angel takes up residence in the mansion again. He confesses to liking most of the new X-Men, except Wolverine. (To be fair, Wolverine is an acquired taste.) Kitty Pryde also formally starts attending the school and slowly, the Jean-and-Scott-shaped void is filled.

Patriarchal Charles is thrilled to finally have a new teenager in the house who will hang on to his every word. It’ll be like the sixties all over again! (X-Men 139)

There are so many beautiful touches in the few panels:

Wolverine calling Charles ‘Chuck’

Nightcrawler getting drinks (and a beer)

Most amazingly of all, Storm becoming the leader. (I give Chuck a lot of flak, but this decision is Right.) Not just because Storm is the best X-Man for the job, but also because she was a black woman leading one of premier Marvel superhero teams for, what? The better half of a decade? The eighties had barely started, so this was a big fucking deal.

Storm also takes up a motherly role for Kitty, who takes up her suggestion for a codename: Sprite. (This after Kitty rejects Charles’ suggestion of Ariel, which is only fortunate, considering that name would soon be associated with redhaired mermaids.)

The rest of the year is dedicated to two adventures, both of them starring Kurt. The first is depicted in the annual: on Kurt’s birthday, he receives a mysterious package with a mysterious figurine that mysteriously explodes in his face. Professor X calls guest star Dr. Strange for aid, who deduces that his soul has been stolen. What follows is a quest to regain Kurt’s soul in an adventure that feels a little too I just read Dante’s Inferno, check how smart I am.

Hell is a little too pedestrian and boring, though we do get a King Minos hitting on Kurt and Ororo. A man of wealth and taste indeed. Anyway, at the end of this side quest, it turns out all of this was a convoluted revenge scheme concocted by one Margali of the Winding Road. She turns out to be Kurt’s (adoptive) mother, who’s getting revenge for Kurt killing her son.

Kurt, racked with guilt, reveals he had no choice. Stefan had always feared the darkness in his soul and he’d made Kurt pledge to stop him if he should ever succumb to it. After Stefan killed a child or two, Kurt had no choice but to end him. Stefan perished and Kurt was blamed for all of the murders, having to flee an angry mob.

Margali forgives him, with some help from Jimaine, Kurt’s foster sister. In a twist that is a little too soap opera for my tastes (and I watch Riverdale), Jimaine turns out to be Kurt’s squeeze, Amanda Sefton. I’ve always disliked this twist, and not just because of the incesteous vibes: I like the idea of Kurt dating a regular lady who is into him despite his appearance and his being a mutant. Making Amanda Sefton his sorcerous half-sister dilutes that message a lot.

The tail end of 1980 involves Wolverine going to Canada so Wolverine can make amends with Alpha Flight. Kurt joins him, ostensibly to flirt with Aurora, but in fact this shows that Kurt and Wolverine are establishing a rapport. A deeper friendship.

In a pretty paint-by-numbers adventure, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and the worse half of Alpha Flight take down a Wendigo. We don’t get Northstar or Aurora, but we do get more Snowbird, who can change herself into Canadian animals, with the danger of being consumed by her animal side.

We get this delightful panel out of it:

Scared Nightcrawler almost makes me forget how full of shit Jimmy MacDonald is, considering last time Kurt saw them, they tried to kidnap the fuzzy elf. (X-Men 139)

This whole arc is meant to show the softening of Wolverine. Not only does he share his name with Kurt (well, sort of: “Logan, is that your name?” “Yup.” “You never told us.” “You never asked.”), but when they fight the Wendigo and Snowbird turns into a white wolverine to deal the final blow, he talks her out of being consumed by her vicious animal nature.

The year ends with two details worth mentioning:

The Canadian government dissolves Alpha Flight, which I can only find a prescient move that highlights their good taste. A realistic note I like is the minister referring to the mutant problem as ‘an American problem’ even though they employ the Beaubier twins. Wankers.

Fred Dukes escapes prison to join the New Brotherhood of Mutants!

We’re now entering a run of the X-Men which I haven’t read much of yet, but Freddy mentions he was helped by some lady lawyer. That’s gotta be Mystique, right?

I can barely contain my glee.

Ugliest Costume: Despite that godawful hooded thing Kitty wears, I have to give this to Dazzler. There’s no salvaging that costume: I’m sorry, but she’s wearing a disco ball around her neck. It's a boot from me.

Best new character: Emma Frost. Fight me by the bike rack near the parking lot if you disagree.

Turns evil: Jean Grey, famously so.

What to read: X-Men 129 to 137, the Dark Phoenix run.

[mst3kproject]

Invasion of the Star Creatures

I promised you guys something truly awful this week, didn’t I?  Well, how about a space invasion ‘comedy’ (big emphasis on the air quotes there) produced by Samuel Zarkoff to be a double-bill with The Brain that Wouldn’t Die?  The closest thing it has to a star is Frankie Ray, whom MSTies might know as the writer of Laserblast.  He also wrote Zoltan, Hound of Dracula, which I really, really need to see one of these days.  Film Historian Bill Warren described Invasion of the Star Creatures as ‘so helplessly bad it’s almost unwatchable’.  Let’s find out if he was right.

Fort Nicholson is the world’s center for atomic research, despite apparently being staffed entirely by idiots.  The two biggest idiots are, unfortunately, our main characters.  Their names are Philbrick and Penn.  No, I don’t know which is which.  No, I don’t care.  I’m gonna call them Rick and Rick With The Squeaky Voice.  The first ‘comedic’ sequence involves Rick With The Squeaky Voice sitting in a barrel pretending he’s going to space, and getting his ass set on fire.

That sets the tone for the whole movie quite nicely. It’s stupid and it’s not funny, and it never gets any better.  In fact, as we shall see, it gets significantly worse.

For some reason, Rick and Rick With The Squeaky Voice are assigned to a mission to explore a cave recently exposed by a nuclear test.  This turns out to be the base for two seven-foot space women, Tanga and Pona, and their tuberous minions, the Vege-Men, and the entire party is soon in their clutches.  The aliens say that they have come to save humanity from destroying ourselves through nuclear war, but naturally the army isn’t into that.  Rick With The Squeaky Voice discovers that kissing the women puts them into a daze, allowing the two idiots to escape, but of course nobody back at Fort Nicholson believes their story.  Is it really up to these two to stop Tanga and Pona from heading back to their home planet with their report?  We’re doomed.

I don’t remember which review it was, but I once invited you to imagine a movie in which every character is Dropo or Watney Smith.  This is that movie.  This is proud of being that movie.  The aliens try to read the two Ricks’ minds and one is completely empty while the other is full of superhero fantasies.  Pona calls what she sees ‘completely illogical and infantile’, which is a fair description of the whole movie.

There’s a sequence where one of the army men shoots a rattlesnake that was about to bite one of the Ricks, and then cries because ‘he might have had a family’.  They try to lampoon the thing in old movies where the characters walk through the same set from different angles by doing it without cutting away or changing the camera angle, but it just looks dumb.  The Colonel gives a long-winded speech about the merits of getting straight to the point.  A forced march stops for a lovely picnic and wine tasting.  A guy gets his ass kicked by a Vege-Man and declares, “that’s the first time a salad ever tossed me.”  There’s a running ‘gag’ about fans of ‘Space Commander Connors’ recognizing each other’s secret decoder rings and immediately going into a full-on geek-out.

None of this is funny, much of it is downright embarrassing, and the worst part is that the writers have no idea how to include their attempts at comedy in the story.  Rather than the hijinks advancing the plot, every time something that’s supposed to be funny happens, the whole thing comes to a dead halt.  This gives the impression that the movie is stumbling around in the dark with no idea where it’s going.  It finally seems to settle on a plot when we find out that the spaceship is about to leave and must be stopped.  After some bullshit the Ricks convince the Colonel (and only the Colonel) to help them take on the aliens.  At this point I was thinking that this movie was pretty terrible but it hadn’t actually pushed me to the point of being tempted to turn it off…

And then it got racist.

The last ten minutes or so of Invasion of the Star Creatures are a downward spiral in which it seems like they gave up trying to be funny in favour of being actively offensive. First, they encounter what’s supposed to be a group of Native Americans on horseback.  Rick With The Squeaky Voice tries to get their attention by saying “hey, Kemosabe, I wanna buy some blankets!”  The Natives don’t speak much English but they do a lot of grunting, and threaten to kill the Colonel because they think he’s General Custer (?!).  Then they kidnap everybody and force them to smoke the peace pipe and drink firewater and the white guys only escape once the Natives have passed out.

Holy shit.  Not only is this repulsive, it is, as previously noted, irrelevant.  It has no effect on the plot other than to waste time.  The Natives do not help them defeat the aliens and neither does the Colonel, who is also in a drunken stupor.  And then, just when we think this can’t possibly get any worse, the defeated alien women declare that they must throw themselves on the mercy of the Earth Men.  This turns out to mean marrying them, and the dialogue specifically likens marriage to slavery, which Tanga and Pona seem to consider a point in its favour!  The end of this movie left my head spinning.  It’s like I watched a guy get ‘comedically’ knocked over by a punching bag for forty-five minutes and then he suddenly turned around and punched me in the face.

(Hey, I just realized… remember how I said the cave was exposed by a nuclear test?  The dialogue emphasizes how this whole area is irradiated and dangerous – and then totally forgets about it.  It’s never mentioned again and the characters take off their protective gear and never put it back on.  So… that was useless, too.)

There is stuff in this movie that could have been funny.  The secret decoder ring stuff almost got a smile out of me once or twice, because the characters seemed so earnest in their love for ‘Space Commander Connors’ and his lore.  The ‘Vege-Men’ also had potential.  We get to see a greenhouse room where they’re grown to be the women’s slaves, and the seedlings are hands or feet sticking out of flowerpots with a few leaves around them.  This is fairly amusing and I could see it being the juvenile form of a sentient plant on Star Trek TOS.  Adult Vege-Men are actors in stupid carrot costumes that they obviously can’t see out of very well, which should have been funny just because it’s so terrible, but Invasion of the Star Creatures is so bad you can’t even laugh at it ironically.

The idea of using a bumbling idiot as your main character, let alone two bumbling idiots, frankly baffles me.  Rick and Rick With The Squeaky Voice are supposed to be the guys we, the audience, identify with.  We’re supposed to like and root for them and to perhaps be able to imagine ourselves in their places, but the only thing I feel for them is contempt.  Why would anyone want to see themselves in these guys?  Perhaps it’s an attempt to say that anybody can be a hero, but the two Ricks don’t even qualify as that.  When they save the world, it’s basically by accident.  The ending, which rewards them with promotions, medals, and beautiful wives from outer space, actively makes me angry because they didn’t earn any of that!

Invasion of the Star Creatures works very hard at being pointless, and there’s very little in it that comes anywhere near a theme.  If any such thing exists, its in Tanga and Pona’s insistence that they’re here to save humanity whether we like it or not, and how the humans react to that idea.  The women say it would be a shame to see a young civilization destroy itself because nations were too stupid to work together.  Rick and Rick With The Squeaky Voice reject this entirely, which is supposed to be a joke: these guys are in the army, so if humanity transcends the need for conflict they’d be out of a job.  The rest of the plot then seems at pain to emphasize that humans cannot work together, and do not want to.

After all, the two Ricks’ attempts to summon help come to nothing.  The Native Americans never understand that these men want assistance, and the Colonel thinks it’s all a Space Commander Connors game before sliding under the metaphorical table, having never done anything useful.  The Ricks themselves spent most of their time arguing and complaining and in the end succeed only through good luck on their part and poor timing on that of the invaders.  Usually a story that begins with ‘aliens want to save primitive humans from ourselves’ would end with ‘the aliens were wrong about us’.  Invasion of the Star Creatures seems to want to say the aliens were right the whole time!

So there you have it – Invasion of the Star Creatures.  It started off kinda bad and not funny, then swirled down the cinematic toilet into outright offensive, racist, sexist drivel.  I’m trying to think of some small thing I can say about it that’s nice, but I’m having a very hard time.  I guess I kinda liked the rumbly noises that represent the alien language – that was more fun than just having the actresses spout random gobbledygook.  Other than that, I’m at a loss.  The actors suck, the sets suck, the effects suck, the costumes suck, and everybody involved was a bigoted dickweed.  Fuck this movie.

[fortheloveoffanfic]

Lullaby

Keanu Reeves x Reader (A/n- 2 more chapters to go.) Chapter Summary- Y/n and Daniel’s wedding draws closer. After her engagement party, Y/n pays Keanu a surprise visit. 

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Chapter 15

2 Months Later It was funny, Y/n thought; how fast things could change, how much faster they could go back to being the same. Maybe she’d taken them for granted, maybe she should have appreciated it more. But it didn’t matter, soon, it would all just be a memory anyway. 

In a month and a half. Six weeks exactly 

By the rate things were moving at, that would be gone before she could blink and by then, Y/n would be a married woman. Mrs. Warren-Wang. It wasn’t the name she’d have chosen for herself, but then again, she hadn’t really chosen much when it came to what being married to Daniel would constitute. Her mother and Alice though, they’d had a field day making the arrangements. They’d chosen everything; from the big things like the perfect venue and the cake to little things like party favors and color schemes. They were so excited, and sometimes, Y/n wished that she was excited too, but really, she dreaded it. She was dreading her own wedding day.

When a large hand stationed itself at her back, pecking the side of her head, Y/n tried to blink away the weighty thoughts that seemed to sink her. Returning to the moment, Y/n drank in her surroundings as if it were the first time, even though she'd been there all night. They’d done a wonderful job, the decorators that her parents had hired; turning the grand ballroom at Delice into an indoor fairy tail; an artificial tree sprouted from the center of the room, its plastic branches stretching all around against the high ceiling, with twinkling fairy lights woven into the perpetually green leaves to combat the intentionally dimmed setting. In mason jars, centerpieces with light colored flowers and lone candles sat at the middle of round tables, scattered strategically about the room, on top of pristine white table cloths. It might have been the perfect engagement party, if Y/n actually wanted to be engaged. “Have I told you how beautiful you look tonight?”

Chuckling quietly, Y/n couldn’t help but blush. At least he was a sweetheart, it could be worse. “You have, but I don’t mind hearing it again,” turning in his embrace, Y/n looked at Daniel through her thick lashes. He was her future, whether she loved him or not. She was learning to though, maybe. They’d only recently moved in together, in a place his parents had gifted them, just one street over from where Y/n grew up and she was beginning to find that he wasn’t terrible to share a home with; he respected her opinions and never made a decision without running it by her. 

“Well,” he grinned, “You look absolutely stunning,” leaning down, Daniel caught her lips in a sweet kiss, and on instinct, Y/n reciprocated, flattening her palm of the lapel of his black suit coat, “I love you,” he murmured when they pulled apart. 

Y/n wasn’t sure if she would ever get used to saying those words to him, but for the sake of making things easier, she hoped she could. “I love you too,” it felt foreign, saying it to Daniel, and every time she did, Y/n a painful pang in her chest followed by the unshakable feeling that she was betraying Keanu, the man she really loved. 

He had taken her engagement in stride, though Y/n could see that even if he didn’t tell her, it bothered him. They’d stopped going out, to avoid being seen in public and really, the only place they ever met up was at his house, after days of planning in advance. Keanu had, unfortunately, become her dirty secret. 

“Your parents want us to say a few words before everyone starts leaving,” no wonder they liked him so much, he was always willing to do whatever they asked. “Shall we?”

Y/n nodded slightly, letting Daniel lead her to the head table, up at the front of the room. Unlike the rest, their table was long and rectangular, similar floral pieces dominating the center of the furniture, occasionally punctuated by picturesque platters of sugary delights; macaroons that obeyed the theme and little round cakes with swirls of champagne flavored frosting on top. Behind their table on the raised portion of the large room, hung white and pink drapes, flowing effortlessly with floral garlands holding it in place at the top. 

Taking their places, Y/n stood next to Daniel, looking at the perfect picture of a doting fiancee, graciously accepting a glass of champagne as someone else handed him a microphone. When he pulled out a chair for her, Y/n smoothed the back of her ankle length, rose gold dress, the thick glittering bands running vertically along the garment rough beneath her fingers. Like everything else, the dress was her mother’s choice; long, stylish, billowy sleeves and a generous ‘v’ neck with a slit that exposed most of her legs when she sat, and finally a gold belt at her waist. Y/n was sure that her mother would be choosing her wedding dress too.

Maybe she should be the one getting married.

When Daniel reached for her left hand, Y/n let him take it, trying to smile lightly as he cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. “Ladies and gentleman,” he glanced around; all eyes were on him before long. He was like that, Y/n had found, able to command a room easily; charismatic, charming and strikingly handsome, women wanted him and men wanted to be like him. “It has been a great pleasure to be able to celebrate our engagement with you, and Y/n and I are both so grateful that we’ve gotten to share this time. But I’d like to keep you for just a minute more, so I can propose a toast to my lovely fiancee,” just after bending to kiss the back of her hand, he let to go to raise his glass, “Y/n,” he looked to her, “You are incredibly beautiful, inspiringly intelligent and everyday spent with you has been adventure, which is why I can not wait to make you my wife; so we we can spend the rest of our lives together, going new adventures, building new experiences and loving each other. To my love; Y/n.”

Just as he sat Daniel kissed her quickly and the guests cooed  quietly and when they broke, Y/n could feel all eyes on her, expecting her adoration for her groom-to-be next. What was she supposed to say anyway? As she stood, Y/n inhaled sharply, her heart thumping erratically when nothing fruitful would come. That was when the idea came to her; just say to him what she would to Keanu; should be easy right?

Right.

“Daniel,” with no time to waste, Y/n dove right in, trying to make the whole thing more realistic, “I don’t think that I could have gotten luckier; you chose me, and for that I will always be honored. I never thought that it was possible for me to love a man the way I love you, but still everyday,” it was much harder than she initially thought it would be; singing praises of love and adoration to a man she barely felt for. As she continued, with Keanu in her head, wishing that it was him there instead, Y/n’s eyes stung and her throat burnt, the emotion too heavy to be quelled. Maybe they’d think it was happy tears. Maybe she’d break down right there and prove them wrong. “Everyday, my love for you grows. You are better, so much better, so much more, than anything I could ever have dreamed to have in a husband.” Y/n’s tongue longed to say Keanu’s name, but she held it, even as the tears now flowed freely and she sniffled noisily, “Daniel,” Y/n breathed deeply, “Thank you for being everything a girl could want, and if I love you the way I do now, I can’t wait to see how much I’ll love you tomorrow, and everyday after that.”

An attendant took the mic and as Y/n sat again, their guests cheered. “See,” Heather leaned in, close to Y/n’s ear, “That wasn’t so hard now wasn’t it?” Swallowing thickly as warm tears tangled in her lashes, blurring her sight, Y/n kept her head trained forward, barely able to nod at her mother’s venomous words. 

The pictures had already started to make its rounds on the internet and Keanu needed a glass of whiskey just to look at them. Y/n, his Y/n, in the arms of another, who surely couldn’t love her the way he did. Maybe it was selfish, maybe it was wrong, but Keanu just wished that she could leave Daniel and be with him; forgo her responsibilities and they could be together, without having to hide. It should have been him after all; he should be the one at her side in those pictures, who she was going to marry. But Keanu couldn’t ask Y/n to do that, he could never hurt her by requesting that she leave everything she knew just for him. 

If only love could be enough.

He hadn’t realized that his eyes had grown tear filled until a knocking at the door had him hastily swiping at them as he stood. Tossing his phone to the sofa, Keanu padded barefoot towards the door, gasping quietly at the sight on the other side of it.

“Hi,” she sobbed, one word enough to tell him how broken she felt, her lips quivering and tears falling freely. A cab was just pulling off the curb, signaling that more than likely, no one knew where she was, at least for now. “I hate this,” Y/n’s voice broke and she ran her hands anxiously through her freed hair. Still dressed for the engagement party, though with slightly smudged make-up, red eyes and stained cheeks. Still Keanu thought that, without fail, Y/n was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever been lucky enough to lay eyes on, “I hate this so much.”

“It's okay,” he gritted his teeth, trying to suppress his own tears as he pulled Y/n against his chest, kissing her hair as he rubbed her back soothingly, “It’s gonna be okay sweetheart.”

“No, it's not,” she blubbered, hugging him back and burying her face into his old t-shirt, finding comfort in his smell and the way his heartbeat felt against her cheek, “I….I just…” Nothing would come, what could she say that he didn’t already know? 

Keanu thought if his soul could be shredded to pieces, then that was what it would feel like. His heart was in his throat and all he wanted, right then and there, was to make everything better for Y/n; to dry her tears and ensure that no ill fate ever befell her. He wanted to be her knight in shining armor and the person she could rest her head next to at night. But he couldn’t be that, he might never be that. Feeling completely helpless to her plight, Keanu led them inside, stopping short in the hallway, “I’m so sorry,” a lone tear escaped his whiskey orb, so much more still kept painfully at bay. Keanu felt like he’d failed her somehow; Y/n had meant more to him than most and he couldn’t protect her from what she’d been running from.

Y/n didn’t pull away, but her tears slowed, the security that he offered enough to make her feel better, even for a bit, “It’s not your fault,” her reassurance was meek, but he knew that it wasn’t how she meant it.

“What can I do?” Keanu pulled her away for a minute, surveying her disheveled form, brushing some hair from her face, only to gently cup her cheek.

Y/n’s fingers slid from his forearms, gliding over his broad shoulders as they made their way to cup his neck, “Make me forget,” her whispered words drew him in as Y/n stepped closer, “Just for a little bit, I want to forget. I just want it to be us, please.” Arching upwards, Y/n initiated their kiss, her lips soft and tasting of champagne and something tart, like lemon. 

Keanu easily took the control she offered him, letting her bloom against him as she responded to his touch; nothing too much just yet, merely steadying hands on her hips. Tilting her head, Y/n slowly rounded her arms around his neck, standing on the toes of her strappy gold heels as she melted into his broad chest. Her tears went dry and no more came as they continued, his tongue gently passing over hers, one of his hands slowly descending to her lower back. “Are you sure?” He broke their kiss momentarily. Y/n had initiated it, but she was in a less than favorable metal state and Keanu didn’t want to take advantage of her.  

“Yeah, please,” she whimpered, trying to close the space between them again. 

“Okay,” Keanu breathed, catching Y/n’s swollen lips once again, that time in a slower, more sensual kiss. He poured his breath, his love and maybe even part of his soul into her, already establishing that the night would go by slowly. The world would humor them; stop its chaotic spin for a bit and they’d be privileged with a handful of sacred moments, so they could indulge each other in what was not meant to be. 

That night, as Keanu hoisted Y/n up into his arms, the lengthy cut in her dress allowing for her legs to easily tangle around his waist, he thought that Y/n didn’t deserve anything less than being appreciated and attended to, slowly and completely. She deserved his all, and Keanu was going to give it to her.

Upstairs, in his bedroom, where pale yellowish light from the harvest washed the hardwood in a somber pool at their feet, his steady palms guided Y/n so her back would be to him and after a lingered moment, he swept her tresses away from the back of her neck, pressing a warm, chaste, whiskey flavored kiss there, breathing her intoxicating scent as his stocky fingers led the discreet zipper of her dress down her spine.

The shimmery fabric settled around her feet, and her strapless bra followed by her lacy panties were next. Naked with the exception of her heeled sandals, Keanu urged Y/n to sit on his made bed, immediately getting on his knees after he made short work of stripping himself, taking a gentle hold of one ankle. A calloused, yet calmingly familiar touch rose goosebumps on Y/n’s skin as Keanu slowly worked on her shoes, dumping it to the side afterwards. 

It was a daunting task, but as his lips sought upwards, from the inner side of her leg, Y/n and Keanu maintained eye contact in the near darkness. Arguably, they were past the point of needing light to maintain their connection, it was always there, it would always be; Keanu was sure that he could find Y/n, even if the world had been plunged into pitch darkness. His open-mouthed, leisurely endearments sent shivers up her spine and electrified her nerves. 

Keanu’s touch, the way his body knew Y/n’s was incomparable; he was permanently in tune with what she needed, always eager to put her needs first. In turn, her breaths were shallow and audible, each hitch easily made out in the near silence and her gasps giving him life. 

With one hand supporting his weight, Keanu occupied the other by letting it roam appreciatively up her body. His longing erection brushed her silky heat when he finally ducked to reach her neck, the scent of her perfume still clung to her skin, drawing him in, the ends of his overgrown mane tickling her cheek. 

"Keanu," Y/n mewled, her warm breath gently blowing her hair, her hands sliding up his bare back, his skin surprisingly cool beneath her tender touch.

"What do you want, baby?" He worked his way down again, his lips circling her breast, his tongue swirling around her hardened nipple, eliciting a needy moan from her ajar lips. With his free hand, Keanu favored her other boob, his gropes gently and slow. 

The ball of Y/n's heels skimmed the back of his calves before tangling with his thighs, urging his hips towards hers, “You,” she breathed sharply, “All I want is you.”

All she ever wanted was Keanu.

If after the worst of the worst, he was all that was left, her world would still be complete. 

Complying after a minute, Keanu eased into her inch by inch, raising himself slightly off Y/n so he could admire the way her jaw hung slack. Finally nestled deep inside the tightness of her drenched heat, Keanu let a throaty groan leave his lips, low and appreciative. Y/n always fit so well with him; like two puzzle pieces that only made sense if they were put together.  

After a prolonged moment of just absorbing the feeling of Y/n enveloping him, Keanu, at an unhurried pace, started rolling his hips, his pace easy for her to keep up with. Clinging to him, with her arms reaching around for his shoulders, Y/n’s erratic breathing matched his and occasionally, her hips would buck to meet his. Their shadows danced on the dimmed walls, and they were so intertwined, it was hard to tell their bodies apart.

Progressively, the heat around them built, swirling with the heavy cloud of emotion, bringing with it, a light sheen to their skin. Time seemed to pass in slow motion, and something about those cherished moments felt vastly different from the ordinary; as if there was more depth to the act, like that much love had never been shared between them. Neither of Y/n nor Keanu wanted it to end, though, eventually, Y/n was gasping raggedly as she came around him, her clenching walls milking his member. Keanu wasn’t too far off, spilling his hot seed deep inside her, his rigid thrusts punctuated by low grunts and their tangled praises.  

Untangling was slow and graciously incomplete; Keanu rolled over to his side, one of Y/n’s legs still hooked over his waist. The natural light wasn’t enough to define their features, but still, Y/n thought that she could see Keanu clearly as she cupped the side of his face, the warm center of her palm over his ear; some of his hair laced with her her fingers while the pad of her thumb skimmed the laugh lines near his eyes; the evidence of a live well lived. Their noses barely touched and any closer might constitute their lashes tangling. 

“I don’t ever want to be without you,” her whispered admission accompanied glassy eyes and the knowledge that her desires may never be more than fiction.

Still, Keanu was clung to hope that they’d been in the best of graces and things could look up. Or maybe he just didn’t want to see her hurt again. “You will never be without me,” he reassured, bringing her face towards his, so he could seal his promise with a kiss. Keanu hated knowing that his assurances might one day be revealed to be empty, they couldn’t go on like that forever, but a voice in his head, so soft it was almost silent, seemed persistent in the belief that somehow, he would in fact, maintain a part of her life. 

Maybe it was right and they just didn’t know it; maybe he’d always be with her.

******

Tagging- @harrisongslimited​  @paanchu786​  @a-really-bi-girl​  @baphometwolf666 @sdaff2   @green-forest-dreams @weird-civilian @magnificentclodpiebanana

[carriagelamp]

So, one of my favourite media genres is “child horror”, especially around Halloween. It’s horror adjacent, it can still be chilling or exciting in its own right, but there’s a layer of autumnal coziness and safety to it. Like trick or treating, but in a book form. You go out in the dark when it feels a little spookier, but you know everyone is in soft costumes and you’re gonna be eating a lot of candy. So I like trying to read child horror during October, to get hyped up for Halloween.

C’est à Moi: Alerte dans l’espace

This is a choose-your-own-adventure story. There’s an English version as well, Space Rescue, but I read this one with a group of kids in French. Honestly, doing a crowd-sourced choose-your-own-adventure with a bunch of kids is one of the funniest experiences, and reading this was a blast. We died horribly in a perfectly preventable way, as should be the case with all good choose-your-own-adventures — we never even got a chance to meet the space aliens! Would recommend for kids (or immature adults who enjoy choose-your-own-adventures) who enjoy scifi and action. It was short and simple, but fun.

Doll Bones

This was a novel I was actually really looking forward to reading this October and it lived up to my excitement, it was probably my favourite new-read this month. It’s a middle grade novel about a group of three kids who have been friends for ever and who have been playing a game together almost as long. It would have been challenging enough for them to confront the challenges of growing up and the judgment of others about them still playing with toys, but things come to a head when, one night, Poppy tells the other two that she’s being haunted by the creepy porcelain doll locked in her mom’s china cabinet, the one in their games that they’ve always called The Queen. Poppy insists that they need to run away, in the middle of the night, to find The Queen’s grave and bury the bone china her soul is trapped in. Meanwhile, Zach and Alice are trying to navigate their changing friendship, and the question of whether the ghost is real, or if this is Poppy trying to rope them into one final game.

Serious, this was a beautifully written story, especially as an adult reader. Reading about Poppy, Alice, and Zach at 12 trying to figure out whether or not they’re too old to keep playing games feels a lot like what I went through around that age as well, it’s very nostalgic and heart warming with just enough promise of the supernatural to keep things exciting as they go out on their quest.

Eerie Elementary: The School Is Alive!

This is one of the Scholastic Branches chapter books. These are great for beginning readers, as they have exciting stories, accessible vocabulary, and big, dramatic art that’s a pleasure to look at. This story is about a boy who is made hall monitor at his school… a position that has more weight than he would guessed. Their creepy old school is more than meets the eye and it has begun to wake… and the students need protecting. It’s the hall monitor’s job to fight back against a blood thirsty building. Lots of fun for kids around grade two.

Five Funny Frights

This was a “horror” book I loved as a kid, and it still has some amusing little stories in it. Who doesn’t still secretly enjoy the “pink jelly bean” story?

Five Nights At Freddy’s: The Fourth Closet

This is the final book in the Silver Eyes trilogy, I’m not quite done it yet by the time of writing this review but I should be by the end of the month. I started this series more as a joke with my brother, but I’ve actually been enjoying it. The Silver Eyes was definitely the most interesting book of the series, but The Twisted Ones managed to keep me going, and now that I’m on the third book I’m feeling intrigued again. It has some interesting characterization, not afraid to make characters that deal with trauma in some messy, angry, emotional ways which is an unexpected treat in a middle grade horror novel, not to mention so real messy murders, and the series did a good job at laying out foreshadowing — some of my predictions are coming to fruition and I feel very satisfied about it. Is it the best book I’ve ever read? No, not really, but if you enjoyed the concept behind Five Night’s At Freddy’s then it’s an interesting read and worth giving a go.

Scary Stories 3: More Tales To Chill Your Bones

Another classic from my childhood that I reread. Honestly, there were a couple stories in here that I enjoyed… “Harold” is a classic, of course, and some of their humorous ones at the end were fun, like “THUPPP”. But honestly, the first one is probably the strongest of the series.

Sheets

A graphic novel that I stumbled across and decided to try out. It was… alright. It was good, it was fine. I was glad to have borrowed it from the library, but I wouldn’t want to buy it. It was an interesting enough story about a girl who, in the wake of her mother’s death and father’s depression, is forced to keep their family’s laundromat afloat. It’s also about ghosts who use sheets to give themselves a physical premise and who put great stock in keeping them tidy. The girl’s life becomes significantly more complicated when a miserable old businessman tries to sabotage the laundromat in order to buy the property out from under her and one runaway ghosts gets tangled up in the mix.

Skeleton Hiccups

This was a picture book I enjoyed a little bit more than I should have, probably. It’s just about a skeleton doing his best to get rid of his hiccups, despite how completely ineffective most of those attempts are when you don’t actually have skin or organs. Goofy nonsense, I loved it.

Warren the 13th and the 13-Year-Curse

Another trilogy-ender I read this month. I really enjoyed The All-Seeing Eye and The Whisper Woods, the first two books that I read last year, and The 13-Year Curse was an enjoyable wrap up to it… though honestly I would be very interested in more stories about Warren and his fantastic hotel. The series, simply, is about young Warren, the thirteen in a line of proud hotel owners, though as of book one the hotel has fallen into considerable disrepair that Warren is struggling to fix. The series follows Warren, along with his friends (two witch hunters, one tentacled monster, and an assortment of hotel staff and guests) as they discover the secrets of The Warren Hotel, confront terrifying witches, and fight against terrible curses. Though the real selling point for this series is the absolutely beautiful graphic design that went into the page layout — I would honestly buy these books just because they are so damn pretty to look at and have so many fascinating details. I highly recommend these to both kids who like interactive stories and mysteries, and to adults who want something whimsical and weird.

[elizadoolittlethings]

Graves is a prime example of the coda “action is character.”

Rupert Graves as Harold Guppy in Philip Doodhue’s Intimate Relations. Photo by Sally Miles. Courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures. [x]

Rupert Graves  by

Nicole Burdette

BOMB 61Fall 1997

full interview

[MORE]

Whether he’s sucking on hard candy, contemplating suicide, or limping slightly in boots two sizes too big, Rupert Graves is ever graceful. At once a mixture of the violent and the poetic, Graves’ film characters are compared to the kings of the tortured handsome, Montgomery Clift and John Keats. It’s an odd and wonderful thing to spend the afternoon with a stranger speaking of the near obscurity and perfection of Robert Donat, Che Guevara’s hands, and what exactly it is to be brave.

Graves is a prime example of the coda “action is character.” He, like all great actors, is highly physical. We can see his characters—literally we recognize them. In Intimate Relations, Rupert as Harold Guppy clings to Julie Walters, feeding himself sugar cubes like a child. In Mrs. Dalloway, his Septimus Warren Smith stumbles through life; again, literally and emotionally. It is all the way Rupert Graves turns his characters inside out, so what you see is what you get. He manages to become Virginia Woolf’s subconscious—he materializes the description of his character, Septimus: “…with hazel eyes which had that look of apprehension in them which makes complete strangers apprehensive too.” Graves has five films coming out this fall: Mrs. Dalloway with Vanessa Redgrave, Different For Girls, The Revengers’ Comedies with Kristen Scott Thomas and Helena Bonham Carter, Bent, and Intimate Relations with Julie Walters, for which Graves was awarded the Best Actor Award at the 1996 Montreal Film Festival. But that is just this year, his other credits include extensive work on British television and other films: Louis Malle’s Damage, Nick Hytner’s The Madness Of King George; and Merchant Ivory’s Maurice and A Room With A View. In addition to his film work, Graves has consistently worked on the London stage, where he is returning this fall to do Hurly Burly.

Nicole Burdette Now, how did you grow up?

Rupert Graves I grew up in a little English town in a poor-ish family. I went to a comprehensive school which is the same as public school here, I think. My father was a bit posher than my mum, who was a working-class girl from Wales. He’s a pianist.

NB How did they meet?

RG My mum used to sing in amateur shows. They met at a choral society that my dad used to conduct. She saw him, and she can’t have thought, “What a beauty,” so it must have been, “What a genius,” because she loved the music.

NB Were you musical as a kid?

RG No, no. I was brought up quite religiously Catholic and was a choir boy and an acolyte. I used to sing, but it’s a horrible sound.

NB I read that you were in the circus.

RG Yes, I joined when I was 15. I had just left school.

NB How did that idea come to you?

RG It didn’t. It came through the city employment bureau. I knew a girl whose mum used to work there—it was a small town I come from—and she knew I liked acting. And so when the circus came into town and their clown disappeared, I became a trainee. A trainee clown through the job center.

NB Were you a good clown?

RG No, not really.

NB Could you do flips and jump off high things and do daredevil stuff?

RG I didn’t jump. I did slackwire. Do you know slackwire?

NB Tightrope?

RG It’s lower than most tightropes and it’s not tight. It’s very loose, about 15 feet high, and it’s harder to do. It’s like walking across a chain.

NB And you were good at it?

RG I was a clown. I would practice in the ring during the performances, and everyone would laugh because I fell off—but I was actually seriously trying to get across.

NB I ask because I got to see three of your movies in one week, and I noticed that in each one you have a different walk. Your body changed completely. But it wasn’t like method acting where one, say, gains fifty pounds and obviously one’s walk changes. With you it’s subtle. There are an actor’s usual bag of tricks—beards, haircuts, accents… Yet, in all three movies your voice, your haircut are all intact, but you are completely unrecognizable—that’s quite an accomplishment. You don’t rely on the visual—you actually act, imagine that!

RG You do have to understand what your part is, and it’s difficult to intellectualize that. But you can feel it and you know it the moment you see it. It’s accessing some part of your own. I’m completely uneducated, untrained, as an actor, but I do have a fundamental belief that one is capable of pretty much anything. That’s a first principle: One is anything. So I kind of feel that I’ve got George Bush and Che Guevara in me.

NB I’ve been thinking about Che Guevara, just so you know.

RG Are you into The Motorcycle Diaries? They’re great. Guevara went around South America and up to Mexico on this terrible old Enfield motorbike with this other doctor, they were specializing in leprosy. And you know, Castro has Guevara’s hands in his house. They found his body in Bolivia just in the last few months, and it’s gone home to Cuba. But it was handless. The story goes Guevara’s hands were sent to Castro to prove it was him, and Castro kept them. Anyway, that gets back to “One is anything.”

NB So that’s your theory for acting?

RG I think you access different parts of the brain. It’s slightly different for different things. For example, for Intimate Relations I wore shoes that were two sizes too big. I wanted to feel clumsy.

NB I read that in explaining your role (Harold Guppy in Intimate Relations) you said, “I think it’s dangerous as an actor to ever judge a character as stupid.” It seemed to me, watching you in the film, that you played against Harold’s violent tendencies—constantly trying to play down his destiny. You are so powerful at this that even though we can see this story (based on a true murder case) turning dark and darker, we still are hoping that tea and sympathy will win out for Harold—which of course it doesn’t. How did you create such a layered portrait of a possibly less layered person?

RG My starting point with Harold was a lack of will. What happens when your will is taken from you, when you become quite suggestible? It’s not that he’s very innocent. I don’t think he’s an innocent person, but I do think he was institutionalized and his will was taken. He had this blood-sugar problem and when the levels went down he would get violent; but he hadn’t really done anything, it was just a behavioral problem. So I imagine from an early age he didn’t have much love or comfort. Nobody would want to hug a child who would head-butt you. His mum threw him out because she couldn’t cope with it. So he’s been in this kid’s prison—not like a home, a prison for bad children.

NB A reform school.

RG Yeah.

Rupert Graves and Steven Mackintosh in Richard Spence’s Different for Girls. Photos by Luis Lazo. Courtesy of First Look Pictures. image not loading :(

NB What was it like working with Julie Walters in the film?

RG Fan-fucking-tastic. She’s a genius. She’s a very working class girl, and she used to work as a nurse and now owns a hog farm down in the south of England. But anyway, she’s a really lovely lady, deeply, all the way from her toes to her head, and she has a great facility at getting the saucy aspects of people. She’s kind of naughty, so mischievous. At the time of Intimate Relations, I had been doing a lot of work and I was getting a tiny bit cynical as an affectation. I thought the more films you did, the more you had to pretend it was boring. And I kind of started to believe it. But she came along and she was like this gremlin, a little troll living under the bridge. Any cynicism that comes over the bridge, she’ll get it. It’s so infectious. She completely gave me my love for doing stuff back.

NB She gave it back to you?

RG Well, only by example, because she’s no time for any of that cynicism.

NB Would you say she’s your favorite person to work with so far?

RG Yeah. She’s great. She really is, she’s so lovely. That’s my Julie Walters rant.

NB If you were for example—and this is hypothetical, obviously—given you as a character, you the man, not the actor, how would you prepare? What qualities would you consider important to examine under the surface?

RG God knows. I’d look at the environment of myself.

NB Which is?

RG Which is London theatricality. Psychologically I would look into background, and try and determine what he was missing or wasn’t missing.

NB Would you want to play you? Would it be interesting?

RG I don’t know. Everyone is interesting in their own funny way.

NB What I noticed in these three characters, and this really sounds corny, but you seem to love these people. It’s old fashioned, to love your characters; Michael Redgrave, the sort of actors I really love, they loved their characters. Did you ever see The Browning Version?Michael Redgrave plays this really tortured, almost bad person, but you can tell Redgrave loves this man and it is the most bizarre thing to watch because he loves this person who is ruining everything. You also give your characters the benefit of the doubt, and you give them nobility. Is that something that just comes to you?

RG I find it difficult playing a part that I don’t have any empathy with at all.

NB Is there such a part?

RG Well, I played a Nazi in Bent. It was a very, very small part but I researched like fuck, because I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t get my head round what it meant to be a Nazi. Here’s a guy taking Jews and homosexuals in the trains to Dachau, the camps. They were just brutal. How do you get to that place? So I researched, what does Nazism mean to Germany, and what state was Germany in that a leader like that could take them in? Not all Germans were bad, but a collected evil gathered speed. And when I played that character, I realized that for him it was just efficiency, that this was the practical thing to do. And somewhere in my soul I had to find something that could understand that.

NB If you were to play Richard III, which you very well might do in your lifetime, what then? That’s pure evil, from beginning to end. Would that be the ultimate challenge?

RG Certainly, with Richard III, there’s an awful lot more context and more individual motivations and desires. Rather than just here’s a nasty guy who’s killing somebody, whacking them up and beating them. The part’s so damn small in Bent, there’s not much actually in there. Whereas Richard III is very articulate about what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. You’ve got to have a reason to be the character. I like mess. That’s why people become so intellectual, because it’s all a damn mess.

I did a funny thing the other day. I’ve got a friend in England who’s an actor and he bought a new house in the countryside, right on the foot of this steep hill which is made of slate and flint, so the ground is really hard. It’s got this path which is almost vertical coming down and which is covered by trees so there is no moon at night. We went to the top and got absolutely stoned out of our faces—and it’s darn hard getting up there, and if you fall the flints can rip you open—and then he said, “Come on, we’ve got to go back, we’ve got to be really careful.” And I said, “No, let’s just run. Let’s just close our eyes and run down this path as fast as we can. Just trust that we can do it.” He said, “No, no, no,” and I said, “Come on.” We were all right, but it was just this moment of going, “Waaa!” into this sheet, which was quite dangerous. I know it’s quite a mild story really, but I’m not really given to wild things.

NB You’re not?

RG No, normally I’m not. But it’s an interesting thing to me, to just trust it. To just go with the message that if you fall over and you cut your hand you’re not going to die. If you cut your fucking hand, so what? Be brave. It’s like in Mrs. Dalloway — the young clerk who says, “Take the plunge.”

NB Are you brave?

RG I can be, and I can be hugely cowardly. But if I’m deeply pissed off or deeply offended I can be brave.

NB Sometimes it’s the opposite with people. When they’re relaxed they can be brave, and when they’re upset that’s when they find that they’re cowardly.

RG That’s true of me too. Maybe I was being disingenuous there.

NB No, I think you’re better off if you’re brave when you’re angry.

RG Yeah, but now I don’t know if that’s true.

NB It’s complex. But you have some braveness in you.

RG Yeah, some. I break things. I’m a good breaker of things.

NB Do you feel better?

RG No, because I only break my things, which pisses me off. Sometimes, I think I do it because I get tongue tied. When I was a kid I used to have a bad stammer, it’s probably one of the reasons I went into acting, because I had to go to elocution lessons to get over going, “Uh-uh-uh.”

NB And that’s how you got into acting?

RG Do you know an actor called Robert Donat?

NB Oh my God! One of my favorites.

RG What strikes me about him is a kind of grace.

NB The Winslow Boy.

RG Isn’t that the most beautiful portrayal of any character ever?

NB That’s what I was trying to explain to you about the love of the character, and that is the most beautiful…

RG His mood is so moving. You can watch him doing Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Thirty-Nine Steps… He has such deep grace. Even The Winslow Boy, that is such a hard part. But there’s this absolute nobility, and it’s not to do with class, but with human nobility.

NB It’s so funny that you bring up that actor. As I was watching your movies I was thinking: Robert Donat. That’s my favorite era of films, English films of the ’30s and ’40s, and you hearken back to that.

RG He was my hero. I’ve always thought, if I could tune into that, if I could take whatever that man was taking, I’d be a happy boy.

NB But that’s a different legacy. It’s just a different kind of acting.

RG Yeah, it is. I did a very bad film called Damage, which Louis Malle directed. And Louis Malle, who was a lovely man and has made some great films, was always going on about grace. You know, (imitating a French accent) “Rupert, there is something of a big grace in you, something that is very beautiful.” But at other times he’d say, “You can’t do acting, forget it!” I looked at his old films and you can see that sensibility, that grace, in some of his really early films.

NB Absolutely, he had a wonderful sense of grace.

RG It’s an overworked word now, grace.

NB No, it’s not. It’s an underworked word.

RG Is it? I’ll fight you for it. (laughter)

NB Let’s get back to Robert Donat. It’s very important.

RG It is, because it’s like having a bag full of nudie magazines in England. You can’t refer to him, because it’s old-fashioned.

NB But old-fashioned is where it’s at.

RG But England is very admiring of American, brash acting.

NB If you could play anybody, or a couple of people, who would it be? This is not an acting question. For instance, I asked a jazz musician what he would be, and he said, Abraham Lincoln, Bobby Fischer, the chess player, and Seymour Glass, a Salinger character.

RG I would like to play Caligula, in Camus’ version. Do you know the Camus version?

NB No.

RG It’s interesting. It’s not a great play, but you can do it if you open it up. You have to really put a bomb under that thing. There’s a lot of existentialist “yadda-yadda-yadda.” It’s about corruption, I suppose, the corruption of a soul.

NB And who else?

RG That’s it. I’d like to play a great sports person. With a kind of absolute grace and ease. (laughter)

NB If you were to come back as an inanimate object, what would you be? You have to say what came to your mind instantly.

RG A stone.

NB A stone? Why a stone?

RG I don’t know, you said whatever came into my head. I don’t know why I said a stone…

NB What does it look like?

RG It’s smooth…

NB What color?

RG I don’t know, do you need me to define it?

NB Yeah.

RG A large pebble.

NB A large pebble. What color?

RG It’s a bit blondish, kind of ash colored, beech-wood color.

NB And where was it, was it alone?

RG It was on a dusty road. On a road with smaller little pebbles around, but it was…

NB You knew that was you?

RG Yeah.

Rupert Graves as Septimus Warren Smith in Marleen Gorris’ Mrs. Dalloway. Photo by Roberta Parkin. Courtesy of First Look Pictures. pic not loading :(

NB What about your work in the theater?

RG I’ve never trained at all. I mean, I did things like ‘Tis Pity, She’s a Whore at the National Theatre in The Olivier when I was 21. Which is a fucking hard play to do. It’s a lovely, hard play, but it’s a really tricky one. And I really fucked up on that. I didn’t know about Jacobean drama, I didn’t know how to speak. I don’t know if you’ve been to The Olivier in London, but it’s massive, an open theater in the round. It’s huge, like three thousand people, and I just ran down this corridor onto the stage and thought, “Ahhh…,” and forgot my lines. I wanted to say, “Come back in five years.”

NB And then what happened?

RG I fell over. I started shaking and then fell over. I got the first word, and then I just stood up and shrieked. (shrieking) I did the play like that.

NB But you got through it?

RG I got through it, but…

NB What did your other actors think? Were they mad?

RG They were just like, “Rupert, what are you doing? Hello!!??”

NB Well, there comes the bravery thing again. That was brave at least.

RG No, that was ignorant, that wasn’t brave. Brave is different, brave is trying to push as many different things, take risks, being open.

NB Playing Septimus in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, what was that like?

RG It was great. I read the script and I didn’t know what the hell it was about. Septimus suffers from a lot of abstracted neuroses, and I needed to find out what that was about. I went to speak to a lady at the Hospital for Psychological Disease. She worked with people who were in the Gulf War and had post-traumatic stress. But it didn’t really help, in that I knew you could be brave with shell shock or post-traumatic stress disorders, it’s not an internal thing. PTSD is actually a physical manifestation. So I wasn’t lacking in confidence, but I didn’t understand what the dialogue meant, things like, “The birds, they’re speaking in Greek to me.” So I looked at everything that Virginia Woolf wrote. Her letters, and biography, and I realized that a lot of her personal trauma had been put into her male characters. That kind of threw me a bit, as she’s acknowledged as a feminine, or feminist writer.

NB As a female writer I do it all the time.

RG But interestingly, I do it as a male. When I used to write songs, and I still do write sometimes, I often have a female character, and put my truth into a female. Woolf puts it into male characters. Things that Septimus says connect very directly to things in Woolf’s life. For example, “The birds are speaking Greek to me.” She was abused when she was a girl during Greek lessons. And when she had a breakdown when she was older she used to hear Greek birds talking to her, or birds talking in Greek. Finding out about those pieces of her life gave me the emotional plane to work on. So it didn’t have to just be, you know, jabber.

NB Actors rarely realize that the playwright or the writer is in all of the characters.

RG Yeah, the most honest stuff and her most personal stuff went into her male characters. Because Septimus is the other side of what Mrs. Dalloway would have been if she’d taken the plunge, like what she said she should have done when she was 17…

NB And married Peter? He would have been the brave choice.

RG Yeah. She took the easy route and married Dalloway. And the day in which the story takes place is her looking back, and thinking, “Am I where I had hoped to be when I was seventeen? Was I brave, or did I do the easy thing?”

NB How do you relate to that? In your life?

RG I don’t know, I’ve never had a plan. I mean, I wanted to act and I’ve done that. And I’ve gotten better as I’ve gotten older, so I’m progressing. I don’t feel I’m getting worse. Sometimes I do, sometimes I think my experience has overcome my naiveté and my naiveté is interesting in a certain way. Do you know what I mean?

NB Yes, I do.

RG You want to know what you’re gaining and what you’re losing, don’t you? Every time you take a step somewhere. That’s what I do anyway. Maybe that’s why running down the hill was so important, because normally I’m looking at stuff pretty carefully. And sometimes you just need something like that. And you can do that onstage sometimes, you can just dive—Bang! it might be into a nest of snakes or it might be a lovely work. It’s essential. I did one play which I loved doing. And the reviews came out, and I’d meet people after the play, and it was like the embodiment of everything that I’ve wanted to do with acting. It was really intense. They were going, “That was the most fucking intense thing. I never had that feeling before.” And then the reviews came out saying, “What a crock of shit.” And in one way it seemed like people were saying, “Oh, I’m so sorry about the reviews.” I was saying, “No, honestly, I don’t know what’s happened, but it’s just fantastic. People love it. People fucking love it.” You would go through the bar, and people were actually shaking sometimes, and that was so wild. It was the wildest thing I’d ever seen.

NB Sure, and the opposite happens too.

RG Yeah, absolutely, all the time. Unnervingly often, too often.

Nicole Burdette is a writer and an actress based in New York. This fall her short stories will appear in Jane magazine and the QPB Literary Review; as an actress she appears in the upcoming Digging to China directed by Timothy Hutton.

source:  bombmagazine [x]

[crushedbyhyperbole]

Into Darkness

Written for @marquiswrites​ 100 follower writing challenge.  Congratulations on reaching that milestone!

Prompt:  Dream a Little Dream (song - shown in bold) with Bucky Barnes

Pairing:  Bucky Barnes x Reader

Words:  2194

Warnings:  Depictions of blood and death, loss and grieving, and a little bit of fluff.

Summary:  In war, time isn’t just measured in victory, it’s measured in loss.  Bucky doesn’t fear death or the eternal dark, not for himself.  He fears he’ll lose the one good thing he’s found in all of this; you.  When the darkness comes calling, the nightingale sings.

A/N:  I’m terrible with images, banners, everything really, so excuse my horrific effort below.  Also, the names of characters don’t reflect characters from the MCU films, howling commandos or the 107th - only Bucky and Dum Dum are present and correct, sir!

Mist creeps across the field, slow and insidious, carrying with it the stench of burnt flesh, gunpowder and excrement.  The air is still and silent, like a held breath; an eerie contrast to the thundering explosions, rattling machine guns and bloody screams of hours past.

Down in the trenches, the sniff and shuffle of soldiers hunkering down to briefly rest is carried to his ears as Bucky waits, prone and alert, searching.  There are no signs of life in the scope of his rifle, the grey gloom is undisturbed.

He sighs.  The longer the medics are out in the open, the less likely they are to return, and he’s looking for one in particular.  You.

He can’t admit it, it’s frowned upon, but he’s grown fond of you in the weeks the 107th have been stationed on the French front line.  As far as nurses go, you’re more skilled than any he’s seen; adept, calm and confident, and with a low mortality rate.  As far as field medics go, you’re a Valkyrie; fearless and steadfast with a warrior’s soul.  You raise hopes wherever you are and you’re a total sweetheart.  He hopes one day you’ll be his sweetheart.

A murmur in the trenches - the medics are bringing back wounded.  His heart jostles against his ribs, a painful thrill punctuating the bright hope that you’re safe and coming back to him, but he can’t leave his post unmanned.

“Robins!”  Bucky hisses as loud as he dares.  “Pssst!  Robins!”

“Sarge?”  The young lad is eager and bright-eyed when he crouches in the mud, somehow unbroken by the countless days, the cold, and the horror of war.

“You got your rifle?” The boy is a good enough marksman for this job in the calm between assaults, Bucky thinks.  “Good!  Cover my spot for a while.  Abe will relieve you in an hour or so.”

The trenches are longer than he remembers them, and more sombre.  The camaraderie is gone now, lost in moments that men claim for themselves; moments of peace to think about loved ones and home, and to dream, however brief it might be.

Bucky sees Dum Dum Duggan and his spirits lift.  They greet each other in a jumble of gripped forearms and stout pats on the back.

“Have you seen Flo?” That’s what he calls you, after Florence Nightingale.

Dum Dum shakes his head. “Not since we went over the top.”

Dum Dum and little Jimmy Parsons from the 107th had both gone over with you, some of the medics and 8 other men, to search for wounded or to bring back the dead.  That had been hours ago, when there were still sounds of fighting and gunshots in the distance.  Now all is quiet but not everyone has come back.

As if Dum Dum can sense his panic, the ruddy-faced scoundrel claps him on the shoulder and leans in. “It’ll take more than Jerrys to keep her off your lap.”

It’s a crude joke designed to bring him relief, but all it does is remind him of the few tender moments you had both shared, and all the ones to come that may have been snuffed out of existence today in a cold field between two conflicting ideals that ultimately only brought death.

“That’s your Johnson talking.”  Rolled eyes and a tired sigh tell Dum Dum his joke fell flat.

“And yours doesn’t?”  

“Not when I’m neck deep in the crap and guts of guys we once knew.”

That’s a lie but Dum Dum needn’t know that.  There hasn’t been any kind of hanky-panky, not even so much as a real kiss, just pecked cheeks, held gazes and the gentle stroke of his hand on your back in comfort. Bucky doesn’t need to get into your drawers to know there’s something between you both and he’s prepared to wait, but he ain’t half gonna be pissed if some Nazi goon puts a bullet in him before he’s known the pleasure of your soft lips.

The subject is forgotten in the crouching run through the rat warren of trenches and Dum Dum is silent, following dutifully as Bucky asks after you with everyone he passes.  His whispered pleas for information are left unanswered by anything but the shake of a head and a grim expression.

Up ahead there’s a commotion. - someone is out in the field, moving slow.  The scouts think it’s one of ours but they can’t be sure.  The rifleman has his target, his gun is cocked and he’s ready to fire.  Bucky watches the twitch of the man’s finger and he prays to all the gods that you’re not still out there, and if you are, that you’re not about to take a bullet.

He’s nervous, waiting for the shot.  Mouth drier than mere hunger and thirst.  Hands colder than from just a long, sleepless night, and there’s a tremor there, under the stress moistened skin of his palms.  But the shot never comes.  Hunger is forgotten, thirst inconsequential, and the warmth in his heart chases away the chill of dread when he finally catches a glimpse of you.

You’re filthy.  The moss-green of your uniform is almost black with blood and dirt, it’s on your face and in your hair, and he prays that none of it is yours.  Injured or not, you don’t care.  You’re determined as you drag a man down into the trench, focused on getting him to safety, heaving him with all your strength until you both tumble down with a grunt.  You’re a miracle, Bucky thinks, single-handedly dragging an injured man across the battlefield to safety through all of that destruction.

He’s almost there beside you, ready with a smile, but then he sees your face.  You’re terrified, and now so is he; he’s never seen that look on your pretty face before, not even when you’re dodging mortars to reach men in bloody holes where their legs are no longer part of their bodily inventory.

You haven’t even seen him yet, rooted to the spot where he watches you stripping away the uniform of the man you brought home.  You’ve already tried to stop the bleeding out in the field.  The hastily applied bandages are soaked through and useless now, but you keep trying, fighting against the blood bubbling up from the man’s chest.  There are so many gashes it looks like a game of tic-tac-toe and the poor fella is struggling for breath, chest rattling as he drowns in his own blood.

“There was an ambush.” You say, voice shaky like you can’t hold back the shock.  “He saved my life.”

The man’s eyes are wide and glassy, and despite the horrified gurn on his face Bucky thinks him familiar if a little too, well, little to be going to war.  Bucky is reminded of Steve for a moment, frail and small in stature, but this man isn’t Steve, he’s Jimmy.  Little Jimmy Parsons.

Suddenly focused, Bucky is by your side in a flash, helping you put pressure on the wounds.  You’re calm again now.  The harrowing expression you wore is smoothed over with one of concentration.  It’s funny how your roles reverse, now he’s the one panicking.

“Pass me some morphine.” You lay a gentle hand on his forearm. It’s bloody and there’s nothing gentle about the situation but your sudden serenity has a calming effect.

Bucky sits back on his heels and wipes at his sweaty brow with the back of his sticky red hand.  He’d gone from Siberian permafrost to tropical rainforest in five minutes of adrenaline-fuelled panic, but he gives you what you asked for.

The little audience you’d gained now begin to disperse; they know what’s coming now and no one wants to see it, but Bucky and Dum Dum are the only family that Jimmy has here – the 107 are his family.  Whoever waits for him at home won’t ever have to see this moment.  It’ll be imagined but the truth of it never fully realised. No one wants to be alone at a time like this, no one wants to face the unknown without a hand to hold.

“Apparently, Jimmy got in front of her in time to get a knife in the gut.”  Dum Dum whisperer hunkering down nearby.  “Nazi scumbag went to town on the poor kid before she stabbed him through the neck.  She must’ve known he wouldn’t make it but dragged him home anyway.”

Bucky nods, eyes never leaving you as you tend your ward.

“Some gal.”   Its praise from Dum Dum, but is far from what you are.  Bucky knows you’re so much more.  He knows you’re not just something, you’re everything.

You’ve slipped down beside Jimmy and pulled him up so he’s resting in your lap.  As you cradle him to you there’s a subtle thawing of his body. The rigidity of his agony is loosening, and his muscles relax, drooping his whole weight against you; the morphine has kicked in and if Bucky didn’t know better he’d say Jimmy sighed.

You’re humming a tune Bucky vaguely recognises but there are no words yet, only the soft melody as you stroke Jimmy’s hair and rock him subtly like he’s a child in your embrace.

“Nora?”  Jimmy croaks, eyes rolling back leaving nothing but sickening white crescents beneath his fluttering lids.

“Shhhh.”  You croon.  “I’m here.”  A tear slips past your lashes, streaking a line down to your jaw that’s cleaner than the rest of your face.  You’re not his Nora, but her battlefield stand-in.  “Rest now.  You’re going to be fine.”

You meet Bucky’s gaze. He’s silently asking you if there’s anything that can be done to save the man.  You answer with an almost imperceptible shake of your head; there’s nothing to do but soothe him until he passes.

Your humming picks up and now he knows the tune.  He waits for the words to come because that’s the only time he hears you sing, to ease the passing of the fallen.  You’re their nightingale, all of theirs, not just his, you’re there for them all but there’s a special place for you in his heart, and he in yours.  And then you sing, soft and delicate, like a loving caress because this is the last time Jimmy will connect with the living; he should be loved.

Stars shining bright above you,

Night breezes seem to whisper I love you

Birds singing in the sycamore tree

Dream a little dream of me….

The wall of the trench is hard when Bucky’s back falls against it.  In defeat he lets his head thud back and he watches you comfort his friend, with tears falling freely down your beautiful face.

Say night-ie-night and kiss me

Just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me

While I’m alone and blue as can be

Dream a little dream of me….

You are like the Valkyrie, Bucky thinks, with an angelic voice you despatch the souls of the dying up to heaven while, with a gentle embrace, you sooth their battered bodies. He’d be lying if he hadn’t imagined the feel of your body against his, or would barter his left arm to make it real, but there was nothing in this life or the next that would make him want to take you away from his friend in this moment.

Stars fading but I linger on dear

Still craving your kiss

I longer to linger ‘til dawn dear

Just saying this….

Jimmy’s eyes are closed now and his rattling breaths stopped.  If there’s anything left in him now he’ll hear you calling him through the dark towards the light where he’ll be at peace.  There’ll be no more pain, not more war, no more fear, just him and what peaceful eternity awaits him on the other side.

You’re holding Bucky’s gaze as you sing, and he can see you’re breaking; your tears don’t stop but your voice barely waivers – this isn’t for you, it’s for Jimmy.  There’s a plea in the way you’re looking at him, like you’re scared there’ll be no life after this war for either of you, like you know you both won’t make it.  He’s scared too, but he’s not scared of dying, he’s scared of losing you.  He doesn’t want to be left alone.

Sweet dreams ‘til sunbeams find you

Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you

But in your dreams whatever they be

Dream a little dream of me….

Bucky’s eyes fall closed now too, his tears held back in the soft grip of his lids.  He lets the softness of your voice wash over him as you commit is friend and comrade unto the dark, a salve for his soul to ease his grief.  You’re his nightingale in the bleakest of nights.

He tells himself he’ll hold you close, he no longer cares who sees; he wants to give something back to you, to sooth your breaking heart.  He wants to commit you to memory before one of you is taken away.

After today, he’s no longer sure of anything except where there is darkness, you are the stars.

[sugarpun-fairy]

SOULMATE AU - SEAN CASSIDY X OC / ALEX SUMMERS X OC

word count: 1843 (first part)

warnings: angst by the end

a/n: who needs to read and write school work when we have fanfic right? def not me and my girl ori, who was the reason i got this done (thank u love) 

so this is another soulmate au, this one being the one where you have a mark related to your soulmate, since they’re mutants its related to their mutation

hope you guys like it xoxo

x-x

LIA POV

“Truth or dare bro?” Scott asked his older brother with the most devilish smile.

We were all sitting on the library, way past our curfew, in a big circle with an empty bottle in the middle. It was already past my first month at the Institute and I had to admit it was way better than I could’ve imagined. It felt good to be in a place where I wasn’t the “weirdo” or the “beast”. It was nice to be just... normal.

So basically, that was the reason I had chosen to be among about fifteen teenagers playing party games after the time we were supposed to be sleeping.

“Dare.” Alex finally answered and Scott looked like a kid seeing snow for the first time. What I didn’t expected was the young boy turning to me after his brother’s response.

“Lia are you wearing a bra?” he spoke.

“Excuse me?” Ori, my best friend who was almost sleeping on my lap questioned with her voice a little too high. I touched her shoulder and nodded.

“Yes, I am. Why?”

“Alex, I dare you to take off Lia’s shirt.” Scott declared with the most excited of the smiles.

“Are you okay with that?” Alex asked turning to me.

My heart felt like it was about to explode on my chest but I simply took a long deep breath.

“If I’m okay with a hot guy taking of my clothes? Why wouldn’t I?” I joked. Ori almost hit me, jumping away from my lap. Almost everyone had to hold back their laughs with both scenes.

Alex’s cheeks were redder than the roots of my hair. It was almost charming.

“Well if you say so.” He crossed the circle and started to unbutton my green oversized flannel, taking it off, leaving me in nothing but bra and black loose shorts. I was totally fine with it until I realized his eyes were not on my boobs but on the circles that took place between them and on my tummy, making me look like a literal walking bullseye.

“See something you like?” I teased arching an eyebrow. He cleared his throat and gave me back my flannel. “I believe it’s your turn to twist the bottle.”

“Probably.”

The bottle stopped on Sean’s direction, and we all could sense something wicked was coming. The ginger boy stared at the bottle for a couple seconds before finally answering his best friend’s question.

“Guess I’ll choose dare.”

 ORI POV

A weirdly expected shiver ran down my spine as Alex took longer and longer to tell what would be Sean’s dare. It was a well-known fact that nothing good could come from that mix.

“I dare you, if your crush is in this game, to kiss her or him.” Alex said with a big smile. Sean only sighed.

“Why put it like that if you know damn well who it is?” He complained and then turned to my direction. “Sorry.” He whispered leaning towards me and giving me a soft quick kiss on my lips.

I felt my face burning deeply, followed by a couple of large arrows tearing the back of my pajamas and going straight to Sean's direction.

“Fuck. Wait. No! Oh my God!” I took a damn deep breath and the arrows disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know how to react to that and… Well yeah I’m just sorry.”

“Well that was unexpected for sure.” Lia said finally buttoning her shirt up.

“I just went with the same logic as my little brother right here!” Alex explained.

“Amazing! Didn't knew you guys could think! And which logic would that be?” The blond didn't answer me, only laughed and shrugged.

“Okay, okay, time to put baby Ori to sleep!” Lia said as she stood up and pulled my arm. “Thanks everybody for the game! It was amazing, let's do it again next week?” added with another pull. “Ori, honey, let’s go before you stab someone with full intention!”

“Oh, but it was just getting funny! Weren't the one that wanted to stay up all night?” I joked and she simply stared at me.

“Am I gonna have to count?” She asked with no sign of being joking anymore.

“No, miss! I'm right behind you! Bye everyone.” I said following my pink haired best friend. But it was clear that there was something bothering her. “Why does it seem that you were more annoyed by the kiss than I was?” I dared to ask.

“It wasn’t annoyance.” she promptly responder.

“What was it then? You had to leave so you wouldn’t wake up the whole institute with your laugh?”

“I think Alex might be my soulmate.” She declared without looking at me. “And maybe Sean is yours.” I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What? Sean? Really?” She stopped and turned to me.

“He has arrows on his back, on the same place yours come from. Just like Alex has red wings on his.”

“So what? Shouldn’t that be a good thing?”

Lia took a deep breath, staring at the circles on her wrists and hands.

“Maybe. I’m not sure.” she whispered. “I really hope I’m wrong to be honest.” “Why honey?” I asked holding her hands.

“Because it would mean two people alone ‘til the end of their lives.” Lia mumbled pulling her hands back and leaving me alone in the dark corridor.

Weeks passed since the game and she never mentioned that suspicion again, but I hadn’t forgot. In fact, that was already pissing me off as hell because I couldn’t stop thinking about Sean and his adorable smile, or his soft ginger hair, or his charming freckles and where else they could be on his body beside his face and arms. It was terrible, annoying and absurd.

“Why don’t you talk to him?” Lia asked on a day she was particularly annoyed by everything. “Go find out if it’s him. What exactly do you have to lose?”

“If that’s so then why don’t you go talk to Alex?” I threw back without thinking much. “That way you can stop running away from him every waking second.”

She didn’t bite back. The absence of an answer made me realize how the whole situation was stressing her. Not only the soulmate thing but she was also failing a couple classes and the latest missions were ending with a lot of people in the infirmary, where she’d stay to help due to her mutation. Maybe that was one of the reasons she wasn’t having time to study properly.

“Lia, talk to me! What’s so bad about the possibility of being Alex’s soulmate?” I begged. “Please. I’m your best friend!” She only sighed without taking her eyes off the textbook. “Ophelia!”

“Don’t call me like that or I’ll steal your energy and you know I can do it.” She growled. “I know you’re my best friend but I’m fine, I swear! No need to worry.”

“I’m your bestie, its my duty to worry about you.” I kissed her on the forehead and left for a walk, leaving her with her textbooks and notes.

As soon as I stepped outside someone called me.

“Ori!” Sean repeated jogging to my direction. “Mind if I make you some company?” he asked with a sweet smile, his face slightly red – as always – from the jog.

“If I ever say no to that you can send me to the sanatory!” I joked making him get even more red. He laughed shyly and started to walk by my side. “So, how’s life?”

“Well I’m leaving for a mission tonight…” he started. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you, actually.”

“Am I your lucky charm?” I teased.

“Better. I believe you’re my soulmate.” He dropped, turning to me. I stopped walking and turned to him as well. “I wanted to tell you about that and tell you how I feel in case… something happens…”

“Don’t say that!” I held his face close to mine and dared to give him a kiss. “Nothing will happen. The mission will be a success! Everyone will be fine!”

His arms laced around my waist and he pulled me closer.

“Do it again. Please.” He whispered looking into my eyes.

“What?”

“Kiss me again.”

“Since you asked so nicely guess I’ll have to do it.” I teased, needing to be on my tiptoes to reach his lips.

For once in my life it felt like everything was in its place. The planets, the stars, us. His lips on mine, his hands on me. It felt like nothing in the world could ruin that.

Two days later, when the Blackbird landed in the middle of the night, I knew I couldn’t have been more foolish. Half of the institute had woken with the noisy clumsy landing that had almost ruined half of the garden. Everyone rushing to see what was happening made the whole situation more tense.

When Scott and Alex left the jet with an unconscious Warren between them and Erik with a bleeding Raven on his arms, some of the shocked students ran to help to get the others, Sean and Kurt. All of them badly hurt and mostly unconscious.

“What happened?” I asked following them to the infirmary. Lia was already there helping to put everyone in the beds.

“All of our data was wrong. It was a trap.” Erik answered laying Raven. “And we fell right into it.”

I took a deep breath and sat beside Sean’s bed, watching him closely. His uniform was completely bloody and torn, and he could barely breath. Tears began forming in my eyes along with a huge weight on my chest. My hands started to shake as I tried to touch his hair, even more red now.

“Ori, I’m sorry but I’ll have to ask you to leave.” Lia whispered touching my shoulder. “Being here won’t be good for you.”

“I can’t leave him!” I sobbed covering my face. “I… You were right, he’s my soulmate…” I stuttered.

“Oriana.” Lia repeated. Her red feathery wings finally appearing behind her along with a bunch of glowy feathers around the room. “I knew it. Now please. I don’t wanna have to heal you too.” I nodded before sobbing on her shoulder for a short minute. “I’ll do my best, I promise.” She swore, her wings getting bigger and glowing even more at every word. Alex closed the door behind me but I couldn’t move my legs to go back to my room.

It felt like everything I had had been stolen from me. My whole body ached at every breath I took. Tears couldn’t stop leaving my eyes no matter how much I tried. And the worst part was how useless all of that made me feel. How I’d just stand there seeing him in the state he was and was unable to do anything to help. How I couldn’t help Lia there. How I wish I could have gone to that mission and maybe help them defend themselves.

 x-x

taglist: @imaginesandideas @90s-cassidy @batboys-and-other-messes @southside-sweets @brattybombshell

[impalementation]

of all the random things to wish season 7 had included (and i actually like season 7, for the record), i wish that they had managed to include, if not cordelia herself since she was off having some apparently terrible storyline, at least some sort of avatar of the southern california mean girl.

i say that because i read season 7 as buffy making peace with her shadow selves. and cordelia was buffy’s very first shadow. in season 3, her shadow-self was faith. faith was, more or less, the temptation to use power selfishly or irresponsibly. so the fact that buffy entrusts faith with power by the end of season 7 (handing over the scythe, etc) is a sign that she has resolved much of her own fear of power.

in season 6, her shadow-self was spike. spike was something like her yearning for escape and self-destruction. the temptation to check out of life. the isolation of keeping your problems secret. i see the fact that buffy forgives and speaks up for spike in season 7 as her forgiving herself by proxy, the exact flip-side of the way she used spike to punish herself the season before.

i don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first so often appears in buffy’s image. in some sense, she is fighting herself. and buffy isn’t the only one resolving issues with her shadow, all of the other characters are too. willow most obviously, as she tries to re-integrate magic into her life, and confronts the image of warren in the killer in me. spike of course as well. it makes a lot of thematic sense for him to spend the season afraid of spontaneously becoming a mindlessly violent demon. 

i wish we’d gotten even more of that with all of the other characters. i wish that we’d gotten to see xander confront, say, his fears of uselessness or becoming like his family. an update on the zeppo. though there’s a bit of that in potential. same deal with giles. i wish he’d had some character focus prior to lies my parents told me, so him wrestling with ineffectuality or ruthless consequentialism would have hit harder. 

but given that this is buffy’s show, i’m most interested in her arc. because of that, i can’t help but think it would have been cool to see explicit resolution with the parts of herself that are cliquish or self-oriented. obviously, buffy is a very selfless character. but she wasn’t always that way. in season 1, cordelia represented the temptation to only care about oneself and one’s problems, and the way that sort of self-obsession means that you don’t take the way you hurt other people seriously. given that buffy has struggled the whole show with when she should selfishly care about her own pain versus when she shouldn’t, it would have been really nice for buffy to have a moment of triumphant selfishness. as funny as that might sound. or at least for her to make peace with the idea of caring about her own personal well-being.

the season almost gets there. i think it would be fair to read the chosen spell as a moment of triumphant selfishness on buffy’s part, given that more slayers in the world means that she won’t be suffering in isolation anymore. and the season does remind us a lot about how much buffy’s isolation hurts her. but it would have been cool for example, if her realizing that the chosen spell was an option was related to her realizing that it was not just possible, but okay to not suffer. because for all that she tells giles she hates suffering in season 6, and for all that she tells spike she’s moved beyond hating, ie punishing, herself in season 7, and for all that she is clearly not lying about either, the tension about how much she’s really allowed to suffer or put herself first is still central to the season. cf, her conversations with dead people scenes, and all the talk of the mission mattering more than anything else.

(i would have liked, for example, if buffy’s get it done cruelty or the empty places blow-up had been more clearly about how buffy has learned the lesson of selflessness too well. ironically, because she’s too preoccupied with her own personal experience. she tries to demand that others use her emotional toolkit, because she’s freaked that everyone is going to die, but doesn’t have the perspective to see that that toolkit is a product of a fucked up situation. that she’s perpetuating isolation instead of looking for something else. i think this is basically what the show was going for. it’s actually one of the reasons i like the season. but again, not clear.)

anya would probably have been the best character to play this symbolic role, and the season does sort of use her that way. she has a whole episode called selfless, after all. but she pretty much just finishes the show as yet another reformed villain. her honesty and frank interest in things like sex and money never get a chance to be framed as something valuable. i can’t help but think the season would have been much thematically stronger if that had happened. similar to the way that andrew’s flaw (narrativization) gets to be used in a positive way at the very end, when he describes anya’s death as heroic.

[pcthstrayed]

( ross butler, 19, he/him )  welcome to  san francisco, ARLO PARK.  rumor has it they are a WITCH/DARKLIGHTER, but only they could tell you the truth! when i close my eyes, i think of them and imagine BLOODSTAINS SCRUBBED OUT OF CREAM COLORED CARPETS, LYFT SCOOTERS, AND THE PRODIGAL SON.

     are you as tired of me doing intros as i am? ‘cuz bruh.  you’re getting the lazy sparknotes version bc i’m tired and gay.

 arlo is penelope park’s cousin! sadly he  ( thinks he is )  tragically heterosexual, but it would have been nice if the family radiated big gay energy.  idk maybe it isn’t too late for him, we’ll see.  he’s also a student at salvatore.  i think he used to go to a public school back home, but i think Some Fucked Up Things Happened and his mom panicked and decided he needed to be around some more positive role models.  hence why he was sent to salvatore.  

speaking of Some Fucked Up Things...  arlo’s dad is Not a good guy.  i want to say he uses his magic for evil, and it’s gotten him ostracized from the coven.  arlo has always been his dad’s closest ally, and sort of confidante, so his mom was shooketh when she found out that not only was bad dad bad, but that arlo had known all along and hadn’t said anything.  he thought he could contain it, maybe talk him out of some of his terrible ideas, but his dad is Not OK and needs help.   but everything fell apart, his parents divorced and his dad is basically m.i.a. now.   rip.  

( edit oct 2019 )  but here is the thing y’all, arlo’s dad is not his biological father. when his parents were trying to have kids they found out his dad couldn’t have kids. so they used a sperm donor and voila arlo was born! tbh arlo is pretty dumb so i don’t think he’s really even like become cognizant of the fact that he and his dad don’t look alike, and don’t have much in common.  is this ignorance or naivety? idk, if your parents tell you something who are you to question it.  anyways his mom never told him the truth even after everything with his dad bc she was afraid she would lose him. he was already closer with his father and she could feel him slipping down the wrong path. fear is a powerful motivator y’all.

personality wise he’s a ‘lil emo, a lil dramatic, always thinks people are talking shit about him.  in his defense, a lot of times they are.  his dad kind of fucked up their family’s reputation and since he’s from california ( i wanna say malibu ),  he’s lived in this area for most of his life so it’s not really a fresh start.  he’s also pissed he can’t go home and visit his dogs which is a fucking mood and a half. 

since his family is a mess, his family’s money is... dwindling, i could see him doing magic for hire on the side.  basically you want something done? something you’re not super proud of or above board? he’ll help you out my dudes, dudettes, and persons.  he’s got you.  

UPDATE JAN 26, 2020

arlo  has  tapped  into  that  park  family  gay  energy  and  acknowledged  his  chaotic  bisexual  energy.  he  has  feelings  for  both  amber  and  callum  and  is  trying  to  come  to  terms  with  everything.  yet  —  lmao,  his  sexuality  is  hardly  the  biggest  situation  at  the  current  moment  in  time.

after  callum  murdered  maya  marceli  in  cold  blood,  arlo  helped  him  bury  the  body.  he  didn’t  hesitate,  simply  did  what  needed  to  be  done.  it  wasn’t  the  first  time  he  helped  someone  dispose  of  a  body  and  the  only  reason  he  felt  bad  about  it  was  because  it  was  maya.  he  knew her,  he  liked  her,  but  he’d  have  done  anything  to  protect  callum.  

his  best  friend,  bradley  duke  (  @teenagewste​  )  recently  got  involved  with  finn  mikaelson.  when  the  vampire  was  whammied  by  the  horseman  famine,  he  came  up  with  a  contingency  plan  to  ensure  he  would  never  end  up  daggered.  a  spell  was  put  in  place  and  as  soon  as  he  was  daggered,  he  body-jumped  straight  into  arlo  and  left  town  while  the  barrier  was  down.   bye  bye  body. 

in  order  to  make  sure  his  friend  doesn’t  spend  his  prime  years  in  a  coffin,  bradley  spelled  arlo  into  the  body  of  morgan  cummings  —  a  triggered,  very  angry  werewolf,  who  isn’t  pleased  about  the  situation.   until  they  can  track  down  finn  with  a  locator  spell,  this  is  really  the  best  of  the  bad  options.

remember  how  i  said  arlo  doesn’t  know  his  bio  dad  ?  turns  out,  his  bio  dad  is  jack  of  darklighter  fame.   so  not  only  is  he  a  witch  but  he’s  a  darklighter.  somewhere  in  tahiti,  finn  mikaelson  is  having  a  fuckin’  field day.   arlo  doesn’t  know  any  of  this  yet  tho  sooooo  lmao  we’re  in  for  a  STORM.  

UPDATE FEB 22, 2020

so  the  angry  werewolf  kept  trying  to  kill  them  both,  so  bradley  bradley  started  looking  for  a  new  body  to  throw  his  friend  into.   he  found  a  dumb,  tall,  white  dude,  who  was  seemingly  human  and  normal  and  said  yes,  this  is  the  right  one.  so  arlo  jumped  into  aiden  kincaid’s  body  and  eh  voila.  

arlo  reluctantly  agrees,  mostly  bc  he’s  afraid  of  morgan,  and  he  jumps  in.   except,  yeah,  this  body’s  in  transition.   he  has  a  choice  to  make;   feed,  or  die.   except  he  doesn’t  because  oops,  yeah,  he  fed.   now  he’s  a  vampire  soooo  this  should  be  fun  !!

UPDATE APRIL 8, 2020

after  removing  famine’s  ring  from  daniel  warren  /  levi  stone’s  finger,  it  was  given  to  finn  mikaelson  (  in  the  body  of  arlo  park  )  for  safekeeping.   while  the  horseman  might  be  out  of  commission  for  now,  he  was  very  cognizant  of  the  fact  that  it  would  likely  only  be  temporary.

self  preservation  in  mind,  finn  did  the  only  thing  that  made  sense.   he  found  a  body  that  no  one  would  assume  him  to  ever  take  —  her  name  was  fiona  michaels.   the  irony  wasn’t  lost  on  him  and  he  thought  it  was  a  very  tongue-in-cheek  way  of  hiding  in  plain  sight.  (  no  one  would  expect  a  mikaelson  to  be  that  obtuse.  )   he  put  arlo’s  body  on  ice  and  delivered  it  back  to  him  with  a  intricately  scrawled  thank  you  note  with,  of  course,  no  mention  of  the  danger  he  would  potentially  be  in  if  daniel  /  levi  /  famine  ever  decided  to  retaliate.  oops.

arlo  got  his  body  back,  moved  back  home  with  his  mother,  and  had  his  boyfriend  move  in  too.  they’ve  never  had  the  ‘what  are  we’  talk,  but  they  can  barely  spend  a  few  hours  apart  so  it  feels  kind  of  inevitable.  he’s  still  in  the  closet  with  his  mother  though  because  if  she  knew  the  truth,  they  certainly  wouldn’t  be  allowed  to  share  his  room  anymore.  this  is  a  lie  he  doesn’t  mind  keeping.  besides,  they  owe  him.

his  parents  are  trying  to  marry  him  off  to  victoria  villalobos.  her  father  made  an  arrangement  with  his  father.  as  far  as  his  mother  knows,  spades  is  a  respectable  businessman  and  it’s  a  good  family.  she  thinks  this  is  good  for  him,  that  he  could  be  happy.  (  she,  after  all,  married  for  love  and  all  it  brought  her  was  pain.  )  he  tried  to  say  no,  tried  to  stand  up  to  his  father  for  once  in  his  life,  but  he  made  it  clear  there  was  no  choice.   if  arlo  messes  this  up,  it’s  his  mother’s  blood  on  his  hands.   so  he’s  going  to  marry  victoria  because  he  has  no  other  choice.  to  protect  his  family,  he’d  do  anything.  the  worst  part  is  that  as  much  as  he  hates  his  father,  he  still  loves  him.  no  matter  what  he  does,  what  lines  he  crosses,  his  devotion  is  almost  pathological.   there  is  a  part  of  him  too  that  wonders  if  he’s  destined  to  become  his  father  even  though  he’s  done  everything  in  his  power  to  resist  it.  he  killed  a  version  of  himself  from  some  other  timeline,  not  to  mention  he  helped  bury  an  innocent  girl,  so  if  there’s  a  slippery  slope  he  feels  like  he’s  skidding  dangerously  close  to  it.

he  is  on  the  verge  of  discovering  his  darklighter  powers  so  stay  tuned  for  that.

CONNECTIONS

- people that finn mikaelson might have crossed or pissed off when he was in his body. - someone finn might have helped when he was riding arlo’s body. (taken by henrik) - he’s learning how to orb so winding up in different places might be kind of funny. bonus points if it’s at awkward or inopportune times. - someone who knows about dark lighters / what this orbing means so that he can sort of understand wtf is happening and how it’s possible.  (taken by parker) - he walks dogs so maybe he made a friend while out walking them?????

[geejaysmith]

Wolf 359: A running list of things I have a heightened appreciation on second listen, pt. 2

Part one here. 

SEASON 3:

Pan-Pan: Still a little miffed they didn't explicitly do the "we have to huddle to conserve body heat" trope. Yes, it's corny, but also shut up, let my touch-starved space disasters cuddle.

So Eiffel stopped Hera and Minkowski arguing in season 1 to address an emergency, and now with Eiffel absent, the team starts arguing again. The fact he doesn't exactly have much Pride In His Own Self-Sufficiency to get in the way of "hey! Guys! Remember, imminent death? More important priorities happening?" tends to defuse situations like this aaaaaand now he's absent.

"Cutter will send a squad of psychos to come up here and kill us faster!" ...she's not wrong.

"Pick a corner and relax! Hop to it!" I just like this line delivery.

"The entire station is a SPACE YUKON and this thing is overheating!" I know, it's like it's symbolic or something.

Episode 29: "we all feel responsible for losing Eiffel and are lashing out because we're scared and sad and grieving and fear getting backlash while we're vulnerable if we admit we need help, and we don't know what to do but keep going because the alternative is breaking down and possibly never getting back up again." Alternatively:  "It's Metaphors All the Way Down."

Mayday: Eiffel's frustrated screaming.

Brain Ghost Minkowski showing up like "Yeah, we know I'm a hallucination, or Weird Alien Shit, or maybe just a clever metaphor representing the abstract process of thought, but who gives a crap, this is more interesting than listening to you talk to yourself for an entire episode."

BGM: Hi, I'm your thought processes externalized using a face and personality that you subconsciously think you need to hear from in this situation, possibly because you think so little of yourself you need to hear it from somebody else first. Eiffel: Oh hey cool, this is just like this one web comic I kept up with sometimes back on Earth- BGM: Not another word.

Eiffel getting slapped by Brain Ghost Lovelace, who is a projection of his thoughts.

What is that whispering in his head that reminds him of the Hermes' name supposed to be anyway? Score one for my Weird Alien Brain Shit theory. Having Lovelace's alien juice in your system comes with such fun side effects.

"I dunno, I only know what you know." "Shut up, don't go meta on me." / "Hilbert wouldn't know that word! He's never even heard of Empire!" Yeah, toldja: it's Brain Ghosts.

Brain Ghost Hilbert may represent the realist in Eiffel and the brutal, calculating reality he doesn't want to confront, but Brain Ghosts Minkowski and Lovelace are his cooler head and ingenuity, working him through staying calm and devising a way to survive, and Brain Ghost Hera, who appears when Hilbert tells him it's hopeless, telling him that against all the odds he will be okay, is his stubborn determination to never, ever quit. They're all his determination to live when Doug might want to just stop trying. They're the better parts of himself, reflected in the voices of his friends.

And Hilbert. But I digress- HOLY FUCK, I just realized the brilliance in the one-two punch of the Brain Ghost Brigade contrasted with the previous episode's Stress Fracture Argue Crew, it's The Sound And The Fury all over again.

Paging the Wolf 359 incorrect quote blogs: "Save my friends! And Zoidberg Hilbert!"  

Sécurité thru Don’t Poke the Bear: Maxwell! I've missed you! (':

"And I build pretty awesome battle drones on the weekends." ...Does Maxwell have her own souped-up version of one Jamie Hyneman's Blendo?

Eiffel, realizing he's starting to sound like Minkowski: My god, what have I become.

Eiffel mumbling to himself in general. "This is hell and I'm in it."

Is it just me or is Kepler's pig story not as agonizingly drawn out to listen to the second time around?

A Matter of Perspective: Funzo: 12 different board games, three of them TCGs and maybe at least one TTRPG, all tossed in a blender, because Pryce and Cutter are psychopaths.

The Funzo manual is the size of the actual Bible and don't try to convince me otherwise.

How into the game the girls all get.

Headcanon: Minkowski and Lovelace are both the types to get stupidly competitive over any kind of game regardless of their initial level of investment.

Eiffel keeps a photo of (it's implied) him and his daughter taped to the underside of his console...

"He looks so... happy." shUT UP

"I had no idea Eiffel had a-" daughter. Was it "daughter" you were going to say Minkowski. Well, no one else knew you were married til you brought it up, so turnabout's fair play.

"You think you know me? You know the artist formerly known as Warren Kepler, you've met my job. Aside from that, there's no one left for you to know." In light of the series finale, I, uh... I don't if I like this, Scoob. Also, stop reminding me all these people are human persons underneath all the desensitization to horror and violence.

"Happy birthday, Eiffel." They remembered! Hope this one is less traumatizing than the last, Doug.

"Happy Kwanzaa!" "Lovelace."

"Long Story Short, that's the last time I saw Maxwell's feet" wh. What. What happened involving Maxwell's feet. What's. why-

And to make a long story short, that's where my "Maxwell has hands for feet" headcanon came from.

Need to Know: Minkowski's dreams, apparently, include both creating musicals and commanding a deep space mission. She's gotten the latter way the hell off the bucket list, somebody with actual songwriting skills want to get in and write the former with me?

Lovelace overindulging on painkillers for her broken arm after losing Officer Fisher... "It was a difficult time." ):

Aaaand serious implications of the above are immediately headed off by Lovelace quacking aggressively at Jacobi.

Fire and Brimstone: where is my fanfiction about Lovelace overseeing Minkowski during her solitary confinement?

The Backstory Episodes: Zach Valenti wrote all the backstory episodes! I just find that kind of sweet.

Once in a Lifetime: Small detail I only noticed on my second listen, after a fanfic put the thought in my head: Minkowski's parents are only referred to in the past tense. Oof.

"Thank you for coming in on such short notice. We had a hiccup in staffing for this upcoming quarter."  So... according to the wiki's timeline, the launch for the second Hephaestus mission was some time in late March 2013. The beginning of this episode (and Eiffel's) states it takes place in 2013, with 3 months of training, meaning they were probably brought on board in January and the whole thing moved *ridiculously* fast. Everything points to them wanting to get people up in space as quickly and with as little fuss as possible, giving the newcomers no time to think it over or do additional research. Once they start the training program, they're probably too busy to look further into Goddard's deep space missions, and are likely in an environment where Goddard Futuristics can cut them off from other information sources. The people they select are relatively isolated (Minkowski and her husband being an exception) - the easier to make them disappear. Even Lovelace has been stationed at "a lot of very isolated, very quiet outposts", the implication being her superiors wanted her somewhere out of the way. Kind of makes me wonder about the rest of the Hephaestus 1.0 crew...

Greensboro: Nice ominous foreshadowing you've got there vis a vis Captain Lovelace and "are you an alien?"

Decommissioned: "We're not about to force anyone to do something they don't want to do!" ...Marcus Cutter deserves to have his trousers ablaze constantly.

All Things Considered is still a bit confusing (because I somehow keep listening to it while doing something else) and I'll need another listen to figure out what probably actually happened, but it is also hilarious.

"Eiffel had engaged the machine, but that's why I build in extra safeguards. My mistake, clearly, was to assume that would be enough to stop the slapstick routine."

“All Things Considered”: Did you have fun with this over-the-top romp of hilarity and and hijinks, dear audience? Good! Because that was us burning off our comedy quota for the rest of the season. Get ready for six whole episodes of nonstop emotional gut-punches!

MEMORIA.

Just... Memoria.

Putting this quote here because of Reasons: "Three years... Three and a half years... I've had this thing in my head breaking me, and making me think it was all my fault, that there was something wrong with *me!*"

So Memoria is still one of the best episodes and the last five minutes fuck me up in a special little way.

Time to Kill: "Or the one outside is the real Jacobi... and the alien is already in here with us." The funny thing, Maxwell, is that you were half-right and didn't even realize it, and you *were* just speaking to Lovelace.

So... do alien duplicates only get reloaded from the singular "snapshot" of the person, or does getting flare-scanned once give them a continually updated source of info? What I'm getting at is: if another Jacobi shows up post-finale, would he need to be filled in on events between his horrible, terrible death and the present?

Persuasion: Maxwell switching to First Name Basis to get Jacobi to be honest with her.

I always forget until the scene after that Hilbert is totally setting up the Space Telephone to manipulate her, but of all the ways he could've gotten Minkowski around to "we are disposable and need to act *now* before these people decide they're done with us", it still kinda touching that this is the method he chose.

Desperate Times/Desperate Measures are just a blur of "oh god oh god oh god" and it's just as nailbiting the second time around. One thing I love about this podcast is how comfortable it is with (for its medium) long stretches of silence, which can feel a LOT longer when you have no other forms of feedback except dialogue to know the first gunshot was just a warning.

So you really *do* feel Minkowski breaking out into laughter when Eiffel tries to invoke Air Force code is a release of the tension that's been building for multiple episodes. Like he's finally gotten through to them just how far this has all gone and how much further it could still go. I keep saying this: when the situation starts to threaten violence, he's got an amazing gift for keeping the rest of the crew in touch with their common humanity when the rest get far too used to a world that runs on self-interest and subterfuge. Hell, he even gets Hilbert and *Kepler* opening up over the course of the story (presuming Kepler is being honest when he talks about being a shell of himself, but even though he was trying to manipulate Eiffel, that doesn't exclude there being a kernel of truth in those words).

Speaking of Kepler: he's definitely riding the adrenaline high of the situation and it turns him into a monster with a manic streak. It makes Jacobi's and Maxwell's relative calm all the eerier by contrast. Those two really do make you forget that all of this is... pretty horribly routine for them.

Until they meet their match, that is, when the women of the Hephaestus refuse to stand down, and each of them is unspeakably badass in their own way. What Kepler didn't account for is that they're ready and willing to die together rather than sacrifice one another for their own survival.

Although again, the irony of the situation is that just dropping the station into the star could have let them avoid, /gestures at season 4. BUT I'm not gonna rain on the Badass parade here.

Bolero, aka "The podcast kicking me in the feelings while I'm down."

The way Minkowski orders everyone else out of the room before Brain Ghost Lovelace conversates with her.  ...did she pop up in the middle of that conversation, I wonder? And all this when psi-wave radiation is spiking, apparently. Coincidence?

Oh come on Hera, war is no reason to end a friendship- Look, I came here from Metal Gear. I see folks dunking on Hilbert and I'm just over here like "he's still not as revolting as Huey Emmerich."  

Listen I've seen enough of Warren Kepler and Marcus Cutter in this fandom to know y'all aren't above liking a bad guy, you just prefer the ones who're having fun with it.

"You're gonna come to my funeral! And you're gonna like it! ...I mean you're gonna feel really sad! And cry! And stuff! GOT IT??" Ah, good ol' Eiffel.

THE COMPUTER ALSO HAS BRAIN GHOSTS

"If I'm not your doctor, then what are we?" "We're... complicated?" Listen, Eiffel, if you're not careful, I'm going to start shipping you and Hilbert ironically For The Lulz, and we all know where shipping things ironically always leads.

Errybody gets brain ghosts this episode. Again: I accept that this is a device that's more interesting than an alternative method of expressing these same ideas, but the ambiguity of a Watsonian explanation (is it all in their heads? Do they really see an apparition of some kind?) lets me do my Weird. Look, I once wrote in a joke in a fic about Death from Discworld complimenting a Quirky Miniboss Squad member from Metal Gear Solid 3 on his taste in interior decorating arena design, and that spawned entire subplots in projects for two different fandoms, and eventually roped in a third fandom to elaborate further on their now-intertwined cosmology. Do not underestimate how much I can give myself to work with.

The last ten minutes of Bolero also fuck me up in a special way, partly because We Are Dealing With the Hard and Unavoidable Fact of Death but also the aliens are about to throw a curve ball that'll... alter that last part a little.

Like, words cannot describe the "Dead Man's Curve in the wet" hard right turn of going from being in mourning for several beloved characters (including my favorite) to SURPRISE, SHE'S BACK! I love it.

I'd have to check the scripts to be sure exactly because some words got lost in Lovelace's respiratory spasms but I do like to imagine the her head wound closing up in front of a horrified Eiffel and Minkowski, with a side order of glow-y shit. I've drawn too many Homestuck god tier revivals I guess.

Update: I DID check the recording script's stage directions to see just how disgustingly physical the whole event is and okay, so no weird glowing shit (I reserve my right to depict it that way anyway) but I'm delighted to report that the gross anatomical-ness I was picturing? It's worse! It is so much worse!

The goddamn AGONY that is the Special Episode being TWO HOURS LONG when it comes right after the BIGGEST CLIFFHANGER IN THE SERIES.

You have NO IDEA WHAT KIND OF TEMPTATION IT WAS TO SKIP THIS AND COME BACK TO IT LATER

LOVELACE 1.0 I LOVE YOU BUT ALSO I WANNA TO SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING TO FUTURE-YOU RIGHT NOW

Change of Mind: love the framing device placing this episode as within Lovelace's mind during her successful cranial reconstruction saving throw.

"Buncha nerds, gonna crash my-"

Just how familiar she is in this place, with these people... Hera was installed in her sister's grave (as another post put it), but Lovelace lives in the gutted cadaver of her home.

Zach Valenti's Lambert voice *does* sound like a bad Minkowski impression.

"I have a physicist to put the fear of *me* into." That's my girl. She kind of was more of an ass pre-Total Party Kill, though? Like come on, Isabel, how necessary *is* all this arguing with Lambert?

Fourier's voice is very nice, also. Very soft, very easy on the ears.

I'm now appreciating how it sounds like Fisher is the older and calmer mediator among the crew.

Also the image of Isabel just floating out in space and listening to some chill tunes is sooooo good.

Hey Doc, did it turn out Fisher was too perceptive to live. Was getting caught outside in that meteor shower really an accident. Hey. Hey Hilbert. Answer me. 

Also goddamnit, has EVERY character in this series has read Harry Potter?

Did the Fishers always differentiate each other by audio channel? I had to rewind the scene when I realized Lovelace's questions in my right ear weren't getting an answer.

"Say you're a big pink elephant!"

*gunshot* *gross biological dissolving noises* WHY

"Just because somebody made you something doesn't mean that's all you're going to be - you can be more!" I wrote this line down prior to the end of the episode's confirmation that it's a Big Thematic Point.

Aaaand we're back to the framing device, and with that, season 3 wraps. Or maybe season 4 kicks off? Either way, hell of a way to kick it off.

Cecilia Lynn-Jacobs had a hand in writing this episode? Aw... that's sweet...

So, yeah, headcanon: Alien resurrection does the weird glowy thing to close any obviously fatal maladies, then the gross biological viscera part kicks in, hence Lovelace sounding like she's trying to hack up her lungs as soon as she starts using them again.

Listen, sometimes the gross biological viscera parts are my favorite parts, okay? Okay.

[dyaz-stories]

No Happy Ending (Part 2)

Part 1 — Parth 3 — Available on ff.net and on Ao3 (this is going to be a three-shot, by the way). Still Layla Williams/Warren Peace.

If there was one good thing to come out of the whole “Gwen is evil and she’s trying to turn everyone into babies” situation, it would be that it helped Layla focus. Which was good, because she hadn’t been able to form one coherent thought ever since Warren had shown up, looking ridiculously good in that suit.

Lips curving into a grin when he pulls her against him for a brief yet heated kiss the second he’s sure they’re alone in the hallway.

God, no. She would take any other time, but really, she couldn’t now. She was stuck with her friends, who she all loved dearly but who she doubted could be trusted to handle everything. As for Warren, she also loved him dear— Erm, she also cared about him and admired him, but if she let him in charge, everything would probably get destroyed, and no one needed super-babies on fire right now.

Nor ever, actually.

Ugh, her mind was all over the place. Which was perfectly fine as long as…

Tongue dancing devilishly with hers once he’d slipped it inside her mouth without any hesitation, giving himself entirely, passionately to her, as in everything he does.

…as long as it didn’t go in that direction.

Fortunately, she was distracted again when the grid closing the air duct was ripped out. She couldn’t help but smile, almost immediately. That could be no one else but Will.

He grabbed her hand gentlemanly to help her out, and the feeling was a bit of a surprise, both because she didn’t expect it and because it was just… just different from what she expected to feel at his touch.

Warm hands cupping her face in such a tender way, like she was the most precious thing he’d ever touched, only leaving it to explore her body.

“You’re never gonna believe this,” Will said as soon as they were all there in front of him, Layla finding herself moving just slightly closer from Warren, almost unconsciously, but still terribly aware of the heat constantly radiating from him — unless it was just her. “Gwen…”

She sighed. Yeah, they knew that story, and she certainly wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to let him know about this. He hadn’t been a great best friend recently, after all. “…is Royal Pain’s daughter,” she completed.

Will looked at her briefly, a confused expression on his face, before continuing. “Yeah, and she…”

“…stole the Pacifier,” Warren finished with his deep voice that sounded almost like a growl, sending a shiver down Layla’s spine, which fortunately no one noticed given the situation.

“…Right,” Will said, now frowning, visibly unsure of how his friends knew so much. Fortunately, Zach was there to clear that up.

“She turned everybody into babies, including your parents, dude.”

His eyes widened, and the sight alone got a smile out of Layla. Yeah, Will could be a bit slow, but she always thought the moment when he figured things out was so funny. “Okay, that I didn’t know,” he admitted.

“This is even more than the great Will Stronghold can handle,” she said with a hint of bitterness in her voice.

“She’s right,” Will admitted immediately, and it wasn’t what she expected, but it was still a rather pleasant surprise. “It’s gonna take all of us.”

“All of who? You and Warren?” Magenta asked in disbelief, and Layla tried to ignore the burning sensation in her stomach at the mention of the boy’s name, the rest of the words seemingly disappearing as her mind…

A groan when she moves closer to him, because she’s just as desperate as he is, her body pressing against hers, before he tears himself away from her. There’s worry in his eyes when he speaks with labored breaths.

“Stronghold isn’t coming to homecoming.”

It takes her a second to figure out why she’s suppose to care, though if she’s honest, she can’t quite think straight when he’s so close to her and when his fingers are tracing circles against the skin of her neck.

“…he isn’t?”

What does that mean for them? Does it mean that he doesn’t want to come?

“Just because you have powers, that doesn't make you a hero,” Will replied to whatever Magenta had said after her initial outburst, his voice snapping Layla out of her thoughts again. ”Sometimes it just makes you a jerk. Makes me a jerk.”

Layla’s smile widened yet again at his admission, and she interrupted his next sentence without really trying to listening to it. “We get it. You’ve been a jerk.”

The intensity in his eyes when he looked at her definitely stirred something inside of her, but… But it wasn’t quite like before.

“Layla, in case my homecoming date ends up killing me tonight, I just want you to know…”

Without a warning, he’d grabbed her arm, and suddenly his lips were on hers.

Warren looked away.

“So, are you?”

Warren blinks at her question. He doesn’t look like he’s been expecting it, and Layla kind of wants to roll her eyes. She thought she’d seen everything in terms of obliviousness with Will, but she was clearly wrong.

She definitely wants to go to the ball with Warren. She doesn’t know about more, or, well, she isn’t sure about more, but she does want this. It would be a start, at least, and she is about certain that he wants it too, despite his initial reactions.

“Yeah. Sure. If you want me to go… I mean, it’d be hard for you to find another date that quick, right? Wouldn’t want to make it hard on you.”

A lock of his hair is falling in front of his eyes, and Layla smiles as she reaches out to push it aside.

“So you should come.”

He nods once, and then he pulls her close again.

Layla closes her eyes, and she melts against him.

She was almost thankful for Penny’s intervention, though she couldn’t quite place what the problem was— and she certainly couldn’t think about it now. Still, she didn’t dare glancing in Warren’s direction.

Later.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Once they were done and everything was back to normal, she was the one to walk up to him, as quickly as she could. Sure, she hadn’t gotten much free time to think about it, but the thing was, this wasn’t about thinking. This was about feeling, and Layla was at least good with what she was feeling.

“Will? We need to talk.”

Will shot her the brightest smile she had ever seen. “Sure!” He lifted her up as though she weighted nothing, and soon, they were outside, floating in the sky in some sort of dance, his hands firm around her so she wouldn’t fall.

His hands on her hips, holding her strongly, and she’s pretty sure he’d lift her up to wrap her legs around him if they weren’t in the hallway. Sure, they’re alone, as always when they kiss, but still, there’s only so much they can do in school.

“Will…”

Her best friend was smiling, and it did make her heart beat somewhat faster, but it was nothing like… Like with…

“You’re not in love with me,” he interrupted her. “I got it.”

She blinked at him a couple of times. “You… what?” Will, understanding something having to do with feelings? Impossible.

“I mean, sure, I didn’t get it before I kissed you, but… But it’s Warren, isn’t it?”

Layla nodded, wordlessly, vaguely wondering if Will had been replaced by a shapeshifting villain. However for someone to be able to shapeshift, to fly, and to have superstrength… No, this has to be Will. But then how?

“I was sure he was just being completely oblivious to it,” Will said, rolling his eyes.

”Well you’re one to talk,” Layla chuckled, finding her words again. “But then… Why did you kiss me?”

Will took a few seconds to think about it, and she thought she’d find him again. There. Speaking and acting before using his brain. “I guess… You know, I think we would work, you and I?”

She nodded slowly. “We love each other enough to make it work.”

“Exactly. But…”

She nodded again. She didn’t him to explain more. She knew the feeling of how he kissed and how Warren kissed; and he had apparently kissed Gwen too. They both knew what existed and what was missing between them.

Pure fire and pure heat, consuming her completely with feelings she knew nothing about as he held her close.

Will set her down in the school’s hall gently and bowed. “Here you go, miss!”

It took some time before they let go of each other’s hand, and there was a lump in Layla’s throat when she said “We would have been good, you know.” She had the feeling she was letting go of a big part of her life. She’d been in love with Will for such a long time, and then Warren had shown up, out of nowhere, and swept her off her feet. Will was security though, and Warren was… Warren was not.

“Yeah,” Will said, his smile tainted with some sadness, “but we wouldn’t have been great.”

They looked at each other, knowing they were giving up on something that could be pleasant and nice, but knowing that there was also so much more out there for them.

Will was the one who let go of her hand, and he shot her a wink. “Go get him.”

Layla took off.

“Fuck, Layla, you drive me insane.”

He never says her name, and there is an intense satisfaction in hearing it when they’re kissing, in knowing that she can get this reaction out of him.

She looked everywhere in the ballroom, but couldn’t find him. Wondering if he had left already, she started walking in the hallways.

The small moan she lets out when he pushes her against the wall, taking her by surprise. His eyes are closed, and she knows he lets go when he kisses her. She likes it. It makes her feel like… Like there’s something there between them. Something great.

She found him.

Rebecca Frost — probably Gwen’s replacement, so pretty and so strong and so everything — was against the wall, hands in his hair, and he was kissing her. Eyes closed.

Layla closed her for a split second before walking away without making a sound. She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t thought about this possibility, couldn’t believe herself for reading into it that much, even though he’d clearly accepted to walk in her plan to help her get Will. She’d been wrong, she had read into things too much. Of course she had. She should have known, shouldn’t she?

Bad guys never went for the good girl.

[her-culture]

How Andrea Savage is Changing the Female Narrative on Television

The scene opens with Andrea and Mike Warren eating al fresco with their five-year-old, Amelia.

“Mommy, I forget. Does a baby come out of your tushy or your vagina?” Amelia asks, comfortable enough to pull this question out of thin air to find the answer she needs.

“Your vagina. Why?” Andrea replies nonchalantly, crunching on potato chips.

“Well, my vagina hole is so small. How could a baby even come out of there?” Amelia questions.

“Well, that is a very good question. Your body is magical. When there is a baby in there, all grown and ready to come out, your body knows to make your vagina hole really, really big, and the baby can just shoot out. Isn’t that cool?”

“So, you have a huge vagina?” Amelia asks, loudly and mildly confused.

“No. It, uh, snaps back into place,” Andrea replies, caught off-guard but staying true to the integrity of her conversation, now aware that fellow diners are listening.

After a beat and some awkward eye contact with the older gentleman a table over, she adds, “Well, it snapped back for me,” with a wink. “No complaints from this guy over here,” she says, motioning to her husband.

And that is how Andrea Savage, and her semi-autobiographical show I’m Sorry on truTV, is changing the face of mothers, and female leads, on television.

Season 1 of I’m Sorry debuted on truTV during the summer of 2017, and picked up a large following when it launched on Netflix in December 2018. On paper, this may seem like something we’ve seen so many times before: a 24-minute sitcom focusing on a comedian let loose in the real world. But I’m Sorry differs from similar predecessors like Seinfeld and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” by offering a fresh perspective from a female lead. The show drops the traditional sloven husband/supportive wife formula of sitcoms passed and instead delivers a married couple full of mutual admiration, grounded in real-life. (In fact, Savage and TV husband Tom Everett Scott are so convincing as a married couple, they had to clear the air during a Q&A session of the show’s season 2 premiere in January 2019. “Spoiler alert, Tom and I are not actually married. We’re both happily married to other people, I’m sorry,” Savage told the audience.)

On the surface, I’m Sorry follows a standard comedy formula. It’s a single-camera, non-serialized, episodic series that follows the lives of an LA-based family. But where other comedies rarely show the matriarch’s orbit outside of her household (see: Deborah Barone in Everybody Loves Raymond; Beverly Goldberg in The Goldbergs; and, during the show’s first few seasons, Claire Dunphy in Modern Family), Andrea’s character has a personality that transcends motherhood.

"Why does every ‘mom’ role have to be married and sexless and boring, or a terrible mother? I'm a mom, but I also do a lot of other things, and I'm layered and nuanced. I have funny stories that have to do with parenting but also have nothing to do with parenting. I wanted to show a female character on TV that I had never seen before,” Savage told the LA Times during the show’s inaugural season.

And that’s exactly what she has done.

In the opening scene, Andrea removes all pretense when it comes to conversing with your children. Instead of formulating an entire episode around a “birds and the bees talk,” the way we’ve seen overplayed so many times before, it's simply responded to matter-of-factly in this cold open. During a time when more women are taking control over their bodies and voicing their opinions to be truly heard, it is refreshing to see a mother address a question about the female body without introducing any shame into the conversation.

In one scene in Season 1, Andrea is outside her daughter’s elementary school prior to pick-up time, making awkward small talk with a group of parents. In a rather predictable fashion, one mother in the bunch looked at a baby boy in a stroller and remarked that he was a little flirt; he was going to be a heartbreaker someday. Andrea turns to another mom’s daughter and, in a similar upbeat tone, jokes, “I bet she’ll grow up to be a real cocktease.” Silence. She goes on to explain that she made the joke because it's weird how people assume future sexual lives of babies. The other parents aren’t laughing, and Andrea is grateful for school dismissal so that she can get out of there quickly.

But isn’t that life? Don’t people occasionally make a joke that would have been better left unsaid? And, how often is parenting in real life as simple as it is on television? Not many mothers fit seamlessly into the school’s PTA, befriending all other women, able to prepare homemade cupcakes the night before a fundraiser. This true-to-life depiction is all of us at some point, mother or not.

The show isn’t groundbreaking. But it is certainly invigorating to see an authentic, unapologetic portrayal of a 40-something working mom. The show is a comedy, and certainly delivers laughs, but those moments come authentically as Andrea tries to navigate territory familiar to most people: raising a child, dealing with aging parents, keeping the flame burning in your marriage. I’m Sorry doesn’t rely on Andrea’s husband and daughter as a crutch; instead, it quickly builds out her circle of friends and confidantes. The candor, dimension and realism the show brings to the female lead seem to still be lacking in several fictional matriarchs, even in today’s era of #MeToo and #TimesUp.

I’m Sorry is a reminder to women that you can continue to be brash and unabashedly confident as you add additional titles to your life’s resume. The show reminds viewers that a woman doesn’t need to lose or change herself simply because she’s now wearing a wedding ring or raising a tiny human. When Andrea (the character) finds herself in a delicate situation of which she needs to work herself out, she uses the same language and tactics she (seemingly) used years prior. The only difference is that now she’s using that language and those tactics to raise a child, just like many of her viewers. And, after all, don’t we all have human anatomy chats with our children while dining outside on a nice summer’s day?