#int; lucy & coop.

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@radiaking said: 46. sender  pulls  receiver  out  of  harm’s  way .

        The first shots fire from somewhere neither of them is expecting, so quiet Lucy almost doesn't realize what the sound is. Fwip, fwip. And her whole body jerks like she's a marionette and someone's pulling her strings: First back as a bullet pearls into her shoulder, then doubling over as another finds her hip.

        Then the Ghoul has her before she can hit the ground. There's a rush of air around her ears and the sound of more gunfire. He dumps her behind a pile of stone and steel rubble with a grumbled, “Stay.”

        “Where d'you think I'm gonna go?” she asks in a daze. It doesn't seem to hurt yet. That's not right. She should be in pain...

[heartsdefine]

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@faultyconscience (coop) said: ❝now you know i hate to question your decisions, but—❞ to lucy

        She's kneeling down in the dust and the dirt, using one hand as a cup for Dogmeat to lap water out of as she carefully pours it from her canteen with the other. When the Ghoul speaks, she glances up at him with a frown. “I don't think that's true. I think you'd love to question my choices.” She finishes up and gives the dog a scratch behind her ears before standing. “But if we're thirsty, she's thirsty.”

[tinymixtapes]

Feature: Avant-Garde Escape Strategies

[A Bewick’s wren perches motionlessly on a thin branch.] In 2017, Twin Peaks is an invigorated brand. It has awoken as if to a new life, walks and breathes more freely. It is viewed on laptops, tablets, phones, and smart televisions connected to Netflix, and it will soon be viewed on SHOWTIME. But how will Twin Peaks be viewed in the year 2117? On what devices? Will it be viewed at all, or will its exact content be experienced in some truncated, more immediate form, facilitated by body-altering technologies yet to be discovered? Who are the people who download Twin Peaks to their brains in the future? Where do they live? These are the kinds of questions SHOWTIME will have to answer in order to ensure the continued relevance of the reawakened, newly optimistic, and hungry Twin Peaks brand. Maybe those viewer-subjects live in a huddled condition, in what philosopher Peter Sloterdijk calls “ecological stress communes,” pressed inland and away from cultural centers now remembered and revered like ancestors, jostled about by resource scarcity, plagued by ridiculous fantasies of aliens and sea people punctuated by actual disaster, war, and collapse. Or maybe these troubles loom on their horizon. In the face of these real nightmares, do they dream of ending up in a place like Twin Peaks, of grappling with its fake demons? Maybe future Twin Peaks viewers see in it a refreshingly provincial vision of encompassing crisis. A town where a yellow light still means “slow down” resonates abstractly with them. They are absorbed by the dark forces stirred out of the brown-gray American forest, by the murder of the cocaine-addicted homecoming queen and secret prostitute. Maybe, naive to the reality of their own circumstances, they feel like Dale Cooper chasing after those elusive and idealized spirits. The X-Files at least has something like a vision of the future, where Twin Peaks only has a vision of the past, and a pretty abstruse one at that. The forces that will carry The X-Files and Twin Peaks together into the cruel future are similar, but not the same. The X-Files, in its simulation of a crackpot investigation motivated less by superstition than clandestine knowledge and bizarre technology, at least has something like a vision of the future, where Twin Peaks only has a vision of the past, and a pretty abstruse one at that. If, disingenuously, The X-Files sought to domesticate the demons split open by modern techniques of investigation, Twin Peaks was overcome by its monsters, disenchanted and reduced to an incomprehensible aesthetic litany. Where The X-Files resolved about a mystery per episode, Twin Peaks lacked satisfying answers. And while we don’t know how Twin Peaks will be viewed in the future, SHOWTIME is wise to bet on disenchantment, on unanswered questioning and the melting of things into dark, muddy pictures. --- [Three white plumes ascend from the smokestacks ahead.] You wake up from an unclear dream in the late afternoon. The year is 2011 or 2012. Your room is dark and warm. Your laptop is next to you, partly covered by sheets. Disoriented, you rub gunk out of your eyes. You were up late browsing Tumblr again. Your laptop screen opens upon your unrefreshed dashboard, where you had fallen asleep to a looping GIF of Laura Palmer’s freeze-framed VHS smile from “Pilot (Northwest Passage).” You “like” the post. Co-created by David Lynch, a pioneer of American avant-garde cinema known for such films as Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive, the show mixes Lynch’s unique brand of surrealism with a dated form of the primetime drama in a way that you’ve enjoyed since you were introduced to the show by friends on the internet. One of the many reasons you love Twin Peaks is that its characters feel like people you know in real life, even though everything else in the show feels very unfamiliar. Twin Peaks makes you nostalgic for a time you don’t remember and a place that doesn’t exist. Animation: Korey Daunhauer Twin Peaks makes you nostalgic for a time you don’t remember and a place that doesn’t exist. Before you knew who David Lynch was, you had seen Laura Palmer wrapped in plastic, an icon of ossified innocence. It would take Lynch and Mark Frost a while to notice, or to do anything about, the fact that Twin Peaks had taken about 20 years to strike the nerve it was always supposed to hit, the one in you. Maybe they were too cynical, too forward-thinking. They thought your parents would be like this. Or, more likely, the conversation they staged between the avant-garde and its supposed opposite traumatically fell through, revealing, eventually, the uncanny mixture obscured by those labels, which they never knew how to control. It took a while to work itself out. By eventually thickening the show with supernatural diversions and visually peculiar dream sequences, ultimately leaving many of its mysteries unsolved, Lynch and Frost created the perpetual conditions for a scrupulous, even paranoid viewing of Twin Peaks. The question is how the show’s visual language, founded upon a mostly-arbitrary complexity inherited equally from Lynch’s experimentalism and from the genre within which it is put to work, means anything at all after the fact of its disenchantment — aestheticized, separated from the ostensible movement toward resolution. Or, as Anamanaguchi’s Peter Berkman put it in a reply to a comment on one of his Facebook status updates, “the question is how that grammar has changed now that we can pause and dissect individual frames in and out of context.” You close your eyes, take a deep breath, and keep scrolling Tumblr. --- [Sparks fly from the grinding wheel as you move in for a closer look.] INT. GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL DINING AREA - MORNING Sunlight pours into the room from the right. DALE COOPER sips coffee, his tape recorder placed neatly in front of him on the table. COOPER Diane, the time is 8:05 A.M., I’m at the Great Northern Hotel. I’ve just awoke from a terrible and convoluted dream. I’m not sure how much of it was significant to the inquiry into Laura Palmer’s death and how much of it was fabricated by BOB for the purpose of diverting it; to be honest, I’m not even sure if BOB or the Black Lodge are real anymore. I don’t know if I care or if the outcome of the investigation is important to me. I feel terrible. I lied awake in bed for a few hours. I feel like I’m living in someone else’s bizarre fantasy. (He pauses.) I mean, I guess her dad did it? I live at this hotel now. BOBBY BRIGGS enters from the GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL LOBBY holding a football. BOBBY Hey, Coop! Catch! BOBBY throws COOPER the football. COOPER fails to catch the football and it hits his tape recorder, sending it flying into the mug of coffee. COOPER B-Bobby! I — AUDREY HORNE enters from the GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL LOBBY smoking a cigarette, holding an iPhone. AUDREY (puffing cigarette) “When the masses think, the intellectual dies.” –Antonio Negri --- [A massive log looms atop a dolly.] Was Twin Peaks an attempt to make the masses think, to think with the masses and to kill the intellectual, or to think of the masses? To create an intellectual picture of their supposed fears and superstitions, their vices and neuroses? First, there’s Cooper and his obsession with an idea of homespun authenticity, one of the show’s biggest memes. There’s also Harry S. Truman, the sheriff, well-intentioned and pragmatic; Bobby Briggs, the football star, surly and unpredictable; the show’s various tokens of the bumbling serendipity of small-town America (Andy the cop, Pete the loyal husband); and the town’s enigmas and obsessives (James the boyishly gilded biker, Leland Palmer, Lawrence the shrink, and Harold the shut-in). Then, there’s a group of female characters, beginning with Laura and growing to include Shelly Johnson, Donna Hayward, Audrey Horne, Norma Jennings, Josie Packard, Lucy Moran, and Catherine Martell, who are depicted at best as seriously or repeatedly traumatized and, at worst, as stupid or possessed by some unknown whim, complicit in their own undoing. Where the town of Twin Peaks is bottomless in its dark mythology, it is flat in other ways. The image of community in Twin Peaks is convincing, actually, because it is not realistic. It is a vision of the countryside native to the city and is nonetheless awkward in representing both. FBI agents and industrialists, the show’s main representatives of the latter, view the fixed category of “provincial values” with lust or disdain. The working assumption is that the city is a place that mystery and magic have abandoned in favor of particular backwaters. That urban coexistence is antithetical to wonder. Moby’s “Go,” the popular rave-inspired electronica single based on a sample of Angelo Badalamenti’s theme music for Twin Peaks, is both clearer about who it is talking to and more successful in its attempt to practice an inclusive form of mastery over its created public than the show itself. As I drive east on Phoenix’s Loop 202 away from the setting sun, “Go (Woodtick Mix)” fades into “Go (Soundtrack Mix),” a line of a hundred cars curving delicately to the returning, quantized “yeahs.” --- [A waterfall crashes.] Everybody needs an escape from the avant-garde. To think all of the time is difficult, and it seems better that one find some place of negotiation, where many people think more and few people think less. As an escape strategy, Twin Peaks faltered in its weirdness, its stubborn maintenance of a position among the few. It was, moreover, unrealistic in its concept of the many. Gesturing toward the avant-garde, it failed there most spectacularly; no matter the depth of the perennial ebb and flow of interest in Lynch’s work, it will always make complete sense to me that Fire Walk With Me was booed at Cannes. If Lynch’s murderous backwater is perfectly fitted to the fetishes and anxieties of today’s teenagers, it is only because they have many of the same fetishes and anxieties as their parents, who watched with baited breath until the questions and clues lost their impact. Lynch’s vision of provincial intrigue said more about the values and aesthetics of America’s cities than its towns, and it appeals to we who carry with us everywhere a version of what Lynch saw in the city. If Lynch’s murderous backwater is perfectly fitted to the fetishes and anxieties of today’s teenagers, it is only because they have many of the same fetishes and anxieties as their parents, who watched with baited breath until the questions and clues lost their impact. Today, Twin Peaks exists against the backdrop of a nostalgia cult. Millennials, lacking spiritual unity and drawn to promises of darkness, are fascinated. Resuscitated by the esoteric magic of the brandscape, will Twin Peaks really walk and breathe more freely, as if awoken to a new life, and find something like that original sense of purpose? Or will it lose its way again in the smoke and mirrors of a shoddily constructed model of the public? --- On this auspicious morning for Twin Peaks, you languish in your room, thinking of the past. Of dead memes, content dampened and wrapped in plastic. Sometimes you wish you could immaterialize, becoming the unfeeling aggregate of your social footprint. You dream of disappearing into a fog of blogwave, street style, spicy memes, or Twin Peaks. Other times, you feel surprisingly up to the task of remaining an aggregate of relations. Your mental image of your environment sometimes appears in the form of a monster you are working to vanquish. With an intoxicated discomfort like nausea, you realize that Laura never lived in a world, had a future. That the real mysteries were yours. --- [You approach a wooden sign on the right side of the road.] http://j.mp/2pXgudV

[greygamer]

TP Countday Day 16: The Orchid’s Curse

I know from the credits that David Lynch didn’t have a hand directly on this episode, but it sure has that kind of lazy, dreamy feeling to it. Things slow down. We linger on moments. We find ourselves enveloped in a dream world.

Probably the scene with the most of that quality in this episode would be Donna’s visit with Harold. She decides to offer him a trade -- she’ll tell him stories about her life for his “living novel” project, and he’ll read her bits from Laura’s diary. We’re treated to a fantastic story about when Laura and Donna were 14 and met a group of older men. The story manages to paint probably one of the more vivid pictures of who Laura was, and how troubled her past was, while also be eerily relatable -- I think we all knew people in high school who wanted to grow up too quickly, for whatever reason.

Unfortunately, the combination of Donna and Harold also brought us the lowest points of this episode. 

So first, after sharing a very brief story with Harold, Donna decides it would be fun to grab Laura’s diary from him and try to lure him outside to read it. Because this is obviously the sort of way to flirt and have fun with someone who is pretty clearly an agoraphobic who becomes immediately terrified as you open the door and step outside with one of his most prized possessions. To Harold’s credit, he pursues her, but then immediately collapses once he gets outside.

So of course Donna learns her lesson and treats Harold with nothing but kindness and respect for the rest of the episode, right? Hahahaha, no.

As if Donna hadn’t traumatized the poor Harold enough, she decides she’s going to try to distract him and get Maddie to SNEAK INTO HIS HOUSE AND STEAL LAURA’S DIARY.

Sure, there’s nothing that could possibly go wrong with this plan.

Except, obviously, it does go completely wrong, Maddie makes a bunch of noise while grabbing the diary, Harold freaks out and grabs one of those garden claw things and then, after screaming at the girls and chewing some scenery, runs the claws down his face, leaving three long, bloody streaks that are some of the worst effects I’ve ever seen.

The less said about this the better.

In other news, Twin Peaks finally gets some trial action happening. Leland is released on his own recognizance (which is going to turn out to be a bad idea) and Leo is found not competent to stand trial and is sent home with Shelly, who seems understandably conflicted about this whole insurance fraud scheme she’s hatched with Bobby. On the one hand, free money. On the other, well, Leo did try to murder her in a burning mill.

One thing that struck me during the courtroom scenes was the presence of Ben Horne during Leland’s hearing. I know Ben is Leland’s employer, but he didn’t seem particularly interested in the goings on of it, sitting in the back of the room snacking on peanuts at the bar (yes, I’m pretty sure the hearing took place at the Roadhouse, complete with sharing a drink with Truman and Cooper during his deliberation). Once hear hears that Leland’s being released, Ben leaves, and ... that’s it. Weird moment, but not int he usual Twin Peaks weird way.

Then there’s some weird stuff with a Japanese businessman wanting to buy Ghostwood, Andy finding out his sperms are working but then thinking that Lucy is getting an abortion (oh that wacky miscommunication comedy!), and yet another warning about the woods, this time from the Judge ("Keep your eyes on the woods. The woods are wonderous here, but strange.")

Lastly, Audrey’s story gets mostly wrapped up this episode, with Cooper and Truman sneaking into Canada to rescue her from One Eyed Jacks. As they prepare to enter, Cooper hears an owl, which I point out on the off chance that he may not be what he seems. Not that I know what it would be if he wasn’t.

Black gets stabbed by Jean, who decked himself out with one those cool Assassin’s Creed hidden blades, then Jean takes a few shots at Truman, but gets away before Truman can shoot back. Security gets the jump on Truman and Coop, and things look bad for our heroic heroes, when suddenly the baddie gets felled by a knife in the back, courtesy of Deputy Hawk who’s followed them to the north.

This is actually a really cool moment and not as cheesy as it sounds. But I also kind of dig Hawk.

As they escape from Jacks, Hank -- who also followed Cooper and Truman at Ben’s request, to make sure the money got there, and Cooper didn’t come back -- calls Ben to tell him things have not gone according to plan. But then Jean pops up and grabs Hank! Things look bad for the Hankster, because when Jean rifles his coat he finds the prosecutor’s ID that Hank lifted the day before. Uh oh! What will happen next? If memory serves me correctly, not a terrible withdrawal for Audrey, which seems unlikely, but then Twin Peaks is a strange and mysterious place.

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@radiaking said: ❝ your t-shirt’s inside out. ❞

        Lucy blinks, looking down at the shirt she's wearing to discover that it is not only inside out, but also backwards. The fact that she managed not to notice the tag under her chin for several hours is a testament to how hectic her job is. “Oh! Gosh. You know, I got paint on my other blouse during recess and had to change in a hurry. Just a sec...” She steps inside the classroom closet to fix her wardrobe mishap, then returns only a little flushed with embarrassment. “Sorry about that. Can I help you, Mr.—?”

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for @radiaking bc we talked about it so i must

        “Wait—” Lucy cannot help herself. She forgets that it isn't safe to do so, and grabs the Ghoul's wrist over his sleeve so she can get a better look at his hand. Or rather, the conspicuously well-manicured finger sewn onto it. “Is that mine?”

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a random bg3 au starter for @radiaking

        It's one of those rare occasions where their fearless leader has elected to bring Lucy along, and she's managing to hold her own...mostly. The Shadow-Cursed lands are just exactly that, and every so often the darkness takes shape and strikes out at her and the others. She's distracted trying to keep an eye on the shadows when a possessed Harper leaps forth and knocks her to the ground. She looks up, wide-eyed, as the dead-eyed corpse hefts its weapon high to strike you down.

        And then its head just...explodes.

        Lucy is covered in blood and corpse gore that's definitely going to take several washes to get out of her hair and clothes. But there is a familiar silhouette striding out of the darkness, as though the Shadow-Curse doesn't even phase him. “It's you...” She scrambles to her feet, hefting her crossbow and aiming it between the Ghoul's eyes.

        The last time Lucy saw him, she did him a kindness. She's not entirely sure if he's come to return that favor or not. “What are you doing here?”

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@faultyconscience — cont'd.

        “You do seem like the type to expect the worst in people...” Lucy trails off as she stands back up, capping her canteen and tucking it back into her pack. She looks to the Ghoul with an arched brow. “No. Of course not. She's a dog.” She gives Four one last pat on the head before moving on. “But if any giant roaches get too close for comfort, I've seen what she can do to them.” 

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@yformaldehyde said: ❛ working together again, it’s just like old times. ❜

        “Are you referring to when you put a wire lasso around my neck and dragged me halfway across the desert to try and sell my organs as old times?” Lucy asks, her tone uncharacteristically dry. It's been a long day, and an even longer couple of weeks, and now she's got to track down her dad with the guy who really did try to sell her organs. “Sorry, that's...” She lets out a breath and huddles closer to the fire. It's still light out, so the warmth doesn't come with a side of danger just yet. She purses her lips, then reaches out a hand to scratch Four around the ears. “Just don't try it again. Deal?”

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@radiaking said: 33. sender  hovers  over  receiver’s  shoulder  as  they  complete  a  task .

        Lucy's sitting cross-legged by the fire with one of John's crossbows in her hands, goggles pulled down and set to daytime so she can simply magnify the gears. It got jammed somehow in the last battle, but she's pretty good at fixing things. That is, when there's not a tall shadow constantly falling over her while she's trying to work.

        “You're in my light,” she says, looking up at the Ghoul with oddly magnified eyes. “If you want me to fix this, you should give me some space.”

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@radiaking said: ❝ can’t tell you how exciting it was listening to that fucking conversation. ❞

        “I don't recall inviting you to eavesdrop.” Lucy scowls at him for a moment, then returns to reviewing some of the notes she took while discussing spell components with Gale. “You could try doing something useful for the group, instead of lurking over my shoulder all day...” 

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@radiaking said: [passionate] an intense and fiery kiss, expressing raw desire and strong emotion

        They're camped too close to the settlement, in his opinion. There's music spilling from a tavern there that carries to them even half a mile off, the sound rising each time someone opens the door to enter or leave, then falling again as the door swings shut. Lucy is not so quick to find it an annoyance. She takes him by the hand and drags him to his feet. Tomorrow she will ask him why he still wears his gloves all the time.

        Tonight, she's asking him to dance.

        Or demanding it, really. With a smile as wide as her bright brown eyes: “Dance with me.” And he does, if grudgingly at first. But the night is young and the music is lively, and before long he's even almost smiling and spinning her out, then back in. On the third spin, she comes back in hotter than intended, landing against his chest with a solid oof on both their parts.

        And she's laughing an apology as he holds her there, closer than they've ever been outside a combat situation. Her laughter dies down. The music swells and fades as someone leaves the tavern back in town. And she's noticed him looking at her in a way before, but never quite like this: Like she's a fire he's dying to burn himself up in. She blinks and her smile fades slightly, though not completely, as her eyes drop briefly to his mouth.

        Which is, it seems, all the invitation he requires. His lips find hers in a feverish kiss, and Lucy melts against him. It's heated and hungry, and she finds herself turning in his arms to gather fistfuls of the front of his clothes, returning his urgency with some delight. A moment's pause taken, only to draw a quick breath before pulling him down to kiss him again. With interest.

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@radiaking said: ❝ so is that a ‘no’ to solving this with murder…? ❞

        “That is a heck no to solving this with murder, actually!” She's not sure how much clearer that could be, given that she's already standing between his gun and the poor trader. “We have enough caps for one bottle of water.” Lucy checks her pouch, and refuses to grimace. Though she can't help adding a muttered: “Barely...” She turns back to the trader then, and seeing that he's still at least a little bit intimidated, decides to use it to her advantage this once. “I would like to take a closer look at it first, though. Make sure it's clean...ish.”

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@radiaking said: “clean yourself up. you're getting blood all over the place.”

        “And whose fault is that, exactly?” Lucy scowls at him. She's still covered in gore from his timely but excessively messy rescue earlier that day. Some of it's dried to her skin and hair. She'll have to take an actual, proper bath to get this all out, but none of the others seem to be quite as dirty, somehow. “And who's going to keep an eye out for trouble while I do? I doubt you came all this way to stand watch while I take a bath.”

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@yformaldehyde said: “why are you so fascinated by that?”

        “You mean...by you?” Lucy blinked, head canting slightly to the side, curious eyes shining in the afternoon light. “Why wouldn't I be? I'm a history teacher, and you're a walking, talking historical artifact.” A pause, as she reconsidered her phrasing. “I mean, you've been around for so long. You have memories of things I could only read about.” She stretched her arms over her head idly. “Of course I have questions.” 

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@heghoul said: “everyone has secrets, don't they? i'm sure you'll tell me yours when you're ready.”

        “I'm pretty sure you're the one with all the secrets,” Lucy says, arching a brow at him. “I still don't even know your name. By comparison, I'm kind of an open book.”