#i might try out for jack just to save our audience from having to listen to one of the cis guys

[the-woild-is-y-erster]

guys i just remembered my theater teacher said we're doing newsies in two years

my head is in my hands im shaking

i dunno if its excitement or just pure AHASHGJSHGOUOC IWDOWUHVCJ yknow

[back-and-totheleft]

‘There’s still a presence out there reminding people not to speak about JFK’s killing’

Oliver Stone is not a fan of “cancel culture”. “Of course I despise it,” the Oscar winning filmmaker says, as if utterly amazed that anyone needs to ask him such a dumb question. “I am sure I’ve been cancelled by some people for all the comments I’ve made…. it’s like a witch hunt. It’s terrible. American censorship in general, because it is a declining, defensive, empire, it (America) has become very sensitive to any criticism. What is going on in the world with YouTube and social media,” he rants. “Twitter is the worst. They’ve banned the ex-President of the United States. It’s shocking!” he says, referring to Donald Trump’s removal from the micro-blogging platform.

It’s a Saturday lunchtime in the restaurant of the Marriott Hotel on the Croisette in Cannes. The American director is in town for the festival premiere this week of his new feature documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, in which he yet again pores over President John F Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963.

“I am a pin cushion for American-Russian peace relations… I had four f***ing vaccines: two Sputniks and two Pfizers,” Stone gestures at his arm. The rival super-powers may remain deeply suspicious of one another, but Stone is loading himself up with potions from both sides of the old Iron Curtain.

He has recently been travelling in Russia (hence the Sputnik jabs) where he has been making a new documentary about how nuclear power can save humanity. He also recently completed a film about Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev which – like his interviews with Vladimir Putin – has been roundly ridiculed for its deferential, softly-softly approach toward a figure widely regarded as a ruthless despot.

Dressed in a blue polo shirt, riffing away about the English football team one moment and his favourite movies the next, laughing constantly, the 74-year-old Oscar-winning director of Platoon, Wall Street, Natural Born Killers et al is a far cheerier presence than his reputation as a purveyor of dark conspiracy thrillers might suggest. He is also very outspoken. For all his belligerence, though, Stone isn’t as thick-skinned as you might imagine. I wonder if he was hurt by the scorn that came his way when his feature film JFK was released in 1991.

“I was more of a younger man. It was painful to me,” the director sighs as he remembers being attacked by such admired figures as newscaster Walter Cronkite and Hollywood power broker Jack Valenti for listening to the “hallucinatory bleatings” of former New Orleans DA Jim Garrison when JFK came out. “It was quite shocking actually because I thought the murder was behind us. I did think there was a feeling that 30 years later, we can look at this thing again without getting excited. But I was way wrong.”

Garrison, of course, was the real-life figure portrayed by Kevin Costner in the film; he was the original proponent of the theory that the CIA were involved in the killing of the US president, after his 1966 investigation. Garrison wrote the book On the Trail of the Assassins, on which the movie was partly based.

Even the director’s fiercest detractors will find it hard to dismiss the evidence he has assembled about the JFK assassination in the new documentary. Once I’d seen it and heard him hold forth, I came away thinking that only flat-earthers can possibly still believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy all on his own. It’s that convincing.

Stone blitzes you with facts and figures about the Kennedy killing and its aftermath. At times, he himself seems to be suffering from information overload. “I am sorry. There are so many people,” he apologises for not immediately remembering the name of Kennedy’s personal physician, George Burkley, who was present both at Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy was first taken, and then at Bethesda, where the autopsy took place. Burkley was strangely reticent when giving evidence to the Warren Commission.

“I think there’s still a presence out there which reminds people not to speak. I’ve heard that in, of all places, Russia,” Stone says. He was startled to discover that the Russians knew all about his new documentary long before it was discussed in the mainstream press. “They said, ‘We heard about it.’ I said, ‘How?’ They said, ‘We have our contacts in the American intelligence business. They are not very happy about it.’”

Stone believes that no US president since Kennedy died has been “able to go up against this militarised sector of our economy”. Even Trump “backed down at the last second” and declined to release all the relevant documents relating to the assassination. “He announced, ‘I’m going to free it up, blah blah blah, big talk, and then a few hours before, he caved to CIA National Security again.”

The veteran filmmaker expresses his frustrations at historians like Robert Caro, author of a huge (and hugely respected) multi-volume biography of President Lyndon Johnson, for ignoring the evidence that has been turned up about the assassination.

“I can’t say [LBJ] was involved in the assassination,” explains Stone, “but it certainly suited him that Kennedy was not there anymore and he covered up by appointing the Warren Commission and doing all the things he did.”

Stone tried to cast Marlon Brando in JFK in the role as the deep throat source Mr X, eventually played by Donald Sutherland.

“I realise now I am grateful that he turned it down because he knew better than I that he would make 20 minutes out of that 14-minute monologue and it wouldn’t have worked.”

Nevertheless, he filled the film with famous faces. He thought that having familiar actors would make it easier for audiences to engage with what was an immensely complicated story.

Getting Stone to stop talking about JFK is like trying to pull a bone from a mastiff’s jaws. To change the subject slightly, I ask if he is still in touch with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He is and is utterly horrified at how Assange is being treated, especially given that Siggi the Hacker, a key witness in the extradition case against Assange, admitted recently that he lied. Stone praises Assange’s partner Stella Morris as “the best wife you could ever have. She really is smart, she’s a lawyer … he has two children. He can’t even touch them or see them. It’s barbaric. It indicates America is declining faster than we know. It is just cutting off dissent.”

The mood lightens when I invite Stone to discuss some of his favourite films. He recently tweeted a list of these, which included Darling starring Julie Christie, Joseph Losey’s Eva starring Stanley Baker and Jeanne Moreau, and Houseboat, a frothy comedy starring Cary Grant and Sophia Loren. “I love films, always have. People don’t know that side of me. I could go on forever.”

Between his darker and more contentious efforts, Stone has made a few genre films himself, for example the underrated thriller U-Turn starring Sean Penn and Jennifer Lopez. He notes, though, that even when he tried a sports movie, he ended up right back in the firing line. The NFL was furious about his 1999 American Football film, Any Given Sunday. “They (the NFL) are arrogant, very rich people who close down any dissent, so I had to change uniforms and names… but they got the point.”

Last year, Stone published the first volume of his autobiography, Chasing the Light, which took him from childhood up to his Oscar triumph with Platoon. It was well received but it didn’t make nearly a big enough splash for his liking. “There was a curtain of silence about that. Maybe it is Covid… it was not reviewed by many people,” he says. “I wish the timing had been better. The publisher was terrible. They didn’t really promote anything. So now I have to start over again if I am going to do a second book, which I would love to do. But I have to find the right publisher.”

The book contains a barbed account of Stone’s experiences as a young screenwriter working in London for British director Alan Parker and producer David Puttnam on Midnight Express. “I wrote about it in the book, so you got my point of view. They were not very friendly people. I gave my criticism of Parker that he had a chip on his shoulder. He was from a poor side of the English. There is this phenomenon you see in England of hating the upper classes until they approve of you.”

No, they didn’t stay in touch. “And Puttnam is a Lord, right? He reminds me of Tony Blair. He is such a weasel.” For once, Stone feels he has overstepped the mark. He doesn’t want to call Puttnam a weasel after all. “Put it this way, Tony Blair is a weasel. I wouldn’t trust Tony Blair. Puttnam is a supporter of Blair. Let’s leave it at that.”

On matters English, he isn’t that keen on soccer either. He watched the semi-final between England and Denmark but had no intention of tuning into the final.

“Soccer is a different kind of game. It’s a different aesthetic. It is constant movement. The United States game allows you to re-group after every play and go into a huddle and so it becomes about strategy. I still enjoy it although people think I am brutal.”

Ask him why he so relishes American Football and he replies that he “grew up with violence in America … we were banging – cowboys and Indians, a lot of killing and that stuff. How do you get away from that? We weren’t playing with dolls.”

Stone’s feelings about the US are deeply ambivalent. He is old enough to remember a time in the late 1940s and early 1950s when “everything in America was golden” and part of him still seems to love the country but his mother was French and he talks about the US as a nation now in near terminal decline.

Perhaps surprisingly, his real political hero isn’t JFK. It’s the former President of France, Charles de Gaulle. “He said no to NATO and he said no to America. He understood the dangers of being a satellite country to America. You have no power in Europe. Don’t kid yourself. The EU is just an artificial body that was amazingly stupid in cutting off Russia and cutting off China too now.”

He doesn’t much like Boris Johnson either. “Boris, listen. He’d simply throw you in jail in a second.” He rails against the English for holding Assange in Belmarsh prison.

When he is not on a crusade or unravelling a conspiracy, Stone relaxes through Buddhist meditation. “Moderation in all things,” the man who came up with the phrase “greed is right, greed works” says with no evident sense of irony. He enjoys hanging out with his friends. “I have a nice life. I’m lucky,” he says before quickly adding, “I wish I had been more honoured and respected in my lifetime, but it seems that I took a course that is in conflict with the American Empire.”

Stone’s films have had relatively few strong female characters. Ask if he welcomes the #MeToo movement and the challenging of old gender norms and he gives a typically contrary answer. “It cuts both ways, though. There are reasons for patriarchy through the centuries,” he says. “Tribes tend to have a strong leader. You need strong leaders, but I do see the feminine impulse as being important, especially when situations become too militant. The feminine impulse, I’m talking about the maternal impulse not the Hillary Clinton/Margaret Thatcher version of feminism. They’re men. They’re not women,” he says. “I don’t want women in politics who want to be men. If a woman is a woman, she should be a woman and bring her maternalism. It’s a leavening influence.”

The director deplores the rush to judge historical figures about past misdeeds from a contemporary point of view. “I am conservative in that way… don’t expect to rejudge the entire society based on your new values.”

He met with Harvey Weinstein in Cannes a few years ago to discuss a potential Guantanamo Bay TV series. “At that point, maybe he knew he was on the ropes; he was delightfully charming and humble.” The project was scuppered by the scandal that that engulfed the former Miramax boss, who is now behind bars as a convicted sex offender. Stone’s gripes with Weinstein are less to do with his sexual offences than with the way that he attacked films like Born on the Fourth of July and Saving Private Ryan to boost his own movies.

“The press loved him [Weinstein]. Don’t forget, they loved him in the 1990s,” he says, remembering the disingenuous way in which Weinstein portrayed himself as the underdog taking on the big, bad Hollywood system.

“I think he robbed Cruise of the Oscar, frankly,” Stone huffs at the intensive Weinstein lobbying which saw Daniel Day-Lewis win the Academy Award for Best for My Left Foot, denying Tom Cruise for Born on the Fourth of July in the process.

Stone acknowledges his status in Hollywood has diminished. “All that’s gone. The people have changed,” he says of the days when the studios doted on him and his films were regularly awards contenders. Now, he’ll often finance his work out of Europe. He is developing a new feature film (he won’t say what it is). “Never say die, never say it’s over,” he says of his career.

Stone is based in Los Angeles and also has “a place in New York”. During the pandemic, he still managed to travel to Russia to make his nuclear power/clean energy documentary. “I got my shots over there because the EU is so f***ing stupid,” he says of the of the Europeans’ refusal to recognise the Sputnik vaccine. “It’s ridiculous, part of the political madness of this time.”

Now, he is putting all his energy into his new documentary about nuclear power. He waves away the idea that the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters show what can go wrong – they were accidents.

“Accidents you learn from. If there were not a few crashes, how would you fly?” he says. It’s a line that somehow seems to express his entire philosophy of life.

-Geoffrey Macnab interviews Oliver Stone, The Independent, Jul 15 2021 [x]

[deadmomjokes]

For me, part of being asexual means that I get really, REALLY grouchy about a lot of romance in media. Rather, the obsession with romance, sex, and sexuality in media. I am that person that will roll my eyes and turn off a movie if it looks like it’s turning into some steamy nonsense, and I will never willingly sit through a romcom even if you paid me. Sex scenes? I’m out. Passionate kissing? Peace, I’m going to the kitchen, want anything? Call me back when the actual story gets back on. Ridiculous ‘ooh they have such SEXUAL TENSION and chemistry, let’s see how close we can get to making them kiss and just have them breathe heavily in each others faces to get our audience all bothered’? I will end you all. I HATE when books or movies or shows throw in a romantic or sexy subplot just for the lols, at least what I perceive as the lols. Basically, a romance has to be really super duper well-crafted for me to get behind it and not be just utterly enraged or completely turned off from the story.

(Also please note that when I use the term romance in this context, I’m using it as a catch all for ship-based storylines that, due to our culture’s obsession with sex, usually include or hinge on sex or kissy scenes.)

That being said. When a romance is done well, and I mean really well, I absolutely 100% lose my mind. I feel that mess in my soul.

So with that introduction, allow me to lay out a few of my favorite (and, in some instances, most maddeningly painful) romances/canon ships in media.

(read more because I went off. like I said, I feel this way too deeply when it’s done well.)

Winry Rockbell and Edward Elric in FMA:B. Slow burn, mutual pining, mutual cluelessness, what’s not to love? So soft and tender and funny all at the same time, and the mad respect Ed has for Winry is absolutely delightful. She does her own thing, and he’s totally supportive, just as she is of him. And a happily ever after??? UGH, I can’t, it’s perfect. The most straightforward and least convoluted of my whole list, and it’s comparatively easy to breeze through. FMA:B is great anyhow, so do yourself a favor and go watch it.

Audrey Parker/ Nathan Wuornos in Haven (with major caveats). Caveats first: they went overboard with the sexy stuff in my opinion. It got too smutty for me, but my tolerance for that stuff is super low, and it did still air on TV, so evidently it wasn’t as bad for the target audience as it was for my sex-in-media-repulsed self. I also find the final seasons to get a bit stale and repetitive in terms of them trying to advance the love story narrative (all the plot points for it got addressed in earlier episodes/seasons, so why are we going over it again??). They also have a bit of an issue in some episodes with dragging out conflicts because the characters just won’t talk to each other like adults. But overall, taken as a whole, it hits hard. Again, we have a slow burn, mutual pining dynamic that starts as a genuine platonic friendship, and transforms into a dimension and time defying chosen soulmates love story for the ages. The things they would do to save each other, even if it means they can never be together, just so they have the joy of knowing that their beloved is okay. The tiny ways they take care of each other- Audrey testing Nathan’s coffee to see if it’s too hot, Nathan slowing down so he doesn’t out-pace her, it’s just adorable.

Faramir and Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings BOOKS. This is an interesting one because it happens really quickly and between two minor characters. But Tolkien did this really interesting thing where he established these two characters separately, and then brought them together and played off what we knew about each of them in context of everything else that had happened with the main story, and suddenly it has, as one of my professors would say, “the illusion of depth.” Faramir absolutely falls head over heels for Eowyn but won’t act until she can deal with her own crap and be emotionally available. Eowyn realizes that she was hung up on ideals, illusions, and false dichotomies. Faramir has been through a lot and is looking for peace. Eowyn is looking for who she really is when she realizes she has more than two choices in life. They find healing together, and in the process, find what they were looking for in each other. And all that happens in the space of, like, 4 pages. I LOVE IT.

Sam Carter and Jack O’Neill in Stargate SG1. This one will hurt you to no end. You will hate life. But gosh dang if they aren’t perfect. This is the slowest burn and most mutual pining of all slow burn mutual pining ships to ever grace media. I’m talking 8 seasons of these two sharing feelings but being unable to express it for one reason or another. What are those reasons, you ask? Jack is her superior and respects her too much to put her in that position. No fraternization on the team. Sam has career aspirations, he won’t ruin her life. He’s got his own issues to work through and knows he isn’t emotionally available. Sam is clueless for a while, then when she realizes she has feelings for him but it couldn’t be because of their work dynamic and because he’s still dealing with his own crap, she tries to move on but keeps coming back to the unspoken fact that she still loves him. To the point that she breaks off her own engagement to a great guy because she realizes she was only trying to move on-- and wasn’t successful. They are clearly in deep for each other, and yet they keep making excuses why they can’t say it.

In the whole series, they never officially get together, and I HATE THAT. There are multiple alternate realities and timelines where they are together, and happy, but in the main timeline, they can’t get over themselves, and it hurts so bad because they’re so perfect. Jack knows she’s the smartest person in the room, and he supports her and defends her and listens to and defers to her. He respects her first as an expert, then as a colleague, and then as a woman whom he deeply loves even though he can’t find it in him to love himself. She appreciates his experience and leadership, and trusts him implicitly. She knows she’s got more book smarts, but relies on his judgement and ability to remain calm under pressure. She also knows she can be real with him, and he knows that when she calls him on his BS he better listen. She is his conscience, and he is her backbone. And in between episodes where they’re clearly pining for each other, and even during, they’re really great friends and a great team. I could seriously write an essay on why this ship is both perfect and intensely frustrating, but then again, you could just watch a great and classic series and see what I mean for yourself. (Then you’d also get to meet the perfection that is Teal’c, and watch Daniel Jackson’s transition from Milo Thatch in Space to sassy beefcake demigod who still loves archaeology.)

Beren and Luthien, Tolkien part 2, electric boogaloo. A love so powerful it transcends death, fate, hell and heaven all at once. It’s kind of wild and not what you’d expect if you’ve only read LotR (or only seen the movies), because it’s more a classic fairy tale than anything, but hot dang if it isn’t still one of the most powerful, moving, deeply impactful love stories in all of writing. It’s even a “love at first sight” narrative and I STILL fall hard for it. This story legit moves me to tears every dang time I read it, or even think about it too hard.

It starts as a simple “forbidden love” story, but these two loved each other so much that they defied one of the most powerful kings in all the world at that time (who was also Luthien’s dad, oopsies), defied Satan himself and marched into Hell just for the chance to be together, and then changed the very way the world works forever just so they could stay together and not be parted. Luthien is a total BEAST, while never giving up her gentle, loving, and tender nature. For the love of this man, she defies her father’s wishes and breaks herself out of her own dang tower to go rescue her prince instead of the other way round, she sends Sauron (yeah, he’s here too!) scurrying with his tail between his legs, wrecks his house, and frees all his slaves and prisoners just to try and get to Beren, drags his butt out of heck part 1, then willingly walks into literal, actual Hell with him and proceeds to enchant Satan and all the demons within. Then she gets her bf outta there after he loses his hand, and goes back to face her father unafraid. Basically, Beren undertakes a literally impossible task just for the chance to be with Luthien, but Luthien is the one that makes it happen because she loves him too much to sit around knowing he’s going to die. She’s willing to die with him rather than live without him, but more willing to dare death to come at her and get some because ain’t no way she’s losing him.

Then, at the last, when all should have been their happily ever after, everything goes wrong and she loses her beloved, and instead of mourning forever, she yeets off her mortal coil out of pure “Oh no you didn’t, not after all we went through” just to go stand before the God of Fate and the Dead and plead with him to change the rules of the universe itself just so that she can be with Beren. And he does it, because their love is so strong. Just for them, all of existence is rewritten so that they might never be parted.

And if you don’t think that’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard, consider also: these two crazy kids were so wonderful that the Goodest Boy in all the world, a functionally immortal and super-intelligent dog sent from heaven itself by a literal god, willingly turned on all his masters and spontaneously learned intelligent speech just so he could help them out and be their Good Boy til the bitter end, thus (in Tolkien’s mythos) starting the whole “man’s best friend” thing with dogs. So yeah. And, uh, Tolkien based it on him and his wife, to the point of ripping their first meeting frame-for-frame from real life. It’s too much y’all.

Anyhow, this post is way, way too long, but I was just feeling the need to get that out there. Maybe I’ll have more in the future, but for now, this is what was on my mind. Particularly the last two.

[genius11rare]

Chit Chat 111620   11-16-20

Chitchat 111620 with Jack Michael Jeremys Chair and the disembodied voice of alfredo (no he left after set up immediately , never heard him) id put “keep reading” if i knew how for this sorry

Jack: hi im jack with my friends michael and Spearow the dragon (jeremys not here , theres a spyro … pillow i think on his chair).. So we made the mistake of doing 2 minecrafts backtoback  and it ended like 20 minutes ago then like “oh yeah we have other stuff we need to set up before”… Michael:  yeah this isnt so much a chitchat it is just a chit not really time for a chat. Jack: how about we chit about recapping extralife?  It went really well thank you everyone who watched and contributed, trying to get chat up right now…. Cuz we got Chit trying to get the Chat as well… this is the 4th year in a row we raised over 1 million$ , and were having some auctions for charity. Up for auction: 3D printed gen lock heads , pictures of the Spooky Hour (Gen Notes i thought they were done with that?) , the jon risinger bob ross segment painting , some f*face hats , some wood and glass sculptures (jeremy comes back during around this) … and gratz to jeremy for urinating and coming back *on time*  Jeremy: hey my bathroom is a few steps from here… that whole time was spent peeing Oooohhhh better. Jack: michael , jeremy got anything to say about whats happened recently. Michael: no uh…. Just recovering… Jeremy: oh that was hard to watch michael. Jack: oh i have this picture i posted on twitter of fiona milking gavin…. Spraying milk into his eyes , sounds weird when i phrase it like that see if i can post it. Fiona somehow got both eyes in one shot , none in the mouth (the goal) just eyes. If you don't know the context it looks like hes spraying milk from his head like some kind of anime demon… then the paintballs happened…. Usually with paintballs theyve been going a while and theyve calmed down , that time it was new compressors and we JUST started using them for michael and gavin (Michael: “they” as in the paintballs themselves , theyve calmed down) yeah so that time they still had a lot of OOMPF and it was like getting kicked in the head over and over. Michael: no that's good , kick me in the head all you want. I went second just so i could tell how bad it hurt , so i knew where to hit gavin to make it hurt the most… immediately flipped on it like “he doesnt deserve this” and shot the face (which hurt the least) as much to spare him… i did do a few tummy shots but still. Jack: the crotch was also a good spot cuz of the cockblocker… problem is if you missed they go left or right into your thigh Michael: the thigh and stomach hurt the most … our thighs are black Jeremy: were also doing the vinyl  Jack: oh yeah we reached our goal and putting AH the musical on a vinyl , plus a new song with Fiona ive been working with her trying to get the tone and everything (Gen notes im gonna guess its there so Still in the Air isnt…) … Jeremy wanna say what you offered up? Jeremy: yeah were doing the AH rap version 2 (Gen notes either A. a version with the rest of  “The B Team” to have verses , or B. redoing it without HIM) , been working on a beat for it … ive written one verse mine so far (Gen notes , think its option B then) but i feel like its a little TOO mean so i may dial it back down a bit … the plan is shorter verses but more people , so hopefully Myself , michael gavin , Jack , Fiona , the twins , Matt , Lindsay and MAYBE a verse where the  support room jump in one bar at a time , still in the works. Jack: yeah you guys DEMOLISHED goals, chads daughter she is so sweet… she saved up chore money and wanted to donate it all of her own , she wasn't convinced to she just wanted to donate 20$ which just broke everyone - well chad and i , caiti held it together, so we asked the audience to match her 20$...  over the course of 10 minutes that 20$ became 65000$... we broke extralife we legit broke their intake of donations. We also had 2 people there who if we needed to hand something to someone wed give it to them , theyd “baptize” it as covid precaution then give it to whoever. Michael: except cloth they were like “you touch cloth you own it” … was like i could walk away with a lot of things right here , this towel? This towels done (Jack: you just going around grabbing curtains) … (start paraphrasing)  we always want extralife to be like the best show ever cuz its for a good cause , but then this year we were like “how would we even pull it off”... i don't think 2020 extralife couldve gone better given everything (end paraphrasing) “fave extralife 2020 moment” Jack: my thing… Chad James is a freaking beast and towards the end the last segment we did was called the sweet and sour hour where caiti would do something nice and chad would get punished … it ended up getting stacked so we started doing some at once. At one point Chad is on the pummelhorse which is an elastic band that hits you in the undercarriage , chelsea was there with a leg wax remover , then we had cody from code 4 which is our compliance officer with hand sanitizer. So Blaine pummelhorses chad , chelsea leg waxes him and then cody sprays him with the antiseptic (michael: in his eyes… Gen Notes i mean hes probably kidding but idk it seems possible) … chads on the pummelhorse weeping and Blaines ALREADY spinning the wheel. Michael: its funny , theres so much stuff that happened and not just the segments i was there for , but a simple delight getting chad to eat that whole pickle … he was just saying “i cant do it ill throw up” and i just kept repeating “youu can dooooo iit...”... gave me some enjoyment since i was there basically to get slapped around , but in between i made chad eat a pickle Jack: so jeremy you have a fave moment? I know you were there for the solo stream section - oh i forgot about DJ JAAWNK how could i that was a blast Jeremy: yeah i was listening to most of the solo streamer section , i know Kdin had a thing where she gathered a bunch of people to do among us and it was fun…. For a certain donation amount they would just launch john mace into space , theyd just call a meeting and get him… Matt joined me playing spyro and i had the Gold Chonky spyro mods on , and if people donated enough wed spin a wheel that me or him would have to do.. We had to spin it like 15 times , and alot of them were “have to hold the controller upsidedown” which is a monstrosity… and twice it was me put a blindfold on and matt would have to direct me through the level. I panicked A LOT cuz you could HEAR the enemies shooting at and coming at you   but i didn't know where … it was like a live Matt and Jeremy do something - your welcome sarah! (Michael: you did do something… Spearow… Spearowmint gum)  so first were doing SPiderman Miles Morales PS4 edition cuz i don't have a PS5! Everyones talking about how they're sold out so the most ive done was when i was shopping for ovens i was like “lemme peruse the playstation aisle” didn't see one and went guess im not getting one… Jack: are they even selling them in person or is it just online… Michael: i know game stop is selling them , they're sold out but i know they were selling them.... Think most stores waiting for black friday to get them in store… i want one but im not going to a store on black friday , ill play fall guys if i want to get trampled Jack: oh yeah someone mentioned the ChungeScwa heist is coming we reached that goal Michael: fiona said i could be there, i asked can i help and she said something like “plz help , cuz otherwise it wont happen.” ive also offered doing a 50 turn mario party even though it wasn't a goal cuz we didn't even do last years so now wed owe 2 for 2021 assuming we can make that happen. Jack: cant you do a 100 turn mario party is that a thing? Michael: no 50 is the most , ive contemplated maybe we combine them into one game and scores carry over but it might be upsetting if im ahead by 9 stars after 50 turns and then it just becomes a 4 hour victory lap so its probably better to do 2 of them… we were about to do one in april we were planning on shooting it in april but then SOMETHING came up idk what it was … it just kept coming up for 7 months… Jeremy: and they don't stop coming and they don't stop coming… oh if were going to show my PS4 screen lemme show how much a  loser i am…. Jack: you got a platinum in bug snax?!?!? Jeremy: yuuuppppp!!!

[jflashandclash]

Tales from Mount Othrys

Alabaster: The Delicate Dance of Chance II

 Author’s note: Are you ready for fluff??? ALL THE FLUFF?! And some angst—BUT MOSTLY FLUFF!?

              Alabaster didn’t remember much about getting off the stage. He did remember shaking so violently that he feared missing a step on the side stairs. When the crowd swarmed them, he was vaguely aware of Pax warding them off and navigating them through the mass of people.

           Axel made some announcement about taking a girl for the first dance and snatched the hand of Charlie—their five year old mascot—who giggled with glee. This caused an uproar—both that Axel was dancing and that he’d picked Charlie as his first partner. Alabaster could practically hear Lucille’s future squeals about how cute it was.

           But, that’s all he could recollect. There was a blank spot, where Alabaster must have shut down from the humiliation and horror of being on stage without any warning. Coherence came when Pax shoved Alabaster to the punch table.

           With a few comments that Alabaster didn’t hear, Pax diverted the remaining admirers. Several monsters and campers were still glancing their way, and a few of his siblings waved at him enthusiastically. But, this was manageable. This was distant.

           Pax shoved a plastic cup of punch into Alabaster’s trembling hand. His touch lingered over Alabaster’s fingers for a moment, likely noticing the quiver. Pax went on his tiptoes to whisper in Alabaster’s ear, as quiet as he could while still being heard over the music. “Your Mist show was amazing.”

           Alabaster jerked back.

           He wanted to hit Pax. Though, he knew it was misdirected anger. Who he should be hitting was Matthias or Jack, who likely planned the grand entrance on stage. Or—

           The music increased in volume, encouraging shouts of delirium. Monsters and campers tangled on the dance floor. Alabaster had never been to a school dance, but this looked like the nightmare version of what he assumed one would be. They were in a gymnasium with a stage on one end. Tables were scattered along the walls for food, drink and loitering. The back had interactive games, like Pin the Sword in the Demigod: Camp Half-Blood Edition. The center was reserved for dancing.

           And, in the middle of that dance floor was Axel Pax, bowing to a thrilled, giggling five-year-old. He handed Charlie off to Chris (likely with strict instructions to escort her off the dance floor, least she be crushed by mingling Cyclopes). Then he turned a smile to Lucille. With the smooth demeanor of a vampiric count, he transferred into the next dance. No one was going to say no to the attractive, typically reserved, stoic and heroic character.

           The reserved, stoic and heroic character that caused that nonsense on stage. While Alabaster wouldn’t have been up there if it wasn’t for Jack or Matthias, Axel had forced him into panicked improvisation and showmanship.

           “I must disgrace Axel Pax,” he growled.

           Pax startled. Over the edge of his plastic cup, he said, “I’m not sure what maniacal soliloquy you had internally, but the rest of the audience is still confused.”

           Alabaster snorted. “I’m going to punish your brother. Maybe I can tell Lucille to spread the word that he’s looking for a male partner.”

           Pax laughed. He set his cup back on the table and drummed his fingers beside it. “Oh, dancing with boys won’t bother him.”

           Axel paused twirling Lucille in front of her girlfriend, Echidna. Echidna wasn’t the daughter of Summanus’ (the god of nocturnal thunder’s) real name, but Pax’s nickname caught because of her prickly personality. Despite this, when Axel offered, and Lucille shoved Echidna towards him, she begrudgingly accepted the dance. She shot a quick glance at Charlie. This was incredible progress—she couldn’t get within ten feet of men a year ago or be separated from Charlie for more than a few seconds.

           Alabaster tore his eyes from Axel and examined Pax skeptically. From what he’d seen, Axel had all the traits, and the cultural background, to be homophobic.

           The thirteen-year-old shrugged. “This isn’t exactly a no dancing with people wearing the same underwear kinda place.”

           A preliminary glance around proved there were girls dancing with girls and boys dancing with boys. It was with such commonality that the gesture seemed to mean nothing about their inclination. Alabaster wasn’t sure how that worked here, since that would have been a social taboo in his Cotillion classes.

           Pax’s smile became distant and sad as he watched Axel save Echinda from tripping all over herself. Pax leaned against the drink table. “Besides, between the circus and our sister, he had to learn not to care. She was a crossdresser and made sure we were comfortable with all sorts of people.”

           Opening up twice in one night, Alabaster mused. They hardly spoke of their siblings, other than that Pax missed them. Their near death experience must have made Pax feel more relaxed around Alabaster. The younger boy seemed to have something on his mind recently. Alabaster often caught Pax zoning out in the laboratory, staring at Alabaster’s sleeve or spell book. Alabaster had wondered if it was for a prank.

           The smile on Pax’s lips quirked into a smirk. His eyes focused back on the present. “Axel doesn’t favor dancing with boys though, unlike me,” he said, giving Alabaster a wink.

           Alabaster snorted. “Stop messing around.”

           Pax looked away and popped his cheeks. He straightened his posture, released the table, and turned towards Alabaster. “I want to have fun at this party. Your whole vengeance on my brother for ambiguous reasons—”

           “Humiliating me—”

           “--that’s villainy and great and stuff, but I don’t want you on it all night. You’ve got his weakest link right here.” Pax pointed both his thumbs at himself. “But I’m not going to help you brainstorm ideas unless you really try to have fun tonight. Now let’s go stuff our faces with Nachos and show Morpheus how to really dance.”

           Alabaster stared at him. “We have two different definitions of ‘fun.’ The most probable outcome to incur enjoyment is seeking vengeance.”

           Pax pouted. He glanced down the refreshments table. “You’re my babysitter. I going to make a  bee line to the first nut-based desert I see and shove it into my mouth if we don’t go play on Matthias’ Wii , and it’ll be your fault.”

           “I won’t save you from anaphylactic shock if you do that,” Alabaster said. He frowned. Pax would be integral to bringing Axel down. And they were stuck here for at least another hour-and-a-half.

           “What’s the best game on Matthias’ Wii ?” Alabaster asked.

             ***

             Alabaster wanted to complain about Mario Party’s reliance on a random number generator and how it devalued the skill level of the player, but that would require him to admit he relied on that random number generator to win. When playing against actual gamers like Matthias and Chris, he knew there would be little hope in him winning in something like Super Smash or Tekken.

           Out of the games they played, his favorite was poker. All magic was legal. He won Pax ten Reese’s Sticks before Prometheus came over and threatened his reigning championship. Alabaster’s “pallor tricks” didn’t seem to work as well on the Titan and Prometheus’s bluffing skills were godly. Well, titanly.

           Pax decided Prometheus’s impending win meant he needed to eat all of his candy at once, something Alabaster suspected he’d regret in about ten minutes.

           Once the Cyclops bouncer wrestled the last six Reese’s Sticks from Pax, he hopped to Alabaster’s side. His brown and hazel eyes twinkled while he rubbed the chocolate and peanut butter off his chin.

           Alabaster didn’t realize he’d been smirking with each his wins. Between Pax’s excitement and cheering and Alabaster’s strategizing, he’d forgotten where they were.

           Pax snagged Alabaster’s sleeve. “Come on!” he cried before Prometheus could gloat. The tuxedo-wearing Titan spread his long, thin fingers over the cards as Pax dragged Alabaster away from the table.

           Once they stumbled from the game sector, Pax stopped short. He gave Alabaster a huge grin, pulling up his shirt to reveal two Reese’s Sticks hidden along his beltline.

           Alabaster snorted. “I’m surprised you didn’t steal more.”

           Pax winked and dropped his shirt. “We could go back for round two later. For now…” He took a few steps further onto the dance floor, tugging Alabaster’s sleeve again.

           Alabaster’s tranquility shattered. He stared at Pax, listening to the thud of the subwoofer and watching the mass of bodies moving behind the Belizean boy.

           Alabaster hadn’t realized it, and he would never admit to it, but he’d been having fun. At the thought of merging into that flowing blob of people, monsters, sweat, and social anxiety, fun evaporated. Cold sweat formed on his brow.

           “No,” he said, yanking his arm back from Pax.

           The younger boy’s pout returned. “I’m going to make you a shirt that says that.”[1]

           They stood there, others swirling around them. Someone bumped their shoulders while running by, shouting, “Don’t be lame and have no shame! Warlock, creep out of your lair, dance, and have fun!”

           His face went hot with humiliation. When Alabaster raised his wrist to check the time, he found his fist clenched. An hour had passed while they were playing games. Had the passerbyer’s mockery not bothered him so much, he might have marveled over how fast the first hour went. He assumed it would be agonizing.

           But, he could tell the next hour would be much worse. He thought about his laboratory and how much he could get done while everyone else was out. After the Roman attack, everyone should have been working to move and restore the building, not throwing a party “in their honor.”

           “This is just a thinly veiled excuse for everyone to feel good about acting like idiots,” Alabaster said. “And a waste of time.”

           Alabaster couldn’t remember how Pax got him to play along with this stupid party. Then, it came back: Axel forcing him into showmanship. The humiliation turned to anger. He didn’t need the younger Pax brother to concoct something against Axel. “I’m heading back to camp,” Alabaster said.

           He turned to leave. Pax frantically grabbed his arm. “Wait!” Pax shouted. “Wait—we were having—you’re my babysitter!  I’ll choke on tree nuts and get kidnapped by bad guys if you’re not around!”

           Considering Pax’s ward, Jack, was a schizophrenic with a history of attacking his family, Alabaster thought his concept of “bad guys” was a bit skewed.

           Alabaster scowled. “Ajax, you’re thirteen. You’re too old for a babysitter. Grow up.”  

           Pax’s eyes widened. The rims reddened. He blinked rapidly and looked away. “We don’t have to dance,” he whispered.

           Alabaster yanked his arm back again. “This isn’t dancing. This isn’t music. This is a group of unskilled buskers following a formula to produce ‘musical’ garbage because people don’t know how to express their hormones without it.”

           Shock wove their mouths shut.

           Musical garbage.

           Someone else had said that around Alabaster. He remembered sitting in the back of the family’s Mercedes Bends, visiting his father in the hospital.  The chauffer cheerfully turned on music for them. His grandfather fired the chauffer, saying what Alabaster had said: that this type of music was a cheap replica of what real musicians could create.

           Just like his grandfather thought Alabaster’s magic was a cheap replica of science that couldn’t save his father.

           Alabaster couldn’t believe he’d quoted that horrible man verbatim.

           At the “buskers” comment, Pax flinched. Although they’d never told Alabaster directly, Alabaster had guessed that Axel and Pax busked, or illegally street preformed, to get by before Camp Othrys. And Alabaster just used it as an insult.

           “Ajax,” Alabaster unfroze his tongue, “I’m sorr—”

           Pax turned and bolted into the mass of dancers, towards the stage. A couple nearby exchanged a confused glance at his passing and looked over at Alabaster.

           “Ajax!” Alabaster called. Although every cell in his nervous system wanted to reel backwards, he shoved past the couple to go after his friend.

           After taking ten steps forward, Alabaster realized that finding Pax would be impossible. There were too many people, too much movement, and Pax was too small and conniving. Considering how many monsters and demigods were over six feet tall, the five-foot-nothing demigod could vanish.

           This was irrational. Alabaster shouldn’t worry. Pax was in a safe environment, surrounded by friends, and didn’t actually need a babysitter. They would meet back up later, after both of them had time to let off some steam, and Alabaster could explain that he didn’t mean what he said and that Alabaster had only said those words because he… because he…

           Is so incompetent at relaxing, I couldn’t rationally explain my anxiety before snapping.

           Alabaster didn’t want to wait to check up on Pax. He despised the thought of making someone feel the way his grandfather used to make him feel. Worse for Pax: what if his and Axel’s father didn’t approve of their street performance? Alabaster didn’t know what nerves he’d struck, and not knowing meant he couldn’t mentally prepare for what damage he’d done.

           There were too many people, too close. The music had grown louder as Alabaster made his way towards the stage. The subwoofer rattled him internally. Alabaster felt clammy. With all the laughter and joy whirling around him, he felt isolated and sick. Especially with the stares of confusion at his rushed passing.

           A sense of hopelessness threatened to overwhelm him when the music quieted.

           With the weirdest transition he’d ever heard, the thud of electronic wound down, like the music itself was dying. The DJ, a dark-haired Titaness wearing a modernized toga-dress, cleared her throat in the echo of the mic. The Eldest muse—Mnemosyne’s voice was silky. “Ladies and Gentlemen, Monsters and Ghouls, we have our first good request of the night!”

           Pax withdrew from the raised DJ booth and hopped back to the floor, only three yards away.

           After the chime of bells, the calming sound of a stringed orchestra flooded the speakers, soon accompanied by a wind instrument—probably a flute.  

           Several demigods groaned. One or two whined. Alabaster was horrified at what Pax had done to the rest of the party’s occupants and whether or not Mnemosyne had been mocking him.

           Then, all the monsters cheered.

           “I love the oldies!” Dr. Thorn, their local manticore, exclaimed. He ejected two spikes into the air in celebration, grabbed a Scythian dracaena, and began the elegant twirl of the waltz. Alabaster didn’t want to know where those spikes would land.[2]

           Alabaster would hardly call Tchaikovsky an “oldie” but he marveled that these monsters were eternal and their concept of time differed from their own.

           While several half-bloods exited the dance floor, a flood of monsters entered. Jack dragged a rather inebriated-looking Luke out to spin with him. Chris and Matthias hopped by, paused, grabbed hold of each other with mock-serious expresses on their faces, and began a goofy, sloppy shamble.[3] Prometheus ruffled Pax’s hair and said, “Good choice,” before bowing to Mnemosyne.

           Their DJ grinned, set her headphones to the side of the sound table, and hopped down from the booth.

            In an empty space of floor, Lucille giggled. She kicked off her high heels, hopped up to her toes, and began to dance point, her flowy skirt mimicking the motions of a ballerina’s tutu.

           Near the food tables, where most of the confused demigods had gone to stand, Axel bowed to Mercedes, offering their Spymaster his hand. Mercedes tucked her embroidered hijab tighter against her chin. She gave Axel a coy smile and flicked him off with her other hand.

           Axel must have just finished dancing with Lou Ellen. She stood beside Mercedes, still bright red in the face from the dance. Alabaster was already annoyed with the inevitable week of Lou Ellen’s squealing. She glanced at Mercedes, glared at the older girl—from jealousy or aghast at Mercedes’ refusal, Alabaster couldn’t care to tell—and shoved her forward, hard.

           Mercedes stumbled forward into Axel’s arms, adding a second forced dance to Axel’s count for the night.

           With all the commotion around them, Alabaster approached Pax. He paused a foot away from him. “Why’d you pick this song?” he asked.

           Pax rubbed his face against his forearm, sniffling back the last of his choked tears. “You—you play it a lot when you think other people aren’t around.”

           Alabaster unclenched his fist. “It was my grandmother’s favorite scene from Swan Lake.” One of his favorite memories: when she was alive, she would hum along as she stained glass in the piano room. His grandfather hated that she used the room like that, but she claimed it had the best lighting.

           “If you were going to leave, I wanted to make sure you at least liked the last song playing before you left,” Pax said. He looked away, hugging himself.

           All the tension eased out of Alabaster. He sighed and wasn’t sure if he was more relieved that Pax had stopped crying or annoyed that Pax had beat him—Alabaster couldn’t leave with such a considerate act.

           “How many people know how to waltz here, you think? That aren’t monsters, I mean. It might be hard to find a partner,” Alabaster said.

           Pax took a step closer. He puffed up his cheeks, popped them, then quietly said, “I know how to waltz.” He offered a trembling hand out, palm down in the female partner position, to Alabaster.

           Alabaster stared. Slowly, he glanced to where Jack and Luke were dancing and Chris and Matthias were… he refused to call that a dance, but awkwardly shambling. It wouldn’t be too weird, right? Everyone knew Luke was a ladies’ man, and Jack and Flynn were a “thing,” and Chris and Matthias were just joking…

            And Lucille, after all, was doing a ballet pas seul with a cheering circle around her like she was break dancing.

           Alabaster exhaled and took Pax’s hand. He slipped his other hand under Pax’s arm, and positioned it on Pax’s shoulder blade. Pax violently shook as he lowered his free arm atop Alabaster’s. Pax was the perfect height for this, being a foot shorter than Alabaster.

           That busker comment must have stung Pax worse than Alabaster thought. To have him shaking like this? He frowned, taking a slow step forward with his left foot. He expected Pax to stumble and mix up his footing. Instead, Pax flawlessly stepped back with his right foot.

           They started with a basic box step. He wasn’t sure how much Pax would remember from his Cotillion classes or how easily Pax would be able to reverse the footwork to follow instead of lead. When Alabaster added in a rotation to their box step, and then lifted his elbow and their hands to properly shape their posture, Pax continued perfectly. When Alabaster began to go up on his toes for the “2 and 3” count of the waltz, then down onto his heels for the “1,” to give the rise and fall effect of the dance, Pax mirrored the footwork. By the time Alabaster added in the swing and sway to make the dance have a rolling effect—raising his rib cage when they went to the side, or tilting his body when they went forward or back—his curiosity had peaked.

           “You know how to follow really well,” Alabaster observed.

           The fluid and repetitive movement of the dance calmed Alabaster. This was a familiar environment. The only unusual part was dancing with a boy. Though… he supposed he’d danced with his male instructor when he was learning.

           Pax had stopped shaking. Now that they were in a rhythm, Alabaster could glance down to see if Pax still had tears in his eyes.

           The younger boy was staring at Alabaster’s collar—the only part of posture he wasn’t doing correctly. His cheeks were flushed with the movement and, likely, his prior tantrum. A little grin touched his lips at Alabaster’s comment. “Thanks. You’re really good at leading.”            Alabaster raised an eyebrow at him. He’d been expecting some stupid, witty retort.

           Pax glanced up. His blush deepened and his eyes shot back down to Alabaster’s collar. “Oh! Um—Lapis and I—my sister—we used to switch places on our Cotillion teacher. Axel, Hiro, and Kouta would play along, altering our names and pronouns to fit according to the day. The instructor never knew if which one of us was a guy or a girl, and she was too scared of getting in trouble for mixing it up to ask Dad. As long as we learned both parts, she didn’t care.”

           That sounded exactly like something the Pax brothers would do.

           Examining Pax’s facial structure, Alabaster could see how the instructor could mistake Pax for a girl. He had all the features to make a convincing crossdresser: with Pax’s wild, raven hair spilling all over his shoulders, his rounded face, button nose, wide eyes, squishy cheeks, and full lips. He was a little too muscular to pass for the average woman, but Alabaster had seen some ripped female demigods and wouldn’t be shocked if Pax’s sister—Lapis?—were similar.

           With the baggy, punk-style jacket he wore, Alabaster could easily imagine Pax as some flat-chested girl half-drowned in her friend’s borrowed clothing.

           And with the thought, Alabaster felt his chest constrict. For some reason, he felt horrendously uncomfortable.

           Alabaster spun Pax out for an underarm turn.

           Nothing would change if Pax were a girl. Then, she would just be Axel’s annoying little sister, instead of an annoying little brother—one that followed Alabaster around the laboratory, cheered when he succeeded in one of his experiments, made him hand-crafted presents, and was always ready with a goofy, lame joke to try to make him laugh.

           Why couldn’t Alabaster shake the idea that something would be different?

           The song would come to an end soon. Alabaster recognized the crescendo. He hadn’t realized until then that they’d danced through two songs—now it was the Waltz of the Snowflakes. Mnemosyne must have a Tchaikovsky Waltz playlist.

           Although the last two songs had been relaxing, Alabaster was eager for the end. Something felt off and he didn’t know why. It wasn’t the same anxiety as before. No, he’d almost forgotten about the others—

           Alabaster glanced around, finding Jack had stopped dancing to watch them.

           Alabaster released Pax’s hand and took a step back half-a-second sooner than he should have according to the music. Pax stumbled, not ready to stop following.

           That goofy smile on Pax’s face widened. “It’s okay. I also get distracted thinking about life, the universe, and everything, and forget how to end a dance.”

           “Nice song choice, Ajax,” someone said beside them.

           Alabaster jumped, having forgotten how many people were around them.

           Mnemosyne climbed back into her DJ booth. The throb of electronic and modern pop thudded back into the gym. Bored demigods cheered. Dancing monsters grumbled.  

           Axel stood near them, one hand still on Mercedes’ shoulder blade. Although he’d lowered their hands from the dance, his other hand still held hers. He continued talking to Pax, giving Mercedes a half-smirk that would have made half the girls in the gym faint. “You helped me find the best dance partner in Camp Othrys,” he said.

           Mercedes did not look amused. Her expression was as deadpan as ever. A lock of curly black hair had escaped the corner of her embroidered fabric. He had to wonder if Lucille forced her into some makeup. Mercedes typically wore the simplest, plainest, and most practical clothing she could, without make up or hair accessories other than her veil.

           “Pax One,” she said to the older of the two, “you found a temporary victim of circumstance that is now going to ruin Matthias’ life in Tekken. If you’ll excuse me.” She bowed her head, as though about to vanish into shadow after a spy mission. For a split second, he thought she frowned at Pax.

           “Uh-hu,” Axel said. As soon as she removed her hands, he took a step after her. “If I win a round of Tekken against you, I win another dance.”

           Pax stared at his older brother. “Axel, you’re awesome and everything, but you’re going to get obliterated.”

           Mercedes’ head didn’t move as her eyes shifted between the two brothers. “Listen to Pax Two. He is wise… unless you’re willing to gamble information on this game.”

           The offer sounded like a threat.

           Alabaster saw a minor opportunity unfolding.

           “If you’re going to do that, you should keep Tran around,” Alabaster suggested, smirking at Axel. “Least someone consider lying.”[4]

           Mercedes let a tiny smile slip. “The child of Aletheia, Goddess of Truth. Thanks, Torrington.” She nodded her appreciation. “Are you feeling lucky, Pax One?”

           Axel shot Alabaster a glare.

           At least he’d successfully started his revenge on the older Mayan.

           Pax tugged on Alabaster’s sleeve. “We can worry about Axel’s downfall later. Let’s get some punch and go for a walk!”

           “My downfall--?”

           “Come on!”

 ***

In two weeks (hopefully) are you ready for MORE FLUFF!?! …. And angst. AND MORE FL—oh, oh, next week is more on the angst side. *ehem* I see.

I hope you guys enjoyed! Thank you for reading :D

***

Footnotes:

[1] And thus, Grumpy Cat was born.

[2] Technically, our spiky friend should be dead by now, but I didn’t know that when I originally wrote this scene and I enjoy having random spikes reigning on this parade.

Also, this was written to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake Suite, Op. 20a, TH 219: Act 1: Waltz.

[3] Okay, I’ll finally admit it, my representation of Chris and Matthias’s whole character are based off family members. <3 you guys.

[4] Call out to my home boy, VCRx.

[hollenka99]

The Vlogger

Summary: With no choice but to keep going, Chase meets others like him and starts his second chance at life with them. 

Warnings: Suicide, alcoholism, self deprecation, depression

@egopocalypse

As soon as Chase Brody pulls the trigger, he regrets it. Not because the rapid loss of blood is dizzying or he knows he may have something to live for. Instead, he rethinks things due to the pain. There's a hole in his skull, a hole he put there himself. If he knew he'd remain conscious, he wouldn't have bothered with the gun. So he's stuck there on the ground, the camera crew hovering uncertainly as an ambulance is called. The thing is, he doesn't want to actually die, doesn't want his children to grow up without their dad. He just wants a way out. No matter what he does, he can never fix the situation at home. Now Stacy was taking them from him. If he won't get to watch them grow up then it should be because he made it impossible, not Stacy. He believes that was the logic that got him in this situation. It was a stupid piece of logic. If the ambulance doesn't hurry up, he won't have much longer to dwell on it. For fuck's sake, why couldn't it have been instant? He can't even shoot himself properly. Now is not the moment to admit that may actually be a good thing. He finds himself waking in a hospital bed. As sure of his abilities as he is stern, Chase doesn't know what to make of the German doctor attending to him. The guy's bedside manner could do with slight improvement at times. However, Chase can't deny he's helpful when he needs to be. Chase find his left arm doesn't work as it used to. Apparently, he suffered damage to his premotor cortex. He won't be able to perform complex actions with that arm, whatever the hell 'complex actions' meant. Physical therapy is advised. He's too preoccupied by the fact he wrecked part of his brain to listen too intensely. That hadn't been in his list of things he'd hoped to achieve. Well, he supposes he had wanted to mess things up in that area of his body. But... the fatal kind. Not that he really knows what he wants in general. Except probably stopping the shitshow that was commonly referred to as his life from plaguing him further. He wants Stacy. And the kids. He wants to be the father and husband of a happy family. He wants to be happy himself. Dr Schneeplestein provides him with an address after he lets it slip he has nowhere to go after being released. It's where the doctor's friends live. They are always open to welcoming a new inhabitant. Chase's isn't convinced he should bother. Schneeplestein suggests he should at least think about it. Well, it's not like he has anywhere else to go. He might as well give these people a chance. Jack is really friendly once he arrives at the house. After checking Chase was aware of Sean, he calls someone named Marvin to the living room. Marvin is clearly a very cold person. The welcome he delivers is the opposite of Jack's. One had made him feel like he was welcome, the other seemed to want him gone immediately. Well fuck you too, Marvin. Despite being quiet and somewhat of a loner, at least Angus didn't seem too bad. Chase doesn't know how to react when Jack directs him to a private clinic within the building. He's even more at a loss for words when Dr Schneeplestein is there, greeting him. Okay, yeah, he gets it. While the doctor may not live in the building, he was an ego himself. Chase had noticed the similarity in appearance when it came to the guys here. Over the coming days, Schneeplestein checks up on him. He promises it is okay to call him Henrik if wants. Their discussions develop into a mix of formal medical stuff and informal getting to know each other better. Schneep reveals he is himself a father of three. He suggests Chase talk a little bit about himself. Okay. Well, his name was Chase Brody. He ran a YouTube channel called Bro Average where he performed trickshots. Occasionally well rehearsed stunts too. He had been married to a woman called Stacy. However, she had just announced she wanted a divorce. She was planning to take full custody of their two children. Their names are- they are... Wait, why couldn't he remember their names? Did the incident take some of his memories? Shit, don't tell him he's fucked up his memories as well as his arm. But he's been thinking about the situation since waking up, here and at the hospital. Wait, no, he was just thinking of them as 'the kids'. Why the hell hadn't he noticed before now? He was a bad father, just like Stacy had- "Chase?" "They're my children, how can I not remember their names?" "I did not either." The doctor reassures him. "Maybe talk to Jack, he is good with names. Helped me remember." He does indeed speak to Jack. They reach Noah without too much issue. It takes several names to get there, sure, but his son's name is fairly common. His daughter though... this was taking forever. Even Jack sounds like he's losing hope as the suggestion of Daisy is accompanied by a sigh. Chase is so thankful this is the one to stir something within him. Encouraging Jack to keep on the plant-based route hits his helper with a second wind. A handful of names later, they finally reach their destination of Willow. Willow and Noah. He remembers now. He can see a 4 year old girl with dark hair who loved mint choc chip ice cream. Then there was her 3 year old brother who loved to chat about anything and everything. They may not have been born at the right time in their parents' lives but he by no means loved them any less because of that. Not everyone has memories of rocking their daughter to sleep while studying. He'd love to hold those two again. As the days and weeks go by, Marvin remains distant. Chase approaches Jack, needing to know what the hell the magician's deal was. He learns there had been another ego, a 16 year old superhero who'd arrived in July. At the beginning of November, Jackie had slipped out to clear his head. Suffice to say, he was yet to return home. Marvin and Jackie had been becoming close friends at the time of his disappearance. He was simply grieving more noticeably than Jack. Jack also takes this opportunity to discuss a second mystery ego. Antisepticeye was very dangerous, not to mention unpredictable. Jack had caught glimpses of him prior to his official appearances on the channel in October. Anti was the one behind Jack's throat scar. Understandably, he'd rather not go into that day. What was important was that Chase did his best to stay safe from Anti, now that he was aware of him. Anti had attempted to kill Jack, abducted Jackie and recently, hijacked Sean's PAX panel entrance reel to threaten the audience. If Chase ever found himself in Anti's sights, run. Drop anything non-essential that may slow him down and get the hell out of there. Eventually the interactions that seem forced melt into something nicer. It's still clear the memory of Jackie will remain superior to him. However, it was good to be more than tolerated by Marvin. Things are easier like this. As it turns out, the magician is actually a pretty cool dude. He's really into plants and able to do a lot of cool stuff with his magic. Please keep everything made of iron away from him though. The first time he bought alcohol, he pretended the intention was innocuous. He'd had a shitty few months. It would just be to take the edge off a bit. Better to get a little tipsy than try to permanently escape again. 'A little tipsy' soon becomes stumbling to bed drunk. Which inevitably results in painfully frequent hangovers. It's a good thing he doesn't have to save money for rent or anything. He can keep this habit going for longer. Of course, this behavioural change doesn't go unnoticed. Jack encourages him to limit himself to a bottle a day, if he needs to drink at all. He understands and appreciates his concern. However, it wasn't exactly his place to dictate what Chase could and couldn't do. This talk still has an effect on his drinking habits. He gets better at hiding his stash. The best thing about the bedrooms in this house were that they changed to fit the needs of the ego whose bedroom it was. This in turn meant he had a mini fridge without asking for it aloud. Jack and Marvin grow more desperate with trying to get through with him. There are weeks were he does genuinely attempt to make an effort to improve. Those attempts don't usually go well. At least there are two people cheering him on. Stacy's even been more approachable about the split during the past month or so, which was pleasant. She still wants full custody though. Especially because she's aware of his issue with alcohol seemingly developing into something likely diagnosable as alcoholism. That would be motivation enough to get him to stop. It only makes him feel worse when he gives in to temptation. At the end of July, Jack invites him and Marvin to marathon the Harry Potter films. He's had an argument with Sean and needs the distraction. Following the end of the second film, Marvin leaves for a moment to take a bathroom break. He turns to his friend on the other end of the sofa. "I-" A pause to question whether he should even bother with this line of conversation. "Jack, I don't get you, dude." "Uh, okay. Where did this come from?" "I don't know. I just don't get why you bother with Sean. You always seem to be at each other's throats." "Why did you try to hang on to your relationship with Stacy for so long?" "Hey, don't bring her into this." "Well?" Chase gives the most exaggerated shrug he can muster before crossing his arms, curling into himself on the sofa as he does so. The best Jack is getting out of him is a mumble. "Dunno. Still love her. Kids." "Yeah, well, Sean and I have quite a history ourselves. What can I say? We can't really go our separate ways by this point. He's an asshole but I still love him despite it. It's... it's complicated. We've known each other since we were kids. We were there for each other back then and we are still down to hang out now. I mean, that's what happened today. He's a busy dude and I don't expect him to drop everything for me. Yet we still make time for each other." Jack pauses to pick up his glass. "Want me to top you up before we start Prisoner of Azkaban?" "Jack." "I was made to be his friend. I can't... not be. Like I said, it's complicated. So, top up?" Days later, he spots Jack stumbling towards where Henrik was privately working on something. When he asks if his friend is feeling well, Jack waves him off, excusing it as 'probably nothing serious'. The words sound strained, as if he's attempting to keep his lunch in. Chase would call him out on the blatant understatement, were it not obvious Jack didn't want the fuss. The first clue he gets is Marvin leaving his room to hover restlessly in the corridor. The magician murmurs about something in the air feeling off. Chase suggests opening a window to aid air circulation, only for Marvin to snap that it wasn't like that. Besides, it was August and fairly warm. Most windows were already open. The second is Henrik being heard loudly speaking his surname. It doesn't sound right, almost like he's not the one to have said it. Marvin freezes at this. This has clearly shaken him for some unknown reason. As rapidly as the noise had stopped Marvin in his tracks does it cause him to pivot and march in the direction of where Schneep is working. The final hint of what is unfolding is Marvin's desperation. He's at the door to the med bay, pounding it with any spell he can think of. Chase rams into it whenever he is sure he isn't at risk of being unintentionally hit. They cry out to Henrik and swear they're coming to help. The locked door receives a series of abuse in a matter of minutes. The door finally gives. Marvin blocks his view temporarily but he sees regardless. There are too many wires and machines for him to comprehend they're all attached to one person. If he'd known, he would have swapped places with Jack in a heartbeat. Henrik is nowhere to be found. Chase's first encounter with Anti has robbed him of two of his good friends. His and Marvin's lifestyles change immediately. Marvin rarely has time to practice magic. Chase, similarly, puts Bro Average to one side. They both focus on providing Jack with the best care their inexperience can form. They are way in over their heads with this. However, Jack remains alive. They must be doing something vaguely correct. The 17 year old in the stolen outfit appears at their door a month on. Chase originally assumes this is a new ego. Oh, Marvin is going to be livid. He already lost his cool when Robbie showed up. Let's not even mention when Sean attempts a visit. Either way, the kid looks completely shattered and like he could collapse in a heap any moment now. He struggles to focus on the sentence he's trying to finish. This ego really is out of it. What kind of video did Sean upload today that it produced someone so wrecked? The teenager sways a little. Chase moves to steady him while Marvin is spouting the same shit about how Sean better not have created another ego. Tired of Marvin's anger at this specific moment, he calls him over to help. The magician barely enters the hallway before the newbie crumples into Chase's hold. He glances back at Marvin, a second away from encouraging him to assist him already. The haunted expression on his friend's face prevents that. Oh. This was Jackie. Of course it was. The two of them place him in the medical bay. Marvin withdraws into himself. Especially in the following days. He spends all his time hanging around Jackie. All he talks about is Jackie and how he's doing. Jackie, Jackie, Jackie. Listen, Chase is glad Jackie has returned home. Ecstatic, even. It's just... things have drastically changed in the household in barely any time at all. First it was Jack slipping into a coma. Now it's Jackie showing up after months of no clues regarding his whereabouts. It doesn't help when the teenager sticks to Marvin's side wherever possible and acts wary of Chase. He supposes he gets it. Marvin is the only person, other than Angus, whom the young superhero recognises from his pre-Anti life. Meanwhile, Marvin, who has spent close to a year missing his friend, wishes to protect him as much as he can. Either way, Chase gently inserts himself into the friendship group. He's heard about this guy a fair bit and felt his absence in the grief of those who'd loved him. He wants to get to know him. It took a couple months for Marvin to be chill with him. Chase would rather not return to being rejected once more. That's why he continues to be Marvin's person to spill his woes to and the one to let Jackie know he's not judgmental of the potential symptoms of PTSD on display. October isn't a good month. An ego named Shawn Flynn is born on the 5th as a result of Sean's video involving his Bendy voice role. On Halloween, they find it very suspicious that an ego who got a personal video hasn't shown up at their home yet. Didn't this guy also have pictures on Instagram as of earlier this week? He really should be here. Especially seeing as he had his own room waiting for his arrival. Chase volunteers himself to speak to Sean. As it turns out, that was the right move. When Sean lets him in, he is introduced to Jameson Jackson. It goes down as well as expected. Chase brings Jameson home and give him the house tour. As they travel around the building, he ensures Jameson knows Sean is not to be trusted. When the new ego argues that their creator had accommodated him, Chase decides this moment was as good as any to visit the medical bay. "This is Jack. He's a prime example of what happens when keep trusting Sean and believing he actually cares. We're not shitting on Sean for the hell of it. We do it because he's a dick and we'd rather not force anyone else to lose their friend." Chase takes a stabilising breath. He shows Jameson to his new room and suggests he familiarise himself with it this afternoon. If he needs anything, feel free to give him a tap on the shoulder. He has to admit, Sean has balls. Not only did he trick Jameson into being his friend, he's trying to get Chase to sympathise with him too. Sean even has the nerve to give some sob story. Obviously, he'd twist the truth to get his way. Chase is smarter than that. It's not like he's to blame for Sean being overloaded by the need to keep up with the upload schedule. That was purely Sean's own doing. Then he has the audacity to pull the Jack card. Oh, fuck you. How dare he?! So what, Chase is just supposed to become Jack 2.0 until Sean bothers to wake him up? No thanks. Unlike Jack, he requires sleep so it's not like he can help without consequences. Besides, he's got his own shit going on. Maybe Sean recalls the whole 'depressed and suicidal guy who's going through a divorce' thing he'd centered his character on. "Chase, please, at least think about it. Jack is in that coma because I was stressed and resentful. I don't want to risk making things even worse. I know I'm just repeating myself now but less time focusing on videos means more time for me to work out how to fix everything." He does think about it. Okay, fine! If it's just to keep the channel going then whatever. The channel is necessary to keep all of them healthy. He'll do it for Jack's sake. Anything to increase the chance of waking him up is worth it, right? Even if it means going against his morals. He nearly throws Sean's offer back in his face a month later. It was simply a charity stream. All that was supposed to happen was a nightly break in the 2 day event. He will forever hate CCTV footage and security from this point onwards. What the fuck did Anti do to Jackie that Silent Night triggers him? The night is spent ensuring two things. One, that everyone, especially Jackie, felt as safe as they could be in a stressful situation like this. The second objective was to observe the feed for the whole night. They sleep in the living room and take an hour long shifts to monitor the glitches. A doctor moves in during January. As much as they need the medical help, Dr Jacksepticeye is hardly Henrik. Either way, an ego is an ego. Chase is glad he's not the only one who is uncomfortable watching the stranger overseeing Jack's care. They just need Henrik back. Things can be generally alright after that. After much negotiating from both parties, Stacy agrees to allow him some custody. She'll have the majority of it but she's fine with weekends being Chase's time with them. Yes, yes, god yes. He'd obviously prefer to have it more evenly split. Maybe alternate weeks or Monday-Thursday morning for one and Thursday afternoon-Sunday for the other. But weekends? He gets to see Willow and Noah for 2/7 of the week? He'd take an hour a year if that was the most Stacy was willing to compromise. The others surprise him with a small party, complete with cake, when the arrangement becomes official. That first weekend can't come soon enough. He has a talk with Jackie about mental health and coping mechanisms after he catches him binging on his secret whiskey stash. Trust him, hangovers are no fun. Stop trying to force your raised metabolism to submit and become intoxicated. Frequently battling with your head is exhausting. Drinking yourself silly is not the answer. No, don't ask why he resorts to alcohol. Do as he says, not as he does, you know? Please tell him you're aware he's down to confide in if you want. No, no, don't cry. It's all good. Marvin doesn't have to know a single thing. Anything else you wanted to say? Zero judging, he swears. Early May finally provides them with their favourite German doctor. Like Jackie, Henrik's wellbeing has certainly seen better days. To think, the three of them had been having some dumb debate about Spider-Man moments before the big reunion took place. This is the beginning of the 10 days where Chase believes things can be good for the egos. The only thing missing is Jack's consciousness. A week later, he provides Sean with a video he'd edited himself. The level of trust they have between each other now means Sean doesn't check the video's contents. It is for this reason that the comments come flooding in before his creator's wrath does. Sean deems the mistake irreversible and the video therefore eligible to stay up. Chase can only hope it doesn't lead to any more issues. The weekend passes without any problem. On Monday, he notices Willow forgot to bring her doll back to Stacy's. He might as well return the toy. It is with annoyance that he realises Stacy's probably experiencing a power cut. Albeit dangerous to have done so, Chase considers it lucky that he was carrying that lighter in his pocket. Come on, work already. Stupid thing. The flame is tiny but at least it's something. Better than exploring blind at any rate. As Chase wanders through dark hallways, he becomes increasingly aware he may be endangering himself. After all, this home was meant to be displaying signs of life. Where were- Faint laughter. Children's laughter, undoubtedly. Oh God, that sounded like Willow and Noah. A girl screams. He wants to run to her. Fuck it if it's clearly a trap. His daughter's in trouble and he'll expose himself to whatever's frightening her without a second thought. He wants to sprint and he knows he should. Yet something keeps him at a cautious pace. His frustration grows as whispers are cut off by what sounds like Noah crying. He's coming, he swears. Daddy's coming. Just hold on. The whispers intensify as he turns the corner. This new hallway is bathed in red. Chase has better visibility but it wasn't necessarily a good thing. The room at the end of the corridor is completely soaking in the colour. It leaks onto the surrounding walls. The only object blocking the light is the silhouette. "Who's there?" The silhouette's head steadily twists over its shoulder. A second passes. An eye illuminates green with an unnerving crackle. It does nothing to acknowledge the questions its current prey begs to have answered. "Where are they?" Chase cries. "What do you want from me?!" There is no time to scream or escape. There is only the erratic approach. And as quickly as a video can cut to darkness, they are both gone.

[motleycrueroadie]

Along for the Ride

Figured that I would try my hand at writing. This is just more of an introduction to the scene rather than the character herself, but that will be coming soon enough. Based on The Dirt (2019). 

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They call New York the city that never sleeps, and as a stranger to the East Coast, I was inclined to deny the cliche when I first moved to the Sunset Strip. Initially it seemed like the Strip never slept, with the blaring neon lights of the bars and clubs. This combined with the music scene draws in the young crowds of those who entertain and those who are entertained. The Strip creates an allure to pull out those chasing dreams, but this allure soon vanishes come Monday to reveal only shadows. New York City remains the city that never sleeps, the Sunset Strip doesn’t sleep on the weekends. Given this, it only makes sense that just about everyone living here is chasing the high of the weekend, and then dragging themselves through the week. I love the weekend nightlife more than anything else, it separates the people I have to endure from the people who I want to be around. 

From the moment the clubs open on Friday until last call on Sunday night, which I guess is really early Monday, London gives me a chance to feel alive. As a band, London attracts the best of the Strip and I love every second of it. The high from being on stage is enough to envy every junkie out there. Jack nor coke can give me the same feeling that a dimly lit room, stuffed to the brim with bodies emitting pure heat and rock and roll could. I left Seattle, my mother Deanna and the revolving door of asshole boyfriends in search of this exact feeling. This is where I finally feel at home. However, there was one thing that ruined this high every time, London. Ironic, right?

London and the music worked fucking wonders, but the people in London are dog shit. The tension between myself and the rest of the band mates rivals that of an elastic band strung to the max. We are a ticking time bomb. Our almost daily band practice had finished today around 11:30, that was added on top of an 8 hour day at the Starwood and I felt exhausted. The walk home served as a moment of relaxation. Even though it was Thursday night, there were still people frequenting the bars; But the people were weekday regulars that live to drink, rather than those who drink to add to the experience of being alive. Though it seemed that there was not much life to the Strip, the diner up ahead, “Tiffany’s 24/7 Dine-In”, seemed as lively as it could get. I could hear it before I could see it. From the outside, the sound was somewhat muffled by the layer of glass, but I could make out Slow Ride by Foghat playing. Wasn’t entirely my style of music but it was close enough. As I begin to pass by the window, I glance in to see why it was so loud. 

The only person that occupied the entire dining room was a girl, suited in a dress I could only assume was a uniform, buffing the floors. It was not my intention to stop and stare, and I honestly could not decipher what was so intriguing about her, but I am completely stopped in my tracks to take her in. She was shorter than myself, but was not swallowed by the fabric she wore, filling it out in what I might call “all the right places”. The most encapsulating part about her was the lightness with which she moved while controlling a machine that could jolt even the most steady people. She swayed the machine lightly back and forth across the floors, while nodding her head along to the beat. I can slightly make out her voice singing along to the words with ease. Suddenly, she looked up at me out the window and it startled me, I felt caught. Her face turned upwards into a smirk and she jutted out her chin while nodding at me, giving a sign of acknowledgement. For whatever reason, I took this as an invitation to come into the diner. The music struck me with a certain intensity as she yelled, “Sorry about that! Have a seat wherever you like and I’ll turn that down and be with you in just a second!” 

 Her voice was steady and held a certain feather light feeling, the same as her movements did, and I just wanted to hear it again. I stepped over the cord attached to the buffer and slid into the booth facing the bar, watching her stretch to reach the volume dial on the radio atop a sliding door refrigerator.

She glided around the bar, swiping a menu from a shelf hidden from my vision and smiled up at me, “Welcome to Tiff’s, can I get you something to drink while you have a look at the menu?”

“Would a Jack and Coke be acceptable to serve on a Thursday night?” I asked, not because I needed her opinion on my drinking habit, but because I wanted to keep hearing her voice.

“Are you asking me whether I find the consumption of alcohol on a weekday moral, or if this establishment serves on a Thursday?” she replied, hand on her hip while leaning against the coat rack extending from the booth. 

“Humour me with both.” I smirked, relaxing back into the seat having finally found my rhythm with her. The next answer she gave would gauge whether or not I continue to push her buttons. 

“Tiff’s, like most other diners, will serve you morning, noon and night any day of the week” she started, “and as for myself, I think booze is far too much fun to contain to the weekend. Only pussies and prudes save drinking for two days of the week” She seemed to mean this despite the humour in her voice, and I was thoroughly pleased with her answer. 

“Mija! Watch your language with the customers!” spoke a voice from behind the server’s window. She chuckled a little, before turning to the window and calling out “Carlos, I always gauge my audience!” A shorter tan man popped his head up from behind the window before disappearing again, “I see what you mean. Carry on!” She turned back to me with a smile on her face, “Don’t take offence to that. You’re just not married with kids or above the age of 60, so I’ve lost my filter. Is that a problem?” 

“Not at all” I said while shaking my head, and she took that as her cue to start grabbing my drink. Returning, with it in her hand she slid into the booth opposite me and asked, “Anything on the menu caught your eye?” I shook my head again and began to hand her the menu, “Just the drink will be fine for tonight.” She gave an appreciative nod, before leaving to grab the cord for the buffer cord out of the wall. 

“Can I put you down for an order of solitude to go with your JC or are you interested in conversation?” She called out from the other side of the diner, but before I had the chance to answer she continued “Cause I can ramble for at least 10 JCs!” Taking a sip, I leaned further into the booth to give her the impression I needed to appreciate the options when I knew exactly what I wanted to say. She continued to wrap up the cord around the buffer, leaving it in its spot and glancing up at me in anticipation of my answer. 

“Conversation. But if you become too annoying I’ll put a 5 on the table and take off”  continuing to push her buttons, seeing if she could take it and dish it out. 

“Fair enough,” and with that she slid back into the booth. 

“Start with your name” she told me rather than asked. 

“Why can’t I have yours?” I asked, realising I had not even bothered to glance at her name tag. It read Janis Jade. She caught me reading, “Cause you just read it off my chest but I don’t have that luxury.” Shrugging my shoulders, I said “Nikki Sixx,” I hadn’t seen the smile leave her face since we caught eyes in the window, but it grew wider and I thought she might have recognized me so I prepared for a slew of questions and rambling to follow. 

“That’s the sickest fucking name I’ve ever heard, and I know for a god damn fact you picked it out yourself” she glowed as she spoke with an infectious amount of genuine enthusiasm. I nodded, chuckling as I did so. 

“Let me guess, you’re named after the infamous Janis Joplin” I smirked as I took a drink. She screwed her eyebrows together, almost offended. 

“How old do you think I am Sixx?” she asked, again I shrugged shoulders. “I had my name prior to Miss Joplin’s rise to fame, but my parent’s wore shit eating grins everyday about my name after she started getting big.” I nodded along to her story, somehow knowing I was in for a good conversation. 

For the next two hours, we swapped tales and although she did most of the talking, I was glad to sit back and listen. She wasn’t wrong when she said she could talk for at least 10 JCs. Janis was full of life and everything I absolutely wasn’t and I couldn’t help but want to know more. I realized that I needed to be heading out, so I began rummaging in my jacket for my wallet. She saw this, and I stopped for a second as I remembered my earlier comment, “Trust me doll, you’re not annoying me but I should be heading out.” She nodded understandingly, “No worries Sixx, you want me to grab your change?” I shook my head at her, and started getting out of the booth. “Your shift done soon? I can walk you home.”

She smiled, “I’m here until 7am but thank you for the offer.” As I began to walk out, I paused while pushing on the door handle, “I hope to see you around Joplin.” She smiled from where she stood, “Don’t worry Sixx, you will” and gave me a two fingered salute before returning to where the buffing machine had sat for the last two hours. I returned home with a new found appreciation for the little diner on the Strip. 

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Thank you for reading! If you’re interest, here’s the Next Chapter 

[shirtlesssammy]

14x20: Moriah

The Road So Far:

How is Team Free Will 2.0 ever going to beat Michael, the Big Bad of the season?

Now:

We open right where we left off last week. Jack escaped the Ma’lak box by blowing it to smithereens, and took most of the bunker’s storage room with it. “You lied to me.” And then he blasts Team Free Will before flapping off.

The guys assess the damage and discuss Jack. And by discuss, I mean Dean and Cas continue to fight about their differing parenting choices. Dean wants to kill their son; Cas wants to save their son. Quite frankly, it’s obvious their therapist is done with it all. And by therapist, I mean Sam. #prayforSam. (I particularly liked the last bit of the fight when Dean had to walk closer to Cas then he already was, and Cas had to clip Dean’s shoulder as he walked away.)

Sam and Dean continue to discuss the plan for Jack. Dean insists they have to find him and “do the hard thing.” They have to kill him. Sam is visibly upset by the prospect.

Jack, meanwhile, is wandering around a city, listening to people lie to everyone around them. I particularly liked the lines that were filler for the lines that we were supposed to pay attention to:

“You should have seen it. I caught a steelhead this big.”

“I saw ‘em at Coachella last year!”

“That’s not porn. I don’t know what that was.”

Jack flashes his gold eyes and commands everyone to stop lying. This is going to solve all the world’s problems! (Sidenote: I liked this post by @eveiswaywardaf)

Sam and Dean pull up to a company called Mirror Universe. Ahem. Sam’s on the phone with Rowena (oooOOOOooo) --she’s in on their little plan.

The brothers head inside to hopefully use the company’s facial recognition program to locate Jack.

Dean calls the whole room nerds, but Sam calls him out on that bit of hypocrisy. DEAN WATCHES JEOPARDY!, guys! (ofc, he does.) Dean tries flashing his FBI badge at the receptionist, but instead of giving a fake name and reason for being there, he spills the truth.

Oh, it seems Jack’s truth command works on everyone everywhere. Dean tests the situation by asking Sam who his favorite singer is and Sam responds, “Celine Dion.” Oh Sam, Vince Vincente (and Balthazar) are very disappointed in you right now. Dean tells Sam that they can’t lie.

Then, all hell breaks loose in the company. I mean, what show are we even watching? (iloveitwithallmyheartandamnotsurewhatiamgoingtodowithoutit) The brothers escape to an empty room. There’s a TV broadcasting the news that the president spilled his tax history, deep ties to Russia and North Korea, and a “demon deal” with Crowley. Out of context, this might be my favorite part of the episode. I mean, the absolute shade! I can’t think of another show I watch doing this --especially one with a conservative audience like we know Supernatural has. In any event, the brothers quickly put it together that Jack’s behind it all.

And then we’re gifted with my favorite part in context (if that’s possible):

THE STAPLER QUEEN!

Cut to Cas in the alley trying to get access to Hell. The demon monitoring the door won’t let him him. Blerg.

For I’m Going to Hell Science:

But Chuck shows up! Uh-oh. He says he’s here because Cas called him, and “him.” Jack’s a problem.

Jack shows up at his grandmother’s place.

The poor lost cause wants to talk about Kelly. (bby boy, you’re so creepy rn.) She’s visibly upset and tells him that they made phone calls and no one knows who he is, and that others think that Kelly is dead. “What did you do to my daughter?!” Agh, her screaming makes Jack get angry and he demands that she stop (so much like his other grandmother...AUGH). The next shot we see is Jack fleeing from the house. Oh dear.

Meanwhile, Dean’s living his best life NOT lying and talking about the parenting blog he follows. MY HEART. Cas and Chuck show up. Dean wants to know where he’s been. “It’s a funny story. Reminds me of a song.” And the Chuck proceeds to pull up a guitar, which Dean promptly smashes to bits and pieces.

He shouts at Chuck to answer him, and with equal force Chuck responds, “Don’t!” Ugh, I think Dean just remembered he’s not just dealing with cuddly, affable, nebbish Chuck here. He’s dealing with God. To lessen the tension, Chuck snaps them all back to the bunker.

That doesn’t stop the questions that Sam, Dean, and Cas have though. Chuck admits to being around, but he’s hands off. If they want to <insert bad event> that’s on them. He only needs to step in when there’s an Apocalypse.

He stops the truth tellings and sets all the world back to order. Sam wants to know if Chuck can stop Jack. He tells them not exactly, but they can with a special gun. He just made it and hasn’t named it yet, but is leaning on “The Equalizer” or “The Hammurabi”. It’s a gun that sends a wave of multi-dimensional energy across a perfectly balanced quantum link. So shooter and shootee get the same treatment with this gun. Cas asks why he can’t just fix Jack’s soul. “Souls are complicated, even for me.” Dean says that this is it. Cas utters Team Free Will’s motto: There has to be another way. Dean doesn’t think so, and tells Cas to “get on board or walk away.” Cas walks away. (Spoiler: DID Y’ALL SEE CHUCK’S LITTLE SMILE AT THAT!?!)

Jack walks the streets replaying his conversation with his grandma. He’s troubled…

So is Dean! He’s tucked himself away in a corner of his bedroom, steadily working through a stash of liquor. He sits Sam down for a special talk. No, it’s not about how two people can still love each other very much, but need to be apart for a while. (#DeanCasBreakup) Dean is, of course, ready to kill himself to take care of the “Jack problem.” Dean. Bean.

Sam refreshingly calls him on his self-sacrificing bullshit.

“We always have a choice,” Sam tells him. He admits to Dean that he’s angry about their mom and a part of him does want Jack dead as well. But they have a responsibility to try to save Jack first. Jack lost his soul to save the Winchesters. Furthermore, he’s FAMILY. “You want my permission?” Sam asks. “You want me to say I’m cool with losing him and losing you all at once? ‘Cause I can’t do that.” GOD, SAM I LOVE YOU. This was the best, most emotional, most needed speech.

Cas continues his desperate search for Jack, heading to the cemetery where Kelly is buried. Jack isn’t there.

But Jack flaps in. He’s been looking for Cas! Castiel, that beautiful, majestic raven, pulls Jack in for a big hug.

Back at the bunker, Chuck’s a giant dork, playing with an AU archangel blade. Sam asks how many AUs exist. Chuck’s not sure, but we do learn about:

Reverse

No yellow

All squirrels (Thanks @consulting-cannibal for your contribution to the world’s cumulative joy)

At the cemetery, Jack talks through his failures with Cas. The lying experiment? Huge fail. Coffee and love with the Klines? Catastrophic strike-out. Grandma Kline accused Jack of killing Kelly, and Jack says that he did, just by being born. UGH that is a terrible guilt to lay on a child, soul or not. (Of course, she didn’t know…) Anyway, Cas is a good dad and talks about Jack’s experiences with him. Jack used to hate himself for Kelly’s death, but the feelings are gone. We also learn that Grandma Kline survived her interaction with Jack. Phew!

Sam asks Chuck an ultra-mega-pertinent question: is their world just another throw-away experiment? Chuck insists that this world is the best and he LOVES following the adventures of Sam and Dean. Sam gets pissed off at the idea of Chuck just watching them suffer through terrible near-ends. “You’re my favorite show,” Chuck says with a little side smile.

Sam demands an answer for why all these world-saving burdens have to fall on them, but Chuck offers up the “non-interference” answer. Anyway, he’s not here to argue cosmic ethics with Sam. It’s time to address the Jack problem. Sam finally asks where Jack is, and Chuck reveals that he’s already told Dean. Dean has left the bunker, gun in hand. Y I K E S.

At the cemetery, Jack and Cas talk.

For Beautiful Feelings Science:

Jack is desperate to do the right thing, but he doesn’t have a soul to guide him anymore. Oh, Jack. Cas will be your Jiminy Cricket! Jack WANTS to love. He wants to feel. But he can’t. “You can’t yet,” Cas tells him. They need to go hide somewhere in the world until Jack gets better.

Enter Dean with his metaphorical gun. Cas stands between Dean and Jack and EMOTIONS ARE HAPPENING PEOPLE. Jack refuses to run. He knocks Castiel away and faces Dean, knowing why Dean is there. Jack kneels. He’s ready. And I’m getting tears in my eyes. Because Dean looks at Jack. He REALLY looks at him while Cas and Sam watch the story unfold.

This metaphorical gun, while almost a joke because of its obvious symbolism, is actually perfect. This death would tear into Dean’s soul just as much as it tears into his body. And when Jack tells Dean that he knows he’s a monster just like Dean’s been saying all along, Dean looks at Jack and sees……...

Sam, meanwhile, has been joined by Chuck who is having the time of his life. Drama! Yes. Despair! Yes. Terrible soul-killing sacrifice! Mmmhmm good. Chuck watches Dean while Sam watches Chuck with growing horror. “Are you enjoying this?” Sam asks and Chuck shushes him like he’s in a freaking movie theater.

Dean cocks the weapon, grits his teeth. Finger tenses. He looks at Jack. And he LOWERS THE GUN. And here, I’m going to take a little crying break. This moment means so much to me.

Dean tosses the weapon aside. Chuck springs to life and orders Dean to pick the gun back up. “This isn’t how the story is supposed to end.” And HERE is where Chuck flips from adorable weird bunny to, idk, red-eyed god-bunny of doom.

The gravitas dies. Chuck goes on a rant about wanting to watch the father-killing-his-son storyline. The epic man paaaaaaain! Sam tells Dean that Chuck’s been playing them for fools. Playing WITH them like they’re game pieces.

“Our entire lives. Mom, Dad, everything. This is all you because you wrote it all, right? Because, what? Because we’re your favorite show? Because we’re part of your story?!”

Chuck tells Dean that if he picks up the gun and kills Jack (and himself) that he’ll bring Mary back. Dean confesses that his mom is his hero (cries) and he misses her (cries more) but she would not want this (cries the most).

“Why the games, Chuck?” Dean demands. The Winchesters unite in outrage. “When does it end?” Sam asks.

Chuck snaps his fingers and SMITES Jack. It isn’t fast, or painless. Cas tries to help him while Jack screams. Meanwhile, Sam picks up the metaphorical gun and shoots Chuck. NOOOOO SAAAAAAM!

(Okay, but the metaphorical gun symbolized Dean’s self-destruction but for Sam, it symbolizes how he fights to protect the people he loves. SAM you have come into your own this season. Truly. I am so proud.)

Sam only shoots Chuck in the shoulder and, as Chuck advertised, gets a wound in his shoulder as well. (At least he won’t have to dig out a bullet?) Pissed off now, Chuck throws a cosmic tantrum. “Story’s over,” Chuck says. “Welcome to The End.”

The sky goes dark. Jack’s dead, wing burns scorching the ground.

Sam’s still injured as they gather around Jack. We fall into a camera spiral, dipping down into Jack’s burned out eye socket (ew?) to the tune of Motorhead’s “God was never on your side.”Jack wakes in the Empty and looks around.

The Shadow greets him and draws a smile on their face. (What Would Mister Rogers Do?)

Billie greets him!!!!!!! “We should talk,” she says. Suddenly, all my crops are watered and my skin has cleared!

Down on the world, shit goes down in the cemetery. As an epic score screams about God’s betrayal, the dead claw themselves from the earth.

The woman in white appears. Gacy resurfaces. Bloody Mary rides again. These souls are all back, despite all the work and the death and loss…

It’s The End, and Team Free Will stand together as the dead converge on them. The camera cuts away and we lose sight of them in the pressing of the zombie horde.

I AM SO EXCITED. What a damn gloriously operatic note to linger on for…months.

D:  h o l d   m e

Quotes Lie:

Dad, none of this woulda happened without you.

You should never have tried to lock him away!

We’re gonna have to do the hard thing. We’re gonna have to do the ugly thing. It’s not like it’s the first time, right?

I’m Dean Winchester. I’m looking for the Devil’s son. This badge is fake.

“Hey I slept with your wife.” “I know. I’m kinda into it.”

And I saw Springsteen on Broadway, man’s a genius.

You want to go up against the British Men of Letter? Little weak, but ok.

Souls are complicated, even for me.

I’ve already lost too much.

What are you?!!

No offense, but your brother is stupid and crazy.

This isn’t just a story. IT’S OUR LIVES.

Writers lie.

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive! 

[mittensmorgul]

12.22:

Mary: It's not okay. Since I've been back, I know... I've been distant. Cold, even. Leaving you, working with them.. I was trying to make things right. Just from a distance, because.. being here with you was too hard. Seeing what I'd done to you and to Sam, I... Dean: Mom, what you did, the deal... everything that's happened since has made us who we are. And who we are? We kick ass. We save the world.

14.13:

SAM: Did you see them at dinner, the way they looked at each other? They just seemed happy, you know? It doesn’t feel fair to get all this and have to throw it away, and I know we have to. But it just feels like, you know… Once we send Dad back… it’s none of this ever happened. He – he just goes back to – to… to being Dad. DEAN: You saying you wish things would be different? SAM: Don’t you? Can you imagine – dad in the past, knowing then what he knows now? I… I think it would be nice. DEAN: Yeah. I used to think that, too. But, uh… I mean, look, we’ve been through some tough times. There’s no denying that. SAM: Yeah. DEAN: And for the longest time, I blamed Dad. I mean, hell, I blamed Mom, too, you know? I was angry. But say we could send Dad back knowing everything. Why stop there? Why not send him even further back and let some other poor sons of bitches save the world? But here’s the problem. Who does that make us? Would we be better off? Well, maybe. But I gotta be honest – I don’t know who that Dean Winchester is. And I’m good with who I am. I’m good with who you are. ‘Cause our lives – they’re ours. And maybe I’m just too damn old to want to change that.

but also:

12.23:

KELLY: God, please. I need help. SVEN [on phone]: I'm trying to help you, ma'am. KELLY: Are you, Sven? Because if you ask me if I have the quarter-inch Allen wrench one – one more time, I am going to come down there and burn your giant Viking junkyard of a store to the ground! Do you understand?! SVEN: Are you sure it wasn't in the box? KELLY: God! [she tosses the phone away in exasperation] CASTIEL: Kelly. I told you I'd put this together. I'm very good at following instructions. And you need to rest. KELLY: No, I don't. CASTIEL: Kelly – [Cas helps Kelly to her feet] KELLY: No, Cas, I don't. I can't. I don't know how long until... I don't know how long I have left. And I...I'm never gonna be able to teach him how to ride a bike or watch him get married or even look him in the eyes. But I can build him a stupid Swedish crib! I can do that. CASTIEL: Kelly, I know how hard this is. [Kelly gives Cas an incredulous look] That's a lie. I have no idea how hard this is for you. But I promise you... I will do everything. I will give my life for your son. And I will raise him. And I will make him someone you will be proud of.

(note that all their work on the nursery, all their preparations for Jack’s birth, building the crib and assuming they’d have a long road of raising a Smol Babby proved... to be a lie... everything they did was... pointless... in the end)

and 14.20:

JACK: You lied to me. CASTIEL: Jack. JACK: (yelling) You lied!

and

SAM: Well, it's like you said. (Chuckles) It's Celine Dion. Uh... I mean Celine Dion. It's Celi-- (Sam stammers) Dean, every time I try and say "Elvis," it comes out -- DEAN: The sad, horrible truth. Yeah. You know why? Because we can't lie.

and

MRS. KLINE: You lied to us. You said you worked with Kelly, but after you left, my husband and I, we made some calls, and no one knows who you are. JACK: I... I didn't.  MRS. KLINE: Yes, you did. Kelly's not away on some "secret mission." She... (Crying) They think she's dead. What did you do to my daughter?! (yelling) What did you do?!

and

DEAN: (looking at his phone) When people can't lie, the Internet gets real quiet.

and

WORKER #7 (in a singsong voice) I hate everyone! I hate everyone!  WORKER #5 (crying) I just want to be loved. WORKER #7: I hate everyone! I hate everyone!  OFF SCREEN: I just want a sweet life.  WORKERS #7: I hate everyone!  (Chuck and Castiel are watching the chaos) CHUCK: see, this is why people need to lie.  -I hate everyone! CHUCK: It's good. Keeps the peace, you know?

and

CASTIEL: Seems like an odd stance for...you.  CHUCK: Is it? I'm a writer. Lying's kind of what we do.

and

(Woman speaking Chinese dialect)- The state is a lie.

and

CAS: Can you fix it? CHUCK: (Sighs) Fine. (Snaps fingers) Fixed. SAM: Really? CHUCK: I'm God, Sam. Yeah, really. Go ahead. Try it out. DEAN:: Celine Dion rocks. Yeah. Yeah, we can lie again. CAS: And the rioting? CHUCK: Like it never happened.

and

CHUCK: Listen, you guys know me. I'm hands-off. I built the sandbox -- you play in it. You want to fight Leviathans? Cool. You got that. You want to go up against -- what was it? -- the "British Men of Letters"? Okay. Little weak, but okay. But when things get really bad, like the Apocalypse or the Other Apocalypse, that's when I have to step in. SAM: So you're saying Jack is Apocalyptic? CHUCK: The kid said, "Stop lying," and I don't know if you noticed, but the world kinda went insane.

and

SAM: So, Michael said that you create these worlds and you just toss them away like failed versions of some book.  CHUCK: And you believe him? SAM: Was he lying? Is that what you're doing to us? CHUCK: No. Sam... you and your brother, of all the Sams and Deans in all the multiverse, you're my favorite. You're just so interesting. I mean, like that thing that happened at the office earlier today -- that was crazy, right?

and

JACK: And I thought I could make the world a better place if people couldn't lie. CAS: Well, it didn't. JACK: It really didn't.

and

SAM: Wait. I thought Chuck said that the gun was the only thing that could... (indicating Jack, who is dead on the ground, eyes burned out) CAS: He's a writer. Writers lie.

and

BUT ALSO!

12.23:

SAM: Crowley...why did you do it? Save Lucifer– What did you want? CROWLEY: I wanted to win. I perverted mother's spell, put Lucifer in a vessel of my own making because I wanted to win. You have any idea how many people have made a play for my throne over the years? Lucifer, Abaddon, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Too damn many. I thought if I could put the Devil on a leash... my own personal nuke, no one would ever dare challenge me again. DEAN: Yeah. That worked out great. CROWLEY: All ended with me narrowly escaping death by hiding in a rat. MARY: Wait. In an...actual rat? CROWLEY: Wasn't too bad, really. Gave me time to think. You know, I've been focused for so long on keeping my job. Never realized I hate it. All those whining demons, the endless moan of damned souls, the paperwork! I mean, who wants that?

and

LUCIFER: Well... this is a fun surprise. I gotta hand it to you guys. You never give up, even when you should. Even when it would be so stupid not to. SAM: Look, whatever you're planning on doing, Chuck...God will stop you, just like he did last time. LUCIFER: You're right. What should I do? Oh, God! Don't strike me dead! Come on, Sam. You sound like a virgin in Jesus camp. "We can't. God is watching." No. Chuck "walked." He's gone. DEAN: So you're just gonna smash his toys? LUCIFER: Exactly. 'Cause every time I look at this sad trash fire of a world, you know what I keep thinking? I could do so much better. DEAN: So Apocalypse, take two. That's your plan? LUCIFER: When in doubt, go with the classics. That's what I always say. Well, boys, enough with the foreplay. Let's do this.

14.20

SAM: Do you watch us? When you're not here, are -- are you... watching us? CHUCK: Yeah. (Exhales deeply) I mean, you're my favorite show. SAM: Then why don't you do something? If I had your power -- CHUCK: Sam. We talked about this. Not the way it works. SAM: (Sighs) Wait a second. Why, when the chips are down, when the world is -- is failing, why does it always have to be on us?!  CHUCK: Because you're my guys. But right now, we need to focus on Jack. Ah, that kid. (Breathes deeply) Whew! SAM: Wait a second. You're scared of him.  CHUCK: Aren't you?

and

JACK: And you were right all along. I am a monster. SAM: (to Chuck) Do something. (he realizes with shock) You're enjoying this.  CHUCK: Shh.  (Dramatic music plays) (Dean cocks the gun. He looks Jack in the eye for several seconds and then slowly lowers the gun. At this point, Castiel also comes running towards the area) (Dean uncocks the gun and tosses it to the side) CHUCK: No. Pick it up! Pick it up.  DEAN: The hell, Chuck? CHUCK: This isn't how the story is supposed to end.  CAS: The story?  CHUCK: (frustrated) Lookit, the -- the -- the gathering storm, the gun, the -- the father killing his own son. This is Abraham and Isaac. This is epic! DEAN: Wait. What are you saying? SAM: He's saying he's been playing us. This whole time. CHUCK: Come on. SAM: Our entire lives. Mom, Dad -- everything. This is all you because you wrote it all, right? Because -- Because what? Because we're your favorite show? Because we're part of your story?

(because in the end Crowley’s spell did nothing, Cas’s self-sacrifice meant nothing, Lucifer’s destruction meant nothing because Michael wrought the same destruction as they were both trapped inside the same story and couldn’t even recognize themselves as Chuck’s characters who were just as “programmed” by Chuck as any of the angels who’d ever been subjected to Naomi’s reprogramming ever were... I mean they may have been partly right about Chuck, but they were still blind to the fact that even in their supposed “rebellion” they were always only ever Chuck’s pawns, enacting his favorite narrative for all time and unable to break free of it)

And the universe takes everything away from Sam and Dean again, and the beginning of another go-around of the narrative. Only this is the last go-around where Cas can be treated as someone that can be taken away from them and still continue to perform according to Chuck’s expectations within his story. This loss broke Dean. And Cas might not understand that yet, but it proved to the audience that Cas is integral to the Winchester Family. Chuck’s story can’t only revolve around Sam and Dean against the world. And by the end of 14.20, at least he’s learned that.

[multsicorn]

what i’m writing wednesday #1

Editing this fic is taking much longer that I'd hoped (or expected).  I took a couple days off from working on it for reasons, but three or four days in, I still have four sections (the last four, out of fifteen), completely to go, and in the first ~73% of the draft I still have eleven relatively thorny stretches of a few sentences each marked to resolve, and eight fact check issues, the same.

In the future I think it'll be more effective to spend a little more time/effort on revising each section of prose to a slightly higher standard - like, this seems fine and postable at the moment, except for specific issues I've marked - a day or so after I write it, rather than leaving all that 'red-lettering' to the end.

Because probably my biggest issue is getting to 'fine and postable'.  Not so much with regards to writing - there's only so much I can improve that - but in my head.  Getting to think, yeah, this is fine, and I can post it.  (And it won't, what? be awful? make me cringe, I guess, when I look back.)

That's what I'm fighting with a bit right now, that's why I took a break from working on red-lettering section twelve of fifteen to write this post instead.  I tell myself, this paragraph might not be so good, but it's fine.  It's good enough.  I remember how I felt looking back at my old Glee fic when I was saving it all - and all the reblog comments on it! - in the days before what we thought would the tumblrpocalypse.  That there's quite a bit of telling that should be showing, there's a number of sentence-level infelicities - but that overall I really like these stories!  If one shares my particular tastes, there's lots in them to like.  And these two things can coexist, and my stories can be not-great in mumble many ways, and still be worth writing and posting and reading.

So.  I wish I didn't have to keep actively telling myself these things, it's wearing, but on the other hand - at least I can.

As for 'what I'm writing,' well, 'never meant to see the light of our armistice day' has been on the top of my fic-writing pile for most of the time since those spoilers about the strip in which Kent comes to the Haus and eats pie first leaked.  (Though I haven't been writing at all during most of that time, so in that way it's not nearly as long as it sounds.)  It's my take on the idea :D.  So, why would he even be there, someone’s got to invite him[ eta 2: - it’d have to be Jack, but why and how would such a thing occur? now that’s a story I want]... etc.

And... hopefully, sometime in the next few days - or, I'm gonna have a busy weekend that I have to prepare for a bit, but sometime in the next week, at least - it should be posted.  And I'll get to work on 'righteous men' (working title subject to change), about Crowley and Aziraphale at the destruction of Sodom.  And then maybe I'll try to take a break from that to write a little Jack/Parse something for the wedding challenge that I myself am supposedly running - or maybe not, I'd like to, but we'll see how late in August it is when I get to that point, and what sorts of ideas I can come up with.  Anyway.  And I have half a dozen or so of 'next priority' fics after that...

Time to get back to actually writing, rather than writing a post about writing.  Thanks for listening, tumblr.

~

eta: But, I guess, the biggest thing that I wish I could change about my writing isn’t a specific problem.  It’s just, this sentence/paragraph/whole story is okay, maybe even good I guess, but I want it to be better than that.  I want it to be great, like the things I love.  Exactly the right words, layers of meaning, making the audience see things and think things and feel things... and I can’t do that, and I don’t know how to do that, and no amount of ‘how do I make this paragraph better’ will get me from here to there.  I don’t know that specifically what I want or need to say.  - but I can keep writing!  And that’s what I want to do.  And people say that’s the only thing that helps.

BUT I WANT TO BE THERE NOW GODDAMMIT I DO

[nogodsnomasters138-blog]

Crushing craniums with Pat O’Brien of Cannibal Corpse

Editor’s note: Interview conducted in 2012 … obviously way before the craziness.

CANNIBAL CORPSE… the band, the myth, the legend. After 24 years on the Death Metal scene and after 12 albums, there’s little new ground to cover when it comes to writing an introduction for this ground-breaking band. Fresh off the release of “Torture”, guitarist Pat O'Brien spoke with Phillip Lawless about the recording process, MORBID ANGEL's last album and O'Brien's brief stint as a replacement guitarist in SLAYER.

Phillip Lawless: The new album just came out, and it seems to be a little more aggressive, if that’s possible. Tell us a little bit about how you guys put it together. Pat O’Brien: It just pretty much just came together. We got together like we normally did at the end of the tour. We started writing; you know for the album … I mean writing tunes for the album. I don’t know, it just came together. We made it kind of a point for everybody to get more involved in the writing process. So maybe that has something to do why it might sound a little different. I wrote a few more songs, and Rob wrote more songs, so it kind of added something I think to the album. Other than that, it just … I don’t know, just a different time period for CANNIBAL CORPSE I think. PL: It’s obviously challenging music. How long do you guys normally rehearse before you head into the recording studio? PO: Usually, it’s about like six months to write the album. That’s usually about the time frame. This time it got pushed back a little bit, it got a little bit delayed. So we had a little more time. But yeah, usually it’s like about six months. PL: You worked with Erik Rutan again for “Torture”. He’s produced some amazing releases with you guys and for other bands. Why did you decide to work with him again? PO: Yeah, he’d done such great work for us before; there was just no reason to go to anybody else different. We went out to a different studio this time, did the first half out at his place out Tornillo just outside of El Paso. And it’s called Sonic Ranch Studios. We went out there. We added different elements into the recording process, and it just made sense to use them. You know, we’re just used to the way he works, and, you know, he’s really good at what he does. PL: Why did you guys decide to record in Texas? What was the motivation? PO: We just basically did it for something new. It was something different. Just because we could, you know. It was kind of a little bit of a break to get out of Florida. Because we’ve already done the last previous albums in Erik’s place. And it was just the idea of being able to wake up there at the studio and being able to walk there and be right there. You know, it’s just something about that that’s very appealing to me. Having to get in your car and drive for 45 minutes to get down and start recording, you know. So it was just … plus we had done already a few albums out there already. We had done “Wretched Spawn”, “Bloodthirst” and “Gore Obsessed”. We already did like three albums out there in Texas before. So we were, you know, quite familiar with the place. And, you know, we just wanted to go back. PL: It seems weird to me, Tampa, FL, is such a gorgeous place with beautiful women, yet there’s all these Brutal Death Metal bands from the city. What do you think it is about the city that kind of spawned that scene? Is there something we don’t know about? PO: It’s probably called the Florida heat. That’s about the only way I can describe it, you know, it gets hot down here in the summer. PL: Were the guys in the CANNIBAL CORPSE camp aware of the response to the new MORBID ANGEL album? PO: Uh, yeah. PL: Is that type of response something you worry about, or do you just write for yourselves and record for yourselves? PO: Well, you know, I mean you’ve always got to be I guess … we always have to kind of be a little on guard for something like that. To where we put out our new album and we think it’s one of our best. And if for some reason, you know, it’s not. For some reason, no one likes it or whatever. But I think we pretty much stayed true to what we do, you know, we didn’t really stray away from being CANNIBAL CORPSE. You know, I think MORBID ANGEL, I think they went a little out there on trying some different kind of things. Which I don’t really mind if a band does that, but I think they should have taken … I think they should have maybe saved songs that they put on their new album maybe and done a side project and just did a whole different band or something. With different kind of songs like that. PL: So no techno on CANNIBAL CORPSE albums? PO: No, no. No, I mean that’s what you’re going to get. You’re going to get a CANNIBAL CORPSE album. There’s going to be a few little surprises here and there, but, you know, it’s like if you go buy an AC/DC album, you’re going to expect to hear AC/DC. You know, you don’t want to go buy an AC/DC album and all of the sudden it sounds like RUSH. Cause that’s not AC/DC anymore. PL: I had forgotten until I was doing some research, but you filled in on guitar for SLAYER for a few dates. I wanted to get your impressions. How was that for you? PO: Oh, that was intense. That was hard, actually. I didn’t have very much time to learn the songs, so I had to really bust my ass, shall I say. And I had like a week and a half to learn all the songs. It was intense. It was a very surreal situation. Yeah, it was cool though. PL: Were the dates larger festivals or smaller festivals in Europe? What types of shows were you playing? PO: It was like a, some of it was like arenas and some of it was like really big clubs. Yeah, it was SLAYER and MEGADETH, actually. PL: In the time you’ve been in CANNIBAL CORPSE, have your label, Metal Blade Records, ever stepped in over artwork or lyrics and said, “Whoa, you guys are maybe taking this too far.” Or have they always been in your corner? PO: They’ve always been in our corner, pretty much. I mean they’ll make suggestions, you know, like putting a sleeve maybe over the top of some of the graphic work, but then still leaving the good artwork in there. Just so they can get it in the stores, because they’ve had problems in the past like getting some of our album covers like in let’s say one place like Best Buy for example. So we’ve had to have some censored artwork. But it’s not been a big deal. They’ve pretty much been in our corner the whole time. They know what we’re about. PL: When it comes to album artwork, do you guys choose from multiple pieces of art, or is the artwork created specifically based on CANNIBAL CORPSE’s ideas? PO: Well, we have the same artist; he’s been doing the album covers since day one. His name’s Vince Locke. And what happens is he’ll come up with a rough sketch, and then we’ll maybe throw some suggestions here and there. Then he’ll go forward with the sketch. And it kind of just goes further and further until we’ve pretty much got what we want. Then he actually makes the actual painting. PL: You guys have a big tour with EXHUMED and some other bands coming up. Tell us a little about it. PO: We’re going to go do the major markets with the “Summer Slaughter”. PL: What’s the typical day on the road like for CANNIBAL CORPSE? Is it more low key, or is it horror movies and Heavy Metal all day? PO: I’d say it’s pretty much low key. Yeah, I’d say pretty much. Our singer, I don’t know, he likes to stay up and drink all night and listen to Hank III. That’s his new thing, drinking Jack Daniels and listening to Hank III. But other than that, it’s pretty mellow. PL: Going back to your earlier band, were you in MONSTROSITY at the same time as George? PO: I was actually in MONSTROSITY after George had joined (CANNIBAL CORPSE) for the “Vile” album. I came in and did a tour when they had just put out the “Millenium” album with George’s vocals on it. George left to join CANNIBAL CORPSE I think right before that album came out or something. PL: How do European audiences respond to American death metal, and how are they different than U.S. audiences? PO: Um, it seems to be really close to the same at this point. Yeah, I don’t really see that big of a difference. I mean, the European fans are very dedicated though, you know, very dedicated. There’s a lot of dedicated metal fans in Europe. But, you know, there’s a lot of them in the States too. It’s about the same, it really is. PL: Are you all headed to Europe for some bigger festivals this summer? What’s the biggest one looking like for CANNIBAL CORPSE? PO: I think we’re playing … I’m not real sure honestly. I think we might be playing Grasspop, but I’m not sure. That might be the biggest one. I still haven’t even; honestly, I haven’t even looked at all the dates. But we’re doing Hellfest, I know that’s a big one we’re going to be doing. We were supposed to be doing some of them with the original BLACK SABBATHlineup. But then Tony Iommi came down with his cancer, so it’s going to be like OZZY and friends, I guess. The original BLACK SABBATH, I’m kind of a little bummed about that because I was … well, I’m a guitar player and Tony Iommi is probably one of my favorite all-time heroes of guitar so. PL: Thinking back over your time with CANNIBAL CORPSE, what’s the strangest gig you’ve ever played with them? Where have you been on stage and thought, “What the hell is going on?” PO: Well, it was actually probably with SLAYER. I standing up there, I’m looking over and there’s, you know, Tom Araya and then Kerry King. I’m looking over there, and I’m like, “What the fuck? What the hell am I doing up here?” You know, looking back there and seeing Lombardo. And it was just … wow, that was just weird. That was the weirdest for me. Because it all went down so fast, I was like, “What the hell am I doing up here?” PL: Did it make it hard to enjoy playing with SLAYER? PO: Well, it was just … there was just so much to learn and so much stress that there really wasn’t time to really … there wasn’t really time to, time to enjoy it. See, I had to just focus on doing the job, you know. But that was probably the weirdest for me. You know, as far as a CANNIBAL gig goes, the weirdest CANNIBAL gig we’ve ever done, I don’t know. I’d have to think about that one. There’s so many of them.

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

THE BISEXUAL WYATT MANIFESTO: PART DEUX

The previous post simply got far too long for me to put it all in one place so here is part the second. Put below a cut and my apologies to mobile users!

Part one here.

PART THE SECOND: POURQOUI???

But why, Mads, you shout? Why decide to headcanon a character as bi? Is it just so you can write your dragon porn?

maybe

Ahem.

Listen. I love diversity as much as the next person. Y’all know I do. I mean, I’m a huge fan of Rufus and Jiya, and Denise, queen of my heart. But… I mean we already have a het ship with Jiya and Rufus. And I feel like, y’know, Wyatt being white AND cis AND male AND straight? Feels like a little much, y’know? And there’s no reason for him to be straight, he just IS, and that feels—I mean where’s the whole backstory about it, right? And it feels a little illogical to have… I mean I don’t have any friends who are white and straight and cis male. It just feels unrealistic.

Okay, okay, extreme salt aside and mostly out of my system…

As a character, even in season one when I did like him, Wyatt is boring. He’s the same white straight male soldier/law-and-order character that we’ve seen in literally every single piece of science fiction since the dawn of time. You will find an exact copy of him in Stargate SG-1 (my apologies to Jack O’Neill), Stargate Atlantis (sorry John…), 12 Monkeys, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Terra Nova, Battlestar Galactica, Andromeda, Star Trek Enterprise, Eureka… and that’s not even touching all the mystery/crime shows (CSI, Bones, Criminal Minds, NCIS, Law & Order, Blue Bloods, Take Two) and military shows (SEAL Team, 24, etc). He’s got a dead wife, fantastic, so does the Punisher, so does Sam Winchester (also created by Eric Kripke), so does GARCIA FLYNN, another character on the show, and Flynn’s wife’s death actually ties into the bigger mystery of the show. By God, if you’re gonna fridge a wife at least make her fridging the entire reason the show exists.

Yes, you heard me. Think about it. If Lorena and Iris Flynn don’t die, then Flynn never wants to go on a vengeful rampage, so Lucy never chooses to give him the journal, so he never steals the time machine… killing Lorena and Iris was the biggest mistake Rittenhouse ever made. If you’re gonna play the dead wife card then by golly at least do it like this and make avenging her death the entire reason for the show.

So not only is Wyatt the same cookie cutter character we’ve seen in every TV show ever, he’s also a repeat of Flynn. He’s not just boring, he’s redundant.

Wyatt is also the only character on the show that you could replace with someone else without changing any of the main plot. When I originally decided to do a fic where the team comes back to find one of them was erased from existence on the trip, I knew it had to be Wyatt—erasing Lucy would change everything (which I explore in The Void is Open), erasing Flynn would take them to a world where Rittenhouse has won, erasing Rufus would mean potentially no pilot… you see what I mean. But Wyatt is very neatly replaced with Dave Baumgardner in 1.14 and shows us that Wyatt is, literally, replaceable. Of course he isn’t to Lucy and Rufus at that point because they care about him but for writing reasons? For plot? Literally any soldier would do. Any. Denise could hop in there with them if she so chose.

Now, all this makes it sound like I dislike Wyatt. And I didn’t in season one. I quite liked our puppy. I liked him for two reasons: 1. He had a lot of potential and 2. his character mirrored/paralleled Flynn and I saw a copious amount of opportunities with that.

Both Flynn and Wyatt have lost their spouse. Both Flynn and Wyatt are soldiers. Wyatt had an abusive father and given that Flynn goes on a potential suicide mission for his mother but we never once hear him mention his father (he might as well not have one for his importance to Flynn’s life), I’m taking a guess that Flynn’s father wasn’t all that great of a person either. Both Flynn and Wyatt risk everything to save the people they love and both pay heavy prices for it and become people they’re ashamed of (Flynn all of season one, Wyatt in 1x13). Both Flynn and Wyatt care deeply for Lucy and look to her for guidance.

Wyatt and Flynn mirror each other. One is willing to break rules, and to forge his own path, while the other follows rules and is scared to strike out on his own. Both of them struggle with identity–Wyatt has no idea who he is now that Jess is dead, and Flynn believes he’s turned into a monster and who he once was is lost. Taking advantage of that mirror makes for compelling storytelling, and the writers failed in that in season two after setting it up so beautifully in season one.

The fun thing is, these parallels become even more poignant if you make Wyatt bi and have him be attracted to Flynn (and is a convenient shortcut to bring those parallels back to the fore).

We touched in the previous section how it’s easy to see Wyatt as attracted to Flynn and that’s why he lashes out so much, and indeed how that is the only rational explanation for why Wyatt is so goddamn against Flynn the whole time.

Let’s dive into that, shall we?

Of the original trio, Rufus and Lucy have ample reason to dislike Flynn. Wyatt? Has none. Flynn makes things personal with Lucy right out the gate, and Rufus’s family will be hurt if Flynn isn’t stopped. But Wyatt is just supposed to see Flynn as an enemy soldier. No personal vendetta involved. And before you say rivalry over Lucy–most of Lucy’s pivotal moments with Flynn in season one are without Wyatt present, and the ones she does have in front of Wyatt aren’t automatically read as romantic. Wyatt himself doesn’t even admit he’s got feelings for Lucy until season two, and as far as he knows, Lucy’s still dealing with Noah.

But Wyatt hates Flynn. As we’ve seen in our examples, he reacts to Flynn with a violence that is missing from Rufus and Lucy. And there is no reason for that violent dislike to be there.

Unless Wyatt is attracted to Flynn and is scared of that from internalized homophobia.

If Wyatt finds Flynn attractive, and has internalized homophobia from, y’know, growing up in Texas and having an abusive father and going into the army, then his anger towards Flynn, his stubbornness, his refusal to listen to Flynn (because if Flynn is right about things and Flynn is an okay guy that opens the door to other more ‘dangerous’ thoughts), and his tendency to react to Flynn’s time with Lucy with such anger–it all makes sense. The last one is partly about Wyatt’s jealousy and possessiveness over Lucy but if it’s coupled with attraction to Flynn it makes even more sense.

Having Wyatt behave this way simply doesn’t hold up. It relies far too much on the audience making leaps of logic about Flynn and Lucy’s relationship in season one and assuming that Wyatt and Lucy are meant to be together, without enough evidence for the latter and Wyatt not at all present for the former.

If Wyatt’s bi, it all makes sense and is logical and again adds another dimension to his character and to his interactions with Flynn.

Monkey Brain: heh heh Wyatt and Flynn kissing is hot as fuck

Wyatt’s toxic masculinity becomes even more interesting and important (and make more sense) if Wyatt is bi.

In this meta here (my first for the Timeless fandom!) I talk about Wyatt and his toxic masculinity so to avoid repeating myself howzabout you go read that and come back mmkay?

…

You done? Perfect. So. Now that you understand where Wyatt’s toxic masculinity comes from and how he displays it in canon, I can say this:

Wyatt being bi forces him to confront his toxic behavior in a unique and powerful way that he can no longer ignore.

Part of Wyatt’s toxic behavior is that his behavior is specifically based in the masculine and the patriarchal. And so most of his bad behavior is rooted in how he treats his romantic interest–which has been Lucy and Jess.

Wyatt was, by his own admission, jealous and possessive towards Jess. He didn’t know how to relate to Lucy when she was no longer a romantic option, so he keeps trying to be romantic with her instead, and his possessive behavior comes to the fore as he tries to control who she spends time with and tries to get her to be as emotionally intimate with him as she was before, despite his wife being back and that intimacy no longer possible.

Getting Wyatt to realize his toxic behavior is difficult, since so many people have bought into the lie that men are supposed to be territorial and possessive towards the women they’re in relationships with. However, most heteronormative toxicity falls apart and is recognizable as harmful once we put it in a new light.

When a situation is bad, you often need an outside perspective, or to change one of the circumstances, in order to see how bad it is. Wyatt’s been lectured at by Lucy, Rufus, Flynn, and Jess, and he didn’t see his behavior was unhealthy. But if we change one of the circumstances i.e. the gender of the person he’s attracted to romantically/sexually, then suddenly he has to look at his behavior towards that person in a new light.

Let’s take Flynn for example. Wyatt can’t treat Flynn the way he’s treated Jess or Lucy. If he tries to be possessive of Flynn, not only would he be unable to, but he’ll realize that it’s wrong of him to even think of it. Wyatt wouldn’t find it natural to try and be jealous when Flynn talked to another man, because Flynn is a man, and he wouldn’t automatically assume another man was flirting with Flynn, or that Flynn was flirting with that man.

Because the thing is, our society is pretty heteronormative still. It’s genuinely hard to tell when someone is just being friendly or actually flirting, but we tend to really assume that when a man is interacting with a woman, one or both of them are flirting. With people of the same gender (or of non-cis genders such as trans and nonbinary) it becomes harder to tell, and a lot of the time we assume that it’s just platonic. So for Wyatt to become jealous over Flynn talking to a man–that goes against the norm because it means he’s assuming romantic rather than platonic interaction, the opposite of what we assume when we look at two people of the same gender.

It would force him to take a second look at all of his behavior and choices. It would force him to realize that his behavior was wrong towards Flynn, which means it’s wrong towards Lucy and Jess, etc. It changes an element and so it forces him to see everything in a new light.

On top of all this—Wyatt’s character is pretty stagnant. I believe that’s why they brought Jess back, honestly: because without Jess coming back to complicate things, there’s nowhere for Wyatt to grow. Forcing him to confront his behavior towards Jess was, I think, what the writers ultimately intended for him (the smart ones, anyway). I don’t think they intended for him to end up with Jess at the end, at least not originally. There are things said by Shawn Ryan in interviews that suggest to me that they realized Flynn/Lucy and Wyatt/Jess was a more interesting dynamic than the originally planned Wyatt/Lucy, so they switched gears and planned to have Jess end up with Wyatt. BUT, whether a romantic reunion endgame for them was the plan or not, given the alley scene in 2x10 and other scenes in season two, I fully believe that prior to the nuclear bomb of dog shit that was the Christmas finale, the plan was always to give Jess a redemption arc and that Wyatt would become a better person through convincing her to turn double agent (and through becoming a father).

If you don’t bring Jess back, there’s nowhere for Wyatt’s character to go. Nothing for him to do. Rufus, Lucy, Flynn, Mason, Denise, Jiya—they all have hugely powerful arcs and tough situations. I could go into them but that’ll send me off into another tangent that we don’t have time for. Suffice to say, I can off the top of my head think of two internal struggles and places for each character to grow that would last a couple seasons. And that’s just off the top of my head.

But Wyatt? You can’t. He’s got nowhere to go.

Bringing back Jess is one way that you can force growth and give Wyatt a new arc, but you can’t just give a character one single arc. You have to give them multiple. No real life person is struggling with just one thing, we’re struggling with multiple things. Take Lucy in season two. She’s struggling with Rittenhouse, with her relationship with her mother, with her realizations about herself and what she’s willing to do, with losing Wyatt, with getting back Amy, and with her growing relationship with Flynn.

That’s a lot.

Rufus and Jiya have their relationship AND Jiya’s visions that lead to an arc about destiny versus free will, AND both struggling with the “what are we willing to do to win/who am I becoming” arc.

Give Wyatt JUST Jess, and that’s not enough. It’s also something that, to do right, you have to stretch over I’d say two seasons, seasons three and four. So you need something else to fill in more gaps.

Having Wyatt be bisexual and having him struggle with his sexuality gives him dozens of more opportunities for interesting interactions with other characters, it gives him more ways to address his toxic behavior (as we discussed), it gives him more ways to grow. Because we don’t just grow in a straight line. We grow like trees, with limbs stretching up all over the place and roots digging in deep and crisscrossing everywhere.

Wyatt is a stagnant character. Giving him bisexuality gives him a way to continue to grow that isn’t dependent on another character (Jess) and can be shortened or drawn out depending on how his other arc (Jess, potentially Lucy as well) plays out.

Having Wyatt be bi takes away all of his redundancy, and stops him from being boring, and stops him from being so easily replaceable. If a character isn’t intrinsically tied to the plot (Rufus is there because he’s the only pilot, Lucy is a history expert and tied to Rittenhouse, etc) then you need to think of other reasons for the viewers to really care about them and I’m sorry, but having a dead wife and then being stuck in a heterosexual love triangle doesn’t cut it in the year of our lord 2016 (or ’17, or ’18, or any other year that follows).

And no offense to anyone struggling with PTSD because it needs to be addressed, but the whole ‘soldier with PTSD’ has been done before and, despite making it a main feature in 1.05 The Alamo, it hasn’t been touched on since. Not once. So that’s I guess been thrown out the window by the writers as a plot device (although again that could be brought back by having Wyatt bond with Flynn and Flynn talking with him about shared experiences could be a way that Wyatt further develops feelings for him YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN!?!?).

It also, as I outlined in part one, explains all of his behavior. It takes behavior that made no sense and was toxic alpha male bullshit and puts a whole new and interesting and understandable spin on it. Note I said understandable, not justifiable, this does not in any way excuse any of Wyatt’s behavior. But boy howdy does it make it a lot more nuanced and layered. Having Wyatt be bi suddenly opens so many goddamn doors for his character I can’t even keep track. His PTSD, his relationship with his father, his relationship with Jess, his relationship with Flynn and Lucy, his time in the army, all of those things have new and boundless opportunities in them. It gives opportunities and explains and gives depth to one-note, shallow, cliche male behavior.

Not to mention, um, making him a repressed bisexual gives so many more opportunities for angst and hurt/comfort and all that delicious, delicious character conflict that we all love. Mmmm yes the precious. And, BONUS, it gives us character angst that doesn’t necessarily revolve around a romantic pairing! You can give a character a sexuality crisis without giving them a person to be paired off with! Wyatt can have his crisis over Ian Fleming or Wendell Scott or Rittenhouse Agent No. 5, and figure it all out with only platonic assistance from the team. OR he can be pining over Flynn without Flynn having a clue because Flynn needs his love interests to hit him over the head with a baseball bat to get him to notice and even then it doesn’t always work. OR have him worry about confessing to Jess and/or Lucy and fearing they’ll see him differently given their past sexual/romantic entanglements! ALL. THE. CHARACTER. ANGST. BITCHEEEEEES.

Finally, last but not least, why should Wyatt be bi? Because representation matters, that’s why.

Up until now I’ve highlighted why Wyatt, specifically, as an individual, should be bi. But stepping away from him individually… why the fuck not make your character bi?

It’s the 2010s. The world is finally waking up to the fact that LGBT+ people are here, we exist, and also having us as characters makes your ratings soar. People were ecstatic over The Day Reagan Was Shot, which focused on Denise and her coming out. Timeless’s diversity was a huge point in its favor and was a huge part of why critics loved it. Making, of all people, the most rough and tumble masculine man’s man of the cast be bisexual is important because it reminds us that anyone can have any sexuality, that there are no stereotypes, and that not all LGBT+ people are fashion gurus.

I’m sorry, Wyatt, but it’s true, you are no longer allowed to dress yourself, I’ve submitted you to Queer Eye.

What could be a more powerful storyline for today than a man who was abused as a kid, exhibited toxic masculinity, and was clearly unhappy with himself as a person and looking outside of himself to someone else to fix him, come to terms with himself, come to love himself, come to say “hey I love who I love and I am who I am and fuck anyone who says otherwise”? What could be a more wonderful representation of the diversity and family bonding themes of the show then to have Wyatt, the insecure difficult-with-feelings small town poster for typical masculinity come out, scared of rejection, scared of their reactions, only to have everyone show him love and acceptance and unwavering support? To have Denise hug him and tell him she understands how she feels? To have Lucy tell him she doesn’t see him any differently? For Rufus to joke this is why Wyatt can never choose a cereal and then reaffirm their friendship?

Having Wyatt be bi isn’t just good for him as a character, it’s good for the audience, and it continues the themes of the show and continues to break down stereotypes and honestly, there’s no reason for any character to be straight, either. We just ask “but why” because straight is still the default in our heads and all deviancy from the norm must be explained and rationalized. But there’s no need for that. Wyatt has the most typically heterosexual traits out of all of them, and he’s from a small town in Texas, and he went into the army. How powerful for people to see him come out. How wonderful. But Wyatt can be bi just because you damn well feel like it, because there shouldn’t be a big list of reasons (although I do have them, clearly). He can be bi just because, well, there’s no big tragic backstory for why I’m bi. I just am. And so is he.

In conclusion: Bi!Wyatt is ten times more interesting, nuanced, and unique than Straight!Wyatt, it adds depth and opportunities for growth, it gives layers to existing storylines and character relationships involving Wyatt, it explains his behavior and makes it more understandable, and it gives us needed representation.

My monkey brain adds that the opportunity for humor with this is also boundless and honestly I agree, good job monkey brain, you get a treat.

Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.

[go-diane-winchester]

Why being a Sam/Jared!stan or a Dean/Jensen!stan is the stupidest status to hold and why these fans generally annoy me.

Our boys are beautiful.  They have flaws sure.  But they are human and, in my humble opinion, they are some of the best people in Hollywood.  Morally, they are better than other human beings who work in that sleazy town.  I really respect that. 

Jared should be a guide to other actors, on how to treat your fans.  Other actors should treat Jared's footage, with his fans, as a set work on how to behave when encountering people that love you.  I had a crush of Viggo Mortensen, but the one thing about him, that I didn't approve of, was that he didn't want to be approached in, say, a coffee shop because he was being disturbed.  Don't take a job that makes people care for you and then get irritated because people care for you.  I still admire Viggo but I will never approach him because he doesn't like that.  I dont think I will ever get to meet Jared because I am from South Africa.  But if I ever did, I will be brave enough to at least wave to him or blow him a kiss.  I know he wont ignore me because he doesn't do that with his fans.  Jared Padalecki makes you fall in love with him.  The best thing about Sam Winchester, is that Sam is played by this awesome creature. 

I was abused thrice in my life.  Twice as a child and once as a grown up.  Nobody helped me.  That is why I have a soft spot for Jensen.  He protects vulnerable people.  Weak people and people with illnesses [like Jared] seek him out for companionship, support and protection.  Being sick and broke is horrible.  But Jared has been employed for 14 years because he had a friend who wouldn't let him quit and who never complained about his illness.  I wish I had a Jensen when I was working, who would be patient with me too.  He has kept women safe from predators in the past.  He talks about the production assistants and the reason why I admire that, is because production assistant are the lowest on a set hierarchy.  They do menial work.  And Jensen leaves the big wigs of CW and Supernatural and compliments these small fries. 

Both boys are flawed.  Obviously.  I mean, their human beings, after all.  I bet the person reading this is full of flaws.  I am full of flaws.  Nobody is perfect.  Nobody has a good life either.  J2 deal with their own hurdles.  So do we.  But when there is an unnecessary, easy to avoid hurdle, that is when I get livid.  Years ago, when Supernatural was born, the only ''war'' that raged in SPN fandom was between Samgirls and Deangirls over which guy is better.  Why?  May I ask, what is wrong with you?  When I first came across these ignorant fools I thought:

Why does loving one guy mean you automatically have to hate the other one? 

And why is it that if your fave is written in a way that you don't approve of, for the sake of furthering the story, it automatically means that the writers are favoring the other one. 

Seasons where bad things have happened to Sam [and Dean equally or by extension] have generally done well.  Look at seasons 1 to 6.  When Sam is the inflicted one and Dean is reacting, we get a Hurt/Comfort scenario that we don't even have to write about, because it is all there on the screen, laid out for us.  Those were enjoyable seasons.  But the stans were never satisfied. 

Samstans:  Why are they demonizing and torturing poor Sam??!?!?!

Deanstans:  Jensen should leave this show because they give all the story arcs to Jared. 

Why is it that the general audience liked seasons with Sam in peril better?  First reason was because the focus was on the brothers.  Second reason, which nobody seems to understand, is that Dean is one of the unique jewels of Supernatural.  Supernatural's dust bowl Americana and texture is closely linked to Dean.  The dearly departed leather jacket, the rock music, the 67 Chevy Impala all are part of the Supernatural landscape and all belong to Dean.  His character, because Jensen has comedic prowess, adds snark and sass to Supernatural.  Sam's seriousness is offset by Dean's sassiness.  The added spice to Supernatural is Dean's character.  Having him reacting, adds texture and emotion to the overall Supernatural story.  Seeing Sam in danger freaks us out.  And seeing Dean go into rescue mode calms us down because ''don't worry, he'll save Sam''.  Meanwhile:

Samstans:  Why do they have to wussify Sam to make Dean look good?

Deanstans:  So is Dean totally pointless until Sam is in trouble? Give him his own story, for goodness sake.  

Season 7 was the first season where the brothers were starting to take a minor back seat to other characters, but Sam was getting sick with hallucinations and Dean was going into protective big brother mode, and that was because Ross-Lemming and her agenda came on board and had not been promoted yet, to a position of power.  In Season 8, the promotion happened.  Suddenly Dean and Sam are separated.  They are at loggerheads.  Their reconciliation was meh! but suddenly we started to lose Dean to demonDean, MarkofCain Dean, BesottedwithAmara Dean, and now MichaelDean.  In other words, we are losing our unique jewel of Supernatural: The Dean Winchester who added texture to the landscape of Supernatural.  Plus, the focus is not just on Dean and then Sam dealing with it.  No, we have Cas, luci, Jack, the icky sheriff girls, Mary and Fake Bobby, the AU people and everyone else ''dealing with it'', unlike season three where Dean was going to hell but was still quintessentially Dean and a freaking out Sam who didn't want to lose his brother.  We didn't lose the hurt/comfort scenario and we didn't lose the jewel.  Because Dean was still Dean, just in peril. 

Instead of sleepy towns, and sharing a room at a motel somewhere, we now have the insufferable bunker with separate lives.  The Old Supernatural is dead and gone and will probably never return.  And that is because you created the unnecessary division.  And when rogues entered fandom, carrying destiel banners, they realized nobody was really listening to them so they started carrying other banners like ''WaywardSisters'', ''GenIsMyQueen, ''DanIsMyQueen'' and ''Dean Winchester''.  They were pretending to be DeanStans.  They worked tirelessly and created the division while stupid stans were fighting over nothing in fandom.  Sure, the hellers ruined fandom.  But both stans helped. 

I am a bibro, because I am not petty enough to fight over which guy is more awesome and who is getting more lines of dialogue.  I observe, without prejudice, what seasons work and why they did.  I like both Js equally.  I get irritated with Dean sometimes.  I get irritated with Sam sometimes.  Sometimes Jensen annoys me.  Sometimes Jared annoys me.  Does that mean I hate them?  NO.  It just means they did something I didn't like.  Am I going to flip out over it?  No, I will just hope it never happens again and more on.  Especially when stans act like the J's mothers.  Stop trying to rescue the boys, from an opinion. 

I remember a fan saying once, in a YouTube comment section, that she hated how Jensen chews gum during his panels.  Not the best reason to hate someone.  Maybe the chewing was really annoying for some people to watch.  Maybe she was looking for a fault.  Maybe she was trolling.  Another time a fan said that she didn't like how Jared always says ''without further ado''.  All of the above I mentioned previously apply here too.  Both observations seem petty.  The respective stans flew into actions:

Excuse me, are you perfect?

Do you have a problem with his breathing too?

Why are you being so petty?

There, there.  I am sorry his existence irks you.

Here is what will happen because of this outburst, instead of scrolling by and ignoring the offender.  The offender might have been making an observation and not genuinely hating the guy.  She will now.  She will hate him and his fans.  You are hurting his reputation.  Others reading the exchange will become disillusioned, because ''that section of the fandom is so problematic''.  They will lose respect in the actor and his fans.  One stupid comment and instead of ignoring it, you have a meltdown.  Meanwhile, there is only gushing going on, on a Misha video.  Despite the fact that Misha has such a negative personality, his fans stand by him and gang up collectively on anyone who might ''hurt'' Misha.  So they are barricaded in their little fandom.  Yes, they are toxic.  But at least they have unity.  Shame on you lot.  The bibros are trying to keep this fandom together and keep Misha and his hellers at bay.  And here you are, making matters worse, because you dont know how to behave, treat each other with respect and treat the other J and his character with tolerance.  Shame on you. 

[dancingoutloudrequired]

Happy Birthday Yog!

Not Quite My First Concert…..

So it wasn’t exactly my first concert. But it left the biggest impression and has the best story to go with it. And it was George Michael, so I wish it had been. I suppose I could have seen Wham! when I was 10 or something, but I wasn’t that into them by that point, and had yet to develop my tenacity for getting into the concerts I wanted.

My very first concert I wanted to go to was Rick Springfield. C’mon-tell me “Jessie’s Girl” doesn’t hold a special place in your heart. But I was only eight when I begged my parents, and even my sweet and indulgent folks had their limits. My first concert wound up being jack wagner. That’s right-I said Jack Wagner, another General Hospital hottie of the time. By the time I gushed over him I was in the 6th grade and deemed old enough to fish my wish. The entire family went to Meadowbrook to see what, I thought at the time, was an amazing shows. I remember huge beach balls being thrown out into the audience. And I recall us bringing KFC or something like it, because this was when one could still bring food to a venue, spread out a blanket and have a picnic. The funniest memories I have are of Jack Wagner swearing throughout the show, I mean dropping F-bombs, and me being astonished. It wasn’t that I had virgin ears, it just seemed so weird and out of context. The other hilarious memory was going to the restroom with my mom. There was a huge line for the ladies’ room and nobody in the men’s room so my mother, in her infinite wisdom (I probably would have done the same thing) took me to the empty men’s room to go potty. That is when security entered and chastised my mother at great length for taking her young daughter into the men’s bathroom. She was a little red in the face when we back to my dad and younger brother. It was a fun night. But it wasn’t the most important early concert I went to.

There were sporadic eighties concerts that followed. I would have to try and find some of my ticket stubs (yes I try to save them all) in order to remember them. Two stand out in my mind. One summer in middle school I went with a girlfriend to see Debbie Gibson. If you don’t know she is, just google the name or listen to the eighties satellite station and sooner or later one of her songs will come on. The other concert is, believe it or not, Poison with Winger. So I had eclectic taste? And the eighties were weird anyways. My friend’s dad took us downtown to that show and as I recall we had a blast, even while sticking out like a sore thumb.

This brings me to the best early concert of my life: George Michael-The Faith Tour. Oh holy Jesus. And as I said before, this was the first time I got lucky with a concert and-well I am getting ahead of myself.

I fell in love with George Michael in the spring/summer of ’88. But tickets for his tour had already gone on sale and sold out. I didn’t quite realize what a big deal his tour was until later. Beside myself, I was depressed yet determined to find a way in. Early in the summer, 95.5 (now this was back when Dick Purtan was still doing the morning show-way before he switched over to the oldies station) announced, actually it was Dick Purtan who announced it, that they would be giving away tickets for one week to the George Michael concert. WHAAAAAA???????? Tickets would be given away during all of the radio shows, AM and PM, Monday through Friday of said week. Well-my mission was set.

I never had a doubt that I would win tickets. I believe my family thought I was nuts but they indulged me, as they always did. Monday morning, I woke up at the crack of dawn and listened to my radio and didn’t leave it all throughout the day. I think I brought it to dinner even. I had no luck on Monday,  

Tuesday started the same way, except I had a dentist appointment in the mid-late afternoon. I was beside myself. The car ride and actual exam were more excruciating than usual. And I had a dentist with coke bottle glasses who freaked me out on a regular basis.  

I got home from the dentist and they were giving away another pair of tickets. I called, as I had been….AND I WON! I couldn’t believe it. I mean I had had faith (no pun intended) but when it actually happened I was beside myself. I think my family was even more shocked. They were tenth row seats off to the side, but I was put in the running for front row tickets. I wasn’t THAT lucky.

Summer went on. We took, what was by now, our usual summer trip up north to Charlevoix. I actually joined my family late that year because of cheerleading camp (don’t ask). Before I left for the bus to go up north I picked up my tickets for the show-it was going to be August 30th, 1988 and was quickly approaching.

I have to say that there really was never a doubt in my mind as to whom I would be taking with me. My brother, Josh, could be a pain in the ass. Who can say that their kid brother isn’t/wasn’t from time to time. But Josh loved George Michael too. I’d like to think I had something to do with that, but I don’t know. But there we were, I was going into the ninth grade and he was going into the fifth grade. I think he was excited. The show was at the Palace in Auburn Hills-which was a really new venue, which also seemed to be really far away. Obviously neither one of us could drive…. Did I mention we have the best parents?

The unbelievably exciting night of the event came, and my parents packed a picnic and took a little TV in their minivan. They drove us all the way out to this concert (at least a half hour each way) and sat in their car in the parking lot and had a picnic and waited for us. How many of you can say your folks would do that?

The concert is almost a blur. It was the best concert I had been to and I think it really is what made me a concert junkie. He had so much energy, sex appeal, and amazing music. And I had the best time with my brother. If I could go back, I wouldn’t take one of my friends. I would take my brother again. I feel like to a certain extent we have shared music as a special bond. We don’t always see eye to eye about it, but I think back to those teen years and it makes me smile.

Josh recently reminded me that we saw the next, and only other, tour that George Michael came on in the United States. It was called Cover to Cover, and SURPRISE! It mainly featured covers of other people’s songs. That show is such a vague memory for me that it makes me weep. You know, I could go on for pages about how gutted I am to have lost George Michael, but I won’t.  And the truth is I have felt this overwhelming guilt because he lost me a long time ago. His untimely passing has brought him back to me in a strange way. But I said I would not focus on how much I miss GM.  

This is a happy piece. So I choose to focus on my unbelievable luck (luck that would stay with me in one form or another when it comes to music, but that might be interesting to fill you in on another day). I won tickets to see the musician who meant the most to me at the time. I was lucky I had a brother whom I loved to share it with. And I was lucky I had amazing parents who were kind enough to go above and beyond to make it all happen. Love to all of you.

[happylittleroleplays]

Sentence Starters: Coyote Ugly Part 1

“When are you guys going to talk about something else?”

“Those arent eggs, their egg whites. I’d rather eat the carton.”

“No fast food. No Sausage.”

“How should I live?”

“It’s simple. Don’t go.”

“You said I could be anything that I wanted to be.”

“You said anything. And I believed you.

“I’m not leaving this house without you’re support.”

“I’m not going to give you a big hug or wish you luck.”

“I am going to sit here with my coffee and pretend to be mad. Is that okay?”

“Good luck. There. I said it.”

“Put pepper spray in your purse. Even if youre not sure, just start spraying.”

“Its just some emergency cash I saved up.”

“From the looks of this place,this is our emergency.”

“We’ve never followed through on a single thing. I think thats what makes us so special.”

“Look at you, you really did it.”

“I don’t like to be alone in the night.”

“I don’t like to hear I’m wrong when I’m right.”

“All i want is someone to sing my songs.”

“Welcome to the music business.”

“Who do I look like, your god damn maid?”

“You better not push me kid.”

“I just made a complete fool of myself.”

“I’m almost sure I would have told you.”

“I’m not following you home, I’m just walking 26 blocks in the wrong direction.”

“It’s not all my fault, you did throw yourself at me.”

“I was pretending to be sweet and innocent so you’d help me.”

“Can I ask you a question? Why did we just walk in a circle? Are you lost?”

“Okay I’ve never had anyone stare at my ass for half an hour so I’m going to say goodnight and I’m hoping you’re going to say it back.”

“You just don’t give up do you?”

“For the record I was only staring at your ass for the first 15 minutes.”

“Sign your name in here and get yourself ready.”

“Bathroom’s around the corner if you want to throw up.”

“Don’t tease me honey, sing!”

“Come on. A naked girl in army boots? Easy play to call.”

“You let him BRAND you?”

“We each made 300.00 tonight.”

“Let me take a look at ya.”

“the last thing I need is some waitress on a power trip wasting my time.”

“The average man is walking around with a toddler in his pants.”

“Let’s see your moves.”

“She just cut off some guys ponytail!”

“As of this moment you are to appear available but never be available.”

“You can have it any way you like as long as its in a shot glass.”

“ Jim, Jack, Johnny Red, Johnny Black, and Jose; all my favorite men.”

“You can only be a tease if you stop sleeping around babe.”

“We all play our little parts. Except she really is a bitch and I really am a tease.”

“Ever since I got really drunk on tequila, I never really drink the stuff anymore.”

“I was just asking this man to buy me a double.”

“The way I see it you got two choices. You can start a fight here, throw some punches, get a bloody nose, make complete fools of yourselves. Or you can take this ten I got here and buy these pretty ladies a round at the bar.”

“I’m just dying to know where that came from.”

“Try serving beer and pizza on Monday nights when the giants play the cowboys in November.”

“I’d be shocked if you survived another night.”

“Did you really write all those songs?”

“I’m just trying to tell you that I like your music.”

“Do you always take compliments so well?”

“If you want to see me again, you’ll figure it out.”

“I have a serious shopping problem.”

“Nobody wears leather in church.”

“Forgive me father, for I have sinned.”

“The next time a guy buys you a shot, chase it with a beer. I don’t swallow them. I just spit the shot back into the beer bottle.”

“I’m not a lesbian. I played in the minors but never went pro.”

“Who am I kidding? I cant do this.”

“There’s a really cute guy at the bar asking for you.”

“So much for sweet an innocent.”

“Take a good look, tonight’s my last night, I think I’m gonna get fired.”

“It’s payback time.”

“Come on girls, 150.00 and you’ll see the butt.”

“You’re going to owe me big time for this one.”

“ Did you ever wake up sober after a one night stand, and the person you're next to is layin' on your arm, and they're so ugly, you'd rather chew off your arm then risk waking 'em?”

“It’s 3:30 in the morning. I want what every man wants...Breakfast”

“That’s it? I go to breakfast with you and we’re even?”

“We’re not even close to even. Because I danced on a bar, I took of my shirt, and I unzipped my pants.”

“I hate to spoil your evening but it looks like were not gonna go anywhere.”

“Cute?? It’s very rugged and manly!!”

“Do you always eat breakfast on the hood of your car?”

“You may not be feeling it now but I think one day youll be on stage singing a song about this very night.”

“When I get on stage I freeze.”

“All I have ever really wanted to do is stand in the dark and listen to someone else sing my songs. I want to be the one who writes it.”

“The great songs last forever.”

“The only way to get my songs heard is to go out there and sing them myself.”

“We’re going to have to fix this little problem straight away.”

“Do you always ask this many questions?”

“Do you always dodge this many questions?”

“The sun’s coming up.  We’re going to be late.”

“I was going to kiss you goodbye but I thought I might gag.”

“I...changed my mind about this kiss. I think we should give it a shot.”

“Yeah...I panicked and I didn’t know what else to say.”

“Shit! The cops are here.”

“Everyone wanted you honey.”

“That was like...a one time performance. That I have to repeat every night.”

“She sang along to a jukebox, lets not start polishing a grammy.”

“She saved your ass.”

“She saved me from kicking the shit out of some drunks.”

“I’ve gotta walk or celebrate or pass out or something.”

“You called me in the middle of the night and said there was an emergency.”

“Why would anything be wrong?”

“Well. I had a good night. So I wanted a good-night kiss.”

“What’s going on? Why do I need my guitar??”

“The only way I can show you is to make you really nervous.”

“I think the audience got more than they paid for, really.”

[caithyra]

Vampire Game Reviews Part 1

This Halloween I sat down and played a bunch of vampire themed games and decided to review them. First up, Vampire Legends: The True Story of Kisilova, Dracula: Origin and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. I might get around to Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption and Dracula: Love Kills in a later post.

I use my own 5-scale gradation in this:

0: Either I couldn’t force myself to finish it, or I was more relieved it was over than anything else. 1: I had no fun, but there might have been something fun in there… maybe…? 2: More bad than good. 3: About evenly good and bad. I actually start having more fun than not. 4: A solid entertainment piece. Has it’s blemishes, but despite that I like it. 5: Almost perfect (perfection is a myth). I had lots of fun and am satisfied.

(Semi-minor spoilers below. Unless you’ve gone quite far into the games, you likely wont suss out what’s happening until it’s happening.)

Vampire Legends: The True Story of Kisilova: You’re an investigator for the Hapsburg Empire going to the small town of Kisilova, recently beset by a killer leaving bloodless victims behind them. Rumors of vampires abound. After a series of mishaps the rumors do not feel so farfetched. Especially not when a mysterious, young woman enters the picture.

(Left: The Beginning of the Adventure with our buddy and hint machine. Right: The first of many, many hidden objects screens in this game.)

Okay, it is a point-and-click visual novel adventure thing that’s really short (less than 5 hours, and I think I left the game — and the clock — running for a while at some point), and also cheap. It was enjoyable enough, the music was forgettable but good enough, the graphics nice and atmospheric enough and the story was short and serviceable. The problems mainly came through the game-play; this game relied faaar too heavily on hidden object minigames, and those were unskippable, while all others were skippable after a short while. Fortunately, your partner can give hints to speed things along. As for my final decision in the winter-themed bonus chapter? Well, it was Halloween so I thought “why not?” and that was that for Europe. I always try to pick the most supernatural decision whenever I can lol (see Squirrel Elves in the Witcher franchise, or picking spell-sneaking classes in the Elder Scrolls).

My biggest problem with this game, however, is that I need to resize the resolution on my ultrawide monitor to play it without horizontal stretching distorting the art. The Options menu is seriously lacking in Options (actually, that whole menu is a mess that looks more at home in a Free-to-Play mobile game).

All in all, I generally liked it and its short nature meant that except for the hidden objects minigame, most of it didn’t outstay its welcome and it was really cheap (less than 4€ when I bought it, which is about the right price IMO. I think regular price is something like 9.99€?) so worth it. 3/5.

Dracula: Origin: You are Van Helsing. Yeah. That guy. And you have a missing friend, Harker, who had something to do with Dracula, and you have a pretty friend named Mina who ends up targeted by Dracula and now you must rush across the Old World to save her from a curse.

(Left: Yup, same dev as the Sherlock Holmes games. Middle: Vampires don’t like garlic breath. Right: Dammit Mina, I gave you ONE job. One. Job. All of this slow walking could have been avoided!)

Ah. Frogware. I generally like their Sherlock Holmes games, but this game… It felt more like a waste of my time. Oh, I’m sure there is a good game in there that isn’t a waste of time. Unfortunately, it is hidden behind the biggest time-sinks in the game: Van Helsing walks at half the speed of a normal person at all times and speaks really slowly, in conversations that has no branches, yet they will periodically be interrupted so that you can click on the next topic in the list (that wont reveal the next topic until you’ve listened to the topic listed before it). There’s this scene during a cave in when he says something like “quickly, we must make haste to escape!” and then you click on the exit and he waaaaaaaaalks slooooooooooooowlyyyyyy through it. It certainly doesn’t help that he must cross the entire span of the screen and backtrack locations many times and… AGH! RUN YOU FOOL!!

And, well, Frogware adventure game with its strange clues and non-clues and objects. There’s this bit in the first outdoor area when you have to capture some flies. Now, if you have followed the story logically, you will have a jar and a lid in your inventory. Easy, peasy, just click the flies with the jar, right? Nope. You must find a mourning veil hidden in the cemetery (that is large and that Van Helsing waaaaalks sloooooowlyyyyy through), use it on the flies and then combine the fly-ridden veil with the jar to get a jar of flies (I wont say what for because of spoilers, but, well, I don’t recommend eating during the Cemetery/Mansion part of the story if you have a phobia against bugs). There are also several objects that are basically five pixels on the screen because of the angle we’re viewing them at that we must find to pick up, and on the whole, I had more frustrations than fun with this story. Like, there’s even this puzzle minigame with a picture of Minos, the Labyrinth and the Minotaur and you find thread/string in the same house and wouldn’t you know it! The thread/string has nothing to do with the minigame and the minigame has nothing to do with the legend of the Minotaur!

On top of that, well, lets just say that the Egyptian section has quite a bit of stereotyping (think Victorian stereotypes of Egypt and its people in a modern game. Also, potential racism against white people must be prevented at all costs, including lying to a bereaved family), and when we run into our first, unliving female vampire she of course wears a top made of strips of cloth and a sheer skirt (you’d think a rich vampire’s favorite mistress would own a nice dress at least, but nope), and every woman (including dead of non-vampiric variety) have their beauty commented upon (and, of course, a young, pretty girl’s defilement/death is a tragedy, which is why it is so important to include that she was pretty).

And, well, this game markets itself heavily with Dracula at the forefront, not Van Helsing, yet while Dracula is the main antagonist, he only has a few, brief scenes, which were disappointing. All in all it was a 1/5.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines: You are a fledgling of one of the Camarilla clans, recently thrust into the secret world hidden by darkness, and more specifically into one of the most fucked cities of the World of Darkness. After your illicit embrace into the undead by your executed sire, the Prince of the City has graciously offered to adopt you, provided you prove yourself worthy to the exacting clan of rulers. Except the prince’s domain is built on quicksand, and this is Los Angeles; the birthplace of the modern Anarchs, and one of the domains of the Kindred of the East, on top of the eternal, political dance all Kindred must dance, and you, baby vampire as you are, have no allies and no clue as how to proceed except to survive.

(Left: Told ya Velvet is a mascot in this game. Middle: Did you know that Mercurio was meant to handle the Voerman sisters and we wouldn’t have to go through sewers and a haunted hotel if he did his job? Right: Apparently the Chinese are masters of Japanese swords and the Ventrue need no neckbones...)

Here’s the thing about VtM:B: It is a very enjoyable game and definitely the definite vampire game out there. It also has no story for your character. “What about the Ankaran Sarcophagus?”, well, your character participates, but it does nothing to answer the questions we are immediately confronted with in the opening of the game: Why would our unknown sire, an upstanding member of Kindred society, break one of the Traditions (pretty much laws set in stone for all Kindred over the entire world) to embrace us? Why would the prince, whose sole job is to uphold the Traditions, then break one of the Traditions and allow the ill-begotten progeny live?

Except for the opening of the game, we never hear from our sire again, nor the questions raised during the opening. And that makes our player character a bit superfluous when any random neonate could serve just as well.

So if not story-telling, what does VtM:B do that makes people sing its praises? In short? Characters and the World. It is incredibly atmospheric and while characters don’t develop (vampires are static by nature in this world, and most characters in the game are entrenched in their places and wont be shaken by some random baby vampire showing up), they are all very distinct and written in different tones. However, if you’re not role-playing as an ignorant fledgling, but meta-playing with some Vampire the Masquerade lore known, you will feel extremely railroaded (if your character had any inkling of who Smiling Jack is in the World of Darkness, they would never believe his coarse but kind uncle-figure thing he’s got going on. Because even before a certain hugely Biblical spoiler got involved, Jack was an imposer, liar, manipulator and mass-murderer who has sired many, many thin-blooded vampires and abandoned them to their fates. There’s a reason why only ignorant neonates like Nines’ gang admires and likes him. What I just said is not a spoiler for the game, btw, because it never comes up because your character is an ignorant fledgling being manipulated and deceived by literally everyone. Maybe Velvet and Bertram don’t, but Velvet might seem so sweet when she convinces you to be her knight because of Presence and acting, and Bertram is a Nossie and they have major secrets within secrets).

And while it is easy to sink into the world of the game and roleplay, thus mitigating the railroading feeling above. This game was clearly written with an audience of White Male Teens in mind. We have Velvet (of the fashion-conscious Toreador clan) show up at the prince’s court in Elysium in only a lacy basque, g-string and thigh high fishnets, tall heels and not as much as a peignoir thrown on top. Yeah, she attends an important society function in her fetish underwear. Then we have the explicit sex life of game cover-girl Jeanette (yeah, the one dressed like a dilapidated school girl), and those two are THE female mascots of the game.

The less said about the Orientalism and the Kindred of the East the better, but that segues into how around the time you reach Chinatown, the game starts losing its luster and strengths. Okay, so if you’re sensitive to that kinda thing, you might notice it a little bit in Hollywood, but by the time Chinatown rolls around, you might notice how it is less immersive and how it starts to feel more and more gamey (specifically, Action gamey), and you get less options that isn’t some variant of “kill it”.

On top of that the game has technical issues if you do not use the fan-made patch (I always use Patch Plus, which restores cut content and quests, as well as ReShade for better anti-aliasing and sharpness), and it still has a few cropping up from time to time. At least it works perfectly well in ultrawide resolutions?

Still it has that charm, and despite its flaws and how I can think of a dozen complaints at the drop of a dime, I still love playing it. So it’s a 4/5 from me.