#its also very funny to think of him being THE furious five fan

[mechieonu]

like. he is such a huge nerd. he made his own F5 merch from scratch. he has illustrated scrolls of each member on his room walls. he is one of the only people to have seen the five's very first unofficial battle EVER and it changed the trajectory of his life. he once got his friends to help him sneak into a kung fu exhibit that was going to open the NEXT DAY. he's got nicknames and COMBO MOVES that HAD to have required an immense amount of knowledge and practice of each member's strengths. when he gets arrested in gongmen city his first impulse is to geek about the acupuncture cuffs they've placed him in. he is such a nerd.

[aliwritesfic]

The Night Shift part 5 (F!Reader x Frankie Morales)

Quick summary: You learn the meaning behind Frankie's nickname

Warnings: None, I think, please let me know if I need to add some <3

W/C: 1.7k

Spotify (mainly just vibes, some songs have meaning, also updated regularly)

Part 1 Part 6

The smell of cooking bacon made your stomach growl as you entered the diner on Tuesday evening. You hadn’t eaten much all day, just a piece of toast and a handful of stale cheerios. Frankie was in the kitchen, his back to you. Your throat dried at the sight of him, remembering what you had done and how you had fantasized about him only a few hours earlier.

“Hi, Frankie,” you said, pushing thoughts of what you wanted him to do with his hands out of your mind. Stop being such a hornbag! You scolded yourself. Then he set those dark brown eyes on you and your brain ceased to function. Could he see your secret written on your face?

“Hey,” he said, smiling up at you. “You look tired.”

You almost sighed in relief. Maybe he couldn’t tell at all. You grabbed the coffee pot and poured yourself a cup. “I didn’t sleep much today. I was . . . worried about the kitten.” It wasn’t a whole lie; you really were worried about the kitten. The vet hadn’t sent you any updates, and you hoped that was a good thing.

“Are you gonna keep the kitten, if she lives?” Frankie flipped eggs as he spoke and set up a couple of plates.

“I can’t,” you grimaced, “Kurt would never go for it. He’s not really a fan of pets.”

Frankie made a face. “Not even adorable kittens?”

“Not even then,” you sighed. “It’s fine, though. It’s not like I have the time to properly care for one. I’m here most nights and I’m so busy with housework during the day when I’m not sleeping that it just- it just wouldn’t work.”

You kept your tone light, aware that customers could be listening. You didn’t want to scare off any tips with how miserable the subject made you. Frankie seemed to understand, because he didn’t bring the subject back up.

You were surprised at how easily you two worked together. Completely in sync when you had to be, entire sentences seemed to be translated through quick looks and raised eyebrows. This guy is a serial complainer. Want me to do something about those frat boys? Can you pretty please make me one of whatever this lady’s having?

All too soon it was 5:30 and the morning crew was there, breaking the comfortable silence between you. You found yourself lingering again, although you weren’t sure what for. You didn’t exactly need to stay. But still.

~*~

Frankie was shocked to see you still there. He was pulling his keys out of his jacket pocket when he saw you, standing outside, shivering in the early spring air.

“Thought’d you’d be halfway home by now,” he said, but he was still pleased to see you. He had come to the conclusion last night that you had a boyfriend, he would respect that and not make any untoward moves on you. Friendship suited him fine, even if he did think your boyfriend was a bit of a freak for not wanting a pet.

“I wanted to ask you something,” you said.

“Go ahead,” Frankie prompted.

“How’d you get the nickname Catfish?”

At this, Frankie’s lips twitched. He hadn’t been expecting that. “Before we were deployed, the boys and I went on a fishing trip. Well, one thing led to another and I had a huge catfish on my hook. This was a catch and release type of situation, you know?” When you nodded, he continued. “So, I reach in this creatures mouth to unhook it, and the bastard clamps down! Whole hand, in its mouth! And the thing about catfish, is they don’t have teeth, so they can’t technically bite, but they suck. It was like my hand was in a vacuum seal. When I eventually managed to get it out, no help from the boys mind you, it looked like a giant hickey on my hand. So, that’s where the nickname comes from.”

You snorted with laughter, and Frankie began to laugh too. At the time, it hadn’t been funny but looking back, he knew he would have been laughing his ass off if it happened to any of the other boys.

“I think Santi got a photo of it, I’ll try and find it for you if you want,” Frankie said. You nodded eagerly, wiping a tear from your eye.

“Please do, I’d love to see it,” you said with a grin that made his heart do something it really shouldn’t. Frankie nodded, making a mental note to call Santi and demand that the bastard rip apart his house to find it if he had to.

You turned to leave, and before he could stop himself, he was asking “do you want a ride?” Friends gave each other rides when they needed it, he reasoned. You hesitated, and Frankie kicked himself. Of course he’d overstepped. You didn’t know him that well, he was just the fry cook.

“Uh, yeah actually. It looks like it might rain.”

As if you had summoned it, thunder rumbled low overhead. Fat drops of rain began to fall slowly painting the ground. Frankie jangled his keys and you both sprinted to his truck. He opened your door for you, and ran around to his side. He didn’t miss that you sat with your back ridgid, your hands curled so tightly your knuckles were white.

“You okay?” he asked, although you obviously were not.

“Yeah, no, it’s just . . . You’re aware your truck looks like a death trap?”

Frankie snorted. He was very aware of this, but he was also very aware of what was under the hood. He trusted this truck more than any fancy modern car. Still. He decided that this was the perfect opportunity to mess with you. Just to see how you responded.

“Have you ever seen The Fast and The Furious?” He began, and you raised an eyebrow at him, your face skeptical. “Tokyo Drift, specifically. Well, this truck won me the title of Drift King several years in a row. That’s how well she runs.”

“Oh, fuck off!” You rolled your eyes, but you were laughing. “That’s not even slightly believable.”

“Yeah, you’re right. But how cool would it be if it were true.”

You rolled your eyes again, but you were smiling as you did it, and Frankie counted that as a victory. You gave him directions as he drove, surprising him with how close you lived to him. Only a five minute drive away. How long had you been this close? How had he never noticed you in the neighbourhood? Had he been blind, all these years?

“Thank you,” you said quietly as he pulled up outside your building, a three story walk up with a faded brick facade. The rain was coming down hard now, and lightning flashed.

“Anytime,” Frankie said in a tone that he truly meant any time. You nodded and ran through the rain, disappearing into the building. Frankie idled for a moment, wishing he could call you back and kiss you goodbye.

But he didn’t, because it wasn’t decent and it wasn’t what friends did. Friends didn’t crush on their friend like a fucking idiot kid.

So Frankie drove himself home and drove all thoughts of your mouth out of his head. That was until he checked his phone, and saw a text from an unknown number.

Thanks for the ride, I really appreciate it :) sent 5:57AM

Frankie quickly saved your number in his phone, not taking the risk of losing it somehow. A second message from you buzzed through.

Oh and lunch on Sunday is at Taylor’s Bistro, on High Street if you still wanna come sent 6:01AM

Frankie wrote his message quickly.

Wouldn’t miss it x

He stared at it for too long, erased the x, replaced it with a smiley face and hit send before he could overthink it entirely. Then he remembered his promise to you, and called Santi almost instantly.

“Fish, what the fuck man? It’s four in the morning,” Santi groaned into the phone.

“It’s six you dope, but I need a favour,” Frankie said.

“Money?”

“No, man, nothing like that. Do you still have that photo of the catfish on my hand?”

“Yeah I’ve got a copy in my wallet.” Santi sounded more awake, and Frankie could hear his fancy espresso machine whir to life.

“Why do you- nevermind. Look, I need a copy ASAP.”

“What for? If it’s to destroy it just know I’ve thought ahead and I’ve got four physical copies and one in the Cloud.”

“No, nothing like that. It’s for a girl at work, she asked how I got my callsign and now I’ve gotta show her the photo.”

“Oh?” Santi sounded intrigued. “Who’s this girl?”

“A friend,” Frankie said a little forcefully. “She has a boyfriend.” As if that closed the matter. Apparently, it didn’t.

“Why should that stop you?” Santi asked. “You’re hot, I don’t know this chick but she’d be blind to not be into you.”

“Well, for one, my brain isn’t directly wired with my dick.” At this, Santiago scoffed. Frankie continued, ignoring him. “Secondly, she’s like, twenty five or six. She’s probably not into old guys.”

“You’re thirty-three, you’re not old. Also, chicks dig DILFs.”

“I don’t have a kid.”

“And yet you still have big DILF energy. I wonder if there are any little Francisco’s running around that we have yet to discover.”

“Shut the fuck up, man, it’s bad luck to say that kind of shit. Just get the photo to me, please.”

Santiago roared with laughter as Frankie hung up. Trust Santiago to work one of his deepest fears into conversation. Frankie wasn’t sure what he was more afraid of: having children, or having children and having no clue they existed. It wasn’t that he was against having kids altogether, it was just he knew he wasn’t in the right headspace to take care of someone who depended on him entirely. Some days he forgot to take care of himself, he didn’t want a kid to suffer. It wouldn’t be fair.

He brushed the thought aside as he climbed into bed. It was bad luck to linger on bad thoughts, at least, that’s what his abuela always told him whenever he complained about something as a kid.

He wasn’t sure why exactly he had told you that there was photographic evidence of a catfish latched onto his hand. Maybe he wanted to impress you? But no, he reasoned, there was nothing impressive about that. It was just plain embarrassing. He realised with a start that what he wanted was willing to do anything to hear your laugh again.

Taglist: @hnt-escape @sharkbait77 @1800-fight-me @annathewitch @darnitdraco @frankiecatfish

[beybladefanboy]

Top 5 Metal Masters Episodes

Honestly, out of the three main seasons, Masters to me is the weakest. That is by a slight margin, it’s still a very good season, but it is a more noticeable margin than the one between Fusion and Fury. I think we can all agree that the time they spend in America in the last twenty five or so episodes is the most consistently good part of the season. Before that, this season goes up and down in quality like a rollercoaster. In the end though, this season was more good than lackluster so here are the best episodes.

Honourable Mentions

Episode 98: The Fallen Emperor

This is the episode where Da Xiang and Julian battle. I honestly really relate to Julian’s story where he was held to really high expectations and was never allowed to fail so when he did, he didn’t know how to handle it and felt like he lost everything. This episode also made me really like Da Xiang. He was annoying at first but seeing him become a leader who has found strength supporting his team and getting back up after every defeat and teaching Julian to do the same was really nice. It was a great moment for both of their characters and it was cool seeing Da Xiang use the full extent of his abilities. I didn’t really think of him as a really strong blader before this episode.

Episode 100: The Wild Beast Unleashed

This is Kyoya and Damian’s battle and once again, I’m biased toward Kyoya. I like his battle against Damian more than Gingka’s because Gingka was sort of guaranteed to win while Kyoya could’ve gone either way. I don’t really have much to say: it’s just an epic battle and an interesting look into Kyoya’s character. I won’t go into that because another Tumblr user has already done a much better job and I don’t want to copy them, it’s just really in line with the Kyoya we know.

5) Episode 77: The Dragon Emperor Returns

I mentioned having a Kyoya bias but if there’s a character I have even more of a bias for, it’s Ryuga. Long story short, this is the episode that made Ryuga my favourite character. I liked him as a villain in Fusion, and was already starting to get a bit of a crush on him, but this episode made me fall in love. In fact, I can pinpoint the exact moment it happened: when he explained how the dark power was man made so he could overcome it and draw L-Drago’s power from its original source, showing that he was willing to admit his mistakes and determined to grow from the experience. How could I not admire that? He’s also just a total badass. His entrance in this episode, walking in with a sadistic looking smile as he makes meteors fall all around him before he beats the crap out of everyone there was just amazing. This is also a great episode for Tsubasa, another favourite character of mine. He’s going crazy due to the dark power in this episode, letting his dark side take over and drive him to battle Sophie, Wales, and Julian in the woods at night with the intent to destroy them. It’s tragic but the Dark Tsubasa arc was the best part of Masters so I really liked seeing him struggle with this darker side and seeing Ryuga provide him the solution: to become one with the dark power. Just a really interesting episode overall.

4) Episode 69: The Scorching Hot Lion

Here’s more of my Kyoya bias. This episode was a huge breath of fresh air. Masters before this point was really uninteresting for me, with the exception of the Dark Tsubasa stuff which hadn’t been portrayed much at this point. It was mostly battles I didn’t care for and Gingka, Masamune, and Yu being insanely obnoxious. So to get away from them, and see a character’s return I was personally waiting for with baited breath, it was like a drink of cold water on a hot day. This is a simple episode all things considered: it’s just the formation of Team Wild Fang but that was more interesting than anything else in the season at that point. Kyoya and Nile’s camaraderie/friendship is developed and showcased well, to the point where they already really feel like a team. Demure is sort of just inserted into their group but he does prove himself to be useful and to kid me, it was a nice surprise that he was the one to make their team. So yeah, just a simple episode showing fun interesting characters forming bonds.

3) Episode 91: The Furious DJ Battle?!

This episode is honestly just funny. It doesn’t accomplish anything plot-wise: it’s just Gan Gan Galaxy trying and failing to find a replacement member for their team since Tsubasa and Yu are both hospitalized. Kenta and Wang Fu Zhong all battle for this honour, when Ryo interferes in his Phoenix costume. He tries to join the team, stupidly not knowing the rules of his own tournament and in one of the most satisfying moments EVER, Hikaru puts this idiot in his place and Ryo is disappointed. His suffering is points in my book. Then the American and Japanese blader DJs come in. Rewatching it now, this episode was probably fan service for people that wanted to see them battle but it’s honestly great fan service. Seeing the main cast react to such a terrible bey battle, with the series’ over the top announcing, is just amazing. Words can’t really give it justice. Just watch the episode. It’s the funniest one in the show.

2) Episode 72: Eternal Rivals

In my opinion, this was Gingka and Kyoya’s best battle. I always have fun seeing these two battle but at this point in the series, they hadn’t battled one on one since Metal Fusion. The battles got much more layered and fierce since then. Gingka and Kyoya are constantly going back and forth between who is winning, trading special moves and keeping you on your toes and wondering who’s going to win. And then… neither of them do. Gingka and Kyoya end up being equals in power, using up every ounce of their strength trying to defeat their opponent before collapsing from exhaustion. Yeah, it’s kind of disappointing we never saw Kyoya defeat Gingka. However, I think a tie was the perfect way to end this specific battle. Before this, Masamune lost to Nile so one more loss would’ve kicked Gan Gan Galaxy out of the tournament but simply giving Gingka the win would’ve sort of discredited the hard work Kyoya put in. Having them tie keeps Gan Galaxy at the disadvantage without making them lose and showcases how far Kyoya has come as a balder. Overall, just a really epic battle that makes the slower parts before it worth it.

1) Episode 79: Dark Eagle

There’s a very simple reason I love this episode: it’s the culmination of the Dark Tsubasa Arc, aka the best thing about Metal Masters. It was an interesting look into a character's psyche and added a darker layer to the earlier part of this season. However, this resolution was what made it really stick out to me. In other shows I've seen (Yugioh for example) the goal is always to drive out/destroy the darkness within people but this episode decided to go in a more realistic direction. Realistic in an representational way I mean. In real life, we can't drive out our "darkness" so to speak. What we can do in real life is accept ourselves and learn to overcome our inner demons rather than denying them, which is what Tsubasa did in this episode. He accepted that his darker self was part of him but that it didn’t define who he was, overcoming that darkness and creating a new special move on the spot to defeat Sophie and Wales. Yeah, the battle itself is still really good but the flashback of Tsubasa as a kid and him overcoming his dark power is what propels the episode into being one of the best.

[vivithefolle]

I loved your ranking of character arcs (for the main seven)! Would you mind going into more detail about Ron's character arc, and how he developed from the first to the last book? I apologise if you've already answered a similar request! :)

[Ranking of character arcs]

Well, during the first three books Ron is rather static - he’s awesome, but he doesn’t has much in the terms of “character growth” moments. He does epic stuff like the chess match, following the spiders et all we know, but that isn’t character growth as much as it is freaking badass.

The first three books serve to sow the basics for Ron’s character: he’s a devoted friend, he can face death with a laugh, and in spite of his bouts of rudeness or temper he’s fundamentally kind and doesn’t take himself too seriously - something two people like “boy-who-lived” Harry and “child prodigy” Hermione desperately need.

But what the first book does is introduce Ron’s emotional baggage.

"I'm the sixth in our family to go to Hogwarts. You could say I've got a lot to live up to. Bill and Charlie have already left -- Bill was head boy and Charlie was captain of Quidditch. Now Percy's a prefect. Fred and George mess around a lot, but they still get really good marks and everyone thinks they're really funny. Everyone expects me to do as well as the others, but if I do, it's no big deal, because they did it first. You never get anything new, either, with five brothers. I've got Bill's old robes, Charlie's old wand, and Percy's old rat."

This introduces us to Ron’s inferiority complex and its origins.

And later on, The Mirror Of Erised helps elaborate:

Harry stepped aside, but with Ron in front of the mirror, he couldn't see his family anymore, just Ron in his paisley pajamas.

Ron, though, was staring transfixed at his image.

"Look at me!" he said.

"Can you see all your family standing around you?"

"No -- I'm alone -- but I'm different -- I look older -- and I'm head boy!"

"What?"

"I am -- I'm wearing the badge like Bill used to -- and I'm holding the house cup and the Quidditch cup -- I'm Quidditch captain, too."

Dumbledore will then add his grain of salt -

Harry thought. Then he said slowly, "It shows us what we want... whatever we want..."

"Yes and no," said Dumbledore quietly. "It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.”

Something to know about Dumbledore - he’s JK Rowling’s mouthpiece. When she wants to tell us something, she puts it in him.

And... well, this looks like a rather... selfish interpretation of Ron’s desire. Especially the “standing alone” part. It somewhat implies that Ron is selfish - especially compared to Harry’s desire which is oh so pure and oh so sad because boo hoo orphan family stuff. (I may be letting all the times Harry fans have pulled the “butt herry iz an orhpan!! :’((” card colour my perception.)

“The best of all of them”. When Ron sees himself being both Head Boy and Quidditch Captain. He’s combining his brothers’ successes into himself. His belief is that this is how he could stand out and be loved - by combining his brothers’ accomplishments.

Anyway.

Goblet of Fire then makes us see Ron’s main problems - his insecurity can lead him astray. First he believes that Harry left him behind during the Triwizard, because why not? After all Ron has already seen that betrayal can come from the craziest places (Lockhart, aka adults/authority figures, Ginny being the Heir Of Slytherin aka family even against their will, and last but not least, freaking Scabbers, aka SEEMINGLY INNOCENT THINGS YOU FEED AND PROTECT). Add to it his budding feeling that he is overlooked in favour of Harry (the twins giving Harry the Marauders’ Map...) and Ron’s emotions get the best of him, which isn’t helped by Harry’s entitled attitude and his acting as though Ron is stupid for questioning him. And then Viktor Krum appears as a prop show us what a catch Hermione is and to be all that makes Ron insecure. The Yule Brawl serves to foreshadow Romione but also to show the negative aspects of Ron’s insecurity, namely jealousy and how he lashes out when he feels betrayed. However, at the end of Goblet of Fire, Ron symbolically outgrows his jealousy by asking Viktor Krum for his autograph.

Order of the Phoenix will then go on to show Ron being jealous of Krum, although being a bit less vocal about it... and it also gives Ron half of the things he’s dreamed of in first year: he’s made a prefect, and joins the Quidditch team. But those are immediately made hollow by the... lackluster reaction of his loved ones and by Malfoy being a vile piece of pond scum. The fact that he’s prefect could have been used to make Ron take on more responsibilities and showcase his motherly side more, but Rowling only used it to again pit him against Hermione by making Ron look like “the immature one” and making Hermione “the responsible one”. And then, to REALLY drive home the point that Ron isn’t allowed to have anything for himself, she has Dumbledore say “oh yeah Harry, you were supposed to be prefect, even though you’re basically allergic to rules and authority and also are emotionally stunted”, and so in a symbolic way VALIDATING Hermione’s reaction to Ron being prefect. Yeah fuck you too Rowling. And the Quidditch debacle could have been used to give Ron confidence in himself. Actually, it does somewhat give him confidence once he trounces Slytherin in the last match of the year. But the fact that Harry and Hermione weren’t present means that Ron’s victory is an afterthought, a background event, a minor thing. Yet, Ron still proves his maturity and patience by just accepting that his friends weren’t here to see him play. They don’t deserve him, seriously. This year also marks a drama-free year for Ron and Hermione, which could have then been built up to make them grow even closer in the next book... but oh, the faults of TERFs...

Half-Blood Prince basically takes all of Ron’s progression through the last two books and says “see that? All that? Well let’s pretend it never happened and do it again, but shittier!” The thing is, Rowling wants Ron to “make himself worthy of Hermione” like the very progressive person she is. But she is also aware that Ron is kind of a naïve romantic who wouldn’t date around while he’s in love with someone else. Unless... Unless she resurrects plotlines that have already been finished, thus bringing Ron back to square one. Now he’s back to not being able to play Quidditch properly and Hermione acts the saviour because girl power. Now he’s back to being enraged by Viktor Krum’s name. Now he’s even less mature than he was in Philosopher’s Stone because Plot Be Like That. JKR did do a pretty good job at setting up the whole argument, not gonna lie. Since Ron is so sensitive to betrayal, finding out that Hermione had lied to him about Krum would indeed make him furious, especially when he finds out that Ginny knew about it and (apparently) so did Harry. Basically, the entire sixth year is built to undermine Ron’s growth and character, both because Harry must be in love with Ginny and in order to properly appreciate Ginny he has to appreciate Ron’s qualities less, since Ginny and Ron basically have the same qualities Harry appreciates but he can only be in love with Ginny; and also because Ron “needed to make himself worthy of Hermione” courtesy of double-standards, sexism and general immaturity from our author.

Finally DH closes the horrible loop. Rather than letting Ron grow secure and confident, Rowling instead insists on pulling him down, and down, and down, then gives us Harry saying “she’s like my sister, I thought you knew” as if that somehow would fix the self-esteem issues and the self-hatred and the sheer abuse Ron is subjected to by his friends - and for someone as obsessed with "love redeems” as Rowling is, it probably is, but those of us suffering from depression know better. Even though the Epilogue shows us Ron being happy and confident enough to joke about fame, it still leaves a bitter taste in the mouth when you realize that Ron-bashers take the “Confunded the instructor” lines to absurd levels and use it as “proof” that Ron is a bad husband / lazy / a cheater / etc... when it’s immediately followed by -

"I only forgot to look in the wing mirror, and let's face it, I can use a Supersensory Charm for that."

This is basically Ron doing the wizard equivalent of the rear-view camera. But of course, bashfics have been written to make it so Ron causes a horrible crash accident and Hermione calls for divorce and blah blah blah sigh.

[laufire]

Supernatural s1

my dash: decries Supernatural every five posts.

me: time to watch it seriously for the first time in my life.

-First thing first: it’s an amazingly well-crafted season of tv. I’m a character-focused watcher, not a plot-focused one; I never connected emotionally to the Winchesters (still haven’t and likely never will, as interesting I might find them as character constructs), so I feared I’d be bored and would want to skip scenes. Nuh huh. I was many things, but none of them were bored xDD. Each episode was a lesson in good pacing and the entire season another in proper build-up. There are one or two or a few dozen tv-writers I would like to show it to, ngl.

-Another thing it excelled at was in its portrayal in abusive family dynamics. The way Dean went mellow and so unlike himself when John gave an order (and what a SHOCK it is in the later episodes when he finally stands up to him!!). How Sam said HE would apologize to his father when they saw each other again, or how he made apologies for his father because “it could have been worse” (at least John didn’t beat them up, like it happened to that poor kid!). John showing Sam more “““respect””” (as far as he’s able at least) simply because Sam already proved he’s capable of leaving him; the way John controls the information he gives them and when and how and how much and how small they feel when they reunite with him. Dean knowing his father had been possessed by a demon because it wasn’t reprimanding him and belittling him. Dean’s psychic shapeshifter (?) expressing his resentment towards Sam for getting to escape. Dean’s quickness to resort to violence when Sam says something that makes him angry, or how he tries to severe ties between Sam and his college friends, or how he guilt trips him when Sam says he plans on returning to his studies, or how he minimizes Sam’s experiences with John or how Sam criticizes Dean’s compliance... (I don’t think Dean’s being consciously manipulative. I think it’s intuitive. Which is far, far scarier. He’s the Elena Gilbert of Supernatural and a walking red flag for controlling behavior). How it’s paired with ~honeymoon periods. The way they use the families around them to highlight their issues. It’s... chilling and terrifying and I can’t look away. I won’t get into the shit John pulls in 2x01 because that’s for the s2 POV, but oh my god I’m so happy he’s dead.

I wasn’t all that sure of how self-aware the creators were about this trend (especially because of how centralized and validated Dean’s POV is in his conflicts with Sam IMO. OTOH... characters like Dean and actors like Ackles are the type to take over a show by charisma alone tbf. The way he swoops in in the pilot and starts disrupting everything, including Sam’s relationship, reminding me of both Angel in BTVS and Chuck in Gossip Girl, Doylist-wise. This comparison is going to make sense to like three people I talk with regularly xDD). At least on early seasons, since certain spoilers about the later ones make me think it grew over time. I’m still unsure but I think they are a little self-aware because of this quote:

Eric Kripke said of Buffy: “I loved ‘Hush’ and ‘Once More, With Feeling,’ but overall, Buffy really taught me about effectively using metaphor in genre. For Buffy, it was ‘high school is hell (literally),’ and Joss Whedon did such a masterful job of grounding his horror and fantasy concepts in this notion, and ultimately telling allegories about high school, which turned what could’ve been B-Movie material into an all-time classic. I used that same philosophy on my run of Supernatural, with the mantra ‘family is hell (literally),’ and always grounded my horror episodes around the notion of families, to the show’s benefit. So thanks, Joss Whedon. I owe you a beer. (Credit: The WB)

everyone wants to be Buffy lol.

-My absolute favourite thing was how competent the Winchesters are (I’m even reluctantly including John here. That bastard). They’re sneaky with local authorities, crafty about fake IDs, credit scams, research abilities, DIY supernatural detectors xDD... I loved the lack of an audience proxy, the fact that the story throws you into the deep end with people that already know their shit. And that the other side is competent too, like when Meg & YED’s plan to trap John relied on the Winchester being competent; on Sam immediately going into the defensive because, what are the chances of finding that cute weird girl a second time, miles away?; on John suspecting it was a trap and only revealing himself after Meg appears to be dead... Another scene that I loved in that sense, from 2x01 (I watched until 2x03, I wanted to see Sterling K. Brown’s first appearance lol) was how upon discovering Reapers are shapeshifters, Dean immediately knew that cute ghost he’d befriended was the one after him. I get the feeling this aspect will get lost in future season and it’s a pity, tbh.

-Related to that, some of my favourite moments: Sam straight up bribing a guy to get into the morgue when Dean’s arguments are failing (with Dean’s money!); Dean’s plan of “well, if this guy is haunting the house and there’s no other way to kill him, we burn the house. No house no haunting”; Dean telling that kid to fake appendicitis to get his parents out of the house; John blessing the tank of water knowing he’s walking into a trap with demons... I dig this stuff.

-I get whiplash sometimes, with the show making a point of (very briefly) telling you racism, homophobia or pro-life attitudes are Bad(TM) and the brothers are Against them (the Racist Truck episode, the one where a woman used a Reaper to exchange “virtuous” lives for those of sinners...), when the rest of the show is err... what it is lol. Dean is toxic masculinity’s poster boy (I was so disgusted by how he acted with Jess omfg), in s2 we don’t get the monsters’ perspective on hunters until we’ve conveniently met our first black one (I love the episode AND the character but it’s fucking true)...

-I need to make a note of paying attention to the writers credits/Bts stuff because I find this show’s progression fascinating on a metatextual level. The only problem is that audience reaction seems to have played a big role (which is a problem on one or two different levels imo xD), and tracking that down is sliiiiightly more difficult lol. Oh well (I don’t even think I want to see too much of this fandom, even to satisfy my curiosity. Some of the glimpses I’ve caught of it are disturbing to the extreme).

-The detail about dead people’s blood being toxic to vampires is SO COOL OMG. I’m tempted to steal it xD

Some random stuff:

-The monsters of the week were some legit creepy stuff.

-I love that Meg has her own hellhounds. Is that still a thing when she returns?

-Dean: you and dad are reckless and I’m going to have to be the one that buries you. / Me, with the power of foresight: 👀

-Also Dean: sometimes it scares me how good I am at killing. / Me: it scares the shit out of me how good you are at killing, too, fam.

-I get the impression Sam loses his demonic-in-origin powers later on, right? What a waste, I love those.

-I’m pretty sure at one point it’s implied John used Dean to honeytrap monsters (when he sends him as a trap for the lady vampire that stole the Colt) and I really don’t know what to do with this information.

-Cassie was GORGEOUS and even make Dean likeable for me while they lasted xDD. But given this show’s track record I’m considering the lack of more appearances a blessing.

-So many guest stars. Everyone’s been on SPN. Especially if they were on the Buffyverse first (I totally get the impulse of casting Buffy actor after Buffy actor lmfao).

-Funny how Luther Hargreeves is exactly who a lot of fans think Dean was (Dean is far, far colder imo), and yet one is constantly called pathetic and evil and the other woobified. Very Funny Indeed *coughs* (funnier still that the character I often see Dean compared to is Wynonna Earp when the parallels are kids-pool deep at best and offensive at worst. Dean is not a Wynonna. Again, Dean is an Elena Gilbert xDD).

-The two paranormal investigators were dumb as rocks, but their motto was “What Would Buffy Do” so I like them (if they ever change that to What Would the Winchesters Do or something like that I’m going to be furious lmao).

-When I want to ~chill I dress about exactly like Dean (minus the flannel I’ve seen in later seasons, you can’t pay me to wear flannel). Like, I think I have a couple of shirts that look exactly like ones of his. I don’t know how I feel about this xDD

-IDK how I’ll feel about Bobby later on (I get the impression every long-term character on this show has their hateful phases xD), but in his introduction he said the last time he saw John he threatened to shoot him (“he causes that reaction in people”), so he’s so far the most relatable character around lol.

[blukrown]

Pride Amongst Siblings

WARNING! This fic contains: attempted roofying/drugging & attempted sexual assualt

If any of these upset you, please do not read!

Also available on AO3

This fic was commissioned by @mrneighbourlove, thank you so much for the support and giving me the chance to write about your character!

"Shit, come back here!" Leere called out to the small figure she was chasing down the busy market streets of Oshmel.

Five minutes after entering the town and she had already gotten lost as well as got her bag stolen. It was rather embarrassing. She might have the thought to shame herself for her naivety if she weren't pelting after the little thief.

Leere had been walking down the crowded streets, map in hand. She had been trying to find her accommodation for the coming evening when a young child had approached her. Clearly a local, the kid offered his help in leading Leere to her destination. She wasn't one to object to a kind offer, especially not when she secretly needed it, so she let the boy lead the way.

Leere had just started thinking about giving the youth a few rupees for his trouble when another kid jumped her. Snatching her rucksack with all of her things and running off, while the first boy vanished into the busy streets.

Although it did take her moment to realise just what had happened, she was soon in hot pursuit of the second child. She might not  be able to punish the bait but at the very least she could recover her things

For how much she was growing to hate the brat, she didn't want to endanger him or other civilians around him by using her magic. She would, unfortunately, have to do this the hard way.

The kid quickly turned out of the busy main streets and ducked into a quiet alleyway. Leere had thought this would give her an advantage with her long legs but the child seemed to have knowledge with the area and still kept a good distance between them.

"Stop! Thief!" Leere called, hoping she might grab anyone's attention. "Get back here dammit!"

The kid kept close to the left side of the alleyway, clearly ready to skid into a turn down a different laneway in the next few paces. But to Leere's great relief, a tall man poked his torso out from the corner, to see what all the commotion was about. And the kid crashed right into him.

Leere restrained a smile as she caught up to the rascal. Catching her breath, she made sure to first snatch her bag back before the little kid could scuttle off.

When Leere turned to thank her unexpected aid, she noticed the stranger seemed unfazed by the collision. He really was also very tall, with at least two heads more height than Leere. Unrecognizable, it wasn't until she looked to the man's face - marked with a wide, excited grin - that she realised who he was.

"Teb?" Leere asked, pleasantly surprised to see her youngest adoptive brother in a place like this.

"Leere!" Tebanam grinned widely, sweeping his older sister into a hug. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing!" Leere answered, welcoming the embrace.  

"So you were going up to Kahmel as well?" Tebanam said with surprise as he finished his meal. "Don't tell me, you were going after the rumoured treasure in the town's shrine."

Leere let out a chuckle, "I'm guessing you had the same idea?"

"Well yeah," Tebanama nonchalantly nodded. "But I was also going up there for research."

"Oh?" Leere said, pausing the forkful of food she was about to eat. "This is about that distant relative of the Gerudo, right?"

"Yeah, the Garai."

Oshmel, the city Leere and Tebanam currently occupied, was a border city. Just a few minutes by cart from the perimeter of Hyrule, this town was a mix of all cultures. It was a city filled with locals, travellers and full of people from nearly every race in the land. The settlement lived at the summit of a great mountain, one which hides within its craters an old, deserted tribal village, known as Kahmel. Some people believe the people who had occupied the village died by a plague, others by wild animals and others still believed they had been cursed. Either way, no one bothered going up the mountain. After all, nothing was up there accept the sad, abandoned ghost town.

For all the travelling the two of them did, this was their first time meeting on the road. Perhaps it was only a matter of time until Leere would run into Tebanam but it did come at a good time.

About half a year ago, Tebanam and Leere - as well as all their other siblings - had returned to Hyrule castle to celebrate the birth of Covarog's first two children. Leere loved being home with her family, she would stay there forever if she didn't feel the call of adventure.

It had been two years since Tebanam had lost Jazoh - a noble boy taken away from court for being caught having a sexual relationship with the young prince - and Leere and her fellow adopted sister Rinku had only meant to help Tebanam.

For being away from Hyrule for so long, the youngest son of Ganondorf had not seemed to recover from the loss of his partner. The sister's had sought to help Tebanam and comfort him. But at some point, they must've upset him.

Leere could not remember the exact reason but Tebanam had stood up - towering over his elder sisters - and looked Leere right into the eyes and spat, "You're only depressed simply because you want attention! My feelings aren't something I can easily turn off like yours, Leere!"

Rinku, furious at Tebanam's statement and intending to defend her sisters, had countered, "She's only trying to help you, Tebanam! You only travel because you lost your fuck toy! As if that's a good way to cope!"

Tebanam had looked furious, but the pain of hearing his eldest's sister's words cut him deep enough to shut his mouth. He only huffed and stormed out of the room, choosing to leave before he said or heard anything more he may regret.

Leere had left before confronting Tebanam about it. Although she didn't say those things, she still should've at least given him a positive farewell.

However, Tebanam happily talked about his travels, Leere could tell that he did not hold any sort of grudge against her.

"Remember that set of armour I gave papa?" Tebanam asked his pompous smirk wide. "He keeps it on display in his office, y'know." Leaning back in his chair, the half Gerudo man puffed out his chest in pride.

Leere let out a snort, "Not last time I was there. Yours was missing the greaves, remember? So it's an incomplete set." Leere loved teasing he brother and by the pitiful bummed out look on his face, she was looking forward to giving him worse. "Mama likes the golden fan I gave her."

Tebanam snorted, "Yeah but what's the point of a fan if you're not going to use it? Mama's not a shower like Papa either."

That shut Leere right up, not that she minded.

Hyrule castle held the largest collection of armour, antiques and artifacts in the land. All starting with King Ganondorf, the passion for treasure hunting had been passed down to many of his children. Both Leere and Tebanam were both proud competitors of a non-existent competition to see who could bring back the best discovery for their parents. As if her parents could love her any less for not finding a prettier treasure than Tebanam, Leere still could not quite let this immature contest go.

"I have a . . . question for you." Tebanam said, distracting Leere from her walk down memory lane. Leere gave an inquisitive look, which seemed enough for her brother to continue. "You know how you can transform, right?"

Leere frowned, she could almost see the gears in Tebanam's head whirring. "Yeah? What about it?"

"Would you be able to say . . . transform into a man?"

"Well yeah, it's a pretty easy spell actually. Even Mama can do it."

"Although the idea of our dear Mama as a man sounds really funny, that is a subject for a different conversation." Pausing to hear Leere let out a chuckle in bemusement, the brother than continued. "Do you still remember it? As in, can you still do it?"

"Yeah . . . I guess." Leere's eyes then squinted in suspicion. "Where are you going with this?"

"Well . . ."

Having found Tebanam's hotel, they had retreated to his room.

It was rather small, what with the large king-sized bed taking up a large amount of space. But Leere didn't have time to judge Tebanam's choice in accommodation when her brother was hurrying her along.

"Alright," Tebanam said, locking the door so no one could enter. "Now let's see what you can do."

Although still unaware of Tebanam's plan, Leere obeyed her little brother's wishes. With a string of non-Hyrulian words, it only took a few seconds before she disappeared behind smoke - an aftereffect of shape-shifting magic. Once the smoke cleared, Leere spoke.

"Did it - Woah!" Leere began before clutching at her throat. Her light and effeminate voice was now low and gravely. "My voice!"

"No way!" Tebanam said, his face covered with shock and awe. "It worked! I mean, you look exactly the same but . . . But a man!"

Going to the hotel room mirror, Leere was greeted by an adult man in her reflection. Her face was just as pale, eyes just as red and hair just as long. She even still had the beauty spot below the left side of his lip. But there was no mistaking it, she had become a man.

A tuft of brown facial hair covered her chin, a strong jawline and obvious Adam's apple made her look like a normal Hylian man.

"I'm honestly surprised," Leere said as she turned around in front of the mirror. "I haven’t used this spell in years. Not since I was a kid."

Then again, that was when she was young. Where there wasn't really a lot of difference between a prepubescent boy and girl. But looking at herself now, she would honestly not recognise herself.

She could already tell she was a bit taller but only a little, as she compared herself to her mixed-raced younger brother. Leere also felt stronger too, her arm muscles easily bulging out of the shirt she wore.

Now that she mentioned it, her clothes did seem rather tight. Especially around her crotch.

"What the heck?!" Leere shouted at the sight she saw under her pants and underwear.

Tebanam did not seem to feel any shame in joining in and sneaking a peek. And before Leere had the right mind to slap him silly, he was cackling.

"Bahahah!" Tebanam roared, holding his stomach. "I-It's like an acorn! Ahahaha!"

Leere glared at her brother, "Shut it! I'm not a giant Gerudian like you, OK?!"

But nothing seemed to reach Tebanam. He was in a fit of uncontrollable laughter, hunching over as he almost seemed to be in physical pain. Even with Leere - softly - punching him, it took Tebanam a good few minutes to recover.

Wiping his tearing eyes, the young prince sighed. Standing tall, he gave Leere another look over.

"Man, you really are a man, huh? I wouldn't even know it was you if I saw you."

Leere couldn't help but feel proud. Raising an arm and flexing her new muscles. "Are you doubting my magic, little brother?"

Tebanam chuckled, "As if, I know my place."

Leere huffed, "So you should."

"But I've gotta say," Tebanam said, walking a circle around Leere with a hand at his own chin. "You look like the sort of guy I would go after."

"Ew, gross." Leere frowned in disgust.

A look of excitement grew on Tebanam's face. "You know what?" He said excitedly, his eyes wide with excitement. "Let's go out!"

"What?" Leere blanched, "Why?"

"Why not!" His voice filled with enthusiasm. "Let's see how long your spell lasts!"

"How?"

"Let's go to a gay bar!"

"Wha-" Leere began but then shook her head. "No way! They'd definitely know."

"Trust me," Tebanam said, patting his, now, brother on the shoulder. "They won't notice a thing!"

"Wait a second," Leere said, stopping Tebanam in his tracks. Pointing a finger defiantly at her brother, "This was what you were planning from the start!"

"Nu-uh!" Tebanam objected, "I want to . . . test your magic and . . ." He was clearly fumbling for an excuse worthy of his plan but with no success.

Leere crossed her arms over her chest. "Come on, what's going on?"

Tebanam sighed, lifting an arm to ruffle his short, bright orange hair. "Well, I may have, kinda, sort of, got on the bad side of a bartender at the gay bar and got into a fight."

Leere let out a long sigh, shaking her head. "Should I ask?"

"Let's just say that you should never hit on a bartender's sidepiece."

Leere shook her head in disappointment. But this did sound a lot like what her brother would do.

"I'm not going, Teb." Leere said, not helping but sounding sympathetic despite Tebanam's stupidity. "I'm not going to be your bodyguard just so you don't get your ass beaten."

"C'mooooon," Her brother drawled, "Pleeaasee? Have you never wanted to experience what it's like to be a man? Better yet - a gay man? Besides, I'm sure it would be fun!"

Leere pursed her lips and tried to stand for her own convictions. But - for some unknown reason - seeing her fully-grown baby brother plead and implore her made her question her own decision.

Letting out a long exaggerated sigh, Leere rolled her eyes. "Fine! But I'm not the one who's going to save you if you get into any trouble."

On the other side of town, surrounded by brothels, bars and shifty-looking hotels, Oshmel's gay bar was alive with raucous laughter, chatter and music. Men of all ages and races gathered in and around the building. All seeming to be having a great night.

Leere shuffled where she stood at the entrance of the gay bar. She wore a spare pair of Tebanam's old clothes. A bit too big, Leere had made do and created an outfit that suited her new physique.

Leere felt nervous. And she didn't usually get nervous. In circumstances like these, Leere would be excited to go in and have a good time. But with her being under an enchantment, she had a fear that her magic could soon vanish and she knew the many patrons of this male exclusive bar wouldn't be welcome to a woman among them.

Besides, she didn't really know how men, more specifically gay me, flirted. She could use her feminine wiles to make men, and even more women, fall to their knees but she had doubts on her skills as a man.

Luckily, Tebanam - while holding back his clear excitement - comforted her. "You'll be fine, Leer. I promise, if anything happens, we're out."

Leere did not seem convinced, giving her brother a doubtful look.

"Alright, alright." Tebanam said, "I'll pay for your drinks too."

Leere was not one to ignore a free drink, so she grabbed onto Tebanam's wrist and lead the way inside the busy bar.

The gay bar was a nice establishment. With many tables filled with patrons, outside veranda and large dance floor, it was definitely a place Leere would happily go to. The building was dark apart from the candles or torches scattered about, making the mood of the building one of flirtation and mischief. A live band played cheerful yet slow music, a beat perfect to dance to as some patrons were demonstrating.

Going to the bar, Tebanam ordered two of the house's beer. The man behind the bar was quick and settled the two flasks on the bartop for the two siblings to take.

Leere took a hearty sip, welcoming the bitter taste like an old friend, watching over the joyful crowd.

"Hey, is Rukah here?" Tebanam asked the bartender, leaning over to see past the staff behind the bar.

The man shook his head. "No, it's his day off tonight."

Tebanam's said a quick thanks before looking to Leere with relief.

"Let me guess," Leere smiled with bemusement and took another healthy swallow of her drink. "He's the bully you're trying to avoid."

Tebanam nodded, "Trust me, I am not at all sad he isn't here."

Leere's brother then turned back to the bartender a telltale smirk on his lips. He's on the prowl , Leere thought. Not much caring, however.

Both of them finished their first drinks and quickly got a second. Whether that was on Tebanam's tab or the flattered bartender's, Leere didn't know but she was thankful nonetheless.

Just enjoying the amazing vocal acrobatics Tebanam did in flirting with the staff, Leere almost didn't notice a man take the spot on the other side of her at the bar.

"Hey, handsome," The good-looking Hyrulian said with a kind smile. Leaning onto the bartop and looking Leere over.

Tall and decently muscular, Leere would consider him as being a rather attractive man. He had short, blonde hair and soft blue eyes that crinkled when he smiled. Maybe it was just Leere's paranoia but the man looked shifty. Her suspicions didn't seem enough to think twice on it, however.

"Oh," Leere said outwardly, surprised someone would come up to her so soon after arriving. "Hey yourself." Giving her normal flirtatious smile.

It seemed to work a treat, the man only smiled wider. "I've never seen you around here before. Traveller?"

"Yeah," Leere answered with a nod, finishing the last drops of her beer. "Passing through to Kahmel."

"Kahmel?" The man repeated in surprise. His eyes not restraining from looking Leere over again. "By yourself? You must be stronger than you look."

Leere smiled, knowing well that the assumption was based on her still obvious height difference with the stranger. Only miniscule compared to that of her Gerudo siblings, clearly, it was something the man had to note.

"Trust me, I can handle myself." Leere countered, giving a wink for good measure.

The man let out a chuckle, "Oh? Can you handle another drink, then?"

"Easily."

The man got a bartender's attention, ordered and within a few minutes another pint of beer was in Leere's hand.

With already half of her third beer past her lips, she felt a hand go around her waist. The man only smiled, shuffling closer to where she stood at the bar.

"So tell me," The Hyrulian began, his voice low yet very audible over the throng of the bar. "What's your name?"

"Leere." She said, curious to see the man's reaction to her effeminate name.

He didn't seem to falter, only smiling further. "Well, Leere, I'm Rukah."

The name sounded familiar but Leere just took it to just be that it was a common Hyrulian name. Raising her glass she nodded to the man, "Nice to meet you, Rukah."

Finishing her drink in one final gulp, the hand at her waist tugged her ever closer to Rukah's side. "What are you doing after this?" His blue eyes seemed to glow in the dark lighting of the bar, making goosebumps rise on Leere's forearms.

"Well I'll probably go home with my-" She turned to point to her brother but found he was very clearly occupied. Leaning over the bartop, he had snagged a quick kiss from the bartender who seemed more than happy for another. " . . . Friend." She finished lamely, impressed yet annoyed by how distracted her brother had gotten in the mere minutes after arriving.

Rukah chuckled, clearly seeing why Leere paused, "Well it looks like your friend is preoccupied at the moment."

Just as Rukah spoke, the music in the tavern changed. Although the same upbeat tempo as the last hymn, this one was lead by a flute. Clearly a favourite of the patrons, the dancefloor was soon stuffed with new dancers.

Rukah seemed to have the same idea, turning to Leere after looking at the crowd. "Would you like to dance?"

Leere didn't need to look over to her brother to know he was still engrossed in seducing the staff so she shrugged. "Sure."

Joining the ever growing group of occupants on the dancefloor, Leere easily found her rhythm. Dancing and swaying to the beat of the song, she was a bit too inebriated to care if she was giving herself away by the rather erotic way she danced. Rukah seemed impressed and no one seemed to be planning to make a big deal out of it.

Leere had found her stride in regards to flirting as a man, easily knowing when to give Rukah or one of the customers a suggestive glance, when to graze her hand or rear against someone else's. Overall, she was having a good amount of fun.

Sadly, the song had to change and although many people still stayed to dance to the new tune, most opted to retreat back to their tables or the bar. Rukah was one of them, offering Leere another drink before leading the way out of the thinning crowd.

Leere could not see Tebanam at the bar, perhaps already having escorted that bartender back to his hotel room. Leere did feel hurt but seeing the newest pint in Rukah's hand, she easily pushed such thoughts aside.

Leere lifted the drink to her lips and gulped nearly half of the amber liquid down before realising something was off. There was this tang at the back of her throat, something that really should not be in a normal beer.

Looking to Rukah, the Hyrulian man seemed to be looking over cautiously, as if expecting something to happen.

Shit , Leere thought. Quickly trying to take a step towards the bathroom and away from the stranger. Intending to throw up the contents of that beer, Rukah grabbed onto her wrist as soon as she turned away from him.

"Hey now," He said, putting on a look of concern. "What's wrong? Where are you going?"

"B-Bathroom," Leere uttered.

The lights seemed to be going brighter as if someone put fuel to the flames. Her legs soon felt weak, her knees eventually feeling unbalance just by standing still. Something was wrong. Something was in that drink.

"C'mon," Rukah tried to soothe her, reaching out his other hand to take Leere's freed wrist. "Don't you wanna dance a bit more?"

"N-No," Leere weakily shook her head, trying but failing to pull out of the man's grip. "There was . . . There was something in my drink."

The world was beginning to spin, disorientating Leere with even the slightest turn of her head. Whatever was in her drink, it was spreading. Pumped into the bloodstream it made quick work with the alcohol. This wasn't an accident, this was done on purpose and Leere knew just who the culprit was.

Taking a step back again, Leere tried to escape from Rukah's clutches but instead lost her footing. Perhaps due to the sticky floor near the bar or just her now feeble legs, the ground came out from under her.

But two strong hands caught her before she landed on the ground. With what strength Leere had, she looked up.

Tebanam was back and he looked worried. Placing a hand on Leere's forehead, he checked her temperature. "Hey, you ok?"

"N-No," Leere said shakily. "Something was in my-"

"He's fine." Rukah interrupted, taking back Leere's wrist and giving it a soft tug. "We were just thinking about going back to my place."

Tebanam frowned, looking from his weakened sister to the stranger. "I don't think so." Easily grabbing onto the Hyrulian's wrist, he squeezed the shorter man hard enough to recoil from his grapple on Leere, who welcomed the protective arm of her brother around her.

"W-We were having fun!" Rukah stuttered, trying to defend himself out desperation. "He'll be fine, I'll look after him. Why don't you go back to chatting with Tirill?" Nodding to the bar, clearly speaking about the man Tebanam had been flirting with. "You two were getting pretty familiar, it'd be a shame if-"

Rukah paused his rambling to scowl. Looking up, he squinted at Tebanam's face as if recognising him. "Wait just a moment . . . Do I know you?"

Even Leere could feel Tebanam stiffen. His arms squeezing ever so tighter around her shoulders as if to keep her from slipping away.

"No you don’t," Tebanam obviously lied. "I'm just a-"

"Yeah . . ." Rukah interrupted, raising a hand to point at the tall man. "Yeah, I know you alright! You're that prick who went after Rilon!"

"Y-You're wrong, I don't know a Rilon." Tebanam continued, taking a cautious step back.

"Don't you bullshit me!" Rukah angrily shouted, catching bystander's attention. "You were here before! Going after him when you knew he was mine!"

"Well, m-maybe I did," Tebanam admitted, "But I didn't know he was yours."

Leere, perhaps too out of it to truly understand the context of this fight, could not help but spare a thought of bemusement. Seeing her tall half-Gerudo brother almost cowering from the puny Hyrulian that stood in front of him.

"Shut it!" Rukah said, clearly intoxicated and visibly angry. Reaching out he grabbed onto Leere's wrist. So tight that is it made her grunt in discomfort. "Imma take your boyfriend and we'll pretend like this never happened."

"Boyfriend?!" Tebanam said, tone heavy with shock and disgust. "He's my sis-brother!" Leere could feel her younger sibling take a step backwards, trying to make space between them and the Hyrulian. "Now let go of him!"

"No way," Rukah said, shaking his head as he closed the space between them again. "I work here, remember? So you better play nice."

With one strong yank, Leere had slipped from Tebanam's safe embrace into the stranger’s arms. Holding both of her arms behind her back and with Leere's symptoms only worsening, there was no way she would have the strength to free herself.

"I'll repeat myself only one more time." Rukah said, a half-crazed smirk curling his face. "You get out of my club and leave your . . . brother with me."

With all the strength she had left, Leere crouched in her assailant's grip. And before either her brother or her attacker could say a thing, she jumped upwards and slamming the back of her head into Rukah's chin and nose.

Leere felt the arms that had been restraining her loosen and took the needed steps to get back to Tebanam's side. Rukah was on the floor, falling onto his ass from the force of the hit. He let out a pathetic groan, clutching at his face as he wriggled to get back up to his feet.

To Leere's dismay, three men separated from the onlooking crowd to join Rukah by his side. Clearly not there to negotiate.

Leere swore under her breath. Knowing her condition, she would only be able to fight off one of the newcomers. But Leere then felt the hand that held her close squeeze her. Tebanam was still with her and clearly, he'd be able to handle the rest of the rabble.

The newcomers were the first to move in. All at once, all three lept to separate the siblings. Leere kicked one in the shin, causing the man to topple. Tebanam used his large forearms to careen across and smack the other two away.

In the ensuing chaos, Leere quickly had her opponent groaning from a broken bone and Tebanam had left the other two men unconscious.

Thankfully, that seemed to be the only people who were planning to side with the now bleeding Rukah. So before any more people got any ideas, the siblings quickly pushed through the onlooking crowd and left the bar in a run.

The night sky outside of Oshmel was beautiful. Without the lights of the city brightening the heavens, the navy blue was dotted by bright stars. It was also silent apart from the soft running of the nearby river flowing through the grasslands and the soft chirping of local insects.

Too bad that was ruined by Leere heaving up the inside of her stomach into the river. Trying as best she could to get rid of any last remnants of whatever Rukah had slipped into her drink. The only comfort being the soft, comforting pat of her little brother against her hunched back.

With her stomach feeling empty and throat sore from choking, Leere laid down in the grass to rest and to stop her head from spinning.

"You feeling better?" Tebanam inquired, sitting next to her and looking over the meadow-covered scape.

"Not a lot," Leere muttered and lifted her had to squeeze it into a fist. "But my energy is coming back."

"Good," Tebanam sighed in relief. "I'm sorry, by the way. I really should've kept an eye on you."

"Yeah, you should've." Leere said dryly but then nudging Tebanam from where she lay to tell him she was joking. "But it's not your fault. It's that son of a bitch Rukah who should by saying sorry."

Tebanam let out an understanding grunt but didn't seem to quite like he had understood that he had been forgiven. Guilt still twinkled in his orange eyes as a frown played at his brow.

"Listen . . . I'm sorry for what I had said. The last time we saw each other, I mean." Tebanam muttered, pulling a blade of grass from the stem to fiddle with it in his fingers. "It was uncalled for."

Leere shrugged, sitting up to watch her little brother twist and tug at the leaf. "It's fine. Me and Rinku weren't really helping things. I don't really know where it all came from but . . . we really shouldn't have ended it like that."

Tebanam nodded, the blade of grass now tatters in his lap. "Yeah . . . me neither."

Nudging her baby brother again, Leere smiled to him. "As if I could ever hold a grudge against you, Teb."

Tebanam could only smile, reassurance being all he needed to let him relax where he sat. "We better get going then." The brother said before getting to his feet. "You can stay in my room tonight."

Leere stood up on her feet but soon felt her knees shake under the pressure of holding herself upwards. Tebanam seemed to see her dilemma and smiled.

"C'mon," He said, crouching and offering his back for her to climb onto. "I'll carry you."

Leere restrained a smile and obeyed, quickly getting into Tebanam's back. She was having a strong sense of nostalgia. They had used to do this when they were kids, only it had been the other way around. Tebanam sobbing from a grazed knee and Leere telling him off for not being careful.

"Goddesses, you're heavy." Tebanam groaned as he steadied himself.

Leere playfully hit her brother, "That's no way to talk to a girl." "But your not a girl," Tebanam retorted, smirking at Leere's still transformed appearance.

"Oh yeah!" The sister gasped, quickly muttering the needed incantation under her breath. She soon felt lighter, her clothes loosening and her chest quickly weighing her down. "Better?"

"Much so," Tebanam answered mid-chuckle.

For that one night, the town of Oshwel was treated to the sound of adult siblings laughter as the two of them, with only one trail of footsteps, ran down the empty streets.

This fic is based on the Zelgan au (and Rinku) by @figmentforms Tebanam is created by @s-kinnaly Leere is created by @mrneighbourlove Towns and other minor characters are by me I highly recommend you look at their content on this to have a better understanding of the story

[badacts]

eyes on me (pt.4)

This fic is about Gotham’s revenant problem.

(part one) (part two) (part three)

Gotham is a stinking, ratshit city sulking in a sickly combination of sea fog and smoke. Goddamn, Jason missed it.

Things he didn’t miss so much: being in the same locale as his own headstone. 

He’s aiming for the grave of Marc Rand, recently undeceased, but his feet move of their own accord to a spot on the northern side of the cemetery. He’s been here once before - it was raining, and he’d been sick when his boots stirred the smell of wet soil underfoot, spent the night shaking and sleepless in the dingy studio apartment he’d been squatting in.

Now, his helmet filters that out. He takes in the smooth white marble of the twin headstones, one for Catherine and one for him. A memento to his old life, still bedecked with a bouquet of white carnations. 

He’s not sure what possesses him to look closer at the flowers. They’re fresh white, unstained by smog and age so far, with a card on the tie binding the stems. He’s expecting the name of one of Bruce’s society pals, looking to make nice by dropping flowers on some dead Crime Alley kid’s grave, or maybe some stalker Wayne fan. 

Instead, the card says: I am the soft stars that shine at night.

“I am not there,” Jason murmurs, words falling like stones into the silence, “I do not sleep.” 

He always loved that poem. It’s either a particularly on-the-nose joke on Bruce’s part, or something else entirely. And he knows it’s Bruce - even in the florist’s typography, the ‘- B’ is instantly recognisable to a child who grew up in Wayne Manor.

So that’s why he follows Tim back to the Cave from the hospital. That, and the fact that his replacement may or may not fall off his bike on the way without supervision.

Of course, Timmy doesn’t seem particularly pleased to have his help. If looks could kill, Jason would be dead for the second time right about now.

“Just sit there and don’t touch anything,” he tells Jason, pressing an ice pack to the back of his head with his left hand while typing at the computer with his right. He sounds grumpy. Not angry, as such, but still low-key pissed that Jason dared give him a teeny, tiny concussion.

Really, he should have caught himself. Jason is good, but so is Red Robin, and Red Robin can’t afford to be taken out by an (admittedly ably assisted) tumble on a rooftop.

Jason is going to keep putting down the fact that Tim did get him in a chokehold to his brief moment of mistaken sympathy. He’s going to have a bruise in the shape of Robin’s shinguard on his throat to remind him of that, too.

“Here,” Tim says, files folding out across the largest screen. “This is everything I have on Rand. I’d read it to you, but I’m still seeing double.” Because he’s dramatic as hell.

“I didn’t grow up on the same street as you, but I can still fucking read,” Jason snaps, waiting for Tim to vacate his personal space before he steps closer to the computer. There’s a discarded batarang there, gleaming black against the table, and Jason can’t resist picking it up to feel the familiar weight. Tim isn’t watching, and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Probably.

Of course, before Jason can start the aforementioned reading, the Batmobile pulls into its spot, its familiar snarl cutting to silence. 

It’s not like Jason didn’t know there was a decent chance of running into Bruce when he came here. It’s just that he’s never as prepared for it when it actually happens as he thinks he will be beforehand.

Batman is hard to read in the cowl, but Jason can tell he isn’t surprised to find the two of them here. His attention jumps to Tim, still holding the ice pack, and he demands, “What happened?”

“Hit my head,” Tim replies, surly, with another of those killer looks at Jason. “It’s fine. We’re going over the Rand case.”

“Let me look,” Bruce replies, pulling back the cowl and letting it hang down his back. Tim, sighing, allows it with bad grace. “Were you knocked out?”

“No. It’s a mild concussion.” 

“They just don’t make Robins like they used to,” Jason says lightly, because he doesn’t want to watch this - the Bat clucking over his newest chick.

“I’m not the one that died,” Tim points out. He’s a shithead, and any regret Jason might have felt over giving him a head injury evaporates.

“Not yet,” he says, and even he isn’t sure whether it’s a threat or not.

Bruce pulls away from Tim, pressing the ice pack in Tim’s hand back into place. “We’ll get Leslie to check you.”

“I’m fine!” Tim exclaims, waving his free hand in exasperation. 

“We don’t take risks with head injuries,” Bruce says, like it’s a lesson learned by rote, right before he turns his gaze onto Jason. “Did you do this?”

Jason shrugs. “I maintain he did it to himself. Turns out he’s clumsy as hell.”

“Fuck you,” Tim mutters at him. Jason would have gotten a double swear jar penalty for that one, but Tim doesn’t even get a look.

“You injured him. Again.”

Tim rolls his eyes. “It was an accident, Bruce. I’m fine.”

“This,” Bruce points at Tim, like he’s pointing at a little cuddly bunny rabbit, and not a buck-sixty of highly-trained muscle and creepy, canny brain, “Cannot happen again.”

Jason leans back against the desk, casual. “Well, that’s it, Timmers. You had a good run, but Dad says no head injuries ever again. Time you retired.”

Bruce is scowling. “That’s not-”

“Or I can lend you a helmet,” Jason cuts him off, smiling. “The colour’s right and everything.”

“This isn’t a joking matter,” Bruce snaps. “You nearly killed him.”

It’s an atomic bomb of a comment. Just like he meant it to be. Tim looks surprised, but he shouldn’t. Or maybe Bats doesn’t talk to him that way, saves it all up special for Jason.

“Yeah,” Jason says, stripped bare of anything but the truth - no attitude, no humour, nothing, “I did. I hurt him. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill you.”

There’s plenty he doesn’t regret. Plenty of blood on his hands he’d happily get all over again. But there are also things he would take back, starting with the sick bite of a chainsaw between the vertebrae of drug pushers and ending with his bullet in Tim Drake’s shoulder. 

Doing what he does is a necessity. He believes that to the core. The taste for violence, the pleasure in it, the crack and wavering of his control - that’s dangerous for him. It’s an addiction that he needs to kick. 

He’s not sure if his words are offering that up as supplication, or just rubbing what he’s done in Bruce’s face. Bruce doesn’t give anything away. He never really does; not for free.

“And every time you did, you took yourself further and further from what that represents,” he says, and points at the thing Jason has been trying to ignore this whole time.

His old uniform, enshrined and adorned with the worst inscription Jason has ever fucking seen. It’s certainly no do not stand at my grave and weep.

Because Jason isn’t dead, but the kid he was? The kid that Bruce claimed as his own, the one he claimed to love? That kid is. And this is the grave.

A good soldier. A good fucking soldier.

“Bruce,” Tim says, and he sounds tentative. He’s watching Jason’s hand, while Bruce is looking him dead in the eye.

“Every time you do, you prove me wrong for ever letting you wear it,” Bruce continues.

“Fuck you,” Jason rasps, and throws.

It’s a direct hit. The glass cracks and falls in a cacophony, echoing in a roll across the cave to the point it compounds on itself. The batarang lodges directly into the armour over where Jason’s fifteen-year-old heart would have been.

“Fuck you,” Jason’s mouth says. “I was never your soldier.” His brain, that part of him that has been getting quieter and quieter since he left this place, the useless part that screams you replaced me over and over, is deafening. All he can hear is that, and the insistent thrum of his own heart.

There are hands in the front of his jacket. He and Bruce are eye-to-eye, and it gives Jason a great view of his rage. In that moment, Jason has never been surer that he’s about to be hit, and that’s saying something, considering his entire life.

He’s holding the front of Batman’s uniform so tight that his nails are breaking on the kevlar weave. 

“Stop.” That’s Tim, probably not for the first time either. But this time he prises himself into the space between them, unignorable. 

Bruce leans back immediately, letting Jason go. Unfortunately, Jason can’t quite convince his hands to release, or his brain to stop screaming.

Tim is holding his wrists, face very series. He whispers, “Breathe.” Jason wants to break him in half, but he doesn’t, and he doesn’t, and he doesn’t.

His fingers relax.

“Gentlemen. What on earth is the meaning of this?”

It’s Alfred. He looks furious.

All three of them freeze. Then Tim lets go of Jason like he’s on fire. It would be funny, if it weren’t for Alfred’s gimlet gaze bearing down on them. Or if the entire preceding five minutes hadn’t happened.

“Master Tim,” Alfred says after a long moment where none of them move, “I believe you have some homework to finish.”

Tim opens his mouth like he’s going to protest, and then sees the escape route for what it is and takes it like the scuttling schoolboy he is. 

Once he’s gone, Alfred turns. “Master Bruce.”

There’s a very long silence. Then Bruce says, “Hrn,” and turns away in the direction of the showers.

That just leaves Jason, still taut with adrenaline to the point his hands shake, standing below, and Alfred like an avenging angel above him, and a pile of glittering glass shards in the corner.

“Master Jason,” Alfred says, and then smiles. “Welcome home.”

[dc41896]

Worst Fear (2)

Hi guys! This is the last part of the previous fic I posted and i hope you guys like it :)!

Warnings: None

Word Count: 3,447 (Sorry that it’s so long)

“This is not good. This is not good,” you repeated pacing the length of your couch with your hands seemingly stuck to the sides of your head as you thought about how you could possibly fix this. Of course this would happen to you. The ONE time you try to express your feelings it had to blow up in your face.

“Why didn’t I delete it last night?! I’m so stupid!” you say in frustration with yourself as tears begin to form in the corners of your eyes. “Ok calm down, everything’s gonna be fine ok,” Alani says trying to be comforting, which you appreciated her for, but also didn’t want to hear because how in the world was everything going to be fine from this? Right now, all you could see was the worse happening, which made the tears flow faster the more you thought about it.

“Lani, I just basically sent a love letter to a guy whom I haven’t seen in a year and DEFINITELY have not talked to about that topic before. Do you realize how psychotic and obsessive I probably look to him right now?!” you yell falling back on your couch tired from everything happening around you.

“If only there was a way I could get his phone and delete it before he sees it then I’d be fine.”

“That’s it! I got it,” Alani exclaims as she furiously searches through her phone. “Alright he posted an instastory of him in the gym five minutes ago, so right now he’s probably working out and from his body, he takes his workouts seriously so he probably doesn’t have his phone on him. This means that he probably hasn’t seen the message, which is why he hasn’t responded yet.”

Now it’s her turn to pace in front of you while almost performing sign language from how she’s waving her hands about. “What if we go to the gym, sneak his phone away, and delete the message?! He’ll never know anything happened as long as we get it done fast,” Alani explains stopping in front of you to hear what you have to say.

Any other day, you’d immediately say no and just face the consequences, but being desperate to fix this wrong you’d do just about anything at this moment. “Alright sounds good lets go,” you reply jumping up from your couch to grab your keys and head out the door.

“Wow I honestly thought you wouldn’t go for it,” she replies following right behind you outside as you lock your front door. “Right now I’m desperate and it’s the only plan we have. Now which gym are we going to?”

“Mayweather Boxing, which luckily for you I have a friend who works there and owes me a favor,” she says moving her thumbs a mile a minute to send this mystery friend a text as you both make your way down the hall and out of the building.

______

“Thanks for letting us in again Trent,” Alani sweetly says following behind the fit, dark haired man. He was nice enough to get you and Alani in the locker room through the back door only used for employees or celebrities in situations where they were trying to escape being seen by fans or paparazzi. “No problem just please don’t cause any trouble and don’t let anyone know I let you guys in. Like you said, get in and get out.”

“You got it,” Alani jokingly salutes from his last statement, making him shake his head and let out a small laugh. “I promise no one will ever know we were here,” you say placing your hand over your heart.

Soon after he left, you guys immediately got to work searching his locker for his phone to try to erase your stupid mistake. You couldn’t lie though and say it wasn’t exciting to be sneaking around like this. Did you ever want to do it again? Absolutely not, but still the event was one you’d probably tell your future daughter and granddaughter if they ever came to you with boy problems.

“Alani go watch the door,” you instruct opening the locker that was a little bit taller than you. If you didn’t already know this was Florian’s locker, you could surely tell now. His signature red hoodie hung from the top with his cross chain hanging on the inside of it. On the shelf at the very top were his circular RayBan shades and next to them the prize of this whole adventure, his cellphone.

“Here I got it,” you softly say to Alani trying not to be heard. “Alright lets get in this thing and erase this message,” she says as you cut on the phone. Thank God he didn’t have a passcode, but problem now was that his phone was an android, which you had no idea how to work.

“Who has an android in this day and age? I thought everyone had an iPhone,” Alani says moving closer to you to look over your shoulder at the foreign object in your hand. “That doesn’t matter right now how do I get to his messages? Everything’s in another language” you ask trying to swipe through the different pages to find something that looks like messages.

“Maybe try that one,” she suggests pointing at the app with an envelope as its picture. “Nope it’s his emails which now are taking forever because it’s loading everything,” you reply trying to quickly escape only to accidentally click on an email from his manager.

“It’s the one with the paper airplane,” you hear a deep, accented voice answer making both you and Alani freeze in place before turning around to see Florian with his arms crossed in front of him and both his friends beside him. Since your friend had left her post and both of you were so caught up with trying to figure out his phone, none of you heard him walk into the locker room to collect his things after finishing his workout.

Surprisingly, he didn’t look furious at you guys. With his eyebrow raised he looked more so curious and obviously waiting to hear what you were doing going through his personal belongings.

“Heyyy…” Alani drags out with a smile trying to hopefully ease any hard feelings this may cause. You on the other hand, were still frozen like a toddler caught in the cookie jar clutching his phone.

“So this is all a very funny story that I’m sure we’ll laugh at one day,” she laughs as she smacks her knee. “My friend here was actually trying to get to her boyfriend’s locker because we thought he was cheating right? Who also happens to not be from the US, which is a crazy coincidence! And this whole time we thought this was his but, apparently it’s not so we apologize and will now be on our way,” she finishes still flashing her best smile while pulling you towards the exit.

However, seeing as though the three mountain of men were blocking the locker room door, how you guys would freely escape was a mystery to both of you. You caused this whole mess, so you knew you had to fix it the right way this time.

“Y/N?” he asks looking directly at you as a signal to come clean. “Ok the truth is that I accidentally sent you something that wasn’t meant for you. Well it was, but I just didn’t really want you to hear it. Like it wasn’t anything bad it’s just really stupid and embarrassing honestly and I came to sneak your phone to try to delete it so you wouldn’t see it, but we all see how that worked out,” you laugh slightly while looking down at the ground or anywhere really to get a break from his intense eyes.

“I’m really sorry and I promise I wasn’t trying to steal from you or anything or act like a crazy fan, but I understand if you want nothing more to do with me,” you finish before handing him back his phone and quickly making your way out of the locker room and eventually the back of the building.

Once outside, you fumbled through your pockets to try to find your keys, which were currently nowhere to be found and meant that you probably dropped them somewhere along the way from here to the locker room. Groaning, you turn around to see Florian a few feet away from you holding your keys by your Mickey Mouse keychain.

“You dropped something,” he says walking up to you to hand you your keys. “I think we need to talk Y/N.”

“Yea that’s probably best, is the car ok?” you ask him as he nods his head and follows you to your black Range Rover. Once inside, the elephant made its presence known and neither one of you knew where to start, or how to start really.

“Nice car,” Florian smiles as he leans the seat back and gets comfortable. “Thanks but you don’t have to try to be nice to me or spare my feelings. Just let me know what you want me to hear,” you reply turning to look at him with your forehead on the steering wheel.

“I’m not trying to spare your feelings Y/N, I was just giving you a compliment,” he sighs looking up at the roof, “but since you want to jump into it then we can. Do I like how you invaded my privacy and went through my stuff? No. But the thing that upsets me the most is how you couldn’t just tell me straight to my face ‘Hey I made a mistake and this happened’ and then we could be adults about it and handle it. Why was it so hard for you to just tell me”?

“Tell you what? About sending the message or the message itself?” you ask now sitting up to fiddle with a piece of string from your jeans. “Both,” he replies turning to look at you with his head still tilted back from staring at the roof.

“I didn’t tell you about the message because then you would’ve had to look at said message, which I didn’t want to happen. I didn’t tell you about the message itself because I was afraid of what would come next. When we first met last year and hung out it was good times and I didn’t want to lose you as a friend if you didn’t feel the same way,” you begin feeling a dry sensation in your throat, which tended to happen when you were nervous.

You knew you had to get these feelings out though. You literally had no other choice and definitely couldn’t lie your way out of it seeing as though all of these secrets had led to this.

“And then I was also afraid that of what would happen if you did feel the same way. Especially what would happen to me,” you explain feeling his eyes on you the whole time. “Well if you told me you sent me something by mistake, I could’ve just deleted the whole conversation without looking at it,” Florian smiles at you jokingly hoping to erase the tension and make you feel better. “And what do you mean what would happen to you? Like not feeling safe around me?”

“No! Not like that. It’s just my biggest fear with relationships is becoming something that I don’t like because I’m pushed to a point where I react or behave in a way I never thought I would,” you answer finally looking up from your string to his eyes.

You honestly expected him to look at you like you were crazy for fearing that or fuss how that wasn’t an excuse for what you did and lash out at you. Instead though, he nodded in an understanding way before positioning himself to where his upper body was fully facing you.

“I get where you’re coming from. Becoming something you’re not is something that I feel most genuine people don’t want to happen. I know I hope to not look in the mirror one day and notice how I’m not me,” he answers. “You shouldn’t let that fear stop you from having relationships though and is something that you talk through with the person you’re with.”

“Yea you’re right. It’s just this weird fear I have that I know probably sounds strange,” you reply giving attention back to your string.

“Look at me,” he says as you turn to look at his now soft expression. “Fears typically come from something deeply rooted, so no fear is weird or strange…well I take that back. If you told me you were afraid of mustard, I can’t lie, I’d think you were weird,” he deeply chuckles, causing you to laugh along with him.

“Thanks for being so understanding and not hating me,” you smile feeling relieved that he took everything so well and that you finally got everything off of your chest even though it wasn’t in the way that you expected. “No problem Y/N, and I’m gonna be honest the first time we hung out I knew I could never hate you,” he replies rubbing the back of his neck with a smile.

“I guess we should get back inside. I’m sure both of our friends are wondering what’s happening,” you say turning off the car and taking the key out of the ignition. “Yea but I don’t think they’re worried. When I was walking out I heard Alani start flirting with my brothers,” Florian replied with a laugh as he returned your passenger seat to its original position.

“Yea that sounds like Lani,” you laugh before both of you exited your car to return back inside.

______

During the drive back to your place, you felt a sense of relief that everything was now out in the open and you didn’t feel like you were hiding anything anymore. However, you couldn’t help but wonder if what happened would still cause problems with your friendship with Florian. He seemed like he was past everything and wanted to move on, but what if he only said all those things to make you feel better? And after this would drop all communication with you as the beginning of erasing “the weird girl with a crush” from taking up this small part of his life?

Seeing that you were deep in thought, and probably still feeling some type of way about your talk earlier, Alani thought it was best to not ask you about what happened and give you time to tell her when you were ready. Also still feeling awkward about the events from earlier, you texted Florian to let him know you’d have to take a rain check from hanging out today.

He tried to assure you everything was fine and that nothing would be awkward in an attempt to change your mind, but you just weren’t really up to it anymore.

“You sure you’re gonna be ok?” Alani asks leaning on the edge of your bed, “I don’t have to go and can stay here with you eating junk and watching tv all night.” While you weren’t planning on going anywhere, Alani had gotten close enough to one of Florian’s brothers, Masias, during your time away that they made plans to go out tonight.

You appreciated her offer and how she was willing to drop her plans to care for you, but you didn’t want her to miss out on her fun just to sulk at home with you. Plus, in times like this, you preferred to be alone so you could process your emotions and heal accordingly.

“Yea I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me,” you answered with a small smile getting up to walk her out. “You have fun on your date and let me know everything after! Also be safe and update me throughout the night where you guys are.”

“Ok and yes mother,” she laughs as she opens your front door to go home and get ready, “And you don’t overthink about today. I know that’s easier said than done but stay positive. I promise it’s not as bad as you think.”

Hugging you before she leaves, you say your quick goodbyes and close the door to begin your night alone. You decided you’d watch your favorite show since there were some episodes you missed and maybe a couple of your favorite movies.

As you started to walk down the hall, a loud buzz from your call box made you jump from being startled. “It’s probably Lani coming back trying to stay here to take care of me,” you thought as you retreated back to your living room to answer it.

“Lani go on your date I’m fine I promise,” you say with a small laugh. “I’m glad to hear you’re fine, but hopefully you’ll still let me up,” Florian answered smiling as he finished his sentence.

“What was he doing here?” you thought as you felt your heartbeat increase, “Oh, um sorry. Yea come up,” you answer. Not long after you hear a hard knock on your door signaling that he had arrived.

Opening the door, you were met with his large frame and soft eyes. Having changed from his workout clothes, he now had on grey sweatpants, an all white tee, and his off-white Nike’s. His look wouldn’t be complete without his thick chain and backwards cap. Why did he have to look that good? You knew he had to know grey sweats, a chain, and backwards caps were every girl’s weakness. Especially if the man could wear it well, which he absolutely could.

“Hey,” you greeted with a small smile holding the door open for him to walk in. “Hey,” he greeted back making his way into your place. As he walked pass, you caught a whiff of his cologne, which of course smelled him heaven itself. “Sir you’re really not making this getting over you thing easy,” you thought as you closed the door and followed him to your couch.

“Ok so I know you’re wondering why I’m here, especially after everything that happened, but I want to show you that everything is fine between us. And I promise that it’s not gonna be awkward,” he says taking both of your hands in his, looking deep into your eyes.

“Let me guess, Alani told you I was sulking in my room?” you ask. Part of you wanted to believe him and just move on, but the pessimist in you just knew there was some underlying reason to this surprise visit and him being overly nice.

“The only contact I’ve had with her was to ask what your address was because I wanted to see you,” he answers with a sigh. “I know you’re thinking there’s a catch to all this but I promise Y/N there isn’t one and I’m just showing you that I still want you in my life. If you want we can even start completely over.”

You can’t help but let out a small laugh, which confuses him for a minute but also makes him laugh along with you. Part of you was laughing at how much of an idiot you felt like for not trusting him from the beginning, and the other part was flattered from how much he was willing to do to prove to you that you guys were on good terms.

“From that smile I’m hoping you believe me now,” he smiles. “Yea I believe you,” you nod with a smile, “Thanks and I’m sorry it took all this for my mind to decide that everything was actually okay.”

“No problem, and I understand you’re trying to protect yourself and make sure someone’s being real with what they say. I’d be the same way,” he responds before leaning back on the couch and getting in his usual wide legged, relaxed position.

“So what are we watching?” he asks turning his attention to your blank tv. “Well I was about to watch Catfish since I missed some episodes and order pizza if that’s fine,” you reply as you open the Pizza Hut app on your phone.

“You know I’d never turn down pizza,” he laughs, “whatever you want though I’ll be fine with it.”

“So if I order lizard tongues and cow brains you’d be fine?” you peak up from your phone with an eyebrow raised and a smirk plastered on your face. “Ok I might have a bit of a problem with it, but honestly as long as I’m with you like I said I don’t care,” he answers nudging your knee with his.

Tags: @honeychicana  @themyscxiras @lady-olive-oil @crushed-pink-petals @ellixthea @lovelymari4 

[dragonofyang]

Let’s Voltron Ep 185 - Mitch Iverson Interview: Voltron Legendary Defender Comics Transcript

The following is a complete transcript for episode 185 of Let’s Voltron: the Official Voltron Podcast in which hosts Marc Morrell and Greg Tyler interview VLD writer Mitch Iverson about the comic books, posted July 11, 2019.

The full text is below the cut, or you can read it at https://www.teampurplelion.com/lets-voltron-ep-185-mitch-iverson-interview-voltron-legendary-defender-comics-transcript/

@voltronisruiningmylife @crystal-rebellion @leakinghate @felixazrael

[Intro music: VLD opening theme]

MM: Welcome Voltron fans! This is Marc Morrell, your host for Let’s Voltron, the Official Voltron Podcast. We have another exciting interview with somebody who created content for Voltron, and this time we’re talking about the comics. So, I gotta get my cohost on, Greg Tyler. Welcome, Greg!

GT: Marc, I’m so glad you didn’t call me your comic relief.

[laughter]

GT: That would’ve been a perfect end, but anyway, yes, um, welcome to all of our listeners and fellow Voltron fans. We’re gonna talk comic books in this podcast and, uh, yeah! It’s gonna be a lot of fun. As many of you know, Voltron: Legendary Defender had three five-issue volumes of a comic book, uh, made by LionForge Comics and we’re gonna talk with one of the people who was involved in every single issue.

MM: Awesome! Awesome, so let me get this straight: every single issue?

GT: I believe so.

MM: Yeah. All fifteen. He was.

GT: Yes, all fifteen.

MM: That’s right. So, what kinds of things do you think our listeners would want to know about the comics?

GT: I don’t know! Wha--what are your thoughts?

MM: I think, uh, one of the first things people always ask about is, ‘Are there any easter eggs?’ You know, like references to other types of things like sci-fi shows or fantasy or other types of things like that.

GT: Mm-hm.

MM: So I-I think that one has to be one of our questions.

GT: Sure, th-that’s a great question. I would say that if there’s one thing--now I-I--it’s not something we can ask our guest--but one thing I think tha-that somebody might ask is ‘are they any good’. And I know that sounds silly, but I’ve heard a lot of people just say, “Eh, I don’t wanna read those comics, those are dumb.” [laughter] But you know what? If you give them a try, they’re a lot of fun in their own right. The dialogue is very natural, the characters are saying and thinking and doing things that are very in-tune with the TV series. They are interesting side stories that, uh, fit between different episodes of the show, so they do have, uh, a-a place in the story arcs, and yet they’re not so confined by them that they can’t do their own thing. And the artwork looks great, and the stories are a lot of fun. So to answer that question, if anybody out there has that, in my humble opinion, yeah, they’re good! They’re a lot of fun. What do you think, Marc?

MM: I think it’s just fun to say things like “fripping bulgogian”.

GT: [laughter] Yes. There are some wonderful sci-fi-ish terms in the comics, just like in the show, and yeah, a lot of fun.

MM: And there’s some wild alien races that you’ve never seen before on the show, and it’s just amazing in how many different wild directions they go with the comics.

GT: Yes, I agree, it, uh, yeah. There’s some really good stuff in there.

MM: Yeah. So, we’d like to bring Mitch Iverson on.

GT: Absolutely.

MM: Alright. So here comes your next guest.

[Mechanical lion roar sound effect, which then turns into Voltron robot noises and the Voltron theme]

MM: Well, Greg, I would like to introduce a former writer of Voltron: Legendary Defender on Netflix, and of course the comics that we’re going to be talking about in this episode. He was also a writer on the up-and-coming Fast and Furious animated show, and he’s working on a top-secret project for Netflix.

GT: Ooh, top secret, sounds awesome!

MM: [laughter] Everybody welcome back to the podcast Mitch Iverson! Welcome, Mitch!

MI: Hello! Thank you for having me on!

GT: Hello, Mitch, welcome back to the podcast.

MI: I’m excited to be back.

GT: Well, we’re excited to have you on. We reread the Voltron: Legendary Defender comics, all three volumes, all fifteen issues, and are--we’re just really excited to talk with you about them.

MI: Awesome. I’m excited to talk to you guys about them.

GT: So what have you been up to in Voltron circles since? We heard that--that there were rumors of a fourth volume, and then that--that fell through or something? Can you tell us anything about that?

MI: We had talked about doing it, but you know, the license… there was something going on with that, and uh, DreamWorks decided, “You know what, let’s just let Voltron: Legendary Defender be what it was.” I think everyone creatively felt like, yeah it’s a--it’s a told story. You know, now that it’s over, going back is just kind of like trying to fill in between lines that don’t necessarily need to be filled in. Like, it is--it’s an awesome story, it’s done.

GT: That’s fair. That’s fair.

MI: I will say, if I were allowed to write Monsters and Mana comics [laughter] forever, I would.

[laughter]

MM: That would be cool.

MI: But I don’t know that those would, uh, would warrant the sales. [laughter]

MM: You also have a history with Dungeons and Dragons, can you tell us about anything you’ve done recently with Dungeons and Dragons?

MI: I’ve played it. [laughter]

MM: Alright.

MI: Yeah, I have a group of friends that meet once a month, uh, every month, on a Saturday. We get together at about noon and we play until about 10 p.m. There’s usually some wine, maybe a little scotch every now and then. It’s really fun, definitely snacks that are really unhealthy for you, lots of laughs.

MM: Nice.

MI: Lots of good storytelling. It’s a, it’s a great group.

GT: I think that’s the best part of roleplaying games, isn’t it? It’s the friendship.

MI: Oh, I thought you were going to say snacks.

[laughter]

GT: Oh, okay.

MI: I mean I would agree.

GT: And the wine.

MM: You can’t have a guy like Hunk as your caterer at every Dungeons and Dragons night, right?

MI: No, you can’t.

[laughter]

MM: So you would love to do Monsters and Mana comics.

MI: I’m being semi-serious. I mean I just love that episode so much and I had so much fun with it, but you know, it did--a lot of its magic was that it was just kind of a one-time adventure, but, uh, I do truly just love that kind of, like, whimsical fantasy element. I thought that was a lot of fun.

MM: Well, the funny thing is that the “Monsters and Mana” episode was one of the few episodes that tied in with the comics.

MI: Right. Yeah.

MM: Because they mentioned the Yalexian pearl.

MI: Right, yeah.

MM: Mm-hm.

MI: You’re, uh, you pay attention.

GT: Yeah! There were a lot of terms that, uh, were expanded upon in the comics, that one being probably the most prominent, but uh, one thing that surprised me a bit in the comics, we had an issue that was told from Lance’s perspective where he is a D&D kind of, sort of sorcery hero. And he rescues the princess, there’s a dragon, the dragon is the princess--spoilers--and, and it’s just--it’s really cool, but one thing that-that kind of surprised me after “Monsters and Mana” is in that episode, Lance acts like he wants nothing to do with th-the game at first, and in the comic world he’s thinking in those terms. So is Lance a closet nerd?

MI: I think he is, and the thi--well, just to--just to make a quick joke, usually you say “spoilers” first, not-not after. [laughter]

GT: Well, yeah, I spoiled the spoiler.

[laughter]

MI: Oh, I’m just messin’ around. But Lance, I mean the reason he’s trying to act like he doesn’t like fantasy is because he wants to seem cool in front of Allura, and then she’s like, “This sounds fun!” and he’s like, “Oh, okay.”

GT: [laughter] Oh, yeah, that’s cool.

MI: And I mean, you know, he’s always playing that video game and he’s got, like, a--a, you know, at the end, he sticks around to play another game. So...

GT: Oh yeah. Yeah, he does.

MM: In that comic, it says, th-the narrator says, “With Lance’s unerring nose for adventure-finding and quest-detection, the lions quickly reached the most likely spot on the planet Krell for a princess rescue.” And of course they chose a picture of a tall tower.

MI: Mm-hm.

MM: Of course, that’s the perfect place for a princess rescue.

GT: Sure!

MM: This particular princess was a little unusual of sorts, wasn’t it?

MI: Yes.

GT: Yeah, I think I already spoiled that, unfortunately.

[laughter]

MI: Whiffed on that one, huh, little button. Yeah, that was, you know in the first two iss--first two books, and then I wrote them together, we broke all the stories together, but we each took a different issue. We were both a lead on a different issue, and that was an issue he took the lead on and I didn’t know that he was gonna do all that Lance narrating stuff, that was totally him, and I remember reading it and laughing and like, “You are a genius, sir.”

[laughter]

MI: I was like, “Wow, man, he--he is awesome.”

GT: Yeah, I-I think what I really like about--one of the things I really like about the comics is that they, you know--Voltron at its core tends to be sort of an action/adventure sort of property, you know, with sci-fi/fantasy elements and all that, but one thing that I really liked is that a lot of the comics were, you know, had unique twists that made them not just, you know, fighting. There were puzzles to solve, there was “Wow, you know, this thing isn’t really a monster. It’s not trying to… It’s just--it’s just hungry, let’s feed it.” Um, you know, there were all these, these twists that make it not just “giant robot punches the crap out of a giant monster”, you know? And at the same, Voltron has formed in almost every single comic which is also cool, so--

MI: Awesome, yeah.

GT: --so was that a conscious effort on your part and Tim’s part for the first two volumes, to shake things up a bit and make them a little different from the show?

MI: Absolutely. And the--and the thing is, though o-our belief in that is-is you watch a show and a giant robot beats the crap out of a giant monster, that’s awesome. But in a comic book, it might not be as fulfilling we thought. We thought, “You know, this is a little more cerebral” because, like, you’re not gonna get to actually see the-the, all the in-between moments, you know. You can get key images of the fighting, but we thought, like, this needs to ha--we need to, like--we need to, like, make this its own kind of fun thing. Not that it isn’t the show, I thought there were lots of awesome elements like that, but you know, the other thing is in the show, it’s--into its--this is me giving a--I just love this about the show--i-it was so… plotty and it wasn’t like “every episode is fighting a monster”, but then--but, like, Tim and I, we love monster-fighting, so we were like, ”How do we get as much of that in without it feeling like every issue is just solved by punching” like you said. So, we put a lot of thought into ways of making that try and be the case.

GT: Well, I love that juxtaposition where the robot is around all the time, I mean in all, like I think thirteen out of fifteen issues--I counted--and I just kept thinking, “Wow, this is so cool, how many times does this happen?” And so you have that, and yes you have the very awesome-looking variety of giant creatures which is really cool, I mean as an old school fan the more the merrier, and yet it’s not repetitive, it’s not formulaic, it’s not just punch, kick, sword, et cetera. There is still a lot of humans, humanities and problem-solving a-and there are enough plot twists to keep it more than robot-on-creature repetitiveness, and so I really enjoyed that juxtaposition.

MI: I think, by the way, if DreamWorks ever makes another Voltron show, they should make it Voltron: Punch, Kick, Sword, Etc.

MM: Ooh.

[laughter]

GT: You heard it here, listeners.

[laughter]

MM: Alright, so going back to what you were saying, Greg, then sometimes those monsters are somebody’s mother or somebody’s baby.

GT: Mm-hm!

MM: And sometimes Voltron ends up getting into a fight with a monster they probably shouldn’t have.

GT: Yeah.

MI: Yeah.

GT: And that’s also cool. And like, at the end of the very first issu--er was it… yeah, the very first issue, I think--they went to planet Krell and uh, defeated this monster and then these little creatures come out and say, “You’ve killed our guardian”. [laughs]

MM: Yeah.

GT: “Huh?!”

MM: “Huh?”

GT: Yeah.

MI: Hm-hm. [laughs]

GT: Yeah, i-it’s just neat. I-I like the-the juxtaposition there. I-I’m using the word “juxtaposition” it’s a new drinking game, everyone. [laughs] But on the subject of the planet Krell, I’m an old-school sci-fi fan as well and Forbidden Planet is one of my favorite films. Was Krell a deliberate tip of the hat to that film or was it just happenstance?

MI: We--please don’t pitchfork me--I have never seen that movie.

GT: No problem.

MI: Now, Tim may have and that may have been, like, a deliberate nod toward that from him.

GT: Okay.

MI: I don’t-I don’t know, though. Sorry. That may not have been satisfying

GT: Yeah, no problem. That’s perfectly satisfying. It’s the right answer. It’s your answer, so [laughs].

MM: So was there anything specifically that you used as a reference in any of these three volumes?

MI: I’m sure there was, it was just so hard to remember. You know, like, I know that we definitely had a section where every--for every issue we would either go out and ha--or for every arc we’d either go out and have drinks or go get, like, go for, like, a meeting session and we would just, like, talk for, like, a long time about, like, you know, sci-fi things we loved or fantasy things we loved. You know, the other thing we have on that, in there, that is--I should mention that I think is just so great--is, like, many elements that we used were things that we had ideas for the show that it was just like, “You know, we’re never gonna get to fit it in there ‘cuz it’s just not gonna, like, fit with all the stuff going on”. So, you know, like, Josh, May, all the writers who contributed on Voltron, we would always have these powwows and we would talk about, like, different elements that could be in the show, and there would be, like, notecards on the wall that would be, like, “planet cracks open--monster”, that was just, like, a notecard sitting on the wall forever. And it was like, “when are we gonna use that?” And it’s like, “I don’t know if we’re ever gonna get around to using that,” so, like, there was all these ideas that had been kind of, you know, in the aether that we then just say, “Hey, you know, we’re never gonna use these for the show, maybe we put ‘em in the comic book.”

MM: Right.

GT: Yeah, I love that idea where the planet was basically an egg. It was cool.

MI: I think that was Josh Hamilton’s idea.

GT: Oh, neat.

MI: He gets no credit and no money, mua-ha-ha-ha.

[laughter]

GT: Your evil plan worked again. [laughs]

MI: No, we asked him. We asked, “Can we take that card down and put it in the comic?” and he was like, “Yeah!” [laughs]

MM: And one of the cool things is in-in the comics, Pidge actually gets to say “Form Voltron”.

MI: Yeah!

MM: And that doesn’t happen in the show.

MI: Does it never happen in the show?

MM: I’d never heard Pidge say, “Form Voltron”.

MI: Oh, wow.

GT: I’ll take your word for it, but yeah, that does sound like something that would not have been said very often. But yeah, very cool.

MI: Now I’m trying to think does anyone that ever say it besides Keith and Shiro, and Allura? Does Lance ever say it, or Hunk?

MM: I don’t think Lance or Hunk have ever done it.

GT: Ooh. Listeners, if you remember any of these things, and we’re not remembering, please let us know.

[laughter]

MM: But that first volume of comics was actually made into motion comics, too.

MI: Yeah! Wasn’t that cool?

MM: That was awesome.

GT: Yeah, how did that--how did that happen? How did you guys find out about that? Were you involved in-in planning that, or was that surpris--a surprise to you guys?

MI: It was a semi-surprise. We were told they were gonna do it, a--uh, you know, later on, and the way we were kind of told was they put on the recording schedule, like, “Oh, we’re gonna get the actors from the show to come in an-and do that.” So it was like, “Oh, cool, that’s really exciting. Like, that’ll be fun.”

GT: Yeah.

MI: And I thought those things turned out really cool.

MM: Yeah, so cool.

GT: Yeah, it gave it a whole different dimension, didn’t it?

MM: Yes.

MI: Yeah.

MM: It was so cool in fact, that many people had asked are we gonna do this with the other volumes as well?

MI: Yeah, that would’ve been fun. There was always, like, um, strategies, and, like, a lot of the stuff we did on the side was to help promote the show, you know?

GT: Yeah.

MM: Mm-hm.

MI: And, you know, enrich brand experience. And so it-it’s not a hundred percent correct, but, you know, like, in a way the--probably shouldn’t say this ‘cuz it’s gonna come out wrong--but, it’s like the comic books were almost like, in a way, like, a form of advertising and engagement. But the--

GT: Well, sure.

MI: --I know that’s not a perfect analogy because it’s, like, you know, people pay for those, but then with the motion comics that was another way to, like, keep fans engaged, you know, because we’re not always going to have new Voltron content coming out, so it was a way to be like, “Yeah, remember? Don’t forget about us, and don’t forget that, like, the show’s gonna come back in a few months.” And so by the time all that stuff had gotten done, I think the show was probably rounding a corner and, you know, like, it wouldn’t have made sense to do that, t-to invest that money, to give away basically a product that was just gonna be advertisement for a show that was, that was, you know, ending.

GT: Yeah, that makes sense.

MI: If that makes any sense.

GT: Yeah that makes perfect sense. Yeah, absolutely.

MI: DreamWorks is very smart, and they did a really awesome job, I thought, you know, getting the word out to the fans and helping us, like, helping us find ways to engage in cool, different, unique ways, so, that was like, you know, that was like a surprise. It was an awesome surprise.

GT: Yeah, it was great. A-and there have been Voltron motion comics in the past. Several years ago, I-I’m trying to remember the publisher now, but there were two different animated comics there--that were adaptations from prior, um, Voltron iterations. Not from a show directly, but kind of a-a more serious bend on the original show.

MM: You’re talking about Devil’s Due Publishing, right?

GT: I think so, yeah.

MM: The Revelations comic?

GT: I think so, there were a couple different, uh, motion comics that came out, and I must tell you, I had a really hard time getting through them when I finally got around to watching them in the last few years. And it’s nothing about the comic, it’s just that the adaptation didn’t have the same quality in terms of dynamic motion. It was much more static. The music was more stock-sounding rather than using the composers from the show, or any show, I mean just felt stock, et cetera. And so the Legendary Defender stuff was a definite cut above what had been made before, and I really think it kind of breathed a different sense of life into the comic story a-and was very exciting in its own way.

MI: Th-thank you, that’s really cool. I mean, you know, when you get, like, Rhys Darby or Jeremy Shada or Bex, er, they’re--you know, Josh, like, they’re all amazing, it’s like--to have them lend themselves to that, it’s just like--it definitely elevates it, too, you know. That was so great.

MM: Yeah, and Pidge in volume one where she establishes that she has this dossier that she’s been building, assessing the strengths and vulnerabilities of her fellow Paladins, that was a really interesting character moment for her.

MI: Yeah, and, uh, I will say--okay, you were looking for things where I got inspiration from. Hopefully I don’t get in trouble for admitting this, but to me, I’ve always thought of Pidge as kind of the “World’s Greatest Detective”, she’s kind of--

MM: Like Batman!

MI: --like a Sherlock Holmes or like Batman, yes. And uh, and Batman, I think at some point, had a dossier on the Justice League, and that was, like, a storyline.

MM: Oh, yeah.

MI: And so, I was like, “You know, that’s just--that rings true.” Like, that’s something that Pidge would do, you know? So… I don’t wanna say “ripped off”, but homaged. [laughs]

GT: Yeah, a-and that’s cool. I really enjoyed it. And then in a later volume--was it volume three? They’re starting to blend together over just two evenings--there was the plot where she wanted to turn o--that was in volume three!--turn off the shield in the SPRAWL, the Galra shield, and she had her memories temporarily wiped. So that was another interesting twist on something you wouldn’t expect. Someone who was as intelligent as she is and the world’s greatest detective, having to figure out not only what to do, who her allies are, but uh, you know, all this while not even knowing who the heck she is.

MI: I had that idea, and I thought it was a really, really cool idea, and then I was terrified about how to pull that off. I was like… it’s… and I hope I did, I still am like, am like, “Is anyone going to understand what’s happening?” Like, “Is this cool?”

MM: Why is she saying “who am I?”

[laughter]

MI: And I was like, “Oh, this could be very… I hope it works!” And so… I’m glad to hear you liked it. That means a lot.

GT: Yeah, it was uber fun. And it also touched on, uh, something she said back in season 1 where Allura is trying to get Pidge to tell her, uh, the secret that Pidge is really a girl, and instead, you know, she says, “I like peanuts, don’t like peanut butter” or whatever that was, and then she says, “I sweat a lot.” [laughs] And in this issue, she sweats off half of her clues that she had written on her arms.

[laughter]

MM: Yep.

MI: Ey, you remembered! Cool! Yeah!

GT: Yeah! You guys did a great job with the continuity. Now obviously, having worked on the show, it was, you know, still fresh on the brain there, but, uh, to work in those references and the character dialogue i-is so spot-on, too. I could hear the actors, you know, reading the dialogue for every single one of the issues, it was really neat.

MM: So did you ever think what it would be like if maybe the show had a longer run, you know, than the two and a half years it was on, and that you would’ve been able to actually take one of these comic issues that you had written, and adapt it back into an episode into the show if you still had those things rolling together like they were?

MI: Yeah, totally. Anytime you get to see stuff be, like, read by actors is fun. [laughs]

MM: Yeah. So you’re taking what was done with the motion comics and you’re taking it to the next level and you’re not only adding motion and voice and sound and all that kind of stuff to it, but the actual animation.

MI: Yeah, that’d be cool.

GT: It would. And so I gotta ask in the, uh, in volume two whose idea was it for Alfor to be a nud? [laughs]

MI: Oh man, that had to be Tim.

[laughter]

GT: Where he takes the, uh, shaman or the healer of the--and I don’t know how to pronounce this word--Davdibal, Davdibaw?

MM: It looks like “Davdabhau”.

GT: Yeah.

MI: I’m gonna go with “Davdabhau”.

GT: Alright.

MI: [laughs]

GT: But the--he takes, you know, he goes into this lab, specimen lab, where Alfor had been keeping all these things he’d gathered over the-the years, and he, uh, I just love how he just calls Alfor basically a nerd, which is hilarious. I mean, Alfor, especially later, you see him as this gallant warrior, the original Paladin, and nah, he’s a nerd.

[laughter]

MM: That was when he picked up the Nomo virus, right?

GT: Uh, yes, yes.

MM: So, another thing that kinda tied into the show, you know, Coran had developed the slipperies on the show. But in the comic he develops the Nomo virus, and it actually ends up saving them in the end.

MI: Uh-huh. [laughs]

GT: Well, the slipperies had, too, right?

MM: Yeah.

MI: Y-yeah.

MM: Yeah.

MI: Yeah, he was getting around.

GT: Yeah.

MI: Moving at an incredible pace.

GT: [laughs] And he lubed up the, uh, teludav lenses or whatever. [laughs]

MI: Yeah.

GT: Yeah, that was funny.

MI: We, uh, loved that slipperies so much, which was a Josh Hamilton episode, I believe, and that was just so funny. We wanted to, you know, sort of repeat that kind of--that kind of tone again.

GT: Yeah, and I-I gotta ask. In volume three, we see some of the Coalition ships, um, and we see on one of them Matt Holt and Captain Olia, and then there’s this Unilu who we see throughout the TV show. Uh, I think it’s a female Unilu, she seemingly only has one eye, a bandana or a heads--like an orange colo-colored, sort of head wrapping--and eventually in the show we see her as a bridge crew member on the Atlas. Does that character have a name? Does anybody behind the scenes have a name for that character? I always thought that that there was a very interesting look. I was very curious about that character.

MI: I know the character does, um, I’m struggling to remember the name, though. Oh man. I would have to look that up for you. I’m sure there’s a name, and I’m sure we had one, but I’d have to look through, you know. One thing that happens--alright, so I don’t work for, uh, DreamWorks anymore, and when I left, I had a DreamWorks email address and like a DreamWorks, uh, like, storage thing, and that’s where all of the scripts I wrote were, and now I’m always like, “Oh, well, let’s look that up and see where that was!” and it’s like, “Oh, I don’t have this anymore.” [laughs]

GT: Oh, bummer!

MI: I’m sure if I were to go, I’m sure someone there would be nice enough to go through with me and find them again and… but it would definitely be troubling.

GT: Yeah.

MI: And it’s on the tip of my tongue, I know there’s a name.

GT: Yeah, I was just curious. I-I-I remember, uh, Lauren Montgomery’s been very kind enough to answer some of the-some of those kind of questions. It’s just--it helps build out that universe just a little more. So, just something I just noticed in one of the panels, and I thought, “Oh, I love that character, even though I know nothing about her.”

MI: Yeah, Lauren would know for sure, I believe L--that was, like, one of Lauren’s favorites. I could be wrong--

GT: Oh, okay.

MI: --you know, the other thing is, it’s been, like, two or three years since I worked on Voltron, so it’s like, you know, the memories get a little hazy over time.

GT: Oh yeah. And so how would you compare your creative freedom in writing one of these comics versus an episode? I mean, were the comics--because they have to be kind of sandwiched between episodes--were they more constrained as a result or were they less constrained because they didn’t necessarily have to fit the overall story arc of the show? How would you compare and contrast that?

MI: We--it-it’s funny, because that constraint of fitting inside of, like, continuity, it’s very similar to when you write an episode to the show anyway because we have it so plotted out it’s like, you know, you know your beginning, you know your end, the whole team works on what it--what the journey’s gonna be like to get between those spots. So that’s, like, that’s kinda similar. Uh, I would actually say there are very, very comparable in terms of the process because, you know, we still had to have a lot of people sign off on it, it was a lot of, like, there’s a lot of collaboration. I had, uh, you know, Tim and I worked on it together, just like on the show, and we even had Josh, I believe, read versions of things. And, uh, it just--it-it felt very seamless as a transition. Now I will say that writing comic books was something Tim and I had never done, so in terms of, like, the formatting and thinking visually, that was totally different and I c--and it was, and it was very challenging. Like, when I write a script, I can see it in my head clearly and if I know what I’m going for, it kinda just flows out a lot of times. Sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it’s very difficult, but it’s like, you know, I hear Pidge’s voice and so I can, like, you know, Tab, P, Enter, line, Enter, move on. Like I know how to, like, just, like-like, fly through a script. But with, uh--and then, you know read it and rewrite it a bunch of times, et cetera. But with the comic, it’s like, so hard to think, like, “Okay, a photo needs to describe everything, and I have to describe it all in detail, and, like, and then--” It was just so--such a different mental muscle that I had to get used to. And I will say, like, honestly, like, when I went back and read the comics, like, Tim and I, when we read the first comic and we were very proud of them, and Lion Forge was so awesome to work with and so helpful. But even after all of that I was still like, “You know, there’s a few things that if I-if I’d really known how this was gonna look, might have written it differently so it might’ve been a little clearer” you know? Or, like, a visual joke could’ve planted, because it was a totally new process to me.

GT: Yeah.

MI: I mean, I still feel very much like a novice in that regard.

GT: Yeah, you were talking about having to describe things visually, with individual panels and all that. Whose-whose idea--since it was introduced in volume one but followed up in volume three, whose idea was it to depict Pidge’s computer-like thought processes as sort of, like, a-a command prompt on the-on the panel?

MI: Yeah, I think that was actually me because I read Tim’s, uh, Lance issue, and I thought and I thought that was so awesome, and I was like, “Oh I’m ripping him off.”

[laughter]

MI: And I was like, “Oh, if Lance is gonna look like that,” hers has to look kinda… it has to be Pidge and I was thinking, you know, Pidge is sort of, like, a techie, and whenever I think “techie” I immediately go to The Matrix, so I ripped off Tim and The Matrix.

MM: And when you have your characters wearing specific outfits, like in the second volume Pilgrimage, Coran gets to go back and wear that, uh, fancy cape outfit--

MI: [laughs] Yeah he does.

MM: --that he wore when he was trying to get to ride Red Lion. So, do you say in the script that he has to be wearing that outfit?

MI: I believe we did call that one out specifically.

MM: Okay.

MI: Honestly, the comic books, one of the things that, you know, when you write a script you can kind of be a little more evocative sometimes. It depends on the situation, it’s always different. But overall you can be a little more, like, you don’t have to fill in all the blanks on things. But with a comic book, they prefer you do. You wanna know, like, the blocking, you wanna know, like, you know, where people are situated. You can-inside the script you can put, like, comp art that you wanna use so the artist has some, like, help because they’re basically gonna go draw--I mean, it--that same thing happens in animation in a way, somebody draws a picture of it. But in animation, there’s like, a whole team, like, you know, and meetings, and there are storyboard artists before it even gets animated. It’s all in motion. But like, with a comic, it is like, you are handing a script off to someone that you might not ever get to talk to, and then they have to, like, read it, and get a pretty clear idea, so the more detail you give the better. And as a very lazy person, that was hard for me.

[laughter]

MM: So you didn’t get to really collaborate with digital art chefs on this?

MI: Not really. I mean, I never got to talk to any of the artists. I mean, I’ve met some people who’ve worked on the comics at cons, just it’s like, you know, and it’s always awesome to see them, it’s like “Yay! You did such an awesome job!” and they’re like, “Aw, thanks!” It’s like, yeah--but yeah, it’s like--they’re always sweet moments, but in terms of the actual collaboration, it was more like we turned in a script and then one day we got to see the comic. Which is, you know, that’s how it is. I know, I mean there’s more to it than that, I’m making it seem… [laughs]

MM: Uh-huh.

MI: But it-but it is, like, you know, we didn’t get to, uh, to talk or-or communicate really directly with the artists.

MM: Okay.

MI: Which is, you know, that’s-that’s not unheard of and-and, um, you know, in writing, you know, oftentimes you write a script and it’s just, like, you know, you get to go watch it on TV and see what happened with everyone else someday.

MM: I was gonna say, that happens with some other professionals, like sometimes the voice actors, they do their thing, and if they didn’t have to do an ADR session on something, they wouldn’t know what was going on, and they find out something happens to their character through--for the first time watching it when everybody else watches it.

MI: Mm-hm. And crea-creating a TV show is such a collaborative effort, and it has got so many moving pieces, and it-so, you know, there can be something that’s changed in boards, changed in, like, so many different aspects of the show where even in ADR it’s like, it’s still shot the same but the dialogue has changed, and that dialogue changes the tenor of everything. And so those moments, like, like the show is always an evolving process, and, like, luckily on Voltron, like, you know, like, I felt like every-every step of the process just got better and better. It was such a great team to be a part of.

MM: So I gotta ask you, uh, we had mentioned at the top when we introduced you that you had done some work with Fast and the Furious and you have left that since then and you’re now working on a top-secret project for Netflix. Has your position changed at all?

MI: I have, um, I have gotten a title bump from that. That’s one of the reasons I, uh, de-decided to-to take a new job, um, and so yeah. [laughs]

GT: Well, good for you. Congratulations! That’s great.

MM: Yes, congratulations on your promotion!

MI: Thank you, thank you. It was fun working on Fast, that was a great scene, and, uh, that show is gonna be so awesome. [laughs]

MM: And that comes out soon, right?

MI: No, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say what the release date is or not. I don’t even know if I know the release date for sure, I ha-ha-I have something in my head, but I could be wrong about it. I know a teaser recently was released and, uh, it’s like, woo yeah.

MM: Right. Yeah, that was a pretty cool teaser.

MI: Mm-hm. I don’t know if you guys know this, but Tim is, uh, the showrunner of that.

MM: Yes! Yes he is.

GT: Very cool.

MI: Yeah.

MM: We do know that. [laughs] So, if you had had the chance on this Voltron story that you had written, you know, in volume three--Absolution, right?

MI: Mm-hm.

MM: At the end, Allura basically says that, you know, the universe is safer because the information Lotor provided us, “It seems we might be able to trust him. It’s time to use even more of his information and finally put an end to the Galra Empire.”

MI: Mm-hm.

MM: So, if you had had a chance to go to a next issue right after that, do you think it would’ve been something related to something that was going on in the show? Or a totally different storyline after that?

MI: Well, my thinking was the next thing that happens after. Maybe not the very very next thing, but when they go to that Glara facility in the next episode of the show.

GT: That’s where they were flying around in those tunnels underneath the…

MI: Yeah, with the lava.

GT: Yeah, I know which one you’re talking about.

MI: “The Prisoner”. Yes. So, my plan was maybe there were a few extra missions that would’ve happened, but the next episode that that would link up with would be “The Prisoner” and when they’re on that mission to go in the Galra facility, that’s information from Lotor that they’re using again.

MM: Right, right. That was the first thing that they learned that they could trust him, because it worked out exactly the way he said it would.

MI: Mm-hm.

GT: That was really nice. I think that that one tied in most directly with the plot probably of all three of the volumes, because we see something that actually motivates Allura to have a change of heart.

MI: Yeah. I hope it worked.

GT: Yeah! It totally did. I think the comics a-are so fun in adding some side stories to the overarching plot without, uh, taking anything away from it. I think the-the generally standalone approach with the tips of the hat to what’s going on in the main plot are-are a really nice compromise between, you know, ignoring what’s going on, of course, with the show, which would’ve been kind of hard to do, and uh, getting way too deeply connected to it so that someone who had only read the comic wouldn’t know what was going on, right?

MI: Aw, thanks. I can’t remember if the-if we pulled it off as well--er, one of the intentions we had in the second comic was, um, the second volume comics, was that the castleship is, uh, damaged. So that’s, like, the next episode was going to be, uh, “Green the Cube”, which starts with them out there trying to fix things on it. And so--

GT: Ooh.

MM: Oh, yeah.

MI: --the idea was the castleship in the-the midst of all that action. That’s why they were out there repairing it when the-the uh--the spore with the hidden information arrives.

MM: Cool.

GT: Very nice, love it.

MM: And I-I did notice that there was an ongoing theme with the aliens in the comics. They were very animal-like.

MI: Yeah! We’re always looking for, like, inspiration in nature and stuff like that. One thing we did on the, uh, on the show, or one thing that I did on the show that I always liked, was I had these, like, D&D monster manuals in my office from all the different var--uh--versions of Dungeons and Dragons. And I would just, like, pull them out when I was kind of, like, bored or thinking about things, and I would just look at weird monsters in there and think, like, you know, “What if this monster were in space? What would that look like?” And, you know, it didn’t always evolve from that, but sometimes that could start the, like, a conversation where maybe it was like, we would come to, like, a cool new unique monster from that.

MM: That is pretty cool.

GT: Yeah. Marc had mentioned that one of the giant creatures that, uh, that was encountered was a baby. A gigantic, gravity-producing baby with a much larger mother. And it--was that inspired by anything in particular, or was that just… awesomeness? [laughs]

MI: There might’ve been one, but I just don’t remember. I do think that--you know, one of the things that me and Tim talked about many times was, like, just ‘cuz we have this, like, scale where we think things are big to us but if you’re a big thing, they might not seem that big to other big things, you know, and that was something we always wanted to play with. We always, like, thought that was a fun concept. And another thing that I always just like--was thinking about was, like, you know, the Paladins, you know, if you’re a human being, a hundred years is a very, very long time, but if you’re a creature that lives for a thousand years, that’s not as long to you. You’re a creature that lives for a million years, a hundred years is like a blink of an eye, you know?

GT: Oh, yeah.

MI: Zarkon, like, he’s been conquering for ten thousand years or whatever, you know, it’s like--so somebody who’s been around for a million years, that’s like, “Yeah, that new kid on the block, Zarkon.” [laughs]

GT: Yeah, that’s a good point, a-and I think Kythylian Mu from volume one--that character that Coran had known and pretended as though Coran owed all that gambling debt to--he had been around for thousands of years, too, which was really cool.

MI: Right. Yeah.

MM: There’s not a good chance of running into somebody that you owe a debt to ten thousand years later where they can actually add the interest to your debt.

MI: No, that would be very, very expensive.

MM: So now you owe him a Yalexian pearl.

MI: Yeah, and he’s gonna get it.

GT: So one of my favorite creatures that you guys came up with was, uh, Gantomor, the ancient Davdabhau--I’m trying to get that pronunciation--who protected the sacred grounds and was-and challenged Keith in the, uh, training deck of the Castle of Lions, and then challenged Voltron, and then challenged Coran’s sneeze.

[laughter]

GT: And the-the idea that this creature could transform itself to match its opponent was a really cool thing, was-was that inspired by anything in particular, or was it j-just… where did this come from?

MI: I don’t remember. I think that that was based on just weird conversations Tim and I would have about, you know, like, uh, the idea of like, what would be, like, a fun thing to fight? And it’s, you know, that’s kind of like a, I feel like a fantasy or sci-fi trope of, like, you know, there’s the thing that can match your power, so, like, having to beat the thing that can beat you. I think we even kind of have that, well, sort of, to a degree, in the ep-in the issue where Pidge has to fight her friends, you know, and it’s always like, “How do you beat these scenarios?” So we would try and lock ourselves creatively into a corner and then try and figure out if there was any way we could solve it.

GT: Yeah, that’s really cool.

MM: Plus that scene, okay, y-you have to suspend yo-your thoughts about, you know, can people survive in space for a little while because Coran comes flying in on a kotka, right? One of these huge things with wings and he--[laughs]--he’s wearing that uniform that we had mentioned earlier, but it’s definitely not a space suit, per se, and of course he’s got this virus that he-he needs to, like, sneeze on-on this monster in order to expose him to the virus.

MI: Mm-hm.

MM: So, we’re sort of like, “Okay, Coran’s going through space with no-no spacesuit on, okay. I’m okay with that.”

MI: He’s also, you know, he’s an Altean. They’re pretty strong creatures.

MM: Yeah. [laughs]

GT: I was about to ask you that. Is-is his ability to breathe, sneeze, and talk in the vacuum of space an ability that’s unique to Coran or or is this something that a-all Alteans have?

MI: I am not--I don’t have high enough rank to answer that question.

[laughter]

MI: I mean, I-I think that there’s a little bit of maybe just, you know, whimsical magic happening there.

[laughter]

GT: There’s nothing wrong with that. I was just asking. [laughs]

MI: Tardigrades can move in space. The little water bears, you know what I’m talking about?

MM: Yeah.

MI: The inspirations for the, uh, “Ark of Taujeer”.

MM: The Taujeerians!

MI: Yeah, uh, the tardigrades.

MM: Cool.

MI: The water bears. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at those things, but th-they’re really weird-looking, but they can live in space.

GT: Yeah. And uh, yeah, the Alteans are great explorers, Allura said so herself, so, uh, talking in space in undoubtedly a very, very uni-unique gift to have.

MI: I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about this before, but one thing that I always thought was funny that is, um, early in the show they fight that, uh, training droid.

GT: Yeah.

MI: And Allura says, “This is fit for an Altean child!”

GT: Oh, yeah.

MI: “This is fit for an Altean child.” And it seems like she’s making a dig at them, but then you find out later she’s super strong. [laughs] And it’s like, “Oh! Maybe that was set for an Altean child.”

GT: Yeah, that’s a good point.

MM: That is a good point. Maybe she wasn’t digging them at the time.

[laughter]

MI: Well, maybe digging them, but digging them with facts.

MM: Yeah. GT: Yeah. Facts that they would not yet know, yeah.

MM: Back then we were questioning as to whether or not Allura was actually controlling that-that droid at the time,

MI: Oh, interesting.

MM: Yeah.

GT: The way they staged that where the droid just collapses and Allura is right behind it, it does-it does sort of, at first glance, y-you kind of think, “Hm, yeah. Was she manipulating that thing or did she just happen to be standing there?” [laughs]

MM: We kind of thought she was the one fighting them, almost.

MI: Maybe she was.

[laughter]

MM:I loved it when they went out in the lions for the first time a-and she-she’s, like, throwing all the Castle at them, you know, like, all th-the weapons that the Castle can-can shoot. She’s firing them.

MI: She’s being so positive.

[laughter]

GT: S-so now that you have, uh, working with Tim and then of course working solo, fifteen comic books under your belt, have you thought any more about writing comics for any other property or maybe going independent? What-what are your thoughts about that medium?

MI: I would love to write more comics some day, and I-and I really want to, but right now I’m a little busy and I’m a little stretched thin. And I also, it just has to be the right one, but I would love to do it again. It’s a really fun experience, especially, like, you know, the company Lion Forge was so great and they were so great to work with, everyone over there is so nice. It’s a really positive company and so, like, maybe if-if I could find something with them someday tha-that that could be really fun, but, you know.

MM: Did you hear about their merger with Oni Press?

MI: Oh! No, I didn’t.

MM: Yeah.

MI: When did that happen?

MM: That was just recently.

MI: Oh.

MM: Apparently they had been either acquired or merged with Oni Press.

MI: Huh. Cool.

MM: Yeah.

MI: Well, I hope, that just makes them even more powerful and awesome.

MM: Yeah.

GT: [laughs] These comics, re-reading them was just a blast. I remember enjoying each of the volumes as they came out and, uh, it was just a lot of fun to revisit them. One--when I first read the first two volumes, I did them through, you know, print, but when volume three came out, I tried at first to buy an e-comic, that was my first ever experience with that, and I don’t know that I--maybe I’m too old-school--but I really, I went ahead and bought the print versions later a-and re-read them that way. Are you into e-comics at all, or do you prefer paper, or… what are your thoughts on all that?

MI: I go back and forth. I-I don’t know if you did the guided comic experience, but if you have an iPad and you do the guided comic experience where, like, it moves between panels and it’s curated really well--

MM: Yeah.

MI: --that can be such an awesome way to experience a comic. Like, I use Comixology, I love it, and I have don-I have done that before, but there’s just nothing that beats going into a comic book shop, talking with the guy that works there, having the paper comic, going home, reading it. I said guy, it could be, you know, any--girl as well, I know for a long time I used to go to Meltdown Comics. There was a really sweet lady that worked there tha-that gave just awesome recommendations. She recommended the comic book Two to me, which I loved, then you go home, you read it, you come back and you’re like, “Thank you for the recommendation”. And it’s just, you know, it’s such a great experience, like, I, I-I don’t know, I could never completely give that up. But, that being said, as I said, there can be some really fun motion comics to read, too.

MM: Yeah, I have a subscription to the DC Universe and they have a comic reader in that that you can watch on TV.

GT: Really?

MM: Oh, yeah. It’s great, and it’s, like, the guided comic, like you said, it goes from panel to panel. You can do it either way, you can do the guided or you can do the regular where you see the whole page at a time.

GT: That’s amazing.

MM: Yeah.

MI: That is awesome. I didn’t know about that.

MM: And they’ve got the whole library of, like, twenty thousand DC comics that are in there.

MI: Wow.

GT: Huh.

MI: Wow. You know, I, at first, was so hesitant to use digital comics, and I was like, “You know, I’m old-school” and I had tried that guided comic experience, and for whatever reason, whatever comic I use, I didn’t really like it as much. I was like, “No, no, no, you should have the page,” you know? And then later on I had a friend tell me, like, “No, no, there are some really cool ones out there,” and I was like, “Okay,” and he recommended one to me--now I can’t even remember--but I went through and did it again and was like, “Oh, oh! This is awesome! Okay.”

MM: Yeah.

GT: That’s cool.

MM: That’s pretty cool.

GT: I wonder if it depends on--I mean, di-di--I wonder if they have to manually stage each of those comics, it’s guided so that it guides you appropriately, you know? In other words, is there a human being involved in taking a comic that’s completed and making that experience the best that it can be, or is it something they can fully automate? In which case, you know, one person might do a better job giving you that guided experience versus another, you know?

MM: Yeah.

MI: There has to be a human being that does it, you know, because it moves so oftentimes it moves from, like, like face to face with speech bubble to other face. And sometimes it, like, you know, i-into a-and then, like, of--it lets the panel build sometimes in certain ways, and sometimes it gives you the whole panel because it, like, you want all this information at once and you don’t want to overmove the, the i-image around, you know. A-and then sometimes, like, you want that splash page when that comic tends to be, like, “Woah!” you know? Like, it’s--there’s no way to-I think that could happen without someone, like, being involved in that.

MM: Right, and then sometimes there’s a lot of information in that speech bubble that takes a while to read, and then other times it’s just, like, one word, and sometimes th-that word is like a shout or something like that and it’s written in big letters and you wanna emphasize it by bringing it into the panel real quick.

MI: Yeah.

MM: You know, or something like that.

MI: It’s funny, it’s not--it’s just so interesting to me how there’s always so many people involved in creative endeavors, like, you know, if you wanna--when you’re watching a TV show, the amount of people that were involved in that, that worked so hard on that, it’s truly impressive to me. I mean that’s one of the reasons why at the end there’s all those credits, you know?

MM: Mm-hm.

MI: But similarly in comic, you know, there’s artists that work on it, there’s inkers, there’s colorists, sometimes that’s all the same person, sometimes not, you know, there’s letterers, there’s, like, it’s--and then, you know, for even to the level of, like, there’s probably somebody that helps curate that motion comic experience. It’s very cool, I think, to, you know. There’s a-there’s a--as a writer, there’s always a part of me that thinks, like, “You know, one of these days I’m gonna write a novel and it’ll be just, like, my thing, it’ll be my book.” And it’s like, yeah. Sometimes I think, yeah, that does sound really fun, but also, like, it’s really fun to work with other people. It’s really fun to see sometimes, like, you have an idea and it might come out different than you expected, but it be even better. It might have been plussed by someone else, you know?

GT: That’s a great point.

MM: The whole is better than the sum of the parts.

MI: Yes. Which, I mean is, I think, apropo when talking about Voltron.

GT: No doubt.

MM: Yes.

[laughter]

MM: We are always stronger together.

MI: Right.

MM: So, one thing I wanted to do before you leave, Mitch, is I wanted to thank you for all these years where you’ve been signing comics for us, an-and you and Tim and everything, and then providing these signed comics for prizes as, you know, for our listeners of the podcast, so I wanna-I wanna thank you for doing all that over the last few years.

MI: Oh, it’s been my pleasure. I should be thanking you. Thank you for all the support, you’re such a great person, you’re such a great fan. Both of you, I-I--it means a lot to me that you guys, you know, uh, like this stuff, you know. We work really hard on it, so when somebody appreciates it that means the world to me.

MM: Oh, yeah. It’s not hard to appreciate it all because you did such a good job.

MI: Aw.

GT: Absolutely.

MI: Keep going.

[laughter]

GT: Well, as soon as we learn about this top-secret project, a-and enjoy that and enjoy Fast and the Furious when it comes out, we will have more to say. Even more to say than we already have. [laughs]

MM: Right.

MI: Yay!

GT: [laughs]

MM: So, we will be watching your career with much interest.

MI: Thank you.

GT: Alright, Emperor Palpatine.

[laughter]

MM: We also look forward to the day when Monsters and Mana has its own comics line.

[laughter]

MI: You know, I-I’m not sure that’ll happen, but maybe, you know, as time goes on, I’ll find the time to do fanfiction for it or something. As long as DreamWorks doesn’t sue me. [laughs]

MM: Okay.

GT: Until then, keep the faith, right?

MI: Right. I can’t believe I got to do that episode at all, that was such a pleasure. So, you know, l-let’s focus on the good we have. [laughs]

MM: That’s right.

GT: That’s right.

MM: That’s right. Can--I can’t believe they paid me to do something that was so fun.

MI: I’m--that’s how I felt, I mean, I was like, every day, finish my stuff, then I got to sneak in little things that were, like, names of people that I play D&D with, their characters, and like, little inside jokes from, you know, people I played D&D with for ten years, so that was, like, tha--I mean, pretty much from the second I was told I got to write a D&D episode until now, whenever I think about it I have just a big smile. I’m really, really grateful for that.

MM: Nice.

GT: Yeah, so cool.

MM: Awesome. So thank you very much once again for joining us on Let’s Voltron, the Official Voltron Podcast.

MI: Thank you.

[mechanical lion roar]

[outro music: VLD theme]

MM: Well, I have to tell ya, I talked to Mitch Iverson so many times in the past few years, but i-it felt a little bit bittersweet this time, I think. Knowing that we might not get a chance to talk to him again without another Voltron thing.

GT: Yeah? I mean, I think the same is true for a lot of the guests that we’ve had on i-in recent months. You know, Voltron: Legendary Defender is done. I mean, it’s-it’s not dead as long as we remember it and enjoy it, continue to watch it, and share the stuff that we like with our friends and family and all that good stuff. It lives on just as the original show and other iterations have. But yeah, it is a little bittersweet, isn’t it?

MM: Yeah, but I mean there were so many great episodes in there, and of course we talked a lot about “Monsters and Mana” because it was one of Mitch’s favorites to write. You know, that’d be like “Space Mall”--

GT: “Crystal Venom”.

MM: --”Crystal Venom”, “Reunion”--

GT: “The Legend Begins.”

MM: Right. All these great episodes that we loved from the show and everything, they each had a writer and Mitch’s favorite was “Monsters and Mana” and I know there’s a lot of fans out there who had said, you know, we could just do a Monsters and Mana, like, type of show and we would love to see that.

GT: Yeah, a-and you know, people were saying the same thing about the Blade of Marmora, maybe some spinoff novels or tie-in novels or whatever. Yeah, I mean there’s so much richness and variety in the Voltron: Legendary Defender universe that yeah, I mean there’s so much potential. But, uh, I guess at this point a lot of that’s up in the hands of fans to maybe pick up with their own fanfiction and if they haven’t already written a lot of that crazy stuff.

MM: “I wanna be a Paladin again.”

GT: Ah, there you go. Yeah. A-and I recall y-you’re kind of fond of the Black Lion, right?

MM: Yeah. Yeah. Always bet on Black.

GT: Ye-yeah, I’ve always been fond of the Yellow fellow, as, uh, Hunk called it in Voltron Force. Yeah. Old Yellow. [laughs]

MM: I thought that was pretty funny that, uh, there was actually a line from the comic where Hunk mentions the fact that, “I-I don’t want to tell everybody out loud, but I may have wet myself,” and Lance says, “Well, you do fly the Yellow Lion.”

GT: [laughs] Yes, I do love that.

[laughter]

MM: And it reminded me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “I’m so scared I soiled my armor!”

GT: [laughs] Yeah, I remember.

MM: And then later on, “I soiled my armor again!”

GT: [laughs]

MM: Yeah.

GT: Yeah. Interestingly, Lance in the comic, and, uh, of course, none of the characters in “Monsters and Mana”, none of them encountered the knights who say Ni!

[laguther]

MM: No. No. Hunk, though, he had a couple of the Davdabhau that had wanted to marry him.

GT: Yeah, he was a popular guy for a while there.

MM: And at one point, he actually says to them, “Well, I don’t think I can marry either one of you, and it’s mostly because, well, number one you haven’t met my mom. An-and there is this rock girl.”

GT: That was really interesting, wasn’t it? That he actually flat-out says it.

MM: Yeah. That was great.

GT: Yep. [sighs] I so love Hunk, I truly do. And apparently he had a pappy at some point named Herschel.

MM: That’s right! I was wondering where Herschel came from and I was thinking to myself, the only Herschel I can think of, there was a character from The Walking Dead that was named Herschel.

GT: Yes, I remember there--isn’t there an astronomer named Herschel, too?

MM: Yeah. I was trying to wonder where Herschel came from, but, I guess we could’ve asked Mitch, huh?

GT: Yeah, where the writers came up with it. Of course in the fiction, Hunk says it was, uh, one of his pappies from the past. A apparently departed pappy, but yeah! Yeah, there are so many more questions we could have asked Mitch, but there’s only so many, uh, only so many minutes we can do these podcasts and, uh, you know, maybe, maybe some things are best left as mysteries.

MM: Well, you know, we do have to give a proper review to these comics, right?

GT: Yeah, that’s true.

MM: So, why don’t we get together in our next episode and talk about these comics a little bit more in detail?

GT: Yeah. We’re gonna dive into all of them, aren’t we?

MM: Yeah, we are.

GT: Yeah. For our listeners who aren’t into the comics, don’t worry, there won’t be fifteen podcasts, one per comic. There won’t be three, one per volume. We’re gonna-we’re gonna cram ‘em all into one, and, uh, it’s going to be a lot of fun. Uh, you know, th-the comics are definitely worth checking out. I know that, uh, there’s some who, you know, who kind of dismissed them outright, but, uh, I hope that, uh, people will give them a look now. They really are fun. You can get them as e-comics on favorite places like Comixology, or you can still find them at, uh, favorite online vendors, or maybe even in some local comic shops.

MM: And you may still even find them on the Voltron store, or Amazon, or many other places that have comic books.

GT: Yep. Yep, yep, comics are fun, and so are the, uh, these Voltron ones, as well.

MM: So, we think we set it up really good with the Mitch interview.

GT: Yeah.

MM: So, thank you Mitch Iverson for joining us on Let’s Voltron, the Official Voltron Podcast, and we’ll get right into the comics next week.

GT: Alright.

MM: We wanna thank you all for joining us on Let’s Voltron. Don’t forget to visit us on Twitter at @LetsVoltron. We’re also on Instagram at @letsvoltron. We are also on YouTube, the Let’s Voltron YouTube channel. And we also have a Let’s Voltron store on TeePublic. We’re also on Facebook. We also have a skill on Alexa where you can just say, “Alexa, open Let’s Voltron,” and you get a cute little quote that is, uh, one of up to a hundred quotes that are possible that you will get.

GT: Awesome, awesome.

MM: And of course you can listen to our podcast on many different places like Google Play, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, also Podbean, Stitcher, and of course on Alexa. You can also say, “Alexa, play Let’s Voltron, the Official Voltron Podcast,” and you can listen to it right on Alexa.

GT: Or, of course, go to letsvoltron.com

MM: That’s our favorite place. Letsvoltron.com

GT: Yeah, I can remember that one. [laughs]

MM: Because that’s how you get to all of our other things, like we just mentioned.

GT: That’s right. We are all over the place.

MM: So, thank you for joining us once again, and we’ll see you all next time on--

Both: Let’s Voltron!

[outro piano music]

[timeisacephalopod]

Action

Have uh, some random Peter Q/ Tony thing in which Tony is Tony and Peter is a movie director.

“You,” Peter says, pointing at the hottie with the coffee. Everyone is going to hate his guts but they can all deal. He knows what he’s doing, its why people love his shit. “Want to be a cool space vagabond in a movie?”

Hottie with the Coffee stares at him for a long moment, clearly trying to determine if he’s serious. “Do you even know if I can act?” he asks.

Nope but he’s got a feeling and his feelings always end well except that one time he worked with Ronan and nearly ruined his career that movie was so bad but then he bounced back with some heartfelt Oscar winning daddy issues shit people loved so. He’s good. “You can probably act, lets go,” he says, walking off fully expecting his new casting choice to follow him.

*

Yeah, okay. This isn’t where Tony thought he’d spend his summer but he’s not complaining either. “I thought only rich kids could end up directors,” he says. He knows a few, they’re all shit but Peter is excellent. Fucking insane but excellent nonetheless. Really likes improv, which means his actors have to be good at it. Lucky him Tony happens to be great with a witty one liner.

“Yeah, that’s pretty true. I robbed the tits out of rich people all over California to raise money to make a movie. It ended up being a smash hit success and it put me in demand a little. People came to me to do a couple things, I proved myself a little more, and now I get regular work. None of the show pilots I’ve written have been picked up but I still get stupid amounts of money for writing them so whatever. Movies are more my thing anyway,” he says. “Gamora, move the lights a little to do that thing!” he yells across the set.

Gamora immediately begins moving the lights around and explaining what’s needed to the rest of the lighting crew. That’s not unusual for Peter, handing out some weird instructions and expecting people to get it. You get used to it working for him. “That’s a great backstory, you should make a movie about it,” Tony tells him, laughing.

“Thought about it but I already write a bunch of self insert characters, figured there was no need to do more of it,” he says. “Besides, sci-fi has always been where I wanted to be.”

“Usually you do drama,” Tony says and Peter raises an eyebrow.

“You did your research,” he says and Tony nods. “Yeah. Got stuck in it for a bit, not really that unusual for writers, getting stuck writing one genre in the industry forever. But I got a few people to take a chance on me and now I’m a proven genre jumper so I get a bunch of different shit. Except horror, I can’t write that to save my life. Always ends up horror comedy.”

Tony nods, “but people loved Black Lagoon,” he points out.

“People are dumb, that movie was hot garbage. The only redeemable thing was the fact that the fans started shipping the creature with the fish man from The Shape of Water and that was hilarious,” he says.

“Yeah, I’ve seen the art. So what exactly drew you to me anyway?” he asks because he’s been dying to know.

Peter shrugs, “your hot.” Tony raises an eyebrow. “No really, that’s it. I mean yeah, also you’re ridiculously expressive and carry yourself in a unique way that’s interesting to watch but mostly you’re hot.”

So it was the way he carried himself, interesting. Not really what he’d been expecting, all things considered.

*

Gamora looks amused, “and the rumor mill has started,” she says, handing her phone off to Peter. He grabs it and rolls his eyes at the TMZ article headline claiming he’s shacking up with Tony but its Tony’s response that catches his attention.

#CanNeitherConfirmNorDeny

More than that the tweet has gone viral. Obviously its a joke, Peter knows that, but he had no idea Tony had such a large and active Twitter base that’s now all interested in his movie for no other reason than Tony being attached to it.

“Bitch, what the fuck? How is this guy a one man marketing campaign?” he asks the screen more than Gamora.

“Probably because he’s already famous, idiot. You do know he’s the son of a billionaire and a genius who’s been in the public eye for years, right?” she asks and no he didn’t know that.

“Well shit, I knew that feeling I had was for a good reason,” he says. Suck it execs.

“Peter he’s well known for being difficult and an asshole, plus he has a history of addiction,” she says. “The fact that none of this seems to be a problem for you is a miracle.”

“Is not, its because I had a good feeling and he looks great on camera. His eyes are unique,” he says and Gamora rolls her eyes.

“Stop hiring people because you think they’re hot, its weird and creepy.”

“I hired you because you’re hot,” he lies and Gamora rolls her eyes.

“You hired me because we worked a job together and you know I’m good with tech. You hired Drax because you think he’s hot,” she says.

“Did not. I hired Drax because he’s a big ass dude and I didn’t know how to say no in the face of all those muscles. I hired Rocket because I thought he was hot.”

Gamora wrinkles his nose, “he looks like a rat.”

“He’s striking, don’t be rude.”

“If you find rats striking,” she mumbles.

“I think rats are very cute and you’re being a dick. Rats are good, Gamora.”

*

Peter considers Tony for a moment, head tilted to the side. “Okay, yeah, Nebs- Fast and Furious but for all those gay guys and women out there. Feel up Tony’s sexy space booty with the camera,” Peter tells her.

The younger Peter who follows Older Peter around with the clip board gives him a funny look. “Don’t be creepy,” he says.

Older Peter frowns at him, “what? Women deal with it all the time and I, personally, have been victimized by the lack of men’s space booties on TV. Its equality,” he says and Tony snorts.

“What, do you want me to bend over too?” he asks, amused.

“Can you work that naturally into the scene?” he asks and Nebula laughs behind the camera.

Mini Peter smacks Older Peter, “don’t be weird! Don’t do that,” he tells Tony and for some reason Peter allows it. Weird, considering he’s laid back but not afraid to tell someone off if they step on his toes.

“Its this your kid?” Tony asks, squinting at him. There’s a resemblance, sure, with the slightly curly dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. Beyond that they look nothing alike.

“Yes,” Older Peter says at the same time Mini Peter says, “no.”

They exchange a look. “No he’s just like my son, I adopted him three movies ago and we’re feeling up Tony’s space booty. This will vindicate every man who’s been attracted to me ever and also women. Straight dudes are officially the minority here and don’t we make movies to please the majority?” he asks Mini Peter, who rolls his eyes.

“That is a totally twisted take on that argument.”

“So is every take on that argument. Space. Booty. Feel it up,” he says.

Tony rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “You’re ridiculous,” he tells Peter.

“Look, just be lucky I didn’t include the original sex scene with an A'askavariian,” he says like anyone knows what that is.

“I’m not fucking an alien. Feel my ass up all you want with the camera, but I draw the line at alien fucking,” Tony tells him.

“Yeah, I got told that was uh. Not appealing to the public and hello, Del Toro had that woman fuck a fish man. Monster fucking is palatable to the public, my editors are just dicks,” he says.

“Peter, A'askavariians have tentacles and needles for teeth,” Mini Peter says, baffled.

Tony wrinkles his nose. “Yeah I know you thought the ass thing was creepy but the alien thing is worse so can we get back to my ass?” he asks.

“Hell yeah, sounds good. Nebula, I assume you know how to work that thing,” Peter says, waving a hand around. “Do stuff. Wait, action,” he says, forgetting fifty percent of the relevant words to his job spontaneously. Not unusual for Peter.

Mini Peter looks horrified.

*

Peter looks like hell, probably, if the rumors are true, because he’s been up all night looking over footage and consulting Rocket for edits later. The guy’s process is a fucking mess. “You should probably sleep,” Tony tells him, bumping shoulders with him. “Today’s going to be a long ass day.” The scene they’re shooting is like ten minutes, which doesn’t sound like a lot but it is when its all stunts and action that looks ridiculous without the CGI to make it look like things are actually exploding. Right now there’s a lot of green screens, sticks with tennis balls on them, and people running around in morph suits.

“Yeah, I’m not leaving anyone else in charge. I have a really specific vision for this and sure I’ve got a good team but also I don’t trust a single one of those assholes,” he says and Tony laughs.

“Will this be more or less painful knowing that you’re tired as hell?” Tony asks. Because some people get nicer and some people turn into massive assholes when step deprived.

Peter looks him over, “for you? Probably a good thing. I assume actors are having as bad a day as I am given that I end up making the poor bastards go through like thirty five takes of one scene. Everyone else? Not so good. I mean I’m a total dick, but shit Gamora knows how lights work why are they like that?” he asks, clearly finding some type of problem and he takes off to go deal with it, leaving Tony to ponder what today will hold.

He decides to make light of that Buzzfeed article that recently came out regarding his supposed relationship with Peter instead of worrying about things.

*

Peter finds Tony in the morning after he fucking sleeps because he has questions. “You, yeah you, what’s with the Twitter speculation?” he asks, catching Tony with a croissant in his mouth looking confused. “You know, about our non relationship,” he adds.

Tony snorts and pulls the food from his mouth. “That? Good marketing gimmick, people love stupid gossip like that. Figured it couldn’t hurt the movie considering your marketing budget is garbage.”

Yeah, true, he spent too much money on music and landed himself in a three week battle over why he needed to blow that much of the budget on music only to win it by pointing out that music often makes movies. Like Halloween without the creepy Micheal Myers theme song? Just some weird guy in a mask following idiot high school students. Sure he gets stabby but its the music that really sells it. Or it did when it first came out, not its just campy to the modern audience. Point is music can make or break a film and yeah sure, he took the money out of marketing but he’s famous enough now that people who know him will go see his shit because they follow his work- built in audience means he can spare marketing dollars.

“Thanks man, appreciate it after three fucking weeks of arguing over that damn budget,” he says, shaking his head.

“To be fair, I’ve heard the music you want paired with the scenes you shot. It’ll sound amazing,” Tony says and finally some appreciation here.

‘Damn right it will. Didn’t think i’d get marketing in the form of celebrity gossip though and when were you going to tell me you’re already famous?” he asks.

Tony laughs, “thought you recognized me but uh, became clear pretty fast that you didn’t so props to you. The last time I ran into someone who didn’t recognize me on sight I was six. Plus I was bored anyway, might as well spend four months on a movie set.”

“Yeah, but I looked you up. Your company has like five new products launching in the next month,” he says. Which is insane given the time and effort that goes into inventing all those things, testing them and he’s been reliably informed by Wikipedia that Tony’s testing process is extensive, and then comes production, marketing, distribution, customer feedback, and then improvements. All of those things on their own is a stupid amount of work, but together plus spending anywhere from ten to eighteen hours a day on a movie set doing random shit? Tony must have the stamina of a robot because keeping up with it all is borderline impossible.

“Half that stuff was already done when I started this and I have an amazing business partner. Honestly most of the credit for all that should go to Pepper. Marketing was all her and she’s a genius at it,” Tony says.

Peter nods because he followed up on the marketing for it. He’s written a few commercials, he knows how difficult it is to run a good marketing campaign when people fucking hate commercials. “You should keep her around forever. She’s way too good a resource to lose when your commercials don’t fucking suck ass,” he says.

Tony snorts, “you don’t have to tell me twice. Pepper is invaluable.”

Maybe he should hire her to run his marketing campaigns. He pretty much hates everyone he has now and in this industry you’re subject to be fired at any moment so he should fire them all and poach Pepper.

*

Tony walks over to Peter and throws himself down beside him, “smile for me,” he says, leaning into Peter’s space and grinning. He snaps a picture of a mostly confused looking Peter and posts it to his Twitter.

“So like. Are you two a thing? Because I don’t know anymore,” Drax says.

“They aren’t,” Mantis tells him. “But its a good method of attaching Peter’s movie to something.”

Drax frowns at her but says nothing. Tony raises an eyebrow and Peter shrugs, “Mantis is never wrong about stuff like that. She’s like... freakishly good at reading people.”

“Oh you’ll end up together but you’re not together now,” she tells them, not looking up from her tablet. “And Peter, please make sure the boom is not in the shots. I’m tired of editing them out.”

“I thought Rocket did the editing?” Tony asks.

“No, Rocket gets the credit,” Mantis says. “I’m kidding. Mostly. I help.”

“Meaning she’s the only thing that keeps Rocket from spontaneously combusting. She’s almost as good with editing tech as she is with emotions and Rocket needs someone to balance him out.” Yeah, Tony has met Rocket. Guy is wound a little tight and inseparable from that friend of his, Groot. Poor bastard probably has the worst name known to man, Rocket following shortly after. Shit, Mantis isn’t far out from that either.

“Huh. Make my ass look good,” he tells her and Drax’s eyebrows draw together.

“Your ass doesn’t need help to look good,” he says.

“Hey eyeballs off his ass,” he says like he has a right to complain. Everyone currently at the table gives him the same look because he’s a total hypocrite. “What? I told Nebula to feel up his ass with the camera, I didn’t feel up shit,” he points out. “My eyeballs were focused on that one fucky light.”

Tony snorts, “yeah, okay.”

“Don’t look at me like that, its true,” he says. “I maintain that until I’ve felt up Tony’s ass no one can give me the looks you’re all giving me.”

“I mean, if that willing,” Tony tells him and the look on Peter’s face is hilarious.

“Are you willing? Because I may actually have dreams about this.”

Drax shakes his head, throwing his fork at his food. “And people say I need to learn how to be less blunt. At least I’m not ruining people’s meals with admissions to sex dreams,” he mumbles, picking himself up and walking away.

*

Rhodey looks down at the article in his lap. “Is there truth to any of this?” he asks and Pepper looks up, leaning out of her desk to see what he’s reading before sighing. She doesn’t even need to speak for him to know what’s going on.

“You know how Tony is, he’ll get bored of Peter once they aren’t spending as much time together. Its a fling,” she tells him.

Which is why, three months later, Rhodey is annoyed to be standing in front of Peter fucking Quill, guy who is absolutely not good enough for his best friend. Tony looks hopeful, like he thinks Rhodey will like this pasty ass cornfed fucker when that’s so not going to happen.

“Let me be clear- I don’t like you. You look like someone stuffed you with some low quality hay, shoved a stick up your ass, and stuck you in a cornfield in Missouri until you managed to come to life, pulled that stick out of your ass, and walked onto a movie set. You’re not good enough for Tony and there is nothing on God’s green earth that will convince me otherwise,” he tells Peter.

“Well, I am from Missouri,” he mumbles.

“Yeah you look like you’re from Missouri,” Rhodey tells him, tone disparaging.

Tony sighs. “Rhodey, he’s great. Really.”

Rhodey squints, “have you watched this man’s movies? He couldn’t write himself out of a paper bag if it was made out of some damn ad libs,” he says and Peter clenches his jaw.

“I’m real upset that you’re coming up with better insults than me,” Peter tells him.

“Rhodey,” Tony tells him. “He’s actually awesome. Give him a break.”

He looks Peter over. “Give him a break? The only thing that needs to be broken here is this ugly ass relationship. Go date Pepper, she’s perfect for you,” he tells him. That is the only person he will accept because Pepper is amazing and treats Tony right. And he’s good for her too, they balance each other out. This shit he’s got going with Knockoff Chris Pratt? Not attractive.

Across the room Pepper looks vindicated.

[shotfromguns]

Overall, I think Avengers: Endgame was... about as good as we were going to get, given who was involved in making the film and what had already been established (or had failed to be established) in previous films. It was for sure massively better than Age of Ultron and a noticeable improvement over Infinity War. But there were still plenty of flaws (including things they easily could have fixed) and a few things that outright frustrated the hell out of me. 

My thoughts on Endgame follow under the cut. There will obviously be spoilers. This is for @pantsvaporation, but anybody else is welcome to read/comment/etc. as well.

I was pleasantly surprised that there was a minimum of obvious “actors swinging at CG enemies that hadn’t even slightly been described to them.” And while there were definitely places the film could have been tightened up, I had been expecting the three hours to feel noticeably slack, whereas the plot never seemed to me to drag at all. In retrospect, maybe I should have been less surprised by that, given that it was directed by Russos, who were also responsible for CA:TWS, which remains the most perfectly paced action movie I’ve ever seen.

Given the length of the film, however, I am fucking furious that the only (and MCU first-ever) LGBT “representation” we got was one of the Russos as a nameless extra in Steve’s support group who was framed as a mlm through the pronouns of who he was on a date with. 181 fucking minutes, and you couldn’t find room for less than 60 seconds to show us Valkyrie with a girlfriend? Carole Danvers got that amazing (as my girlfriend often describes my current look) ‘90s dyke aesthetic after the time skip, but she couldn’t have a wife? And, of course, anybody and everybody else was given a Big Case of the Not Gays, including and especially the male characters people have enthusiastically been shipping with each other due to the historical nigh-complete dearth of women in the MCU films (Tony, Steve, Sam, Bucky... and I will have more to say about Steve).

I did cry a few times, especially towards the end, which I honestly hadn’t expected to. But it all felt very... emotionally manipulative? For example, I didn’t cry at Tony dying, per se. I did cry at Pepper reacting to his death, his daughter, Happy, etc. It felt like they sort of realized that by this point Tony had become extremely unsympathetic and that they’d probably overly telegraphed that he was going to die, so they needed to make us sad about it by ensuring we were thinking about how other characters would feel about his death, versus how we ourselves felt about it.

And we sure did get a whoooooooooole lotta time to show the audience how sad everyone felt about Tony to ensure we did, too. But there was (a) very little for Natasha, who died in this film saving the universe even more tragically than Tony did, given that she didn’t even know her sacrifice would work to get the Soul Stone, let alone whether the rest of the plan would work even if she did; and (b) almost none for the characters who died in Infinity War and didn’t get a Comic Book Death resurrection through Bruce snapping or past!Nebula breaking literally the entire premise of the film (more on that in a bit). The Vision got a two-second reference, not even by name. Loki got just a flash of a cameo, with Thor not bringing him up once that I can recall, being completely focused on their mother even in a time when they were both still alive. Heimdall didn’t even get that much, nor was he even referenced; nor were any of the Wakandans who died so that Scarlet Witch didn’t have to lose her creepy robo-boyfriend (which, whoops, she did anyway). Regardless of how obnoxious some of these character and/or their fans may have been, they still very much should have mattered to the other characters, who should have been mourning them just as much as they were mourning Tony. And yeah, sure, anybody who didn’t get Thanos’d had had five years to mourn the ones who died in Infinity War, but (a) to anybody who’d just been brought back, they were still freshly dead, and (b) even the people who were around for those five years are probably dealing with that grief all over again, not least of which because they had the others who died then returned to them, and because not everybody (especially not Thor) had even properly gone through the whole grief process in the first place.

On the topic of Thor, boyyyyyyy howdy was it frustrating how thoroughly Endgame finished off the way that Infinity War had started cutting the entire legs of his Ragnarok character development out from under him. If it weren’t for the momentary appearance of a handful of characters from Ragnarok, the movie literally might as well not have happened: Thor no longer cares about being a leader for his people, he’s back to leaning on weapons instead of relying on himself, and he seems to have completely forgotten Loki after having finally reconciled with him. And making Thor fat as a joke was not only fatphobic and unfunny but really undercut the narrative’s ability to make the viewer take his trauma seriously, because of a continuously competing tension between “you’re supposed to laugh at how he looks” and “how he looks is supposed to make you sad” that was never really resolved. There was no “you’re laughing at this, but then you realize what it actually means, and you feel like an ass for having laughed.” It was clearly set up to be, “you’re laughing at this, but then you realize what it means, and you feel a little sad, but don’t worry, there will be plenty of more times when ‘Thor is fat now’ is a punchline.”

As for the film’s humor as a whole, while there were some genuinely funny moments that were well positioned in the narrative, the movie overall felt like it frequently ran into the same problem as Star Wars: The Last Jedi, where the writers were so desperate to have characters constantly quipping that they constantly undercut their own poignant moments.

Probably the biggest actual plot hole is, unsurprisingly, the time travel. They initially did an... okay job of justifying why the characters couldn’t just change the past (though it wasn’t until Bruce got to have his chat with Mx. Yellowface that it actually got in any way coherently explained). But after they did all that work of establishing that they couldn’t just change the past, for capital-R Reasons...

They did uhhhhhhh a whole fucking lot of changing the past. A few of these things could be at least fanwanked away. Maybe past!Steve forgets future!Steve telling him Bucky’s alive because he got knocked unconscious immediately afterwards. Maybe Tony’s chat with his dad had always happened. Maybe Steve had always spent decades with Peggy. But there is no way Sitwell et al. wouldn’t remember Steve pretending to be a member of Hydra, which would significantly alter the events of The Winter Soldier if they weren’t smart enough or lucky enough to verify that Steve wasn’t also a mole and therefore realize he was an “imposter” before one of those Hydra sleeper said something to past!Steve to make him suspicious. And Loki grabbing the loose Tesseract and poofing is a massive change in the timeline.

Their enemies did a whooooooole lot of changing the past when past!Nebula brought past!Thanos and The Gang through to the future, including effectively permanently restoring Gamora, i.e., someone who’d been “irreversibly” sacrificed to obtain the Soul Stone.

Once these things happened, there was literally nothing to explain why (a) the future!Avengers couldn’t at least bring back Heimdall, Loki, all those Wakandans, the Vision, Natasha, and Tony by pulling them from earlier points in the timestream, and (b) why the future!Avengers couldn’t just take their set of Infinity Stones to a point before all of this shit happened and prevent it from ever having happened. Which isn’t to say the writers couldn’t have cooked up some sort of internally consistent explanation, e.g., “this Gamora is basically stolen from the other timeline, which still exists on its own independent axis, and the Avengers wouldn’t kidnap their friends out of another timeline and leave that version of themselves without the person they want to restore just to have that person here.” But they didn’t bother, which presumably means no one involved in making the film even noticed the utter inconsistency.

Speaking of utter inconsistency... Steve. Steven fucking Rogers. Hooooooooboy. That ending was the biggest, stupidest, cheapest piece of schlock I’ve seen in a movie for a long fucking time. Let’s leave aside the fact that he chose to leave behind two perfectly good boyfriends and the fact that he barely said boo to Bucky, despite the film having reminded us how important Bucky was to him by having his name literally be the thing that so shocked past!Steve that future!Steve was able to beat him. You’re seriously telling me that Steve was still pining soooooooo badly for Peggy that he would literally risk the entire timeline so they could have their Hetero Happily Ever After? (Bucky, Sam, Tony, Angie: I’m so sorry, bbys.)

Yeah, sure, Peggy and Steve being parted was sad when it happened. But they’d been colleagues for a handful of years, then maybe sorta friends, and then kissed once, in a speeding car, just after they finally admitted they’d both been crushing on each other pretty hard the whole time because they were on the way to possibly both die. That is not “the love of your life” who you spend the rest of time sighing over. That’s, like, the guy I casually dated for a bit over a month in 2011 because, while we hit it off amazingly well, I didn’t want to get serious when he’d be moving in about a year once his postdoc was done, who sure enough moved to the east coast a year later and then abruptly died of a heart attack a few years after that. Is it tragic that he’s dead? Absolutely. Have I sometimes thought, “Gosh, I wonder what could have been”? Sure. Did I decide that I would never ever again date or even look at anyone else, because he was the only person for me in all of space and time? Lmaoooooo no. I am, in fact, deliriously happy with my current girlfriend, who I also happen to think is way better for me than he ever could have been.

It was already established that Peggy got married in the original timeline (in CA:TWS, Steve watches some footage in which she mentions that during the war he’d saved the man she eventually married). This means that either (a) Steve supplanted her original husband, which is pretty gross, especially if he didn’t tell Peggy “oh hey btw you originally married this other guy, wanna go check him out first,” or (b) Steve was Peggy’s husband all along, and she just obfuscated that. Either way, in the timeline we end up with, somehow for 50+ years this incredibly well-known woman and sometime Director of SHIELD was married to a man she kept absolutely secret and hidden, which somehow no one ever discovered the secret of or even ever commented on, apparently. It also means that, when Steve showed up on her doorstep, both of them agreed that (a) it was more important for them to play house than for Steve to ever openly use his abilities again and (b) Steve would sit on his ass and twiddle his thumbs through every major crisis he knows is coming over the next half-century. If the MCU serum slowed Steve’s aging the way the comic serum did, this might be slightly understandable, because they could justify it as, “Well, Steve will go back to adventuring after he closes the loop with his original timeline, and this will basically be an extended vacation.” But Steve did age (and they presumably had no expectation that he would not), meaning that he wasted decades of active time at most acting secretly and anonymously from the shadows. You really think that these two incredibly dedicated and driven heroes would both agree to that? Sure, I could absolutely believe they’d take the opportunity to finally get that dance. But there’s no way that Peggy wouldn’t have booted Steve’s ass out of bed and back to the 21st century, and it’s highly unlikely Steve himself would have so much as seriously considered staying for more than a more leisurely farewell and proper closure.

Steve’s Hetero Happily Ever After also further complicates the issue of that time travel plot hole I mentioned. If the stones were plucked from one or more divergent timelines (or changes made while grabbing the stones then caused the creation of divergent timelines at those points)... how did aging!Steve end up staying in the same timeline as the rest of the future!Avengers? It seems like it should be impossible for all these things to be simultaneously true, which means either I’m missing something huge or at least one of them is a huge fuck-up in terms of the plot’s internal consistency. EITHER the changes to the past happened in (or spawned) one or more divergent timelines, which is why, e.g., Gamora could be brought forward from her past and now be alive in the future without altering the past that led to her being brought forward in the first place, in which case aging!Steve would have spent his life in an alternate timeline and old!Steve wouldn’t have been able to come visit all his buds on the day young!future!Steve left to return the stones; OR everything took place in a single, unified, undivergent timeline, which would mean Steve could drop into the past and take the long way back to the exact point in spacetime he left, but the changes to the past would have altered the past events, meaning that because Thanos and The Gang skipped forward and Loki is at large with the Tesseract, the events of Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok, Infinity War, etc. never happened, and we’re also back to having no reason why other dead people couldn’t be pulled forward from their past timeline, why Thanos couldn’t be stopped by time-traveling the stones to before he retrieved them and using them to stop him, etc.

Various other issues:

The “monstrous” single woman who can’t get pregnant sacrificing herself so that the virile man will have his wife and children restored to him is... not a good look. Also, it’s weird how “we don’t trade lives” when it’s about a robot coded as a white man sacrificing himself to save half the universe (though apparently even at the time a whole bunch of Wakandans was fine, whoops, remember all the Black people who died trying to stop Thanos from getting to the Vision, weird how those lives were okay to trade), but when it’s about Natasha or Clint throwing themself off a cliff, immediately they’re both all, “Yeah, it’s gotta be done for the greater good.”

Thor getting to be the one to axe Thanos’s head off instead of, you know, like, oh, I don’t know, Nebula? The woman he abused and tortured pretty much her entire life? Bad. Inappropriate. Disappointing.

Everybody kept talking about how the characters who got Thanos’d in Infinity War were their “family.” For Rocket, I believe it; one thing the GotG films actually did well was to establish that level of relationship for those characters. But the Avengers? Lmaoooooo. The MCU Avengers were not a fucking family. The MCU Avengers spent every single movie at each other’s throats. If you wanted us to believe they were even friends, you should have given us at least one film of them seriously working as a team instead of against each other.

Holy shit, do I not care about Clint Barton’s Manpain(tm). Also, if you want us to see how far he’s “fallen,” maybe do something other than giving him the worst mohawk I’ve ever seen (including one done backstage after a show and one a friend gave me in my bathroom in college) and a boring tattoo and having him badly pick up an ugly katana-esque sword to kill objectively bad guys.

Bringing Scott back was easy enough that a rat walking across a panel after five years of that shit sitting in a storage facility could do it, and yet no one else tried even once? Somebody saw all that shit set up, and went, “Welp, guess they’re all just dead,” instead of, “Hey maybe this running equipment indicates an experiment in progress that we should maybe investigate”?

The “let’s line up all the named women” shot in the final battle was the most patronizing display of pandering I’ve seen in the entire franchise. Not only did it make no sense for them all to be in the same place at the same time with no men even in the shot, but... they were utterly ineffectual? It was like, “Gosh, how will Carole ever make it through that??? Oh, she’s got US, GIRL-FRIENDS, DID WE MENTION WE’RE ALL LADIES, BUT NOT QUEER OR ANYTHING.” And then... Carole immediately blew straight past them, because her power level is so off the charts compared to almost every other named woman in the MCU, many of whom are simply very, very skilled peak human heroes versus being superhuman.

Speaking of superhuman abilities: Why wasn’t every time-travel suit an Iron Man-style suit like Rhodey’s? Obviously he needed an exoskeleton bit to walk, but since Tony took the time to build him a beefed-up full suit, why didn’t he do the same for everyone else?

Along that same line of stupid decisions made around the Vitally Important, We Only Get One Shot At Fixing This time-travel mission, why didn’t they wait until everyone was in better shape? Thor was clearly still an emotional wreck, and if Rocket hadn’t been on the ball, it would have cost them one of the stones. As soon as you’re traveling back in time to fix something, unless there’s a hard limit on how far you can go back (which there wasn’t), you literally have the rest of your lives to get ready for it, so can and should take as much time as you need to prep (and even over-prep) for that mission. A little more lead time also would have given someone the opportunity to go, “Hey, wait, why don’t we first make a quick stop to just grab more Pym Particles, so we have more flexibility with destinations and do-overs?” Or even, “Why don’t we make these suits modular? That way, they can join into a single unit for each team on the way there, thereby saving a bunch of charges, but also split off into individual suits with everyone having enough juice to get home individually just in case someone gets split off. That will leave us with a bunch of extra Pym Particles in case something goes wrong.”

Other than meta reasons like “we want there to be a big epic fight,” why was it such a struggle to fight Thanos? The Avengers very nearly beat him in Infinity War, when he had five of the six Infinity Stones. Here, he had none, and they still barely squeaked out the victory by the skin of their teeth.

Thanos’s rapid switch from “I’m gonna kill half of all living creatures to uhhh save the universe somehow” to “I guess I’ll just wipe out everything and make an entirely new universe” once again highlighted how deeply stupid his original plan was. If he has the capacity to re-create the entire universe, why doesn’t he just... make more resources, if that’s such a fucking problem? I mean, also, spoiler alert for the real world: It’s not. It’s always been an issue of distribution, not amount. People aren’t starving to death because there’s no food; people are starving to death because of capitalism. So unless you target your population elimination at capitalists exclusively, killing off a bunch of people is going to maintain exactly the same problems of unequal resource exploitation and distribution.

Speaking of which: Why is post-Thanos Earth presented as a mellow semi-paradise (except for everybody being sad about all the dead people)? The loss of half the world’s population would have been catastrophic, cascading into many more deaths. Nor would it have solved inequality... or even resource “over”-utilization. Earth hit a population of 3.85 billion (i.e., half the current ~7.7 billion) around 1972, which many people currently alive have personal memories of not actually being particularly idyllic. This also highlights once again how deeply stupid and nonsensical Thanos’s original plan was, given that his “solution” could easily become obsolete in another 50 years... or even sooner, given that Thanos also cut all non-human creature populations in half, which would have not only reduced related resources available for human consumption but devastated ecosystems worldwide.

There has been a huge official campaign to persuade audiences to not spoil the movie for others. As a general principle, I’m a fan of encouraging anti-spoiler culture, but I think it says a lot about this movie in specific that the studio has put in so much effort to try to stamp out spoilers: i.e., they’re worried that the only real draw it has is people finding out assorted plot points. If your film can be easily replaced by a bulleted list of who’s alive or dead at the end of it, it’s... not actually a good film.

ADDENDUM MAY 5, 2019:

Okay, so, per the Russos, the reason Steve's Hetero Happily Ever After DOESN'T break the entire rest of the film is that it happened in an alternate timeline, and he just jumped back to the MCU prime timeline later... somehow. I still think that's shitty, lazy filmmaking, because in three hours they absolutely should have, you know, made that more clear (or... at all indicated that's how it played out). But at least it keeps their time travel mechanics from completely breaking their own plot.

But that means that in THAT timeline there were two Steves. Which means the BEST-CASE SCENARIO is prime!Steve hooked up with that timeline's Peggy after being 100% honest about who he was, alt!Peggy... chose a different version of Steve over her own Steve, for... reasons?, and then together they found and revived alt!Steve, at which point prime!Steve was like, "lol sorry bro, she's my wife 'cause I missed my chance with prime!Peggy, but at least now you're not frozen for any longer than you already have been."

Other options include:

Prime!Steve pretended to be alt!Steve while leaving him in the ice, counting on him not getting rescued until alt!Peggy would be nearly dead.

Prime!Steve helped rescue alt!Steve, then left alt!Peggy and alt!Steve to have their personal Hetero Happily Ever After while he... married some other random person?

Prime!Steve straight-up murdered alt!Steve to take his place.

Prime!Steve and alt!Peggy rescued alt!Steve, and she married both of them. (Somehow I don't see Disney going for that option.)

ADDENDUM MAY 12, 2019

I just read another interview, this one with the writers. Buckle up, because there’s even more embarrassing shit.

McFeely: I mean, we did all of this before Ragnarok.

Markus: Yeah, initially we were writing drafts prior to Taika coming onboard. And it was once they got underway and they were off in Australia making the movie and it was clear that they were discovering new facets to Thor, Chris Hemsworth wanted to make sure that this new loosened-up Thor didn't vanish immediately upon returning to the Avengers world. And so he and Taika flew to Atlanta and we had long meetings with them and watched some footage and got a sense of the new Thor tone, and it worked perfectly with where we wanted to go.

... ... ... ... Literally WHAT FUCKING PART of Infinity War and Endgame matches AT ALL with Thor's character development from Ragnarok? I was all ready to go, "Oh, okay, that makes sense" at the reveal that this was written before Ragnarok. But then, nope, they admit that they just have no fucking idea what they're doing and think they actually integrated its changes WELL. JFC.

McFeely: So where we hit upon it was in order to become their best selves, Steve had to find a life, and Tony had to lose his.

Boring idea and poorly executed to boot. (Not to mention the extreme cringiness of “finding a life” necessarily requires “marrying a woman and having babies in the suburbs.”) How are they getting paid money for writing this trite?

Fandango: So people are asking... Does this mean an old Captain America was hanging out this whole time while another Captain America was saving the day?

Markus: That is our theory. We are not experts on time travel, but the Ancient One specifically states that when you take an Infinity Stone out of a timeline it creates a new timeline. So Steve going back and just being there would not create a new timeline. So I reject the "Steve is in an alternate reality" theory. I do believe that there is simply a period in world history from about '48 to now where there are two Steve Rogers. And anyway, for a large chunk of that one of them is frozen in ice. So it's not like they'd be running into each other.

HAHAHAHA HOLY FUCKING SHIT okay so NOT ONLY do the director and writers have COMPLETELY DIFFERENT IDEAS about what the fuck happened at the end (did they... not discuss this with each other? at all?), but the WRITERS' version is the one that is THE MOST OUT OF CHARACTER. HOLY SHIT.

McFeely: So we've always thought that the most perfect conclusion to [Natasha's] arc would be to die for her new family, or to sacrifice greatly for her new family.

GAG GAG GAG GAG GAG GAG GAG

McFeely: We toyed with not doing that, and we had another version, and several women on the crew said, "Don't you dare take that choice away from her. The heroic thing is for Natasha to do it, not for Hawkeye to do it."

these are definitely real women who actually exist

Fandango: Do you think there's a world where we see the adventures of Captain and Peggy either on the big or small screen?

Christopher Markus: Possibly. I think maybe all I did was Steve was a stay-at-home dad and Peggy went to work at S.H.I.E.L.D. I don't know that there were any adventures.

lmaoooooooooo

Imagine being this bad at knowing your own characters. Imagine thinking either Peggy OR Steve would just give up their life to play house when there's important work they could be doing.

[son-of-alderaan]

From one controversy to another, we move on to Star Wars — the 50 Shades to the Marquis de Sade of Mother!. The reboot orchestrated by Abrams has had its fair share of detractors, with keyboard warriors furious that the galaxy far, far away isn’t entirely run by middle-aged white men.

Is Gleeson aware of the controversy? “Look, that f******...” he begins, before calming himself a bit. “Having a problem with a female lead or a diverse cast? That doesn’t even cross my mind as being an issue, because if that’s a problem for you, then your opinion doesn’t matter to me. If you’ve paid the money, you’ve bought the right to an opinion. But, also, movies have to change.”

Has there been any attempt on the third Star Wars film to appease the issues a certain section of the fan base had? “Well, this is where my eagerness not to cause waves probably perks up, but I’ve not been aware of any corrective measures. It just feels like the third part of a trilogy.”

Domhnall Gleeson used to think he would be dead by the time he was 30, so the fact that he’s speaking to me at all is great. The actor is 35. Seriously, though, why did he think he would be done with this earth by now? “Argh, some stupid thing,” he says in a high-pitched voice. “Maybe I had a dream? But, past my 30th, I was, like, ‘What is going on?’” He pauses to take it all in. The bar. His glass of water. The soft lighting. Every moment precious. “It was odd,” he says quietly, seriously. “But it definitely gave me a weird drive to get things done.”

He must be exhausted. Just a glance at his CV reveals a restless actor in the rush of a career that’s busier and more varied than most. In the five years since his breakthrough lead in About Time, a temporarily diverting Richard Curtis romcom, Gleeson has been directed by Angelina Jolie, Alejandro Iñarritu and Darren Aronofsky, has starred in two Star Wars films and has coaxed the best performance out of Tom Cruise for more than a decade in the irrepressible American Made. He has the randomness of an actor desperate for any old part, except that these are big films and he is good in all of them. No wonder he is wired when we meet. He’s a man on 23 jobs at once, who has no idea which part he is playing next.

What is next, though, is The Little Stranger, Lenny Abrahamson’s classy take on Sarah Waters’s gothic novel. The book is about Dr Faraday (Gleeson), born into a low class, but obsessed with a nearby manor house and the woman who runs it, Caroline (Ruth Wilson). The rich family are selling land to build council houses; miseries are many and awkwardness is rife. Gleeson and Wilson are both terrific in largely tacit roles. And, though the film is being sold as a ghost story, it really isn’t one. Rather, it is about society and need, and how you die in the class you were born in.

Gleeson — whose first name is pronounced “Doe-nal” and who is the son of the excellent character actor Brendan, not to forget a welfare-officer mother, Mary — is erratic company. He’s friendly and funny, telling me how he spends his days (watching George Harrison documentaries) while laughing so loudly and squeakily, it sounds like a cave of bats being gassed. But there is also, always, a barrier. This is in part because he has the hair and make-up of the villainous General Hux in Star Wars, which he had been filming earlier that day. It makes him look like an oppressive sheet. But mostly the wall is there because he hates talking about his life or opinions and just seems unflaggingly professional. Exactly the sort of actor directors adore.

“He’s an utter joy to work with,” gushed JJ Abrams, who directed Gleeson’s first Star Wars, The Force Awakens, and is back for the third in the trilogy. “I love him,” said Jolie, who cast him for the Second World War survivalist epic Unbroken.

I tell him the clippings just portray him as someone who is nice. He smiles, of course. “Having an edge is not something I aspire to,” he says, unflustered. “But I’ve done roles that definitely explored parts of myself that are more than just being a nice fella. I’d rather do it that way, via work, than go out and slate people.”

So he doesn’t want to be contentious? “I would care if I hurt someone,” he says. “And I’m aware my opinions change. I don’t see the point. I’ve plenty of negativity in my life. Plenty of negative emotions. But I’d rather just go there in my work.”

I mention that I emailed Waters before meeting him to ask what she thought about his casting as Faraday, given that neither his CV nor his interviews are exactly littered with hints that he could play a frigid weirdo like the doctor she wrote.

“When I heard Domhnall had been cast as Dr Faraday, I thought, ‘OK, that’s interesting,’” Waters wrote. “In the films I’d seen him in, he plays youthful, endearing characters, and the Dr Faraday of the novel is a bit older and not madly likeable.” Gleeson nods as he hears this. At first, he had been sent the script for a different character. “I understood I wasn’t the obvious choice, because I wasn’t the obvious choice to Lenny.”

Once you have seen the film, it’s hard to think who else could have done it as well as he does — and his casting is testament to the fact that directors are finding it increasingly hard to imagine a role Gleeson can’t play. (He’d make a great Neil Kinnock.) In American Made, he is cocky and outrageous. In The Little Stranger, he is terrified and quiet. And, yes, it’s acting. Chameleon talent is the entire point. Gleeson is just better at it than most.

Faraday’s a mess, isn’t he? “He’s not well, you know?” Gleeson says with some sympathy. “He suffers from an emptiness that can never be filled, because it’s a desire to be something he cannot be, which is of a different class. There’s just so much bitterness, and lust and anger against women. All those things add up to a man unable to connect. Lenny said, ‘If you carry something explosive, you walk carefully.’ And I think Faraday has this. Part of him understands that he has this facility for violence, maybe.”

He is, I offer, a bit “incel”. Gleeson looks blank, so I fill him in. It stands for “involuntary celibate” and is the creation of a group that came to light in April in Toronto, when a man drove his car into women because he believed they owed him sex. “That’s interesting,” Gleeson says carefully. “It’s what a lot of film noir is about, wondering where a man’s place is. With Faraday, it’s more complicated, and the power thing is different, as Caroline is a woman, but she’s from a class he aspires to. I think he’s lonely. I loved him. I connected to him while we were doing it.”

Gleeson was born in 1983 and started acting in his late teens. He still lives in Dublin, like his family. His dad’s mainstream fame came late, so it wasn’t an acting family as such. He is hardly Scott Eastwood to Clint, so he had to earn his success. He was helped by the playwright Martin McDonagh, who cast him in The Lieutenant of Inishmore on Broadway at 23: a role that gave the actor a Tony nomination. Yet despite all this, Gleeson remains very, well, normal. His conversation, for instance, is about living in a messy flat, or Deliveroo, or his grandparents’ Catholicism and his fears about his lack of faith. “I don’t believe in anything afterwards,” he says. “Wish I did.”

In the absence of the comfort of religion, Gleeson listens to advice from his grandmother. “She used to say, ‘If you’re going to make some-thing, make something beautiful.’ If you try to put some good out in the world through your actions, that’s how you live on.”

Why then, I wonder, did he make Mother!, the Darren Aronofsky film that includes a dismembered baby? Gleeson played a man who fights his own brother. Did he read the whole script? “I did.” Even the baby bit? “It will be excessive and offensive to some people, but, for me, it’s not,” he says. “I thought it was an angry film about something that deserved to be angry about.” He has seen the film twice.

From one controversy to another, we move on to Star Wars — the 50 Shades to the Marquis de Sade of Mother!. The reboot orchestrated by Abrams has had its fair share of detractors, with keyboard warriors furious that the galaxy far, far away isn’t entirely run by middle-aged white men.

Is Gleeson aware of the controversy? “Look, that f******...” he begins, before calming himself a bit. “Having a problem with a female lead or a diverse cast? That doesn’t even cross my mind as being an issue, because if that’s a problem for you, then your opinion doesn’t matter to me. If you’ve paid the money, you’ve bought the right to an opinion. But, also, movies have to change.”

Has there been any attempt on the third Star Wars film to appease the issues a certain section of the fan base had? “Well, this is where my eagerness not to cause waves probably perks up, but I’ve not been aware of any corrective measures. It just feels like the third part of a trilogy.”

The first time Gleeson felt that he belonged as an actor was during his time on Anna Karenina, Joe Wright’s 2012 theatrical film version of the Tolstoy novel. Before that, during auditions or on film sets, he had felt out of place, but Wright wanted his cast to get to know each other, so planned umpteen rehearsals and bonding sessions. “Tom Stoppard was doing yoga with us. It was mad.”

Surely, though, thanks to Star Wars and working with Cruise, he is up there now? He pauses. “There is still something to be got over, and it’s less to do with the fact they’re stars. The power differential is not based on position in the industry, but hours of me watching them, as opposed to them possibly not having seen me in anything.”

That awe happened when he met Leonardo DiCaprio on The Revenant. Surely it’s happened to others meeting him, too? “A couple of people,” he says. What did they say? “They said very nice things.”

[salty--alien]

Deeply Wired - cp. 4

Prologue | cp. 1 | cp. 2 | cp. 3 | Ao3

Summary: It’s 2904. A mechanician known as the Doctor finds a broken android, Rose, and decides to take it with him and fix it. The two become closer quickly but soon a mysterious virus inside Rose starts acting up and revealing its true capabilities, changing everything. When Rose’s previous owner comes around and tries to get a hold of the Bad Wolf virus, the two are left with no choice. What lengths will they go to keep Rose away from the evil hands of the Master?

Pairing: Tenth Doctor x android!Rose Tyler (au)

Chapter: 5/?

Rating: T

Wordcount: 2439

Notes: Huge thanks to both @wordsintimeandspace and @starlightkissedsmiles for beta’ing this chapter <3

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

After that night things between the Doctor and Rose started healing. Rose began discovering herself all over again with the help of the Doctor, following his tinkering with a newfound interest. He could see that she didn’t fully trust him yet. He could see it from the way she would hesitate before asking him a question or from the way she didn’t rely on him as much. It hurt, of course, but the Doctor also understood it. Her asking questions was a way to rebuild the lost trust back. And he was glad Rose was beginning to construct an independent self image.

“So, how much of it was true?” Rose asked one day as the Doctor was working on a broken computer.

“From what?” he asked, not quite sure what Rose was referring to.

“Y’know, from the story of how you found me. I was unconscious… well, shut down, more like. Was I really just lying on the street?”

The Doctor’s expression darkened as he remembered the way he had first found her. Bruised and ripped apart brutally with no remorse. “...It’s not a pretty story,” he said. “I don’t think you’d like hearing that.” “I don’t care. I asked you a question,” Rose responded stubbornly. The Doctor sighed. “Well, alright. I didn’t find you on the streets. I found you in a… in a scrapyard.”

Rose’s eyes widened in horror. Androids didn’t like scrapyards. They held a dark history of android brutality. Junkyards were meant for garbage and machinery, not androids. It was highly offensive to abandon broken AI there. Unfortunately, it happened regularly.

Rose might not be aware of every social and cultural taboo there was, but she had been watching the TV awfully lot for the past few days. Even if she hadn’t, the Doctor was almost sure that some sort of android instinct in Rose knew the implication of what being abandoned in a scrapyard meant.

“I… “ Rose began, voice wavering. She brought her hand to her lips. “I was abandoned in a s… scrapyard?” She said it like a dirty word. The Doctor could only look down and nod. “Yeah. And it’s not all. I don’t have to tell you if you don’t want to hear it, though.”

At the Doctor’s words Rose visibly steeled herself, shaking her head. “No. I can take it. Tell me.” It’s not like it could’ve been any worse than that, right?

Well, the Doctor knew it was.

“I didn’t find you whole, Rose. You had been chopped to pieces, uh… limbs off.” The Doctor glanced over at Rose who was gripping the edge of the workbench, looking a bit nauseous.

“You are whole now, though,” he said, reaching out for Rose’s hand. Her knuckles were marble white against the table. She did, however, look back at the Doctor and take his hand. There was a nod.

“You fixed me. I’m okay now,” she agreed, falling silent again. “...’s just. Why would someone do that?” she asked, a deep frown crumbling her face.

“I can only hope it wasn’t a person who did it,” the Doctor answered. “It’s possible it was a wild animal.” Thinking about it still made the Doctor’s skin crawl, but at least it was easier to accept than some person actually being heartless enough to do something like that to another living being.

It was when the Doctor felt a firm squeeze in his hand that he realised they were still holding hands. He looked up, smiling at the android beside him. Even in her distraught state she managed to smile back at him with reassurance and love.

He never wanted to let go of her hand ever again.

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

Sunlight shed light on the workshop through the colourful leaves of the old elm tree standing in front of his window. The shadows of the leaves draped across the Doctor and Rose’s faces, gently filtering the light. It was a calm afternoon, just the way the Doctor liked it. It was even better with Rose at his side.

“Are there androids who don’t have owners?”

“Of course. There are plenty.”

“D’ya suppose I had an owner, though?” Rose asked. She was in a mood for questions today, it seemed. The Doctor took a moment to ponder her question before answering.

“It’s likely, yeah. Your model was produced for…” he felt iffy even saying it, “service purposes.”

“Was produced?” Rose asked in surprise.

“Yep. Your model unit isn’t produced anymore. Most of the RO-53 units have been replaced with RO-54 units,” he explained.

“What’s so good about them that I can’t do?” Rose frowned, suddenly very defensive. The Doctor sighed.

“Nothing. And I mean it. RO-54 units are different because humans aim to build them without emotions. Purely for service and work. Your model was too… rebellious, so to speak. So it had to be replaced with a model better suited for its intended purpose.”

“...Wow,” Rose let out. “That’s just messed up.”

“I know,” the Doctor sighed. ”It’s just downright cruel. Humans want to control everything, but what we don’t seem to realise is that you cannot control life. We can try to rule an individual’s independent mind but that has never ended well.”

“I feel bad for them,” Rose said. Of course she would. She didn’t want anyone to suffer. “They must be so scared. People are messing up with their circuits and trying to turn them into machines. We’re not machines.”

“No, you’re not,” the Doctor agreed. Androids were higher than highest high tech. That’s what he’d always thought. Treating them merely as machinery was positively insulting.

He continued fixing the computer’s motherboard after their conversation dried out. Rose sat beside the Doctor quietly, following every movement of his clever fingers. It was comforting, having someone just sitting there and keeping him silent company. He knew that many people didn’t like it when someone was watching you work and it made them uncomfortable, but luckily the Doctor wasn’t one of those people. Maybe he’d been alone for too long to ever mind having somebody close, who knew.

“Give me the small screwdriver?” the Doctor asked, blindly reaching his arm out towards Rose who was sitting next to the toolbox.

“The one with the blue handle?” Rose asked, moving the tools around with one hand.

“No, the thin yellow one that has a cross shaped end.”

After hearing the tools clattering around, the Doctor felt Rose’s hand brush against his reached out one, giving the small utensil to him.

“Thanks,” he mumbled as he continued working with the tiny teensy bits of the damaged motherboard. “Whose computer are you fixing?” Rose inquired.

“It belongs to Mrs. Tyler,” the Doctor answered, absorbed into his work. “A nice lady. Widowed, no children. She’s a bit scary, though. Lives across the street. I repair her stuff from time to time.” “For free?” He could practically see the frown on her face, solely based on her tone.

“Uh… Maybe? As I said, she’s a bit scary,” the Doctor chuckled. “Slapped me once. But she has a heart of gold. She sometimes comes by to give me home-cooked food because I forget to eat.” “Aww, that’s nice of her,” Rose approved. For a while, nobody spoke.

“Come to think of it, there’s this funny thing I just remembered.”

“What’s that?” Rose asked.

“Weeelll… She has this dog. A tiny, tiny thing. Always barking and challenging dogs three times her size.”

“Okay…? Did the dog slap you too or what?” Rose quipped, grinning. The Doctor paused his work, looking at the chuckling android, feigning offence: “Oi!”

“Obviously not. Is just… I just remembered the dog’s name,” the Doctor admitted, embarrassed. Rose was still confused.

“So?” she questioned.

“Well… The dog’s name might or might not be Rose.” Rose’s face sobered instantly.

“What? You named me after a dog?!”

Furious. She was absolutely furious. The Doctor was quick to defend himself: “No Rose, I swear! I didn’t even remember it until now! I promise! I just… since your model is RO-53 I thought it’d be clever to… you know, the number five is kinda like the letter ‘s’ and the three is like a backwards ‘e’, right? So I‒”

“...Okay, okay Doctor, I believe you! You don’t need to explain it. Just… what the heck? That’s not funny!” Rose laughed, clearly unamused. “Not funny,” she repeated as she tried to tamp down her own laughter.

The Doctor relaxed at the sight of her, giggling and trying to be cross with him (and failing) at the same time. It was impossible not to smile at that.

Rose noticed him smiling and pointed an accusing finger at him in a half-hearted attempt to be intimidating.

“Stop smiling! I’m still very cross with you!” she tried.

The Doctor didn’t stop smiling.

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

The Doctor wasn’t a big fan of clothes shopping. He had said it before and he would remind everyone of that again if necessary. However, he noticed as he had once again tagged along with Rose to buy her new clothing, he did have a small soft spot for a certain android. Well. Small was a relative word. In reality, he was absolutely smitten, even to the point where he voluntarily accompanied Rose in clothing stores. Just seeing the android’s face light up at the concept of possessions of her own made it all worth it in the Doctor’s opinion.

Now the two were back at his workshop and Rose was walking around with her brand new pink sweater on.

Had he just said that just seeing her happy face was enough of a reward? Well, while that was correct, it was nothing compared to the hugs she gave him. Her new sweater was soft and warm, but the person wearing it was even softer. The Doctor did nothing more gladly than swoop the android up in a big hug and hear her laugh as he swirled them around.

When had he become so attached to her?

As the sun was starting to set the Doctor found himself staring at Rose instead of his work. The android was gazing out of the big window, light hitting her face in an aesthetic way that you’d see in the movies. Her brown eyes were like pools of gold against the sunlight, almost glowing.

Rose noticed the Doctor staring at her, mildly startled but quickly recovering with a gentle smile.

“What?” she asked, reaching her hand out to clasp their fingers together.

“Nothing,” he answered in kind, snapping out of his trance. “Just lost in thought.” Rose grinned. “It happens when you have such a big brain,” she teased. The Doctor smiled, biting his lip.

“Yeah, it does.”

Rose smiled wide, pressing her chin against her other shoulder. The android’s hair slumped across her face at the movement. Rose tried to nudge the mass of hair away with the help of her face and shoulder, turning to gaze at the Doctor with a wistful expression on her face.

“What?” he asked in turn, blushing from the attention he was given. Rose shrugged, squeezing his hand.

“I saw the mail at the door the other day. It was designated to someone called ‘John Smith’. So I was thinking, ‘who’s that?’ I’ve never heard you mention any John, but it’s clearly not coming to the wrong place since you open it and...” Rose’s voice faded out at the Doctor’s awkward silence and her eyes widened in realisation. “Oh. Oh! Shit, I’ve been so stupid,” she laughed. “You are John Smith,” Rose realised, an embarrassed look passing across her face.

“...Yeah, that’s… that’s me,” the Doctor said, ruffling his hair with his free hand nervously. “Never really adapted to that one,” he admitted. Rose was having a full moment of her mind being blown, though.

“I never even questioned it, for some reason. I always just thought you were called the Doctor, but… wow.” The Doctor smiled.

“It’s a rather boring name, isn’t it?” he asked, waiting for Rose to say what every other person who knew his whole name usually said first.

“No! Well… yes, but… okay, it is rather boring,” Rose admitted, “fits you perfectly, though,” she added with a tongue touched grin.

“Oi!”

“Just kidding, Doctor! You’re not boring,” Rose giggled and squeezed their hands together briefly before letting go and getting up.

“Boring, yeah right,” the Doctor mumbled before continuing his work.

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

The rest of the evening went by in a blur. The Doctor was working on Mrs. Tyler’s computer and Rose was listening to a very old fashioned and retro radio the Doctor had in his workshop. She had a lot of fun checking out the different radio stations.

“Do people even have radios anymore?” she had asked, amused. Technology had left radios behind centuries ago. The Doctor, however, had all sorts of weird gadgets in his workshop. Besides, he liked how simple the old things were. No hundreds of different buttons for a single function. Just a volume button and the one that you could use to change stations. Besides, he liked to remind Rose, those radios were amazing because you could hear all sorts of classical music from them. Since radios weren’t a thing anymore, most radio stations were gone. Some of them were still up and running. Mostly playing classics like Britney Spears’ ballad, Toxic, or the speech podcasts of the ever famous storyteller, Snoop Dogg. The Doctor never quite understood the messages of his stories. So fast-paced and… well, explicit. Rose told him it was “called art”.

The doorbell rang as the Doctor was just finishing up with the computer. Rose was in the kitchen doing her own thing.

“Someone’s at the door,” Rose announced after the bell’s ringing.

“Yeah, it’s Mrs. Tyler. She’s here to get her computer back, just in time!” the Doctor quipped, speeding up with the last touches.

“Should I go open or will you go?” Rose questioned. “Yeah, go open the door for her. I’ll be there in a minute, I’m just going to finish the computer up,” he requested, trying to be as quick as possible. He heard Rose’s steps as she walked out of the room, doing what was asked of her. He heard the door open but no further sounds of any kind.

“...Doctor?” That was Rose’s voice.

Finishing up, the Doctor got up from his seat, wiped his dirty hands on his shirt and hurried to the door.

As soon as he reached the door and Rose he froze beside her, looking at the visitor who most certainly was not Mrs. Tyler.

“Hello, Doctor Smith. I’m here to reclaim my RO-53 unit.”

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND August 2, 2019  - LUCE, THE NIGHTINGALE, TEL AVIV ON FIRE, THE RED SEA DIVING RESORT

There are some really good movies out this week, and I want to shine a bit of focus on some of the limited releases before getting to the bigger releases.

First up, there’s Julius Onah’s LUCE (NEON), starring Kelvin Harrison Jr. from last year’s excellent Monsters and Men as the title character, a well-liked African-American high school student who seems to have it all together. His adopted parents, played by Naomi Watts and Tim Roth, love their son and are willing to give him the benefit of a doubt when one of Luce’s teachers, played indelibly by Octavia Spencer, finds something in Luce’s locker and tries convincing his parents that maybe he’s not the perfect son.

This film deals with the difficulties of being an African-American student in modern times and the expectations put on you. In Luce’s case, he was adopted after being rescued from an African war zone by his adopted parents, and they think he can do no wrong. When Luce’s teacher finds something in his locker, she thinks he’s putting on a front and fooling everyone but her.

Luce reminds me quite a bit of HBO’s Big Little Lies, a series I absolutely loved, because it’s about the interactions of these characters and their differing viewpoint on what’s happening. It also reminded me of the remarkable work done by Todd Field in his two movies, particularly In the Bedroom.

The performances all around are fantastic, making me think that this could work just as well as a play*, but there are some nice surprises in there like Andrea Bang as Stephanie Kim, a fellow student who might have been involved in an assault. I would not be remotely shocked if Spencer gets another Oscar nomination for her role in this (which ends up being far more complex a role than the one she played in the thriller Ma), but the entire cast and the way Onah tells this story is equally riveting.

What’s especially good about Luce is that it’s likely to start a lot of conversations, hopefully between white and black viewers, but it’s just one of the better adult dramas this year, and I’m sure Onah* has a strong future ahead if he keeps making movies like this. (Note: I feel a little silly because when I wrote this I didn’t realize that the movie was indeed based on a play and that Onah had directed The Cloverfield Paradox which went straight to Netflix.)

Rating: 8/10

Jennifer Kent’s THE NIGHTINGALE (IFC Films) is the follow-up to her 2014 horror film The Babadook, which is thought to be one of the best horror films of the past decade – and I’m not going to disagree with that sentiment.

The Nightingale is a very different movie, a period revenge thriller set during the days when Australia was caught in a war between its indigenous people and the British army. In this environment is Aisling Francisoci’s Clare, a young Irish ex-convict who has been bought into service by an Army officer (Sam Claflin), who will not release her after she fulfills her duties.  One night, her husband and baby daughter are killed, sending Clare on a path of vengeance. Along for that journey is Baykali Ganambarr’s Billy, an indigenous tracker who knows that being black means he’s just as at risk of getting murdered as Clare.

This is not the groundbreaking follow-up some might be expecting, but it’s still very good, and it proves what a talented filmmaker Kent is, both with the screenplay that’s authentic to the times and the way she directs

I think what surprised me most about The Nightingale was how pretty boy actor Sam Claflin is able to play a complete slimeball, which is very much against the characters we’ve seen him play before. This is as much a testament to Claflin as it is to Kent for realizing he had it in him.

Some people might try to sway you off seeing Kent’s film due to the violence, which includes brutal rape, but honestly, I’ve seen far worse from male filmmakers like Lars von Trier and Gasper Noé, and in this case, it’s keeping with the way women would have been treated during these times.

I don’t think The Nightingale will be for everyone, especially those who first became fans of Kent’s from her earlier venture into horror. This is a tough and serious drama that still has genre elements, but it leaves a lasting imprint on you, not always in a good way.

Rating: 7.5/10

Lastly, I want to draw special attention to Sameh Zoabi’s TEL AVIV ON FIRE (Cohen Media), a witty comedy set in modern-day Israel where a Palestinian soap opera filled with dysfunctional characters becomes the center of a conflict more bizarre than the one in the Middle East. It stars Kais Nashif as Salam, a consultant on his uncle’s show who gets stopped at a checkpoint by a soldier Assi (Yaniv Biton) who doesn’t like the way that the Israeli soldier is portrayed on the show. He offers Salam a few tips, and Salam’s uncle and the show’s primadonna star like them enough to promote Salam to writer… except he relies on Assi to help him with that duty.

The movie definitely veers into the world of the absurd as Assi has to contend with his wife (an avid fan of the series) and Salam is trying to reconnect with an old flame, all the while dealing with the tense situation between the Israelis and Palestinians in the region.

This movie mainly surprised me because I didn’t go into it expecting a comedy, so when it proved to be particularly witty and entertaining, I was glad I made the effort to see it.

In fact, I had a chance to speak with Zoabi last week, an interview I’ll be running soon, but I wanted to share a few tidbits from it now.

“The comedy decision was more of a natural progression as my voice as a filmmaker,” he told me. “My first feature was a comedy, and I went to school here at Columbia University and did my masters here and did my BA in Tel Aviv, which is interesting because in Tel Aviv, I studied mostly European cinema more than American cinema, so the arthouse world is more prominent in the studies there. Then you come to the U.S., and it’s a totally different business, which is entertainment. I always felt like it was interesting if you could find your voice in the middle where you can be talking about something important, but still entertain at the same time. I think gradually I realized while watching the news and the media all the time, it’s always the fighters and the victims, and there’s nothing in between, which is a daily reality that I grew up with, which is that people are funny. People don’t wake up in the morning and think, ‘Oh, my God, today I’m going to go kill five, six people.’ They wake up in the morning and they still have to do [everyday] things. These are the characters that never make it to the big media. I grew up with comedies. People in my village, my town, my family, they never talk about serious things. It’s almost like every third line has to be a joke. I always said that if I want to talk about these issues and I want to present the reality closer to what it is, I think humor is an essential part of it. It comes really natural. Once I look at a situation, it’s almost like back home when I tell my friends a serious story, everyone is waiting for the punchline. It’s not an effort. It’s something you grow up with.”

“As a writer, you evolve of course, and hopefully you get better from one film to the next, but the voice of it has always been there, and I love the creation of comedy, because it brings people together in different ways.”

“For this film in particular, it cannot be done without a comedy, because it’s all about stereotypes,” he continued. “It’s about how Palestinians see the Israelis and how Israelis see the Palestinians. The best way to deal with it is a comedy, and the seriousness comes from the soap opera.”

“I actually grew up watching more soaps than films. I grew up two TV channels, and my Mom controls the remote, so we always had to watch soap operas. Years after, with all these satellites and millions of stations, there’s more soaps in the Middle East – from Turkey, from Syria, from Lebanon, Egypt. When I grew up, we only watched Egyptian soap operas, and this soap opera in my film is almost an homage to one that was very popular about an Egyptian spy who comes to Tel Aviv. I changed the narrative and made it a woman, but what’s interesting is that when I was writing the film, I was home with my Mom watching one of her soap operas, and she was crying at a moment when I was laughing, because of the overacting. I asked, ‘Mom, do you really believe this?’ and she goes, ‘What? The movies you make are better?’”

I’ll have more from this interview soon, but if you have a chance, do check out Tel Aviv on Fire, which opens at the Quad Cinemaand the Landmark 57in New York on Friday.

Of course, the big movie of the weekend is gonna be Universal Pictures’ FAST AND FURIOUS PRESENTS: HOBBS AND SHAW, and I’ve written quite a bit about that over at The Beat, including my interview with writer/producer Chris Morgan and a box office preview. My review will be live later on Wednesday. Not sure what more I can say about the movie… I enjoyed it!

I’m also excited that A24 is expanding Lulu Wang’s THE FAREWELL nationwide this weekend after it broke into the top 10 last week. I’ve been meaning to see it again myself and probably will this weekend, but it gets my highest recommendation, especially if you want to learn more about Chinese culture and traditions than you may have been able to get out of Crazy Rich Asians. Even though this one also stars Awkwafina, it’s a very different movie and it’s a very different, more dramatic role for the actor, and I wouldn’t be shocked if she’s in the Oscar (and Indie Spirit) conversation at year’s end.

LIMITED RELEASES

Opening in L.A. this Friday at the Landmark Nuart and in New York at the Quad on August 9 is Garret Price’s Love, Antosha, co-produced by Like Crazy director Drake Doremus, which is about actor Anton Yelchin, who was at the peak of his career when his life was cut down suddenly in a bizarre accident. This is a really sold documentary that’s quite heartbreaking, and I want to write more about it and hope to soon…

Opening at New York’s Film Forum on Wednesday is Stephen Wilkes’ doc Jay Myself (Oscilloscope), a film about photographer Jay Maisel, whose six-floor building The Bank on Bowery and Spring Street has been wrapped in mystery until the filmmaker is given access just before Maisel’s planned move after selling the building.  It will open in L.A. on August 18.

One movie I had heard about out of Sundance but didn’t have a chance to see was Britt Poulton and Dan Madison’s Them That Follow (1091), which has an amazing cast that includes Oscar winner Olivia Colman, Walton Goggins, Alice Englert, Kaitlyn Dever from Book Smart, Jim Gaffigan, Thomas Mann and more. It takes place in the Appalachias in a community of snake handlers run by the Pastor Lemuel Childs (Goggins) as his daughter Mara (Englert) is getting ready for her wedding day when a secret is revealed about the church.

Lots of odds and ends after that, mostly low-profile stuff really …

Claudio Giovannesi’s Piranhas (Music Box Films) based on the novel by Gomorrah writer Roberto Saviano stars Francesco Di Napoli as a 15-year-old who lives with his mother in Naples in a neighborhood ruled by the Camorra mafia, although he has dreams of leaving, something that gets him involved with selling drugs.

Latin American filmmaker Mariano Llinás’ 14-hour epic La Flor (Grasshopper Films), which premiered at last year’s New York Film Festival, will open at Film at Lincoln Center in New York on Friday. It’se a “love letter to the history of cinema” filmed on three continents in six languages with the director making appearances to explain the structure. I just don’t have 14 hours to see this so I probably never will.

Adam Dick’s Teacher (Cinedigm) stars David Dasmatlhcian  (Ant-Man) and veteran comic Kevin Pollak that follows the downward spiral of DastMalchian’s high school English teacher who is trying to protect his students from bullies while challenging a wealthy patron in the community.

The other movies opening this weekend are Fred Grivois’ 15 Minutes of War (Blue Fox Entertainment), starring Alban Lenoir and Olga Kurylenko, based on the 1976 hostage crisis when Somali rebels kidnapped 21 French children; Sara Seligman’s crime-thriller Coyote Lake (Cranked Up),  Zach Gayne’s States (Indiecan Entertainment) starring Alex Essoe; and Diane Krueger’s psychological spy thriller The Operative (Vertical), directed by Yuval Adler.

I don’t know much about The Grateful Dead: Meet-Up at the Movies 2019, which is taking place on Thursday, August 1, although apparently, the entire Giants Stadium concert from June 17, 1991 will be screened.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Netflix’s big release of the week is RED SEA DIVING RESORT, a dramatic thriller based on true events starring Chris Evans, Haley Bennett, Michael Kenneth Williams, Alesandro Nivola and more. It deals with the true story of a group of Ethiopian Jews who are seeking refuge from the warlords in Jerusalem, so it’s up to Evans’ Israeli special agent Ari Levinson to find a way to get them out of the country. He does so by having the Israeli government lease a rundown tourist spot in Sudan, to where the Ethiopian refugees can be brought by Michael K. Williams, as the man dedicated to saving them all.

Levinson has to deal with a lot of pushback from the government, including his handler played by Sir Ben Kingsley, but he puts together a crack team of Mossad agents (including Bennett and Nivola) to make this operation happen.

I wanted to like this movie more, due to it being based on an inspirational story, but it’s tone is all over the place, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness, and bouncing back and forth from the serious to the frivolous is not something that works in this case. I just don’t think Gideon Raff, who both wrote and directed this, is a very good filmmaker, and he’s made a fairly bland movie that’s so inconsistent, it’s hard to get

It’s a shame, because this seems like an important story to tell, but when you compare it to something like the recent Hotel Mumbai… or even Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda … it’s obvious why this isn’t getting theatrical distribution.

Rating: 6/10

Also, Cindy Chupack’s Otherwood, starring Angela Bassett, Patricia Arquette and Felicity Huffman will stream starting Friday. They play three friends who are feeling forgotten on Mother’s Day, so they drive to New York to reconnect with their adult sons. (How come MY mother never has done this??!)

Also, it looks like Dear White People is back for its third season, and though I haven’t seen it, creator Justin Simien is a good dude, who I used to work with in his film publicity days, so check it out! (In other words, do as I say, not as I do.)

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

Opening Friday is the Metrograph’s retrospective on Czech New Wave filmmaker Luraj Herz called “In and Out of the Czechoslovak New Wave.” This continues in the tradition in the past year of rep theaters getting into the Czech New Wave, and the series includes the filmmaker’s 1978 take on Beauty and the Beast, his 1981 film Ferat Vampire, and then next week, it will screen a restoration of the filmmaker’s 1969 film The Cremator. Also Friday, Metrograph will begin screening a new 35mm print of Joan Tewkesbury’s Old Boyfriends (1979), starring Talia Shire, John Belushia, Keith Carradine and Richard Jordan. In preparation for the release of Nanfu Wang’s excellent new doc One Child Nation, the Metrograph is also showing her previous two films, Hooligan Sparrow on Saturday (with the filmmaker doing a QnA) and 2017′s I Am Another You  on Sunday.

This week’s Late Nites at Metrograph is John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness from 1987, while Playtime: Family Matinees  will screen the 1953 monster film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which was a huge influence on the making of the original Godzilla.  “Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Future Life Part II” concludes this weekend with screenings of 1970’s Notes Towards an African Orestes and Pasolini’s collaboration with Godard, 1963’s La Ricotta, which will screen with three Godard shorts, all in 35mm. Rob Nilsson’s 1996 film Chalk will play a couple more times before the weekend, as well.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

The Forum continues its amazing Burt Lancaster series with Atlantic City and Luchino Visconti’s 1963 film The Leopard on Wednesday, plus John Cassevetes’ 1963 film A Child is Waiting on Weds. and Thurs. 1983’s Local Hero screens on Friday and Saturday and more, as the series continues through August 6.

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Tarantino’s movie is still mostly showing Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood for the next few weeks, and it’s also mostly sold out, but the Wednesday matinee James Bond movie continue today with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), George Lazenby’s only movie as Bond, but a good one nonetheless. The weekend KIDDEE MATINE is Disney’s amazing Mary Poppins (1964), and then Monday’s matinee is John Waters’ original 1988 musical comedy Hairspray.

AERO  (LA):

It now looks like the EGYPTIAN THEATRE will shut down for renovations but the Aero is back, taking up the “Highballs and Screwballs” double feature series with My Man Godfrey  (1936 )and Danger (1946)on Thursday, followed Friday with a double feature of Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic Sunset Boulevard and Preston Sturges Sullivan’s Travels (1941)… the latter two are in 35mm, the first two as DCP. Friday’s midnight movie is the original Child’s Play, and then Saturday, it’s back to “Highballs and Screwballs” with the Oscar-winning It Happened One Night  (1934) and Ida Lupino’s The Hitchhiker  (1953). On Sunday, the Art Directors Guild brings Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo  (1985) with production designer Stuart Wurzel in person.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Apparently, the IFC’s usual series are back… or maybe the theater finally decided to add them to its website because it looks like this began back in early July, and I didn’t see any of this on the site before this week. Anyway, I’ll try to get over the fact that I missed most of July with the August offerings. Weekend Classics: Staff Picks Summer 2019 will screen James Gray’s Two Loversthis weekend, while Waverly Midnights: Staff Picks Summer 2019 will show Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle and Late Night Favorites: Summer 2019 will show… for the 5,000th time… Ridley Scott’s Alien. (There must be a lot of demand since this seems to show at the IFC Center every month.) Also, “Abbas Kiarostami: A Retrospective” continues over the next few weeks with two more panels by film critic Godfrey Chesire and Jamsheed Akrami this Saturday and Sunday.

FILM OF LINCOLN CENTER (NYC):

“This is Cinema Now: 21stCentury Debuts” concludes on Wednesday with double features of Neighboring Sounds (a fantastic Brazil-set doc) and João Pedro Rodrigues’s 2000 film O Fantasma, as well as a double feature of Eduardo Williams’ The Human Surge and Helena Wittman’s Drift.  This week’s free double feature on Thursday is Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine (1998) as well as Alex Ross Perry’s fantastic recent film Her Smell with a reception in between! And did we mention... it’s FREE?!

BAM CINEMATEK(NYC):

BAM’s series “We Can’t Even: Millennials on Film”  continues this week with Beach Rats, The Bling Ring, Tangerine, Greta Gerwig’s Oscar-nominated Lady Bird, David Fincher’s The Social Networkand the Edward Snowden doc Citizenfour, basically movies from the last ten to fifteen years that appeal to Millennials. On Saturday, the “Beyond the Canon” series will screen Haifaa Al-Mansour’s Wadja, along with Wim Wenders’ 1974 film Wind in the Cities.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

The “See It Big! 70mm” series is a bit of a knock-off of what Lincoln Center did a few years back, but some of the same movies will be shown including Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, plus more in the coming weeks. Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, starring Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie, will screen every afternoon from Thursday to Sunday as part of its “Summer Matinees: Fantastic Worlds” series. (While there, also check out the Jim Henson Exhibition!)

ROXY CINEMA (NYC)

New York’s downtown (and downstairs) arthouse will show the 1966 political thriller Torn Curtain in 35mm on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

This week’s Friday night midnight movie is Tommy Wiseau’s The Roomfrom 2003.

Next week, we have a bunch of wide releases including Paramount’s Dora and the Lost City of Gold, the horror anthology Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the female-driven crime thriller The Kitchenand more.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #97

gaming survey.

let's start with the classic: what's your favorite game?  why?   "silent hill 2."  it is so fucking well-thought out and went places no one ever thought a game would go.  it was psychological as fuck and absolutely terrifying in that sense.  it had such an intricate storyline and was positively heart-wrenching.  the characters were very unique, and oh boy, don't even think of forgetting the soundtrack.  it was so, so immersive.  the monsters were incredibly symbolic, and it really, really got you to question your own conscience.  i could literally go on about how wonderful this game is for hours on end. least favorite game?   probably "eleusis," whose name i don't care if i spelled wrong.  i know it's an indie game, but holy fuck, it's horrible.  the puzzles make legitimately no sense and literally requires a walkthrough. what's your favorite gaming genre?   psychological horror, easily. least favorite gaming genre?   probably first-person shooters. what's your favorite childhood game?   "spyro the dragon: year of the dragon."  i loved the entire series, but that was my favorite. when did you start gaming, anyway?   literally as soon as i could hold a controller and had the coordination to understand the buttons. scariest game ever?   "scp containment breach."  i couldn't play it because the first scp scared me so much lol.  however, i've watched my favorite youtuber play it many times.  despite it being in the indie scene, it's an incredible game and should really, really cost money.  hmmmm... actually, "parasite eve" may overthrow it.  not in terms of jumpscares, but in terms of, "what if that really happened?"  scientifically, maybe it's possible.  it explains why so very well.  it's the only game that ever resulted in me having to take an anxiety pill.  oh yeah, fun fact, we actually had a demo of the game on a demo disc, and mom hated the preview of it so much that she refused to let my sisters and i play it lol. favorite comedic game?   oh that's easy, "five nights at fuckboy's 3."  it is sooo fucking funny.  i love all of them, but the third's the funniest. favorite action game?   "resident evil 4."  it was one of my first action horror experiences. saddest game in the history of ever?   "silent hill 2," again.  i fucking cried so hard and my week was ruined lol.  that game legitimately changed me and made me ponder my decisions much more. favorite game based off a tv show or movie?   probably the first season of "the walking dead."  the characters were very unique (kenny is the Love of my Life), and the plot was phenomenal.  i wasn't much of a fan of the gameplay (or lack thereof), but i was there for the story.  the ending had me sobbing.  i've never actually watched the tv show, but man i love that game.  season three hasn't been that good imo, but i enjoyed the second one, too. game with the most interesting concept?   the entire "silent hill," obviously.  the idea that our biggest regrets and demons exist in multiple layers of reality is cool as fuck.  "soma" is a close second.  the philosophical debate of "if you move a human's conscience to a machine, is it still human?" is incredible. game with the most fucked-up storyline?   "silent hill 2" or "silent hill 3."  sh2 was more psychological in how screwed-up it was, but sh3 was very brazen abut it.  it also has the only scene ever in a video game that made me gag.  like i had to walk away from the controller because i literally almost puked. favorite gaming otp?   that's p hard.  actually, wait, i like tyrande and illidan from "world of warcraft" a lot.  their story was sad as fuck.  jaina and arthas from the same game, too. favorite video game protagonist?   i have two: heather mason from sh2 and leon kennedy from the "resident evil" series.  both are just total badases.  heather mason reminds me a lot of myself, and leon is just super fucking cool and gives zero shits. favorite video game antagonist?   does pyramid head from the sh series count?  i mean in ways he's not really an antagonist, so.  if he's not included, maybe claudia wolf from "silent hill 3" (LOOK I KNOW I'M TALKING ABOUT IT A LOT BUT THE SERIES IS MY BABY OKAY).  she is a prime example of how religion can absolutely destroy a person, and i think it's really cool that she truly thinks she's doing what's good for the world.  i also really like walter sullivan from "silent hill 4" because he is just sooo incredibly fucked up with a really tragic story.  arthas menethil from "world of warcraft: wrath of the lich king" is also amazing and i pitied him so much. favorite video game monster?   pyramid head, bar none.  he is so mysterious and terrifying in his concept. sequel that disappointed you most?   hmmm.  i'm not sure.  i mean, if i absolutely had to pick, maybe "silent hill: origins?"  i mean don't get me wrong, i enjoyed the game, but it's my least favorite in the series. most under-rated game?   "AMNESIA: A MACHINE FOR PIGS."  oh my GOD.  i do NOT understand why people thought it was disappointing to the title.  that is one of the most fucked-up, greatest games i've ever played (it's my second favorite game) i've ever had the pleasure of playing.  it is way, way better than the first game.  it's another game that had me depressed for days and questioning my life. most over-rated game?   probably "call of duty" and the like.  i just don't see the appeal. favorite quote from a game?   "i have stood knee-deep in mud and bone and filled my lungs with mustard gas. i have seen two brothers fall. i have lain with holy wars and copulated with the autumnal fallout. i have dug trenches for the refugees; i have murdered dissidents where the ground never thaws and starved the masses into faith. a child's shadow burnt into the brickwork. a house of skulls in the jungle. the innocent, the innocent, mandus, trod and bled and gassed and starved and beaten and murdered and enslaved. this is your coming century! they will eat them, mandus, they will make pigs of you all and they will bury their snouts into your ribs and they will eat your hearts!" - "amnesia: a machine for pigs."  i get literally covered in goosebumps every single time i hear it.  it's about how absolutely horrid the world is today from the perspective of the past.  i also really enjoy "the only me is me... are you sure the only you is you?" from "silent hill: p.t." game you want made into a movie?   "SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS" OH MY GOD.  CAN YOU FUCKING IMAGINE. game you currently most want to play?   "the last guardian."  the story and trico are so fucking cute. what do you think of revamping classic games to "improve" them?   eh, i've never been too into it.  don't get me wrong, it works sometimes, but imo, it takes away the charm of the game sometimes.  ex., with "crash bandicoot" being remade.  i loved that game as a kid, but i think its graphics just added to the charm. favorite movie based off a game?   the first "silent hill." did you ever get those old demo discs as a kid?  did they ever influence you to buy a game?   yes.  i think we had three.  i was first exposed to "shadow of the colossus" by a demo disc.  i was totally into it and only played it a thousand times before buying it. were you ever or are you into the "final fantasy" craze?   not really.  i used to play "final fantasy viii" on a demo disc; my sisters, brother, and i loved it.  my bro was the only one who could beat the final boss (the spider thing) of the demo; he and ashley used to play it a lot.  i really liked it, and when i was young, wanted to buy it.  we all used to think squall was sexy as fuck lol.  the summons were super-duper cool too, especially rinoa's (i used to make her do her water dragon limit break constantly ha ha).  i did, however, have "final fantasty vii," and i got all the way to the second disc, but i eventually just fell out of playing it.  i think it was too long for me personally, although i really did enjoy the story. i'm sure you've heard of the "five nights at freddy's" one, too.  were you into it?   i've never played it myself and i personally wouldn't, but i've watched youtubers play it and i enjoy it.  the story and characters are cool (especially springtrap), and the story is quite frightening. hardest game you've ever beaten?   i am not even remotely kidding, "the legend of spyro: the eternal night."  it took me over a fucking year to beat that game and i rage-quit a lot. hardest boss monster?   jesus fucking christ.  there are three that top the list.  the ultimate being from "parasite eve" is probably number one, though.  he was hard as FUCK and took me like a whole goddamn day to beat.  his multiple phases were annoying, and the fact he could trap you at the VERY END if you picked the wrong door was a cardinal fucking sin.  basaran from "shadow of the colossus" was also horrific.  even malus wasn't that bad.  getting onto his back was a goddamn nightmare, especially when he got back up and if you misjudged your jump, you'd go flying.  ripto of "spyro the dragon: ripto's rage!" was also a childhood nightmare.  his phases were also annoying and he was just overall difficult.  i felt like a fucking god when i finally did beat him lol.  memory of alessa of sh3 was also hard for me, although she herself isn't that much of a difficult boss.  it was just that i had no ammo so had to melee her the whole time.  i got so fucking angry. how did you feel about "silent hill: p.t." being cancelled?  it was probably one of the most anticipated games of 2014.   want my honest opinion?  i'm glad it was cancelled.  that series is my fucking child and i would be legitimately furious if they fucked it up.  i had many issues with it.  one, the fact that norman reedus was made a model of the main character.  it just pissed me off that they designed him to look pretty much exactly like daryl dixon.  i don't want people to think "oh hey a guy from twd went to silent hill."  i also had a problem with them changing the name to "silent hills;" i really don't know why since it's such a minor thing, but it irked me regardless.  it also really, really bugged me that kojima openly said he's a bit of a wuss with horror games.  dude, you can't be like that when you're working with what is well-known to be one of the scariest series of all time.  i had full faith that del toro would be great for the series, but not kojima.  it also pissed me off that it was said that aliens might be involved in the game.  just... no.  that's not what silent hill is.  i get that it's a joke in the series, but to make it canon?  if they actually went through with that and made it so extraterrestrials were involved, i literally would've broken something.  ultimately, i'm glad it didn't work. favorite running joke or something of the like in a series?   the "i'm totally gonna stick my hand in this filthy toilet for a wallet" joke that the "silent hill" series has, rooting from when james sunderland did so in sh2.  i love the references. favorite side-kick?   uhhh.  cynder from "the legend of spyro: dawn of the dragon."  she not only looks super fucking cool, but she has an interesting story and is just overall really rad. saddest video game death?   well that's hard.  prepare for spoilers.  the one that hit me the hardest personally was probably vol'jin from wow.  he was my favorite character out of like the billion wow has, so him dying sucked.  not to even mention his death was super anti-climactic to where it pissed off the whole damn fanbase, despite being one of the most important characters.  lee from twd was also absolutely horrible.  ha, what a coincidence... they have the same voice actor.  #stopkillingdavidfennoy favorite plot twist?   spoiler warning once again.  my favorite and to me the most shocking was the fact james was responsible for mary's death in "silent hill 2."  it rocked my fucking world. best soundtrack?   "shadow of the colossus."  ko otani is a musical genius.  sh2 is a very close second. what's the first gaming console you ever had?   the original playstation. favorite setting in a game?   that's super hard considering so many games are absolutely gorgeous.  but i suppose lakeside amusement park from "silent hill 3."  i love the blood & rust, macabre feel to it.

[theliterateape]

I Like to Watch | Game of Thrones (All Eight Seasons in Three Weeks)

by Don Hall

On April 17, 2011, I watched the first episode of the first season of HBO’s Game of Thrones. I immediately loved it like so many others. I was so happy to see Sean Bean as another epic hero in a Lord of the Rings sort of drama. Before the second episode, a friend of mine let me know she had read the first book and that Ned Stark is beheaded shortly after.

“Fuck that!” I thought. “That’s some bait and switch bullshit.”

Despite the overwhelming pop-culture gravitas the next eight or so years held, I ignored the show from that point on. Sometime during Season Five, I decided that I’d wait until the goddamned thing was done and then I’d watch all of it in one fell swoop.

Thank you, COVID quarantine.

I’m not one of those DON’T SPOIL IT assholes unless it just opened, so I knew a number of things going in. Of course, that Ned Stark would get his head lopped off. I knew that there was something called The Red Wedding and all hell had broken loose after but didn’t know whose wedding it was or who got axed. I knew about Cersei’s walk of atonement but not the circumstances. I read some squawk about Arya finally getting laid and I knew that the finale disappointed, well, everyone. 

I also had heard that Daenerys dragon-flamed thousands in a bloodthirsty move, John Snow killed her, and that Brandon Stark was made the king at the end (all making long-time fans Twitter-furious).

I read that the show runners for the final season no longer had a book to adapt but an outline of possibilities from author George R.R. Martin and that there was a Starbucks cup present in Season 8, Episode 4.

Endings are hard. I recall really enjoying LOST during its six seasons. I loved the characters, the riddles, the labyrinth of theories about the island. I also have a sour taste in my mouth because I hated the conclusion. That failure to stick the landing tainted the entire six years of engaging and fun television.

I loved Spielberg’s AI: Artificial Intelligence but the last fifth of the film (the epilogue following the kid’s descent into the ocean staring at the statue of the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio) was both unnecessary and has made any repeated viewings uninteresting.

Stephen King is almost legendary for shitty endings to brilliant tales. The most notable is the creation of Pennywise the Serial Killing Clown. Easily on of the scariest villains ever penned only to reveal at the end that he is just a big fucking spider.

On the other hand, Six Feet Under, The Leftovers, and the most recent Watchmen all ended so well and I was so satisfied that they sit on a mental shelf of some of the best told stories I know.

Watching Season One of GoT and knowing the ending likely had me looking for clues. And the clues are there. Brandon Stark is the first significant character we see which indicates in some way that the whole thing is his story. Likewise, Daenerys shows us her impulsive anger and desire for power very early on. Throughout the series, both these aspects built a resume in my viewing that indicated the logic behind where it ended.

By Season Four, I realized that there are three things that define this sprawling storyline: a fixation on cocks (and the removal and absence of balls), broken vows and lies, and spectacular deaths. 

Lots of talk about testicles. Like almost ridiculous amount of time spent on so many characters without them. Ramsay Bolton cuts off Theon’s nuts and he became like a neutered puppy. Varys has a dude in a fucking crate he keeps as revenge for lopping his grape nuts off. Grey Worm, while often badass, still spends an awful lot of screen time either reminding us or him being reminded that he is a Ken Doll in the crotch.

Add to that the nearly non-stop cock bragging by Bronn, Tyrian (a dwarf in size but, oh, the size of his Johnson!), the mysterious primacy of Podrick’s magic man meat. Yeah, George had a fixation on dick and sack.

I could be wrong but the only character among hundreds who never told a lie or broke a promise was John Snow, right? I mean it was fucking 76 hours, so I may have missed it but it was almost a guarantee that no one in this series could be trusted ever.

By Season Six, if Martin were trying convey some sort of overarching message it was not that power corrupts but those who pursue power are corrupted by the pursuit. The only truly decent characters in the entire cast of hundreds are the ones who do not want to be in power. Ned Stark doesn’t want to be Hand of Robert Baratheon. John Snow has less than no interest to be Lord Commander, King in the North, or Occupant of the Iron Throne. Tyrian Lannister enjoys power but rarely seeks it. Arya Stark isn’t invested in acquiring power but instead skill to avenge injustice. Jorah Mormont only wants to serve a Queen he loves and is inspired by. 

Back to the spectacular deaths.

The best Death by Dragon Fire was the first, Kraznys mo Nakloz, the slave trader who sold the Unsullied to Daenerys.

Sansa Stark feeding Ramsay Bolton to his own dogs was well-deserved (he was maybe the only truly irredeemable character in eight seasons) and satisfying. I never liked Sansa but her double-tap with Arya killing Littlefinger was just exactly right.

Lyanna Mormont dying by being crushed by an undead giant just as she stabs it in the single blue eye was rad.

Oberyn Martell getting his eyes gouged and his skull crushed by The Mountain after one of the best single combat scenes in the series was awesome.

Tyrian capping his dad while Tywin is dropping a deuce wasn’t spectacular but was somehow perfectly fitting.

In my view, the best death was Arya’s assassination of Ser Meryn Trant. Gruesome, well deserved, and by the exact right means and by the right character. 

Arya Stark was, hands down, my favorite character in the entire thing. Her journey to Bravos and subsequent training and then what she did with that training was righteous. Tyrian was also a favorite and Peter Dinklage carried so much of this series it’s difficult to imagine any of it working without that specific actor playing that specific character. Third on this list was Bronn. Plain-spoken, always true to his nature, funny, and surprisingly honest in intent, Bronn felt like the audience stand-in in this world of royals, religious fanatics, and soldiers.

Also, I’ve been seeing cinematic dragons since I was a kid and these dragons were what I think real dragons would look like.

I understand the need for so many to want there to be messages of import from such a pop culture behemoth but I’m not so sure Martin was going for any of that. Aside from the idea that the act of pursuing power is the true corruption, any über-ideas were like the best characters — set up for our enjoyment only to be axed as soon as we fell in love with them.

The feminist message seemed to be that women are perfectly capable of being in charge and just as capable to be fuck ups and despots as well. The whole Bernie Sanders-ishness of Daenerys freeing all the slaves would be quite progressive except that, once freed, all her slaves tended to serve her, die for her, or kill for her. In fact, the two most prominent freed slaves — Grey Worm and Missandei — served virtually no distinguishing purpose in the storyline.

I read some pissing and moaning about the only two black characters in eight seasons either being killed off or becoming the tool of fascism and I’d be more distraught but Missandei was a cardboard cut-out of a character and Grey Worm was simply a follower. Not a lot on diversity in Westeros, you know?

But let’s look at that fucking ending.

If I were to throw out a recommendation to anyone thinking to watch the series for the first time, I’d say STOP AFTER “THE LONG NIGHT” AND GO NO FURTHER! First, the epic battle to defeat the Night King is a fucking ride and definitive. Season One, Episode One: “Winter is coming.” Season Eight, Episode Three: “Winter came and we kicked its ass.” Done. Finished. Second, after saving the world from the undead and the creepy snow god on his undead snow dragon (was that blue fire hot? Cold?) who gives a flying fuck about the Iron Goddamned Throne?

Sure you’d miss the fight between The Hound and The Mountain but after eight seasons of build up, that battle royale was pretty much just a brawl, devoid of the emotional pay off expected. You’d miss Daenerys burning the Red Keep and thousands of innocent women and children (which is some spectacular filmmaking and completely in character for her despite your need for her to rise above her obvious and oft-stated lust for power and vengeance). 

You’d also miss the two biggest missteps in the series: the deaths of both bloodthirsty Queens. Which ain’t much to miss because spending 76 hours of Cersei connive, betray, napalm hundreds in a church, fuck her brother, try to kill her other brother, lose her children, and become one of pop culture’s most indelible villains, she dies by getting rubble dropped on her. WTF? Are you kidding me? Not even a callback to the first episode and drop her out of window?

And, while I felt the transition from Mother of Dragons to Pol Pot was rushed, I bought that Daenerys let the rush of power seize her. But a character so larger than life, so imbued with destiny, dies by getting stabbed in the gut? WTF? Even her shitty brother got a molten gold crown.

In a series defined in some ways by creative and satisfying deaths, to punt the demise of two of the most interesting and central characters just blows.

The internet is filled with die-hard fans playing coulda/woulda/shoulda with the ending of Game of Thrones but that changes nothing. We are stuck with the ending we are given. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the world of Westeros. Like a book I’m thrilled to read, I feel a little wanting for more after the final page and I’m still hearing that goddamned catchy theme song in my head. I choose to pretend I never saw the final three episodes. I choose to end the series with the defeat of the Night King because once you save the world, who gives a fuck about almost anything else?