#like as far as shit goes it's actually not an objectively horrific scene it really is quite basic

[hella1975]

i have the option to show really vividly something HORRENDOUS in the next chapter of my fic OR i can sort of let it happen off-camera and pull my punches with it...

[webnovel-liker]

Look. Maybe im just being chronically online and nitpicking (and tell me if im being that) but those type of comments really bothers me. It smells a little bit misogynistic to me

(as yall know my english is shit and i dont have the vocabulary to explain this better but hear me out.)

1. In Tamayo's case, she being a mother is just mentioned in ONE sentece and yes in that video she expressing her guilt of killing her family and how she just wanted to live long enough to see her child grow. But in a grand scale, her actions, motivation, and the fact that she is there fighting Muzan is because is she recognizes what Muzan is doing is wrong and like other characters, she also carries human will despite being a demon. Boiling down a female character actions to "mother" and solely seeing her for that, when you know that same character for seasons and having multiple scenes of her saying her motivations feels misogynistic to me, fellas.

2. Amane didn't fucking "pleased and fulfilled" Kagaya desires???? What the hell are you on about??? Amane and the 2 children were the ones who choosed to partake in the suicide plan alongside with Kagaya because they were aware of their necessity in the plan and, as people of the clan, they are aware of their mission of killing Muzan. .Admittedly, this information is from the manga and not the anime, but still the assumption that a woman's sacrifice was done out of some weird submission towards her husband and not due to the major objective/theme of human will that the entire story is centred around is just....so weird. In the case of the girls, they didn't want to be apart from their parents, its not because Amane forced them to die out of her love towards her husband. That's so messed up. And that definitely isn't loyalty nor true love, that interpretation goes against the story's core themes and messages, and also against that very act of suicide itself. It's belittling their sacrifice and will, it's very very insulting.

If Amane and the girls were male, the phrasing and assumptions would be VERY different here. That's for sure. Amane was loyal not because she was "submitted" to her husband and "sacrificed" her daughters, but because she choosed to stay with her loved one even in a horrific death and to carry the mission of her clan til the very end. That's noble and heroic. The Hashiras respected and followed her alongside with Kagaya for a reason yknow? Not because she is his wife, but because she carry the same heroic traits, responsibility and devotion to her mission as Kagaya.

Look, everyone knows that Kimetsu is far from a feminist piece considering that it fails on that aspect 90% of the time. But, in the 10% that actually have some good things in it's female writing, it shouldn't be thrown in the mud with more misogynistic shit from the fans. I wish those people just stopped and thought for once about those characters outside of the scope of "mother" and "wife", especially when in Kimetsu, these two characters' actions are heavily connected to the story's main theme.

When Kagaya, Renguku and other male characters sacrificed themselves they're (rightfully) praised. They're mvps, heros, inspiring characters. But when a female character does that she is simply doing her duty as mother, as a wife, to submit to her husband's will, to be solely defined as her motherly grief for her family when she only briefly mentioned her past and has been in the anime since the 1st season and so you could analyze her character outside from that.

It's 2024, anibros should grow up already.

[iron--spider]

I woke up at 3am yesterday to watch The Devil All the Time and I’ve been thinking about it since. I’m gonna put my thoughts and feelings and a review of sorts behind the cut, because I am gonna talk about it freely, so there will be spoilers! So don’t click if you don’t wanna see. I’ll also be discussing the content of the film and I know that might bother people, so that stuff is in here, too! And it’ll be really long because you know I can’t shut up.

So, I loved it. I loved it loved it loved it. I read the book a long time ago when I first found out Tom was gonna be in it, and the only problem I had with the book was that the POVs would change in the middle of a paragraph lmao, but other than that I thought it was pretty perfect. I knew the movie was gonna be pretty brutal, because the book is brutal, so I was prepared.

-BUT I think the critics HIGHLY HIGHLY exaggerated how bad the content was. Like, seriously, they acted as if this was gonna be a Saw movie. I was preparing for blatant, horrific gore, but it didn’t live up to their dramatics at all. There’s blood and nasty situations, but every single episode of Game of Thrones is worse than this movie, as are most episodes of any crime drama on a paid network. I actually thought they were super, super tactful of all their horrific shit. The dog death was off screen and the shot of the body (described by the critics as literally traumatic) was so quick (enough to shut your eyes) and in the dark. I also argue that particular moment is extremely important for Arvin’s journey, because it’s the moment he truly turns on his father and turns on religion entirely, and he carries it with him his whole life (it’s what he flashes back to when he says “I know what my daddy did” because it’s the marker of all Willard’s mistakes) and it winds up being one of the last things he does before he leaves everything behind. Burying Jack’s bones. So, like, I despise dog death or any animal death in my entertainment, but it’s important here and handled well. And all the worst death scenes are either extremely fast (Helen’s and Gary Matthew’s) or shown in negative (all the photos). I think Bodecker’s headshot with Bobo is probably the worst and is also pretty quick. I don’t know if this means I’m a jaded bitch, but God the way they were all whining and crying, I thought it’d be a million times worse. It could have been, with the book’s descriptions, so it was actually pretty tame. Lenora’s death affected me the most and they cut away from that, too. I guess it’ll still bother some people, but there are many, many mainstream things that are far more violent and gory than this was.

-I thought it was a beautiful movie. I never mind films that are slightly slower but I love ones that use their time to lay things out and really show us what’s going on, build the ambiance and the relationships. I loved the narration (which I was worried about), and it really made me feel like we were visiting a moment in time that was important. Like something that was written and should be learned about. Rumors in a town you’re passing through. The ghosts of past trauma and transgressions looming over everyone that’s left.

-I liked the changes they made with Roy and Theodore because I thought that storyline kinda meandered in the book and I’m glad that Roy was actually gone the whole time and not just neglecting to come back to Lenora.

-The only real complaints I can make, I’ll get out of the way here: I wanted a little bit more time with Carl and Sandy. Carl was really creepy, but he could have been much creepier. In the book he was the one looking at the pictures constantly, Not Sandy, and that really showed that he was the one with the sickness, the one pushing them forward and orchestrating it all. I thought they did well with showing how Sandy deteriorated in her efforts with him through the years, but I would have liked to see a bit more of their personal lives together and her fear of him and her genuine feelings about what they’re doing, because the book goes into that a lot more. I also wasn’t a fan of Lee finding the picture early and knowing some about what they were doing, because I liked how it was a surprise to him in the book and yet he still did all he could to cover it up. And lastly, in the book there’s a scene with Arvin after he kills Sandy and Carl where he’s in a motel and he takes like 18 showers because he can’t get the grime of what he’s done off of him, and he looks at the picture and has a nightmare about killing Sandy, and I really would have loved if they’d kept it in. It would have been another ‘acting’ moment for Tom, and it would have been nice for us to see his direct trauma and reaction to everything that’s piling on top of him.

-BUT that’s it. I loved pretty much every single other thing and decision that they made. The cinematography was TOP NOTCH. You could tell they filmed on 35mm film, you could see the grain, and it really, really added to it. Antonio Campos is a very skilled director and I trusted him at the helm of this story. Everything looked so authentic, all the sets and the costumes. The soundtrack and score were AMAZING and enhanced the film. Technically it was just perfect in every regard to me.

-Acting! Acting! God this was like...a massive testament to the casting department and the talent of these people. Everyone was on their A game. Bill Skarsgård has been on my radar since Castle Rock (which I recommend to everybody, both seasons) and he was so natural and great in this role. Haley Bennet was absolutely adorable as Charlotte, I loved her cute face and her sweet relationship with little Arvin. Riley Keough was so great as Sandy with the limited amount of time she had, and Jason Clarke is one of my favorites but he was unrecognizable in this as creepy ass Carl. Harry Melling was a far cry from Dudley Dursley and he did a great job with his screen time, too. Same with Mia Wasikowska, who didn’t have much to do (same as poor Helen in the book) but she was able to garner our sympathy anyway. Seb Stan was slimy and gross but he pulled it off so well. Eliza Scanlen has been one of my favorites since Sharp Objects (another one that’s brutal as hell but I recommend it, she’s so scary) and she was so, so great here. Robert Pattinson was ALRIGHT, everybody talks him up over this but he felt a little hammy to me and a little too over the top, but there’s no denying his talent.

-Now, the reason we’re all here. Tom. My God. As soon as it was over I just didn’t know what the hell to do, I didn’t even know how to....go on, lmfao. We all know he’s talented, that’s why we’re here, that’s why we love him, but his performance in this is just BEYOND all that. Beyond comprehension. The man is only 24 years old and he’s out here outacting people who have been in the industry for longer than he’s been alive. He is SHOCKINGLY good. I knew he’d be perfect for Arvin as soon as I read the book, but he just completely embodied this role in a way that I couldn’t have imagined. He doesn’t show up in the movie until about 45 minutes in (which doesn’t hurt it because of the strength of the leadup, Bill’s performance and the performance of little Arvin’s actor) but God, as soon as he’s there the whole thing comes to life in a way that it hadn’t before. Tom is literally just a shining light, and he draws your eye in every single scene he’s in, and when he’s not there you’re wondering when he’s gonna come back. Arvin, to me, is a very complex character—he has been inherently changed by how his father twisted religion in his childhood, how deeply he betrayed him by his behavior, but he still has a kind heart and a protective streak and the need to be strong despite the pain nearly breaking him apart from moment to moment. Tom is just outrageously good at portraying all Arvin’s little nuances, how he clenches his jaw, how his voice breaks when he’s afraid or trying to convince someone of something or get his point across, how his hands tremble after he’s done something he wishes he didn’t have to do, how his whole body wilts when he realizes he’s emulating his father. And his eyes. Tom can do so, so much with his eyes that it’s unbelievable. He tells you so much with just a simple look, a glance, a wince, a long blink. I’m not exaggerating when I say he’s just an absolute revelation in this, he cements his place in Hollywood with a firm hand and a tender look, and I will not be forgetting what he did here anytime soon. There’s a reason that everyone called him out for being so stunning in this. He is magnificent. He has a gift.

-I wanna say, in particular, how much I love Arvin’s relationship with Lenora. Their lives were both marked by such tragedy and pain and Arvin just took up the torch of protecting her from the moment he said hello as a child. He wants so badly to be tough, and he IS, but there’s just miles and miles of love in this boy’s heart, and it manifests itself for his family—for his uncle, for his grandma, but for Lenora in particular. I loved how he just showed up when she was being harassed and just ran in there without thinking, and it’s purely devastating that he was out taking care of her bullies while a worse predator was cornering her. The scene where she was sick wasn’t in the book but it was a beautiful addition. Tom sometimes wears this very open, unguarded, honest expression, and this is the only scene in which he shows it, and it really expresses the love between them and how much she means to him. Arvin didn’t find Lenora’s body in the book, but it was the right change for them to make. Tom was devastating here, and that pain and that moment truly fuel every second of his journey through the rest of the film. “My Lenora”. The saddest siblings. Both Eliza and Tom did so beautifully with this relationship and I hope they work together again.

-Favorite acting moments for Tom: when he’s in the car in the rain after beating up the bullies, when he’s in the church crowd and realizes Preston is insulting his Grandma (the way his face changes oh my GOD), when he finds Lenora, when the cop comes to tell him Lenora was pregnant (this is just....so damn good), when he was telling his uncle to look after his Grandma, THE ENTIRE CHURCH CONFRONTATION (the way he trembles when he’s trying to get his attention, how he speaks the whole time, how he slowly gathers his strength), when he thinks Sandy has shot him, the moment where he’s over Lee’s body and just....pleading with his eyes for him to listen and realize what he’s done. And the last scene, in the car, all the emphasis on his face....once again, he can do so, so much with a look, with his eyes. Someone called out the beautiful last shot in the film, and of course, it’s Arvin’s sleeping face. And it was so beautiful (and devastating, to think of him enlisting. Tom draws so much sympathy that you just want Arvin to have a normal life so badly. He deserves it, he does, but will he get it?)

-Last thing I’ll say, I really loved how, despite turning his back on religion, that God seems to be protecting Arvin the whole time. He’s terribly afraid confronting the preacher and that could have easily gone badly, especially when he tosses the book, but Arvin was somehow able to get a shot off and get the upper hand. And with Carl and Sandy, he senses something is off immediately once they pull off the road, and he would have absolutely been killed had Carl not switched out Sandy’s bullets for blanks. And in the confrontation with Lee, he once again shoots at the same time as him, shoots without looking, and manages to come out unscathed and on top. A few spoiler reviews pointed out that the last person that picks Arvin up is supposed to be a Jesus-like figure, almost like he’s finally been saved. It hurts that everyone around him that he loved is almost forsaken by God, but he himself is protected. It’s such a complicated commentary on religion throughout the entire piece, but it’s so interesting and engrossing.

So I’d recommend this movie to anyone that loves movies, loves Tom, can deal with a gritty story that takes its time laying out all the chess pieces. It is definitely heavy subject matter but it doesn’t go overboard with the horror as it easily could have. Yes, there are triggers to look for, but the critics hugely over exaggerated how awful it was. I can probably go get time stamps for certain things if people wanna ask me after reading this, but if you can get through a Tarantino film or any HBO drama, you can do this. And Tom’s performance is one for the ages and not one that deserves to be passed over or downplayed. It is beautiful and heart-wrenching—a magnificent turn that displays his monumental ability to reach out and guide you into any world he decides to make his own.

I loved The Devil All the Time.

[franniebanana]

CQL Rewatch - Ep15

I forgot this guy’s name, Yao or something? Honestly, I don’t care enough to research this, like, at all. I hate this guy. My friend and I now refer to him as the Hype Man, so I might just call him that from now on. But I wanted to say that I didn’t realize he was in it so early, so when I saw him, I was like, “That fucking guy!!” And I also totally missed that the point of Jiang Fengmian leaving was to take this worthless piece of trash somewhere. I wish he’d died haha. But then I guess there’d be less reason to hate him, and I enjoy hating him.

I can’t believe this is the first paragraph that people are going to see. If you’re reading this now, you’re like, why do I want to read this crap? And y’know what, I can’t blame you. The next few episodes are gonna be rough. I don’t even know if there will be much to say on my end. My friend, after watching these few episodes commented something like, “Huh, that really dragged.” I could only agree, pulling my hair out from the headache these few episodes were giving me.

Okay, but seriously, Yao is so pathetic here! Talking about how he never thought they’d end up like this, and, “Oh, we were just a small clan, woe is me!” It’s amazing that he turns into the biggest prick, always right there hyping up the scapegoat-blame game rhetoric. Sorry, I hate this fucker.

A rare nice moment from Madam Yu. It was sweet having her show a caring side, packing medicine for her husband, snacks for her daughter. But of course, it was because Jiang Yanli had come to say goodbye to her earlier. Jiang Cheng is really like his mother—they can’t do anything for kindness’s sake, there’s always an obligation to the kindness.

I hate Wang Lingjiao, but I love her, and I love hating her. I’m conflicted. She’s just such a fun, evil character, more fun than Xue Yang in my opinion, probably because she actual interacts with the main characters in the story. It will forever annoy me that Xue Yang gets so much attention for appearing in a long-ass flashback (via empathy) and what should have been a flashback (Chang Clan) but wasn’t because they wanted it to be padding, I guess.

Anyway, Wang Lingjiao. She’s fun, she goes completely nuts—what’s not to love about her? She’s also someone who is so similar to Madam Yu, but because she also is ambitious and wants to take over Lotus Pier, Madam Yu wants her dead. Haha!

While Madam Yu is, objectively, a horrible person, I actually really like how her bodyguards aren’t treated like servants. I like that there’s mutual respect there, as there should be when you’re talking about protecting someone. Unfortunately, I think Madam Yu treats them better than her own family in most cases. It’s cool that the Jiang Clan doesn’t rely on servants to get food and tea and whatnot. These are things that the disciples and leaders must do for themselves. By contrast, the Jins have so many servants—it’s almost obscene by comparison.

Also I want to point out how hot-headed Jiang Cheng gets here, while his mother is just cool as a cucumber. It really shows you how unready he is to actually lead (which she points out). He’s so emotional, quick to anger, yet he has none of the foundations to really lead a group of people. Even when the disciples are explaining to them what happened to the kid and the kite, it’s Wei Wuxian who is keeping everyone calm and asking the questions.

I love that his first reaction here is to insult Wang Lingjiao’s intelligence. We’re basically getting a parallel to how he reacts to Wen Chao, which is fun because you can see how his behavior hasn’t changed at all. He uses his wit in both situations and is easily able to outwit both Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao. What’s kind of interesting is that Jiang Cheng will speak up now when he wouldn’t before. And I wonder is it because he is guilty for being silent earlier with Wen Chao, or is it something else? I think ultimately Jiang Cheng blames Jin Xizuan, Lan Wangji, and Wei Wuxian for what happens to his parents and to Lotus Pier. Even though, logically, it would have been destroyed anyway, he still wants to place the blame on someone who he can reach. All this is to say, I don’t think Jiang Cheng regrets not speaking up at the Wen Indoctrination. So I think he feels superiority over Wang Lingjiao really because he thinks she’s a stupid woman. And duh, she is not that clever. But she is smart enough to be able to use what talents she has to get ahead. She apparently is favored over Wen Chao’s own wife (who knew he was even married—not me lol), and you have to be ambitious and have some smarts to get that far. That’s not to say that Jiang Cheng wouldn’t treat a man this way too—I think he would. I think he picks and chooses who he’ll stand up to. He’s on his own turf, she’s an invader, she’s a woman—she only brought a few henchmen, right? He’s also been charged with watching over Lotus Pier in his father’s absence. Maybe he just wants to look big for once. Just a thought. Take it or leave it.

So, I think Madam Yu is enjoying this. She’s getting two things she wants: the Wens are going to leave and she gets to beat the shit out of Wei Wuxian. She doesn’t even have to be prodded to punish him, right? She barely waits until Wang Lingjiao has finished speaking. This has something she’s wanted to do for a long time. I think she’s hit him before, yes? But she can go all out right now, since Jiang Fengmian, his only real protector, is gone.

Also Jiang Cheng! Man, he’s torn apart! He hates to see this happening to Wei Wuxian—yes, he blames him for all that shit, but he doesn’t want to see this happen to him. It’s actually harder to watch Jiang Cheng in all of this than Wei Wuxian, who mostly remains as stoic as he could possibly be while she’s whipping the shit out of him. And again here, we get Wei Wuxian telling Jiang Cheng not to interfere, because the last thing he wants is for Jiang Cheng to be penalized too. He’s fine receiving this punishment because it’s a “better me than him” kind of a thing. It’s harder to watch someone else suffer than to suffer ourselves, right? I’m like that, idk if you readers are, but I think a lot of people are like that. I mean, I’ve always been that way, but it’s been amplified since I became a parent. And not only is he accepting of being whipped by Zidian, he’s ready to lose his fucking right hand. The hand that he wields a sword with. His dominant hand. He is ready to lose it with absolutely no fuss. That’s how much Wei Wuxian cares about Lotus Pier. His response is, “I’ll have to learn how to use my left hand.” It’s a passing line, a line when you can’t even see his face—but do you get how big that is? Jiang Cheng is up there losing his mind, completely emotional, crying, yelling at his mother to stop—Wei Wuxian is just silently gritting his teeth and taking it. They’re both brave (I would not want to stand up to Madam Yu), but different kinds of brave, y’know?

I do love this part. I’m not gonna lie. Seeing Madam Yu slap Wang Lingjiao around is something that’s deeply, deeply satisfying. I guess it’s just nice to see Madam Yu’s anger turned towards an actual villain, since up until this point, it’s been directly mainly at Wei Wuxian and her own husband. I think this part is forever tainted if you know how the story goes, because Madam Yu is just on fire! But if you’ve seen this series before, which hopefully you have (otherwise spoilers abound), you know it doesn’t end well for her. I like this plot device here, making you think that the good guys are going to come out on top, and then reversing it so quickly as soon as the Core-Melting Hand shows up. One minute, you’re cheering, the next, you’re…not.

I also want to point out how quickly things reverse here as well. Jiang Cheng is trying to protect and comfort Wei Wuxian throughout this whole scene, which is something we’re definitely not used to seeing. This has always (and I mean always) been more of Lan Wangji’s thing. But in kind of a nice twist of fate, we actually see Jiang Cheng caring for Wei Wuxian. But then, boy, do things change! We see a complete reversal of this behavior—first Wei Wuxian has to be there for Jiang Cheng’s emotional state, and then his physical one. And the man does not complain about it at all.

I want to say that I didn’t cry in my first watch of CQL until episode 50. That is 100% the truth, so help me God. However, when I watched this scene in the donghua, I cried like a little bitch. Cried probably isn’t the right word—how about sobbed. I sobbed. I think because I knew it was coming when I watched CQL, it didn’t really affect me (plus my husband was right there, not paying attention, but still on the couch with me, so I tend to not cry as much when he’s around. I like to cry on my own, okay?). Having said that, the second time I saw this scene, I fucking cried, and I really didn’t stop until after they told Jiang Yanli, because that sweetheart crying makes me cry, okay? I have a really hard time watching things about children and parents, because I always think about my own parents and my own kid, so it just makes me really emotional. The idea of never seeing your parents again, especially in such a traumatic situation, at the age of what—17? That’s something I can’t even begin to imagine. In a word, horrific. Traumatic isn’t even a strong enough word to describe the emotional and mental turmoil that a teenager would be going through. But I can probably ramble about that later.

And my heart breaks for Wei Wuxian here too. Even though she hated him, even though she treated him so poorly, I’m sure he still thought of her as something akin to a mother. She was the only mother figure he had in his life who was still living, so there was definitely an attachment there (and this is proven later). Even being acknowledged by her here must mean something to him. She may hate him, but she trusts him to keep her children safe and to protect them. It’s honestly so sad.

Ugh, this is hard to watch. As a mother, the idea of sending your kid adrift when you know you’ll probably never see them again is so heartbreaking. The connection you have with your children is something that no other relationship can match, whether you physically bore your children or not. They are a part of you. Like, let’s be real, raising children is difficult—they can test your patience, make you angry, make you sad and hurt (toddlers don’t care about you, yeah, I said it)—but you love them in spite of it all. And for me, I can never really hate Madam Yu. I can find her attitude and treatment of certain individuals deplorable, but at the end of the day, she loved her children. Was she a good mom? No, probably not. But I don’t think Jiang Fengmian was a good dad either (although I think he tried a bit harder). But I think she loved A-Cheng and A-Li, and I think she trusted Wei Wuxian to protect them. I think she gave him that shred of respect at the end.

In case you’re wondering, I fucking cried through to the end of this episode. I mean, Jesus, Yanli just gets immediately thrown into another boat and tied up with her brothers, after finding out that her mother might be dead already, and then her dad abandons them too. I just can’t.

I’m sorry this was short (maybe I’m not sorry, depending on how much you like the episode). I’m going to try and knock out more than one episode per week because I just don’t have a lot to say. These are mainly getting through the plot episodes, if you know what I mean.

Other episodes: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |

[docholligay]

A Silent Voice--Koe no Kitachi

This movie has come up a couple times for Eight Days and various other things I’ve done, which was basically all I knew about it, until it was sponsored as a one-off by @iscahwynn. The first time I watched the movie, I felt a lot of ways about it at once. It was certainly one of the most interesting “anime movies” that had ever been recommended to me, and had a capacity and quality of humanity that I really didn’t expect going into it. 

As always, non-spoilery review leads, spoilers under the cut. 

A Silent Voice, (Which is called The Shape of Voice on my subs) if you read the blurb, is about a boy trying to make restitution for a deaf girl he bullied horrendously in elementary school. That’s a fair assessment, but I also don’t think it’s a complete one. The movie is really about the nature of alienation and friendship, and how a lot of lonely people have at least some culpability for that loneliness. I don’t know if I would go so far as to say I liked it. I had some issues with it that I’ll go into in the longer spoiler review, but being as its on Netflix right now, if you have any interest in seeing it, I don’t think it’s a waste of time at all. 

I”m not going to go through a play by play of the film itself, I figure if you’re reading this you’re familiar with the general narrative of the film and I’m not super interested in padding this out for the mere word count.  

Also, the main character’s names are really similar: Shoko and Shoyo, so I’m going to call Shoyo by his patronymic, Ishida, for clarity. 

You feel, or at least this viewer felt, nothing but sadness and frustration for poor Shoko, who did nothing but have the audacity to show up at school. One thing I think this movie does an excellent job with is showing how resentment creeps in over the most minor of accommodations. We see at first, the kids be taken in by the novelty of writing in Shoko’s notebook in order to accommodate her and talk to her. Then we see it turn annoying, when she wants to be brought into conversations on a regular basis, and they don’t want to do that. It turns to hatred and resentment, as it gets easier and easier to simply ignore her or make fun of her. When a teacher comes in to teach them some sign language at ten minutes a day, for all but one student, this is too much effort for them to make. 

It escalates with Ishida himself repeatedly yanking her hearing aids out of her ears and throwing them out of the window, into the trash, etc, at one point ripping them out with such force that her ear bleeds. His punishment for this cruelty is essentially that his mother has to pay back, or choose to pay back, all the money lost for the hearing aids to Shoko’s mother, but on a more personal level, his classmates, actually faced with consequences, turn on him and implicate him as the sole actor in all of the cruelty aimed toward Shoko. 

And I’m fine with him reaping the whirlwind, let’s not mistake that, but I do have one compelling question: 

There are 106 schools for the D/deaf in Japan, and you couldn’t put your child into one of them? I have no idea if Japan has any equivalent of the ADA whatsoever, and the internet seems to suggest that the rights and education of D/deaf people in Japan is pretty woeful, but this really annoyed the shit out of me. I mean, I’m supposed to feel for Shoko, so I suppose that didn’t detract from what the movie wanted to do in that right, but man did it make me irritated with every single adult involved. 

I think some of the most interesting things that come out of the movie are the ways in which it deals with depersonalization and isolation. 

After we see Ishida’s fall from grace, if you will, when in middle school, people are (rightly) told that he’s a bully. People don’t want to be around him, and while, again, I do not feel particularly sorry for him, there’s definitely something deeply human and deeply disturbing about the way they make him the pariah of it all, even though they were mostly all involved in treating Shoko cruelly, or at the very least, at a distance. It’s easier to believe that it was Ishida’s sin specifically, and that they bear no responsibility for their part in the cruelty toward her. 

When this happens, by the time we meet up with him, we see that he sees the world of people with the letter X across their faces, as a sign that he no longer thinks of them as people, more like objects or happenings that are best to be avoided. He goes so far as to say that he never looks anyone in the face anymore. Its a very visually powerful way of showing how Ishida, when he is hurt, walls himself off in the world, while, even when we see Shoko later, there’s no indication that she has done such (Though admittedly, the vast majority of the movie is through the eyes of Ishida) 

It isn’t until Ishida defends Nagatsuka, a fat kid with curly hair, from getting his bike stolen by giving his up as an option instead, that he begins to see people in any different way. And it isn’t even in the moment that he does something, but when Nagatsuka returns his bike, found in a rice field, that the x falls away from his face and he begins to see someone as a fully realized human. A cynical viewer, who might be me, would see this as an acknowledgement that Ishida’s problem is not seeing people outside of their relationship to and treatment of him. That it is only with returned kindness that he can see Nagatsuka as human, defending him only because he recalls the shame of having been so cruel to Shoko. 

Which I actually don’t have a problem with! I think it would go fairly far to show that he’s learned something from the Shoko situation, for him to expect no inkling of humanity but still be so desirous to remove that shame that he acts anyway. I just don’t know if that’s the intention of the narrative, even having seen it several times now. 

“Friendship lies somewhere beyond things like words and logic” is one of the best lines from the movie, and I think it does a fairly good job of doing that as it calls up a large group from the past. It’s complicated, because I actually thought the group aspect was very interesting, particularly the incident on the bridge where Ishida, every fairly, tells each of them how they failed, what their personal sin is, and he isn’t wrong! The first time I watched it, I found myself screaming at it, the reckoning of this responsibility finally shared. 

But the downside of all of these characters is that the focus on Shoko and Ishida, as well as any real development of feelings and forgiveness between them, feels very rushed. We get to the end of the story, with Ishida having saved Shoko’s life and hurting himself in the process. SO much emotional and character development gets laid down in a five minute scene, and while the scene itself does lend a lot of strength to the characters for that, I found myself more frustrated that we couldn’t have seen this sooner, and come out over time. Unfortunately the time with the ancillary characters feels a bit wasted, given what ends up being sacrificed for it. 

Some parts of the movie are tricky for me to fully allow myself to fall into, at best. It’s particularly difficult for me to see Ishida as a huge victim given the exceptional level of his cruelty to Shoko, and if he really only pays until he’s in high school, while that may play as “forever” to a younger audience, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for his plight. This isn’t following him to his damn job. Maybe I’m a jackass, and that’s why I can’t go with it in the way the film seems to want me to, or maybe it’s that I was also horrifically bullied to the point of tears as a child, and I do not feel any particular sadness for the ways in which some of my own bullies were socially punished in high school. I don’t want him to kill himself, I want him to be better, and honestly the movie could have really really worked for me if we just saw the developing of his friendship with Nagatsuka and his turning into a better, softer person. This kind of goes into what I was talking about earlier--in a two hour movie, there just isn’t the time for all the side characters as well as the full development of the mains. We would have been better off just having Ishida, Shoko, and Nagatsuka. I fell you could have told a quite complete story with that. I think if those three characters had been more carefully written, I could have ADORED this movie, instead of the middle place I end up with in it. 

But instead we come to the question of Shoko. I kinda suck my teeth at Shoko’s treatment in the film. Her open hearted kindness was heart-breaking as a child, the way she just wanted to be friends and she still had that belief that it could all work if she just did as adults told her and was NICE, and it’s extremely effective.  But when we get to the high school Shoko and we’re still meant to see her as being this very mild, very apologetic, very sad person with no friends...it stops being a tragedy of the character individually and starts being a way of writing a disabled character as someone for our protagonist to act upon. Shoko is never really given her own moment of anger for herself, her own rich life outside of Ishida and the friends he brings to her. We don’t see her thoughts except as they relate to Ishida. We’re meant to believe she has no one outside of her sister when Ishida decides to reconnect with her, a tragedy of convenience that allows Ishida’s “work” to be valuable to more than just him. Even her own sorrow and suicide attempt seem to have so much more to do with the further of Ishida’s character than the oppressive social forces that have conspired against Shoko. 

And we ALMOST get there. The end conversation between the two of them, where he says he understood her in ways that were convenient for him, and that because of that he failed to see her own pain and isolation, is amazing. Great, and I wish it would have come sooner and that we could have had some real payoff from that conversation that showed their relationship deepening in a way that served both Shoko and Ishida. But it comes at the tail end, and the “solution” we get all has to do with Ishida and his embracing of humanity, which I want, but not at the expense of Shoko’s character, who I liked very much and longed for a richer treatment of. 

The romantic element between them is frustrating. Not only because he was her very very overt bully, I might even go so far as to say abuser, but because it feels so tiresome when the movie clearly has bigger fish to fry, and in many ways, does fry them!  It doesn’t help that it is like quite a few things, painfully rushed, and when she falls for him, it’s left to the viewer to supply your own reasons that don’t quite make sense. It adds a layer to the story that I personally felt it did not need, even as cute as I find Shoko’s little flappy legs on the bed when she has her head buried in a pillow after trying to confess to Ishida, but he can’t understand what she’s saying. 

Basically, I think this movie watches better once. I know that sounds like a strange thing to say about anything, but the first time I saw this, I didn’t notice so keenly some of the things that niggled at me later. I think it’s pretty fucking enjoyable, in the one shot, to be honest! I think it’s an ambitious movie that is, at its best, trying to say something about the nature of bullying and that it not only harms the bullied but the bully themselves. And in some ways, I think it has absolutely brilliant moments with that, and reflections on the nature of friendship and what it takes.  But I think some of that ambition falls through, and feels a bit flat, when taken on the whole. 

Have you seen it? What did you think? 

[phantomphangphucker]

Ectober Day 28: Fall - Sinners Are We Chap.6: No More Idle Hands

And Dove could stay silent no more.

Neither he nor his brother got their father’s infamous wail. For Russet that made perfect sense, he simply didn’t hold up in the power department for such a powerful ability. And Orrin didn’t find such a brash brazen ability to be suited to him, so he rather didn’t care if he developed it or not. But Dove having it, and so young, was truly a surprise. And he loved those. So he feels he is quite justified in laughing as everyone else grasped their ears and collapsed, even father fell to the ground as everything shook. Everything around bursting, exploding, pluming even more smoke and ash into the sky practically blotting it out.

Who would have thought she’d have such a destructive ability.

He summons enough ectoplasm around his ears to muffle the sound, father wasn’t honestly smart enough to think of this quite yet. Then again, father was never on the receiving end of the Ghostly Wail. Orrin stands up, defying gravity to keep his balance on the shaky ground, sticking his arms out to the side and laughing, “WOW! I MEAN REALLY! WOW!”, grinning wide and a bit wild, if everything’s descending into madness and chaos then might as well behave a little mad to match, “KEEP THIS UP AND YOU MIGHT JUST KILL EVERYONE YOURSELF! HAHAHAHAHA!”. He absolutely knows father looks to him and notes his little trick to get around the wail, and will, of course, utilise it himself in a few seconds. The pressure’s on Dove, what will you do? What will you do.

But again she catches him by surprise, picking an option he never realised was on the board at all. She doesn’t stop, or aim it; no she changes octaves. Which, was father even capable of such a thing? She, she might just be stronger than him. Well fancy that. This octave though, oh it absolutely makes Orrin drop to his knees; the ectoplasm doing nothing to muffle the sounds.

All the mortals groan and roll over, many simply watching or backing away in stunned silence as three of the -apparently- four present Gray-Phantom’s pass out, the little girl- the princess losing the human disguise in the process.

Rio pushes herself up, staggering to run over to the little glowing gray-haired girl with her little head tilted skyward as green/purple sound-waves pulsed out of her mouth, sparkling pale blue tears streaming down her face from amber eyes. Rio collapsing next to her and hugging the little girl she’d grown to know as so gentle it almost hurt, “ROBIN! DOVE! STOP! SWEETHEART IT’S FINE! IT’S FINE! NO ONE’S HURTING ANYMORE! BUT YOU NEED TO STOP!”, and practically smushes the girl into her as the horrific sound peters off and the girl shakes violently.

Rio looks around as everyone starts to stand, some very cautiously looking towards the downed Gray-Phantom’s and chucking things at them from afar. Rio squeezing Dove/Robin closer and snapping her head towards Rex as he walks over, “she’s never hurt anyone”.

“She’s one of them”.

Rio snarls, “do I look like I care?”. Rex just huffs and wanders off, waving over his shoulder, “this is your problem then. Remi’s fine though”. Rio sighs at that. Then looking around as she stands. What the Hell are they going to do?

Spotting one of the hunters moving to put anti-ecto braces on Lark -Orrin, she staggers over, minding her twisted ankle and other injuries, “wait. This- this utterly insane nutter is to thank. He did this. Planned this. He-”, glancing to the girl she’s carrying in her arms who looked to just be staring blankly, “-got her to take them down. At least wake the twit up”.

The hunter huffs and cuffs him anyway but does give the... prince a good zap to wake him up. The guy groans on the ground in a way that makes it sound like he had simply been taking a nice afternoon nap, “well. That was certainly interesting”.

Rio grunts down at him, slightly out of pain, “and that was a stupid choice of first words. I don’t think I need to point out that you’re at gunpoint, cuffed, and surrounded; Orrin”.

He chuckles faintly, sits up, and crosses his legs. Cool, calm, demeanour never faltering, “well I would certainly hope so. These fellows wouldn’t be doing what they’re supposed to otherwise”, he looks around and shrugs a little, her following his gaze towards Russet. Him chuckling faintly, “well damn, that imbecile’s still alive”.

Jester loses it at that, “you wanted us to kill him?”.

“Arguably, why not? He’s a real bastard”.

One of the hunters makes a wheezing sound, “oh gods”, looks to Rio, “how in all the worlds did you turn one of the princes. Seriously”.

Orrin apparently won’t let that statement fly, “oh no. Blame the little missy. Real gentle doll that one”.

Rio looks to the side as Dove/Robin stirs at that, looking down at Orrin. Rio holds on to her, unsure, when the girl moves to reach for him. Orrin just chuckles and stands up while the cuffs just fall off and takes the girl from her in a swift motion. Everyone near -who aren’t helping with clean up or medical care- gape at him and follow him with their guns, Rio turning around gapping herself. Orrin chuckles again, looking at them with a smirk, “what? Did you really think I wouldn’t have altered everything to have little to no effect on me?”, he grins, “I’m the smart one you know. The sneaky shadow. Guess it’s true what people say that no one notices what their shadow does until it does something they don’t expect”. One of the hunters shoots him in the foot as if to check, which he rolls his eyes at. It, of course, does nothing more than leave a bit of ash on his black spandex high-heels.

Everyone looks to the two Gray-Phantom’s that could actually be cuffed. One guy clearing his throat, “so... what are we supposed to with this? Did... did we just win”. It takes only a bit of murmuring for most of the people around to break out into cheering or crying. No one stops pointing weapons at Orrin though, which he obviously ignores as if they don’t even exist.

Rio does smile at Dove when she seems to hum slightly happily over the cheering. Though Dove straightens up and leans away from Orrin a bit, reaching her fingers out towards Russet. Everyone jumping and staring as both Russet and Phantom move across the ground to the other two Gray-Phantom’s inhumanly fast, yet never waking. Orrin putting Dove on the ground who goes over, takes off her teddy bear backpack, and bops Russet on the head with it; pointing at him with puffed out cheeks like she was scolding him. Then moving to do the same to Phantom. Orrin blinks at the scene, “I do not claim to understand that girl”.

Rio is the only one willing to stand anywhere close to him, her crossing her arms, “I think you just don’t understand being nice and innocent”.

“You may be right there. Though I doubt most would be any different in my shoes”. No one really argues him there, because he was probably right. How could anyone be raised by those monsters and not wind up one?

Rio scowls at him, “I almost feel bad for you. But you’re probably as much a murderous monster as the rest of your family”, scowling more when he chuckles and grins meanly. Making it very clear to everyone that he was perfectly fine with that fact, and that he has, in fact, actually killed people. Rio draws her eyebrows together, “then why, why effectively save us”.

Orrin quirks an eyebrow, “didn’t I already tell you? Oh well, mortal minds are hardly of quality”, then steamrolls right over multiple offended objections, “me and brother dearest started out like terrible terrors”, pointing at Dove, “she, did not”, smoothing his jacket, “be a shame to turn gold to brass, don’t you think? Further, this seemed like a far more interesting course of action, I dare say”.

Everyone pauses and looks to Dove and Russet as the latter stirs. Orrin actually smirking when Russet spots Dove glaring down at him with crossed arms and Russet actually flinches. Orrin saunters over with a very wicked-looking grin on his face, “now what was that? Did the big scary bad Rusty flinch at the sight of a little girl?”. Which fine, more than a few people around laugh at slightly. Though many find this to be incredibly surreal and way too mundane after everything; petty sibling bickering between those framed to be the worst of monsters in the middle of what was just a battleground that had promised nothing but death for all the mortals there mere seconds ago.

Russet scowls up at the younger prince, “fuck you you fucking piece of shit demon child bastard. Ancients fuck you are a psychopath-”.

Orrin cuts him off with a shrug while everyone else just watches wide-eyed, “I appreciate the compliment, though really this seems more like a situation where you should be aiming to be insulting”, he shoves Russets head with his boot, making Russet squirm and start spewing profanities at noticing the cuffs and everything. Orrin just talks over him, “be glad I’m not power-hungry like you. Otherwise-”, Orrin grins and everyone tenses as he bends down, “-I’d find it quite tempting to take advantage of this and just do away with the first prince entirely. I find doing so would hardly be difficult, considering your current predicament”. Everyone relaxes when Dove hits Orrin with the plushie backpack, and he just chuckles faintly and gives her a head pat as he straightens up.

After a second though, all the hunters and rebels nod to each other, marching over and move to grab up both the still unconscious Phantom and snarling Russet. But Dove grabs both of them and squeezes them, somehow knocking Russet back out, and puffs out her cheeks defiantly.

Everyone glancing at each other awkwardly. Orrin breaks their awkwardness slightly by sighing, “and she still doesn’t know how to snarl properly”.

Rio shakes her head, personally glad for that, and walks over the kneel in front of her, “sweetheart, we can’t just leave them in the street. And remember what I said about bad people needing to be punished?”, when Dove nods she continues, “well we punish people by locking them up. Besides-”, side-eyeing the hunters, “-I doubt you’d let us seriously hurt them. Right?”. Dove nods immediately and repeatedly, puffing her cheeks more. Rio can tell that the hunters got the damn message that this was a losing battle. No Gray-Phantom was dying/being destroyed here today. This tiny girl just effectively took out all of the ghostly Gray-Phantom’s with one attack and practically instantly, even nearly destroyed the city and everyone in it at the same time. They were very lucky she was a kind gentle soul. Very. It would be better to not tick her off or do something to change that. Not that Rio was entirely sure it was possible to piss that girl off. Annoy? Sure. Piss off? No.

Dove huffs again, turns almost dramatically, and starts marching off in the direction of the -probably wrecked- jailhouse; dragging Phantom and Russet under her arms across the ground.

One of the hunters pointing out, “she does realise we can’t put them in regular cells, right? Like, those things need special ecto-containment cells. Especially Phantom”, grumbling, “with that bloody crown of his”.

Orrin grins and turns to him, sticking his hands in his pockets and giving a smile that’s close to charming, “actually, no”, tilting his head, “well, yes, but no”. Rio glares at him so he explains himself without any further prompting, “I think it is fair to say that father was quite efficiently and effectively bested, yes?”.

One of the hunters scowls, “your point, monster”, scowling a little more, “and know that regardless of this, you still belong in a cell or obliterated out of existence”.

Orrin only chuckles instead of seeming even slightly threatened, “oh I’m well aware how others feel of me, no need wasting your breath. After all, you need it and you have so very little of it”, grinning meanly, “why it could be snuffed out just like that”.

Rio pinches the bridge of her nose, “for the love of- stop being threatening just because you can be now that it won’t make you suspicious”.

Orrin rolls his eyes, “you have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to tear off your pretty little head”.

“Uncalled for”.

“And yet you still seem to put up with me. Strange”. Rio absolutely scowls deeper at the Gray-Phantom for that. “Anyway, my point is, when you best a royal, what is it that happens?”, he taps his chin in obviously fake contemplation before sounding rather condescending, “why you usurp them of course. You take their throne. Their crown. I do believe you get the message this time”.

Rio blinks at him, bullshit, “there is no way your... mother will go for that”.

He wags a clawed finger at her, “ah but her role as Mortal Queen is entirely made up and her claim as High Ghost Sovereign is that of a Consort”, shrugging, “normally in chess, you kill the queen, you win the game. But in this case, it’s the king”, smirking, “or was”. Needless to say, everyone starts freaking out.

Rio watches him smirk as people panic, it was mostly a good or confused panic though. “You just like chaos, don’t you”.

He doesn’t even look to her as he speaks, “I find it enjoyable yes. It’s more that I like to be entertained. I’m a creature of novelty and I had been rather bored as of late”.

Rio squints at him, “I can’t figure out if you’re genuinely on our side or are just dicking around”. Scowling when he winks before sauntering off in the direction of the jailhouse. More than a few hunters and rebels following largely to ‘keep an eye on’ the Gray-Phantom they could do nothing about; though some were conflicted on their feelings over the halfa that they had become familiar and even friendly with over the past while.

They walk in to Dove sitting on the floor attempting and succeeding at braiding Phantom’s flaming hair. Orrin furrowing his eyebrows at her, “why? What purpose does this serve”. She predictably just hums at him, rocking a little. Many of the hunters and rebels mutter, “you've got to be kidding me”. Rio and a few others barely hold back cooing ‘awww’s at the girl; the fact that it was Phantom getting his hair braided rather killed the cute effect of the scene.

Everyone but Orrin and Dove jumping at a portal swirling open on the wall and the FrightKnight waltzing through. All of the fully living aiming their weapons but doing nothing when the ghost bows to Dove, who pats his helmet with a small smile.

The FrightKnight looks to Orrin, “I must say, you frighten me. It will never cease to amaze me how so many call the first prince the demon rather than you”. Orrin bows very exaggeratedly with a coy grin, “you flatter me so”. The ghost shakes his head before turning and kneeling before Dove, “shall I take these two to the dungeon for you, my queen”, she just hums but the ghost seems to understand and before anyone can do anything the two captured Gray-Phantom’s are whisked away by the ghost.

All the fully living around are stunned stupid, Rio looking to Orrin, “you were serious”, then screwing up her face, “wait”, throwing her hands out to the side and scowling at Orrin, “Dove obviously doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. Isn’t she just going to let them loose?!?!”. The group giving the halfas panicked looks as they come upon the same worry. The princess -Queen?- was practically a newborn and those two monsters were her family.

Orrin waves everyone off, “oh it’s no matter. Crown’s hers all the same. Dear brother isn’t strong enough to beat her and father wouldn’t bother to even try. He never genuinely harms family in any long-lasting or permanent ways”, Orrin looks around and gives another mean smirk, “though you should thank little Dove for stopping you from killing Russet. I sure wouldn’t have”.

One of the guys squints at him, “why? Also, them being free is the problem, not them trying to challenge her. Though fine, that would be an issue too”. Everyone had officially decided without question that they’d take the sweet little Dove as a ruler over her monster parents or siblings.

“Why that’s so very simple. You may think father is bad already, but that is nothing compared to what he’s really capable of. I wouldn’t put it past him to annihilate everything he could get his claws on if one of us were destroyed”.

Rio almost can’t believe that she’s hearing the Phantom, the mass-murdering monster of monsters, had a ridiculous soft spot for his family. A genuine one. Turning to look at Dove and going wide-eyed at her floating/walking over while tugging at a flaming glowing green crown. Which pulls down over her face before springing back over her head every time she lets go of it. The girl humming and purring in clear joy and amusement. Then kneeling down to poke Rio’s ankle which suddenly doesn’t hurt. Rio blinking, “sweetheart... did you just... heal me?”. Dove hums and nods before running off poking people.

Orrin sighs and shakes his head a little, guess she thought the hiding game was over; he does follow her with his eyes though. Which doesn’t go unnoticed.

One of the hunters kneeling down to let the little glowing girl poke his head, then staring off after her as she moves on, “this is going to take some getting used to”, then noticing Orrin’s staring that’s boarding on a glare, “chill out ah... for the love of everything take your human form again, this is too weird”. Some others nod, some laugh though it’s weak.

Orrin rolls his eyes but promptly shoots the guy lazily with an ecto-beam; the guy hissing from the impact and being caught off-guard, “that’s for proposing the idea of kidnapping Dove”. Unsurprisingly everyone points their guns at him again before lowering them and glaring at the halfa after he spoke. He just grins, “just keeping things interesting”, the grin turning rather mean as the guy brushes himself off, “besides I think you’d prefer a weak little ecto-beam over my original idea. Which involved cups, mice, and your eyes. Make of that what you will”.

Rio scowls, “I think I preferred when you didn’t randomly threaten people, let’s go back to that”, sighing and glancing to Dove, “at least you’re protective I guess”.

Everyone goes silent, which becomes slightly awkward till Remi comes running in looking for her ma only to get practically tackled by Dove. Gently tackled, but still tackled. Remi just looks confused and kinda scared, “w-who”. Resulting in Dove looking almost heartbroken and making gestures at Orrin, who rolls his eyes but twirls his fingers dramatically; both of them suddenly looking as everyone was rather more familiar with. Remi gets over her shock instantly and starts worry babbling at Dove.

-

Orrin grins faint and amused as he leans his arms on the windowsill, watching as Dove finishes poking people outside, everyone exchanging glances before basically shouting, “LONG LIVE THE QUEEN”. Oh there were so many possibilities to be had. Especially when father wakes and mother hears of this. Would she be proud ‘her little girl’ bested the ghost she never could? Would Dove ‘talk’ them into being peaceful ‘or else’? Would the dead accept her as a High Sovereign or would she need to prove her worth?

Looking down, she obviously had little idea what was going on. Possibly none at all. She was simply smiling and moving her hands around because she was enjoying their happiness and cheer. Such a strange thing. Her enjoying... joy. He truly has little clue how their parents made her. And he rather doubts they understand it either. Even when those two were ‘good guys’ they certainly weren’t able to be called ‘innocent’ or ‘gentle’. While those were the first words that came to mind with Dove.

Turning his head slightly as Rio comes in, her closing the door and leaning against it with crossed arms, “so... are you guys going to be staying or...”, and quirking an eyebrow.

“Is this your mortal way of asking me to”.

She huffs, “Remi would be sad, that is all”. Which Orrin isn’t even close enough to a fool to believe for even a second, “yeah. Sure it is”.

“...”.

Orrin shakes his head a little and turns to look back out the window. The mortals were giving her sweets. How quaint. “I doubt I could keep Dove away. As I find I doubt she would really let me try to in genuine”. She had clearly grown fond of this place and it’s creatures; and clearly not as simply pets, servants, or loyal manipulatable underlings.

He can hear the raised eyebrow in Rio’s voice, “wouldn’t ‘let you’? You don’t seem like someone who’s controllable”.

He elects for vague, not as if he needs to explain in the first place, “there are ways”. Far be it for him to mention that the Crown makes the wearer able to control the dead, or part dead for that matter. He doubts Dove would make much use of that, which is quite fine by him. Not that that wouldn’t make things interesting regarding father.

“Riiiight”.

He outright ignores that. Him speaking again as she joins him by the window, “regardless, no we will not be staying. Dove has her castle and throne to attend to”, grinning both mean and mischievous, “and I have a brother to torture”.

“... I can’t tell if you mean that literally”, she sighs, “so she’ll come back then”.

“Indeed”.

“And you?”.

That does catch him just slightly off-guard. Apparently he wasn’t completely deplorable to these people. Fancy that. Though he had a level of feeling that this particular member of the living was more than just tolerant of him. “Oh I doubt Remi would care if I did or not”, him smirking a bit, “unless of course, that particular question has nothing to do with her happiness at all”.

He glances at her as she audibly scowls at him, “you’re an emotionless asshole without a caring bone in your body”.

Which only makes him chuckle, “then clearly you’re rather nuts for getting feelings involved”. This entire escapade was bringing plenty of interesting surprises and twists that he hadn’t yet experienced it would seem. “Particularly when you know said asshole has wanted to at the very least mildly murder you on multiple occasions”. Why that of all things gets her to promptly give him a chastised kiss he isn’t going to claim to understand in the slightest. Instead he furrows his brows at her, “I find I don’t understand you much either at times”. Did Phantom’s just have a habit of attracting living women? That could be an idea to look into at a later date.

She rolls her eyes and looks back out the window, where Dove is now chuckling flowers at people. “Good. I’d probably bore you otherwise”.

He dips his head slightly to acknowledge that is rather true, “accurate”.

“... so, will you come back?”.

“Well I dare say my curiosity is rather peaked now, so I hardly can find a reason to not”.

She scowls at him, but even his moron of a brother could tell she wasn’t actually upset with him. “Yup. You’re still a jerk”.

He snorts, “don’t go expecting change. Dove’s the ‘sweetheart’, not me”, running a hand through his hair and smirking, “I’m definitely more charming though”.

“Annnd there’s the ego”.

“It’s far too late for you to make denials-”, pausing and tilting his head at sniffing mothers scent. Looking up to spot the red suit and hoverboard far up in the sky, clearly she was watching, was seeing this. Dove frolicking with a bunch of mortals, a green crown flaming over her head all the while. “Mother’s here”.

Rio immediately jerks to attention and puts her hand to her blaster in preparation for assault. Orrin tilts his head though, watching as mother seems to shake her head and laugh before shooting off into the distance. “She... left”, he’s never felt genuinely shocked by something before. Why?

Rio blinks at him, obviously in shock herself, “what?! Why?!”.

“I... don’t believe I know”.

Rio blinks at him before shaking her head and stiffly leaning on the windowsill again, “well I'm not about to look that particular gift horse in the mouth”.

He squints before smirking after a bit, “she may very well be going to mock father and berate brother for being a moron again”.

“Still not even glancing at the gift horse”. He chuckles at that.

Suddenly Dove’s floating in front of them, tugging gently on Orrin’s sleeve. ‘Come’. He feels the unspoken command deep into the core of him, and he can’t very well deny it. Now can he? So he floats off the ground and moves to head out the window, though smirking meanly and grabbing Rio at the last second to yank her out too.

“You bastard!”. That only makes him chuckle more.

Him speaking quiet enough that the living won’t hear, “you truly ought learn to be more sparing with the KingSpeak, being forced to do things is hardly enjoyable. Particularly for a Gray-Phantom”. Dove just hums pleasantly at him as he’s effectively dragged into the silly dancing thing. And while the mortals keep their distance mostly, they don’t outright flee from him. How quaint and a rather peculiar turn of events.

End.

[atamascolily]

Lily reads Star Wars: Red Harvest, part six

In which EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE (and no, I do not exaggerate). Eat your heart out--oh, wait, sorry, eat someone else’s heart out. My bad.

(If you’re just joining me, check out the “Red Harvest” tag on my blog for previous posts)

We left off with Darth Scabrous waiting for Zo in the library. There's the obligatory villain monologue with some much-needed backstory.

“This library,” he said, “is the oldest part of the academy, older even than the tower itself. It was constructed over a thousand years ago by a Sith Lord named Darth Drear. He founded the academy, back when the planet itself was young. The ancient writings tell about how he used his first students as laborers. For hundreds of years, the Masters at the academy believed that a good many of those students died down in these very chambers, using the Force to move hundreds of tons of snow and ice and dig out these corridors and chambers to house Drear’s vast collection of … specimens. It was thought that Drear worked the students until they died from exhaustion.”

Blah blah blah Sith holocron blah blah blah eternal life. The usual stuff.

“Before he died, Darth Drear wrote of the final stage of the process—the step that he himself was never able to achieve. He dispatched his sentries to a nearby planet to abduct a Jedi and bring him to the secret temple underneath the library. After ingesting the elixir, in the final hours before his body gave in completely, under exactly the right circumstances and conditions, Drear planned to use a ceremonial Sith sword to cut open the Jedi’s chest while he was still alive, and eat his heart. Only then, with that final infusion of midi-cholorians still warm from the Jedi’s blood, would the decay process be held back—granting the Sith Lord his ultimate immortality.”

I TOLD YOU THEY WENT THERE.

The plant!zombies show up again - turns out they weren't really dead! They carry Zo down to the Secret Sith Basement at Scabrous's command, where the sacrifice is to take place. But don’t worry, not!Qui-gon is in hot pursuit! The tree librarian grabs not!Qui-Gon and dangles him in the air. I am LIVING for this. “No need for your weapon here,” the voice said. “Not in this place of learning. We are both learned beings, are we not? Enlightened and informed by the written word. No need for the encumbrances of physical violence.” It uttered another bulky, dusty chuckle. “Look upon me, if you like. Seek my face.”

There's a bunch of book avalanches. not!Qui-Gon  goes into the tree!Librarian's head at his own urging and sees his memories

It was the librarian’s name, Trace realized, his patronymic, and somehow he knew that on his home planet it meant “lover of knowledge,” a perfect choice for—

HOW DID HE END UP ON A SITH PLANET AS THE SITH LIBRARIAN IF HE WASN'T ACTUALLY EVIL?? Sadly, we don't get answers.

Also, more relevant to the plot, not!Qui-Gon sees the secret Sith basement being built and gets caught up on all the backstory that Scabrous already revealed. Then everything catches on fire and not!Qui-Gon uses the Force to retrieve his lightsaber and create an air bubble to ward off the flames.

He looked at the lightsaber, laboring to evacuate every other thought from his mind. At the Jedi Temple, they had taught that it was never a matter of manipulating the object, but of eliminating the space that separated you from it. Yet at this moment, the object in question had never felt so far away....

The timing of what happened next was critical. Deactivating the bubble, he opened his hand, and the lightsaber flew into it. Its handle was almost too hot to hold, but the solidity of it had never felt better in his life.

I like this attention to detail in my Star Wars.

Not!Qui-gon gets pulled down to the basement via plant zombies for the final showdown as the library burns around him.Good-bye, Tree Librarian -- you may have been evil at the end, or perhaps this whole time, but you were fucking rad.

The mechanic is still alive and in hiding. He gets lured out by Kindra's pleading, only to reveal it was a trap by the zombies and she's a prisoner. The zombies rip her to pieces but the mechanic gets away. I’m so mad because even though I knew it was a trap, and I knew she was going to die, I hoped she got a more badass ending. Sigh.

Meanwhile, the bounty hunter and the newly liberated HK droid discover the zombies are hiding INSIDE the Tauntauns, a la Aliens and it's gross, and now we have zombie tauntauns, too. Turns out the HK droid hates the Sith too! But the bounty hunter got sprayed with tauntaun spit so now he's infected. Good thing droids can't get this... right?

Scabrous tries to kill Zo but not!Qui-gon makes a dramatic entrance and stops him. Not!Qui-gon gets murdered while Zo watches in horror and... I guess he really has more in common with Qui-Gon than I initially thought!

Scabrous transforms into his final form, but the orchid wakes up just in time, and Zo tells it to grow while she starts going to town on the Scabrous and slaughters him with his own sword. It doesn't take, so she switches to her brother's lightsaber, which does better, since it actually cauterizes.

She climbs out of the pit after Scabrous is dead, only to find the rest of the zombie horde waiting for her. The bounty hunter and droid rescue her, but they're attacked by the academy's perimeter cannons, so everthing gets worse fast. The droid jumps out and turns to the lasers on the tower, destroying everything - including the orchid if it's still alive? I'm a little fuzzy on the details here. Fortunately, the mechanic is flying the plane and he's okay.

Zo goes into the trophy room, only to find that the bounty hunter is now a zombie, but he locks himself in a cage before he turns and tells Zo to send him out the airlock, which she does--along with the entire grisly contents of the room, and a last zombie stowaway. FINAL GIRL VICTORY.

Zo returns to Jedi Greenhouse Planet, traumatized but alive. Turns out the guy who we thought was dead in the bounty hunter attack at the beginning of the book is actually alive, so that's good. There's a new orchid waiting for her:

You were with my seed-brother, the orchid said, arching toward her. Is that true?

Yes, I was, she told it, and thought about the voice of the first orchid, the one that she still heard in her mind. I still am, in a way. He saved my life.

Really?

Bennis smiled again, the indulgent smile of a proud parent, and gave the orchid a small pat.

D'awwww. Wait, so the original orchid isn’t really dead? She can still hear him even though it’s gone and they’re separated? Did I miss something in the tumult of the finale?? Or is Zo being metaphorical here?

Also, I’m so curious how the Jedi just... got another orchid so quickly. In our world, orchids can be clonally propagated in HUGE batches, so the AgriCorps could potentially be churning these things out at a massive rate. This raises WAY more world-building questions that this book is NOT going to answer, and it frustrates me, but I doubt the author knows much about actual orchids, so... *shrugs*

But cuteness aside, Zo decides she'd rather study on the Jedi Temple at Coruscant (the mechanic will take her) because she has too much PTSD. Also, this means that if anybody else tries to kidnap the new orchid, they won’t get Zo! I don’t know why the Jedi are even raising these orchids, given that they’re in demand on the Sith black market. Didn’t Zo explain they were the critical ingredient for an awful zombie plague?? DID NOBODY LEARN FROM THIS EXPERIENCE??

This is supposed to be a happy/hopeful ending, and it kinda is, but Zo apparently doesn’t know / the author forgot that the Jedi Temple was destroyed when Corsucant got sacked eight years earlier (as Trace tells us in his introductory scene)... which means she's walking into ANOTHER haunted temple nightmare and doesn't realize it yet. We'll call it.. Red Harvest II: Coruscant Nights, or maybe just Blue Harvest. How about that??

Frode would be waiting for her with the ship, ready to take her back to Coruscant, and whatever might be waiting for her there. The mechanic would be good traveling company, she sensed—there was a low-key air about him that bespoke dozens of untold stories, events that had made up his life and taken him to the unlikely destination of Odacer-Faustin. She felt herself already beginning to trust him.

Wow, I was not expecting this dude to survive, but okay. Also, he got tagged in the beginning as kinda greedy (scuttling the engines of the other bounty hunters to sell) and kinda lazy/stupid/opportunistic/desperate (for ending up as the mechanic for Sith Hogwarts in the first place). But okay, whatever, I guess.

And the moral:

The future was scary, but you couldn’t avoid it, anymore than you could outrun the past.

OR  A MASSIVE ZOMBIE HORDE, AM I RIGHT??

Wow, that was a trip.

I feel like this was better than I had any right to expect from the premise, but still felt like a B-grade horror movie. I like the tantalizing hints of what world-building we do get, and I think this novel is excellent fodder for future horror/Halloween fics. Otherwise, I’d skip this unless you are a “must read everything in Legends” purist, enjoy Sith shit, enjoy watching Sith die in horrific ways, and/or a diehard plant nerd like me.

RANDOM TRIVIA: Wookiepeedia says the first draft had a character named  "Middish Sunblade, modeled after Holden Caulfield, but Sunblade was removed from the rewrite because he was whiny and nobody could stand him," which is just too true and too funny for words. Also, an actually-in-character Holden Caulfield expy would last approximately 30 seconds at Sith Hogwarts before being stabbed... I’m just saying.

[queerhannibal]

Continuing #minivan au

The third kid is actually the child of one of their kills so adopting him is a little trickier. Abby and Rachel they have an obvious reason to have met and become attached to

(Rachel’s parents weren’t murderers, but she hid in the basement while they were murdered in a horrific and artful fashion and heard and saw some of what happened so Will had to speak to her for the case, and what was he gonna do, not immediately feel an immense sense of responsibility for her? Their house had way too many bedrooms anyway. Will joked that he was going to start collecting children the way he collected dogs; Hannibal nodded very seriously and said they could always get a bigger house)

But Diego is the child of a deeply unpleasant single father who they encountered at the science fair at their daughters’ school.

Hannibal and Will (perhaps less aggressively) pride themselves on being actively involved in and supportive of their children’s endeavors, so of course they’re both there to support their daughters science projects. Abby enlisted Hannibal’s help in making a detailed anatomical model; Will and Rachel made some kind of small robot that’s far more advanced than anything any of the other ten year olds made

Diego, who is only six (two years younger than Abigail), made a beautiful paper mache volcano, clearly entirely on his own as his father is berating him for how unoriginal and ugly it is. Hannibal, whose main calling in life is starting shit, goes up to the boy and praises his ingenuity. The father reacts by sneeringly saying that Hannibal’s children must have made some real crap if he thinks this project is good. It’s only Hannibal’s firm hand on Will’s shoulder that prevents Will from decking him right there. Not that Hannibal is any less angry: he makes a cutting remark and moves on, but inside he’s seeing red.

When they get home he doesn’t even have to suggest to Will that they look up Diego’s information in the school directory, Will immediately says “we’re not letting that guy keep breathing air after that, are we?” which is maybe the first time he’s been the one to suggest a kill, although it’s not the first kill he’s been a part of

They probably don’t wait long enough really to kill the guy; Hannibal usually likes to wait months or even years after his last interaction with a person, but Will points out that every day they wait is another day Diego is suffering, so it ends up being only a few weeks later. But the kill is an obvious Ripper kill, and nobody in their right mind would profile the Ripper as a suburban father with a minivan that has those stupid family bumper stickers on the back (two dads, the kids, and a custom breed specific one for each of the dogs). Anyway, everyone knows the Ripper never has a personal connection to his victims

Will of course is called in to look at the scene, and while he sees plenty of evidence that the Ripper is rapidly turning into a soccer mom (Rachel started soccer last fall) he finds ways to redirect that into another, more plausible, profile.

And because honestly, Jack never fucking learns with these two, he believes Hannibal has a purely professional interest when he suggests that he be the psychiatrist to talk to Diego afterwards (after all he does have so much experience with traumatized children, Jack, it’s only logical (meanwhile Alana is somewhere in the background shouting about objectivity while Hannibal blithely ignores her. She’d be more upset with him but he and Will are so obviously a good match and they are great dads, even if they do keep picking up Trauma Children to project on)) and anyway no one but Jack is surprised to hear that the Lecter-Graham household is gaining another dependent

They only stop at three because that really is the maximum they can fit in a car with them and the dogs unless they want to get an actual van. Plus Will points out when he’s in a morbid mood (so on a regular Tuesday) that they’re pretty old to have a six year old as it is (especially since one of them is a murderer and one of them is in law enforcement, not exactly high life expectancy things to do) and it would be pretty shitty to keep adopting young kids and eventually leave them without a parent

They maybe make an exception to that later after Rachel has left for college and they find a teenager in need of some good murder dads but I haven’t thought that out as well

[tomionekinkmeme]

Samhain 2k18 - In Dreams

A/N: Modern Muggle AU

Tick. Tock. Tick…. Tock….

The clock was mocking her, she was sure of it. Why call it the face of a clock afterall? If not to represent the laughing, taunting nature of father time.

Hermione Granger had been awake for 5 days straight, her body vibrating with energy in defense of mounting exhaustion. She did not suffer from insomnia or some other sleep disorder. Yet she haunted the house like a wraith, silently drifting from room to room, always moving. She was not cramming all day and night for exams or crying over a failed relationship. No, the reason why Hermione refused to close her eyes, to lie down in any position resembling horizontal, was that every night she went to bed, she died a horrific death.

Well, maybe not literally, but in dreams she witnessed the last hours of countless victims, a passenger seeing through their eyes as they met a grisly end. Every dream was so vivid, each victim and murder unique.

The nightmares began about a month ago or was that two?

The days now ran together in her dazed state, time a viscous liquid that she waded through so slowly, she often wondered if she was moving at all. She would fight the siren call of sleep for as long as she could, drinking coffee, energy drinks, exercising, but eventually she couldn’t help but to give in to it’s honeyed promises of peaceful slumber.

She could still remember the first dream like it was yesterday, it all started with a girl named Ginny.

Flashing white bulbs and neon colored signs competed for attention everywhere she looked. It was as if she were submerged under water, the lighting diffused with a soft glow. The evening held a dreamy quality to it, the wind whipping fiery red strands into her face that she pushed behind her ear. Sounds though sharp, were muffled and distorted, the noise putting her on edge. Various songs blared from worn out speakers as they passed, people all around were talking animatedly and laughing.

Her arm was entwined with a young man who had messy black hair. His green eyes crinkled when he smiled at her, the lights glittering off the round wire glasses that sat high on his nose. He was amused by something she’d said as he pulled her further into the crowd toward the ferris wheel. Oh no, she hated heights, Hermione wanted to yell at the mystery man, but she couldn’t speak. She could only watch in apprehension as her body walked up to the carney, handed tickets to the man and got into the rickety cab of death.

The ride wasn’t quite as terrifying as Hermione had anticipated, there was a sense of security she received from her companion, a warm feeling that flooded her gut. He had a muscled arm wrapped around her and she leaned into his warmth. The evening was a blur of faces, friends chatting, snacks eaten, rides enjoyed. She could lose herself in the nostalgia this outing at the carnival invoked, it felt more fun and carefree than she remembered experiencing in a long time. The girl’s boyfriend had stepped away to use the loo as she leaned against a nearby wall.

The restrooms were located quite far from the main carnival setup on the grounds. You had to practically walk back to the parking lot just to get there and it was poorly lit too. It looked like a scene right out of a horror movie, the young perky innocent girl, all alone in the dark, waiting for her murderer to come. She was looking down at her phone, the bright screen illuminating her face, when she heard a faint sound.

She moved toward it and Hermione felt her fight or flight instincts kick in. This woman didn’t seem to possess Hermione’s same sense of self preservation and walked around the dim corner to investigate. Suddenly strong hands gripped her from behind and pulled her into a tall firm body. Within seconds she felt the prick of a needle go into her neck. The girl struggled desperately to get free, but with each wild flail of the arms and kick of her legs, she could feel her body was shutting down. She cursed her bad luck as she slipped into unconsciousness.

She couldn’t see anything, a course strip of cloth biting into her face. She went to remove it, but couldn’t move her wrists, in fact, her whole body felt tied down to a hard cool surface. This can’t be good, Hermione chided, doesn’t this girl know you should never go alone to check out a strange noise? This setup so cliché, Hermione internally rolled her eyes, trying to remember her tv history and if that included too many episodes of cold case files or some halloween slasher marathon. She couldn’t recall, though at the moment, she had more pressing matters to be concerned over.

She knew how this would play out and would much rather wake up, before the final act was performed. Wake up, wake up, wake up, she chanted, as she heard the creak of a door. The girl was trying to spew obscenities, but her mouth was gagged, as a man chuckled and ran a hand through her hair, playing with a strand between his fingers.

“I’ve been patiently waiting for you, my little lamb. Tonight is a very important night.” he trailed off as he ran the same hand along her cheek and cupped her chin. He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “You should feel very special, I’ve chosen you as my first and one never forgets his first time, as the saying goes.”

Tears were trailing down her eyes and her breathing was becoming erratic.

“Oh, sweet Ginerva or is it Ginny? You do seem to prefer being called Ginny, don’t you? Well, don’t you worry, you have nothing to fear. You were destined for greatness. I will make you famous, immortal even. Long after you’ve left this mortal coil, you will forever live on in the tales of this night. This story, our story will be on the tip of every tongue, burned into the hearts of anyone who hears it. Or maybe, and this is just me being entirely selfish, maybe I don’t want to share what we have with the world. What do you think?” He paused, then walked around the table, leaning down to her ear on the opposite side.

“Would you like to know a secret, my pet?” Here, he finally removed the object that kept her from speaking.

“I don’t give a shit about what you’ve got to say, you sick fuck! Let me go this instant. Harry will be looking for me, you idiot. I’m sure someone must’ve seen you with me and I don’t know if you’re aware, but I come from a long line of cops and my family will not stop until they find me.”

“Oh, sweet Ginny. Of course, I expect your family to find you!” He exclaimed, clapping his hands together.

“First they’ll find your two hands, then they’ll find your torso, that pretty little head of yours, the lovely lower half, and lastly your two legs and feet. Seven pieces to make you whole once more.”

“Untie me this instant! Give me a fair fight, you fucking coward!” She screamed.

“Such a filthy mouth,” he sighed, shoving the gag back between her lips, “I was hoping for a civil conversation, but I see now, that won’t be possible. I was going to serenade you with all the reasons why I chose you Ginerva, seven letters first name and last, seventh child, I could go on and on about why seven is the most powerful number and how you perfectly embody the number in walking, talking, human form, but the moods been ruined, hasn’t it? I suppose it was too much to ask for you to be excited about this journey we’ll share together. I get it, maybe I’d be less thrilled if I were in your place, but Ginny, can’t you at least appreciate that, in a sense, you’ll be living on forever. Forever Ginny!”

This man is clearly insane, Hermione deduced. I mean, where is he going with this monologue? It sounds to me, even he’s lost the plot. The room went silent and she couldn’t feel his presence hovering over her anymore. She wondered if he quietly slinked away, or was he just standing there unmoving, staring like a predator in wait. Each second that passed, felt like an hour, several hours, when out of nowhere there was a prick against her stomach, that was pushing with more pressure, and Jesus Christ, is this what it felt like to be stabbed? Ginny was now letting out muffled screams and sobs, as Hermione witnessed this terrible act. The pain that Hermione felt was numbed, but she knew it must’ve been agonizing as Ginny thrashed and cried against the assault.

Beep…! Beep…! Beep! Hermione jolted upright in bed, blinking, eyes madly darting around the room. She sighed, it really was just a dream. I knew that, she reaffirmed, dragging a hand down the side of her face.

Increasingly disturbed come morning as she awoke from each new and gruesome death scene, Hermione was determined to overcome these strange recurring night terrors. She had started to keep a dream journal after maybe the third or fourth night, with detailed recounts of everything she could remember. It was therapeutic writing it out and she felt a bit lighter with each swipe of the pen.

There had been a pretty blonde with wavy hair that giggled too much, named Violet or was that Lavender? She was sure it was some purple flower name. He had grabbed her from a dark alley as she was reapplying her lipstick, eyes glued to her compact, already wasted and barely standing. A little prick to the neck and Hermione was greeted with darkness once more. He was not fond of Lilac, he flayed part of her arms and legs, his sick manic laugh ringing in her ears along with the poor girls wails. Iris periodically passed out from the pain only to be waterboarded awake.

Then there was another blonde with straight hair and more of a plain face that went by Hannah. Hannah Abba, she’d actually created a last name for once. Hannah was terrified and begged continually to be spared. He who had no name, snickered at her naivety.

“Do you imagine yourself in a situation that warrants you to just walk away if you ask nicely enough?” His smooth deep baritone caressed as he cruelly cut off her air supply by shoving a thick cloth into her mouth and pinched her nose. He sighed as her face turned varying shades of pink and red.

“I’m doing you a favor, you know? You’re the human equivalent of stale white bread. No one cares about you, no one would remember you if you got hit by a car tomorrow. Not your so called friends, or peers. Not even that beta male boyfriend Neville. Sure, they may think fondly of you for a week, but after that, your memory will be gone with the ether. That’s how little your very existence impacts the world around you.”

As her skin tinged purple then blue, he released his hold on her nose. He pulled the cloth from her mouth as she took deep gulping gasps. She flinched when she felt him near once more, his breath upon her face.

“So you see, I’m saving you from a fate worse than death. To be forgotten, to have never been. No, the world will remember you, sweet Hannah as a tragic character, sure. A cautionary tale, maybe. But they won’t forget, no, they’ll always recall this very night, the night which you became a legend.”

He switched it up with a male victim another evening. Colin was tall, skinny and homely looking. When he smiled, his teeth looked about 2 sizes too big for his mouth. Colin was strangled with a plastic bag over his head. He who had no name was choking poor Colin over and over until finally he took pity on the poor sod by mounting him, and snapping his neck with a hard twist of the chin.

Hermione felt crazy, how could she be normal and create these grotesque visions. No well adjusted person fantasized about murder to the degree that she lived it every night. She researched the meaning behind dreams and the symbolism of the unconscious mind. Was there some hidden underlying issue that needed to be addressed?

“Honey, you look like death. You really shouldn’t stay up so late at night.”

“Thanks mother, I’ll try that in the future.”

We have retired F.B.I. Profiler “Mad Eye” Moody on the show today, “Mr. Moody, what would you say drives a serial killer such as the self proclaimed “Death Eater” or “Voldemort” that has eluded police capture for the past 6 years.”

“He’s been at large for 6 years, but he’s been inactive for the past 4, only recently re-emerging in the past 3 months.” Moody gruffly spit out.

“Mom, why do you watch this garbage?”

“The news? Honey, current events are important, you could stand to be more informed, you should sit down and watch with me.”

“The news is nothing more than depression inducing and fear mongering. I’ll pass.”

No, Hermione had much more important matters to ponder than brainlessly learning about what common household items give you cancer or which celebrities were having a baby.

All of her most recent dreams were about blondes, did she have some deep seated hatred for fair haired individuals. She couldn’t remember any particular trauma from her past that would result in her wishing for the death of blondes. Then again, the first victim she saw had vibrant red hair.

She consulted several sleep therapists in person and online, only to be disappointed with them spouting off the same information she had dug up herself already. In desperation, she even tried taking sleeping pills in hopes of blacking out, but those too failed to safeguard her from the haunting images.

Nothing helped and nothing changed. So she settled into her current cycle of staying awake for as many days as humanly possible, mind of over matter and all that, followed by crashing for a day, day and a half, repeat. At least then she was only faced with the horrors of her mind once a week, rather than Every. Single. Night.

~O-O~

Tick. Tock. Tick…. Tock….

Is it just me or did the clock just wink at me? Hermione blinked her eyes, staring harder at the enemy. She didn’t want to know the time, to know that it was god awful early in the morning and she should really be asleep right now, rather than standing in line for coffee like these other early bird bastards.

Hermione was tired, dead tired. What was that line from Fight Club? “This is how it is with insomnia. Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy.” That line epitomized her current state of being as she stumbled through her order, “No, it’s Hermione, H-e-r-m, ugh, just write G, it’s for Miss G. Thanks.” She muttered walking away to stand off to the side.

“I’ll have a coffee, black.”

Hermione whipped her head toward the sound, that voice. The pitch and tone of that man instantly gave her chills and her legs threatened to buckle beneath her. Luckily she was near a wall and was able to lean against it nonchalantly as her mind raced a million miles a minute. Could this be the man in her dreams, was that monster real? Was she even awake right now?

“Miss G, order up!”

Hermione took a deep breath and headed toward the counter. She raked her eyes over him, tall, dark, and handsome. His hair was artfully windswept, his gait confident, he smelled like money. Some understated cologne that lingered pleasantly in the air and made your eyes follow the source.

He held himself with an air of ease as if everything just came to him, yet the coldness he radiated made him seem unapproachable, untouchable even.

He noticed her instantly, leaning heavily against the wall as if she could melt into the shadows. Her eyes kept darting toward him, she was not as subtle as she imagined. It stirred the predator inside, she was so damn skittish, beyond normal attraction or nerves. She was dripping neurosis, with her twitching and constant subtle movements. Her hair was curly and wild, it seemed to reflect her agitation. She invoked the thrill of the hunt in him, which was odd to say the least. Intrigued he put on his friendly face.

She was staring off into the distance again, only realizing too late that her line of sight settled in his direction. He flashed her a grin with his dead eyes. She almost dropped her coffee.

“I’m so sorry!” She blurted out, blushing profusely. “You just look so familiar, I was trying to place you, but I can’t seem to figure out where I would’ve seen you before.” Or heard you, demon spawn.

“Tom, order up!”

He grabbed his coffee turning towards her, hand outstretched. “It’s ok, I get that more often than you’d think.” This time, the smile reached his eyes.

“I’m Tom.” He said tipping his coffee toward her in salute.

“I’m Hermione and really, I didn’t mean to stare. I don’t suppose you attend Hogwarts Uni and I’ve seen you around campus?” She blurted the first nonsense small talk she could think of.

“Oh no, dear!” He said with a hearty laugh. “I’ve been out of University for about 10 years now.” He invited her to join him.

“I shouldn’t, I couldn’t.” Hermione stammered, adjusting her messenger bag, wondering if he would chase her should she bolt for the door.

“Nonsense, come, sit”

“Um…ok.” She sat down gracelessly, bumping her bag into the table and knocking some of her books and papers from inside the bag onto the floor. Fuck, I’ll never get out of here now.

“I’m such a klutz lately, sorry. I feel like I can’t stop apologizing to you.” Please be annoyed and send me away.

“It’s fine, it’s early and you haven’t had any of your coffee yet. You have an excuse.” He offered charmingly. Tom bent down to help her gather her things. Hermione Granger displayed on one of her cover pages. “You mentioned you attend Hogwarts? And majoring in…” he looked down at the textbook Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience and a paperback Dreams and Nightmares: The Origin and Meaning of Dreams.

“I’m going to take a stab and say, psych major?”

Funny you should say “stab”, seems you have a propensity toward violence even in your everyday speech.

“It was a fair guess, but no. I’m a pre-med major, I have an academic interest in psychology, hence…”

She seemed friendly enough, but there was something in her eyes. He could see fear in them if he looked hard enough. She recognized him, which was absurd as he’d never seen this girl before. She held herself surprisingly steady, considering her instinct to flee, her body was facing the door and she held tension in her legs to jump up and run at a moment’s notice.

Fascinating. He wanted to splay his hand on her knee to hold her still, he wondered if she would faint if he touched her. Or would she fight him? Would he have to wrestle her to the ground and use his body weight to hold her down. He was getting excited just thinking about her underneath him.

“Is old Slughorn still teaching Chem?”

“So you did go to Hogwarts?” She countered, eyebrow raised. Liar, liar, pants on fire. What else are you lying about sweet prince?

“I did, but ages ago.”

They talked about some of his old professors that still taught, about some of her classes. The conversation flowed freely and Hermione found herself being lulled into a false sense of security the more she listened to his opinions and thoughts on current medical practices and some of the recent breakthroughs his research firm had made in cancer cell analysis.

Was she being paranoid in thinking this highly educated well to do man was a serial killer just because of the cadence of his voice. Of course she was being paranoid, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right about him.

“I should get going, classes and all that.” Hermione was never good at a natural exit strategy.

Tom smiled warmly. “I’d love to see you again, allow me to take you to dinner tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Tomorrow night?” She choked, catching herself from a look of horror and forcing a pleasant expression on her face. This is it, this is the moment that I’ll regret my life choices once I’m lying blindfolded and tied down on his table.

“I’d love to, but I’m just swamped with midterms coming up and I have this research paper due on Tuesday…”

“Give me your phone. We can exchange numbers and meet up the next time you have a few free hours. I’d love to pick your brain on stem cell theory, you’re more enthusiastic and knowledgeable than my current interns. It would be great having someone like you on board.”

Now this posed a unique opportunity. Getting close to him, she could find out if her suspicions were real or merely a fantastic coincidence. Surely if he was a murderer, he wouldn’t be dumb enough to piss where he eats, wait, what was that saying? Don’t take a piss in the yard? Don’t piss where you sleep?

“Hermione?”

“Hm…?” Shit, I didn’t hear what he was saying.

Tom’s hand was outstretched, her phone in his palm. He placed it in her own, playing with her fingers in a surprisingly intimate way. He stood and leaned toward her ear.

“I look forward to our next meeting, Hermione. I can’t wait to get to know you better.” he breathed, then swiftly walked away.

What the fuck was that?

~O-O~

Hermione slept like a baby. Sweet, sweet peaceful REM sleep, no night terrors, no lingering feelings of disgust and horror upon waking. I haven’t felt this good in what feels like forever, she mused.

A couple weeks passed and she fell back into routine easily, school, study, work, repeat. It seemed like the nightmares and sleep deprivation were a thing of the past. She didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, so she put the disturbing dreams behind her, locking them in a box within the deepest, darkest recesses of her mind.

“Hermione, can you pick up a prescription for your father tomorrow afternoon? I thought I’d be around, but Barbara filled the cancellation spot, so it looks like we’ll be in the office most of the day.”

“Of course mom, it’s no problem.”

Parts of Hannah Abbott were recently found buried in multiple shallow graves on the shore of the Thames by Reading. Seven graves, each containing a piece of her body. Police suspect this is another case of the self proclaimed “Death Eater” or “Voldemort” serial killer. He is known to stalk, torture, and kill his victims, disposing of their body, by cutting it up into 7 pieces.

Hermione stared at the tv, her eyes getting blurry and a high pitched ringing filling her head. Hannah Abbott, Hannah Abbo, Hannah Abba. Why did that name sound so familiar?

Ding.

Hermione looked down at her phone.

Hey, it’s Tom. We met at the coffee shop. How did midterms go? What are you doing this weekend? Want to have dinner?

Her stomach dropped.

Hermione ran to her bedroom grabbing her dream journal and flipping open her laptop.

“Honey are you okay?” Her mother called from the living room.

“I’m fine Mom, I just felt a headache coming on. I think I’m going to lay down.”

She furiously typed Hannah Abbott into google and opened the first article with a picture of a plain faced blonde smiling back at the camera. She typed in “Voldemort” seeing thousands of articles pop up in the search, scrolling down the screen names like “Ginny” “Lavender” and even “Colin” jumping out at her. This serial killer had been active on and off over the past 6 years, with his victim count suspected to reach as low as 23, as high as 48. The room started to spin and she was hyperventilating, this was real, all her dreams really happened.

She passed out.

~O-O~

Now that she thought about it, the dreams stopped around the time she met Tom. She felt like an idiot for not making the connection sooner! This had to mean something. She felt fear, yes, of course, but she also felt purpose and duty. Hermione was meant to prove his guilt and somehow stop his murderous killing spree, she just knew it.

Hello, Tom. It’s good to hear from you. This weekend sounds great! I’m available Saturday night, just let me know when and where. I look forward to seeing you soon. :)

[sieben9]

“broken heart” impressions

{Quick request to anyone reading: I’m watching OUaT for the first time, and I want to avoid spoilers. So, if you want to discuss something spoilery, I’d be grateful if you could start a new post for that. Thank you!}

::long sigh::

Hook. Buddy. Pal. Dear asshole. You have (knowingly) been the Dark One for, like, eight minutes, and you pull shit like this? I better not hear a single word out of you about Rumple’s past behaviour again, because you know what? Terrible as he was, he never actually raised the souls of the malevolent spirits in his head to come visit a plague upon the living.

The fact that this episode enabled me to write that last sentence is possibly its only saving grace, to be honest.

You know. When people kept telling me “oh, 5A is really good until it isn’t and then it’s awful”, I was actually naïve enough to think “OK, but you’ve said that about literally everything so far, and it really wasn’t that bad”. I would now like to apologise for my unspoken scepticism. This really is not a good episode. Worse, this episode (as well as “Birth”) have the effect of making me like the rest of the season less, because of the massive disappointment all those neat little mysteries ended in.

Before we venture under the cut, I feel the need to point out that this entire post was written to every ABBA song available on Spotify. Which is pretty much every ABBA song.

Look, we all deal in different ways.

Damnit, but I liked Merlin.

Mind you, I had a suspicion that he wouldn’t last. Because this show has a serious problem with killing off 90% of its non-white characters. And I doubt this comes from a place of malice; it’s just the easy complacency us white people can so easily fall into. Namely, “I’m not a racist, so I can’t possibly have done/said/written a racist thing”, which is bullshit, for reasons other people have said much better than I could under the circumstances.

And then there are the rather horrific implications of Emma covering up the murder, and if you’re going “huh, why?” at this point, let me spell it out very clearly: She is the (white) town sheriff and she is hiding the murder of a Black man to cover for her (also white) boyfriend. Again, I am convinced that this doesn’t come from a place of malice, but it clearly is coming from a place of profound ignorance, and it’s no less hurtful for it. (By the way, this issue was pointed out to me separately, but I’d like to think that it’s glaring enough that I would have noticed anyway, but you know. Full disclosure and all that.)

To be frank, that topic is so much bigger than this post, and I am so not an expert. But I did notice this, and it was very much not good. Do better, show. Please.

OK, now that everyone is uncomfortable, on to the rest of this trainwreck. …yeah, sorry, not much positive energy in this post, I’m afraid, because—surprise—this was not a good episode.

And I don’t just mean “I was expecting something else and was disappointed”, I mean “as objectively bad as bad can be.” It was convoluted, unfocused, and generally not a fun viewing experience.

So… I don’t know. I did like Rumple showing up to the duel without outside prompting. Didn’t much enjoy the whole “I’ve never done anything worthwhile with my life, ever” speeches, but compared to the rest of this trainwreck, it didn’t register much. Also liked the duel itself—it shows what has been implied before: that Hook and Rumple are pretty evenly matched where swordsmanship is concerned (and both are pretty good swordsmen). In fact, considering that Hook doesn’t tire and has much faster reflexes than normal human beings (see: every instance where a Dark One or other magic user caught a flying arrow out of the air), and this still happened…

…I’d go so far as to say that Rumple is probably the better fighter of the two. Who’d have thunk it, huh? (I mean, Rumple also won in the end, but while victory-by-rigging may be fair game, it doesn’t exactly demonstrate superior skill with the blade)

Also, is that limp permanently healed, now or…? Because if yes, then what the hell. I mean, good for Rumple and all that, but if it’s that easy, why did he never do it himself? (OK, I actually already have a headcanon for that, but it’s so outlandish and actually belongs to a different franchise, so I doubt it’s the “official” explanation for this)

The only other bright spot in this tangled, miserable mess of an episode was Henry.

seriously, bless this child

I joke a lot that he’s used to having an “evil” mom, so this isn’t quite as hard for him, but there really is a lot of truth to that. His willingness to trust Emma once she made the first step doesn’t seem so much like naiveté, and more like the result of what he learned from Regina’s struggles. I’m pretty sure he realises how much his support can help Emma, and he’d rather take the risk and be wrong with that than playing it safe and not helping her when she needs it most. I might have said it before, but between all the chaos and curses, Regina and Emma are raising a pretty good kid.

As for the whole Dark One plot… I don’t even know. It makes very little sense. It wasn’t foreshadowed. Last season all the Dark One wanted was to “take over the world”, now it’s “bring all the previous Dark Ones back to plague the world” …it’s just a mess.

And that’s without getting into the convoluted details of that plan, or that cop-out with Hook casting the curse via Nimue or how ridiculously easy Merlin went down… yeah, I’m not in the mood to be charitable to this plot point, in case you can’t tell.

this ad in the background gives it about the right gravitas, really.

And I’m not even going into how Hook treats Emma in this, because I like to believe that it’s meant to be objectively Bad™ and bygum, they succeeded in showing that.

seriously, man, what the fuck.

I mean, I’m not exactly Emma’s biggest fan at the moment, but holy crap, she didn’t deserve that.

Oh, and that scene at the well. What the fuck to that, too.

And please understand, it’s not Belle saying that she can’t be together with Rumple that merits that “question”—yes, my shipper heart is breaking, but that’s how this goes—but that she went to the well, where Rumple explicitly asked her only to come if she was willing to try again. Just… what kind of cruel, OOC kind of nonsense is that? Did you get that sentence mixed up somehow? D’you think you might wanna write that down next time?

Not happy, predictably. And the most hilarious thing is that I almost forgot about it, because there’s so much other nonsense going on this episode. Separating Rumbelle Yet Again barely registers. Yeah. I know.

Yeah, so. Dark Ones coming over from the underworld. Which is actually a pretty cool image, but the whole plot is so contrived and rushed that I can’t really muster any interest in it.

(Also, yes, I know that there was another subplot happening this episode, but you know what? I took a long look at that and decided that I am not touching that with a ten-foot-pole. I’m sure Robin and Regina know what they’re doing. Kind of.)

[kurly-quill]

Robin’s Nest Cafe (part 1)

So, here goes nothing! This will probably have more than one part, but will likely be non-chronological. 

Pairings: JayTim, maybe future JayDickTim 

Rating: Mature for Language [for now] 

Coffee Shop AU (sort of), Civilian!Tim (mostly?)

         Part 1 - Part 2

(1) Hot Chocolate

The first thing to know about Gothamites, is that they are objectively, irrevocably rude as fuck.

It’s not like New York City, where people bustle past without so much as a nod of acknowledgement because they have somewhere to be and don’t have time for pleasantries, or the aggressive shoving on the metro in Tokyo, or God forbid, like Metropolis, where people born past 1930 still tip their hats at passerby.

No, the average Gothamite would see you, without an umbrella, soaking wet, and shake their umbrella off on you on the way inside. If you gave up your seat to an elderly Gothamite on the train, they would sooner say fuck you than thank you. If you tried to mug a Gothamite, they would probably punch you in the face and steal your wallet, because, hell, you’d be the fifth person to try it this week.

And Tim, for all of his “good breeding” and “respectable upbringing” is, at his very core, a Gothamite.

His smile is so wide that he’s baring teeth, and while it doesn’t match the snarl on the face across from him, it’s no less able to convey the sheer amounts of fuck you very much, have a fucktastic day!!

“I ain’t sayin’ it again -” the man bellows, spit hitting Tim’s face and, ew, probably his lips too, “- give me the money inna register ‘afore things get ugly!”

His eyes glimmer with the sharpness of the icicles hanging outside along the shop window, barely sparing the knife shaking under his chin a second glance.

It’s 11 pm on Friday night, and the cafe is still open because Gotham never really sleeps and Tim lives above the shop, anyway. Behind Knife Guy, there’s a few people in line, displaying varying degrees of concern.

(1- was born in a Gotham alleyway, please if you’re going to stab the cashier just do it I’ll pour the coffee myself, 5 - been in Gotham for awhile, kinda worried but Killer Croc smashed my car last week and I just really need a coffee, 10 - visiting Gotham for the first time this weekend-- and the last time.)

Tim looks skyward, praying for strength. There are cobwebs up there he’s never noticed.

“Sorry, the money in the register is a seasonal flavor. But hey, bright side, we’ve just got peppermint mocha back in, so I can ring you up for that instead?”

Knife Guy gapes for a second, squinting at Tim like he expects him to start tap dancing any second now. Tim raises a brow, patient. With a frustrated snarl, the knife jolts forward enough that it clicks against Tim’s nametag, chipping at the edge of the black and yellow batman sticker beside his name, which is his favorite sticker so excuse you.

“Look, I’ll make you a deal. Either you put away the knife and order a peppermint mocha with christmas tree sprinkles, and we pretend this never happened, or we do it the less fun way, with the GCPD. Who are a total buzzkill, by the way, believe me. Your choice.”

There’s an eye-twitch, and a change in the man’s expression that makes Tim’s finely-honed Gotham instincts go “oh damn, here we go”, when someone opens up the front door with far too much strength, the glass rattling with the force of its inward swing. The freezing night wind billows in, the scent of oil and snow filtering through the warmer scents of the cafe. There’s an unceremonious tinkle of the bell dangling on the doorframe, and beneath it stands another man.

Tim stares. Knife Guy stares. One of the customers looks up from her phone, groans long and loud, grabs her triple-espresso hazelnut latte with caramel drizzle, and walks out into the late-November chill.

The Red Hood holds the door open for her, because he’s a fucking gentleman.

The door swinging shut with another tinkle, and there’s a pause filled only with catchy holiday jingles that have been playing over the radio since September. Hood surveys the scene before strolling toward the counter.

“Damn, lemme tell ya, it’s cold as fuckin’ balls out there,” Hood laments, with absolutely zero prompting, rubbing his hands together as though he’d gain any friction through the gauntlets. He stops just short of where Tim and Knife Guy are facing off, the blade hovering threateningly in the air just under Tim’s chin. Hood cocks his head.

“Am I interrupting somethin’?”

Tim takes a quick second to make sure that, if he opens his mouth, his jaw won’t hit the floor, before he replies, “Just regular customer service in Gotham. Hope you’re not here for the money in the register too - We’re fresh out of stock. Moving onto the Winter Menu, you know?”

Hood nods, making what sounds like an understanding hum through the voice synthesizers, “Some people just never check the website. Read you’ve got a mean gingerbread latte on special.”

Tim would respond, except now the knife is shaking to a worrying degree– Knife Guy is scared shitless, because the Red Hood is nearly shoulder-to-shoulder– or, well, shoulder-to-bicep with him, because the man is huge and smells very distinctly of cigarette smoke and blood. Tim would sympathize if he wasn’t having an internal fangasm to end all fangasms at this moment.

In a display of panic-borne, truly ballsy stupidity (unfortunately, also a common trait amongst Gothamites, particularly the ones that rob cafes at knife-point at just the hour the Bats tend to come out), Knife Guy whips the knife to the side to turn on the vigilante.

Hood’s got the knife out of the guy’s hand in an instant– Tim has just enough reflexes to grab the steaming cup of caffeine goodness that’s sitting innocently in harm’s way– and in the next second he’s grabbing the guy by the hair and slamming his head backwards onto the counter, spine bent at an angle that makes the onlookers flinch. A few more scurry out the door. There are other places to get a caffeine fix.

“Look here,” Hood growls, No-Knife Guy going cross-eyed as the knife points straight at his nose, “I ain’t lookin for a side of stitches with my candy cane hot chocolate with heavy cream, ya feel me?”

Mr. No Knife squeals.

“P-Please– I’m sorry, I’ll go! Promise! Just– fuck, l-lemme go!”

Hood’s head makes a minute motion, somehow conveying sheer exasperation despite the helmet (Though Tim can just feel the eye-roll going on). He drags the wannabe-robber up to his feet, though it’s pretty useless seeing as the guy’s knees give out they’re shaking so hard– and, oh dude, gross, that’s definitely a wet spot in the front of his jeans there. Tim’s nose wrinkles. He better not have to mop that up.

Hood pays the fact that he’s basically holding up all the man’s weight one-armed no mind, dragging him to the front of the shop. The bell chimes merrily as he gives the guy a literal kick in the ass out the door. The guy lands face-first in dirty, oily, Gothamy snow. An eight year old kicks him as she walks past, hand-in-hand with her father to the nearest bus stop. That Uptown Gotham charm, amiright?

“You’re just lucky I’m feeling the holiday fucking spirit right now– Plus, no offense,” a quick appraisal, “you’re kinda pathetic.”

And then Hood closes the door.

But he’s still here.

Tim looks around the shop. Apparently, at some point in the last 2 minutes, the rest of the customers have decided that they really don’t have time for the typical Bat-dramatics today and fucked off to another cafe. Tim should be more upset about the loss in business than he is, but that’s the furthest thing from his mind.

Because the Red Hood (It’s him, it’s really him) is still standing there. In the cafe.

 With Tim.

He glances down at his chest to make sure the knife isn’t actually buried there, because the possibility that he’s died makes more sense than the Red Hood standing in his cafe, surrounded by a horrific mash-up of dollar-store Hannukah and Christmas (because his family is technically Jewish even if they didn’t celebrate jack shit, and Steph took the shitty plastic menorah on top of the espresso machine as a challenge).

“Um,” Tim remarks, scrambling for the words he wants to say to one of his childhood heros, “So, can I get you something? I feel like I should get you something. Cause I mean. This is an establishment that supports vigilantism, okay? Robin’s Nest cafe, at your service. At least a 10% discount, just like military. Just putting it out there.”

Right. So where is that knife again? Can’t speak if he doesn’t have vocal chords.

The vigilante makes a sound through the synths in his helmet that must be a chuckle, shaking his head in amusement. He moves back up to the counter with movements far too fluid for someone of his size, and Tim swallows a bit as he’s forced to look up (and up) at close proximity. Wow, the helmet is something else– he’s itching to get his hands on it, take it apart and see all its functions and how it was made.

“Gotta first aid kit?” is almost lost to Tim, he’s so mesmerized – he thinks distantly that he’s probably looking a little manic, cause he’s running on caffeine and spite, and people have always told him that his tendency to hyperfocus is unnerving on a good day – but then the words click. He frowns.

“Yes, we do? He didn’t get you with the knife, did he?” he questions, eyes raking up and down Hood’s leather jacket for any telling rips or tears.

Hood tuts, reaching up to tap at his neck, “Nah, not me, but you’re ‘bout to need a new white shirt.”

Tim mimics the movement on autopilot, clapping his hand to the side of his neck and feeling the stickiness there. His heart jumps for a second as he pulls back his hand and sees enough blood there to wonder how he’d missed it.

“Oh. Damn.”

And that’s how, five minutes later, Tim’s got the doors to the cafe locked and finds himself sitting in the break room with the Red Hood dabbing at his neck with a cotton swab.

If he finally manages to overdose on caffeine tonight, he thinks he could go happily.

Hood’s so close that Tim’s 100% sure the vigilante can feel his heart trying to burst all his arteries by its sheer pumping force. He’s getting light-headed because he’s trying not to be creepy and do something like smell the the tall, buff guy with gentle hands (Cause, God, somehow the scent of cigarettes, leather, and gunmetal just work for him) and has thus forgone taking any deep breaths.

“Lucky you, s’not deep,” are the only words either of them has said since he plopped down on the table. Tim hesitates for a second, watching Hood close the first aid kit and step away, before he clears his throat.

Courage, Tim. Come on, you’re from Gotham.

“So. Thanks. For all that, I mean.”

Hood shrugs.

“Eh, there are worse ways to start the night. Plus, it’s way warmer in here than out there. Wasn’t kidding when I walked in– was gettin fucking blue balls out there, and not even from anything fun this time.”

Tim lets out a surprised laugh.

“Oh? Well, I think I have a way to warm you up.”

There’s amusement in every line of Hood’s shoulders as he tilts his head, becoming increasingly intrigued by this particularly bold civilian. When he speaks, there’s a definite purr there, mechanized though it is. Something prickly hot shoots down Tim’s spine, and he has to fight down a flush.

“Yeah? You got something in mind?”

Tim can’t help but grin. “Oh, I’ve got just the thing.”

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

“Let me guess. Hot chocolate with heavy cream?”

“Shut your shittin’ mouth, Dick.”

.

.

.

.

“…. It’s got candy cane flavor in it”

[queenboudicaa]

The annuls of the terf part 2

TERF-blocker descends*

 Episode 1: The End of the First War. Scene 3: Cyberspace and public sphere, 2014-5

Feminists: *Educate themselves* *Become increasingly horrified* *Start writing articles nobody fucking reads*

HEY PEOPLE! This shit is mental. There are these people saying being female has nothing to do with being a woman, and that they’re women because they have magic gender essence, and this sounds pretty sexist, and they also say that sex doesn’t exist and given we’ve always thought that that’s the reason we’re oppressed we’re pretty worried this is a bad idea for women and feminism, and now these other people who say they’re feminists are telling us we have to centre people who are not female in our feminism or we’re the oppressors and are going on and on about how we shouldn’t say anything because we’re whorephobic bigots and it’s kind of nuts and people are bullying lesbians to have sex with people with penises and they’re encouraging young people to take hormones that we don’t seem to understand the effects of and we think this is all sketchy as fuck to be honest. What the hell is going on?

Trans activists and intersectional feminists:That woman talking over there is making people unsafe because she is an evil bigot and trans people are the most vulnerable people in the world and she is the oppressor and she is oppressing us by speaking and if she speaks then it is literal violence and it will make people hurt us and we will also hurt ourselves and so you have to stop her speaking and if you don’t stop her speaking then you are also an evil bigot and we are going to tell everyone what evil fucking bigots you are and you wouldn’t want that now so you better stop her speaking right fucking now.

Civic institution: Um, what now?

Trans activists: *Pickets* *Inundates with letters and emails and phone calls* *Goes on twitter and gets a massive pile of people to bombard institution*

Civic institution’s PR people: This makes us look bad.

Civic institution: Okay, we won’t let the bigot speak. I mean, she’s just a feminist, right?

Trans activists: Hurray we are safe! Ding dong the witch is dead!

Feminists: What the fuck? HEY PEOPLE! I was just trying to say something because I think there are some questions here and I think we should really talk about it. I’m not sure people are women just because they have magic woman essence and I think there might be some not good consequences of thinking this.

Trans activists and civic institutions: SHUT UP BIGOTS.

Misogynist child with column in major left-wing newspaper: SHUT UP BIGOTS. YOU’RE THE KIND OF PEOPLE WHO THOUGHT GAY PEOPLE WERE ALL KIDDY FIDDLERS.

Feminists: Um, lots of us are lesbians actually and the rest of us were totally behind gay rights, like, we’ve always been allies, what the hell are you going on about?

Misogynist child with column in major left-wing newspaper: *Blocks all the women objecting* WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY BITCHES.

Woke bros and assorted leftie-misogynists:*Jumping up and down with excitement* WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY UPPITY BITCHES.

Trans activists and civic institutions and leftie newspapers:  REPEAT AFTER US – Trans women are women. Because trans women are women then trans women should be given all the social resources given to other women and if you don’t accept this then you are exclusionary bigots and we’re going to make damn sure everyone knows what terrible terrible people you are and how you shouldn’t be allowed to live or work or speak or write in public. Have you fucking got that???

Feminists: You’re intimidating and silencing us.

Trans activists and leftie newspapers:  No, we’re not. You trigger people by existing and asking questions and having the wrong opinions. You need to shut the fuck up so that everyone is safe. RIGHT NOW.

 Episode 2: Between the Wars. Public sphere, 2015-2017

Feminists: We’re feeling pretty demoralized here…

Trans activists: EXCELLENT. You just sit over there and keep your little lady-mouths shut. *Organise some more* *Take over Stonewall and all the LGBT+ organizations* *Start sending people into school and institutions to explain that people have magic gender essence which sometimes gets trapped in the wrong body* *Bully, harass and no platform any woman who speaks up*

Hey, government. We’ve got this great idea. You know how people think you’re a bunch of assholes who has been driving the economy into the ground and lining rich people’s pockets while you let vulnerable people starve, we’ve got just the ticket for you.

Government: *Ears prick up* Tell us more.

Trans activists: Yeah, all you have to do is change this piece of legislation so we can get our sex changed more easily. The current legislation is really burdensome, and we’re really vulnerable, and it would really help us out, and would totally make you look like you care about marginalized people while costing you fuck all.

Government: Well, that does sound like a boon. Is there a catch?

Trans activists: No, not one. It’s just streamlining an administrative process really.

Government: Okay, come and tell us all about it. Is there anyone else we need to talk to?

Trans activists: No. It doesn’t have any effect on anyone, it’s just paperwork really. JUST MAKE SURE YOU DON’T TALK TO THOSE UPPITY WOMEN OVER THER THEY’RE ALL EVIL BIGOTS WHO WANT TO KILL US.

Government: Oh yes, they do sound like terrible people, how awful for you.

Trans activists: Yes, they’re really horrific. And while we’re at it, you might want to think about removing their rights to single-sex spaces from the Equalities Act because it discriminates against us.

Government: Interesting. Okay, when can you come in?

 Episode 3: The Second War Begins. Scene 1 – Somewhere in Whitehall, 2018

Government: We think we’re going to change the law. Just a little administrative clear up to make life less burdensome for the trans population who, as we know, are terribly vulnerable.

Feminists: You’re going to do what??? Why didn’t you ask us about this?

Government: Yes well, the trans people said it didn’t affect you.

Feminists: THEY SAID WHAT??? Hang on a motherfucking minute.

 Episode 3:  The Witches Strike Back. Scene 2: Cyberspace and public sphere, 2018

Trans activists: REPEAT AFTER US: Trans women are women. Trans women should not be excluded from any spaces women have access to. Anyone who questions that is an exclusionary genocidal racist who is in league with the far right. And by the way, you’re not women anymore, you’re cis women, and we want you to stop talking about your bodies, and we’re going to change all the words in all the literature that has anything to do with you so that everyone understands that being female is not necessary to being a woman, and from now on you are ‘mentruators’ and ‘cervix havers’ and ‘pregnant people.’ Got that?

Women: WOAH. You fucking what? We’re cis-what? And we’re not women anymore, we’re menstruators. We don’t think we like this.

Trans activists: It’s inclusive.

Women: Well, it sounds dehumanising as all hell to us.

Trans activists: Shut up cis people, you are the oppressors. These are the new words for you.

Women: Don’t we get to decide which words we use for ourselves?

Trans activists: No, you are the oppressors, if you do not accept these new words you are oppressing us.

Women: We’re oppressing you by wanting to be called women??? What the hell is….

Trans activists: BIGOTS! These are your new words. You are cis women, and we are trans women. We are both just different types of women, except we’re more oppressed than you so you have to do what we say. Look, there’s nothing you can do about it, the government already agrees with us, see?

Women: The government already agrees with you? What?

Trans activists: Yes. REPEAT AFTER US: Trans women are women. The government believes this and is going to change the law so that we can be legally recognised as female if we sign a piece of paper that says we have magic woman essence…

Women: What??? This can’t be right. Surely someone would have said something about this? Where are the feminists? Feminists, is this right?

Feminists: U-huh. We were trying to….

Women: What are the implications of this???

Feminists: *montage of charts and essays* *three weeks later*

Women: Fuck this shit. We need to do something.

Feminists: YES. WE. DO.

Feminists and radicalized women and intersex people and transsexuals and concerned parents and gay men who are realizing something’s up and some straight male allies:EVERYONE HOLD HANDS AND PUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLL.

The press: The women seem to be making a shit-ton of noise about something? Why are there stickers of cocks everywhere??? What on earth is going on?

Trans activists and the left-wing press:NOTHING, THEY’RE BIGOTS.

Most of the press: Oh, okay.

A few journalists: *Digging around* What the actual fuck??????

Feminists and allies: EVERYONE KEEP PUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLLING. IT’S MOVING.

Trans activists: BURN THE WITCHES BURN THE WITCHES BURN THE WITCHES.

Feminists: Ha, yeah, we’re not so scared of you and your words now are we? There’s a ton of us here. And people are starting to listen. EVERYONE. C’MON. PUUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.

Trans activists: BURN THE WITCHES BURN THE WITCHES BURN THE WITCHES.

Women and allies: PUUUUULLLLLLLLL.

Feminists watching from around the world:Hell yes! PUUUUULLLLLLLLL.

Women and allies: KEEP FUCKING PUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLLING.

Trans activists: BURN THE WITCHES BURN THE WITCHES BURN THE WITCHES.

Government: Lah-lah-lah.

A few journalists: Um actually, we had a little look at this thing, and we think the women might have a point.

Trans activists: NO THEY DON’T THEY’RE WITCHES BURN THEM BURN THEM.

A few journalists: Now, come on, there is a proposed change to law, and this is a democracy, and they have some arguments that seem quite compelling, and there have been some things that have happened recently that seem to suggest that maybe there’s some substance to their concerns, and it seems like we should think this through.

Trans activists: NO DEBATE. BURN THEM BURN THEM.

A few journalists: We’re not sure that’s really helping your case. We think we’re going to start covering this in more depth.

Trans activists: YOU CAN’T LISTEN TO THEM THEY’RE WITCHES. IF YOU DON’T GIVE US WHAT WE WANT WE’LL KILL OURSELVES.

Women and allies:PUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLL. IT’S MOVING IT’S MOVING!!!!!!!

Feminists watching from around the world:PUUUUULLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!

Major left-wing newspaper that has been steadfastly quiet: *ostentatiously clears throat* Um, actually we think the women might have a point.

Women and allies: *BACKFILPS*

Trans activists and allies at home and abroad:OMFG why is the British media so full of evil bigots??????

Women and allies: *Lying in a bundle panting* Whatfuckingever asshats.

[ayearofpike]

Falling

Tom Doherty Associates, 2007 402 pages, 24 chapters ISBN 978-0-7653-5644-4 LOC: PS3566.I486 F35 2007 OCLC: 73502344 Released March 6, 2007 (per B&N)

Matt Connor has been wronged by the girl he loves. Kelly Fienman has been wronged by the suspect she’s stalking. They’re both out for vengeance, but while Matt is upfront and honest about the stunt he plans to pull, he isn’t really honest with himself about what he actually wants to get — and for her part, Kelly pretends that her need for justice is both moral and absent. When their paths inevitably cross, they’re left with several huge questions: what is right? what is good? do these things intersect? is it OK if they don’t?

(Thanksgiving and a child’s birthday were NOT conducive to A Year of Pike, gang. Let’s see if I can pick it back up here in December.)

I remembered being really happy with this book the first time I read it. Like, OK, Pike is taking it easy on the kidlit, having maybe resigned himself to the understanding that his style no longer fits with popular expectations. Plus, this came probably three years after I’d read a recent predecessor, and a solid five years after I’d BOUGHT one  — I got Alosha and The Shaktra out of the library, never read The Yanti until just now, and then I saw Falling at a bookstore sometime in 2008. I read it and I loved it: so unexpected, such power, what a shift in tone and characters, what a strong and solid cliffhanger ending — literally! Surely there exists some kind of excited blog record of me finding this, so long after I’d decided Pike wasn’t for me anymore. After spending entirely too long trawling the depths of my LiveJournal, though, I can’t find one.

And the reread? Eh. As it turned out, I didn’t actually remember very much about this book. Parts of it want to be The Silence of the Lambs (and Pike even nods to that) but it doesn’t have the same power. The rest? So much speculation and estimation left up to the reader to really understand this closed-book antagonist, who is actually quite selfish but we don’t get her perspective. She doesn’t even monologue when she has our hero at literally the end of his rope. And the powerful scene at the end? More like a trickle to a halt, made even weaker by the unnecessary intercutting to the other character’s perspective as she oversees the end of her antagonist’s life. We’ll get there. I don’t know. Maybe I was so excited to get this, and to have a book where a baby’s life and future hangs in the balance right around the same time I was raising my own baby as a new at-home parent, that I overlooked another one of Pike’s letdown endings.

I forgot to talk in the last post about the ISBN shifting to 13 digits. This started in 2007: all new books would have a code that better matched up with international book listing codes. These last two have had both an ISBN-10 and an ISBN-13, I assume because he had both of them slated prior to the change, but I’ve decided to just list the newer code for simplicity’s sake. You can do more research if you feel like it, or even convert back and forth between ISBN-10 and 13. It doesn’t really affect my blog, but it’s a change and I wanted to mention it.

So Falling. It actually could have been a pretty straightforward story, with much of the bulk of the book spent exploring the mental attitudes involved in what it takes to go beyond the law, commit some kind of horrific deed that most people couldn’t imagine. The real problem with this story is that it tries to cram too much into it, and the one crime is so vile and base that it renders our antihero’s misdeed into almost seeming unimportant. But it’s not — Matt’s actions are horrible and indefensible, especially as we don’t actually get his villain’s perspective, no matter what someone else did that was totally gross. (I am so a parent: “I don’t care what Tommy did, you are not to act that way.”)

What the hell does Matt actually do? This is where Falling is good: it keeps us in suspense for the first good quarter of the book as we try to understand his plan and how it’s going to adversely affect the girl. Because of course his object of vengeance is a girl — the one who just dumped him, actually. She didn’t “just dump him,” though; she strung him along as “the only one” while she was still in contact with her rich “ex,” who she is now married to and has an unborn child with, a child that could only have been conceived while Matt was still seeing her. And it’s not his, it can’t be his, because she never let him stick it in. So Matt is going to fake his own death by crashing a personal aircraft in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, he will parachute to a waiting boat, anchored in a shallower area, and assume a new identity until he can carry out the second part of his plan: kidnap the baby, months later, after everyone has forgotten his involvement with the woman.

Kelly is one of the FBI agents assigned to the kidnapping case. She’s actually just back on the job after a tragic and devastating incident with a previous suspect that has taken out a good chunk of her GI system. And this is where Falling has problems: this second story, totally unrelated to and unnecessary for understanding Matt’s motivations, is clung to and pushed on us constantly through the whole book, even as it threatens to be a more engaging tale of horrific glee. Like, I get why Pike didn’t just write this one (out of concerns of being accused of ripping off Thomas Harris) but this is really TWO suspense stories, and he hasn’t properly fleshed out the tale of Kelly and the Sex Murderin’ English Teacher.

Because that’s what’s happened: three-four months before the kidnapping, she gets pulled into an investigation on a dude who has made videos of himself having extremely consensual sex with rich women, tying them to the beds, confronting them about their obvious infidelity to their rich husbands, and then killing them by pouring corrosive acid on (and then INTO) their chests. She has a Ph.D in mythology and literature, which they need because the dude is throwin’ out all sorts of esoteric references and they think that knowing them will help them track him down. Of course, Kelly has gone into FBI work because she wants to be a hero, and so she breaks like EVERY protocol in investigating the trail of these obscure Asian myths back to either Ohio State or Ohio University, depending on which page you look at. (Does Pike know there’s a difference?) All the evidence points to a doctoral student, but it’s been manipulated that way by his faculty advisor, who is doing the sex murders because he caught his wife cheating with the dude. And now he’s going to kill Kelly the same way, only he hasn’t counted on her being a totally buff FBI agent who actually MOVES THE ENTIRE BED SHE’S TIED TO and makes the acid splash on the ropes, which she can now break to get at her gun and cap the fucker in the back of the neck. Of course, the acid has also splashed on her stomach and eaten into her organs, hence the GI problems. And also her husband is pissed that she went to such crazy lengths and endangered herself, to the point where if she goes back to the FBI he’s not willing to hang around and watch her kill herself. So he moves out and takes their young daughter with him.

I KNOW. This is a WAY more fuckin’ interesting story than oh, boo hoo, she was stringing me along so I’m gonna kidnap her baby. It’s too bad that he drags this shit out and doesn’t give it more consideration. But as with so much literature, we gotta accept the tragic male antihero versus the strong female agent who is still trying to figure out the boundaries of her moral code.

Yeah, there’s still more story. Matt hires a nanny under the table to help take care of the baby, and she thinks they look alike. You hear this all the time as a parent, even if your kid looks NOTHING like you — but Matt’s curious, so he does a mail-away DNA test and it comes back unquestionably that he’s actually the father. So now he knows he can’t just bail on the kid like he was planning, but he needs money to raise him. So he sets up an intricate ransom for his ex and her husband, who has money (of course he has money; why do you think she married him?). Matt makes the dude put $3 million in cash and jewels into a bag, then chase all over metro LA until he finally ends up taking a boat out to Catalina Island. But halfway there, he instructs the husband to load the dough into a weighted box and throw it overboard. Because of course Matt is a scuba diver — this is a Pike book, after all. He retrieves the money and then uses a personal propeller to zip off underwater. And the FBI, which was so prepared for an island drop or a boat handoff, is caught with their pants all the way down.

Of course Kelly is furious, but also curious. She remembers seeing a picture of Matt in the woman’s desk, and asks about the circumstances of his death. It seems that the day Matt’s plane crashed, he had been on Catalina — finishing up his scuba certification. So now Kelly has connected the dots, in a way only a Pike heroine can, but she can’t imagine where to find the dude. But she knows someone who can: a certain Sex Murderin’ English Teacher, who is still alive but paralyzed from the neck down, who knows better than anyone Kelly knows how a twisted male mind works. He grasps the intricacies of the situation immediately and advises Kelly to follow the woman, because there’s no way she’s unaware.

Kelly doesn’t believe it, but sure enough the chick leads her directly to Matt and the baby, set up in a fancy apartment not even that far from the rich husband’s house. It seems that Matt felt like he had all the leverage he needed to get the girl back, now that he had the baby and some money. But it’s not enough — she knows that the dude isn’t ever going to let her just go, and that the only way to be totally free to be back with Matt is if they kill her husband. So Matt, against his better judgment, starts coming up with a plan to murder a dude: drive his boat to Catalina, get him super drunk, and then push him overboard on the way back. The girl, weirdly, insists that Matt has to be on board and actually do the pushing. Which makes Kelly, listening in on her bugs planted in the apartment, start to think that maybe she’s the actual monster, even though Matt has faked his own death and then kidnapped her son. So she affects her own secret identity and moves into the complex to get closer to the situation but also to try to keep Matt from doing something he’ll regret.

Matt actually has no intention of killing the husband. His plan was pretty much always to tag along on the boat and then get the girl to fake her OWN death, and then they can be free and alone and untraceable. But but but, the girl objects, if she is dead and not the husband, then she won’t be heir to all his money! But Matt flatly refuses to push the dude. So she goes ahead and does it. Unlucky for her, they’re being tailed by — who else? — Kelly the Hero, who now has enough circumstantial evidence to arrest the woman for murder. Her father-in-law bails her out of jail, raising more weird questions, and then she manages to convince Matt to help her jump bail and escape with all her worldly possessions. They make it to Utah the first night, but the ten minutes Matt runs out to buy diapers and formula is long enough for a dude to bust in and tie his girl to the bed and be looming over her with a beaker full of acid when he gets back.

Holy shit, right? By now Matt knows who Kelly is and has gotten her backstory, and he knows that she’s willing to let him slide on the whole kidnap kerfuffle, so he calls her with this weird coincidence. But there’s no way it could be SMET, who is totally paralyzed! But Kelly now fears for HIS ex-wife’s life, and flies back to Ohio to do another check on this whole twisted clan. The best thing she can think of is to do a home stakeout with the lady and her new man, the grad student she was cheating with. Only — uh-oh — turns out the dude is in cahoots with SMET the whole time! His whole life, in fact: Cheatin’ Grad Student is SMET’s little brother! Their mother was also a cheater, and died of complications from their dad pushing her down the stairs after he found out. But wait! It seems that SMET actually did the killing, replacing her cardiac epinephrine shot with vinegar, so when she seized in her hospital bed it was the attempt to save her that killed her. Please note: SMET did this as a motherfucking TEN YEAR OLD. From there, he realized the thrill of destroying loose women and employed his little brother in helping to deface and dispose of the bodies.

So it only follows that he’d employ the dude to lure his wife, and was devastated when she bit, and that has turned into more killin’. In fact, it was CGS who was in Utah the night before, on his brother’s orders, ready to take down another terrible, cheating, murdering, bail-jumping lady. But this kid is even more debased than his brother, and is just going to rape and dismember Kelly while his new bae is knocked out from drugs in her dinner. Luckily she has her own syringe of cardiac vinegar, uncovered in her prior search of the dad’s house, and she manages to stab it into CGS’s heart just in the nick of time.

What’s up with Matt and the On-the-Lam Family? No big, they’re just doing some leisurely rock climbing now that they’re free from dead rich husbands or acid murderers. This, it turns out, is Matt’s one final big test to his girl’s fidelity — and she fails big time, cutting his rope and leaving him stranded on the edge of a cliff while he’s rappelling. But Matt’s been here before, because he’s an experienced and expert rock climber (because what the FUCK ELSE can this asshole be good at), and he manages to free-climb up the side of the cliff and catch his girl as she’s packing up the car. So now it’s her turn to be stuck on a cliff ledge, until he can get to a pay phone and call the cops on her for jumping bail. And we’re all like, good god, dude, it took you fuckin’ well long enough.

Of course we can’t just be done, right? Kelly has a sex murderin’ English teacher to revenge. She makes it look like a suicide, unscrewing part of his wheelchair and scraping his wrist veins against it so he bleeds out. But before he goes, he wants to talk to Matt, because they’re not so different, and he’d like to congratulate a fellow charismatic criminal for getting away with his misdeeds. And then he dies, and Kelly swears off FBI work so that maybe she can go back to her family and actually appreciate it and be appreciated by them.

Um ... what? But yeah, that’s the end of Falling. Either one of these stories would have been better served by itself, unless he could have given us Kelly’s necessary backstory in the beginning rather than trying to make everything happen at the same time. It comes across as excessive and unnecessary, and makes the ending fall flat. And when you have a blah ending, it doesn’t matter how vibrant the characters have been, or how real and horrific their struggles, or how much you sympathized with them throughout the narrative. All you remember is the “um ... what?”

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 60: Keeping It Together

“It’s not our fault!”

Does Steven Universe have a more ominous setting than the Prime Kindergarten? Rose’s Room comes close (and I maintain that Rose’s Room is the scariest episode of the series), but episodes featuring it always pay off the unsettling setting with an actual scare. Whereas the muted colors and cacophonous clangs of Kindergarten maintain a constant thrumming dread, promising something horrible and imminent, and lets that tone linger uninterrupted. Amethyst’s fight with Pearl in On the Run is intense, and the Crystal Gems confronting Peridot in Marble Madness ramps up the suspense, but we haven’t seen any true horror from Kindergarten until now. 

And yeah, holy shit.

As I mentioned in Reformed and Sworn to the Sword, Keeping It Together establishes Garnet’s next big arc. But hers is much different from her fellow Gems’, both in structure (it’s the shortest by far and resolves with its Peridot Episode instead of its Steven Episode) and in tone. Garnet is the emotionally healthiest Gem on the planet right now, so she needs a bigger push than Amethyst or Pearl if she’s going to lose her cool. This isn’t to belittle the other two Gems, but there’s a reason the prompts for their episodes are day-to-day issues (for them) like renewing their physical forms or training a student, while Garnet needs dramatic scenarios like the Cluster Gems or a friend’s betrayal to reach the same level of crisis.

In short, external motivation is everything to Garnet’s arc because she lacks the internal baggage of her peers. There’s nothing unhealthy about being queer a fusion, so her problems stem from societal oppression that targets her for being who she is. We’ve seen her face fusionphobia with grace against Jasper, and we’ll see that bookended with Peridot when the season ends, but an attack on her identity as abhorrent as the Cluster Gems is certainly grounds for an extreme reaction.

We’ll get there, but first I have to point out how well-structured this whole episode is. The opening revels in switcheroos, first with Garnet’s serious conversation turning out to be part of a chore session, then with two red herrings in quick succession: the hint that we might see Ruby and Sapphire, and an extended callback to On the Run suggesting a focus on Amethyst. 

From there, the episode looks like it’s going to be about Steven settling into his own new status quo as a more respected member of the Crystal Gems. And in a way, it is! We spend a lot of time with him, and he summons his shield without any fanfare when the going gets tough. But it makes sense to focus on him more here than in Reformed and Sworn to the Sword, because Garnet’s status as a fusion is still novel to him and has changed their relationship in a way that warrants examination. And in an episode about Garnet encountering forces that don’t understand fusion to a horrific degree, it’s a soothing contrast to see Steven’s own misunderstanding come in the form of genuine curiosity.

Steven is also where we get a lot the goofiness that often accompanies the show’s horror episodes, but don’t let the clip of his spectacular shrug fool you, the comedy crown here goes to Peridot. This is the episode that tips the scales on Peridot as a villain: she began as a coldhearted alien, and her bureaucratic fussiness emerged in Warp Tour and Jailbreak, but now she fully transitions from a menacing opponent to a panicky thorn in the Crystal Gems’ side. All it takes is one look at Steven to make her lose her worker bee cool, and the action scene that follows plays her increasingly absurd bag of tricks for laughs as she outmaneuvers our heroes.

Peridot’s newfound jitters make sense on a character level, as she lost her power and is stuck on a world she knows is doomed. But the silliness that ensues also works wonders for Keeping It Together’s structure: by making her such a loud source of comedy, her exit marks a concrete tonal shift from goofy to grave. And by making her someone to be pursued, we get rid of Amethyst and Pearl in the process. And by revving up to a breakneck pace to follow her zany action, we reach the third act around the episode’s halfway mark to let it sink in that much deeper. Thanks, Peridot!

After focusing on Garnet in the episode’s onset, we’re right back to hanging out with her again. She’s even more confident than usual here, accepting Steven’s effusive praise with a simple “thank you” and acknowledging out loud that she’s great, to show us how big of a deal her panic attack is. We’ve seen her handle monster after monster without breaking a sweat, and she even defeats Jasper with a smile hours after getting destabilized. But the Cluster Gems hit her where it hurts, and seeing Garnet get rattled like this is far scarier than the monsters themselves. 

Not to take away from Aivi and Surasshu’s awful Cluster Gem theme (great, but awful), but the true sound heroes of this scene are whoever designed the ungodly noises these things make. Considering nobody is credited as “Monster Scream Maker” I’ll go ahead and shout out the whole sound design team for this one: Timothy J. Borquez, Susy Campos, Tony Orozco, Daisuke Sawa, Robert Serda, and Tom Syslo. I have no idea how their jobs work, but I’m so glad they’re so great at what they do.

And then of course there the visuals, and dear lord are they upsetting. The drizzle of mismatched body parts starts small, with a hand and foot that happen to match Ruby and Sapphire’s colors taking the Gem Shard concept we’ve seen in Frybo and Secret Team to a whole new level of creepy. But the limbs get bigger and bigger until the excruciating reveal of five screaming Gem ghosts transforming into a monstrous “arm” reinforces Garnet’s pained explanation of what these Cluster Gems actually are: the remains of her long-dead friends forced together.

But even then, even as Garnet is literally falling apart, she manages to push through the horror and save the day with Steven’s help, leading to Estelle’s showstopping argument with herself. Where A.J. Michalka’s frequent use of separate voices for Steven and Connie shows Stevonnie’s youthful uncertainty, Estelle’s normally steady performance makes her frantic and distinct portrayals of Ruby and Sapphire a shocking swerve. It both subverts and fulfills our expectation of seeing Garnet’s two halves after Stephen brought them up during laundry, and brings home the idea that splitting up isn’t a fun party trick no matter how much Stephen (and fans) want to see more of them.

The little details here are amazing. I love that it’s Ruby’s eye that tears up during the fight, but by the aftermath she’s moved to rage while Sapphire is still reeling; one lives moment to moment, and the other thinks in the long term. I love that gaps in the conversation are filled by them clearly sharing the same thoughts, namely that Rose might have known about these experiments and kept them secret; the notion that this is even possible foreshadows how dark Rose’s secrecy is going to get in the coming episodes. And even though it’s tragic, I love that the header quote can first be read as Garnet’s guilt over being part of the rebellion that caused her friends to suffer, but can be reread after The Answer as guilt over prompting the Diamonds’ interest in fusion. It’s not her fault, but it certainly would feel like it was.

But therein lies the difference between Garnet and Amethyst/Pearl: guilt this intense would shut the latter two down, but by the end of the episode Garnet has kept it together. She’s still upset, and she should be, but she’s not letting herself drown in her sadness and anger. 

The Week of Sardonyx is about to test Garnet again, and Pearl’s betrayal can hit even harder now that we’ve explicitly been told about the importance of consent in fusion. And as I hinted at earlier, fusion’s multipurpose metaphor extends to a specifically queer reading that’s vital to Garnet’s arc. I honestly wouldn’t mind being hammered over the head with the message that homophobia is bad, because yeah, homophobia is bad and kids should know that and children’s media doesn’t bring it up very often. But like everything to do with fusion, the Steven Universe team handles the allegory factor with incredible finesse. There’s no one-to-one analogy between fusion and queerness beyond Ruby and Sapphire both presenting as female; indeed, the mistreatment of queer people in the real world rarely includes forcing them into long-term relationships with each other a la the Cluster Gems, and Homeworld society only finds fusion acceptable in same-Gem relationships, so it’s actually heterophobic if we want to get stupid and pedantic.

This show doesn’t need an episode about conversion therapy or corrective rape to display the horror of an outside force perverting what you are and oppressing who you are, and Garnet’s journey through Season 2 shows that Steven Universe isn’t content with presenting two women in a relationship and patting itself on the back for being progressive. The fact that the show addresses homophobia with sensitivity but without pulling punches is something entirely new, but the fact that it’s doing so while enhancing a character and advancing the main plot is even more outstanding.

Future Vision!

The headline here may be kicking off Garnet’s arc, but it also revs up the Cluster Arc: these shard fusions are bad, but who could’ve guessed they were apocalyptically bad?

Peridot’s surprising resilience to large objects and gravity is as true in the Beta Kindergarten as it is in the Prime, if Kindergarten Kid is anything to go by.

The question of whether Rose could’ve known details about Diamond tactics reframes Sapphire’s rage in Now We’re Only Falling Apart.

If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have inconsistencies…

As great as Steven is here, would he really be that surprised that he’s coming along? I get that they’re showing that the status quo of getting some respect is still new to him, but yeah, after saving everyone in Jailbreak I think he’s pretty official. Enh, just a gripe, it’s implemented well enough.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

I think just above On the Run sounds right for Keeping It Together. It’s a terrific Garnet episode with a welcome side of Peridot, and manages to set the stage for a new arc while culminating Kindergarten’s foreboding tone with a bang. 

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Winter Forecast

Keeping It Together

On the Run

Warp Tour

Maximum Capacity

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

The Test 

Future Vision

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

No Thanks!

     4. Horror Club      3. Fusion Cuisine      2. House Guest      1. Island Adventure

(No official title card for this one, likely due to Keeping It Together being part of a Steven Bomb, but luckily this piece from Vondell Swain will do.)

[peanutdracolich]

Peanut Dracolich Watches Horror: Saw

I had never seen Saw. What I had heard led me to believe it led to a period of gruesome torture porn as horror films and was itself a film about gruesome torture and ‘oh look bloodshed the horror’. It was not.

This was in fact a pleasant surprise. It did not rely upon gruesome showings of severed limbs and cut open stomachs, but understood that hey the implication is more horrific. It was instead Psychological Horror of the locked in a room murder gamey type. I enjoy this horror in manga and stories. So this was a pleasant surprise.

It was also a badly done example of this type of horror. The villain relied too far on luck and people acting extremely stupid and in some cases extremely uncharacteristically stupid. The film was sloppy with details, that in the sort of puzzle it was presenting you would and should be looking at. While some of these were inconsequential (ok in the long run it didn’t matter that the dude instantly dried off) it was jarring from the mystery and the horror and the film asked me to look for it. It lacked the fun that made Child’s Play enjoyable despite the bad (and I’d say Child’s Play wasn’t worth the time) leaving it unsatisfactory.

Ultimately I expected a film at about The Omen’s quality. Nothing that I’d be wondrously impressed by, nor anything that would make me groan. Instead I found it profoundly disappointing even by those standards and would put it closer to Uzumaki; though it did do many things better than Uzumaki it invited the critical/analytical brain and it should not have done that. Unlike The Omen, Alien: Covenant, and Prince of Darkness I feel no need or desire to ever watch this film again.

Still the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and my screaming loathing of Adam as an annoying dolt... I mean my scene by scene are below the cut.

The Good:

The Bear Trap story: It’s not surprising that they picked this for the 10 year anniversary poster. This story was in fact chilling and horrific (if not scary but horror and scary are not always the same). It was the best part of the film.

The creepy doll: The puppet is creepier than Chucky. it just didn’t really get to do much in the film to capitalize on it.

Cary Elwes. I like him. And his character was actually likeable despite his flaws. You root for him which is necessary in this sort of film.

 The Bad:

The Music. It slips from mediocre horror movie track to feeling like it's a laughtrack telling me when to be scared, attempting to manipulate my emotions with all the skill of an auditory jump scare. Yes suddenly loud/creepy tone as they reveal the object. I'm so scared.

Adam. You need to like him. You need to be torn between Cary Elwes's character killing him or not, you need to want him to survive. He annoyed me throughout the film until the last 5 minutes. The only reason to want him to win is because you want the monster to lose more.

The resolution: While the very last 3 minutes are good, the events that lead to the resolution are a cluster of stupidity that just leaves a bad taste in the mouth (especially as it was coming from Cary Elwes who had been smart before that).

The start: It starts off on the wrong foot with Adam being annoying and stupid. This means it makes a bad first impression it has to fight against, and while the Bear Trap scene does that... well it just means it had an uphill battle to reach the bear trap scene and then unfortunately goes back to Adam.

 The Ugly:

The 'frantic mode' accelerated footage. At first I thought it was supposed to be time skip, but no apparently it's just supposed to be some stylistic 'things are happening frantically' and it doesn't work well. Show them being frantic, that'd have worked better.

The details. Details are important in this type of plot, and the movie ignores things like 'he has another tool' or 'he should be soaking wet' and it detracts heavily from it; sometimes as just 'nitpicks' that would normally be shrugged off if it was not a movie that demanded that sort of attention, and sometimes as ‘your plot hinges on stupidity because you didn’t show this as failing’ which just leaves a bad taste at the best of times.

And now my unsatisfied play by play

Saw (Film)

 Nice start. Immediately gets into the creepy with waking up drowning in a bath. Character loses points for 'I'm probably already dead'. You've got a chain on your foot, and you woke up in a life or death situation, you shouldn't be jumping to that yet. Actually I just don't like the dialogue thus far.

 Music does its job to try and trick me into thinking a dead body is scary. Those burns on the face of the man with the gun are... supposed to be muzzle burns? Every line from main character makes me like him less. And I want to know how he got here drowning without the doctor noticing something. I mean the water wasn't rising, it was over his face. He should have been drowning well earlier if he was put in first.

 And you question the doctor on why he knows that 'if your kidneys were stolen it'd hurt like hell'. Adam you annoy me. Every line from your mouth has annoyed me. You are an idiot and it's only 6 minutes into the film.

 Still Adam and the doctor Lawrence are trapped in a shit hole room together, with tapes in their pockets, and padlocked and chained to a pair of pipes. The tapes so to play them, though, and the dead body in the center of the room has a cassette player so.

 Adam is stupid some more... also surprisingly dry. Like his clothes aren't wet at all. Does this film not understand how water works? I don't think this film understands that water is wet.

 Tape is ok. Gravely voice is so so effect for horror, music accents it well. Still it's basic serial killer threat of you might die in here. Which yes you woke up chained up in a room that's to be expected. The Doctor's tape is more fun. He has to kill Adam! Adam knows this. Doctor also seems to have a better idea what the puzzle is going on than Adam, but I feel that Adam never knows what the puzzle is going on. Ok, it finally does something scarier than 'locked in room' (scary irl but the stakes are low in that the monster has already won, the danger can only decrease); the fact that his wife and daughter (I'm guessing) are threatened adds danger once more, something more than just the madman has already won.

 Adam is surprisingly cooperative with the man who just got told to kill him. And there's a bad bit of humor/gross out with Adam reaching into the bowl of the toilet instead of checking under the lid first and having to deal with disgusting poop water. They find hacksaws, but Adam breaks his and the iron chain is just too thick and hard for the rusty old piece of junk. Lawrence realizes that they're supposed to cut their own feet off.

 We get a campfire story about a serial killer from Lawrence. Thus far film's best thing is average music. Still murder games/torture is creepy. Um Lawrence, technically speaking putting someone in a situation that will kill them if they do nothing or if they try and escape is murder. There is no technically not a murderer here. Don't say stupid stuff, I want to like one of you.

 Still we learn some stuff from the murder game stories. Jigsaw, the killer, likes to watch. Also Dr. Gordon had a patient that looks like the dead dude on the floor, and an underling who was Ben in Lost. I don't trust Ben. Ben just has a villain face. Oh and Jigsaw left Lawrence's penlight at the scene of one of the crimes. Fun. Apparently his alibi was that he was having an affair. I currently suspect Ben.

 I have mostly not commented on the 'campfire stories' but they're not actually bad. The reverse beartrap is actually creepy. The puppet works. And if the film can keep this quality (instead of the first 10 minutes) it'll be pretty good. the fast movement thrashes of the victim and attempt at frantic is more headache inducing than scary, though, and I am unsure if I'm supposed to think it's a long time (which the fast forwarded motion implies) or just 'panic mode' which makes more sense with the time. The sounds and movements of the man as she cuts him open to get the key is effective. The rummaging in his stomach less so. And then we get frantic mode again as she takes off the helmet with the key.

 The puppet appears and is creepy. Far creepier than Chucky was. But I've not been scared. The only story with tension was the woman's thus far, and now that it's gone I feel unsatisfied as I didn't get the fear hit.

 Adam is a dumbass. But picking up a piece of broken glass realizes it's a two way mirror and then starts throwing shit at the mirror. In all the stories the rooms were very carefully prepared so that there weren't just random tools, in this one there's a good number in Adam's reach and he's just chucking shit at a camera where it won't hit. Lawrence believes that they have to play the game... and Adam is a total dumb ass again. He needs to keep his mouth shut. I enjoy the film much more when he does.

 We are now 1/3rd through the film. I don't feel primed for horror. I don't feel any desire to stop typing. The movie has been 'better' than Child's Play thus far, but simultaneously it's been less fun because Child's Play at least made me laugh at its serious attempts, and this makes me... want to read Japanese murder porn manga because they get a better hit.

 Musical cue to be scared when Adam reveals the photo of Lawrence's wife and daughter tied and gagged is oo overt, to forced. And... Did Adam take the picture with the clue, or did Lawrence just not react at all to it? We get some immediate horror (as opposed to vague dread) when he comes for Lawrence's wife and daughter in flashback that is now no longer someone's specific memory but just prior events (acceptable technique just on my mind). Unlike with Child's Play I feel this film has an outside chance of actually killing the small child. I hope they don't but... was that Ben's face. I'm pretty sure that was Ben's face. So either Ben did it or he's an accomplice which... not surprising.

 And the detective apparently is 1) Spying on the doctor's home while the abduction takes place, and 2) blaming himself for letting the doctor go while watching the criminal abduct his wife. Detective seems crazy. We also learn this movie was brought to us by Krispy Kreme. Krispy Kreme donuts the best for cops who are being presented as irrationally hating a doctor enough to watch someone abduct his wife. To be fair he might just be illegaly spying on the doctor and thinks it's an affair, but his words implied the other and either it's... This film does not want me to think about things. Also sound cues for horror have gone from 'mediocre' to 'it feels like a laugh track that is telling me be scared now'.

 We get that the villain is sick, implied to be terminally ill, and he cuts Tapp, and this is implied to be a flashback to after Gordon gave his alibi but before they... shot Jigsaw. So it's a fake or he's playing dead. Ok lures the young cop into a death trap, and the old cop can't follow because throat is slashed. And his hand that is 'keeping him from bleeding to death' stretches out...

 Still ok Cop is now completely obsessed with catching the man who killed his partner, and talking to his dead partner. This is the creepiest the movie has felt. And Adam is in fact hiding the clue like a dumb ass. Still he half tells him the clue, but not 'oh yeah there's a picture of your tied up family'. Gordon I hope you kill Adam. If only one of you is going to live, I would prefer Gordon. I mean either he should give him the picture, or not give him the clue. If he's trying to make sure Gordon doesn't have the information to kill him not giving him the clue is a good move. It'll lead to them both being left to rot if Jigsaw is honest but... If he's not then give the man his picture, you already (before seeing the picture) made certain he believed it was true and tried to call him cold hearted for not panicking more. Also lying makes you suspicious. Adam lies badly and I agree with Gordon that he's dealing with a juvenile. Adam finally gives the picture clue, after lying about it. And Gordon asks the sensible 'why didn't you show me it before'. We're supposed to think that Adam was just being nice by hiding the pain. He's a douche ass for it, though. Though now Gordon is really thinking about killing him, partially because of the picture and partially because Adam has been a dumb ass.

 Gordon comes up with a plan, in the dark, whispered so that Jigsaw and we don't hear it, we hear enough to get the idea that there is a plan, and it's pretty obvious that it's fake poisoning a cigarette and giving it to the smoker Adam to kill him. This is not a good plan given that they don't know how the poison works, and that Adam is a lousy liar with the most unconvincing death scene. Jigsaw's response is to electrocute Adam. Which apparently makes him remember what happened the night before... Progress?

 An hour in and I have decided that for murder/torture/deathtrap porn I'm just going to stick to Japanese stuff. This reminds me I need to watch Battle Royale.

 Still the scene in his memory is more traditional horror; the killer is in the house.

 Alright his daughter is calling Gordon on a phone that was provided with the last set of stuff. We are... Not scared. Ali tells him not to believe Adam's lies, that Adam knows him, and we saw it in the flashback so it can be believed. Gordon immediately shares the clue. Gordon demands the truth. Adam seems to be a private eye that's been spying on Gordon with pretty obvious flash photography and knows that Gordon was having an affair. Which apparently he broke off last night because she paged him while he was at home and that made him have qualms of conscience... I still like him more than Adam. I'm guessing someone died because Gordon was sleeping around and Jigsaw wants revenge, but idk.

 Adam was hired by Bob for $200 a night. Gordon figures that he's the culprit, and Adam can't remember shit about what he looks like, but finally says 'tall black guy with a scar around his throat', i.e. the detective. We've seen enough shots of a white guy watching them that I don't believe that he's the culprit. Though Ben could be the accomplice to him... I don't believe it quite.

 Ben is named Zep. Zep the Orderly who has been watching them on the camera. And time runs out. With, guestimating 30 minutes or less (maybe only 15 minutes) we finally enter the final act. The music increases the tempo to say danger time is go, and Ben begins to talk to Gordon's wife forcing her to tell him that he failed. Except the wife has slipped her bindings and takes the gun from FailBen. She doesn't shoot him. Shoot him. Shoot him before everything goes wrong. They both break down crying. There's some actual tension, and then FailBen attempts to take back the gun. There's a few shots, and the corrupt ex-cop who has been watching it all finally makes his move.

 And I must simply wonder what is it with horror movies and stabbing people with scissors. Do they really go into the flesh so well? Like seriously several inches? Either way corrupt cop hears a gunshot so comes in to try and play the hero and save Gordon's wife and daughter and apprehend FailBen. We've got the psycho killer is in the house horror, the music is working to increase adrenaline, and the scene is ok. He also electrocutes Gordon presumably to death. We see some 'frantic mode' scenes with FailBen and the cop and then Gordon wakes up.

 Gordon dropped the phone and it's out of reach. He tries to grab it with a box, ignoring that the hacksaw is longer and in reach and would reach it. This ruins the tension a bit, and makes his panic stupid. He ties off his foot, with his shirt (that could also reach the phone) and starts cutting off his foot. And this is supposed to be horror with all this blood and... It mostly makes me feel slightly more nauseous (I have a stomach thing and have felt like puking off and on for the last 30 hours) but mostly that the film is dumb.

 Cop shoots himself in another moment of dumb. The film is dumb. Gordon shoots Adam now that he knows there is no reason to do it. The film is stupid. The film is dumb. I still might have enjoyed it more than Uzumaki, but I think I hated it more too? It leaves you feeling slightly unclean (a good thing in horror), but it's fucking dumb. The plot runs on idiot ball at the end, and before that it's just not good.

 And then there's a good moment. Adam was faking dead and begins to brutally beat Ben with a toilet lid. It's not scary, though, it's senseless brutality. He could have shot him, but the film wanted to show 'scary' brutal murder. And 'chillingly' we learn that FailBen was not the culprit, but another victim. Which is a good ending, music gets the heartbeat up, but it all feels hollow.

 The dead man from the floor rises and kills Adam. Your classic final rise of the monster to show that even in defeat Jason/Freddy has won. "The key to that chain is in the bathtub" Which means it got flushed down the drain. It's a nice effect, but while it feels a lot better as a film, similar to the omen with its good end giving the illusion for a short time of being better, the film is overall dumb. The last 3 minutes do not make up for almost 100 minutes of dumb.

 I came in with low expectations. The film surprised me. It mostly avoided what I was led to expect, and had some legitimately good moments of psychological murder room horror (the woman with the reverse bear trap). It was still, however, worse than I had been led to expect.

 The movie lacks the camp charm of Prince of Darkness, or even Uzumaki. It plays itself as a psychological horror, a genre that is supposed to engage the mind and get you thinking, but relies on a massive idiot ball, and thus if you're thinking it ruins the film. The cop is supposed to be 'secretly a hero' all along, but could have caught the killer by simply making a move when he first realized what was going on instead of watching it like he was getting off on Gordon's family being held hostage and chose to wait until a person who he seems to have evidence is innocent's family is apparently shot before acting because... umm??? Gordon could have reached the phone with the hacksaw, either it was a final chance or too late, and his logical characterization suddenly exploded. Yes he has an IC reason for suddenly going from cold and logical to panicking, but he obviously wants to answer the phone so he's not at that type of panic (should have shown the phone further away). The little bits of stupid added up throughout the film and the ending does not save it by having a sudden creepy reveal; though it does finally answer the itching 'what about the third dude, guys you're obviously missing something' aspect. Still if psychological murder trap horror is your thing, there's a good number of manga about it; it has teenagers which apparently makes it better! Also decent writing.

 I came in expecting something mediocre, on the side of good, something near the level of the Omen. I was disappointed. It demands intellectual involvement (psychological and mystery elements) and cannot stand up to it, leaving a film that is neither fun or fulfilling, and not even a film that is scary.

 The Good:

The Beartrap story.

The creepy doll.

Cary Elwes. I like him. And his character was actually likeable despite his flaws. You root for him which is necessary in this sort of film.

 The Bad:

The Music. It slips from mediocre horror movie track to feeling like it's a laughtrack telling me when to be scared, attempting to manipulate my emotions with all the skill of an auditory jump scare. Yes suddenly loud/creepy tone as they reveal the object. I'm so scared.

Adam. You need to like him. You need to be torn between Cary Elwes's character killing him or not, you need to want him to survive. He annoyed me throughout the film until the last 5 minutes. The only reason to want him to win is because you want th e monster to lose more.

The resolution: While the very last 3 minutes are good, the events that lead to the resolution are a cluster of stupidity that just leaves a bad taste in the mouth (especially as it was coming from Cary Elwes who had been smart before that).

 The Ugly:

The 'frantic mode' accelerated phootage. At first I thought it was supposed to be time skip, but no apparently it's just supposed to be some stylistic 'things are happening frantically' and it doesn't work well. Show them being frantic, that'd have worked better.

The details. Details are important in this type of plot, and the movie ignores things like 'he has another tool' or 'he should be soaking wet' and it detracts heavily from it; sometimes as just 'nitpicks' that would normally be

[ernmark]

So what'd you think of the new episode?

You know, for the last two days I kept thinking about making a reaction post, but then life got in the way. So thank you for asking~

Overall, this feels a lot like a breather episode after The Week Of OH GOD WHY. Juno needs a chance to unpack some of the real nasty heaviness that’s been building up, and we could all use some kittens.

I’ll admit, the trolley was a surprise. I was not expecting the Penumbra to be a transformer, but there ya go.

After all that (admittedly fan-generated) hype about a time skip, listening to an old guy definitely had me freaking out a little. Then we hear Juno’s voice for reals and I’m sighing in relief. It’s just some foreshadowing, probably introducing the real villain of the episode/season. Thank god. 

(Maybe Noir monologues are just a fundamental part of the Martian dialect?)

I’m pleased about the darkness/dawn imagery that goes into that opening monologue, though. We’re basically getting a Greek Chorus with that monologue, and it’s lovely.

We’re gonna spend some time on that one scene in the opening, because yeah.

Juno is a dick, and not just as a gumshoe. This is why I keep trying to emphasize that being depressed is not an excuse for being an asshole, because in this opening sequence, Juno is both, and the way he acts is Not Okay on a human level. He’s being shitty, and he probably knows it.

On a narrative level, I totally get why this turn of events is unfolding. It’s fairly essential to the arc that they’re building, if my guess is correct. 

On a mental illness level, I have totally been there, sans the violent outbursts. Like, a lot of the things Rita’s describing are things I have done. And yeah, sometimes the only way out of it is to pick up (or, if you’re lucky, be handed) a fairly simple task that you actually feel capable of accomplishing, just so you can scrape yourself off the floor. So as far as realistic portrayals go, a smarting gold star for that one.

I’d like to reiterate how very Not Healthy and Not Okay Juno’s reactions are-- but that’s literally the point of the scene.

His bursts of violent rage aren’t new-- hell, we’ve heard about him giving Mick concussions. Mick is still afraid of him. At the moment he seems to be taking it out on inanimate objects (Rita’s monitor? His, if he’s the one who bought it?) but still, there was some very definite alarm in her voice when he decided to smash it.

I gotta say, though, major kudos to Rita for standing up to him when he’s scary, and actually talking him down from his rage. It takes a lot of courage to do that, and she’s got plenty of that. Like holy shit, I can’t begin to explain how difficult that is. The fear doesn’t carry over, though-- as soon as she gets her footing, she’s in control of the situation, and she doesn’t cede control at all after that point. She’s scared for the monitor and for Juno, but she’s not scared for herself. That’s important. 

(Also, I love that her first thought when he lost his eye was “it’s cool, we’ll just dress like pirates!”)

I won’t lie, I appreciate the swords-and-sorcery theme for the episode. 

Also, according to the script “six months have passed since he made all our fans really mad.” Thank you, Kevin Vibert.

Oh, Juno. A shitty decision followed by a spectacular failure. Wow. Yeah, been there.

I like the updates on what’s happening with Mick and Cassie. Also, RITA GOT CASSIE OFF MARS!!!! My heart sings.

RITA: And… and… hey,because of you, Billie Navarro is dead!

JUNO: That’ssupposed to make me feel better?

RITA: She was a realmean lady, Mista Steel. I’m sure it makes… someone feel better?

Time to ring the foreshadowing bell! I expect to hear more about Billie Navarro in the next few episodes.

Admittedly, I have a soft spot for that old trope “Sure, if [absurdly improbable thing] happens, then I’ll do the thing” followed by somebody rushing in and using those exact words apropos of nothing. 

The minute Maia started describing Pippa’s change and behavior, I was like “somebody switched the cat.” 

Also, it’s relevant that Maia is a real estate lawyer. 

Can I take a moment to appreciate truly bizarre cats in podcasts? If this can just start being a staple of the medium, I would be delighted.

“Her meow is pained in some way.” Jesus Christ, after what they did to that poor cat, I would say so! Seriously, the descriptions of what they did to those designer cats was horrific. I don’t know if the episode came with a content warning, but it should have.

A great stage direction: 

WHEN HE’S NOT CRITICALLY DEPRESSED AND ANGRY,JUNO KNOWS THAT THE ONLY WAY TO TAME RITA IS TO USE HER CHAOS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

One of the things I really love is how Juno’s voice changes over the course of this episode. He sounds so much more like himself by the end.